In the seventeenth century the Princes of Orange, who dwelt in a stronghold upon the hill overlooking the theatre, attached it to their castle, converting it into a fortress. Much of its ornamentation disappeared at this period, and more was destroyed at a later date when the town was taken by Louis XIV., who ordered the demolition of the castle and fortress. A squalid town of houses and stables occupied the interior of the Theatre after this; but happily they were all cleared out at the beginning of the last century, and to-day the monument is jealously guarded by a Government department.
From the hilltop behind the castle one looks over a country as rich as any in Provence. The Rhone glides through meadows, orchards, vineyards, and great mulberry plantations, past little red-tiled farmhouses, and long white roads lined by tall poplars and thickset hedges.
Orange is the gateway to Roman Gaul, and its two monuments are a magnificent introduction to the neighbouring towns of Arles and Nîmes. There are many curious streets and houses in the town, and the Hôtel de Ville, which stands in the principal square, is a pleasing bit of seventeenth-century architecture. Down one of the narrow streets near the great wall of the Theatre there stands a little church surmounted by an old crumbling tower. The interior of this ancient little building is so striking in contrast to the usual magnificence displayed in the churches of Provence, that one is not surprised to
discover that in it the Protestants of Orange worshipped. The plain whitewashed walls are reminiscent of the churches of Holland—perhaps the only association discoverable in the town with the Stadholders, who were also Princes of Orange. Many of the older streets have quaint arcades with bold round arches that naturally suggest a Roman origin.
Carpentras lies to the east of Orange and Avignon, about fifteen miles from either place. In the old days the dusty mud-stained diligences plied from Avignon to Carpentras, but to-day the cross-country motor-bus has found in Provence a hearty welcome and plenty of passengers, and the ancient relationship between the two towns is more closely knit together. Carpentras is no longer the important town it was before the Revolution. From being a Roman town of great consequence, “Carpentorate,” it grew during the Middle Ages to become the capital of the Papal province, the “Comtat Venaissin.” When Pope Clement V., by the orders of Philip the Fair, removed his Papal See from Rome, his time was divided between Carpentras and Avignon, and it was in the former town that he breathed his last.
In 1305, when Clement took up his temporary abode in Carpentras, it was strongly fortified with machicolated battlements, towers and gateways, and all the other accessories of a mediæval town. Churches had been established for ages, the oldest one, St. Siffrein, dating from the sixth century. The present Cathedral of that name is the fifth building that has been erected upon the same site: the first having been built in the sixth century, the second in the eighth or ninth, the third in the tenth, and the fourth at the end of the thirteenth century. Nothing remains of the two earliest, although some parts of the third building were incorporated in the fourth.
The present church was built by the anti-pope Benedict XIII., who at the period of the schism had a large following among the clergy of France. He thought to establish himself and the Papacy in Carpentras, having previously been kept a prisoner at Avignon by the factions who refused to acknowledge his papal authority. He was, however, only successful in retaining the loyalty of a portion of the French Church and nobility, for a few years later, in 1409, the General Council of Cardinals met at Pisa, together with the influential envoys of France and England, and the two rival Popes, Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., were both tried and deposed for contumacy and the violation of their solemn engagements. But for this Carpentras might have been a second Avignon.