The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 8

It has braved with impunity the winds and tempests of many centuries, and stands to-day as beautiful a work of its kind, when one is away from Strasburg, Chartres, Antwerp, or Malines, as one can well conceive.

Its appearance is indeed magnificent, with a richness of ornament which has not been carried to the excess that would make it tawdry, and an outline which in every proportion is just and true.

Each day brings new admirers to this shrine, and one and all, antiquarians and cursory travellers alike, go away with an enthusiastic regard for its charms.

Freiburg itself does not go very far back into antiquity. It owes its origin to Berthold III., Duke of Zahringen, who founded it in 1118 and made it the capital of Breisgau, one of the most fertile districts of the ancient German duchy.

The cathedral at Freiburg marks the opening of a new era in the Christian architecture of Germany. It was founded in 1122 by the Duke of Zahringen, soon after he took over the guardians.h.i.+p of the city, but it was only in 1513 that it was entirely completed.

Nothing now remains of the primitive church except the transept and the base of the lateral portals. The nave dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, and the choir was mostly rebuilt at the same time.

The dedication did not take place until a century and a half later.

The structure is in the conventional form of a Latin cross, with the usual nave and aisles and a series of chapels surrounding the apside.

The facade is remarkable for the porch, which is highly ornamented with sculpture and forms the lowest story of the tower.

The pediment above the entrance is garnished with statuary representing the crowning of the Holy Virgin, while just below, at the sides, are two kneeling figures, with crowns on their heads, bent in prayer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FREIBURG CATHEDRAL]

Besides this gallery of saintly figures, there are also sculptured symbols which, in such a company, might well be thought profane: figures representing Geometry, Music, Arithmetic, and the Arts.

In the tower, above the porch, is a chapel dedicated to St. Michael, lighted by three ogival windows. It is now a bare, uninteresting chamber, its altar and decorations having disappeared.

The third story of the tower forms the belfry, from which springs the gently tapering and beautiful spire which rises to a height only forty feet less than that of Strasburg.

The dwindling spire has a dozen facets which in some mysterious way unite with the octagon of the belfry in a manner that leaves nothing to criticize.

Within the cathedral there are some acceptable mural decorations in the wall s.p.a.ce above the western arch of the transept crossing. There are also a number of funeral monuments, finely sculptured and quite remarkable of their kind. One, a "Christ in the Sepulchre," is admirably executed in the sixteenth-century style of Koempf, who is responsible also for the elaborate pulpit.

There are two other churches in Freiburg of more than usual interest; the parish church with a fine fourteenth-century cloister, and the Protestant temple, a modern structure in the Byzantine style, which has been built up on the remains of the church belonging to the ancient Benedictine convent of Tonnenbach, which existed in the twelfth century.

In the chapel of the university are a number of paintings by Holbein.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IX

STRASBURG

The greatest curiosity of Strasburg is the Rhine; after that, its cathedral.

Usually, on entering Strasburg, the first landmark that greets one's eye is the slim, lone spire of the cathedral.

Years ago an itinerant showman travelled about with a model of the celebrated Strasburg clock, and the writer got his first ideas of a great Continental cathedral from the rather crude representation of the Gothic beauties of that at Strasburg, which graced the canvas which hung before the showman's tent.

The clock is still there, in all its mystical incongruity, but one's interest centres in the grace and elegance of the dwindling spire and its substructure of nave, transept, and choir, which dominates all else round about.

Of many eras, the structure of this great Latin-cross cathedral is not harmonious; but, for all that, it is a great Gothic triumph, and one which might well lend most of its details of construction and decoration to any great church, and still add a charm which was. .h.i.therto absent.

Strasburg has in all fifteen churches, but the cathedral is possessed of more and greater glories than all the others combined.

From the days when Strasburg was the Argentoratum of the Romans, the city has ever been the scene of an activity which has made its importance known through all the world. It was sacked by Attila and his Huns in 451, and was completely abandoned up to the seventh century, when one of the sons of Clovis built it up anew and gave to it the name of Strateburgum.

Ptolemy is said to be the first writer who mentions Argentoratum, the ancient Strasburg.

What a bitter blow the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, of which Strasburg was the gem, was to France can only be realized by a contemplation of the sentiment which even yet attaches to the event.

That the allied provinces were French in spirit as well as Catholic in religion is demonstrated by the fact that, at the time of the German occupation, there was a population of over a million and a half of souls, of which quite a million and a quarter were of the Roman Catholic faith. About a million and a quarter were natives of Alsace-Lorraine, one hundred thousand were Germans, and thirty odd thousand were foreigners.

The present cathedral was erected on a site that had been consecrated to religion in very early times. It had been a sacred place in the time of the Romans, though the deities wors.h.i.+pped were pagan, a temple to Hercules and Mars having been erected here.

The first Christian church was built, it is believed, in the fifth century, by St. Amand, then Bishop of Strasburg.

This first church of Strasburg, which was a wooden structure, was probably founded by Clovis, 504, and reconstructed by Pepin-le-Bref and Charlemagne. It was mostly destroyed by fire in 873, and in 1002 was pillaged and fired anew by the soldiers of Duke Hermann, who was condemned himself to repair the damage. Lightning destroyed it again in 1007, and, by the time the new structure was thought of, nothing but the crypt of Charlemagne's edifice was visible.

From the proceeds received from Duke Hermann, and contributions from all Christianity, Bishop Werner conceived a vast scheme of a new church which in time was completed and consecrated.

This in turn fell before the ravages of fire, and nothing but a ma.s.s of debris remained, from which the present structure was begun in 1277.

The ancient church foundation of Strasburg was peculiarly arranged, after a manner most unusual in a cathedral church. The ground-plan of the ecclesiastical establishment was not unlike those of the monkish communities which were so plentifully scattered over Europe, but it was built for use as a church, and for the bishop and his clerics, instead of being merely a secular monastery.

The following diagram explains this unusual arrangement.

The masonic theory with regard to the construction of these mediaeval ecclesiastical monuments is of much interest in connection with Strasburg. The lodge at Strasburg was the earliest in the north of which we have any knowledge, and Ervin von Steinbach himself seems to have been at the head of it, which fact proves that he was one of the first of secular architects engaged upon a great religious work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Ancient Church Foundation, Strasburg_

A--Habitation of bishops and clerics B--Cour commune C--Part a.s.signed to women D--Part a.s.signed to men E--For preaching F--For penitents G--Doors H--Altars I--Pulpits K--Choir for clergy ]

Great opportunities and privileges were conferred upon him by Rudolph of Hapsburg, and the masonic lodge of which he was the head had the power, over a wide extent of territory, to maintain order and obedience among the workmen under its jurisdiction.

In 1278 Pope Nicholas III. issued a bull, giving the body absolution, and this was renewed by his successors up to the time of Benedict XII.

Iodoque Dotzinger, master of the works at Strasburg in 1452, formed an alliance between the different lodges of Germany.

It was an appreciative Frenchman--and all Frenchmen are appreciative and fond of Strasburg, because of what it once was to them--that said: "_La cathedrale est un merveille unique au monde_." Continuing, he said: "Those who have not seen it know not the _gaiete lumineuse_ of a Gothic church."

All of this is of course quite true from some points of view.

There is, however, something pitiful about the general aspect of this great Gothic church. Its lone spire, standing grim and gaunt against a background of sky, makes only the more apparent the incompleteness of the structure.

Its facade is certainly marvellous, quite rivalling those of Reims and Toul, not so very far away across the French border.