XII. SOISSONS
SOISSONS is a white, peaceable and smiling city whose tower and pointed spires rise from the bank of a lazy river, in the midst of a circle of green hills: town and countryside call to mind the little pictures which the illuminators of our old manuscripts painted with loving care. Here is France, pure France: nothing of that Flemish air assumed by the little towns of the valley of the Oise, with their brick houses, such as exquisite Noyon, like a great béguinage. Precious monuments relate the whole history of the French monarchy, from the Merovingian crypts of the abbey of Saint Médard to the beautiful hotel built on the eve of the Revolution for the intendants of the provinces. In the midst of the narrow streets and the little gardens, a magnificent cathedral extends the two arms of its great transept; on the north a fiat wall and an immense expanse of glass; on the south, that marvelous apse where the pointed and the rounded arch mingle in so delicate a fashion.
One cannot omit a malediction in passing on the architect who, to the dishonor of the interior of this monument, marked off each stone with black joints, checkering it in such an exasperating manner that all the lines of the architecture are lost.
A promenade through the streets of this lovable town is charming. Today, I would like to entertain you with the most celebrated of the monuments of Soissons, the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.
Of this monastery, which was one of the most beautiful and richest in France, there remains only the façade of the church, the remains of a cloister of the fourteenth century, traces of a cloister of the Renaissance, a few buildings of the seventeenth century, and a magnificent Gothic hall, the refectory of the convent.
How the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes was reduced to a state of ruin is an interesting chapter of the history of vandalism, which I will briefly relate to you. Then we will see what steps would be necessary to save the refectory building.
Founded in the eleventh century, the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes followed the rule of Saint Augustine. Its monks were Joannist canons. Their duty consisted in celebrating mass within the monastery and in acting as curates in the forty parishes which belonged to the community in the dioceses of Soissons and of Meaux. Ninety canons remained encloistered; fifty priests served the parishes. Because of their holiness and their knowledge, the Joannists had acquired such renown during the Middle Ages that Cardinal Jean de Dormans confided to the monks of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes the direction of the college of Dormans-Beauvais founded by him at Paris.
The gifts of kings, nobles and citizens gave the canons means wherewith to undertake the construction of a great church. About 1335 they laid the foundations of the nave and the towers. At the end of the fourteenth century the walls of the nave were finished, and the towers had risen to the level of the great rose window. The plunderings of the Abbé Remy d'Orbais, and later the wars of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, interrupted the work, and it was not until about the end of the fifteenth century that the vaultings and the tiles were put in place. The two towers were not finished until later, the smaller in the last years of the fifteenth century, the greater in 1520. The construction of the church had occupied more than two hundred years. [22]
In 1567, two years after the death of the last canon regular of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, the Protestants devastated the abbey: the library and the treasury were plundered, the stained glass and the statues were broken, the carvings were burned and the fountains demolished. The commendatory monks took little pains to repair the damages.
At the beginning of the Revolution, there were no more than thirty monks in the monastery. They were expelled, and the nave of the church was used as a military bakeshop.
There is a widely believed legend that the church was demolished during the Revolution. This is absolutely false. At this time, as the roofs were not well looked after, a bay of the vaulting fell; but, under the Consulate, the monument was still solid and a few repairs would have sufficed to preserve it. It was torn down by a bishop of Soissons, Msr. Leblanc de Beaulieu.
It is a painful story. I have before me the administrative documents of this abominable destruction, documents which were brought to my attention by M. Max Sainsaulieu, the architect of the historic monuments of Soissons. These documents are instructive.
On August 1, 1804, the churchwardens of the cathedral and parish church of Soissons address themselves to the mayor of the city and disclose to him that their church is in great need of repairs and that these indispensable works will cost 23,786 francs. "The desire," they write, "to lighten as much as possible this charge upon our town, has suggested to us a means which would totally free us from it, at least for several years. This means consists in obtaining from the government the right to dispose of the former church of the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, in order to employ the products of its demolition for the conservation and repair of the cathedral. It will not be difficult for you, Monsieur le Maire, to convince the government by a description of the present condition of this church, and by a relation of the accidents which almost happened two years ago and again recently, by the falling of various parts of it, that the total demolition of this structure will produce no real disadvantage to the national treasury and will contribute advantageously to public safety...."
Behind the churchwardens, it is really the bishop who demands the demolition of the church. As a matter of fact, on April 25, 1805, by a decree given at the Stapinigi Palace, the Emperor orders that the prefect of the department of the Aisne, at the instance of the Bishop of Soissons, shall put at his disposal the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, "in order that the materials coming from the church may be used in the repair of the cathedral": the inhabitants of Soissons must merely, in exchange for this concession, consolidate the walls of the other parts of the abbey which have been granted to the Administration of Powder and Saltpeter.
Mgr. Leblanc de Beaulieu receives his decree. Meanwhile the inhabitants of Soissons are alarmed at this project of demolition, protest against the plan of the prelate and take their grievances to the prefect. It is often assumed that before the advent of romanticism no one in France cared for the monuments of the Middle Ages. Now, as early as 1805, the news that the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes is about to be destroyed excites the indignation of the people of Soissons. The archaeologists make ready for battle. The prefect writes to the bishop (June 26, 1805): "Monsieur, I am receiving a great number of complaints against the approaching demolition of the church of Saint-Jean: the inhabitants of Soissons appear to be extremely attached to this edifice, which they regard as a precious monument of the arts. I have the honor to forward to you a copy of a historical summary which has been forwarded to me. As it belongs to you, Monsieur, to decide the fate of this church, which is at your disposal, I can only confide in what your good sense and your enlightened love for the arts will suggest to you."
His "enlightened love for the arts" does not in the least inspire the bishop with a desire to save the church; but the complaints of his flock embarrass him, and he explains to the prefect that he himself cannot proceed in a regular manner, that it is unsuitable that a bishop should have "personal connection with the demolition of a church." And, for four years, matters remain at this stage.
Finally, in 1807, disdaining the protests and triumphing over his own scruples, the bishop awards the glass and the ironwork to a certain Archin. In 1809 he empowers his notary to treat in his name with the contractors for demolition. All that he accords to the inhabitants of Soissons is the preservation of the façade.
The bargain is concluded between "Antoine Isidore Petit de Reimpré, imperial notary, domiciled at Soissons, in the name and endowed with the powers of Mgr. Jean Claude Leblanc-Beaulieu, Bishop of Soissons and Laon, baron of the Empire and member of the Legion of Honor, of the first part; and Leonard Wallot, building contractor, and Pierre-Joseph Delacroix père, carpenter...." By the terms of the agreement, the two towers and the portals must remain intact, and the contractors are even obliged to do certain work of consolidation. But nothing will remain of the nave and the choir of the church: "All the parts to be demolished shall be demolished down to and including the foundations. The rubbish caused by the demolition shall at first be thrown into the vaults of the church; consequently the ceilings of the aforesaid vaults shall be demolished, the ground shall be perfectly leveled and the surplus of the rubbish shall be transported into the fields." This is not all. The bishop reserves for his own share a hundred and sixty cubic meters of ashlar! The price of the sale was fixed at three thousand francs.
For six hundred dollars, they leveled to the ground a marvelous Gothic edifice, the largest church of the diocese except the cathedral; the choir was composed, as a matter of fact, of two bays, the transept likewise of two bays, and the nave of five; it was sixty meters long and twenty-six high. It is an excellent custom to carve upon the monuments the names of those who have built and repaired them. It would not be ill if upon the ruins of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes an inscription should recall the absurd demolition and the name of its author, Mgr. Leblanc de Beaulieu.
In 1821 the demolition was not yet complete, for Wallot found some difficulty in selling his ashlar. It is said that several houses of Soissons were built with the stone of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.
[Original]
The Department of War, which had been granted the buildings of the abbey, continued the work of the ecclesiastical housebreakers. It tore down a small Renaissance cloister. Had it not been for the intervention of the Archaeological Society of Soissons, it would have destroyed the two galleries of the great cloister which still stand. Finally, in 1870, the German shells did great damage and set a fire which calcined the lower part of the portal.
Today, a part of the ruins has been placed in charge of the Administration of Fine Arts. It is possible to visit the towers, the organ platform and the great cloister.
It is a lamentable spectacle, that of this magnificent façade, now isolated like a useless stage setting: through the three bays of the portal we perceive the ground which was carefully leveled, in accordance with the orders of Mgr. Leblanc de Beaulieu; the great rose window is an empty hole against the sky. Nevertheless, how precious this fragment of a church still is! What masterpieces of grace and boldness are these two towers, unlike, but both so perfect, with their galleries, their arcades, their pinnacles, their bell towers and their stone spires. And what admirable carvings! There are, under the elegant canopies attached to each story of the towers, the images—alas! too often mutilated by the Huguenots or by the Revolutionists—of the Apostles and the Evangelists; there is the crucified Christ upon the window bars of the great tower window; there are, above all, on the two sides of the rose window, the touching and expressive statues of Our Lady of Sorrow and of Saint John the Evangelist.
Two of the galleries of the cloister have disappeared. The other two present arcades of a charming design. Ornaments of rare delicacy frame the inner door. Heads of monsters decorate the gargoyles. About the capitals and upon the bases of the corbels are twined allegorical flowers of perfect execution: here the vines which recall the name of the abbey itself, there the ivy and the wormwood to which Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of the monastery, communicated the virtue of counteracting witchcraft; elsewhere the oak, the apple, the strawberry, the wild geranium, all the plants which in the Middle Ages were reputed to cure ills of the throat, for, until the last century, it needed but a pilgrimage to Saint-Jean-des-Vignes to be freed from quinsy. [23]
And this is all that one is allowed to see of the abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes. Whoever is curious to become acquainted with the last remnants of the Renaissance cloister (a few arches and four very beautiful stone medallions) and to enter the ancient refectory of the abbey, will run against the veto of military authority.
It is probable that the Administration of Fine Arts will without difficulty obtain permission that the public may have access to the courtyard where the little cloister stands. But it will doubtless be more difficult to recapture from the War Department the refectory building, where it has been installed for a century.
This refectory is a vaulted hall, forty meters long and divided into two naves by fine columns. Whoever wishes to obtain an idea of the beauty of this admirable structure may think of the refectory of Royaumont, today much disfigured, or even the refectory of the priory of Saint Martin in the Fields, now the Library of Arts and Trades, and whose character has been altered by useless daubs of paint. These two latter edifices belong to the thirteenth century. The refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes seems to date from the fourteenth. Here may be found, as in all the halls of the same kind, the readers' stall hollowed in the thickness of the wall, and reached by several stone steps.
A food storehouse has been installed in this refectory. To utilize the space, it has been divided into two stories by a floor which passes below the capitals of the columns. Here are piled boxes of canned goods, biscuits, bags of grain. In conformity with the military regulations, all the walls are covered, for a meter above the floor, with a thick layer of coal tar, so that the capitals, just above the second story floor, have disappeared under this covering. The rest of the walls is simply covered with whitewash. At some unknown time the whitewash was removed from certain spots to uncover two pictures which appear to be contemporary with the building. One is still visible and represents the Resurrection. The other has almost completely disappeared. Formerly wooden shutters protected them from the curiosity of the soldiers employed in the storehouse. They are now exposed to every insult. Perhaps other paintings exist under the whitewash.
Under this great hall is a vaulted subterranean room, whose bays correspond to the bays of the refectory. It is likewise used for army provisions.
This is the condition to which, in 1905, one of the most precious monuments of Gothic architecture which exists in France is abandoned. And the vandals are not satisfied with secularizing the buildings, with tarring the capitals and with dooming the paintings to certain destruction.
By overloading the edifice they endanger its safety.
The War Department is not responsible for all this vandalism. It has been assigned a Gothic hall in which to store its provisions. It has used it as well as it knew how; it has applied to it the rules which are common to all military buildings; it is not the guardian of monuments of the past.
This guardianship belongs to the Bureau of Historic Monuments; its responsibility is to take notice of and to save the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.
It is not possible to conceal the difficulties of the attempt. The Minister of War will consent to abandon this edifice only if he is furnished another provision storehouse in Soissons itself. So a new building must be put up. Who will pay for it? The city of Soissons, interested in the preservation of a "precious monument of the arts," as the prefect of 1805 said, doubtless will not refuse to contribute to the expense. But the state must come to its aid.
When, tomorrow, at some public sale, there shall be put up at auction some primitive of more or less certain authenticity, a hundred thousand francs will be spent to hang it in a room of the Louvre, and there will be glorification over the acquisition. Would it not be wiser and safer to preserve the paintings of the fourteenth century which decorate the refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, whose authenticity, I believe, no one will ever dare to contest? With the same stroke, a magnificent bit of architecture will be saved. Who knows if we may not even see other mediaeval paintings appear from under the whitewash?... In short, we shall have saved a precious work of Gothic art for France. And future centuries will draw a parallel between the house-wrecking bishop who destroyed the church of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes and the pious undersecretary of state who protected the refectory of the Joannist canons. [24]