Chapter 13

The Cathedral of the Cité is worthy of great protecting walls and there are few churches whose destruction would have been so sad a blow to the architecture of the Midi. Saint-Nazaire is typical at once of the originality of the southern builders, of their idealism, and their joyous freedom from conventional thrall. The façade, straight, and massive, has the frowning severity of an old donjon wall. Its towers are solid masses of heavy stone; instead of spires, there are crenellations; instead of graceful flying-buttresses at the sides, there are solid, upright supports on the firm, plain side-walls. This is the true old Romanesque. A few steps further, and the apse appears, as great a contrast to the body of the church as a bit of Mechlin lace to a coat-of-mail. A little tower with gargoyles, another with a fine-carved turret, windows whose delicate traceries could be broken by a blow, and an upper balustrade which would have been as easily crushed as an egg-shell in the hands of the lusty Huguenots,--these are the ornaments of its wall, as true XIV century Gothic as the nave is XII century Romanesque. It is sadly disappointing to find the Cloisters in uninteresting ruin, but the church within is so full of great beauty that all other things are unimportant. The windows glow in the glory of their glass, and the tombs, especially those of the lower Chapel of the Bishop, are wonderfully carved. The first burial place of de Montfort, terrible persecutor of his Church's foes, lies near the High Altar, and in the wall, there is a rude bas-relief representing his siege of Toulouse. All these admirable details are puny in comparison with the interior which contains them. It is to be feared that often, too little time is spent upon the nave. Even in mid-day, lighted by the southern sun, its beautiful, severe lines are mellowed but little, and one turns too instinctively to the Gothic, the greater lightness beyond. Yet it is a nave of exceedingly fine, rugged strength, and to pass on lightly, to belittle it in comparison with its brighter choir, is to wantonly miss in the great round columns, the heavy piers, and the dark tunnel vaulting, the conception of generations of men who had ever before their mind--and literally believed--"A mighty fortress is our God." The choir is of the XIV century, a day when the "beauty of holiness" seems to have been the Cathedral architect's ideal. Delicate, clustered columns from which Saints look down, long windows beautifully veined, a glorious rose at each transept's end, and high vault arches springing with a slender pointed grace, all these are of exquisite proportions; and the brilliant stained-glass adds a softening warmth of colour, but not too great a glow, to the cold fragility of the shafts of stone. Nothing in the Gothic art of the South, little of Gothic elsewhere, is more thoughtfully and lovingly wrought than this choir of Saint-Nazaire, and few churches in the Romanesque form are more finely constructed than its nave. On the exterior, the Gothic choir and the Romanesque nave are so different in style it seems they must be, perforce, antagonistic, that the grace of the Gothic must make Romanesque plainness appear dull, or that the noble simplicity of the rounded arch must cause the Gothic arches, here so particularly tall and slender, to seem almost fragile and undignified. In reality, this juxtaposition of the styles has justified itself; and passing from one to the other, the traveller is more impressed by the subtle analogies they suggest than by the differences of their architectural forms. On week-days, when the church is empty, they seem to prefigure the two ideals of the religion which they serve--the stern, self-conquering asceticism of a Saint Dominic, and the exquisite, radiant visions which Saint Cecelia saw when heavenly music was vouchsafed her. Or, if one has time to fancy further, the nave is the epic of its great religion; the choir, a song which is the expression of most delicate aspiration, most tender worship. On Sunday, when to this beauty of the godly habitation is added all the beauty of worship, the music of the oldest organs in France, slow-moving priests in gorgeous vestments, sweet smelling incense, chants, and prayers of a most majestic ritual, one is tempted to read into these stones symbolical meanings,--as if the heavy nave, where the dim praying figures kneel, were typical of their life of struggle--and their glances altarward, where all is light and beauty, presaged their final coming into the presence and glory of God.

Hunnewell has finely written, that "while the passions and the terrors of a fierce, rude age made unendurable the pleasant land where we may travel now so peacefully, ... and while Religion, grown political, forgot the mercy of its Lord and ruled supreme, ... an earnest faith and consecrated genius were creating some of the noblest tributes man has offered to his Creator," and it may be truly said that of these one of the noblest is the church begun in that most cruel age of Saint Dominic and de Montfort, in the very heart of the country they laid waste, in the city which one conquered by ruse and the other tortured by inquisition, the old Cathedral of Saint-Nazaire in Carcassonne.

[Sidenote: Castres.]

In the VII century Castres, which had been the site of a Roman camp, became that of a Benedictine Abbey; and around this foundation, as about so many others, a town grew through the Middle Ages, and came safely to prosperity and importance. Untrue to its early protectors and in opposition to the fervent orthodoxy of the neighbouring city of Albi, Castres became a Protestant stronghold, and its fortunes rose and fell with the chances of religious wars. It was, perhaps, one of the most intrepid and obstinate of all the centres of heresy, and the centuries of struggle seem only to have strengthened the fierceness of its faith. In 1525, when the Duke de Rohan was absent and a royal army again summoned it to submission and conversion, the Duchess had herself carried from a sick bed to the gate of the city which was threatened, and it is related that the inhabitants of all classes, men, women, and children, without distinction of sex or age, armed themselves and rushed victoriously to her aid. Thirty-five years later, their children sacked churches, destroyed altars and images, and drove out monks and nuns.

Bellicose incidents make history a thrilling story, but they are accompanied by such material destruction that they too often rob a city of its greatest treasures, and leave it, as far as architectural interest is concerned, an arid waste. Such a place is Castres, prosperous, industrial, historically dramatic, but actually commonplace. Old houses, picturesque and mouldy, with irregular, overhanging eaves, lean along the banks of the little river as they are wont to line the banks of every old stream of the Midi, and they are nearly all the remains of Castres' Mediævalism. For her streets are well-paved, trolleys pass to and fro, department stores are frequent, and that most modern of vehicles, the automobile, does not seem anachronistic. No building could be more in harmony with the city's atmosphere of uninteresting prosperity than its Cathedral, and he who enters in search of beauty and repose, is doomed to miserable disappointment.

Confronted in the XIV century by a growing heresy, John XXII devised, among other less Christian methods of combat, that of the creations of Sees, whose power and dignity of rank should check the progress of the enemies of the Church; and in 1317, that year which saw the beginning of so many of these new Sees, the old Benedictine Abbey of Castres, lying in the very centre of Protestantism, was created a Bishopric. The century, if unpropitious to Catholicism, was favourable to architecture, the Abbey was of ancient foundation, and from either of these facts, a fine Cathedral might reasonably be hoped for,--a dim Abbey-church whose rounded arches are lost in the gloom of its vaulting, or a bit of southern Gothic which the newly consecrated prelate might have ambitiously planned. But the Cathedral of Saint-Benoît is neither of these, for it was re-constructed in the XVII century, the XVII century in all its confusion of ideas, all its lack of taste, all its travesty of styles. There is the usual multitude of detail, the usual unworthiness. Portals which have no beauty, an expanse of unfinished façade, dark, ugly walls whose bareness is not sufficiently hidden by the surrounding houses, heavy buttresses, ridiculously topped off by globes of stone,--such are the salient features of the exterior of Saint-Benoît.

The "spaciousness" of the interior has given room, if not for an impartial representation, at least for a reminder of all the styles of architecture to which the XVII century was heir. There is the Renaissance conception of the antique in the ornamental columns; in the rose-window, there is a tribute to the Gothic; the tradition of the South is maintained by a coat of colours--many, if subdued; and the ground plan of nave and side-chapels might be called Romanesque. Although the vaulting is high and the room large, there is no simplicity, no beauty, no artistic virtue in this interior.

Opposite the church is the episcopal Palace which Mansart built, a large construction that serves admirably as a City Hall. Behind it, along the river, are the charming gardens designed by Le Nôtre, where Bishops walked and meditated, looking upon their not too faithful city of Castres. Upon this very ground was the ancient Abbey and close of the Benedictines; and as if in memory of these monkish predecessors, Bishop and builder of the XVII century left in an angle of the Palace the old Abbey-tower. This is the treasure of Castres' past, a Romanesque belfry with the pointed roofing of the campanile of Italy, heavy in comparison with their grace, and stout and strong.

[Sidenote: Toulouse.]

Toulouse is one of the most charming cities of the South of France. It is also one of the largest; but in spite of its size, it is neither noisy nor stupidly conventional; it is, on the contrary, an ideal provincial "capital," where everything, even the climate, corresponds to our preconceived and somewhat romantic ideal of the southern type. When the wind blows from the desert it comes with fierce and sudden passion, the sun shines hot, and under the awnings of the open square, men fan themselves lazily during a long lunch hour. Under this appearance of semi-tropical languor, there is the persistent energy of the great southern peoples, an energy none the less real because it is broken by the long siestas, the leisurely meal-times, and the day-time idling, which seem so shiftless and so strange to northern minds. This is the energy, however, which has made Toulouse a rich, opulent city,--a city with broad boulevards, open squares, and fine buildings, and a city of the gay Renaissance rather than of the stern Middle Ages. Yet for Toulouse the Middle Ages were a dark time. What could be gotten by the sword was taken by the sword, and even the mind of man, in that gross age, was forced and controlled by the agony of his body. It is a time whose most peaceful outward signs, the churches, have been preserved to Toulouse, and the war-signs, towers, walls, and fortifications, dungeons, and the torture-irons of inquisition, are now--and wisely--hidden or destroyed. Of the fierce tragedies which were played in Toulouse, even to the days of the great Revolution, few traces remain,--the stern, orthodox figure of Simon de Montfort, and of Count Raymond, his too politic foe, and the anguish of the Crusaders' siege, the bent form of Jean Calas and the shrewd, keen face of Voltaire, who vindicated him from afar, these memories seem dimmed; and those which live are of light-hearted troubadours and gaily dressed ladies of the city of the gay, insouciant Renaissance to whom an auto-da-fè was a gala between the blithesome robing of the morning and the serenade in the moonlight. Fierce and steadfast, sentimentally languishing, dying for a difference of faith, or dying as violently to avenge the insult of a frown or a lifted eye-brow, such are the Languedocians whom Toulouse evokes, near to the Gascons and akin to them. Here is the Académie des Jeux-Floreaux, the "College of Gay Wit" which was founded in the XIV century, and still distributes on the third of every May prizes of gold and silver flowers to poets, and writers of fine prose; and here are many "hôtels" of the Renaissance, rich and beautiful homes of the old Toulousan nobility whose courts are all too silent. Here is the Hôtel du Vieux-Raisin, the Maison de Pierre, and the Hôtel d'Assézat where Jeanne d'Albret lived; and near-by is a statue of her son, the strongest, sanest, and most debonnaire of all the great South-men, Henry of Navarre. Here in Toulouse is indeed material for a thousand fancies.

And here the Cathedral-seeker, who had usually had the proud task of finding the finest building in every city he visited, was doomed to disappointment. In vain he tried to console himself with the fact that Toulouse had had two Cathedrals. Of one there was no trace; in the other, confusion; and he was met with the axiom, true in architecture as in other things, that two indifferent objects do not make one good one. The "Dalbade," formerly the place of worship of the Knights of Malta, has a more elegant tower; the Church of the Jacobins a more interesting one; the portal of the old Chartreuse is more beautiful; the Church of the Bull, more curious; and the Basilica of Saint-Sernin so interesting and truly glorious that the Cathedral pales in colourless insignificance.

Some cities of mediæval France possessed, at the same time, two Cathedrals, two bodies of Canons, and two Chapters under one and the same Bishop. Such a city was Toulouse; and until the XII century, Saint-Jacques and Saint-Etienne were rival Cathedrals. Then, for some reason obscure to us, Saint-Jacques was degraded from its episcopal rank and remained a simple church until 1812 when it was destroyed. The present Cathedral of Saint-Etienne is a combination of styles and a violation of every sort of architectural unity, and realises a confusion which the most perverse imagination could scarcely have conceived. According to every convention of building, the Cathedral is not only artistically poor, but mathematically insupportable. The proportions are execrable; and the interior, the finest part of the church, reminds one irresistibly of a good puzzle badly put together. The weak tower is a sufficient excuse for the absence of the other; from the tower the roof slopes sharply and unreasonably, and the rose-window is perched, with inappropriate jauntiness, to the left of the main portal. The whole structure is not so much the vagary of an architect as the sport of Fate, the self-evident survival of two unfitting façades. Walking through narrow streets, one comes upon the apse as upon another church, so different is its style. It is disproportionately higher than the façade; instead of being conglomerate, it is homogeneous; instead of a squat appearance, uninterestingly grotesque, it has the dignity of height and unity. And although it is too closely surrounded by houses and narrow streets, and although a view of the whole apse is entirely prevented by the high wall of some churchly structure, it is the only worthy part of the exterior and, by comparison, even its rather timid flying-buttresses and insignificant stone traceries are impressive.

The nave of the early XIII century is an aisle-less chamber, low and broadly arched. As the eye continues down its length, it is met by the south aisle of the choir,--opening directly into the centre of the nave. Except for this curiously bad juxtaposition, both are normally constructed, and each is of so differing a phase of Gothic that they give the effect of two adjoining churches. The choir was begun in the late XII century, on a new axis, and was evidently the commencement of an entire and improved re-construction. In spite of the poorly planned restoration in the XVII century, the worthy conception of this choir is still realised. It is severe, lofty Gothic, majestic by its own intrinsic virtue, and doubly so in comparison with the uncouth puzzle-box effect of the whole. Its unity came upon the traveller with a shock of surprise, relieving and beautiful, and after he had walked about its high, narrow aisles and refreshed his disappointed vision, he left the Cathedral quickly--looking neither to the right nor to the left, without a trace of the temptation of Lot's wife, to "glance backward."

[Sidenote: Montauban.]

Although Montauban was founded on the site of a Roman station, the Mons Albanus, it is really a city of the late Middle Ages, re-created, as it were, by Alphonse I., Count of Toulouse in 1144. And it was even a greater hot-bed of heretics than Béziers. Incited first by hatred of the neighbouring monks of Le Moustier, and then by the bitter agonies of the Inquisition, it became fervently Albigensian, and as fervently Huguenot; and even now it has many Protestant inhabitants and a Protestant Faculty teaching Theology.

The Montauban of the present day is busy and prosperous, very prettily situated on the turbid little Tarn. In spite of her constant loyalty to the Huguenot cause, perhaps partly because of it, she has had three successive Cathedrals; Saint-Martin, burned in 1562; the Pro-cathedral of Saint-Jacques; and, finally, Notre-Dame, the present episcopal church, a heavy structure in the Italian style of the XVIII century. Large and light and bare, the nudeness of the interior is uncouth, and the stiff exterior, decorated with statues, impresses one as pleasantly as clothes upon crossed bean-poles. It is artificial and mannered; the last of the City Cathedrals of Languedoc and the least. If the notorious vices of the XVIII century were as bad as its style of ecclesiastical architecture, they must have been indeed monstrous.

END OF VOLUME I.