The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 21

Within full view of the Seven Mountains, on the opposite bank of the Rhine, is G.o.desberg,--"a cheerful village with a castle which is a splendid ruin," say the guide-books.

They might go a bit further and recount something of its political and religious history, although usually they do not, but rush the tourist up-river to Coblenz, giving him only a sort of panoramic view of this portion of the Rhine.

Originally a _castellum romain_, the "cheerful village," known to the ancients as Ara Ubiorum, came under the control, in 1210, of the Archbishop Theodoric of Cologne, who built a chapel to St. Michael on the ancient ruins, which, according to tradition, had endured from the times of Julian the Apostate.

For many centuries there was a chateau here which served as the country-house of many of the archbishop-electors of the Empire, until destroyed by a thunderbolt. In 1593 it was pillaged by the troops of the Archbishop Ernest, and to-day only a great, lone, round tower remains intact.

For the rest it is a fine ruin and a picturesque one.

_Rolandseck_

But a short distance above G.o.desberg is Rolandseck; opposite which is the island of Nonnenwerth, with which it is a.s.sociated in a famous legend.

The chivalrous Roland sought the love of some fair being, whose beauty and whose virtues should deserve and retain the heart of so brave and gallant a young knight. Nor did he look about in vain, for Hilda, the daughter of the lord of the Drachenfels, was all that dreams had pictured to his youthful fancy as worthy of an ardent soul's devotion, and soon he was made happy by a confession from the maiden that his pa.s.sion was returned. Lost in a dream of first love, the knight forgot the world and its struggles, and, in the expectation of an early day for his wedding with his mistress, he lived a life of perfect joy,--now gazing with Hilda upon the windings of the Rhine; now watching her as she stooped gracefully to tend the flowers which peace allowed to flourish under the walls of her father's stronghold.

But Roland lived in times when love was but the bright, transient episode of a life of war. The laws of chivalry forbade a true knight's neglect of duty, and, in the very week in which he was to be wedded, the summons came for him to take the field.

The war was long, and it was three years before Roland left the camp.

When he reached the home of his mistress, he received a frightful welcome. The castle was in ruins; its lord was slain; and Hilda, deceived by reports of Roland's death, had taken the veil in the neighbouring convent of Nonnenwerth!

Over the bright path of the young knight a dark and lasting shadow was cast. His early hopes were shattered; the joy of his existence had fled; his spirit bent beneath the weight of his evil fortune. But his faith and constancy were beyond the control of Fate. Retiring to his castle of Rolandseck, he made himself a seat within a window, from which he could look down upon the island of Nonnenwerth and the convent that held his beloved Hilda. Whether she heard of his return tradition does not say; but the rumour of such constancy was perhaps wafted through the nunnery walls. Be that as it may, it is chronicled that, after Roland's watch had been for three years prolonged, he heard one evening the tones of the bell that tolled for a pa.s.sing soul, and next day the white figures of the nuns were seen bearing a sister to her last home. It was the funeral of Hilda.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The isle of Nonnenwerth and its convent are still there opposite the grim, gaunt, ruined gateway of Rolandseck, a brilliant jewel in an antique setting; and, while neither the conventual buildings nor the ruined chateau show any unusual architectural features, they are characteristic of the feudal and religious architecture of the middle ages.

Architects of to-day do not build with the same simplicity and grace that they did of old, and these little out-of-the-way gems of architecture are far more satisfying than are similar erections of to-day.

XXV

COLOGNE AND ITS CATHEDRAL

No stranger ever yet entered Cologne without going straight to see its mighty Gothic cathedral. Three things come to him forcibly,--the fact that it was only completed in recent years, the great and undecided question as to who may have been its architect, and the "Legend of the Builder," as the story is known.

There are two legends of the cathedral and its builders which no visitor will ever forget.

_The Architect of Cologne_

Mighty was Archbishop Conrad de Hochsteden, for he was lord over the chief city of the Rhine, the city of Cologne; but his thoughts were troubled, and his heart was heavy, for, though his churches were rich beyond compare in relics, yet other towns not half so large or powerful as his had cathedrals whose fame extended over Europe, and whose beauty brought pilgrims to their shrines, profit to the ecclesiastics, and business to the townspeople. After many sleepless nights, therefore, he determined to add to his city the only thing wanting to complete it, and, sending for the most famous architect of the time, he commissioned him to draw the plans for a cathedral of Cologne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL VIEW _of COLOGNE_]

Now the architect was a clever man, but he was more vain than clever. He had a vague idea of the magnificence which he desired to achieve without a clear conception of how he was to do it, or without the will to make the necessary sacrifices of labour, care, and perseverance. He received the commission with great gladness, and gloated for some days upon the fame which would be his as the builder of the structure which the archbishop desired; but when, after this vision of glory, he took his crayons to sketch out the design, he was thrown into the deepest despondency. He drew and drew, and added, and erased, and corrected, and began again, but still did not succeed. Not a plan could he complete.

Some were too mean, others too extravagant, and others, when done and examined, were found to be good, but not original. Efforts of memory instead of imagination, their points of excellence were but copies of other cathedrals,--a tower from one, a spire from another, an aisle from a third, and an altar from a fourth; and one after another they were cast aside as imperfect and useless, until the draughtsman, more than half-crazed, felt inclined to end his troubles and perplexities by a plunge into the Rhine.

In this mood of more than half-despair, he wandered down to the river's edge, and, seating himself upon a stone, began to draw in the sand with a measuring rod, which served as a walking-stick, the outlines of various parts of a church. Ground-plans, towers, finials, brackets, windows, columns, appeared one after another, traced by the point of his wand; but all, one after another, were erased as unequal and insufficient for the purpose, and unworthy to form a part of the design for a cathedral of Cologne. Turning around, the architect was aware that another person was beside him, and, with surprise, the disappointed draughtsman saw that the stranger also was busily making a design.

Rapidly on the sand he sketched the details of a most magnificent building, its towers rising to the clouds, its long aisles and lofty choir stretching away before the eye of the startled architect, who mentally confessed that it was indeed a temple worthy of the Most High.

The windows were enriched by tracery such as artist never had before conceived, and the lofty columns reared their tall length toward a roof which seemed to claim kindred with the clouds, and to equal the firmament in expanse and beauty. But each section of this long-sought plan vanished the moment it was seen, and, with a complete conviction of its excellence, the architect was unable to remember a single line.

"Your sketch is excellent," said he to the unknown; "it is what I have thought and dreamed of,--what I have sought for and wished for, and have not been able to find. Give it to me on paper, and I will pay you twenty gold pieces."

"Twenty pieces! ha! ha! twenty gold pieces!" laughed the stranger. "Look here!" and from a doublet that did not seem big enough to hold half the money, he drew forth a purse that certainly held a thousand.

The night had closed in, and the architect was desperate. "If money cannot tempt you, fear shall force you;" and, springing toward the stranger, he plucked a dagger from his girdle, and held its point close to the breast of the mysterious draughtsman. In a moment his wrists were pinioned, as with the grasp of a vise, and squeezed until he dropped his weapon and shrieked in agony. Falling on the sands, he writhed like an eel upon the fisherman's hook; but plunged and struggled in vain. When nearly fainting, he felt himself thrown helpless upon the very brink of the stream.

"There! revive, and be reasonable. Learn that gold and steel have no power over me. You want my cathedral, for it would bring you honour, fame, and profit; and you can have it if you choose."

"How?--tell me how?"

"By signing this parchment with your blood."

"Avaunt, fiend!" shrieked the architect; "in the name of the Saviour I bid thee begone." And so saying, he made the sign of the cross; and the Evil One (for it was he) was forced to vanish before the holy symbol. He had time, however, to mutter: "You'll come for the plan at midnight to-morrow."

The architect staggered home, half-dead with contending pa.s.sions, and muttering: "Sell my soul," "To-morrow at midnight," "Honour and fame,"

and other words which told the struggle going on within his soul. When he reached his lodgings, he met the only servant he had going out wrapped in her cloak.

"And where are you going so late?" said her surprised master.

"To a ma.s.s for a soul in purgatory," was the reply.

"Oh, horror! horror! no ma.s.s will avail me. To everlasting torments shall I be doomed;" and, hurrying to his room, he cast himself down with tears of remorse, irresolution, and despair. In this state his old housekeeper discovered him on her return from her holy errand, and, her soul being full of charity and kindly religion, she begged to know what had caused such grief; and spoke of patience in suffering, and pardon by repentance. Her words fell upon the disordered ear of the architect with a heavenly comfort; and he told her what had pa.s.sed.

"Mercy me!" was her exclamation. "Tempted by the fiend himself!--so strongly, too!" and, so saying, she left the chamber without another word, and hurried off to her confessor.

Now the confessor of Dame Elfrida was the friend of the abbot, and the abbot was the constant counsellor of the archbishop, and so soon as the housekeeper spoke of the wonderful plan, he told her he would soon see her master, and went at once to his superior. This dignitary immediately pictured to himself the host of pilgrims that would seek a cathedral built with skill from such wonderful sketches, and (hoping himself one day to be archbishop) he hurried off to the bewildered architect.

He found him still in bed, and listened with surprise to the glowing account of the demon's plan.

"And would it be equal to all this?"

"It would."

"Could you build it?"

"I could."

"Would not pilgrims come to wors.h.i.+p in such a cathedral?"

"By thousands."

"Listen, my son! Go at midnight to the appointed spot; take this relic with you;" and, so saying, the abbot gave him a bone of one of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. "Agree to the terms for the design you have so long desired, and when you have got it, and the Evil One presents the parchment for your signature, show this sacred bone."