SOME CHURCHES OF LE PUY EN VELAY AND AUVERGNE
(From the Transactions of the R. I. B. A. 1889)
In the course of last autumn,[28] after having spent three weeks in climbing Swiss mountains, I was able to devote a few days, on my way home, to a district which, as far as I had been able to gather from books, appeared to contain a mine of interest for the architect, not less than for the geologist and the lover of natural scenery. From Lyon I went by Monistrol to Le Puy, which was the grand object of my tour; thence by Brioude into Auvergne, and through Issoire, Clermont-Ferrand and Nevers, to Bourges and Paris. I was so much struck by what I saw, that, though I am well aware that my visit was too hurried to be at all exhaustive, I think I cannot do better than give you the results of my journey, in the trust that what was full of interest, novelty, and instruction for myself, may be of some use also to others who have not been able to make this journey for themselves. The complete-Gothic architecture of Velay and Auvergne is not, it is true, to be compared to the best work in the north of France. I am not, however, going to tell you about it, but about an earlier style, which, as I hope to show, has special value as illustrating, among other things, the way in which French Gothic was developed from Romanesque and Byzantine buildings; and our attention will, therefore, be almost entirely devoted to buildings which are either Romanesque or Romano-Byzantine in their character, or belonging to the period of transition from those styles to first-pointed. The complete-Gothic buildings are comparatively few, and have no special value; and I shall, probably, not have time now to refer to them even in the most cursory manner.
I will begin with Le Puy, the ancient capital of Velay. The city is crowded up the side of a volcanic rock, one end of which is crowned by the picturesque mass of its Eastern-looking cathedral. It consists of a network of narrow streets not passable by carriages, and reminds one forcibly of some such city as Genoa. Above the rock on which the cathedral is perched rises another, called the Corneille, on which are some old fortifications, and which has just been crowned by a monstrous image of the Blessed Virgin, made of the metal of guns taken at Sebastopol, to whose charge I may fairly lay much of the imperfection of my account of the buildings beneath her feet; for I had the ill-luck to arrive at Le Puy only three days before the inauguration of this statue, and I found the whole city so entirely occupied with the preparations for the fête, that it was with the greatest difficulty that I examined the cathedral at all, and into some portions of it I was quite unable to penetrate; whilst the only condition on which I could obtain rooms at an inn was that I should not stop for more than two days, and should make room for some bishop, prince, or cardinal (of whom there were a legion on the road), before the great fête-day. I had to work very hard, therefore, to do as much as I did, and I make no doubt that a more leisurely and uninterrupted examination would have enabled me to discover and do much more. Separated from the great volcanic rock I have already mentioned by one or two furlongs only, is the smaller, but even more striking rock, called the Aiguille de S. Michel, and crowned with a little chapel dedicated to that Archangel. It rises, in the most abrupt and precipitous manner, to a height of about 265 feet. The distant background includes a series of truncated conical hills, evidently ancient volcanoes, and from almost every point of view a landscape of the most picturesque and extensive description is seen. Rarely have I enjoyed a more charming ride than that which, for the last twenty miles into Le Puy on the road from S. Étienne, made me generally acquainted with the remarkable physical formation of this mountain district; beautiful throughout, it was at its best just when, some twelve or fifteen miles before I reached the city, I first saw the “angelic” church, as it is styled, standing up boldly on its rock, the centre of an almost matchless landscape.
The story of its claim to this style of “angelic” is this. Bishop Evodius, at the end of the sixth century, on being made first bishop of Le Puy, wished to construct a church; the Virgin, who had before shown to S. George the place where she wished one to be built, appeared to a sick woman on the Mount surrounded by a crowd of angels, and desired her to tell Evodius to proceed at once with his work. After much prayer he went to Rome, and the Pope sent back with him an architect and senator named Scutarius, under whose auspices the church was soon built, and whose tombstone is still to be seen near the transept door. Evodius and Scutarius then started for Rome again, but on the way met two old men, who gave them two boxes of relics, and desired them to return to Le Puy, saying that as soon as they arrived with the relics before the church the doors would open, the bells would ring of themselves, the whole interior would be bright with torches and candles, and they should hear divine melodies, and smell the sweet perfume of the heavenly oil which had served for the consecration of the church by the angels. Everything happened just as had been foretold, and Evodius felt it unnecessary again to consecrate his church, which from that time to the present day has been called the “angelic” church. No doubt you all know how curious a parallel to this legend the history of our own Abbey of S. Peter at Westminster affords.[29] But in searching for information about the churches of Auvergne, I came upon a continuation of the Le Puy legend, to which the Westminster story affords no such parallel. This second legend tells how, when the seraphic basilica of Le Puy had been thus dedicated, S. Anne descended from heaven to visit the palace of her daughter. Not content with this human work, she seized the hammer of the master-mason, and, taking wing, descended on the summit of a hill, and, turning towards Auvergne, which to her mind offered no church worthy of the Queen of Heaven, she threw the hammer, saying as she threw it, “On the place where the hammer falls a church shall rise.” The hammer fell on the right bank of the Allier, and immediately there rose from the soil like a flower the church of Les Chases, which was dedicated forthwith to S. Mary.[30]
Let us now leave legends, and direct our attention to the ground-plan of the cathedral. Its architects have ingeniously contrived to cover the whole of the summit of the rock on which it stands. It consists of a nave with aisles, transepts, a choir, and choir-aisles, and a steeple at the east end of the north choir-aisle. To the south of the cathedral is the modern bishop’s palace, whilst to the north are the cloisters, two grand halls, some ruins, and to the north-east a chapel dedicated to S. John and other buildings. There are entrances in the east walls of each of the transepts, but these were rather intended, I suppose, for the exit than for the entrance of the people, and the mode in which they were admitted forms one of the most striking features of the whole scheme. I said that the church was built on a rock, and its western face, forming one of the principal streets of the city, is so steep as to consist alternately of steps and inclines, until, at a short distance in advance of the west front, it is changed to an almost interminable flight of steps. The grand west entrance is an open porch, like an enormous crypt, beneath the three western bays of the nave and its aisles, whose walls and piers it reproduces in its plan. The steps[31] formerly rose in a straight line, until they came up in the very centre of the church, in the fifth bay of the nave, and in front of the roof-loft, and of the miracle-working image of the Blessed Virgin, which, brought from the East and given to the church by S. Louis, was, until its destruction in A.D. 1789, the greatest attraction for pilgrims in France.[32] This singular entrance, and the mode of exit by the eastern doors of the transepts, gave rise to an old saying, “In Notre Dame du Puy one entered by the navel and went out by the ears.” Unfortunately, however, the central entrance has been diverted, and after ascending a hundred and two steps, and arriving at the Golden Gate, as it was called, the passage branches right and left—on the left ascending into the cloister, and on the right winding round the south side of the church, until the hundred and thirty-fifth step lands the weary pilgrim in the south aisle, near the transept.[33] This, then, is the general scheme of this most singular church. Let me now go on to describe it in detail, beginning with the oldest portion. This comprises the choir, the transepts, and crossing, and the two easternmost bays of the nave. The choir is completely modernized, and I am unable to say whether any portion of the internal arrangement is old. It presents the peculiarity of a square exterior and a circular interior. This is a not uncommon arrangement in the earliest Italian examples of the apse, and is seen at St. Mark’s, Venice, and elsewhere. The arches opening into the choir-aisles are old, and I believe that we may venture to say that the original plan must have been very nearly the same as that of the church of S. Martin d’Ainay, at Lyon, in which the choir-aisles are shorter than the choir, and all are terminated with apses.[34] I shall have other occasion to point out that at a later date the architects of Ainay and of Le Puy must have been the same. The date of the foundation of Ainay is some time in the ninth century, and it was carried on until the end of the eleventh; but the apse and capitals of the columns of the crossing—for the columns themselves are Roman—cannot, I think, be later than about A.D. 940 to A.D. 1000, which latter would, I think, be the date generally accepted for this portion of the work at Le Puy. To proceed with my notice. The crossing is surmounted by a quasi-dome, carried up as an octagonal lantern, much of which has been modernised in restorations, whilst much is quite new; though the universality of the raised central lantern in the churches of the district makes it probable that it is, to some extent, a proper restoration.[35] The transepts are covered with barrel-vaults, strengthened by transverse ribs of a square section below them; the small apses in their end walls have semi-domes, and the tribunes which cross them are groined with quadripartite vaults without ribs. The whole of the nave is covered in the same way as the crossing, each bay being divided from the next by bold transverse arches, and having a quasi-dome, supported by arches across the angles of each compartment, and all of them, in truth, being not domes, but eight-sided pointed vaults, springing from the octagonal bases thus contrived. There are no pendentives, properly so called, and the construction is, I should say, that of men who desired to erect domes, but had no knowledge whatever of the way in which they were constructed in the East; or—to take a more favorable and, perhaps, juster view—of men who, desiring to give a small building the greatest possible effect of space, to roof it with stone (not knowing anything yet about flying buttresses), and to light it from a clerestory, actually solved all these points in a successful way. Where this kind of roof was first attempted I am quite unable to say. Certainly the central lantern at Ainay is so identical in character with some of those at Le Puy, that the same workmen must have executed both; but there seems to be no other example in the same district as Ainay, whereas at Le Puy, and in Velay and Auvergne, everything is more or less roofed on the same principle. The second portion of the cathedral at Le Puy consists of the third and fourth bays of the nave, and the third portion of the fifth and sixth bays.[36]
The latest portion is of early pointed character, and not later in date than circa A.D. 1180 to 1200, and it was at the same time that this was erected that the greater part of the enormous substructure forming the porch was also completed. The aisles throughout the church are vaulted with quadripartite vaults, the three western bays alone having ribs. In the two western bays there are engaged shafts both in the porch and above it in the nave, but the rest of the piers are of the simplest plan, large and generally cruciform in their section, save at the crossing, where the arches are carried on coupled detached shafts. There is much elaborate sculpture introduced in the capitals of the pilasters and columns of the nave, but it is nowhere of any very high merit, and is so inferior in delicacy and beauty to the sculpture of the same age to be seen on the banks of the Rhone, that I should attribute it to a native school of sculptors acquainted, probably, with none but inferior Roman sculpture, from which they endeavoured to develope a style for themselves. A clerestory of wide and rude round-headed windows, one in each compartment, lights the series of domes in a very effective manner.
The arches across the nave are very bold, and, in the wall above them, an opening is pierced under each of the cupolas. As is generally the case, however, in churches covered in this way, very little is seen of the real vault in any general view of the church, these transverse arches only, with the quasi-pendentives above them being seen. The pendentives are true semi-domes, constructed in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and the difference between their plan and the square angle in which they are placed is skilfully concealed by detached shafts, with capitals placed under the pendentives.
I think you will agree with me that considering its early date (no part probably later than circa A.D. 1150 or 1180), it would be difficult to find a grander or more nervous scheme, or one which, with such small dimensions, conveys nevertheless so great an impression of size and importance. The choir-aisles were altered at various times. That on the south has been rebuilt in second-pointed of poor character, and is now a mere passage-way to the modern sacristy, and that on the north was probably interfered with not very long after its first construction, when the great steeple which now abuts upon it was commenced. M. Mérimée,[37] in his very interesting description of the church, suggests that the base of the tower was originally a baptistery, but I see no reason whatever for this suggestion and it is impossible to doubt, when we carefully examine the whole design, that though the steeple was long in building, the main feature in its design was from the first just what we now see it to be. Moreover, the chapel of S. Jean close by is said to have been the baptistery for the whole city until within the last sixty years. The design of the steeple is very bizarre and unusual. It consists of a long series of no less than nine stages on the exterior, and it diminishes rapidly in diameter, and is, perhaps, on the whole, more curious than pleasing in its outlines. If you look at the ground-plan you will see that its construction is most remarkable. The internal diameter of the tower at the base is twenty-four feet six inches, but this is reduced to only twelve feet by four detached piers, one foot ten and one-half inches square. These piers are carried up from the base to the very summit, detached in the three lower stages, and forming part of the thickness of the wall in the portion above. The highest stage of the steeple, twelve feet in internal and sixteen feet in external diameter, is therefore, as nearly as possible, carried up on these four piers, and the rapid decrease in the external dimensions, from thirty-six feet to sixteen feet, was only rendered possible by this very ingenious mode of construction. So far as I know there is only one other example of the same scheme, viz. in the steeple of the cathedral of S. Étienne at Limoges. Here, however, the base is the only portion remaining of the original work, and the columns are cylindrical in place of being square, but it is evident that the intention was the same as at Le Puy. The steeple at Limoges is probably the first in point of date. M. Viollet-le-Duc dates it at about A.D. 1050, but the Abbé Arbellot, in a learned paper on the cathedral, in the Bulletin of the Société Archéologique et Historique du Limousin, maintains that it was certainly built before A.D. 1012, when the Bishop Arnaud de Périgeux, after assisting at the consecration of Bishop Gerald at Poitiers, accompanied him to Limoges, and put the cords of the bells into his hands. The lower part of the steeple at Le Puy may, I think, safely be referred to the end of the eleventh century, and its completion to the end of the twelfth, whilst the planning appears to me to be thoroughly characteristic of a Byzantine artist, the construction of the piers in the lowest stage being almost identical with that of the main piers under the domes of S. Mark’s, Venice, and S. Front, Périgueux.
The arrangement of the belfry stage, with its gable on each face, is very noteworthy, and is, perhaps, one of the earliest examples of a type which was developed afterwards into the well-known arrangement of the belfry of the south-west tower at Chartres, and this, with the influence of the churches of the Rhine,[38] developed in almost all subsequent modifications of the spire with its gabled spire-lights; one of the windows under this pediment is planned in a most ingenious manner, presenting externally a semi-dome pierced by two pointed arches; another window is pierced with a trefoil head, the diameter of which is much larger than that of the light it surmounts. This is a favorite form of cusping throughout this district. I have seen it in Lyon, at Vienne, often at Le Puy, at Brioude, at Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, and in the south porch at Bourges; and there can, I think, be little doubt that it is somewhat Eastern in its origin, and analogous to the horseshoe form of arch.
The cloister on the north side of the church appears to be in part coeval with the earliest,[39] or, perhaps, the second portion of the fabric, and in part with the later additions to it. It consists of a simple arcade of round arches on rather solid piers, with a detached shaft on each face. The capitals are all richly sculptured, some with figures, some with foliage. The spandrels of the arches are filled in with a reticulation of coloured stones; above the arches runs a band of similar ornament, and above this again a carved cornice, which in the later part of the cloister forms a sort of frieze. In this portion the arches have sculptured key-stones, a peculiarity which I hardly remember to have met with before in work of the same date. On the south side there are two fluted shafts and one spiral; all the rest are circular, but noticeable for their very considerable entasis. The groining is all quadripartite without ribs, and executed with rough stones, set in concrete, on a centring of boards. The cloister was surrounded on all sides with buildings. On the south is the cathedral; on the east, and opening to the cloister by an arcade of open arches, is a large hall covered with a pointed barrel-vault. This was originally called the choir of S. André, and in it masses in commemoration of the dead were said, and services held on the feasts of the Invention and Exaltation of the Cross, and on the feasts of S. Andrew and S. Eustachius. It was also called “cæmeterium,” being used for the burial of the clergy, and is now called the chapel des Morts. On the wall are still to be seen remains of a painting of the Crucifixion, with many prophets and angels, S. Mary and S. John, the sun and moon, etc. In the northern gable of this building is a fine cylindrical chimney, built in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and rising from a fireplace in a chamber over the hall, and of the same date as the hall. M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a drawing of the fireplace, which is of a not uncommon early type, the head projecting considerably on a semicircular plan. At the north end of the Salle des Morts is a passage leading to the cloister, and along the whole northern boundary once stood a vast range of building called the Maîtrise.[40] Nothing now remains of this save its undercroft, which was spanned by bold pointed arches of stone, on which the wooden floor rested. The Maîtrise was pulled down a few years since, and, not long before, a tower close by it, called the tower of S. Mayol, was also destroyed. It is described as an erection of the eleventh century, battlemented, but without machicoulis.[41] It seems to have served as part of the fortification of the church, which was also attended to in an alteration of the building on the west side of the cloister, in the fourteenth century. This building contained, below, a hall on a level with the church, which was the chapel of the Holy Relics; above was the Salle des États of Velay, with a stone barrel-roof, now both thrown into one room. Above these again was an open space under the roof, protected on the side towards the town by a magnificent overhanging battlement and machicolation of the fourteenth century, and quite open on the side towards the cloister save for the stone piers supporting the roof. The machicoulis are some of the finest I have ever seen, and project from the buttresses as well as from the walls. The only access to this stage of the building seems to have been from the roof of the cathedral. Le Puy was, in the first instance, selected as a site for the cathedral because it afforded so secure a refuge from attack, and in later days it seems to have been not less necessary to provide against danger: for among other enemies the Lords of Polignac, whose magnificent castle is visible from the steeple of the cathedral, only some four miles distant, were the most conspicuous as they were also the most powerful. M. Viollet-le-Duc supposes, indeed, that the tower of the cathedral was meant in part for defence; but I see no evidence of this, and possibly he had in his mind the destroyed tower of S. Mayol, which, as well as the double wall of enceinte which formerly surrounded the whole cathedral, was no doubt a purely military construction. Fortified churches are by no means uncommon in this part of France. At Brioude is a painting showing the church entirely surrounded by a crenellated and turreted wall in A.D. 1636; and Royat, near Clermont, and the abbey church of Menat, also in Auvergne, still retains provisions for defence. The Salle des États contained formerly the archives of Velay, and in removing them a few years since (about A.D. 1850) portions of a hanging of blue wool, “semée” with fleurs-de-lys, and adorned with the armorial bearings of Jean de Bourbon, Bishop of Le Puy from A.D. 1443 to 1485, were found.[42] At the same time a curious painting on the east wall of the lower chamber was discovered under the whitewash. It represents four liberal sciences—Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Music—as females seated with ancient worthies at their feet. Priscian sits below Grammar, writing; and two boys, with open books, are on her other side. Logic holds a lizard in one hand and a scorpion in the other, and Aristotle is arguing below. The inscription underneath is—“Me sine doctores frustrâ coluere sorores,” and each figure has a corresponding leonine verse inscribed below. Rhetoric holds a file in her left hand, and Cicero sits at her feet. Music plays an organ, whilst Tubal, with two hammers, plays upon an anvil. There used—according to the “Chronique des Médicis”—to be a second painting here with figures of young demoiselles gorgeously clothed, and from the same chronicle it appears that Messire Pierre Odin, official of the Bishop Jean de Bourbon, who died in 1502, presented both:—“Il estait si grant orateur que, par son mellifère et suaviloquent langage, fust commis plusieurs fois estre ambassadeur devers le Pape à la requette du très-excellent et redouté Prince Louis XI. roy de France, lequel dudict Pape obtint grande louange et avoir, ce que il employa en divers façons et moyens en aulmosnes et à la décoration de cette saincte église du Puy.” The picture has considerable merit; its detail is a mixture of Renaissance and Gothic, and the Gothic portion—as for instance, the chair on which one of the figures sits—is not Italian, and I should be inclined to suppose that it was the work, therefore, of a French artist. Its date must be between 1475 and 1502. Louis XI. came to Le Puy on a pilgrimage in 1475.
The external side elevation of the church is best seen from the cloister, and, with a few words upon this, I will leave this portion of the building. Here, even more clearly than inside, the division of the building into work of different epochs is seen. The two bays nearest the crossing have large coupled windows in the aisle, with parti-coloured voussoirs and jamb shafts. The clerestory is very peculiar in its treatment, and undoubtedly very effective; the windows are of one light in each bay and round-headed and on each side of them above the springing there is a recess in the wall, in the centre of which a detached shaft is placed to carry the cornice. A similar recess and a smaller shaft occur immediately over the arch of the window, and the window-arch being built of alternately dark and light stone, and all the sunk panels being filled in with geometrical patterns, composed in the same way, an extremely rich effect is obtained. Recesses of the same kind in the upper part of the walls occur all along the eastern face of the transept at Le Puy; and between the clerestory windows of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont; S. Paul, Issoire; and commonly in Auvergne. But so far as I can judge from the portion of the cathedral in which they occur, and from the early and simple character of the work itself, I am inclined to believe that it is earlier here than in any of the other examples. It would be of great interest to have some more positive evidence on this and other similar questions of date. But, so far as I have been able to discover, there is no such evidence, and we are left in doubt, therefore, whether this portion of the architecture of Velay came from Auvergne, or whether the reverse was the case; as also whether this external decoration of the fabric is coeval with its first erection, or is a subsequent addition.
The two central compartments of the nave have circular windows (sixteen feet in diameter) to light the aisle, and round-headed windows in the clerestory; and between the arches of the latter windows are small arched recesses. In the two western bays the clerestory is similar, save that the intermediate recessed arch is omitted. In both the voussoirs are counter-charged, and the wall from the springing up to the eaves is coursed with stone and lava. The transept gables are only noticeable for the courses of inlaid patterns with which they are enriched. All these patterns are formed with white stone and lava. The latter, indeed, forms the whole ground of the walls, and varies in colour from a greenish grey to black; and the patterns are formed with the darkest lava and stone. The cloister is similarly inlaid above the arches, but it has almost all been restored in a most injudicious manner. They have struck and ruled (I believe that is the technical phrase for this most abominable of inventions, is it not?) an enormous red mortar joint between all the stones,[43] and wherever this has been done the diaper appears to be formed with a chequer of black and red; wherever the cloister has not been retouched the diaper is black and white.
I have left, almost until the last, that which is after all the crowning wonder of this singular church—the western porch. I have already referred to its position and plan. The majesty, I may say the awfulness, of this entrance, can hardly be exaggerated. It owes little to delicate detail or enrichment of any kind, for, though these have been, they are no longer; but it is the gloom and darkness, the simple, nervous forms of arch and pier, the long flight of steps lost in obscurity and crowded constantly (when I saw them) with a throng of worshippers, which constitute the strange charm of this strangest of entrances. I told you that in the nave the two western bays of the aisle alone had groining ribs; in the porch below it is only in the western bay that they are used, and this affords interesting evidence of the very gradual yet regular development of our art.
The spaces below the aisles in the third bay from the west form chapels—that on the right dedicated to S. Martin, and that on the left to S. Gilles. Before the last extension of the building these chapels were at the extreme west end. They have western doorways, which still retain the wooden doors. Each of these doors was of four divisions in height, covered with subjects carved in low relief. They are executed either in cedar or oak (I am uncertain which, for they are covered with paint), and the subjects, inscriptions, and borders are all obtained simply by sinking the ground three-sixteenths of an inch. The figures are, of course, only in outline, but it is still evident that they were carefully painted with draperies, etc., so as to be thoroughly distinct. There is some appearance of the ground having been painted with broad horizontal bands of colour, but the traces are so indistinct that it is difficult to speak positively.[44] The doors are hung folding, and those to the chapel of S. Gilles contain subjects from the early life of our Lord, whilst those in the chapel of S. Martin contain subjects from His Passion. The meeting-rail in the former fortunately contains an inscription of extreme value: “Gaulfredus: me: fct: Petrus: epi”; after which some letters are lost. If my reading of the last letter but one as “p” is correct, I think it leads to a most important inference. No one who looks at the design of these gates can doubt that they are thoroughly Eastern in their character; and, upon searching for the lists of bishops of Le Puy since my return, I was delighted to find that the first bishop of the name of Peter[45] was consecrated at Ravenna by Leo IX. in A.D. 1043, and died at Genoa A.D. 1053, as he returned from the Holy Land. Gates of the same description are said to exist in the churches of Chamaillères and of Lavoulte-Chilhac in the same district, whilst other evidence of intercourse with the East is afforded by fragments of tissus preserved at Monestier, at Pébrac, and at Lavoulte-Chilhac. These tissus are all extremely Eastern in their character, and very similar to the famous cope at Chinon described by M. de Caumont in the Abécédaire, and to the Le Mans tissu described by M. Hucher in the Bulletin Monumental (1846, p. 24). The date ordinarily attributed to them is the middle of the eleventh century, which exactly tallies with the return of Bishop Peter from the Holy Land. I dwell on this the more because, if the inference I have drawn from the inscription be true, it gives the date also to the second portion of the construction of the cathedral, to which the chapels in the porch undoubtedly belong; and the result would be that whilst I should date the earliest portion of the church at about the end of the tenth century, or quite the commencement of the eleventh, the second portion would be dated at about A.D. 1050; and, finally, there is little doubt as to the whole having been completed in the course of the twelfth century.[46] These dates are, as in all such cases, of course only approximate; and it is pretty clear that there was seldom any long pause in the works, and the development in their architectural features is therefore very gradual.
The external elevation in the west front is similar in style to the clerestory on the north side, and mainly executed in alternate courses of lava and stone. The aisle-roofs are masked by walls with pediments. Throughout this part of the work you will observe that its early date is proved by the fact that the round arch is almost invariably used for ornament, and the pointed arch only where great strength was required. A great buttress, which had been built against this vast front, was removed during the recent restorations.
I observed before that there are doorways on the east side of both transepts—the “ears” referred to in an old saying. The south transept door is in itself remarkable for the peculiar form of the cusping of its arch, and still more for the magnificent porch built over it. The date of this is the latter part of the twelfth century. It is open on the south and east sides, and abuts on the church on the west and north, occupying the re-entering angle between the transept and choir aisle. The arch is remarkable for a rib detached below the arch, and connected at intervals with it by columns, so as to have the appearance of being suspended. My impression is that the architect feared that his arch had not sufficient abutment, and hoped by bringing some of the weight on to the lower rims of the arch to remedy this defect. The whole detail of this porch is a very rich kind of pointed, full of half-Romanesque and half-Byzantine detail. The groining, in alternate coloured courses, is quadripartite, but has the very rare feature (in France) of ridge ribs. Above the porch is a room or chapel, to which I omitted to gain access. Over the door of the other (north) transept a great arch, thrown from the cathedral to the chapel of S. Jean, carries another chapel, lighted with a first-pointed triplet. This door is square-headed, and covered with rich though rude ironwork. The door-handles have a resemblance to one in the cathedral at Trèves made by Jean and Nicholas of Bingen, which struck me, and was remarked on also, I find, by M. Mérimée. The lintel of the door is deeper at the centre than at the sides of the door, pediment-like, and has figures of our Lord and the Twelve Apostles carved on it, whilst above, under a circular arch, is another figure of our Lord, with an angel on either side. The whole has been very much mutilated and all the figures are hacked to pieces. The ground was painted, and no doubt the figures were also, and the woodwork of the door was covered with linen or leather under ironwork.
The very ancient chapel of S. Jean is close to this door, and by its side is a fifteenth century archway. The chapel is arcaded on its south side and pierced with very simple windows. Some antiquaries assert that it is a piece of Roman construction, and it is not impossible, though I should be much more inclined to call it tenth century work. The chapel has a rude quadripartite vault, and its apsidal chancel is roofed with a semi-dome.
I must conclude my long notice of this church by some mention of the extensive remains of painted decorations still visible. During the late restorations of the cathedral, I understand from M. Aymard, the greater portion were destroyed. The vaults of the north transept and the semi-domes of its apsidal recesses are still, however, covered with paintings, though they are scarcely intelligible, owing to darkness and dirt. In one of them occurs a figure of our Lord giving the benediction in the Greek fashion, and it is one of the many evidences which may be adduced of the Eastern influence visible here in so many respects, though I am not disposed to lay so much stress upon it as some of those did who engaged in the controversy it occasioned.[47] In the western porch there are also extensive remains of painting; the soffits of the arches in the third bay from the west are all painted, and so too are the walls over the altars in the chapels of S. Martin and S. Gilles. The painting was executed on a thick coat of plaster, and the nimbi are of gold with lines incised on them. No doubt the whole church once glittered with gold and colour, and, seeing how fine its effect still is, we may, aiding the indications still left with our recollections of Assisi, of Venice, and of Padua, people the bare walls once again, and bring before our eyes an interior of the most gorgeous magnificence.
I may conclude what I have to say about the cathedral with a few words about the sacristy and its contents. The building itself is not more than a hundred and fifty years old, and most of its treasures have been lost. The most precious relic still left is a Bible, which, by a note at its end, is stated to have been written by S. Théodulf, Bishop of Orléans, in the ninth century, and sent by him, in accomplishment of a vow, to the shrine of Notre Dame du Puy. It is a quarto of 347 leaves of very fine vellum, some white with black letters, and others purple or violet with gold or silver letters. It contains the Old and New Testament, commentaries on the text, interpretations of Hebrew, Greek and Latin words, and some poems by Théodulf. The pages are interleaved with excessively delicate tissues of various colours and patterns, which appear to be of the same age as the book, and of Eastern manufacture. They are made of china crêpe, cotton, silk, linen, poil-de-chèvre, and camel’s hair, of extreme fineness, and of various colours and patterns.[48] The binding is, however, later, and of red velvet on chamfered oak boards, with good simple metal knobs. There are also preserved here some wax candles, tapering considerably in their length, and stamped with a pattern made by a pointed instrument; and, finally, there is a tippet embroidered with a tree of Jesse, said to have been of Charlemagne’s time. It is not so old as is said, but may possibly be (though I very much doubt it) of the twelfth or thirteenth century, but it has been much damaged by removal from its original ground and by partial re-working. The sacristy also contains a reliquary of very late sixteenth-century date, of which a photograph has been published by M. Aymard, but which was not shown to me; and an almost endless roll of vellum illuminated with a chronological tree of the history of the world.
How much has been lost may be guessed from some statistics which I have come upon as to the number of silversmiths and specimens of their work in Le Puy in the Middle Ages: in A.D. 1408 there were no less than forty resident in the city, whilst as to their work I find in A.D. 1444 there were in the sacristy 33 châsses and reliquaries, 26 chalices, 11 statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels, and other figures, 10 candelabra, 9 crosses, 9 lamps, 9 mitres, crosses with their stems, episcopal rings, crowns for the Virgin, censers, paxes, basins, plates, books with covers adorned with chasings, pearls and precious stones, and many like things; and in A.D. 1475 I find that Louis XI. gave 30 silver marks for a canopy over the miracle-working figure of Notre Dame du Puy, which was made by François Gimbert, a silversmith of Le Puy. Other churches in the neighbourhood have been more fortunate in retaining some of their old plate, and a fair list might be made out, if I had time, of their possession, many of which have been photographed by M. Aymard.
The building of the greatest interest, after the cathedral, is the little church of S. Michel, which crowns the rock fitly called the Aiguille. It is reached by steps winding irregularly round the rock, to the shape of the summit of which it has been most ingeniously adapted. The oldest portion of the building is the square choir, covered with a dome, under which stands the principal altar. To the (ritual) east and north of this are apsidal projections, and to the south an archway, which as it agrees exactly in dimensions with the others, opened, no doubt, into a third apsidal chapel, like the others, whilst the entrance was at the west. This archway now leads into a chapel of very irregular form, part of which extends over the porch of entrance, in the arrangement of which one may trace a certain kind of analogy to that of the cathedral, though it is perhaps older. West of the choir is a nave, somewhat like a cone in plan, and surrounded by an aisle, from which it is divided by arches supported on slender shafts. The choir has a square domical vault, and the chapel over the porch a true dome, the pendentives under which are just like those of S. Fosca at Torcello. The apsidal chapels have semi-domes and the rest of the church has a waggon-vault of very irregular outline. An arcade against the walls of the side corresponds with that between the aisle and the nave. At the end of the nave is the tower, which was probably built at a slightly later date than the main building. The whole interior appears to have been richly painted, but faint indications only of this portion of the decoration remain. In the central dome there is a sitting figure of our Lord on the east side; emblems of the evangelists are at the angles, and angels and seraphim around our Lord. Below these is a line of single figures, six on each side—the four-and-twenty elders—and below this again are subjects, the whole combining together to make a very interesting example of the treatment of the Last Judgement. The dome of the chapel over the porch is also painted with our Lord, angels, and the evangelists.
THE TEMPLARS’ CHURCH AT SEGOVIA
The walls generally are built of lava, though a little white stone is used in the steeple and for the sculptured capitals.
The columns are very small, averaging eight inches in diameter, and decrease considerably in diameter from the base to the capital. The dimensions are exceedingly small, the central choir being only thirteen feet six inches in diameter, and the spaces between the principal columns in the nave varying from four feet to four feet nine inches. The effect is rather that of a crypt, but, in spite of its small size, it is solemn and religious.
The steeple suggests comparison, in some respects, with that of the cathedral; the arches are built with alternately light and dark voussoirs, and there is a peculiar spire-light rising out of the parapet, as to the antiquity of which I have my doubts.[49]
The only part in which any rich decoration has been introduced is the front of the porch. It has a semicircular arch, trefoiled above a horizontal lintel. The walls are richly inlaid, and there is also a good deal of sculpture. In the centre division of the trefoiled tympanum is an Agnus Dei, and there are figures kneeling and holding chalices within the cusps on either side. In the five divisions of the arcaded cornice are—in the centre our Lord, on His right S. Mary and S. John, and on His left S. Michael and S. Peter. The mosaic is executed with black tufa, red and white tiles, and a light yellow sandstone. I know no other example in this district of the use of tiles for inlaying, though M. Mallay mentions one at Merdogne in Auvergne, which he says is of the seventh century, though his dates are not always to be implicitly trusted; but at Lyon, in the extremely beautiful Romanesque domestic building called the Manécanterie, and at a slightly later date in the church of Ainay, in the same city, they are freely used and with admirable effect. Odo de Gissey, in his history of Le Puy, published in A.D. 1619, states that the first stone of S. Michel was laid in A.D. 965, and that the church was completed in A.D. 984, when Guy II. was bishop of Le Puy, “as one may learn from the ancient charter of its foundation, and from other manuscripts which I have read.” Brother Théodore, in his Histoire de l’Église Angélique de Notre Dame du Puy, A.D. 1693, says that the first stone was laid in August, 962, and that his statements are “derived from the deed for the foundation of the church, and from the book of obits in the cathedral.” These dates, if they refer to the existing building, can only do so to the central portion with its apses; the nave may have been added some time in the eleventh century, and the steeple, perhaps, in the course of the twelfth.
At the foot of the flight of steps which leads up to the picturesque entrance of this little chapel are the remains of a small detached building, probably a residence for a sacristan or priest.
Very near the Aiguille of S. Michel is a curious chapel. It is an octagon, with an apse projecting from the eastern face, the octagon covered with an octagonal domical vault, and the apse with a semi-dome. The walls are arcaded inside and out below the vault, the internal arches springing from engaged shafts in the angles. Some of the arches outside are cusped in the usual way, the cusping not starting from the cap with a quarter-circle, but with a half-circle, the same as all the rest. There are doors in the west and north sides, with tympana filled in with mosaic, and the wall in the spandrels between the arches outside is also inlaid. The exterior of the apse is not visible, but I found, on making my way into the cottage and barn built against it, that it is perfect and undamaged. The popular opinion at Le Puy is that the chapel is an ancient temple of Diana, a fiction which a minute’s examination destroys. M. Didron maintains that it was a mortuary chapel, and he refers to the chapel of S. Croix, at Montmajour, as an example akin to this. M. Mérimée, on the other hand, says that the Templars had property in the Faubourg de l’Aiguille, and compares it to the similar oratory of the Templars at Metz, and he might have added the curious Templars’ church at Laon as another case in point.[50]
This concludes my notice of early buildings in Le Puy, and I have no more than time to catalogue the church of S. Laurent, famous for the monument of the Constable Duguesclin, a large second-pointed building of poor character, and very Italian in its plan and design,[51] and with an enormous sham front; the gabled end of the hospital chapel, with its fifteenth-century bell-turret; a pretty little fountain, and a large number of picturesque houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and a very scanty remnant of a gateway at the bottom of the town, called, I think, the Porte de Panessac, against the proposed destruction of which I find M. Aymard protesting only a few years back in the Bulletin Monumental.
About four miles to the north of Le Puy, close to the ruins of the magnificent castle of Polignac, is the Romanesque church of the village. This is parallel triapsidal in plan, and the piers are planned, as are those in the cathedral, in the shape of a cross, with columns in the re-entering angles. The little church at Monistrol is a good example of the Le Puy style applied to a very small building; and the church at Le Monestier, which has many features of similarity to the cathedral at Le Puy, and is rich in early plate, ought not to be forgotten, but I am unable to speak of it from personal inspection.
I will now turn to the churches of Auvergne. Though numerous, they are so much alike in their character, details, and design, that a description of their peculiarities need not be so long as might be supposed. These churches all lie in a group together, Clermont-Ferrand being their geographical centre,[52] and to its north are Riom, Volvic, Menat, Mozat, and Ennezat; to the east Chauriat; to the west Royat and Orcival; and to the south S. Nectaire, S. Saturnin, and Issoire.
Beyond the bounds of the province, at Brioude, at Conques, at Toulouse, and in the church of S. Étienne at Nevers, there are, among many others, examples of precisely the same description of design and construction.[53]
It will be well to describe the general type of these churches, and then give a few notes as to particular examples. In plan they consist of a nave and aisles, western narthex and steeple, central dome and steeple, transepts with apsidal chapels on the east, and apsidal choirs with the aisles continued round them, and four or five apsidal chapels round the aisle. Under the choir is sometimes a crypt, in which, in addition to the columns under the columns of the apse, are four shafts which were intended for the support of the altar, and whose presence certainly seems to suggest that it must have been a baldachin and not merely an altar that they were designed to support.[54]
The naves are roofed with waggon-vaults, either with or without cross ribs below them. The aisles have quadripartite vaults without ribs, and the triforia above them are roofed with a continuous half barrel-vault, which resists the thrust of the vault of the nave, and is, in truth, a continuous flying buttress. The triforia galleries are lighted with small windows, and this, the only light analogous to a clerestory, being entirely inadequate, the effect of the nave roof is generally very gloomy. The transepts are vaulted with barrel-vaults like the nave, and in one or two instances are divided in height by a sort of tribune level with the triforium. At Brioude, where this arrangement is seen, there is an original thirteenth-century open fireplace in the tribune, and M. Mérimée ingeniously suggests that the noble canons of Brioude, for they all had the rank of Count, were in the habit of hearing mass before a good fire; but it is fair to them to say that the fireplace is in the east wall, and that I saw no signs of an altar near it. The crossing under the tower is generally roofed either with an octagonal vault or with a circular dome with an opening in the centre. To resist the thrust of this dome on the north and south sides the upper vaults of the triforia are continued on between the transepts and the crossing, or else vaults of the same section are introduced at a higher level, where the central dome is raised (as it often is) higher than the barrel-roof of the nave. The western steeple, as well as the centre lantern, was sometimes domed; and that at Brioude is a most valuable example of the best type of dome in the district. The choirs are vaulted with waggon-vaults terminating with semi-domes, and the apsidal chapels are also each covered with a semi-dome. The columns are generally square, with half-columns engaged on three, and sometimes on four sides, the latter only when the main vault of the nave has transverse ribs below it. The columns round the apse are circular, and detached shafts against the apse walls carry the groining, and occasionally shafts are introduced inside and outside the window-jambs of the choir. In the nave and triforia, the windows are generally very plain with a label containing a billet-moulding, though the latter have sometimes, as at Notre-Dame-du-Port and Issoire, jamb-shafts. The capitals of the columns are carved with great richness, sometimes with foliage, but often with Scripture subjects. At S. Nectaire, for instance, perhaps the most elaborate of all these churches in this respect (M. Didron is my authority), the capitals round the apse have subjects from the New Testament, four on each capital. Frequently griffins and other animals are carved, and in one case, at Brioude, is a demon holding an open book on which is written the sculptor’s name, which does not seem to be a very complimentary arrangement. It is in the earlier examples that sculpture of subjects and figures is commonly seen, and, as the style developed more towards Gothic, foliage took the place of subjects. The arcades are remarkable for their generally lofty proportions. They are of course not so lofty as pointed arcades, but they have seldom, if ever, the heavy and low proportion commonly found in the arcades of Romanesque buildings. The arches are generally semicircular, and in the apses stilted.
The walls were probably covered with paintings of Scripture subjects. At Brioude there is some of this decoration remaining in a chapel dedicated to S. Michael in the gallery over the narthex. The semi-domes of the apsidal chapels in this church were also richly painted, and in one of them traces of colour exist all over the window-jambs. At Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, in cleaning the nave, after removing seven or eight coats of whitewash, considerable traces were found of gilding on the capitals, and if this portion of the church was thus highly decorated, there can be no doubt that the colouring of the choir was at least equally sumptuous.
A stone seat is in some cases continued all round the walls of the apse and its chapels inside and out, and in one or two cases the iron grilles still remain. The only instance of the old pavement that I saw was at Brioude, where it is composed of black and white stone in chequers; but this is a mere fragment and of poor design.
The entrance to the crypts is by stairs from the transepts or crossing. The staircases to the upper portion of the building are variously placed. At Notre-Dame-du-Port they are in the middle of the north end of the aisles; at Brioude, in the transepts, and also at the west end; and in this church, an enormous wooden stair leads from the south door up to the chapel of S. Michael over the narthex.
On the exterior the designs are as much alike as in the interior. The aisle walls are divided into bays by pilasters, above which arches are turned over the aisle windows, and then above are the windows lighting the triforia, which are generally more richly decorated than those below, and form part of an arcade with carved capitals and moulded bases. The walls are finished by a boldly-projecting cornice supported on large corbels. The transepts are buttressed at the angles, have a heavy engaged column in the centre, from which two arches spring, within which are pierced two windows; above these are other windows, either two or three lights, and the gable is either filled in with mosaic or pierced with more windows. It is on the exterior of the apse that the main effort at display is made, and the more ornate examples of the style, as Notre-Dame-du-Port, Issoire, and Brioude, are singularly rich in their effort. The two former examples are of very nearly the same date (about A.D. 1080 to A.D. 1130); the latter is considerably later (probably circa A.D. 1200). I will describe Notre-Dame-du-Port first. Here the transept-chapels are much lower than those of the chancel, and the latter (four in number) have cornices below the cornice of the aisle, and gable walls are raised on the aisle walls to receive their roofs, which would otherwise run back to the clerestory. There are windows between each of the chapels, and a great part of the beauty of the effect, both internally and externally, is to be attributed to this fact. I am not sure that the whole arrangement is not a modification of the original plan, for on close examination I found that the labels of the large windows between the chapels are returned and mitre with another label against which the chapels are built, and which might very well have formed part of an arcade pierced at intervals with windows. In the neighbourhood, about half-way between Clermont and Issoire, at S. Saturnin, there is a church precisely similar to what this would have been without its chapels, and the eccentric position of the chapels at Notre-Dame-du-Port, there being none opposite the centre,[55] would be just such as would have been rendered necessary if it had been desired to add them after the work had progressed somewhat towards completion. In any case, however, there could not have been any great interval of time between them, and probably the chapels and the clerestory are of exactly the same age. The whole of this apse is full of beautifully inlaid patterns, made with red and black scoriae and white stone. The enrichment is always confined to the walls above the springing of the windows, and does not generally extend quite to the cornice. The spaces between the corbels under the cornice are inlaid and the under side of the cornice is carved with a sunk pattern and in some cases appeared to me to have been coloured. Between the clerestory windows is precisely the same arrangement of shafts supporting a flat lintel under the cornice that I described in the first portion of the clerestory of Le Puy, and here, as there, the recessed wall is all inlaid.
At Issoire the general scheme is precisely similar. Here, however, a square chapel juts out from the centre of the apse, and the question arises whether this is an original arrangement. The suggestion I should throw out here, as at Clermont, would be that this is the only original chapel, and that the others were added, just as those at that place may have been. In both these churches the buttresses are alternately rectangular and circular, and the latter are always finished with carved capitals.
S. Julien, at Brioude, is an example of a later date, but it adheres closely to the same type, save that there are five apsidal chapels; and though the windows are much more elaborate, having jamb-shafts and moulded arches, and being arranged in a regular arcade of triplets in the clerestory, there is much less positive effect of decoration owing to the comparatively small amount of inlaying.
The churches at Brioude and Issoire are both on a much larger scale and generally finer than Notre-Dame-du-Port.
Lastly, I come to the steeples of these churches. Of these there were generally one or two at the west end and one over the crossing. I believe that not one of those over the narthex now remains, though two or three have been recently rebuilt. Those at the crossing were treated in a singular manner. The eastern wall of the transept, carried up much above the height of the walls of the apse, forms an enormous mass for the support of the steeple, and is arched and pierced with windows, or inlaid. The steeples seem generally to have been octagonal, and to have consisted of two stages arcaded and sometimes shafted at the angles, and capped with stone spires sloping at an angle of about sixty degrees. The steeple at Issoire is quite modern, and I believe no authority existed for it. That of Notre-Dame-du-Port is also new, the finish having been a bulbous slated erection, with an open lantern at the top, only a few years ago. Ancient examples, more or less perfect, still exist at S. Saturnin, Ennezat, Orcival, and S. Nectaire, and all of these are octagonal. These churches tally with most other early churches in this feature of central steeples.
I have not yet mentioned the roofs. In those which I was able to examine, they are covered with slabs of stone, supported from the stone roofs without any use of timber whatever. The ridges are also of stone, elaborately carved, and the whole construction seems to be as imperishable in its scheme as anything I know of the kind.
The churches of the Auvergnat type present so little variety, and were built within so short a space of time, that a description of each of them in succession would be wearisome. Of course there are some variations. S. Amable at Riom, for instance, has the main arches pointed, whilst the triforium arcade is round-arched, and the vault of the nave is also pointed instead of round. The vault of the nave of Issoire is another example of a pointed vault. At S. Nectaire the usual piers in the nave have given way to columns. At Brioude, the style reached its perfection, and, indeed, I know few effects more striking in every way than that of the aisles round the choir; the roof, constructed as a regular barrel-vault and without any ribs, seems to be true in principle, and to carry the eye on even more agreeably than our ordinary Gothic vaulting of circular aisles, in which the eye is often distracted by numbers of conflicting lines of ribs. The wall arcades between the chapels recall the peculiar form of trefoil to which I have before had to refer, and it is again met in the triforium of the south side of Notre-Dame-du-Port.
The doorways appear to be of two kinds; one enriched with sculpture, the other with inlaid work. Of the former the south door of Notre-Dame-du-Port is a fine example. The opening is square, covered with a pediment-like lintel, on which are sculptured in low relief the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptism of our Lord. Above the lintel is a round arch, under which is a figure of our Lord, seated, with a seraph on either side. Against the wall, below the lintel on each side of the door, are figures of Isaiah and S. John the Baptist. In the much-altered church at Mozat,[56] near Riom, is a door of a somewhat similar kind, and both are very like the doorway in the north transept of Le Puy. At S. Nectaire is an example of a door with the tympanum filled in with mosaic.
The masonry is usually of wrought stones squared, but not very neatly put together. M. Mallay, the architect of Clermont, who has restored some of them, ascertained the curious fact that the stone-masons who wrought the stone for the arches, and wherever else superior work was required, marked their stones with the usual mason’s mark, whilst those who wrought the stones for plain walling, jambs, and quoins, made no mark; and he found that precisely the same masons’ marks occurred at Issoire and Notre-Dame-du-Port; whilst the details and plan of Orcival, a few miles south-west of Clermont, are again so identical with both of these, as to leave little room for doubt that it was executed by the same workmen; and I found another evidence of the way in which details were repeated, in some fine ironwork in the south door of Brioude, which occurs again at Orcival.
The arches are generally built with small stones of the same size and of even number, so as not to allow of a keystone. M. Mallay says that the mosaic work in the walls of these churches had wide joints of red mortar, projecting from the face of the wall. These mortar joints in the restored work appeared to me to be a bad modern device, and I think that the evidence in their favor ought to be very strong to be convincing.
The proportions of these churches are very similar. At Issoire, the width from centre of aisle wall to centre of nave column is one-fourth of the whole width, equal to the width from centre of nave columns, and to the diameter of the chapels in the apse, and one-half the height of the aisle, and one-fourth that of the nave. The height from floor to ridge is equal to the extreme width at base of walls. At Notre-Dame-du-Port the same kind of proportion exists, but from the outside of the buttress to the outside of the nave pier is one-fourth of the whole width.
I must now, before I conclude, say a few words as to the date of these churches, for which M. Mallay[57] is inclined to claim rather too great an age. He dates most of them (conjecturally) in the tenth century, though he admits that buildings in which the pointed arch is introduced may be as late as the twelfth century; and he considers the date of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, as circa A.D. 863 to 868. He founds this belief on the fact that no lava was used in its construction, and that the mosaics in its walls were formed of scoriae found on the surface of the soil. He considers that lava was not used until the eleventh century, but he must also prove (which he has not done) that stone was never used in Auvergne after the lava had once been admitted. M. Mallay depends no doubt to some extent on the admitted date of the nave of S. Amable, at Riom, where the main arches are pointed, as A.D. 1077. But the presence of the pointed arch proves nothing as to date, for we see it long before this in S. Front, at Périgueux; and in every other respect there is no doubt that S. Amable presents every evidence of being older than Notre-Dame-du-Port, and others of these churches, in which none but round arches occur.
On either side of Auvergne there are other churches, of precisely the same character as to plan and mode of construction, the dates of which are pretty certain. One is S. Étienne, at Nevers, which was commenced in A.D. 1063, and completed and consecrated on the 13th December 1097. The plan of this church is similar in nearly every respect to that of the Auvergne churches. But, so far as one may judge of date from style, I should have no hesitation in saying that this church must be older than either Issoire or Notre-Dame-du-Port. It is ruder in character, there is very little sculpture on the capitals, which are mostly a sort of rude imitation of Doric, and in the transepts there are not only round arches, but also some straight-sided.
At Conques, south of Auvergne, is another church on the same plan as S. Étienne, Nevers, in almost every respect, which there is little doubt was completed in the first half of the eleventh century, by the founder Abbot Odalric. Then again to the west there is the church of Moustier-neuf, Poitiers, commenced in A.D. 1069, and consecrated in A.D. 1096, which has a chevet evidently formed upon the same type as Conques; and at S. Hilaire, in the same city, consecrated in A.D. 1069, whilst the ground-plan of the chevet is just the same as that of Conques, the nave columns are analogous, there, to the half barrel-vaults of the triforium in Auvergne. Now none of these churches is earlier than the beginning of the eleventh century, and yet it is hardly credible that a province shut in as Auvergne was should have received a perfect and complete new style, or invented one and carried it to the degree of finish and perfection at which it had arrived when Notre-Dame-du-Port was erected, without our being able to trace, somewhere, the source from which it was developed. I believe, however, that its origin may be traced if we examine carefully the architecture of the church of S. Front at Périgueux, commenced in A.D. 984 and completed in A.D. 1047. This church, founded on the same type as, if not copied from St. Mark’s, Venice,[58] exercised a vast direct influence on the architecture of the day. It is seen most clearly in churches which are, like itself, cruciform, without aisles, and covered with domes. The churches of Auvergne, and those other examples to which I have referred, seem to me to be clearly derived from S. Front, or from the Eastern models on which it too was founded. The east end of St. Mark’s presents a circular wall, with a succession of semicircular recesses or apses in its thickness. S. Sophia contains the same feature, though differently treated. The Roman circular buildings which have so much in common with early Byzantine architecture have the same feature; and S. Vitale, Ravenna, whether it is Romanesque or Byzantine in its origin, is planned in a similar way. The architect of S. Front evidently copied his apses from these models, only converting the recesses of St. Mark’s into chapels projecting from the walls.[59] The Auvergne architects attempted to combine the plan of the basilica, with its nave and aisles, with the features which were seen at S. Front. They retained its external wall and projecting chapels, therefore, but placed within them the cluster of columns round the apse forming an aisle between the chapels and the choir. By this simple and natural modification of the S. Front plan to meet the necessities of their triple-aisled churches they at once invented, one may almost say, the perfect French chevet. I know no other churches in France of the same age which appear to have suggested so much in this respect; and you will realize it if you compare their plans with, among others, those of Bourges cathedral, S. Pierre at Bourges, S. Martin at Étampes, Chartres cathedral, the destroyed church of S. Martin at Tours, and finally what is, I think, almost the best complete Gothic plan, that of Rouen cathedral. In every one of these we see the surrounding aisle lighted by windows between the chapels, and the chapels are distinct and well-separated on the exterior, precisely as in these older churches in Auvergne. These buildings, therefore, have great value, not only as illustrating a chapter of the history of our art, but because the chapter which they do illustrate is just one of the most interesting I can conceive; being that which explains how and by what steps Gothic architecture, of which, as our national style, we are so justly proud, was developed from the noble architecture of the old Romans and Greeks, an architecture to which we owe, among other things, this great debt of gratitude, that it naturally led up to, and rendered possible, a Westminster, a Chartres, an Amiens, and all the other glories of our Christian architecture.
You will have gathered that there are many similar features in the churches of the two provinces which I have been describing. They are shortly these: vaults and quasi-domes alike, and carried on the same kind of squinches or pendentives; the decoration with mosaics and its detail; the design and treatment of doors, either sculptured or inlaid; the form of trefoil cusping of arches, character of mouldings, sculpture, and decoration with painting, all of these are the same throughout both districts. The only marked difference, and it is important, is in the ground-plan, the cathedral of Le Puy having no chevet, but an east end derived from Romanesque rather than Byzantine precedents; and the other churches in its neighbourhood are generally similar in their plan.
There are two important heads of my subject to be shortly discussed before I conclude. One of them refers to roofing; the other to coloured decoration. First, as to roofing. I have already explained how this was executed; let us now consider why the modes which we see were adopted. At S. Front the experiment was tried of covering a nave and transepts with a succession of domes resting on pendentives, and supported on pointed arches spanning the nave. These domes were the only covering of the church, and were visible on the outside as well as on the inside. At Conques, the architect, unable to carry domes on the comparatively delicate piers which were all that were required for the division of a nave from its aisles, contrived a barrel-vault for his nave, the thrust of which was resisted by the half barrel-vault of the triforium; a device not improbably obtained from Byzantine churches: for if we compare the section of S. Sophia with that of the crossing and central dome of Notre-Dame-du-Port, we shall find the semi-domes affording abutments for the great domes in the former, absolutely identical in their section with the half barrel-vault, which forms the abutment on the north and south sides of the central dome of the latter.[60] But it was impossible to obtain any light for a clerestory roofed and supported in this fashion, and one is rather disposed to wonder how it was that so many churches should have been built on the same gloomy scheme. It was, no doubt, because in that part of France wooden roofs were thought to be undesirable, and no other economical way was seen of combining the nave and aisles with what was intended to be an indestructible stone roof. I need hardly say that at the same period, in the north of France, in Normandy, and in England, the nave was seldom, if ever, roofed with anything but timber, and the aisles only were vaulted in stone.
At Tournus, on the Saône, another device was adopted to serve the same end as the Auvergne roof, but admitting of a clerestory: this was the covering of the nave with a succession of barrel-vaults at right angles to the length of the church, and supported on bold transverse arches. But I doubt whether it was ever repeated on a nave, though there are several examples of aisles thus roofed;[61] and it was, no doubt, ugly and ungainly. The Le Puy architect devised yet another plan, which combined to some extent all the others, and this was, as I have explained, a succession of domical vaults, which, while it was much lighter and more practicable (owing in part to the difference of scale) than the S. Front plan of a series of genuine cupolas, achieved, nevertheless, much of the effect that was there gained. A very small portion only of the weight of the vault exerted a direct lateral thrust, and it was possible, therefore, to erect such a roof upon a clerestory; and though the transverse arches limit the height of the building in one respect, in another there is no question that the height is apparently much increased; for in looking down the interior it is impossible ever to see the apex of any of the domes, and the vault lost behind the transverse arches gains immensely in mystery and infinity, so as to produce the effect of a larger and loftier building than the reality. But, on the other hand, the disadvantages were great: the piers between the nave and its aisles were so large as to render the aisles nearly useless; and I can hardly wonder, therefore, that the example set here was not generally, if, indeed, at all followed.
It is doubtful where the kind of vault used at Le Puy was first devised. The central dome of S. Michel de l’Aiguille is, perhaps, the oldest of all, and this is, in fact, a square dome, if one may use the expression. The octagonal dome-vaults of the cathedral are probably a little later, but that over the crossing of the church of Ainay at Lyon may possibly be older. A comparison will make it evident that one is copied from the other; and if the Le Puy vault was derived from Lyon, it becomes possible to make the important inference that it was an Eastern influence travelling up the Rhone and distinct from that which is seen at Périgueux, to which we owe this kind of domed roof. Further evidence of this is found in the pendentives of the dome at Brioude,[62] which are identical in intention with the plan of the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, at Constantinople, and yet quite unlike the kind of pendentive common in churches of the S. Front type. They are, in fact, the Le Puy and Ainay pendentive reduced to the very simplest conditions. The invention of the flying buttress adumbrated in, and possibly suggested by, the quadrant vaults of Auvergne, finally stopped these various endeavors after new forms of roofs, and set men to work to see how it might most readily be made to serve the boldest and most airy system of design and construction; and in the rage for these, that old system of roofing with domes, which had been, so far as is known,[63] first tried in France at Périgueux, and had afterward spread with such rapidity over a very large district, though with many modifications and variations, was entirely ignored or forgotten. Is it well that we too should ignore it? It is clear that the disciples of the Gothic school may claim it as their own with just as much truth as any other school can; and in some form or other it is often so attractive, so majestic on a large scale, so impressive even on a small scale, that few of us who have much work to do should altogether eschew all use of it, or treat it as though it were the exclusive property of the architects of Classic and Renaissance buildings. I do not feel, however, as most who write on the subject seem to do, that our domes must invariably be supported on what are called true pendentives. I think they are not beautiful, and I do not see that they are especially scientific. The S. Front pendentives are mere corbellings out of the wall, and in truth only imitations of pendentives. At S. Mark’s they are formed with a succession of arches of brick work across the angle of the dome, though this construction is not visible, and these, I suppose, are all wrong; but they are very similar in their intention to the kind of pendentive which I have had to illustrate to-night, and which is in truth much more Gothic and picturesque in its character than the true pendentive, for it admits of any amount of decorative sculpture, and is really precisely similar in its object to the squinches under our own English spires.[64]
THE WESTERN PORCH, SAUMUR
I will add but a few words as to the constructional polychromy which distinguishes the exterior of the churches throughout this volcanic district. So far as I have seen, it was never, save in Le Puy cathedral, admitted into the interior,[65] and this is much to be regretted, because it seems that the vaults of their naves, the domes of their crossings, and the semi-domes of their sanctuaries, would have afforded most admirable fields for this kind of decoration. As I have stated, the walls were once covered with painting, and as long as this existed a mosaic of black and white and dull red would have been valueless; but now that the iconoclast, the whitewasher, and the restorer have done their worst, the want of some decoration on the otherwise bald surface of the vaults is painfully felt everywhere. Externally the coloured materials are used in two ways; sometimes the whole of the wall is built of the dark volcanic products, and patterns are obtained by the occasional use of white stone or by alternate courses of this and the darkest scoriae that can be found. Or else the walls generally are built of stone, and the patterns only formed with the dark material. Here, too, as is the case in all old examples of coloured constructions with which I have ever met, the colours follow the natural course of the construction. At Le Puy, for instance, the courses are alternately light and dark, producing bold horizontal bands of colour. The arch stones are continued generally in one line of colour all across an arch, even when it consists of several orders, and from the arch on into the wall. The bands of ornament are similarly arranged in horizontal stripes, generally placed where they will dignify and give value to some very prominent architectural member. They never occur below the line of the springing of an arcade, and are richest under cornices and between their corbels. And when we consider the date at which this inlaid work was executed, and compare it with what we know of our own art at the same period, or, indeed, with that of any other portion of the country which is now France, we cannot too highly extol its delicacy and grace and its carefulness of design and execution. I believe that we may regard the whole of the work in Velay and Auvergne as that of native artists. The detail of sculpture is, when compared with such work as is to be found in Provence, exceedingly rude. It is vigorous, indeed, but wanting in that extreme delicacy and refinement which marks the work of the early Provençal artists.
Were I to attempt to say anything about the buildings of a later date, it would be impossible to do more than give a catalogue, which would be as unintelligible as it would be tedious. I will only say, therefore, on this head, that Clermont cathedral well deserves careful study, and is rich in very fine glass; that at Montferrand may be seen as large a collection of mediaeval houses of all dates as in almost any small town that I know; that Riom possesses a fine S. Chapelle; and that in the abbey of La Chaise-Dieu is still preserved a very rare and complete series of tapestries of the sixteenth century. Besides these, a large number of articles of church-plate are to be found scattered up and down in the village churches, and all this goodly store of antiquities is set before you in a province whose physical features are so full of interest and beauty as in themselves to make a journey through Velay and Auvergne one which none will repent having undertaken.