CHAPTER III

ABBEYS AND CARTHUSIAN MONASTERIES

In the eleventh century a large number of monasteries had been built throughout Western Europe by monks of various orders, in imitation of the great monastic schools of Lérins, Ireland, and Monte Casino. Among the famous abbeys of this period may be mentioned "Vézelay and Fécamp, sometime convents for women, afterwards converted into abbeys for men; St. Nicaise, at Rheims; Nogent-sous-Coucy, in Picardy; Anchin and Annouain, in Artois; St. Étienne, at Caen; St. Pierre-sur-Dives, Le Bec, Conches, Cerisy-la-Forêt,[48] and Lessay, in Normandy; La Trinité, at Vendôme; Beaulieu, near Loches; Montierneuf, at Poitiers, etc."[49]

[48] _L'Architecture Romane_, by Ed. Corroyer, chap. iii. part ii.

[49] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_.

The Abbeys of Fulda, in Hesse, and of Corvey, in Westphalia, the latter founded by Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Corbie, in Picardy, were in their day the chief centres of learning in Germany.

In England St. Alban's Abbey, in Hertfordshire, was built in 1077 by a disciple of Lanfranc, the illustrious abbot of the famous Abbey of Le Bec, in Normandy. A large number of monasteries were founded later on by various orders, notably the Benedictines--Croyland, Malmesbury, Bury St. Edmund's, Peterborough, Salisbury, Wimborne, Wearmouth, Westminster, etc., not to mention the abbeys and priories which had existed in Ireland from the sixth century.

The mother abbey of Citeaux gave birth to four daughters--Clairvaux, Pontigny, Morimond, and La Ferté.

The importance of Clairvaux was much increased in the first years of the twelfth century by the fame of her abbot, St. Bernard, that most brilliant embodiment of mediæval monasticism. His influence was immense, not alone in his character of reformer and founder of an important order, but as a statesman whom fortune persistently favoured in all enterprises tending to the increase of his great reputation.

St. Bernard distinguished himself in the theological controversies of his century at the Council of Sens in 1140, and in successful polemical disputations with Abélard, the famous advocate of free will, and other heterodox philosophers who heralded the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Somewhat later he took an active part in promoting the hapless second Crusade under Louis VII., and in 1147, a few years before his death, he entered vigorously into the Manichæan controversy as a strenuous opponent of the heresy which was then agitating the public mind and preparing the way for the schism which, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, brought about the terrible war of the Albigenses, and steeped Southern France in blood.

The monastic fame of St. Bernard was established not only by the searching reforms he instituted at Clairvaux among the seceding monks of Cluny and Solesmes, but by the success of the Cistercian colonies he planted in Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark, to the number of seventy-two, according to his historians.

During his lifetime the poor hermitage of the _Vallée d'Absinthe_ (which name he changed to Claire-Vallée, Clairvaux) had become a vast feudal settlement of many farms and holdings, rich enough to support more than seven hundred monks. The monastery was surrounded by walls more than half a league in extent, and the abbot's domicile had become a seignorial mansion. As the fount of the order, and mother of all the auxiliary houses, Clairvaux was supreme over a hundred and sixty monasteries in France and abroad. Fifty years after the death of St. Bernard the importance of the order had become colossal. During the thirteenth century, and from that time onwards, the Cistercian or Bernardine monks built immense abbeys, and decorated them with royal magnificence. Their establishments contained churches equal in dimension to the largest cathedrals of the period, abbatial dwellings adorned with paintings, and boasting oratories which, as at Chaâlis, were _Stes. Chapelles_ as splendid as that of St. Louis in Paris. The very cellars held works of art in the shape of huge casks elaborately carved.

Thus, by a strange recurrence of conditions, the settlements founded on a basis of the most rigorous austerity by the ascetics who had fled from the splendours of Solesmes and Cluny to the forest, became in their turn vaster, richer, and more sumptuous than those the magnificence of which they existed to rebuke. With this difference, however: the ruin brought about by the luxury of the Cistercian establishment was so complete that nothing of their innumerable monasteries was spared by social revolution but a few archæologic fragments and historic memories.

The influence of the Cistercian foundation extended to various countries of Europe. It was manifested in Spain, at the great Abbey of Alcobaco, in Estramadura, said to have been built by monkish envoys of St. Bernard; in Sicily, in the rich architectural detail of the Abbey of Monreale; and in Germany, in the foundation of such abbeys as those of Altenberg in Westphalia, and Maulbronn in Wurtemberg. In 1133 Everard, Count of Berg, invited monks of Citeaux to settle in his dominions, and in 1145 they founded a magnificent abbey on the banks of the Dheen, which was held by the Cistercian order down to the period of the Revolution, when it shared the fate of other religious houses.

The Cistercian Abbey of Maulbronn is the best preserved of those which owed their origin to St. Bernard throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The abbey church, the cloister, the refectory, the chapter-house, the cellars, the storerooms, the barns, and the abbot's lodging, the latter united to the other buildings by a covered gallery, still exist in their original condition. More manifestly even than Altenberg does the Abbey of Maulbronn prove that simplicity marked the proceedings of the Benedictines during the first years of the twelfth century, under the rule or influence of St. Bernard. From this period onward Cistercian brotherhoods multiplied with great rapidity in the provinces which were to form modern France.

In the Ile-de-France the ruins of Ourscamp, near Noyon, of Chaâlis, near Senlis, of Longpont and of Vaux-de-Cernay, near Paris, bear witness to the monumental grandeur of once famous and important abbeys. The monasteries and priories of the twelfth century are numerous in Provence; we may name Sénanque, Silvacane, Thoronet, and Montmajour, near Arles, at the extremity of the valley of Les Baux. Among the abbeys founded in the thirteenth century were Royaumont, in the Ile-de-France; Vaucelles, near Cambrai; Preuilly-en-Brie; La Trappe, in Le Perche; Breuil-Benoît, Mortemer, and Bonport, in Normandy; Boschaud, in Périgord; l'Escale-Dieu, in Bigorre; Les Feuillants, Nizors, and Bonnefont, in Comminges; Granselve and Baulbonne, near Toulouse; Floran, Valmagne, and Fontfroide, in Languedoc; Fontenay, in Burgundy, etc.

Towards the close of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century other fraternities had been formed in the same spirit as that of Citeaux; "in the first rank of these was the Order of the Premonstrants, so named from the mother abbey founded in 1119 by St. Norbert at Prémontré, near Coucy."[50]

[50] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_.

To this order the monastery of St. Martin at Laon, and others in Champagne, Artois, Brittany, and Normandy owed their origin.

In the early part of the twelfth century Robert d'Arbrisselles founded several double monasteries for men and women, on the model of those built in Spain in the ninth century; that of Fontevrault was not more successful as a monastic experiment than the rest, but it gave rise to a number of superb buildings. The abbey itself contributed in no slight degree to the progress of architecture, which developed in Anjou at the dawn of the twelfth century, and manifested itself principally at Angers in works the supreme importance of which we have dwelt upon in the early part of this volume.

The episcopal churches also owned claustral buildings for the accommodation of the cathedral clergy who lived together in communities according to the ancient usage which obtained down to the fifteenth century. The Cathedrals of Aix, Arles, and Cavaillon, in Provence, of Elne, in Roussillon, of Puy, in Velay, of St. Bertrand, in Comminges, still preserve their cloisters of the twelfth century.

The Abbey of La Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, founded in the eleventh century, was one of the monastic schools which rose to great importance, mainly through the talents of its monkish architect and sculptor, Guinamaud, who established its reputation as an art centre. By the close of the twelfth century La Chaise Dieu was turning out proficients in sculpture, painting, and goldsmith's work.

The buildings of La Chaise Dieu were reconstructed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The order of preaching friars, founded by St. Dominic in the early part of the thirteenth century, is noted rather for its intellectual than for its architectural achievements; the fame of the Dominicans rests upon their preaching and writings, not upon the number or magnificence of their monasteries.

About the same period St. Francis of Assisi founded the order of minor friars, who professed absolute poverty--a profession which, however, did not prevent their becoming richer at last than their forerunners. These two orders--preaching and mendicant friars, apparently formed in protest against the supremacy of the Benedictines--were strongly supported by St. Louis, who also protected other orders, such as the Augustinians and Carmelites, by way of balancing the power of the Clunisians and Cistercians.

To the preaching friars St. Louis granted the site of the Church of St. Jacques, in the Rue St. Jacques, Paris--whence the name _Jacobin_ as applied to monks of the Dominican order,--and here they built in 1221 the Jacobin monastery, the church of which, like those of Agen and Toulouse, has the double nave peculiar to the churches of the preaching friars.

From the thirteenth century onwards the arrangement of the abbeys diverges more and more from the Benedictine system in the direction of secular models. The daily life of the abbots had come to differ but little from that of the laymen of their time, and as a natural consequence, monastic architecture lost its distinguishing characteristics.

The Rule of the Carthusian Order, founded towards the close of the eleventh century by St. Bruno, was of such extreme austerity, and was so persistently adhered to down to the fifteenth century, at least, that we need not wonder to find no vestiges of buildings erected by this community contemporaneously with those of other great foundations. The Carthusians clung longer than any of their brethren to the vows of poverty and humility which obliged them to live like anchorites, though dwelling under one roof. Far from living in common, on the cenobitic method, after the manner of the Benedictines and Cistercians, they maintained the cellular system in all its severity. Absolute silence further aggravated the complete isolation which encouraged them to scorn all that might alleviate or modify the rigours of their religious duties.

In time, however, the Carthusians relaxed something of this extreme asceticism in their monastic buildings, if not in their religious observances. Towards the fifteenth century they did homage to art by the construction of monasteries which, though falling short of the Cistercian monuments in magnificence, are of much interest from their peculiarities of arrangement.

The ordinary buildings comprised the gate-house, giving access by a single door to the courtyard of the monastery, where stood the church, the prior's lodging, the hostelry for guests and pilgrims, the laundry, the bakehouse, the cattle sheds, storerooms, and dovecote. The church communicated with an interior cloister, giving access to the chapter-house and refectory, which latter were only open to the monks at certain annual festivals. The typical feature of St. Bruno's more characteristic monasteries is the great cloister, on the true Carthusian model--that is to say, rectangular in form, and surrounded by an arcade, on which the cells of the monks open. Each of these cells was a little self-contained habitation, and had its own garden. The door of each cell was provided with a wicket, through which a lay brother passed the slender meal of the Carthusian who was forbidden to communicate with his fellows.

The Rule of St. Bruno, as is commonly known, enjoins the life of an anchorite; the Carthusian must work, eat, and drink in solitude; speech is interdicted; on meeting, the brethren are commanded to salute each other in silence; they assemble only in church for certain services prescribed by the Rule, and their meals, none too numerous at any time, were only taken in common on certain days in the year.

The severity of these conditions explains the extreme austerity of Carthusian architecture. It had, as we have already said, no real development until the fifteenth century, and then only as regards certain portions of the monastery, such as the church and its cloister, which were in strong contrast with the compulsory bareness of the great cloister of the monks.

The ancient _Chartreuse_ of Villefranche de Rouergue, either built or reconstructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, still preserves some remarkable features. The plan, and the bird's-eye view (Figs. 145 and 146) from _L'Encyclopédie de l'Architecture et de la Construction_, gives an exact idea of the monastery. Some of the cells are still intact, also the refectory, and certain other portions of the primitive structure.

In spite of the rigidity of the _Rule_ of St. Bruno certain foundations of his order became famous, notably the monastery established by the Carthusians on the invitation of St. Louis in the celebrated castle of Vauvert, beyond the walls of Paris, near the _Route d'Issy_. The castle was regarded with terror by the Parisians, who declared it to be haunted by the devil, whence the popular expression: _aller au diable Vauvert_, which later was corrupted into _aller au diable au vert_. The Carthusians, nevertheless, took up their quarters in the stronghold, and enriched it with a splendid church built by Pierre de Montereau, the foundation stone of which was laid by St. Louis in 1260. The _Chartreuse_ of Vauvert developed greatly, and became one of the most famous of the order. It was in the lesser cloister of this monastery that the artist Eustache Le Sueur painted his famous frescoes from the life of St. Bruno in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The most famous Carthusian monasteries of Italy are those of Florence, which dates from the middle of the fourteenth century, and is attributed in part to Orcagna, and of Pavia, founded at the close of the fourteenth century by Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti.

The French Carthusian monasteries of greatest interest after Vauvert, which had the special advantage of royal protection, are those of Clermont, in Auvergne, Villefranche de Rouergue (Figs. 145 and 146), Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, and Montrieux, in Var. The _Chartreuse_ of Dijon is one of the most ancient, not only as to its buildings, which are the work of the Duke of Burgundy's architects, but in respect of its famous sculptures of the tomb of Philip the Bold, and his wife, Margaret of Flanders, and those of the _Well of Moses_, carved by the Burgundian brothers, Claux Suter, who flourished at the close of the fourteenth century, and had much to do with the revival of art at that period.[51]

[51] See Part I., "Sculpture."

But the most imposing of all, and the most famous, if not the most beautiful, is that in the mountains near Grenoble, universally known as _La Grande Chartreuse_.

The original monastery is said to have been founded by St. Bruno. It consisted merely of a humble chapel and a few isolated cells, which are supposed to have occupied the site in the _Desert_, on which the Chapels of St. Bruno and St. Mary now stand. The existing buildings were reconstructed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the manner of the day, of which the arcades of the great cloister are good examples. The present church, which is extremely simple in design, has preserved nothing of its sixteenth-century decoration but the choir stalls. The great cloister consists of an arcaded gallery, on which the sixty cells of the monks open. It is arranged in strict accordance with the Rule of St. Bruno as regards its connection with the main buildings, the chief features of which we have already pointed out.