How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 34

In Vezelay occurred two notable gatherings of mediaeval history. Here, on March 31, 1146, St. Bernard preached the Second Crusade, on the hillside without the northern gate. Abbot Pons built on the site the chapel of the Holy Cross, wherein was preserved the tribune on which the saint had stood. The leaders of France flocked into this valley of Burgundy, Louis VII and his brilliant queen, Alienor of Aquitaine.[294]

St. Bernard had been commissioned by the pope to set the new venture in motion, and he threw his whole pa.s.sionate heart into the enterprise.

Standing above the vast gathering, he read the papal letter that told of Odessa's fall, two years earlier, and the horrifying ma.s.sacre of eastern Christians. It was sound statesmans.h.i.+p that discerned the menace of the Eastern Question; the advance of the Seljukian Turk was indeed a knotty problem for the XII century, when XX-century Europe, after oceans of blood, has not settled the trouble. We may be sure that Bernard of Clairvaux used no flatteries in addressing the throng at Vezelay, if his public word was as uncompromising as his private letters: "Up! soldier of Christ! Go, expiate your sins! The breath of corruption is on every side. The license of manners is unchecked. Brigandage goes unpunished.

_Debout, soldats du Christ!_" We know that his words of flame swept the crowd, and that, as at Clermont, fifty years earlier, again rose the cry: "G.o.d wills it! The Cross! The Cross!" The seductive queen, whose equivocal conduct on this very crusade was to start centuries of calamity for France, threw herself at Bernard's feet, to receive from his hand the Cross. The lowly people jostled with the lords to take the vow, "_les menues gens et les gens de grand air_," for crusades were democratic things that did more than aught else to break up feudal autocracy.

The eager men and women of 1146 knelt in the actual nave and narthex of Vezelay's abbatial. The choir which we have to-day was not yet built. In 1165 a fire damaged the choir of the Madeleine. A year later the exiled archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, excommunicated his enemies in England from Vezelay's pulpit. The new choir was built mainly under Abbot Girard d'Arcy (1171-96), and is Burgundy's Primary Gothic, though a generation behind the work of that phase in the Ile-de-France.

Unpracticed hands made its vaulting, whose web is not built elastically as in the true Gothic fas.h.i.+on; the stones were welded in a compact ma.s.s by a bath of mortar. Viollet-le-Duc suggested that Abbot Hugues, deposed by the pope in 1206 for indebtedness, may have expended more than he should on the church.

The choir was well advanced when, in July of 1191, the second great gathering at Vezelay occurred. Here Philippe-Auguste and Richard Coeur-de-Lion met, swore eternal friends.h.i.+p, and then marched south together for the Third Crusade. Before ever they reached Palestine their pact of good will was broken, as was only to be expected with the virus of the Capet-Angevin duel in their veins. Richard's mother, Alienor, had flouted Philippe's father, her first husband, on the former great enterprise for the East which had been initiated at Vezelay. The Madeleine church reconstructed its west frontispiece in the XIII century in order to light better its narthex; the pignon is overheavy and rather odd.

Three times St. Louis came to pray in the famous Burgundian pilgrim church, his last visit being a few months before his death while crusading in Africa. Then, in Provence in 1279, was discovered what was claimed to be the real body of the Magdalene. Before the XIII century was ended the prestige of Vezelay's pilgrimages was a thing of the past.

The monastery's ruin was consummated during the religious wars.[295]

Such was the decrepitude into which the splendid church fell, that only a complete restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, from 1840 to 1858, saved the edifice from collapse.

Because Vezelay's nave belongs to Burgundy's school of Romanesque it is s.p.a.cious and amply lighted; no gloom, no cramping here. Such a nave could lead up to a Gothic choir, without sharp contrast. The choir, taken by itself, may be a cold work, but the sublimity of its setting places it beyond criticism. There is no more romantically ideal a vista in architecture than the white choir of Vezelay, as it appears from the narthex through the imaged portico. Seen thus down the prospect of the sober nave four hundred feet away, it rises like the crusaders' dream of the Heavenly Jerusalem.

The dominant note of Vezelay's interior is serenity. Pace up and down its deserted aisles as a warm June day fades. The rose glow of sunset trans.m.u.tes the coa.r.s.e, porous stones to glory and the church seems voicing, _securo e gaudioso_, the grand old plain-chant psalmody which through long centuries echoed here. With you, like a tangible presence, is Faith's cert.i.tude, the cert.i.tude of John the Baptist who witnessed, the vision of John the Evangelist who loved, the impa.s.sioned tranquillity of Mary of Magdala. Here reigns the benignant gladness, _benigna letizia_, that Dante attributes to St. Bernard in Paradise. The luminous stillness of Vezelay testifies that he that cometh to G.o.d must believe that He is. Here Faith is an overwhelming acquiescence of the conscience as entire as was the belief of the men and women of the XII century who, when they heard the preacher's word, responded with the cry: "The Cross! The Cross!" In the solitary abbatial of to-day, half forgotten on a bypath of the world, breathes the living quietude, the active repose, the voluntary discipline of its old Benedictine builders.

"Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. Without faith, it is impossible to please G.o.d."

Like the Tag, in India, there is here a supersensual art beauty that renews the jaded spirit. Both have been embalmed for eternity in a vivifying peace. "Without holiness no man shall see G.o.d," thought the faulty, vehement, crusading generations who prayed in Vezelay's church, and holiness, then, meant primarily the humble repentance of sins.

Whoever it was built the tomb of the Indian princess at Agra, whoever it was built the church in Burgundy called after Mary of Magdala, he worked in something more than stones and mortar. At Agra you end by thinking that the secret of the enthralling magic lies in the marvel of atmosphere, the deep soft shadows which break the dazzling sun expanses.

At Vezelay, in the groping effort to put its spell into words, you end by saying that the beauty lies in the s.p.a.ce which the inclosing walls have so holily shut in. But what a.n.a.lysis or what detailed description can convey how the spirit is impressed by this shrine, named for the Sinner who poured out the precious ointment with a Faith and Love so complete that it washed her clean!

In such a church come flashes of insight, momentary liftings of the veil, periods of mental fecundity that make clear why the true mystic pa.s.ses without loss from his isolated reverie of Divine Love to an intensely practical activity, and when you begin to understand that you are on the way to a comprehensive sympathy with that pillar of French Christianity, that apostle sent of G.o.d as surely as was Paul to the Gentiles--Bernard the Burgundian, who prayed and preached in this abbey church.

THE GOTHIC COLLEGIATE AT SEMUR-EN-AUXOIS[296]

Les Francais, fils aines de l'antiquite, Romain par le genie, sont Grec par le caractere. Inquiets et volages dans le bonheur; constant et invincibles dans l'aversite; formes pour les arts; civilises jusqu'a l'exces durant le calme de l'etat; grossiers et sauvages dans les troubles politiques; flottants comme des vaisseaux sans lest au gre des pa.s.sions; enthusiastes du bien et du mal; aimants pusillanimes de la vie pendant la paix; prodigues de leur jours dans les batailles; charmants dans leur pays; insupportable chez l'etranger; tels furent les Atheniens d'autrefois, tels sont les Francais d'aujourd'hui.--CHATEAUBRIAND.

If the traveler has chosen little Avallon as the center from which to explore Burgundian churches, Semur-en-Auxois, lying a few miles to its east, will soon be visited. Picturesque and well kept, it is perched on a crest round which loops the river, a site such as a feudal baron chose, when possible, for his lair. The donjon towers at Semur belonged to a fortress built by Duke Philippe le Hardi.

The collegiate church of Notre Dame, included with the best Gothic work in Burgundy, derived indirectly from the choir of Auxerre Cathedral, through the church of Our Lady at Dijon. About 1225 the builders began to replace the XI-century Notre Dame at Semur by the present edifice, which reproduced the columnal piers with salient crockets that distinguish the most beautiful of Dijon's churches. By 1250 they had terminated the choir, transept, and the bay of the nave touching the transept. The nave and transept are too narrow for their height, because they followed the same ground plan as the antecedent Romanesque church.

Burgundy seemed to enjoy a problem in construction. Here, the arches of the vault being excessively pointed, the flying b.u.t.tresses were made with a radius greater than is to be found elsewhere.

Early in the XIV century, three new bays were added to the nave, as is shown by their main arches, which are more pointed than those of the earlier bays. Then about 1370, probably after a fire, the nave's stone roof was rebuilt and its triforium suppressed. The religious wars of the XVI century played havoc here in Notre Dame. During the Revolution, for two entire weeks, cartload after cartload of art treasures was carried away from the collegiate. Happily, the transept's northern portal escaped destruction, for it is a small masterpiece of Burgundian sculpture. Its tympanum relates the adventures in India of St. Thomas the Apostle, whose builder's rule was said to be of gold, in emblem of his spiritual masoncraft. St. Jerome would not sanction the Indian legends of the architect apostle, but the story of King Goldoforus and St. Thomas lingered in popular favor.

In one of the chapels of Semur's collegiate church is a XIV-century window dedicated to no saint, telling no Scriptural story, but merely setting forth, in large, clear panels, the working day of various artisans--dyer, vintager, butcher, tailor. The theologians who directed the iconography of mediaeval churches permitted the old guildsmen to translate into sign language their sensible idea that honest work was prayer.

The keystone over the sanctuary of Notre Dame, where eight ribs meet, is the most beautiful ever carved--a Coronation of the Virgin. Throughout the church the sculpture is exceptional. In the choir and transept, carved heads lean out from the triforium's spandrels, heads of monarch, bishop, monk, nun, and chatelaine, with here and there a grinning mask or grotesque. The restorer has followed a wrong path when he makes the exaggerated images in XIII-century sculpture exceed the ideal or realistic ones. Semur's triforium is among the most beautiful in Gothic art. On some of the capitals of the collegiate are vintage scenes, as was natural in this land of famous wines. There are noted modern vineyards, such as Chambertin and Vougeot, which were cultivated by the monks of Cluny and Citeaux for many a long century.

THE CATHEDRAL OF AUXERRE[297]

J'erre a pas muets dans ce profond asile, Solitude de pierre, immuable, immobile, Image du sejour par Dieu meme habite, Ou tout est profondeur, mystere, eternite ...

La voix du clocher en son doux s'evapore; Et, le front appuye, contre un pilier sonore, Je le sens, tout emu du retentiss.e.m.e.nt, Vibrer comme une clef d'un celeste instrument ...

Les rayons du soir que l'Occident rappelle, eteignent au vitraux leur derniere etincelle, Au fond du sanctuaire un feu flottant qui luit, Scintille comme un oeil ouvert sur cette nuit; Alors, portant mes yeux des paves a la vote Je sens que dans ce vide une oreille m'ecoute, Qu'un invisible ami dans la nef repandu, M'attire a lui, me parle un langage entendu, Se communique a moi dans un silence intime Et dans son vaste sein m'enveloppe et m'abime.

--LAMARTINE (1790-1869; born in Burgundy).

At Auxerre, on the Yonne, two Gothic edifices stand imposingly above the city, the cathedral of St. Stephen and the abbatial church named after that bishop of Auxerre, St. Germain, who foretold the sanct.i.ty of _la pucellette_ Genevieve in the village of Nanterre by Paris, and whose own sanct.i.ty was so a.s.sured that more churches have been called for him than for any other saint of France save the supreme St. Martin himself.

Paris put her church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois under his protection. He had been the ruler of this region of middle France under the Emperor Honorius, and was a soldier and devoted to sports; yet the old bishop of Auxerre, St. Amatre, chose him as his successor, divining in him a man destined to do great things for G.o.d.

The splendid abbey church at Auxerre stands on the site of the oratory which rose over the grave of St. Germain. Queen Clotilde on her way to wed Clovis, pausing here in 490, renewed the shrine by a church, which became the nucleus for an abbey favored by all three dynasties of France--Merovingian, Carolingian, and Capetian.[298] The monastery was a noted school whither came St. Patrick, and many generations later St.

Thomas Becket studied here after he had finished his law courses at Bologna.

In memory of Auxerre's reputation as a teacher, the cathedral has twice represented the Liberal Arts, in gla.s.s and in sculpture. The choir of St. etienne Cathedral was begun about 1215 by a well-known schoolman, Bishop Guillaume de Seignelay, who undertook it at his own expense, stimulated thereto by some of the parish churches which had lately been rebuilt in the new way. The crypt (c. 1130), retained under the choir of the new cathedral, had been begun by the bishop, St. Hugues de Chalons, a friend of St. Bernard, and probably finished by his successor, Hugues de Macon (1137-51), the first abbot of Pontigny, and St. Bernard's kinsman and childhood intimate. Of the cathedral of their day only the present crypt remains.

When Bishop Guillaume de Seignelay was transferred to the see of Paris, in 1220, he worked on the west facade of Notre Dame of the capital, and his successor at Auxerre, Henri de Villeneuve, completed the choir of St. etienne in 1234. Two lancets in the sanctuary are his gifts. The cathedral of Auxerre was building at both ends, while between lay the ancient Romanesque nave. The easternmost bay of the nave is XIII century, but the next five bays were erected only during the XIV century, at which time most of the statues of the western portals were done. With the choir's superb stained gla.s.s they form the supreme accessory of this cathedral. M. Enlart holds Auxerre's imagery to be, for delicacy and charm, among the best produced by the XIV century, and that the statuettes of the Liberal Arts, in the spandrels over the canopies of the David-Balthazar groups, are equal to Greek terra-cotta figurines. The Judgment of Solomon by the northwest door is excellent.

Within and without the stonecutting of the transept's southern facade should be observed. At that entrance appeared an early example of an accoladed arch, cited by M. Enlart as an indication of the English derivation of Flamboyant Gothic in France, since during the XIV century they were masters of Auxerre for a time.

As the Hundred Years' War relaxed building enterprise, the nave was not covered by a masonry roof till the XV century, about the time when Jeanne d'Arc paused to pray in Auxerre Cathedral on her memorable journey of eleven days from Lorraine to Touraine, across a France ravaged by civil and foreign wars.[299] The gracious Flamboyant west front of Auxerre's chief church is an expression of the hope and national pride renewed in France by the Maid's feat at Orleans. The well-designed north tower proves that the final phase of Gothic art in France did not pa.s.s away in decrepitude; had only the south tower been raised above the roof, this frontispiece could claim foremost rank.

For bold and light construction Auxerre's choir is notable, and it made a school in Burgundian Gothic. It has only one radiating chapel--that in the axis--because it followed the ground plan of the Romanesque crypt, its foundation. The charming Champagne disposition of planting columns between chapel and ambulatory was made use of; perhaps the pillars and stilted arches of Auxerre are rather too frail in their proportions. The same feature was used in the abbey church of St. Germain, and when the church of St. Eusebe[300] rebuilt its chevet, in the XV century, pillars were again placed to divide the curving aisle and the radiating chapels.

Auxerre Cathedral showed another trait of the Champagne school of Gothic--an interior pa.s.sageway beneath the aisle windows. The plain wall below it is relieved by a kind of arched corbel course not very satisfactory; the arches and the capitals upon which they rest are present, but there is no shaft to support the capitals, from above each of which reaches out a well-sculptured head. One of these busts represents the Erythraean priestess referred to in the _Dies irae_:

That day of wrath, that dreadful day, When Heaven and Earth shall pa.s.s away, As David and the Sibyl say.

The XIII century distinguished only that one sibyl whom St. Augustine's _City of G.o.d_ had popularized as the prophetess of the Last Judgment, but later in the Middle Ages all ten of them were represented, and certain Renaissance windows represented as many as twelve pagan prophetesses.

The placing of sculptured heads in the spandrels of arches was not infrequent in Burgundy, though occasionally merely one salient crocket was used. The cathedral of Nevers,[301] south of Auxerre, went a step farther and chiseled a small figurine in the spandrels of its triforium, like the angels of Lincoln's choir. Moreover, the colonettes of Nevers'

triforium are borne on the backs of small crouching caryatides--a Lombard echo. In France, Nevers' cathedral of St. Cyr was exceptional in having an apse at both east and west ends, like a Rhenish church. One is forced to relegate the beautiful little capital of the Nivermois to a footnote, which is what France herself seems to be doing to the well-set town on the Loire which in England or beyond the Rhine would be made into a small residence city. Its palace, parks, cathedral, and numerous churches, its faence industry and fortifications give it the air of a little capital.

Auxerre is another Mecca of stained gla.s.s in France. Its choir possesses almost forty windows (1220-30) of the school of Chartres, half of them being in the ambulatory and Lady chapel. Unfortunately, the lower panels were wrecked in 1567, and the east window of the axis chapel was destroyed in the Franco-Prussian war; the grisaille design throughout is mastery. The opaline loveliness of the choir's clearstory grisaille has drawn from M. Viollet-le-Duc one of his most eloquent pages.[302] Each bay is filled with twin lancets surmounted by a rose; each lancet has a large figure set in uncolored gla.s.s--one of the first attempts made to give more light to an interior. Those crusading generations visioned their Heavenly Jerusalem in sculpture at Vezelay, in color at Auxerre:

With jaspers glow thy bulwarks, Thy streets with emeralds blaze, The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays: Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced; The saints build up its fabric, And the corner stone is Christ.

They stand, those halls of Zion, Conjubilant with song, And bright with many an angel, And all the martyr throng: The Prince is ever in them; Their daylight is serene, The pastures of the blessed Are decked in glorious sheen.

There is the throne of David, And there, from care released, The song of them that triumph, The shout of them that feast; And they who, with their leader, Have conquered in the fight, For ever and for ever Are clad in robes of white.[303]

In the roses of the two bays neighboring the central lancets are the Liberal Arts and virtues contrasted with vices. The choir aisle has a Creation window, and lancets of the popular St. James, St. Nicolas, and St. Eustace. The transept's south rose is Rayonnant. Its north one is Flamboyant, and with the eight golden lights below it was given by Bishop Francois de Dinteville, the younger (1530-52), who donated also the _Gloria in Excelsis_ west rose. But no sooner were all these precious things installed when came the bitter civil wars of the XVI century. No place in France suffered more than Auxerre. An eyewitness of the 1567 sacking wrote: "All the woes of Jerusalem when it fell to the infidel are heaped on our city." Many a citizen died of grief at the town's desolation, and so devastated was every single church that for months no services were held.

A restoration was accomplished by Bishop Jacques Amyot (1571-93), the noted h.e.l.lenist, who first brought flexibility and amenity into French prose.[304] His translation of Plutarch--a French cla.s.sic--molded the ideals of French youth for generations. Unfortunately, because imported foreign taste had won the victory over the national art, this enlightened Renaissance prelate removed some of the ancient windows to light his high altar. His marble bust adorns a pier of the choir of Auxerre Cathedral.

DIJON[305]

Eternal, je me tais; en ta sainte presence Je n'ose respirer, et mon ame en silence Admire la hauteur de ton nom glorieux.

Que dirai-je? Abimes de cette mer profonde, Pendant qu'a l'infini ta clarte nous inonde, Pouvons-nous seulement ouvrir nos faibles yeux?

Cessez: qu'esperez-vous de vos incert.i.tudes, Vains pensers, vains efforts, inutiles etudes?

C'est a.s.sez qu'il ait dit: "Je suis Celui qui suis."

Il est tout, il n'est rien de tout ce que je pense; Avec ces mots profonds j'adore son essence Et sans y raisonner, en croyant, je poursuis!

--BOSSUET, _Tibi silentium laus_ (1627-1704; born in Dijon).

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Notre Dame at Dijon (1220-1245). Burgundian Gothic_]