Part 17

The steeple suggests comparison, in some respects, with that of the cathedral; the arches are built with alternately light and dark voussoirs, and there is a peculiar spire-light rising out of the parapet, as to the antiquity of which I have my doubts.[49]

The only part in which any rich decoration has been introduced is the front of the porch. It has a semicircular arch, trefoiled above a horizontal lintel. The walls are richly inlaid, and there is also a good deal of sculpture. In the centre division of the trefoiled tympanum is an Agnus Dei, and there are figures kneeling and holding chalices within the cusps on either side. In the five divisions of the arcaded cornice are--in the centre our Lord, on His right S. Mary and S. John, and on His left S. Michael and S. Peter. The mosaic is executed with black tufa, red and white tiles, and a light yellow sandstone. I know no other example in this district of the use of tiles for inlaying, though M. Mallay mentions one at Merdogne in Auvergne, which he says is of the seventh century, though his dates are not always to be implicitly trusted; but at Lyon, in the extremely beautiful Romanesque domestic building called the Manécanterie, and at a slightly later date in the church of Ainay, in the same city, they are freely used and with admirable effect. Odo de Gissey, in his history of Le Puy, published in A.D. 1619, states that the first stone of S. Michel was laid in A.D. 965, and that the church was completed in A.D. 984, when Guy II. was bishop of Le Puy, “as one may learn from the ancient charter of its foundation, and from other manuscripts which I have read.” Brother Théodore, in his _Histoire de l’Église Angélique de Notre Dame du Puy_, A.D. 1693, says that the first stone was laid in August, 962, and that his statements are “derived from the deed for the foundation of the church, and from the book of obits in the cathedral.” These dates, if they refer to the existing building, can only do so to the central portion with its apses; the nave may have been added some time in the eleventh century, and the steeple, perhaps, in the course of the twelfth.

At the foot of the flight of steps which leads up to the picturesque entrance of this little chapel are the remains of a small detached building, probably a residence for a sacristan or priest.

Very near the Aiguille of S. Michel is a curious chapel. It is an octagon, with an apse projecting from the eastern face, the octagon covered with an octagonal domical vault, and the apse with a semi-dome. The walls are arcaded inside and out below the vault, the internal arches springing from engaged shafts in the angles. Some of the arches outside are cusped in the usual way, the cusping not starting from the cap with a quarter-circle, but with a half-circle, the same as all the rest. There are doors in the west and north sides, with tympana filled in with mosaic, and the wall in the spandrels between the arches outside is also inlaid. The exterior of the apse is not visible, but I found, on making my way into the cottage and barn built against it, that it is perfect and undamaged. The popular opinion at Le Puy is that the chapel is an ancient temple of Diana, a fiction which a minute’s examination destroys. M. Didron maintains that it was a mortuary chapel, and he refers to the chapel of S. Croix, at Montmajour, as an example akin to this. M. Mérimée, on the other hand, says that the Templars had property in the Faubourg de l’Aiguille, and compares it to the similar oratory of the Templars at Metz, and he might have added the curious Templars’ church at Laon as another case in point.[50]

This concludes my notice of early buildings in Le Puy, and I have no more than time to catalogue the church of S. Laurent, famous for the monument of the Constable Duguesclin, a large second-pointed building of poor character, and very Italian in its plan and design,[51] and with an enormous sham front; the gabled end of the hospital chapel, with its fifteenth-century bell-turret; a pretty little fountain, and a large number of picturesque houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and a very scanty remnant of a gateway at the bottom of the town, called, I think, the Porte de Panessac, against the proposed destruction of which I find M. Aymard protesting only a few years back in the _Bulletin Monumental_.

About four miles to the north of Le Puy, close to the ruins of the magnificent castle of Polignac, is the Romanesque church of the village. This is parallel triapsidal in plan, and the piers are planned, as are those in the cathedral, in the shape of a cross, with columns in the re-entering angles. The little church at Monistrol is a good example of the Le Puy style applied to a very small building; and the church at Le Monestier, which has many features of similarity to the cathedral at Le Puy, and is rich in early plate, ought not to be forgotten, but I am unable to speak of it from personal inspection.

I will now turn to the churches of Auvergne. Though numerous, they are so much alike in their character, details, and design, that a description of their peculiarities need not be so long as might be supposed. These churches all lie in a group together, Clermont-Ferrand being their geographical centre,[52] and to its north are Riom, Volvic, Menat, Mozat, and Ennezat; to the east Chauriat; to the west Royat and Orcival; and to the south S. Nectaire, S. Saturnin, and Issoire.

Beyond the bounds of the province, at Brioude, at Conques, at Toulouse, and in the church of S. Étienne at Nevers, there are, among many others, examples of precisely the same description of design and construction.[53]

It will be well to describe the general type of these churches, and then give a few notes as to particular examples. In plan they consist of a nave and aisles, western narthex and steeple, central dome and steeple, transepts with apsidal chapels on the east, and apsidal choirs with the aisles continued round them, and four or five apsidal chapels round the aisle. Under the choir is sometimes a crypt, in which, in addition to the columns under the columns of the apse, are four shafts which were intended for the support of the altar, and whose presence certainly seems to suggest that it must have been a baldachin and not merely an altar that they were designed to support.[54]

The naves are roofed with waggon-vaults, either with or without cross ribs below them. The aisles have quadripartite vaults without ribs, and the triforia above them are roofed with a continuous half barrel-vault, which resists the thrust of the vault of the nave, and is, in truth, a continuous flying buttress. The triforia galleries are lighted with small windows, and this, the only light analogous to a clerestory, being entirely inadequate, the effect of the nave roof is generally very gloomy. The transepts are vaulted with barrel-vaults like the nave, and in one or two instances are divided in height by a sort of tribune level with the triforium. At Brioude, where this arrangement is seen, there is an original thirteenth-century open fireplace in the tribune, and M. Mérimée ingeniously suggests that the noble canons of Brioude, for they all had the rank of Count, were in the habit of hearing mass before a good fire; but it is fair to them to say that the fireplace is in the east wall, and that I saw no signs of an altar near it. The crossing under the tower is generally roofed either with an octagonal vault or with a circular dome with an opening in the centre. To resist the thrust of this dome on the north and south sides the upper vaults of the triforia are continued on between the transepts and the crossing, or else vaults of the same section are introduced at a higher level, where the central dome is raised (as it often is) higher than the barrel-roof of the nave. The western steeple, as well as the centre lantern, was sometimes domed; and that at Brioude is a most valuable example of the best type of dome in the district. The choirs are vaulted with waggon-vaults terminating with semi-domes, and the apsidal chapels are also each covered with a semi-dome. The columns are generally square, with half-columns engaged on three, and sometimes on four sides, the latter only when the main vault of the nave has transverse ribs below it. The columns round the apse are circular, and detached shafts against the apse walls carry the groining, and occasionally shafts are introduced inside and outside the window-jambs of the choir. In the nave and triforia, the windows are generally very plain with a label containing a billet-moulding, though the latter have sometimes, as at Notre-Dame-du-Port and Issoire, jamb-shafts. The capitals of the columns are carved with great richness, sometimes with foliage, but often with Scripture subjects. At S. Nectaire, for instance, perhaps the most elaborate of all these churches in this respect (M. Didron is my authority), the capitals round the apse have subjects from the New Testament, four on each capital. Frequently griffins and other animals are carved, and in one case, at Brioude, is a demon holding an open book on which is written the sculptor’s name, which does not seem to be a very complimentary arrangement. It is in the earlier examples that sculpture of subjects and figures is commonly seen, and, as the style developed more towards Gothic, foliage took the place of subjects. The arcades are remarkable for their generally lofty proportions. They are of course not so lofty as pointed arcades, but they have seldom, if ever, the heavy and low proportion commonly found in the arcades of Romanesque buildings. The arches are generally semicircular, and in the apses stilted.

The walls were probably covered with paintings of Scripture subjects. At Brioude there is some of this decoration remaining in a chapel dedicated to S. Michael in the gallery over the narthex. The semi-domes of the apsidal chapels in this church were also richly painted, and in one of them traces of colour exist all over the window-jambs. At Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, in cleaning the nave, after removing seven or eight coats of whitewash, considerable traces were found of gilding on the capitals, and if this portion of the church was thus highly decorated, there can be no doubt that the colouring of the choir was at least equally sumptuous.

A stone seat is in some cases continued all round the walls of the apse and its chapels inside and out, and in one or two cases the iron grilles still remain. The only instance of the old pavement that I saw was at Brioude, where it is composed of black and white stone in chequers; but this is a mere fragment and of poor design.

The entrance to the crypts is by stairs from the transepts or crossing. The staircases to the upper portion of the building are variously placed. At Notre-Dame-du-Port they are in the middle of the north end of the aisles; at Brioude, in the transepts, and also at the west end; and in this church, an enormous wooden stair leads from the south door up to the chapel of S. Michael over the narthex.

On the exterior the designs are as much alike as in the interior. The aisle walls are divided into bays by pilasters, above which arches are turned over the aisle windows, and then above are the windows lighting the triforia, which are generally more richly decorated than those below, and form part of an arcade with carved capitals and moulded bases. The walls are finished by a boldly-projecting cornice supported on large corbels. The transepts are buttressed at the angles, have a heavy engaged column in the centre, from which two arches spring, within which are pierced two windows; above these are other windows, either two or three lights, and the gable is either filled in with mosaic or pierced with more windows. It is on the exterior of the apse that the main effort at display is made, and the more ornate examples of the style, as Notre-Dame-du-Port, Issoire, and Brioude, are singularly rich in their effort. The two former examples are of very nearly the same date (about A.D. 1080 to A.D. 1130); the latter is considerably later (probably _circa_ A.D. 1200). I will describe Notre-Dame-du-Port first. Here the transept-chapels are much lower than those of the chancel, and the latter (four in number) have cornices below the cornice of the aisle, and gable walls are raised on the aisle walls to receive their roofs, which would otherwise run back to the clerestory. There are windows between each of the chapels, and a great part of the beauty of the effect, both internally and externally, is to be attributed to this fact. I am not sure that the whole arrangement is not a modification of the original plan, for on close examination I found that the labels of the large windows between the chapels are returned and mitre with another label against which the chapels are built, and which might very well have formed part of an arcade pierced at intervals with windows. In the neighbourhood, about half-way between Clermont and Issoire, at S. Saturnin, there is a church precisely similar to what this would have been without its chapels, and the eccentric position of the chapels at Notre-Dame-du-Port, there being none opposite the centre,[55] would be just such as would have been rendered necessary if it had been desired to add them after the work had progressed somewhat towards completion. In any case, however, there could not have been any great interval of time between them, and probably the chapels and the clerestory are of exactly the same age. The whole of this apse is full of beautifully inlaid patterns, made with red and black scoriae and white stone. The enrichment is always confined to the walls above the springing of the windows, and does not generally extend quite to the cornice. The spaces between the corbels under the cornice are inlaid and the under side of the cornice is carved with a sunk pattern and in some cases appeared to me to have been coloured. Between the clerestory windows is precisely the same arrangement of shafts supporting a flat lintel under the cornice that I described in the first portion of the clerestory of Le Puy, and here, as there, the recessed wall is all inlaid.

At Issoire the general scheme is precisely similar. Here, however, a square chapel juts out from the centre of the apse, and the question arises whether this is an original arrangement. The suggestion I should throw out here, as at Clermont, would be that this is the only original chapel, and that the others were added, just as those at that place may have been. In both these churches the buttresses are alternately rectangular and circular, and the latter are always finished with carved capitals.

S. Julien, at Brioude, is an example of a later date, but it adheres closely to the same type, save that there are five apsidal chapels; and though the windows are much more elaborate, having jamb-shafts and moulded arches, and being arranged in a regular arcade of triplets in the clerestory, there is much less positive effect of decoration owing to the comparatively small amount of inlaying.

The churches at Brioude and Issoire are both on a much larger scale and generally finer than Notre-Dame-du-Port.

Lastly, I come to the steeples of these churches. Of these there were generally one or two at the west end and one over the crossing. I believe that not one of those over the narthex now remains, though two or three have been recently rebuilt. Those at the crossing were treated in a singular manner. The eastern wall of the transept, carried up much above the height of the walls of the apse, forms an enormous mass for the support of the steeple, and is arched and pierced with windows, or inlaid. The steeples seem generally to have been octagonal, and to have consisted of two stages arcaded and sometimes shafted at the angles, and capped with stone spires sloping at an angle of about sixty degrees. The steeple at Issoire is quite modern, and I believe no authority existed for it. That of Notre-Dame-du-Port is also new, the finish having been a bulbous slated erection, with an open lantern at the top, only a few years ago. Ancient examples, more or less perfect, still exist at S. Saturnin, Ennezat, Orcival, and S. Nectaire, and all of these are octagonal. These churches tally with most other early churches in this feature of central steeples.

I have not yet mentioned the roofs. In those which I was able to examine, they are covered with slabs of stone, supported from the stone roofs without any use of timber whatever. The ridges are also of stone, elaborately carved, and the whole construction seems to be as imperishable in its scheme as anything I know of the kind.

The churches of the Auvergnat type present so little variety, and were built within so short a space of time, that a description of each of them in succession would be wearisome. Of course there are some variations. S. Amable at Riom, for instance, has the main arches pointed, whilst the triforium arcade is round-arched, and the vault of the nave is also pointed instead of round. The vault of the nave of Issoire is another example of a pointed vault. At S. Nectaire the usual piers in the nave have given way to columns. At Brioude, the style reached its perfection, and, indeed, I know few effects more striking in every way than that of the aisles round the choir; the roof, constructed as a regular barrel-vault and without any ribs, seems to be true in principle, and to carry the eye on even more agreeably than our ordinary Gothic vaulting of circular aisles, in which the eye is often distracted by numbers of conflicting lines of ribs. The wall arcades between the chapels recall the peculiar form of trefoil to which I have before had to refer, and it is again met in the triforium of the south side of Notre-Dame-du-Port.

The doorways appear to be of two kinds; one enriched with sculpture, the other with inlaid work. Of the former the south door of Notre-Dame-du-Port is a fine example. The opening is square, covered with a pediment-like lintel, on which are sculptured in low relief the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptism of our Lord. Above the lintel is a round arch, under which is a figure of our Lord, seated, with a seraph on either side. Against the wall, below the lintel on each side of the door, are figures of Isaiah and S. John the Baptist. In the much-altered church at Mozat,[56] near Riom, is a door of a somewhat similar kind, and both are very like the doorway in the north transept of Le Puy. At S. Nectaire is an example of a door with the tympanum filled in with mosaic.

The masonry is usually of wrought stones squared, but not very neatly put together. M. Mallay, the architect of Clermont, who has restored some of them, ascertained the curious fact that the stone-masons who wrought the stone for the arches, and wherever else superior work was required, marked their stones with the usual mason’s mark, whilst those who wrought the stones for plain walling, jambs, and quoins, made no mark; and he found that precisely the same masons’ marks occurred at Issoire and Notre-Dame-du-Port; whilst the details and plan of Orcival, a few miles south-west of Clermont, are again so identical with both of these, as to leave little room for doubt that it was executed by the same workmen; and I found another evidence of the way in which details were repeated, in some fine ironwork in the south door of Brioude, which occurs again at Orcival.

The arches are generally built with small stones of the same size and of even number, so as not to allow of a keystone. M. Mallay says that the mosaic work in the walls of these churches had wide joints of red mortar, projecting from the face of the wall. These mortar joints in the restored work appeared to me to be a bad modern device, and I think that the evidence in their favor ought to be very strong to be convincing.

The proportions of these churches are very similar. At Issoire, the width from centre of aisle wall to centre of nave column is one-fourth of the whole width, equal to the width from centre of nave columns, and to the diameter of the chapels in the apse, and one-half the height of the aisle, and one-fourth that of the nave. The height from floor to ridge is equal to the extreme width at base of walls. At Notre-Dame-du-Port the same kind of proportion exists, but from the outside of the buttress to the outside of the nave pier is one-fourth of the whole width.

I must now, before I conclude, say a few words as to the date of these churches, for which M. Mallay[57] is inclined to claim rather too great an age. He dates most of them (conjecturally) in the tenth century, though he admits that buildings in which the pointed arch is introduced may be as late as the twelfth century; and he considers the date of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, as _circa_ A.D. 863 to 868. He founds this belief on the fact that no lava was used in its construction, and that the mosaics in its walls were formed of scoriae found on the surface of the soil. He considers that lava was not used until the eleventh century, but he must also prove (which he has not done) that stone was never used in Auvergne after the lava had once been admitted. M. Mallay depends no doubt to some extent on the admitted date of the nave of S. Amable, at Riom, where the main arches are pointed, as A.D. 1077. But the presence of the pointed arch proves nothing as to date, for we see it long before this in S. Front, at Périgueux; and in every other respect there is no doubt that S. Amable presents every evidence of being older than Notre-Dame-du-Port, and others of these churches, in which none but round arches occur.

On either side of Auvergne there are other churches, of precisely the same character as to plan and mode of construction, the dates of which are pretty certain. One is S. Étienne, at Nevers, which was commenced in A.D. 1063, and completed and consecrated on the 13th December 1097. The plan of this church is similar in nearly every respect to that of the Auvergne churches. But, so far as one may judge of date from style, I should have no hesitation in saying that this church must be older than either Issoire or Notre-Dame-du-Port. It is ruder in character, there is very little sculpture on the capitals, which are mostly a sort of rude imitation of Doric, and in the transepts there are not only round arches, but also some straight-sided.