Part 23

Such is the cathedral of Naumburg--little known to, and scarce ever visited by, English tourists; and yet undoubtedly one of the most interesting and least altered churches in Germany: its two rood-screens would be alone sufficient to give it high claims upon our admiration, since they are, so far as I know, the two earliest examples remaining, and certainly older than any quoted by Mr. Pugin in his work on Screens. Besides this, the architectural value of some parts of the building is so pre-eminent, as in itself to repay a long journey.

III

ERFURT AND MARBURG

At Naumburg there was little, save the cathedral, to detain an ecclesiologist. The Stadt-Kirche deserved little more than a hurried visit, though the singularity of its plan deserves a note. It has an immense apsidal west end, a vast semicircle on the plan, embracing both nave and aisles, and its choir is also terminated with an apse. Beyond this the only remarkable features are the large multifoiled arches which occupy the space between the windows and the plinth in each bay of the eastern apse.

From the railway station one obtains a good view of the cathedral steeples over the vine-clad hills on which Naumburg stands--refreshing sight after the dreariness of the country generally in which I had been journeying. From Naumburg to Erfurt the railway runs through a really pretty, often very picturesque, country, with hills and rocks by the river-side, ever and anon capped by those feudal keeps in which all German rivers seem to be so rich; as picturesque now as they were formerly advantageous to their predatory chiefs. I had but two or three hours at Erfurt, but this was enough to show me that much was to be seen. The Barfüsser-Kirche was the first that I saw--one of those immensely long churches of which Germans were rather fond; a nave and aisles, and an apsidal choir, all groined at the same height, with windows of the same size and character throughout, and the whole “restored” in that peculiarly chilling fashion, which Lutherans are so singularly successful in achieving, which makes one’s recollection of such a church not very grateful. There is, however, some old glass in the choir windows, and a most prodigious carved and painted reredos behind the altar, which, though apparently to some extent modern, is nevertheless striking in its effect. The entrance to this church is by double doors on the south side which run up into and form part of the windows, the same jamb mould being continued all round.

I had some difficulty in finding my way to the cathedral--strangely enough too, for when at last I reached the Dom-Platz, there, rising high into the air, and approached by an almost endless flight of steps, stood the magnificent choir of the cathedral, surmounted by its singular triple arrangement of central steeples, and by its side, and on the same high plateau, the church of S. Severus emulating, I should almost say, aping, the cathedral both in height and design very curiously. The east end of the cathedral, built on the precipitous edge of a rock, has been under-built with a terrace supported upon arches, which, concealing the natural rock, gives it an effect of extraordinary height. These arches have been all modernized, but there are traces here and there which prove the arrangement to be original.

Let us mount the flight of steps which lead by the entire length of the north side of the choir to the porch, and we shall see reason to class one at least of the architects of Erfurt, with the greatest of his race. No position can be conceived which would present more difficulty to one who wished to show the doors of his church to the people who might gather in crowds in the Dom-Platz, and seeing nothing but the tall east end of their church and the sharp perspective of its side, shrink from the attempt to find a door at the end of the long flight of steps before them. Every one must have felt how those great foreign doorways call upon all to enter; they are always open, guarded on either side by kings, and saints, and martyrs, and revealing glimpses, precious because vague, of glorious interiors and worshippers within on their knees. They call upon all to enter, and who can refuse? At Erfurt, however, one might have deemed it impossible that people should be made to feel this, but yet it has been done, and done nobly and magnificently. There are no transepts, and so against the eastern bay of the north aisle of the nave is set a triangular porch of grand size and lovely design and detail. Its base rests against the church, and its two sides, jutting out at angles of sixty degrees from the wall, show both from the west and from the east the whole width of its two glorious doorways. So, as one gazes up from the Dom-Platz, and wonders at the singularity of the position of the church and the beauty of the choir, one’s eye follows up the track of those who ascend the toilsome flight of steps till it rests upon the doorway at their summit, and one is led at once to find one’s way through its great opening into the nave of the church. Sad to say, wanton havoc has destroyed much of the more delicate ornaments of this most noble piece of early fourteenth century architecture. Of the nave little can be said, save that it is entirely unworthy and unsatisfactory; between it and the choir is a great mass of wall, pierced only by a narrow arch opening into the choir, and supporting a curious combination of towers--a central tower rising from between one on either side--in a singular and rather picturesque fashion of which I recollect no other examples than the imitation of it here in S. Severus, and the cathedral at Constance. The interior of the choir is very noble; its elevation very great, and its windows of rather late middle-pointed, full without exception of brilliant though late glass; too rich in colour however for the traceries, which it quite conceals, giving a useful warning to architects in dealing with stained glass.

The only piece of old furniture in this choir of which I made a note, is a curious figure in brass, supporting three branches for lights, one in either hand, and one growing out of his back. The effect of this is not at all satisfactory.

This cathedral is Catholic, as also is S. Severus and some of the other churches, the Lutherans holding about an equal number.

S. Severus imitates the cathedral very curiously; it is within some thirty or forty feet of its northern side, and has in the same transeptal position a great mass of tower, the outer flanks of which are crowned with tall spires, whilst from the intermediate wall, and raised above the others, rises the central spire; the mass of tower is smaller, but nevertheless by dint of its slated spires, S. Severus manages to rise higher than the cathedral. As may be imagined, the whole group is one of most picturesque character. S. Severus has some very good middle-pointed detail, especially in its window traceries.

It was late in the evening when I left the Dom-Platz, but I saw hurriedly the exteriors of some eight or ten pointed churches. They were mostly of the same date, _circa_ 1320 to 1400, and of very various degrees of merit. One--the Prediger-Kirche is the not pleasant dedication by which it is now known--is of enormous length as compared to its width and height: fifteen bays to a church consisting of a not very lofty nave with narrow aisles is an excess of this proportion; its length cannot be less than about 225 feet. Near it, but apparently having no connection with it, is a detached campanile.

In one of Erfurt’s many squares or market-places, is a good pointed house, with a large bay window, and three traceried windows, one on either side, and one above it in its gable end.

In another Platz is a church with two western steeples, one with a spire rising from the gabled sides of the tower. Another church occupies a triangular piece of ground, the tower being at the western angle, between two streets. It is desecrated, and I could not get into it, but its internal arrangement must be most singular.

These hurried notes are all that I could make. I was homeward bound, and obliged to travel all night to Marburg. So I did what a pilgrim to the shrine of S. Elizabeth of Hungary ought, I suppose, not to have done--I slept as the train passed Eisenach, and neglected therefore, even to get a glance through the starlight of the castle on the Wartburg, her residence and the scene of most of the beautiful story of her life.

It was early morning when Marburg was reached. Under high hills, covered with vine and picturesque in their outline, stands the noble church, conspicuous as one first sees it by its two completed and nearly similar towers and spires rising in all the beauty of their deep-coloured stonework against the green hillside which rises so precipitously close behind them. On the summit of the hill are the tall walls of the fine old castle, and to the left of the church and below the castle the town covers the hillside with the ramifications of its old steep and narrow streets. The church is perhaps rather too much outside the town for the use of the townspeople; but then it was not built for them, and in the general view it certainly gains much by being placed where it is.

And now, before I say anything about the church, two or three dates, which seem to be settled beyond dispute, may as well be mentioned.

S. Elizabeth of Hungary was born, then, in the year 1207, was married when but fifteen years old, and ere she was twenty left a widow, her husband having laid down his life in the third Crusade: three years and a half of widowed life were all she saw before an early grave received her; and from thence forward year after year saw fresh fervour excited by the contemplation of her virtues, and fresh enthusiasm awakened about the old city of Marburg, in which the last years of her life had been spent in the practice of austerity and self-denial such as the world has seldom seen. She was canonized in A.D. 1235; and in the same year the church as we now see it was commenced, and completed by about A.D. 1283.

More I need not say; for the life of her whose memory gave rise to this grand architectural effort is foreign to my present purpose, and moreover is too well known to need repetition.

Judging by the evidence of style--which is not however very strong, as the whole work has been completed carefully upon a uniform plan--I should say that the work commenced at the east, and was continued on westward, so that the west front, with its two towers and spires, was the latest portion of the work. I am inclined to think, too, that the sacristy, a large building of two stories in height, filling the angle between the north transept and the northern side of the choir, is an addition to the original fabric, but probably earlier than the steeples.

The plan shows a very regular cruciform church, the choir and transepts all having apsidal ends, a large sacristy, and two western steeples; the whole very regular and similar in character throughout.

The exterior of the church is perhaps, with the exception of its west front, more curious than really beautiful. Throughout its whole extent every bay is similar, and consists of two stages, the upper an exact repetition of the one below, each lighted with a simple two-light window with a circle in the head, and divided by a great projecting cornice, the top of which is on a level with the bottom of the upper windows. The nave and aisles are all groined at one height without triforium or clerestory; and the outer walls are, therefore, the full height of the groining of the nave. Now this endless repetition of the same windows in a manner so apparently unnecessary was at first most perplexing to me, inconsistent as it seemed with the delicate taste exhibited elsewhere by the architect; but I was not long perplexed. The cornice between the windows was, in fact, a passage-way extending all round the church in front of the windows and, by openings, through all the buttresses: whilst in front of the lower windows a similar passage, not corbelled out, but formed by a thinning of the wall from this point upwards, again encircles the church. The sacristy is the only portion of the building not so treated. The church has not and never had cloister, chapter-house, or any of the ordinary domestic buildings of a religious house, attached to it; it stood on a new piece of ground, away from houses, and with an open thoroughfare all round, and all this helps in the solution of its singular arrangements. We have but to recall to mind that the relics of S. Elizabeth were visited by more pilgrims for some two or three centuries than any other shrine almost all Europe could boast of, to see the difficulty accounted for. It was built from the first to be a pilgrimage church, and carefully planned with an especial view to this. No doubt it was a great shrine, round which thousands of pilgrims congregated in the open air, to watch as processions passed with the relics they came from so far to see, passing by these ingeniously contrived passages round the entire church again and again, seen by all, but unencumbered by the pressure of the multitude.

The whole arrangement is so curious that I have dwelt at some length upon it, feeling that it certainly shows well how boldly a thirteenth century architect ventured to depart from precedent when he found a new want to be provided for, and when a before unthought of necessity had arisen. I need hardly say, that the effect of the corbelled-out passage is to divide the height distinctly into two parts, a division perhaps more difficult of satisfactory treatment than any other that one can imagine. The only variety in the tracery of the windows throughout the body of the church is, that the centre window of each apse has a sexfoil in the circle in its head, none of the other windows having any cusping whatever. The moulding of the windows is very simple,--a very bold roll and chamfer; and it is noticeable that in the tracery the roll-moulding does not mitre with the same moulding in the arch, but is just separated from it, an ungraceful peculiarity; the roll-moulding of the tracery is treated as a shaft in the monial and jambs, and has corbelled bases, the effect of which is not at all good. The buttresses run up to the eaves, but finish abruptly without pinnacles, nor is there any parapet. It seems probable that something must have been intended, but possibly never done; and I confess I should shrink from venturing now upon the introduction of either pinnacles or parapet, and I cannot but trust that in the extensive repairs now in progress, restorations of this conjectural kind will not be attempted. Better, in such a case, let well alone, rather than run the risk of destroying everything by some monstrous mistakes!

The west front is quite a thing to be considered apart from the rest of the church, later in character, and the work, I am inclined to think, of another man, who did not only this but all, or nearly all, the magnificent fittings of the interior. The first man worked under the trammels of a transitional style, endeavouring after yet not achieving the beauties which the second man was able, in all that he did at a more advanced day, so completely to realize.

The west door at once fixes one’s attention. It is very lovely: the jamb perhaps too plain, and lacking mouldings between its shafts, but the arch absolutely perfect; it has two rows of the freshest and brightest stone foliage ever seen, and the tympanum--diapered over one half with a trailing rose, and on the other with a vine, both creeping naturally upwards with exquisite curve and undulation, regular in their irregularity,--is certainly of a degree of exquisite and simple beauty such as I have never seen surpassed. In the midst of this bower stands a fine figure of S. Mary with our Lord in her arms, and on either side an angel censing. As one looks at the carving, one thinks of the prettiest perhaps of all the legends of S. Elizabeth, and it may be that the sculptor, as he struck out the bold and beautiful work, which even now surprises by its beauty and its sharpness, thought of those roses of paradise with which S. Elizabeth in the legend surprised her doubting husband.

Above this doorway a pierced parapet carries a passage in front of the fine and thoroughly geometrical west window of six lights. Another parapet, and then a row of traceries and canopies which mask the roof gable. On either side the great buttresses of the steeples give an air of solidity and plainness to the whole elevation, which I think very satisfactory. A two-light window on the same level as the great west window, and very long narrow belfry windows, also of two lights, are the only openings in the towers. The buttresses finish with pinnacles, and the towers with pierced parapets, above which, on the cardinal sides, are gables with windows, and at their summit an octangular open parapet, from which the spires then rise without further break or ornament. The composition is unusual and very good.

Besides these western steeples there is a turret of poor and modern character over the intersection of the transept and other roofs.

And now let us enter, and we shall find ourselves in what seems like a very lantern; windows everywhere, tier above tier, and admitting a flood of light which is bearable only when--as happily still in the choir--all the windows are filled with the richest stained glass.

The architectural peculiarities of the exterior are as marked but not as intelligible in the interior; and one cannot cease to regret the effect of the reiteration of the same window everywhere: otherwise, however, the interior is full of beauty; the nave piers very simple--large circles with four engaged shafts--very lofty and with finely carved capitals. The transept piers are clustered, and the groining throughout is very simple, but of exquisite proportions.

And now I must go on to describe the fittings and arrangements of this interior, which are so perfect as to make it, perhaps, the most interesting and complete church in Germany.

The choir extends to the western side of the transepts, and is finished towards the nave with a high stone screen, against the western side of which is a large people’s altar. The screen is traceried and panelled over its whole western surface, and surmounted by a delicate open arcade finished with pinnacles and gablets; the portion over the altar being elaborated so as to form a reredos rather than a screen. The only openings in this screen are a row of small windows (as one may almost call them), opening just above the backs of the stalls, which in the choir are continued not only on the north and south sides, but quite across the west side also. The only entrance to the choir, therefore, is on either side from the transepts to the east of the stalls. On the eastern face of the screen, a kind of large ambon is corbelled forward in the centre, just the width of the people’s altar; and above this rose--I say “rose,” for when I was there, it was lying on the floor, as a first step to “restoration,” which may not, I trust, mean “destruction,”--a grand trefoiled arch of timber, covered with very boldly carved natural foliage, and flanked by two massive pinnacles. All trace of the figures is gone, but there can be no doubt that this arch and the pinnacles bore on their summits the Crucifix with the figures of S. Mary and S. John; and, indeed, the marks of their having once been affixed still remain.

In the choir there is a double row of stalls round three sides, the subsellae having low original desks in front of them. These are perfect all round, and, as I need hardly say, valuable for their rarity. The stalls are finely treated, and the upper row is well raised. The effect of the whole is most singular and very new to an English eye, for though, as I had occasion to show at Naumburg, and as I saw elsewhere in the same part of Germany, stalls against the centre of the eastern side of a screen are not uncommon, I have nowhere else seen such a complete shutting-off of the choir from the church as has from the very first existed here. There is a space between the back of the stalls and the rood-screen, in which probably an entrance was originally contrived to the ambo under the rood, though of this no trace now remains.

There are no parcloses between the choir and the transepts, whilst between the latter and the aisles of the nave there are only rude and modern screens, without any trace of the original arrangement.

And now that we are in the choir, the most noticeable feature is the altar with its reredos, and its great standard candles on either side.[79] The reredos is elaborately decorated with colour, and consists of three very fine trefoiled arches with crocketed gables above, and elaborate and lofty pinnacles between them. The spaces within the three arches are much recessed, and ornamented at the back with sculpture of figures in niches, and tracery; the whole very full of delicate taste in its execution. The altar is perfectly plain and solid, with a moulded mensa, and footpace of three steps in front and at the ends. It stands, of course, on the chord of the apse. The arrangement at the back of the reredos is most singular: there are two lockers on either side, and in the centre a doorway, which when opened discloses steps leading down to the space under, and enclosed by, the altar. In this space there are five square recesses below the level of the floor: three on the west side, and one at each end; the dimensions of this chamber are 8 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in., and 7 ft. 3 in. to the under side of the mensa of the altar; the recesses in it are 1 ft. 8¾ in. wide by 1 ft. 7 in. deep. But one of the most singular features in it is, that there were evidently originally sliding shutters in front of each of the three recessed niches which form the front of the reredos. These are all gone, but the grooves remain both above and below, and leave not a shadow of doubt as to their former existence. There are two grooves in front of each division, and of course there are corresponding openings in the mensa of the altar. The arrangement is so new to me, that it is difficult to say exactly for what specific purpose it may have been made; but it seems obvious that it might allow of great variety of decoration or illustration of subjects suited to the varying seasons of the Christian year, supposing the sliding shutters to have been decorated with paintings.

To the south of the altar are oak sedilia--a long seat undivided, but with five canopies above: the work all good, but defective in not having its divisions marked through the whole height.

The windows in the choir are, as I have before observed, full of fine stained glass, some of which is of very early character. The lower tier of windows is filled with subjects in medallions, the upper with two rows of figures and canopies--a satisfactory and common arrangement in old work.

Some old lockers in the walls, and banners suspended round the apse, serve to complete a most striking and long-to-be-remembered _tout ensemble_.

Unfortunately there are no signs of any ancient pavement, unless we take for old the wretched gravestones of the Landgraves of Hesse and their family, which almost cover the floor. They are effigies of recumbent figures in not very low relief, but partly sunk below the proper level of the floor and partly raised. One stumbles over these wretched man-traps at every step, and wishes heartily that such a device for damaging ankles had never been invented. In the south transept there are a number of high tombs with recumbent effigies, beginning with one of early date and fine character.