The Cathedrals of Northern France

APOLOGIA

"There are two ways of writing a book of travel: to recount the journey itself or the results of it." This is also the case with regard to any work which attempts to purvey topographical or historical information of a nature which is only to be gathered upon the spot; and, when an additional side-light is shown by reason of the inclusion, as in the present instance, of the artistic and religious element, it becomes more and more a question of judicious selection and arrangement of fact, rather than a mere hazarding of opinions, which, in many cases, can be naught but conjecture, and may, in spite of any good claim to authoritativeness, be misunderstood or perverted to an inutile end, or, what is worse, swallowed in that oblivion where lies so much excellent thought, which, lacking either balance or timeliness, has become stranded, wrecked, and practically lost to view because of its unappropriate and unattractive presentation.

To-day, the purely technical writer may have little hope of immortality unless he is broad-minded enough to take a cultivated interest in many matters outside the ken of his own particular sphere. The best-equipped person living could not produce a new "Dictionary of Architecture," and expect it to fill any niche that may be waiting for such a work, unless he brought to bear, in addition to his own special knowledge, something of the statistician, something of the professed compiler, and, if possible, a little of the not unimportant knowledge possessed by the maker and seller of books, meaning – the publisher. Given these qualifications, it is likely that he will then produce an ensemble as far in advance of what otherwise might have been as is the modern printing machine, as a factor in the dissemination of literature, as compared with the ancient scribes working to the same end.

The sentimentalist and rhapsodist in words and ideas is a dwindling factor at the present day, and a new presentation of fact is occasionally to be met with in the printed page. The best "book of travel" within the knowledge of the writer, and perhaps one of the slightest in bulk ever written in the English language, is Stevenson's "Inland Voyage" – here were imagination, appreciation, and a new way of seeing things, and, above all, enthusiasm; and this is the formula upon which doubtless many a future writer will build his reputation, though he may never reach the significant heights expressed by Stevenson in the picturesque wording of his wish to be made Bishop of Noyon.

This apparent digression into a critical estimate of the making of books is but another expression of the justification of the writer in the attempt herein made to set forth in attractive and enduring form certain facts and realities with regard to the grand and glorious group of cathedrals of Northern France.

They have appeared as demanding something more than the conventional guide-book, or even technical estimates as to their perfections, and the belief is that the gathering together, after this fashion, of the contemporary information not always to the hand of the general reader presents an attraction as appealing and deserving of a place on the book-shelf as would be an avowed reference work, or a volume made to sell on the strength of its bulk or ornateness, or, lacking these questionable attributes, presented in the guise of a whilom text-book, the sole province of which is to impart "knowledge" after a certain well recognized and set pattern.

It is believed that, regardless of much that has been said and written anent the subject, the fact remains that some considerable numbers of persons may be supposed to exist who would be glad of a further suggestion which would make possible an acquaintance with the cathedrals of France as a part of their own personal experience. To all such, then, it is to be hoped this book will appeal.

INTRODUCTION

An attempt to enumerate the architectural monuments of France is not possible without due consideration being given to the topographical divisions of the country, which, so far as the early population and the expression of their arts and customs is concerned, naturally divides itself into two grand divisions of influences, widely dissimilar.

Historians, generally, agree that the country which embraces the Frankish influences in the north, as distinct from that where are spoken the romance languages, finds its partition somewhere about a line drawn from the mouth of the Loire to the Swiss lakes. Territorially, this approaches an equal division, with the characteristics of architectural forms well nigh as equally divided. Indeed, Fergusson, who in his general estimates and valuations is seldom at fault, thus divides it: – "on a line which follows the valley of the Loire to a point between Tours and Orleans, then southwesterly to Lyons, and thence along the valley of the Rhône to Geneva."

With such a justification, then, it is natural that some arbitrary division should be made in arranging the subject matter of a volume which treats, in part only, of a country or its memorials; even though the influences of one section may not only have lapped over into the other, but, as in certain instances, extended far beyond. As the peoples were divided in speech, so were they in their manner of building, and the most thoroughly consistent and individual types were in the main confined to the environment of their birth. A notable exception is found in Brittany, where is apparent a generous admixture of style which does not occur in the churches of the first rank; referring to the imposing structures of the Isle de France and its immediate vicinity. The "Grand Cathedrals" of this region are, perhaps, most strongly impressed upon the mind of whoever takes something more than a superficial interest in the subject as the type which embodies the loftiest principles of Gothic forms, and, as such, they are perhaps best remembered by that very considerable body of persons known as intelligent observers.

The strongest influences at work in the north from the twelfth century onward have been in favour of the Gothic or pointed styles, whilst, in the south, civic and ecclesiastical architecture alike were of a manifest Byzantine or Romanesque tendency. No better illustration of this is possible than to recall the fact that, when the builders of the fifteenth century undertook to complete that astoundingly impressive choir at Beauvais, they sought to rival in size and magnificence its namesake at Rome, which, under the care of the Pontiff himself, was then being projected. Thus it was that this thoroughly Gothic structure of the north was to stand forth as the indicator of local influences, as contrasted with the Italian design and plans of the St. Peter's of the south.

A discussion of the merits of any territorial claims as to the inception of what is commonly known as Gothic architecture, under which name, for the want of a more familiar term, it shall be referred to herein, is quite apart from the purport of this volume, and, as such, it were best ignored. The statement, however, may be made that it would seem clearly to be the development of a northern influence which first took shape after a definite form in a region safely comprehended as lying within the confines of northeastern France, the Netherlands, and the northern Rhine Provinces. Much has been written on this debatable subject and doubtless will continue to be, either as an arrow shot into the air by some wary pedant, or an equally unconvincing statement, without proof, of some mere follower in the footsteps of an illustrious, but behind the times, expert. It matters not, as a mere detail, whether it was brought from the East in imperfect form by the Crusaders, and only received its development at the hands of some ingenious northerner, or not. Its development was certainly rapid and sure in the great group which we know to-day in northern France, and, if proof were wanted, the existing records in stone ought to be sufficiently convincing to point out the fact that here Mediæval Gothic architecture received its first and most perfect development. The Primaire: the development of the style finding its best example at Paris. The Secondaire: the Perfectionnement at Reims, and its Apogee at Amiens. The Tertiaire: practically the beginning of the decadence, in St. Ouen at Rouen, only a shade removed from the debasement which soon followed. As to the merits or demerits of the contemporary structures of other nations, that also would be obviously of comparative unimportance herein except so far as a comparison might once and again be made to accentuate values.

The earliest art triumphs of the French may well be said to have been in the development and perfectionnement of Mediæval (Gothic) architecture. Its builders planned amply, wisely, and well, and in spite of the interruptions of wars, of invasions, and of revolutions, there is nowhere to be found upon the earth's surface so many characteristic attributes of Mediæval Gothic architecture as is to be observed in this land, extending from the Romanesque types of Fréjus, Périgueux and Angoulême to that classical degeneration commonly called the Renaissance, a more offensive example of which could hardly be found than in the conglomerate structure of St. Etienne du Mont at Paris, or the more modern and, if possible, even more ugly Cathedral Churches at Arras, Cambrai, or Rennes in the north.

There may be attractive Italian types in existence out of Italy; but the fact is that, unless they are undoubted copies of a thoroughly consistent style to the very end, they impress one as being out of place in a land where the heights of its own native style are so exalted.

Gothic, regardless of the fact as to whether it be the severe and unornamental varieties of the Low Countries or the exaggerations of the most ornately flamboyant style, appears not only to please the casual and average observer, but the thorough student of ecclesiastical architecture as well. It has come to be the accepted form throughout the world of what is best representative of the thought and purpose for which a great church should stand.

With the Renaissance we have not a little to do, when considering the cathedrals of France. Seldom, if ever, in the sixteenth century did the builder or even the restorer add aught but Italian accessories where any considerable work was to be accomplished. Why, or how, the Renaissance ever came into being it is quite impossible for any one to say, sans doubt, as is the first rudimentary invention of Gothic itself. Perhaps it was but the outcome of a desire for something different, if not new; but in the process the taste of the people fell to a low degree. Architecture may be said to have been all but divorced from life, and, while the fabric is a dead thing of itself, it is a very living and human expression of the tendencies of an era. The Renaissance sought to revive painting and sculpture and to incorporate them into architectural forms. Whether after a satisfactory manner or not appears to have been no concern with the revivers of a style which was entirely unsuited in its original form to a northern latitude. That which answered for the needs and desires of a southern race could not be boldly transplanted into another environment and live without undergoing an evolution which takes time, a fact not disproven by later events.

The Italians themselves were the undoubted cause of the debasement of the classical style, evidences having crept into that country nearly a hundred years before the least vestiges were known in either France or Germany, the Netherlands, or England, and which, though traceable, had left but slight impress in Spain. It is doubtless not far wrong to attribute its introduction into France as the outcome of the wanderings in Italy of Charles VIII., in the latter years of the XV. century. As a result of this it is popularly supposed that it was introduced into the domestic architecture of the nobles who had accompanied the king. Here it found perhaps its most satisfying expression; in those magnificent chateaux of the Loire, and the neighbourhood of Tours and Blois, ever a subject for sentimental praise. One would not seek to pass condemnation upon the application of revived classic features where they were but the expression of an individual taste, as in a chateau whose owner so chose to build and embellish it. Certainly no more splendid edifices of their kind are known than the magnificent establishments at Blois, Chenonceau, Chambord, or Chaumont. The style appears, however, out of place; an admixture meaningless in itself and in its application when, with a Gothic foundation bequeathed them, builders sought to incorporate into a cathedral such palpable inconsistencies as was frequently done.

The building of the chateaux was perhaps the first anti-Gothic step in France and proved to be an influence which spread not slowly, as to decorative detail at least, and soon of itself established a decided non-Gothic type.

It was but natural that the cathedral builders should have followed to some extent this new influence. The Church was ever seeking to strengthen its popularity, the bishops ensconced themselves in their cathedral cities as snugly as did a feudal lord in his castle, and their emulation of wealth outside of the Church was but an effort to keep their status on a plane with that of the other power which also demanded allegiance of the people. It is to be regretted that they did not pass this manifestation by, or at least not encumbered an otherwise consistent Gothic fabric with superimposed meaningless detail. Such decorative embellishments as are represented by the tomb of Louis XII. at St. Denis, and the tombs of the cardinals at Rouen, may be considered characteristic, though they bear earlier dates by some twenty years than the south portal of Beauvais, which is thoroughly the best of Gothic, or St. Maclou at Rouen, which, though highly florid, is without a trace of anti-Gothic. The extreme (though not a cathedral church) may be seen at St. Etienne du Mont, wherein the effort is made to incorporate large masses of pseudo-classical decoration with Gothic, and, alas, with sad effect.

For the most part, the Gothic cathedrals of France, as such, while closely related to each other in their design and arrangements, have little to do with those which lie without the confines of the country, either in general features or in detail. The type is distinctively one which stands by its own perfections. In size, while in many instances not having the length of nave of several in England, they have nearly always an equal, if not a greater, width and an almost invariably greater height, though not equal in superficial area to St. Peter's in Italy, the Dom at Cologne, or even the cathedral at Seville in Spain.

Such Romanesque types as are to be seen to the northward of the Loire are mostly found in the smaller churches of Brittany, while the early transition type, so familiar throughout the Netherlands, is, in France, usually seen in the neighbourhood of the frontiers of the Low Countries.

"Les Grandes Cathédrales" of the north are distinctly those of Paris, Amiens, Reims, Rouen, Beauvais, and Chartres; and it is to them that reference must continually be made; while the severely plain transitory types of Noyon or Soissons, or the more effective development of Laon, and the flamboyant structures of Troyes and Nantes, at least lean toward the decadence.

The difficulty of assigning ranks to these monumental cathedrals is made the greater by reason of the fact that to-day it is with but one people that we have to reckon, so far as their temperament and environment is concerned. Since feudal times the movement has ever been toward one nation, one people, and one view, different from that presented in the middle ages.

For centuries after the break of Roman power it had been mostly one local influence against another which prevented perfect cohesion to any national spirit, and thus it was that the tendencies of the cathedral builders, though Roman as to their teaching and religion, and doubtless, in many instances, with regard to their birth as well, followed no special style until the era of Gothic development. Unconsciously, transitory types crept in, until suddenly throughout northern Europe there bloomed forth within less than a century of time the so-called Gothic in all its splendour, and with scarce a century between the commencement and the completion of some of the most notable of the group. The Romanesque types which still lingered in Brittany, though well worthy of special consideration to-day, are unimportant and in a way insignificant when compared with the grand group.

To most of us it will be impossible to conjure up any more significant thought with regard to mediæval church architecture than that fostered by the memories of acquaintanceship with these examples of north France; an opinion which is further strengthened when it is also recalled that they are representative of the first really national artistic expression. For this reason alone, if for no other, the hasty critics who have so handily claimed precedence elsewhere, might profitably review the facts of the circumstance which led to so universal an adoption of the full-blown style in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The Romanesque peoples were confined southwards of mid-France at the time of the withdrawal of the Roman legions, while, in the north, the conquering Franks sought to wipe out every vestige of their past influence; hence it may be considered that the new manner of building had everything in favour of its speedy growth. It was thus definitely assured of a warm welcome, and, following in the footsteps of Clovis himself, the rulers were more than willing to aid what they believed might be a strengthening influence, politically, as well as morally.

The style may be justly said to be a natural and growthful expression of a race, and more significant than all else is the fact that nowhere, not even on the Rhine, which with northern France claims the origin of the style, is to be found any single example equalling in any like measure the perfections of "Les Grandes Cathédrales Françaises," though it be recalled that in many instances the German buildings were planned and often erected by French architects and artisans.

Among the two thousand or more "Monuments Historiques" paternally cared for by the French government and under the direct control of the Ministry of Public Instruction and the Beaux Arts, none are of the relative importance, historically or artistically, of the Grand Cathedrals. Certain objects, classed as megalithic and antique remains, may be the connecting links between the past and the present by which the antiquarian weaves the threads of his historical lore; but neither these nor the reliques which have been dug from the ground or untombed from later constructive elements, all of which are generously included in the general scheme by the Department of Beaux Arts, which has provided a fund for their preservation and care, have one tithe of the appealing interest which these great churches bespeak on behalf of the contemporary life of the times in which they were built, reflecting as they do many correlated events, and forming, in the interweaving of the history of their inception and construction, an epitome of well-nigh all the contemporary events of their environment, as well as the greater parts which they may have played in general affairs of state.

The best example of a part so played is that of the cathedral at Reims, which saw the crowning within its walls of nearly every monarch of France from the time of Philippe Augustus (1173) to that of Charles X. (1823). The monarchs of France, a long and picturesque line, have ever sought to ally the Church on their side, and right well they have been served, not ignoring, of course, certain notable lapses. In the main, however, the rulers and the people alike, whatever may have been the periodical dissensions, combined the forces which made possible the projection and erection of these noble examples of an art which, in the Gothic forms at least, here came to its greatest and most interesting phase.

Invasion, revolution, and the stress of weather and time, all played their part in the general desecrations which sooner or later followed; far the most serious of these visible damages reflected upon us to-day being the malpractices occurring at the Revolution, whether at the hands of a sans culotte or of the most respectable of bourgeois, led away by the excitement of revolt. The depredations were irreparable; they razed, burned, or ruthlessly shattered shrines, statues, or even reliquaries, as at Reims, where the Sainted Ampulla, which contained the miraculous oil brought by a dove from heaven, now preserved in reconstructed fragments in the sacristy, was dashed to pieces in a fury of uncontrollable wrath.

The paucity of sculptured decoration in certain places only too plainly designed for it is, too, frequently painfully apparent. Such sculptured decoration and glass as were easily to hand met with perhaps the most ready spoliation, while here and there, from some miraculous reason, a gem was left entire, though likely enough in a bruised and shattered setting.

This is what befell most of the great churches, and, for this reason, any work treating of these architectural glories of France must make due allowance in hazarding opinions as to the merit or lack of merit of any particular example as it now exists, as compared with what it may have been as it once was, or had it been completed in accordance with the original design.

In local and cathedral archives much valuable and interesting information exists, treating in this very manner such embellishments as may to-day be lacking; but unfortunately such facts are often buried in a mass of other irrelevant material which would make its discovery unusually difficult to any but a very learned local antiquarian. In this same connection, also, there is a dearth of illustrative material which can be depended upon as to minutiæ or accuracy of detail. Hence it is possible to deal only with such general facts as may be supported by the best contemporary information based upon the researches of others. It may be well to note here, however, a fact which is often overlooked, namely, that the written records of France are not only very complete and exhaustive, but, with respect to Paris itself, to cite an example, the documentary history, consecutive and exact, from the time of the decline of Roman power is preserved intact, – a record which is perhaps not so true of any other large city in Europe.

In dealing with the cathedrals of the north, territorially, we have to consider those examples which are generally accepted as being all that a cathedral church should be. Of the first rank are those gathered not far from the confines of the mediæval Isle of France. They too, are best representative of the true Gothic spirit, while the southernmost examples, those of Dijon and Besançon, are of manifest Romanesque or Byzantine conception. Each, too, is somewhat reminiscent of the early German manner of building, the latter in respect to the double apse, which is often found across the Rhine, but seldom seen in France. The most northerly of all is at St. Omer, where are the somewhat battered remains of a satisfactory Gothic cathedral, although Amiens, not far to the south, is perhaps the ideal cathedral when considered from a general point merely. For the western representative, a line running due west from Paris almost into the Atlantic finds at Quimper, a small port fifteen miles from the sea, the Cathedral of St. Corentin, which, though not as lofty, is more of the manner of building of the Isle of France than one might suppose would be the case here in this outpost of Brittany, where are found so many evidences of Romanesque influences, retained long after they had been given over elsewhere.

Such, then, are the extremes of latitude and of architectural style which combine to give variety to the interest which is always aroused by the contemplation of the masterworks of any of the arts, where outside and contiguous influences have something in common therewith.