A Tour Through Old Provence

by A. S. Forrest

“Irreproachable and pious, pure in life and body,
Concordius, here entombed, lived for eternity.
In his youth he occupied the office of a deacon,
He was afterwards chosen as a priest by the Divine Law.
He had scarcely completed his fiftieth year when
He was transported prematurely into the starry hall of the Almighty,
Where his loving mother and brother aspire to find him.”

The inscriptions on most of the tombs evince that the departed were held in tender regard by their bereft relatives and friends. Some of them are quite touching human documents, manifesting the deep attachment that parents had for their children. Many elaborately carved tombs, with short stumpy figures, lacking entirely any æsthetic beauty, but full of ingenuity to express symbolically the Christian story and traditions, have been found; and one of the latest additions to the Museum is an early Pagan tomb of great excellence of workmanship, evidently belonging to the first century of the Christian era. The figures carved round it have an entirely different character from those on the Christian tombs of a later date. This was found in La Camargue when the railway to Les Maries was in course of construction.

The Alyscamps, the vast cemetery, where most of these tombs were found, lies to the south of the town on the farther side of the broad “Avenue Victor Hugo.” The antiquity of this burial-ground is indisputable. When it was consecrated for Christian burial by St. Trophimus may well be a matter for dispute, for it is a little uncertain who St. Trophimus really was. He is the apostle of Arles, and legend makes him one of the companions of St. Paul who accompanied him on his travels; but this claim was not put forward until the twelfth century, and after the time when the saint’s bones were transferred from the Alyscamps to the Church of St. Etienne, now famous as the Church of St. Trophimus. Whoever the St. Trophimus may have been, there is very little doubt that the Church of St. Honorat was built by St. Virgil, who probably utilised the site of an ancient Pagan or early Christian temple.

The Alyscamps was well supplied with churches and chapels, at one time possessing as many as nineteen. Even the early Church of St. Honorat, when it was rebuilt, had chapels added to it by the pious, and still more by the aristocratic families of the seventeenth century. The nave of the church is in ruins, although other parts are in tolerable repair. The pillars, which support the roof and separate the nave from the aisles, are enormous columns about thirty feet in circumference. The additions of later times have made the interior plan of the church rather confusing, and the ruinous state of the exterior gives one the impression that a bombardment or an earthquake shock have rendered some assistance in tumbling walls and ceilings to the ground.

All through the Middle Ages the Alyscamps was in high favour as a burial-ground, and bodies from distant parts were brought to it for interment, but its popularity declined somewhat after the removal of the remains of St. Trophimus. At intervals there seemed to be a slight revival, for we find that chapels were added to the original collection of buildings as late as the seventeenth century, although before this period the collector had been busy among the tombs, and Charles IX. (the same monarch who consented to the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day) gave away many of the more beautiful of the sarcophagi to his friends and intimates.

The vast field of tombs rapidly fell a prey to the vandal hands of collectors, and one can readily understand that

the large trade in stone coffins would make folk timid of patronising a graveyard that was subject to such unholy raids. Much ground of the Alyscamps has been turned over to the plough, and the railway company has erected large repairing shops upon a portion of it near the Church of St. Honorat. A number of the great massive tombs have, however, been collected and placed at the foot of the tall poplars that line either side of the avenue that leads from the ruined gateway of the cemetery to the ancient church. Here and there other monuments and larger vaults break the monotonous regularity of the long series of stone mausoleums, but nothing can rob the Alyscamps of the mournful pathos of its history.