CHAPTER X

ROMAN, ROMANESQUE, AND GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE

In the wide range of its ancient and mediaeval architecture France stands next to Italy. Its Roman buildings are almost as fine as anything to be found in that country, its Gothic structures include some of the world's masterpieces, while in examples of the Renaissance only the country where the re-birth took place can rival her. England, which competes closely in the Romanesque and Gothic periods, is out of the running in the earlier epoch, and takes a very much lower position in the works that succeeded the death of the pointed style. Italy, the most formidable rival, is superior in its Roman remains, but inferior in its Gothic work. In the Renaissance, Italy, its home, stands easily first, and in works of the Byzantine period its possessions at Venice and Ravenna leave the western nations far behind.

Prehistoric architecture is well represented in Brittany, where the vast scale of the Carnac lines--the Avenues of Kermario--dwarfs the British survivals on Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor. There are numerous dolmens and tumuli, containing chambers roughly constructed out of unhewn stones of the New Grange (Ireland) type, but there is nothing comparable to Stonehenge.

When one comes to the Roman period the remains are so splendid that many are satisfied with what they have seen in Provence, and do not feel impelled to see Rome before they die. Nimes stands first among the towns of Provence for the splendour of the Roman structures it has preserved. Not only has it an amphitheatre which is more perfect than any other in existence, but its temple, dedicated to Caius and Lucius Caesar, adopted sons of the Emperor Augustus, between the first and the fourteenth year of the Christian era, is also the best preserved in the world. Having been used successively as a church, a municipal hall, and a stable, it is now a museum of Roman objects, and seems capable of standing for an unlimited time. Besides these most famous structures there are two gateways, one of them bearing an inscription stating that it was built in the year 16 B.C. To the north of the town are Roman baths of wonderful completeness, and in their restored condition of very considerable beauty. Over them on the hill-top rises the Tour Magne, a Roman watch-tower which formed part of the defences of the city. Stretching across the deep and rocky bed of the river Gard, about 14 miles to the north, is the vast aqueduct which carried the water-supply of Nimes across the obstruction caused by the river. The three superimposed tiers of arches filling the wide space make one of the most imposing of all the Roman works that have come down to the present time.

Arles is a serious rival to Nimes. It has preserved its amphitheatre, built about the first century A.D. and large enough to hold an audience of 25,000 persons. The remains of its theatre, with two marble columns of its proscenium, which were utilised as a gallows in the Middle Ages, standing out among the fallen and dislodged stones, has preserved just enough of its form to be exceedingly impressive. In the disused church of St. Anne have been gathered a most remarkable collection of Roman sarcophagi, altars, and many other objects of richly sculptured stone, while in the Avenue des Alyscamps one may see the cemetery of Roman Arles just outside the city walls, dating from the reign of the Emperor Constantine. On the two sides of the avenue there are many stone sarcophagi, the larger ones, of which there are two or three dozen, having retained their lids. There are remains of the forum and a tower of Constantine's palace, built early in the fourth century.

Orange has a theatre which, now that the upper tiers of seats have been restored, has very much its original appearance. The immense stone wall, forming the back of the semicircular stage, is 118 feet in height and 13 feet thick. Stone was close at hand, making its construction easy, and the auditorium was hewn out of the limestone hill against which the theatre was built. There appears to have been a permanent roof of timber--a unique feature--for there are structural indications leading to such a conclusion, as well as signs of fire, which no doubt was the cause of its disappearance. In about A.D. 21 a very fine triumphal arch was erected at Orange, then known as _Arausio_, and this still stands complete, save for the detrition on its surface caused by the weather and perhaps some rough handling in the Dark Ages. Very judicious restoration has given one a convincing idea of what is missing where the structure has not been overlaid with new work. St. Remy has contrived to preserve a considerable portion of its triumphal arch, and close to it a remarkably perfect mausoleum, 50 feet in height. It is adorned with much sculpture like the archway, and both stand upon an exposed rocky plateau. There are, indeed, so many survivals of this period which one would like to mention that there would be no space to deal with any later age. Vienne, on the extreme confines of Roman Provincia, has its temple, rebuilt in the second century, converted into a Christian church in the fifth, and made more famous during the Revolution by the celebrating within its walls of the Festival of Reason. Remains of the city walls, of a theatre, of the balustrade of a fine staircase, of a pantheon, an amphitheatre, and a citadel are still to be seen. The Roman aqueduct, which supplied the city, restored in 1822, is still to some extent in use!

Perigueux is full of indications of its Roman buildings. The Tour de Vesone is in part a Gallo-Roman temple, dedicated to Vesuna; the remains of the amphitheatre include much of the outer wall, in which are staircases, vomitoria, and the lower vaulting now partially exposed. At Lillebonne, mentioned in another chapter, are the carefully excavated remains of a theatre; at Carcassonne, at Narbonne, at Lyons, in Paris, and in other cities and towns, Roman foundations and many sculptured stones are full of significance, and of absorbing interest to the historian, the architect, and the archaeologist.

Following the age of Roman domination came those strangely fascinating centuries of disruption and destruction in which the outward influences of Rome slowly gave way before the westward march of the lower but healthier civilisation of the tribes of central and eastern Europe. When these new peoples had settled down among the older occupants of the country, they began to build permanent structures for themselves, and although there may have been some craftsmanship among them, they were unable to do more than make indifferent attempts to copy the architecture of the Roman era. The dark shadow that the irruptions caused to fall upon the face of Europe leaves the world in ignorance as to the fate of the architects, and stone masons who reared the noble works of Rome's supremacy in western Europe. It would appear that in the two or three centuries of uncertainty, if not of perpetual warfare and social chaos, no one had time or opportunity to do more than erect hurried fortifications of the crude type one sees in the Visigothic portions of town walls, such as those of Carcassonne. No architect could flourish under such conditions, and unless he migrated to the seat of the Eastern Empire opportunities for applying his knowledge were no doubt impossible to find. And at Constantinople a new development of architecture was taking place, in which the exterior was disregarded to a very considerable extent while internal decoration became extravagant, Byzantine art being dissatisfied unless every portion of walls and roof was richly ornamented and brilliant in colour. The profession of the architect being useless, the dependent handicraftsmen would inevitably die out, and thus from the sixth century, which is about the earliest date of any Romanesque building in France, one sees the crude efforts of the ill-trained sculptors to copy the ornament of the buildings that lay around them ruined or gutted. In many of the capitals that were carved in these early centuries of Christian times, the volutes are half-hearted attempts to reproduce the Ionic order, with a tendency to stray into Corinthian foliation. From such very early buildings as the church of St. Pierre at Vienne, onwards to St. Trophime at Arles, the crypts of Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand and of St. Denis, Paris, until one reaches the great churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as the cathedral of Angouleme and the church of Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers, one can see the steady development of a curious mixture of bastard Roman with the Byzantine style, upon which was growing a new individuality which burst into flower with the introduction of the pointed arch. In France this abandonment of the Roman semicircular arch came very gradually. Belonging to the transition stage are many fine buildings, in which group are the fine church at Poitiers just mentioned and the cathedral at Le Puy-en-Velay. The sculpture of this period reveals the very strong Byzantine influence prevailing, and if no other evidence existed this alone would demonstrate the debt western Europe owes to the rearguard of its civilisation.

The architecture of Normandy had its own peculiarities during the Romanesque period, but while these differences have entitled it to a separate name and classification, it is Romanesque influenced by the Northmen, and all through England the strong Byzantine influence was felt until the great expansion of new ideas began to outgrow the forms and ornament of the preceding centuries.

Two of the finest Norman Romanesque buildings are the great abbey churches built at Caen by William the Conqueror and his queen Matilda. The Abbaye aux Hommes, William's work, is not quite as it was when consecrated, but it is almost entirely a work of the Norman period. That there was a simplicity in the style at this period almost amounting to plainness is shown in the west front of William's church; while the Abbaye aux Dames, built about a quarter of a century later, shows a very great advance in the distribution and application of ornament both within and without. Another abbey church, that of St. Georges de Boscherville, built in the eleventh century by Raoul de Tancarville, is a more perfect and complete work of that period than any other in Normandy. With the exception of the upper portions of the western turrets and the broach spire, the whole church stands to-day as it was originally erected. In these large and not always very beautiful buildings, it is their association with a romantic period and the evidences they show of architectural evolution that provides the chief satisfaction to the informed visitor and the student.

A considerable portion of the abbey buildings that engirdle the summit of the rocky islet of Mont St. Michel belong to the Norman period, although much of the work is Gothic.

At St. Denis, outside Paris, one sees the beginnings of French Gothic. Clearly the builders regarded the new style as empirical, for there was obvious hesitation to plunge too far into a field of such considerable possibilities when the west front was designed. A little later than St. Denis is the cathedral of Noyon, another extremely interesting example of this period. Almost simultaneously came Chartres, but a disastrous fire in 1194 left little besides the towers and the west front. The rebuilding, however, which proceeded almost at once, was to a considerable extent completed by 1210, and this later work shows the Gothic style grown to all the splendour which has perpetually satisfied and enthralled the minds of succeeding generations.

At this time building was proceeding all over Europe with wonderful vigour. The new style gripped the imaginations of all the western nations, and wherever sufficient funds were obtainable the monkish architects were enthusiastically producing designs which were steadily carried out in stone. In Paris Notre Dame was building all through the closing years of the twelfth century and the opening of the next; at Rouen, the cathedral having been burnt in 1200, half a century of building followed; the glories of Rheims and Amiens were materialising during the same period, and almost coeval is the vast cathedral of Beauvais, which was planned to eclipse that of Amiens in every respect. The ambitious intent of the designers of Beauvais was never consummated, and in the unfinished pile standing to-day one sees the failure to build a Titan among cathedrals.

All through the period known in England as Early English there is much similarity in design, as well as in ornament, on both sides of the Channel, but signs of divergence begin to appear with the development of decorative skill during the English Decorated Period, and when the French architect had reached his highest achievement in the subtly beautiful lines of the Flamboyant style, the English craftsmen, after a few brief moments in the same direction, turned about and produced their unique development in the style known as Perpendicular. Here and there in France there are suggestions of the restraint of the last phase of English Gothic, but they are almost as rare as the Flamboyant style in England. At Evreux and at Gisors one sees remarkable examples of the work of the Renaissance in the reconstruction of the west ends of these Gothic churches. The contrast of styles is, however, too marked to allow even the hand of Time to remove the challenge which the two styles fling at one another.