More anciently Combourg Château was a feudal fortress, in an old building of which, now swallowed up in the surrounding structures, the infancy of René Chateaubriand was spent. There is also an old tower dating from 1016, built by Gingoneus, a bishop of Dol. The present château belongs to the Countess of Chateaubriand, and is visible to the curious public on Wednesday afternoons.
The hall, the library, which contains the writing-table of the author of the “Genius of Christianity,” and his bedroom, where is the little iron bed on which he died in Paris,—all go to make of this a literary shrine of prime importance.
The Château of Combourg has a legend, too, but since it concerns only the skeleton of a cat, which in life was supposed to be the reincarnation of a former Count of Combourg, it seems unworthy of repetition here.
CHAPTER X.
ON THE ROAD IN BRITTANY—MAYENNE, FOUGÈRES, LAVAL, AND VITRÉ
IN general aspect a Breton country-side differs widely from those of Normandy. Here one comes upon hedgerows and an occasional bit of stone wall, quite as one sees them in England.
The towns and communities of Brittany are less numerous and less populous, too, than those of Normandy, and paving is uncommon in the towns, and were it not for the steep ascents and descents, by which one leaves such places as Mayenne, Fougères, Josselin, Auray, or Quimperlé, this would prove quite a blessing to the automobilist. As it is, while they give variety to one’s journey by road, they do not by any means permit of “plain sailing” at all times.
The great national road from Paris to Brest crosses mid-Brittany, after leaving Normandy, at Pré-en-Pail just beyond Alençon. It passes through the great towns of Mayenne, Fougères, and Rennes, where it joins the highway from Paris by way of Chartres, Le Mans, Laval, and Vitré.
From Rennes this road, No. 24, runs straight, almost as the crow flies, to the tip of Finistère, by Montfort-sur-Meu, Loudéac, Carhaix, Huelgoat, and Landerneau to Brest.
This takes one through the very heart of Brittany, though by no means is it the most interesting or the most prosperous. Mayenne, Fougères, Vitré, and Laval form a quartette of Breton towns which, taken as a whole, have characteristics quite similar, and yet different from those in other parts. Virtually, they are all hill-towns, and therein lies their resemblance, though their careers have been varied indeed.
The run down into the valley of the river Mayenne, as one comes into the town of the same name, is a wonderfully delightful and gentle descent of perhaps a dozen kilometres. There is nothing very terrific about it, nor is it of the frankly mountainous order, still the eminence to the eastward is sufficiently elevated to give a singularly spacious appearance to the landscape above the river valley itself; indeed, next to that magnificent run down into Rouen—from the height of Bon Secours—it is one of the most splendidly scenic roads in all North France.
At the bottom flows the Mayenne, joining the Loire at Angers, and on its banks is nestled snugly the town of Mayenne itself, with a truly delightful riverside hotel and church.
Just below it is the ancient castle built on a rocky escarpment overhanging the river. There are five great towers on the riverside, and three others on the north, of which one alone has preserved its conical roof. To-day it serves as a prison, but there are yet to be seen in its interior some fragments of the ornamentation of the thirteenth century. The terrace of the château forms a delightful promenade overlooking the river.
William the Conqueror besieged Geoffrey III. here in 1064, but the most celebrated siege which the château underwent was that by the Count of Salisbury in 1424.
The Hôtel de Ville is an admirable relic of other days, though by no means pretentious. It is a small, rectangular structure, its front ornamented with two enormous solar devices, and the whole surmounted by a graceful bell-tower. Behind the Hôtel de Ville stands a bronze statue of Cardinal Cheverus, first Bishop of Boston. The Church of Notre Dame is really a grand structure, with its fine showing of splayed buttresses. Its foundation dates from 1110, and it admirably exhibits the best traditions of its time.
Five kilometres away are the remains of the old Cistercian Abbey of Fontaine-Daniel, founded in 1204 by Juhel III. There are some remarkable fragments of its old foundation still remaining, but a large part of the present edifice is of the seventeenth century. From Mayenne to Fougères, still on the highroad to the west, one passes Ernée, whose name is not known to many travellers and which is not marked on every map, though it is a bustling town of five thousand inhabitants.
The origin of this place is due to the foundation of a château—on the site of the present quaint church—by the Lords of Mayenne, who were, in the sixteenth century, of the house of Lorraine.
Henri of Lorraine was killed by a musket-shot at the siege of Montaubon, and was brought here to die in 1654.
Some years later the Seigneury of Mayenne and Ernée passed to the hands of Cardinal Mazarin, who transmitted it to his niece, and gave the old château for transformation into the present church.
Javron, also on the way to Fougères, is a small town of two thousand inhabitants, and the former site of a monastery, founded by Clotaire for an anchorite named Constantin. The present church is built over the tomb of this saint.
The situation of Fougères is truly remarkable. It is, moreover, a remarkable place in itself, and is to be reckoned as one of these delightful spots to visit, which, if not exactly popular tourist resorts, are at least as satisfying to the curiously inclined.
Fougères in all ways is this, and more. It is almost the best example of a walled and fortified town of the middle ages existing in all North France. Its situation, on a great hill, with its tower-flanked walls and gates, is one of surpassing impressiveness, although to-day the general aspect of the little city of twenty thousand inhabitants is modern enough.
Fougères was one of the original nine baronies of Brittany, and owes its origin to a château which Méen, the son of Juhel Béranger, Count of Rennes, constructed at the beginning of the ninth century.
To-day the city walls, the remains of the château, and the gates and watch-towers are admirably preserved. The castle itself is nothing more than a vast ruin, whose entrance, formed by three towers, plainly shows it to date from the twelfth century.
There is a great tower yet remaining—one of a twin pair—known as the Tower of Coigny, from a former governor, and within this tower is an ancient chapel.
There are three other celebrated towers, well-nigh as perfect as they were in the middle ages as far as their general outlines are concerned. The keep was razed in 1630, but the inner wall which surrounded it, with its three angular towers, is still to be seen. The Tower of Melusine encloses a museum in which are many relics and curiosities of a period contemporary with the castle itself. The ramparts of the town are more or less ruinous, but are still to be seen throughout its whole circumference. No part of this feature, however, dates from before the fifteenth century.
There are two admirable churches,—relics of the middle ages,—St. Sulpice and St. Leonard, also the ancient convent of the Urbanists, dating from 1689, now barracks.
There are many fine old houses in wood and stone scattered about the city, and an octagonal tower, in which is a great clock whose bell was cast in 1304 by Rolland Chaussière.
North of the town is the Forest of Fougères, composed principally of great beeches. Within the forest are the ruins of an ancient convent of the Franciscans, and near the little hamlet of Landeau are the famous “Caverns of Landeau,” constructed, it is said, in 1173 by Raoul II. of Fougères, to hide his riches and those of his vassals from the rapacity of the troops of Henry II. of England.
Dropping down again to the main route from Paris, which joins with that by the way of Mayenne and Fougères at Rennes, one enters Laval, the first Breton town of any magnitude on this route, as one comes westward.
It is a veritable local metropolis, and, like Mayenne, farther up the river, it spreads itself amply on both sides of the stream which flows southward to join the Loire at Angers, just below the country.
The first Château of Laval was built by the Count Guidon or Guy to protect the Bretons from the invasion of Charlemagne or his successors. The second Guy received a charter from the Bishop of Mans, dated in the fifth year of the reign of King Robert (1002), and this designates him as the real founder of the Château of Laval. The town became the seat of a barony, afterward a county, of which the possessors were ever famous for their personal valour and their high lineage. Among them were the Montmorencys, the Montforts, and the Colignys.
When, in the fifteenth century, the English had become virtual masters of Maine, Laval alone resisted their efforts, thanks to the energy of a certain Anne of Laval.
The historical records of the town and the château are ample and eventful, even down to as late a day as 1871, when, after the battle of Mans, General Chanzy retreated upon Laval.
It was in the environs of Laval that the four ancient smugglers, the brothers Jean, François, Pierre, and René Cottereau, known as the Chouans (because of their owl signal, as the French give it), first rallied and organized the bands of partisans which gradually adopted the name.
The keep of the château is a great cylindrical tower of the twelfth century, remarkable for its height, its size, and the wonderful carpentry of its roof. The great interior court is bordered on two sides with a magnificent Renaissance structure attributed to Guy XVI., Count of Laval and Governor of Brittany in 1525. The chapel has now been given up to the prisoners sheltered within the castle. It is the masterpiece of the whole work, and dates from the eleventh century.
The Church of the Trinity, made a cathedral in 1855, was in 1790 the seat of the Assemblée, but in its most ancient parts dates from the episcopate of Hildebert of Lavardin (1110).
There are some remains of the town’s ancient fortifications yet to be seen, such as the Renaise Tower and the Spur Tower, which are in every way as suggestive of former importance as the remains of the castle itself. The Beucheresse Gate is another fragment of these same fortifications.
In Laval are ten thousand workmen engaged in the production of tent and awning cloth. Laval is a great wheat market for the prolific wheat-growing region round about, so its commercial importance of to-day is quite as firmly established as is its historic past.
Laval was the birthplace of Ambroise Paré, the founder of French surgery. It was he who drew the spear-head from the cheek of Balafré, and he who declared the malady of Francis I. to be incurable.
His statue bears the following inscription, “I dressed the wound, and God healed it.”
One cannot say too much in praise of Vitré, though it does smack of the popular tourist resort, with hotels whose runners tout for your patronage, and picture post-card sellers, who seem to think that you prefer their wares to viewing the sights themselves; but the hotels are amply endowed with those creature comforts that most of us value highly, and, if you wish, you will be put to sleep in a hygienic bedroom, which is something like a prison-cell, but which must truly be hygienic, judging from its get-up.
These rooms, installed by the “Touring Club of France,” are now to be found sprinkled here and there throughout the land, and, if white lacquered walls and ceilings and iron beds, and simple draperies and no carpets,—but highly waxed floors instead,—can ensure a superlative cleanliness and airiness, why, so much the more welcome they are; and surely the weary tourist ought not to mind whether he sleeps in a cubicle or not. Again, the fare of this particular hotel (the Travellers’) is so excellent that he ought to be willing to sleep on the proverbial plank.
Vitré, in spite of all novelty, is a true city of the past, and one literally walks the by-paths of history when he traverses its streets. All at once one comes to the ancient and theatrical-looking Château of the Tremoilles, Vitré’s most noble family of other days.
The town has undergone many sieges. Charles VIII. captured it, and in 1488 sojourned in it for some days. During the wars of the League, the Rieux and the Colignys led the revolt, and it served for some years as a strong place of resort for the Huguenots. Within the two hundred years following, the Breton Parliament, alternately presided over by the Dukes of Vitré and of Rohan, met here many times, always amid a great and joyous festival given by the town.
- A—Château
- B—Place du Château
- C—Fosses
- D—Dependencies of Château (non-existent to-day)
- F—Porte d’Enhayt
- G—Porte de Gastesel
- H—Eglise Notre Dame
All the activity in the past has worked for the preservation of many ancient memorials.
The aspect of the town is not so ruinously picturesque as Fougères, nor again so trim and neat as Mayenne or Laval, but more than either of these it preserves to-day its ancient outlook at every turn.
“II n’est plus que Vitré en Bretagne, Avignon dans le Midi, qui conservent au milieu de notre époque leur intacte configuration du moyen-âge” (Victor Hugo).
The château itself has been recently restored, and ranks as one of the most perfectly preserved specimens of military architecture in all Brittany. One may visit the interior of this old fortress-château in the care of a painstaking porter.
The principal mass, known as the châtelet, is the best preserved, and, flanking it on both sides, are series of crenelated towers and machicolated walls. In the courtyard is the eleventh-century château, now incorporated in the later work.
On the same side is a charming Renaissance tower, built by Guy XVI., and known as the “Tribune of Tremoille.” The five sides of this admirable architectural detail are charmingly decorated in sculptured stone, and on one is the inscription taken from the Book of Job: “Post Tenebras Spero Lucem,” the Tremoille motto.
Within is a museum with divers collections of many things of an era contemporary with the structure itself.
Opposite the great entrance gateway to the castle is a modest little house, once the residence (or temporary abode) of Madame de Sévigné, and now occupied by the “Cercle Militaire.”
In the environs—five kilometres to the south—is the Château of Rochers, better known as the domicile of Madame de Sévigné, and one of the stock “sights.” It was from the Château of Rochers that she dated so large a number of her letters in 1670-71.
In a letter bearing date of the twenty-second of July, 1671, she writes thus to Madame de Grignan:
“Madame de Chaulnes arrived on Sunday, but in what manner think you? On her beautiful feet, between eleven and twelve at night. One might think that Vitré was in Bohemia.
“She made no ceremony of her coming.... She had come from Nantes by La Guerche, and her carriage stuck fast between two rocks half a league from Vitré.”
It was from the Château of Rochers that Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter: “On Sunday last, just as I had sealed my former letter, I saw enter our courtyard four chariots with six horses, with fifty mounted guards, many led horses, and many mounted pages.”
These were gallant days at Madame de Sévigné’s Breton home, and to read all of her letters from Rochers—mainly to her daughter—is to get a wonderful epitome of the seventeenth-century social life in this part of France.
On the above occasion the company included M. de Chaulnes, M. de Rohan, M. de Lavardin, M. de Coëtlegon, and M. de Locmaria, the Baron de Guais, the Bishops of Rennes and St. Malo, “and eight or ten I knew not,” she continued.
Throughout the château and its dependencies, the illusion of Madame de Sévigné’s time has been well kept up unto to-day. One learns that the château became the property of the Sévignés upon the marriage of Anne of Mathefelon, “Lady of Rochers,” with William of Sévigné, chamberlain to the Duke of Brittany.
The kindly and well-meaning concierge, or cicerone, or whatever one chooses to call him or her who conducts him over the château and its grounds, is somewhat of a bore, though one has not the courage to cut off the prattle for fear he may lose something which may not have been offered to others.
It is somewhat disconcerting and even annoying to be told, however,—when about to stroll down a tree-alleyed path,—that “the marchioness never went there.” Of course it’s pure conjecture on the part of this twentieth-century guide, since the noble marchioness has been dead some two hundred years or more, but, as aforesaid, the interruption fascinates one with its coolness.
At the right of the château are the gardens traced by the famous Lenôtre. In the “Letters” one reads frequent references to these great gardens with their vast and ancient forests of tall timber.
CHAPTER XI.
RENNES AND BEYOND
RENNES was once a great provincial capital, as great politically, perhaps, as Rouen, but it has not a tithe of the fascination or wealth of attraction of the Norman metropolis, and never had. Its Cathedral of St. Pierre is a cold, unfeeling thing, and its eighteenth-century town hall, its great military barracks, and its palace of a university are in no way great or lovable architectural monuments. As an offset against the mediocrity, is the somewhat bare exterior of the court-house, built in 1618 for the Breton Parliament, and furnished now, as then, in most luxurious fashion.
The Salle des Pas-Perdus is a vast apartment, most delightfully planned and decorated, and of the Grand Parliamentary Chamber the same may be said. Above the floor of this chamber are still to be seen the tribunes where the dames of other days, of the days of Madame de Sévigné, assisted at the sessions.
The town hall contains a library of eighty thousand volumes, of which one hundred or more are first editions, and six hundred manuscripts.
The museums of the university palace are exceedingly rich in treasure, and are in every way worthy of a great provincial capital.
For the rest, Rennes is a most ordinary, uninteresting town, though it does possess two mediæval monuments of remark: the Porte Mordelaise, a historic souvenir of the military architecture of the middle ages, and Church of Our Lady, the ancient chapel and cloister of an eleventh-century monastery founded by the Bishop St. Mélaine.
There are many fine old Renaissance houses scattered here and there about the town, but the general aspect is modern, and mediocre at that. Rennes would have been called by century-ago travellers “a well-built town,” and such it certainly is, as becomes the ancient capital of the duchy of Brittany.
In later days it is mostly known to the general reader as the scene of the famous Dreyfus trial, and its only liveliness comes from the officers of the tenth army corps, who, of a summer’s night, frequent the coffee-rooms opposite the court-house or the theatre, or promenade in the Thabor and the flower-garden, the old gardens of the Benedictine convent.
Just previous to the Revolution, there were stirring times in Rennes, when a marshal of France commanded the troops camped within the city. The discontent of the people had arisen from two distinct causes, the price of bread and the abolition of its ancient parliament. The former seems a good enough excuse, but the latter is inexplicable, except, perhaps, as the snuffing out of an ancient source of local pride. It was to Rennes that Père Caussin, the father confessor of Louis XIII., was sent by Richelieu, when he proved himself incapable of becoming the tool of the cardinal. The prison of state at Rennes was a terrible place in those days, but the true churchman preferred it to exile as a missionary in the wilds.
All this and much more of political history made Rennes a famous centre in times past, but to-day it is so much like a bad imitation of Paris, that in desperation the stranger within the gates finally takes his departure for more idyllic parts, with the vow that never again will he seek to learn of present-day Brittany from the cafés and boulevards of Rennes.
One other comment may be made on the unloveliness of Rennes as a place of temporary sojourn; and that is on its cab-drivers. The driver of a fiacre in the average Breton large town is like his fellows of Paris. He drives with a loose rein, and rushes helter-skelter down narrow streets with never a care for other traffic, or for foot-passengers, save a shouted, “He, la-bas!” which is so sudden and unforeseen that it is quite useless as a warning. There have been those who have said that the hoot of an automobile’s horn would drive even the “sense of traffic”—a new sense recently discovered by the Parisian medical journals—from out of the brain of even the most careful of persons! This is as naught compared to the Breton cab-driver’s stentorian “He, la-bas!”
As one comes to the open country again, he leaves all these distractions behind, and revels in nature, and if he be travelling by road, in the stubbornness of cows and sheep and the aggressiveness of geese and ducks, all road-users like himself.
Westward of Rennes, twenty kilometres by road, is Montfort-sur-Meu, a charming small town, situated upon the banks of two tiny rivers. Its origin dates back to an ancient eleventh-century fortress, which remains to-day in the form of a great cylindrical machicolated tower. The Seigneury of Montfort, since the fifteenth century, has passed successively, by marriage or by heritage, through the houses of Laval, Rieux, Coligny, and La Trémouille.
Next is Montauban, with a fine, moss-grown ruin of a château, dating from the fifteenth century; the town itself numbers three thousand inhabitants, but it does not look it.
St. Méen, a dozen kilometres farther on, was born of a monastery founded in the tenth century by a holy man of its name. It was destroyed and rebuilt many times in the years to follow, but its old abbatial church still exists, one tower coifed by a dome, and another smaller and flat. But no one comes here to see this fine old monkish relic but the farming folk from round about, though St. Méen is a town of three thousand souls and an idyllic artists’ sketching-ground. No colony of painters has yet settled here, leaving it a wholly new field to exploit by any painter looking for new worlds to conquer.
Loudéac and Pontivy, the one in the Côtes du Nord, and the other in the Morbihan, are two characteristically Breton towns bearing no relation whatever to the outside world. It seems doubtful indeed if the inhabitants of these two centres are aware that there is any outside world, so taken up are they with their own little affairs.
Loudéac has some six thousand inhabitants, but it has no apparent industries to hold all these people together, and it seems as if they had simply grouped themselves at the crossing of five great routes and built a town. Its foundation does not go very far back into antiquity; its parish church is only 150 years old, but the Chapel of Notre Dame Vertus dates from the thirteenth century.
In October, November, and December are held great cider-apple markets, which, from their magnitude, would seem to be the chief source of income of the population.
The ancient slogan of Pontivy, born of Revolutionary times, was “Freedom or Death,” which is not far different from the battle-cry of socialists the world over to-day. The condition of the inhabitants of Pontivy, however, does not differ from most folk elsewhere, and the frowning walls of its old castle ironically point to the fact that the time has not yet come when a successful social revolution can be steered through the breakers ahead—not even in France, where indeed there are even more advanced ideas on the subject than in Germany itself.
The memory of this event, though the “Treaty of Pontivy” was sent broadcast through all the communes of France, has quite died out, and the serenity of a little Breton market-town long ago settled upon Pontivy, with nothing but a dim memory existing to neutralize the admiration one is bound to have for the town’s wonderfully picturesque castle. It is a grand ruin with crumbled roof and walls, but its outlines are as clear as ever they were, and if it has not the magnitude or magnificence of many others of its class, it looks far more imposing, and forms an exquisite stage setting for any mediæval romance one is able to conjure up. The history of Pontivy and its castle is this:
The town owes its origin to a monastery built here in the seventh century by St. Ivy, an English monk. The castle, however, was a foundation of seven hundred years later, by John of Rohan, in 1485. At the creation of the duchy of Rohan, in 1663, Pontivy became the first seat of this jurisdiction.
At the Revolution the famous Pontivy treaty mentioned came into being, with the result that in 1802 a consuls’ decree prescribed the construction of a vast barrack at Pontivy, and the canalization of the river Blavet, upon which it sits, down to the sea.
Napoleon, however, by a decree given at Milan, sought to create a new town south of the present city, whose name should be Napoleonville. All this because Pontivy had declared for the rights of man. When the Revolutionists sought power Pontivy had every chance, but with Napoleon his desire was to efface it.
Pontivy is distinctly Breton in every aspect; its manners, customs, and above all its costumes. Decidedly one’s itinerary in Brittany should be made to include it.
Rostrenen is a delightful old town banked high upon a hillside some six hundred feet above the valley. The old-time collegiate church is a thirteenth-century foundation, which, though restored in our day, has all the loveliness of the era of its foundation well preserved.
Like the church at Josselin it is called Our Lady of the Blackberry-bush, from a miraculous Virgin found beneath a blackberry-bush. The great day of pilgrimage to this shrine is the fifteenth of August.
Carhaix is a little Breton town now all but shorn of its former importance, though its breed of cattle is prized above all others in Brittany,—as if that were enough to keep its memory alive. Anciently Carhaix was the capital of the Vorganium, whose peoples took an active part in the wars against Cæsar. Seven Roman ways centred here, and there are yet to be seen the remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct.
Vorganium ultimately lost its rank, and was made a part of the realm of Cornouaille founded by King Grollo, who gave Carhaix its present name—then Ker-Ahès.
Carhaix is the birthplace of La Tour d’Auvergne, “the first Grenadier of France.” His career was almost legendary, and after his famous infernal column which went up against the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, he retired to the city of his birth, and took up the study of the Celtic tongue. In 1796, when the Terror broke out, at the age of fifty-two, he took the haversack and cartridge-box of a simple soldier, to replace the son of an old friend who had been drawn by conscription. He would never advance a single grade, but remained in the ranks from this time forward, and was killed at the battle of Oberhausen in Bavaria. His heart is enshrined in the Hôtel des Invalides at Paris, having been brought there and buried with great pomp in 1904.
Carhaix has a real novelty in its horse-market, held before the Church of St. Trémeur. There is nothing actually profane or sacrilegious about this perhaps; but yet again, perhaps there is. Certainly it is incongruous to see a long string of horses tethered to the very church door-knob itself, with the breeders seated back against the church wall smoking tobacco and eating and drinking.
Huelgoat is in the very heart of Finistère. It is as typical in the manners and customs of these parts as is Pont l’Abbé in Cornouaille or Auray in Morbihan. It has one of the finest sites given to a town in all Brittany, and abounds in quaintness and beauty.
There are various ecclesiastical monuments and religious shrines in and near the town, of which the guide-books tell, and all are well worth visiting.
The market-place of Huelgoat does not differ greatly from other market-places in Brittany. The costumes are brilliant in magpie colours,—if white coifs flashing in the sunlight can be said to make colour,—and the little life and the little affairs of the peasant people scintillate and fluctuate from day to day as if they were the most serious and momentous things in all the world.
Above, on the right, rises the quaint bell-tower of the sixteenth-century church, not beautiful of itself, perhaps, but grouping wonderfully with the moving foreground.
Huelgoat is a great place for ducks, evidently, for ducks big, little, and of all colours of the rainbow are apparently the chief and staple article of trade. What the value may be to-day, as compared with what it was last market-day, no one can prognosticate. Two francs is certainly not much for a nice fat duck, just waiting to be plucked and garnished with green peas, but two francs for a brace is cheaper still, and two francs for a whole flock or bevy, or whatever formation ducks group themselves in, is a still better bargain, and on occasions you may buy a whole duck and drake family—father and mother and two or three youngsters—for a matter of une pièce, which is the Breton’s way of counting a hundred sous or five francs.
From Huelgoat the highroad branches to Morlaix in the northwest, and Landerneau, directly to the west, when one comes once more on the national road, running westward from Alençon by way of Fougères and the north to Brest.
CHAPTER XII.
RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND PARDONS
BRITTANY has been called “the Land of Calvaries and Pardons.” This does not mean much to one who has never come under the spell of these strange sights and survivals, but it means a great deal to those who realize to the full the real significance of the devoutness and religious motives which inspire the Breton folk to worship God in a manner which, in the present age of disregard for the Christian religion of our forefathers, seems to be playing less and less a foremost part.
. . . . . . . . . .
Au pays du Creizker finement dentelé.
Venez donc faire un tour au Pays de Calvaires,
Au Pays des Pardons mystiques et joyeux.”
So sang Theodore Botrèl in a charming series of verses written as an invitation to his fellow Frenchmen to know more of the ancient province of Brittany. Since Brittany is so very religious, the most devout of all the provinces of the France of to-day, the following account of the disposition of certain observances under the care of the state is apropos.
France is said to be Catholic, because the majority of the people profess Catholicism, which apparently answers their wants better than any other. As a matter of fact, however, there is the coëstablishment of four religions, all of which are recognized by the state and their ministers paid by the state. So, virtually, there are four state religions, if they can be so called. In truth, there is no religious head in France; neither the chief of state, the Archbishop of Paris (there are three other heads of religions, so manifestly one could not be chosen), nor the minister of public worship can be called upon to fill the office, hence there is no national religion, though the Roman Catholic faith predominates to-day as in the past.
Since we are concerned herein with Brittany alone, and since the Breton is accounted the most devoutly Catholic of all Frenchmen, it is enough to define the organization of the Roman Catholic religion alone, leaving the question of the Calvinists, the Lutherans, and the Israelites quite apart, as they exist not at all in Brittany as a factor of the local conditions of life.
The parish is the unit in the Catholic Church organization in France, as the commune is the unit in civil administration; the parishes are divided into curés and succursales.
The first class, which number forty-five hundred throughout France, have for their pastor a priest who is immovable, nominated by the bishop with the approval of the government. The second class have a pastor who is nominated by the bishop, but who can be removed or replaced. The parish priest may have one or more assistants. Above the parish priest in rank is the bishop.
In general the bishoprics correspond with the departments, though there are eighty-four dioceses and but sixty-seven bishops, the archbishops of the “ecclesiastical provinces”—which often include several departments and dioceses—making up the number.
In Brittany the Departments of Ille-et-Vilaine, Côtes du Nord, Finistère, Morbihan, and Loire-Inférieure have a bishopric, with an archbishopric at Rennes.
The bishops are nominated by the chief of the state, but are invested canonically by the Pope. They are assisted by vicars-general, who undertake the administrative functions of the diocese. The canonical chapter of the cathedral, the diocesan seminary, and all other seminaries are under the authority of the vicar-general.
Above the bishops are the archbishops, who administer to the wants of their diocese in the same way as the bishops, and, in addition, preside at all provincial councils, ordain the bishops, and in general have a certain jurisdiction over the bishoprics of their sees.
The ecclesiastical provinces, as the great administrative districts of the Church are known, correspond to-day, in a great part, to the ancient provinces of the Roman epoch in Gaul, as the bishoprics themselves correspond with the ancient cities and towns.
Higher up even than the archbishops are the cardinals, nominated by the Pope with the concurrence of the head of the French nation. To-day there are five cardinals in France, all being titularies of one of the Roman churches and members of the Sacred College which elects the Pope.
Those who know Brittany will recognize as the foremost trait and characteristic of the people their devotion to religious forms and ceremonies.
It has been said that by nature the Bretons are conservative. This is indeed true enough, but they are something more, they are superstitious, not only with regard to certain phases of their religion, but also with respect to many of their local customs, which have naught to do with religion. It is said that belief in witchcraft still endures, and certain it is that folk-lore and fairy-lore are, in some parts, quite as much of the life of the people as is the case in the bogs of Ireland. The Celtic imagination, which is the same in both instances, doubtless accounts for this. What the Bretons really are, or have been, though they have not often been accused of it, is pagan,—at least some of them are. It was only in the seventeenth century that the pagan cult—as a body of magnitude—was suppressed. This again was a survival, of course, from the barbarous rites and practices of the druids, which indeed were the same elsewhere, so it need not be laid up against the Bretons alone.
Probably those vast colonies of megalithic monuments at Carnac, and their orphaned brothers and sisters scattered elsewhere throughout Brittany, did much to keep the flames aglow on pagan altars, and even to-day it is easy to perceive with what awe and veneration the simple-minded Breton peasant regards these weird survivals of other days. At any rate, Breton religion to-day is a devotion to many forms and ceremonies.
Brittany has been called the land of pardons (pays des pardons). Every one knows of these great Breton festivals and of their significance. If one travel between May and October, scarcely a week will pass without his falling unawares upon one or another of these great sacred fêtes.
All Bretons do not give to these rites the sacred regard with which they were originally intended to be endowed. Decidedly they have been profaned only too often, and at times there is a little too much license. The Breton pardon is by no means to be thought of in the same manner as the kermess of Flanders, which is a merrymaking pure and simple, with not even a side-light of religion thrown upon it.
The five great pardons of Brittany are held each year as follows:
“The Pardon of the Poor,” at St. Yves; “The Pardon of the Singers,” at Rumengol; “The Pardon of the Fire,” at St. Jean du Doigt; “The Pardon of the Mountain,” at Troménie de St. Ronan; “The Pardon of the Sea,” at Ste. Anne de la Palude.
It is a moot question as to just how much of romance is in the make-up of the Breton character. Emotional the people are, but the emotion that leads them into the enthusiasm which they exhibit at their great religious festivals and pardons is more superstitious than romantic.
The druidism, or paganism, or whatever the religion (sic) of the ancient peoples of the Armorican peninsula may have been, bears not the least traditional resemblance to the fervour of the devotees of the pardons of to-day, but one can readily believe that the same spirit, if with a different motive, does exist even now.
The blessing of the boats, the birds, the cows, and what not, which takes place periodically at different points along the Breton coast,—for it is mostly along the coast that these observances take place,—smacks not a little of something that is of more psychological purport than mere religious devotion.
From whatever tradition these great religious observances have descended, there is no question of the sincerity of the participants, though there is a wide difference between the “sacred” and “profane” elements which meet on these occasions.
Brittany, perhaps as much as any other of the ancient provinces of France, has preserved its local customs and traditions, unblushingly indifferent to the changing conditions round about them. Of course there is no reason why religion and its observances should change with the march of time, but they do, nevertheless, in France as much as in any other land. Only in Brittany, apparently, do the congregations of men and women—for elsewhere the congregations are mostly women—of great churches approach to anything like the numbers that the churches were built to contain.
Throughout this land of calvaries, too, there will be found at all times of the day, and often at night, a tiny congregation of one, two, or perhaps a half a dozen, peasant or fisher folk kneeling before one of these wayside crosses, and invoking their God after the manner they have been taught, in a truly devout and sincere fashion, which is more than can be said of some parts, where the peasant, when on a visit to town on the market-day, rushes in and out of a church with hardly time enough devoted to the whole process even to have used the holy water.
Brittany may be a poor and impoverished province, and in many respects it has not the abundance of the good things of life which one finds in Touraine, Burgundy, or the Midi, but there is a general air of prosperity in the gay accoutrements of the men and women who shine forth on the occasions of the great pardons, showing a snug wardrobe stowed away somewhere.
As one leaves Normandy, at Pontorson, he enters Brittany—the land of calvaries. These fine monuments are not the calvaries which have made the old province famous,—the great stone crosses of Finistère,—but are for the most part unpretentious pieces of wood put together in the form of a cross, or a like symbol, rudely hammered out of a piece of iron by the local blacksmith.
One notes many of these simple crosses throughout Brittany; simple as compared with the more elaborate calvaries, though they may have one, two, or even more sculptured figures in the arms or branches of the cross. One of the most ancient of these, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, is at Scaër in Finistère.
It is a question as to whether any of the great monumental calvaries of Brittany can be considered really artistic. They are imposing,—some of them even terrifying in their strange grandeur,—but all of them seem theatrical, however sincere and devout the motive for their erection may have been. The chief and most elaborate examples are those at Plougastel, near Brest, and St. Thégonnec in Finistère (dating from 1610).
Besides these really great and celebrated functions are many others of minor purport, such as the “Benediction of the Boats” and the “Benediction of the Fields.” The latter occurs when the caterpillars and earthworms fall upon and ravage the land. The local curé, with the permission of the bishop, then blesses the fields. In the midst of the fields the curé takes up his position on some slight eminence, clad in a white surplice, with a violet stole, and begs God to exterminate the noxious insects, the prayers meanwhile being accompanied with the sprinkling of holy water and burning of incense.
The Pardon of St. Jean du Doigt, on the twenty-second of June, is perhaps the most solemn of all its species, and for that reason is described here.
The Pardon of St. Yves, in the Tregarris, of Rumengol and Ste. Anne de la Palude, in Finistère, are especially religious and severe, while that of Notre Dame de la Clarté, in the Morbihan, has the double purpose of homage to Our Lady and the facilitating of marriage.
Here the young peasants in search of a spouse promenade around the church, and when they have made their choice they address the young lady and ask her if she will accept the gift; the boy having meanwhile bought a large round cake. “Will mademoiselle break the cake with me?” says he. If she accept, they consider themselves as engaged, after which their families meet together and discuss the conditions of the marriage.
At Creac’higuel, near Rosporden, the pardon endures for three days, and here one sees the wonderful ’broidered waistcoats and collarettes and beribboned hats of the young men of Pont Aven, Quimperlé, and Scaër, unique in all Brittany.
In July, at Guingamp, is the procession to Our Lady of Good Help, with the inevitable salute of firearms, and a torchlight procession of ten or twelve thousand pilgrims—and some others who are merely profane lookers-on.
The “Benediction of the Sea” at Concarneau, Douarnenez, Trébone, and many other seacoast villages and hamlets, is another religious manifestation which is always attractive to the curious.
At the pardon of St. Jean du Doigt the precious relic of the saint is guarded before the high altar of the church by an abbé clad in his surplice and holding in his hand the precious finger enveloped in fine linen. One by one the faithful pass before the abbé and touch, for an instant, the sainted relic.
Near the choir, another cleric holds aloft the skull of St. Mériadec, before which the pilgrims bow their heads as they pass. Before leaving the church, in response to the call, “Dour ar bis! Dour ar bis!” sung in a strident Celtic voice, the pilgrims repair to a fountain attached to the side wall, in which the finger has previously been bathed at the end of a gold chain. Immediately this operation is over, the devout plunge their palms deep into the sanctified water and vehemently rub their eyes. Then the pardon is finished, and the profane festivity begins.
“Whence come you?” was asked of a happy family of three at St. Jean du Doigt. “From St. Jean-Brevelay,” they replied, mentioning a village a hundred kilometres away, in Morbihan. “We have walked three suns and three moons,”—which sounds like the American Indian’s method of reckoning by moons, but which in this case meant merely that they had been on the road three days and three nights.