The Cathedrals of Southern France. M. F. Mansfield
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are further borne out by the frequent juxtaposition of ecclesiastical and civic institutions of the cities themselves—fortifications, palaces, châteaux, cathedrals, and churches, the former indicating no more a predominance of power than the latter.
A consideration of one, without something more than mere mention of the other, is not possible, and incidentally—even for the church-lover—nothing can be more interesting than the great works of fortification—strong, frowning, and massive—as are yet to be seen at Béziers, Carcassonne, or Avignon. It was this latter city which sheltered within its outer walls that monumental reminder of the papal power which existed in this French capital of the "Church of Rome"—as it must still be called—in the fourteenth century.
To the stranger within the gates the unconscious resemblance between a castellated and battlemented feudal stronghold and the many churches—and even certain cathedrals, as at Albi, Béziers, or Agde—which were not unlike in their outline, will present some confusion of ideas.
Between a crenelated battlement or the machicolations of a city wall, as at Avignon; or of a hôtel de ville, as at Narbonne; or the same detail surmounting an episcopal residence, as at Albi, which is a veritable donjon; or the Palais des Papes, is not a difference even of degree. It is the same thing in each case. In one instance, however, it may have been purely for defence, and in the other used as a decorative accessory; in the latter case it was no less useful when occasion required. This feature throughout the south of France is far more common than in the north, and is bound to be strongly remarked.
Two great groups or divisions of architectural style are discernible throughout the south, even by the most casual of observers.
One is the Provençal variety, which clings somewhat closely to the lower valley of the Rhône; and the other, the Aquitanian (with possibly the more restricted Auvergnian).
These types possess in common the one distinctive trait, in some form or other, of the round-arched vaulting of Roman tradition. It is hardly more than a reminiscence, however, and while not in any way resembling the northern Gothic, at least in the Aquitanian species, hovers on the borderland between the sunny south and the more frigid north.
The Provençal type more nearly approximates the older Roman, and, significantly, it has—with less interpolation of modern ideas—endured the longest.
The Aquitanian style of the cathedrals at Périgueux and Angoulême, to specialize but two, is supposed to—and it does truly—bridge the gulf between the round-arched style which is not Roman and the more brilliant and graceful type of Gothic.
With this manner of construction goes, of course, a somewhat different interior arrangement than that seen in the north.
A profound acquaintance with the subject will show that it bears a certain resemblance to the disposition of parts in an Eastern mosque, and to the earlier form of Christian church—the basilica.
In this regard Fergusson makes the statement without reservation that the Eglise de Souillac more nearly resembles the Cairène type of Mohammedan mosque than it does a Christian church—of any era.
A distinct feature of this type is the massive pointed arch, upon which so many have built their definition of Gothic. In truth, though, it differs somewhat from the northern Gothic arch, but is nevertheless very ancient. It is used in early Christian churches—at Acre and Jaffa—and was adopted, too, by the architects of the Eastern Empire long before its introduction into Gaul.
The history of its transportation might be made interesting, and surely instructive, were one able to follow its orbit with any definite assurance that one was not wandering from the path. This does not seem possible; most experts, real or otherwise, who have tried it seem to flounder and finally fall in the effort to trace its history in consecutive and logical, or even plausible, fashion.
In illustration this is well shown by that wonderful and unique church of St. Front at Périgueux, where, in a design simple to severity, it shows its great unsimilarity to anything in other parts of France; if we except La Trinité at Anjou, with respect to its roofing and piers of nave.
It has been compared in general plan and outline to St. Marc's at Venice, "but a St. Marc's stripped of its marbles and mosaics."
In the Italian building its founders gathered their inspiration for many of its structural details from the old Byzantine East. At this time the Venetians were pushing their commercial enterprises to all parts. North-western France, and ultimately the British Isles, was the end sought. We know, too, that a colony of Venetians had established itself as far northward as Limoges, and another at Périgueux, when, in 984, this edifice, which might justly be called Venetian in its plan, was begun.
No such decoration or ornamentation was presumed as in its Adriatic prototype, but it had much beautiful carving in the capitals of its pillars and yet other embellishments, such as pavements, monuments, and precious altars, which once, it is said, existed more numerously than now.
Here, then, was the foundation of a new western style, differing in every respect from the Provençal or the Angevinian.
Examples of the northern pointed or Gothic are, in a large way, found as far south as Bayonne in its cathedral; in the spires of the cathedral at Bordeaux; and less grandly, though elegantly, disposed in St. Nazaire in the old Cité de Carcassonne; and farther north at Clermont-Ferrand, where its northern-pointed cathedral is in strong contrast to the neighbouring Notre Dame du Port, a remarkable type distinctly local in its plan and details.
From this point onward, it becomes not so much a question of defining and placing types, as of a chronological arrangement of fact with regard to the activities of the art of church-building.
It is doubtless true that many of the works of the ninth and tenth centuries were but feeble imitations of the buildings of Charlemagne, but it is also true that the period was that which was bringing about the development of a more or less distinct style, and if the Romanesque churches of France were not wholly Roman in spirit they were at least not a debasement therefrom.
Sir Walter Scott has also described the Romanesque manner of church-building most poetically, as witness the following quatrain:
| "Built ere the art was known |
| By pointed aisle and shafted stalk |
| The arcades of an alleyed walk |
| To emulate in stone." |
However, little remains in church architecture of the pre-tenth century to compare with the grand theatres, arenas, monuments, arches, towers, and bridges which are still left to us. Hence comparison were futile. Furthermore, there is this patent fact to be reckoned with, that the petty followers of the magnificent Charlemagne were not endowed with as luxurious a taste, as large a share of riches, or so great a power; and naturally they fell before the idea they would have emulated.
As a whole France was at this period amid great consternation and bloodshed, and traces of advancing civilization were fast falling before wars and cruelties unspeakable. There came a period when the intellect, instead of pursuing its rise, was, in reality, degenerating into the darkness of superstition.
The church architecture of this period—so hostile to the arts and general enlightenment—was undergoing a process even more fatal to its development than the terrors of war or devastation.
It is a commonplace perhaps to repeat that it was the superstition aroused by the Apocalypse that the end of all things would come with the commencement of the eleventh century. It was this, however, that produced the stagnation in church-building which even the ardour of a few believing churchmen could not allay. The only great religious foundation of the time was the Abbey of Cluny in the early years of the tenth century.
When the eleventh century actually arrived, Christians again bestirred themselves, and the various cities and provinces vied with each other in their enthusiastic devotion to church-building, as if to make up