CATHEDRALS AND CLOISTERS
OF THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

CATHEDRALS
and CLOISTERS

OF THE

SOUTH OF FRANCE

BY

ELISE WHITLOCK ROSE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

VIDA HUNT FRANCIS

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I.

PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

• PREFACE
• 
  
• LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED.
• 
  
• ILLUSTRATIONS.
• 
  
• PAGE
• 
  
• The South of France
• I. The South of France3
• II. Architecture in Provence, Languedoc, qnd Gascony29
• 
  
• Provence
• I. The Cathedrals of the Sea55
• Marseilles—Toulon—Fréjus—Antibes—Nice
• II. Cathedrals Of The Hill-towns72
• Carpentras—Digne—Forcalquier—Vence—Grasse
• III.River-side Cathedrals101
• Avignon—Vaison—Arles—Entrevaux—Sisteron
• IV. Cathedrals of the Valleys178
• Orange—Cavaillon—Apt—Riez—Senez—Aix
• 
  
• Languedoc
• I. Cathedrals of the Cities237
• Nîmes—Montpellier—Béziers—Narbonne—Perpignan—
• Carcassonne—Castres—Toulouse—Montauban

Illustrations

• Page
• 
  
• RodezFrontispiece
• “ Sheer and straight the pillars rise, ...
• and arch after arch is lost on the shadows of
• the narrow vaulting of the side-aisle.”
• “Carcassonne, the invulnerable”5
• “The Tower of an early maritime Cathedral”—Agde10
• “A nave of the earlier style”—Arles15
• “A nave of the later style”—Rodez19
• “The delicate choir of Saint-Nazaire”—Carcassonne23
• “A cloister of the South”—Elne27
• “A Romanesque aisle”—Arles31
• “The sculptured portals of Saint-trophime”—Arles33
• “A Gothic aisle”—Mende35
• “Corresponding differences in style”—Carcassonne39
• “Fortified Gothic built in brick”—Albi43
• “A church fortress”—Maguelonne45
• “Stately Gothic splendour”—Condom47
• Entrevaux52
• “People gather around the mail-coach as it makes its
• daily halt before the drawbridge.”
• “The new Cathedral”—Marseilles57
• “The desecration of the little cloister”—Fréjus65
• “The military omen—the tower”—Antibes70
• “The interior of Notre-dame-du-bourg”—Digne77
• “The interior has neither clerestory nor triforium”—Digne81
• “A large square tower served as a lookout”—Forcalquier86
• “A suggestive view from the side-aisle”—Forcalquier87
• “The old round arch of the Bishop's Palace”—Vence92
• “The low, broad arches, and the great supporting pillars”—Vence93
• “Higher than them all stands the Cathedral”—Grasse97
• “The pont d'Avignon”99
• “The interior has a shallow, gracefully balustraded balcony”—Avignon103
• “The porch, so classic in detail”—AVIGNON107
• From an old print
• “Notre-Dame-des-Doms”—Avignon111
• “The Tower of Philip the Fair”—Villeneuve-les-Avignon114
• “The great Palace”—Avignon119
• “On the banks of a pleasant little river is Vaison”123
• “The ruined castle of the Counts of Toulouse”—Vaison125
• “The whole apse-end”—Vaison127
• “The south wall, which is clearly seen from the road”—Vaison129
• “Two bays open to the ground”—Vaison131
• “The great piers and small firm columns”—Vaison133
• “In the midst of the wealth of antique ruins”—Arles135
• “The façade of saint-trophime”—Arles137
• “Right detail—the portal”—Arles141
• “Left detail—the portal”—Arles145
• “Through the cloister arches”—Arles147
• “A nave of great and slender height”—Arles149
• “The beauty of the whole”—Arles151
• “The Gothic walk”—Cloister—Arles153
• “This interior”—Entrevaux156
• “The Romanesque walk”—Cloister—Arles157
• “One of the three small drawbridges”—Entrevaux159
• “The Portcullis”—Entrevaux160
• “A fort that perches on a sharp peak”—Entrevaux161
• “A true 'Place d'Armes'”—Entrevaux163
• “The long line of walls that zigzag down the hillside”—Entrevaux165
• “The church tower stood out against the rocky peak”—Entrevaux169
• “The Cathedral is near the heavy round towers of the outer ramparts”—Sisteron172
• “The bridge across the Durance”—Sisteron173
• “Entrances to two narrow streets”—Sisteron176
• “It was a low-vaulted, sombre little cloister”—Cavaillon182
• “The Cathedral's tower and turret”—Cavaillon187
• “The main body of the church”—Apt191
• “The Virgin and Saint Anne—by Benzoni”—Apt194
• “Saint-Martin-de-Brômes with its high slim tower”197
• “The fortified Monastery of the Templars”—near Gréoux199
• “The tower of Notre-Dame-du-Siège”—Riez201
• “Nothing could be more quaintly old and modest than the Baptistery”—Riez202
• “Between the columns an altar has been placed”—Baptistery, Riez203
• “The beautiful granite columns”—Riez207
• “The mail-coach of senez”211
• “The open square”—Senez213
• “The palace of its prelates”—Senez214
• “The Cathedral”—Senez215
• “The Cathedral”—Senez218
• “Tapestries beautify the choir-walls”—Senez219
• “Between branches full of apple-blossoms—the church as the curé saw it”—Senez221
• “The south aisle”—Aix224
• “The Romanesque portal”—Aix225
• “The cloister”—Aix227
• “The Cathedral”—Aix231
• “An amphitheatre which rivals the art of the Coliseum”—Nîmes238
• “The general effect is somewhat that of a port-cochère”—Montpellier244
• “The finest view is that of the apse”—Montpellier245
• “The clock tower is very square and thick”—Béziers248
• “The quaint and pretty fountain”—Béziers250
• “The door of the cloister”—Narbonne255
• “This is a place of deserted solitude”—Narbonne257
• “These flying-buttresses give to the exterior its most curious and
• beautiful effect”—Narbonne261
• “All the old buildings of the city are of Spanish origin”—Perpignan265
• “The unfinished façade”—Perpignan267
• “The stony street of the hillside”—Carcassonne269
• “The ancient Cross”—Carcassonne272
• “Often too little time is spent upon the nave”—Carcassonne275
• “The choir is of the xiv century”—Carcassonne279
• “The façade, straight and massive”—Carcassonne281
• “Perspective of the Romanesque”—Carcassonne283
• “The nave of the xiii century is an aisle-less chamber, low and
• broadly arched”—Toulouse291
• “The present Cathedral is a combination of styles”—Toulouse294

LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED.

The South of France.

I.

THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.

If it is only by an effort that we appreciate the valour of Columbus in the XV century, his secret doubts, his temerity, how much fainter is our conception of the heroism of the early Mediterranean navigators. Steam has destroyed for us the awful majesty of distance, and we can never realise the immensity of this “great Sea” to the ancients. To Virgil the adventures of the “pious Æneas” were truly heroic. The western shores of the Mediterranean were then the “end of the earth,” and even during the first centuries of our own era, he who ventured outside the Straits of Gibraltar tempted either Providence or the Devil and was very properly punished by falling over the edge of the earth into everlasting destruction. “Why,” asks a mediæval text-book of science, “is the sun so red in the evening?” And this convincing answer follows, “Because he looks down upon Hell.”

For centuries before the Christian era the South of France, with Spain, lay in the unknown west end of the Sea. Along its eastern shores lay civilisations hoary with age; Carthage, to the South, was moribund; Greece was living on the prestige of her glorious past; while Rome was becoming all-powerful. Legend tells that adventurous Phœnicians and Greeks discovered the French coasts, that Nîmes was founded by a Tyrian Hercules, and Marseilles, about 600 B.C., by a Phœnician trader who married a chief's daughter and settled at the mouth of the Rhone. But these early settlements were merely isolated towns, which were not interdependent;—scarcely more than trading posts. It was Rome who took southern Gaul unto herself, and after Roman fashion, built cities and towns and co-ordinated them into well-regulated provinces; and it is with Roman rule that the connected history of Gaul begins.

From the outset we meet one basic fact, so difficult to realise when France is considered as one country, the essential difference between the North and the South. Cæsar found in the South a partial Roman civilisation ready for his organisation; and old, flourishing cities, like Narbonne, Aix, and Marseilles. In the North he found the people advanced no further than the tribal stage, and Paris—not even Paris in name—was a collection of mud huts, which, from its strategic position, he elevated into a camp. The two following centuries, the height of Roman dominion in France, accentuated these differences. The North was governed by the Romans, never assimilated nor civilised by them. The South eagerly absorbed all the culture of the Imperial City; her religions and her pleasures, her beautiful Temples and great Amphitheatres, finally her morals and effeminacy, till in the II century of our era, anyone living a life of luxurious gaiety was popularly said to have “set sail for Marseilles.” To this day the South boasts that it was a very part of Rome, and Rome was not slow to recognise the claim. Gallic poets celebrated the glory of Augustus, a Gaul was the master of Quintilian, and Antoninus Pius, although born in the Imperial City, was by parentage a native of Nîmes.

Not to the rude North, but to this society, so pagan, so pleasure-loving, came the first missionaries of the new Christian faith, to meet in the arenas of Gaul the fate of their fellow-believers in Rome, to hide in subterranean caves and crypts, to endure, to persist, and finally to conquer. In the III and IV centuries many of the great Bishoprics were founded, Avignon, Narbonne, Lyons, Arles, and Saint-Paul-trois Châteaux among others; but these same years brought political changes which seemed to threaten both Church and State.

Roman power was waning. Tribes from across the Rhine were gathering, massing in northern Gaul, and its spirit was antagonistic to the contentment of the rich Mediterranean provinces. The tribes were brave, ruthless, and barbarous. Peace was galling to their uncontrollable restlessness. The Gallo-Romans were artistic, literary, idle, and luxurious. They fell, first to milder but heretical foes; then to the fierce but orthodox Frank; and the story of succeeding years was a chronicle of wars. Like a great swarm of locusts, the Saracens—conquerors from India to Spain—came upon the South. They took Narbonne, Nîmes, and even Carcassonne, the Invulnerable. They besieged Toulouse, and almost destroyed Bordeaux. Other cities, perhaps as great as these, were razed to the very earth and even their names are now forgotten. Europe was menaced; the South of France was all but destroyed.

Again the Frank descended; and like a great wind blowing clouds from a stormy sky, Charles Martel swept back the Arabs and saved Christianity. Before 740, he had returned a third time to the South, not as a deliverer, but for pure love of conquest; and by dismantling Nîmes, destroying the maritime cities of Maguelonne and Agde, and taking the powerful strongholds of Arles and Marseilles, he paved the way for his great descendant who nominally united “all France.”

But Charlemagne's empire fell in pieces; and as Carlovingian had succeeded Merovingian, so in 987 Capetian displaced the weak descendants of the mighty head of the “Holy Roman Empire.” The map changed with bewildering frequency; and in these changes, the nobles—more stable than their kings—grew to be the real lords of their several domains. History speaks of France from Clovis to the Revolution as a kingdom; but even later than the First Crusade the kingdom lay somewhere between Paris and Lyons; the Royal Domain, not France as we know it now. The Duchy of Aquitaine, the Duchy of Brittany, Burgundy, the Counties of Toulouse, Provence, Champagne, Normandy, and many smaller possessions, were as proudly separate in spirit as Norway and Sweden, and often as politically distinct as they from Denmark.

In the midst of these times of turmoil the Church had steadily grown. Every change, however fatal to North or South, brought to her new strength. Confronted with cultured paganism in the first centuries, the blood of her martyrs made truly fruitful seed for her victories; and later, facing paganism of another, wilder race, she triumphed more peacefully in the one supreme conversion of Clovis; and the devotion and interest which from that day grew between Church and King, gradually made her the greatest power of the country. After the decline of Roman culture the Church was the one intellectual, almost peaceful, and totally irresistible force. The great lords scorned learning. An Abbot, quaintly voicing the Church's belief, said that “every letter writ on paper is a sword thrust in the devil's side.” When there was cessation of war, the occupation of men, from Clovis' time throughout Mediævalism, was gone. They could not read; they could not write; the joy of hunting was, in time, exhausted. They were restless, lost. The justice meted out by the great lords was, too often, the right of might. But at the Council of Orléans, in 511, a church was declared an inviolable refuge, where the weak should be safe until their case could be calmly and righteously judged. The beneficent care of the Church cannot be overestimated. Between 500 and 700 she had eighty-three councils in Gaul, and scarcely one but brought a reform,—a real amelioration of hardships.

Something of the general organisation of her great power in those rude times deserves more than the usual investigation. Even in its small place in the “Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France,” it is an interesting bit of Church politics and psychology.