Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg

by Anonymous

The chancel is joined to the nave by two pillars of very large dimensions and whose tops belong to one of the constructions anterior to the gothic order. The magnificent lobby built by Erwin of Steinbach was taken down to make room for the taste prevailing in the seventeenth century; it was demolished in 1682. Two high and circular columns support the cupola of the chancel and separate it from its two aisles; in the centre of each of the latter stand also columns to sustain the arch-roofs; that of the northern part is round, whilst the column of the southern aisle is composed of a collection of very slender pillars, probably of a later construction; this long, thin and gracious column bears in its corners some statues, the fineness and gracefulness of which recall to mind the work of Sabina of Steinbach. Beneath are the four Evangelists; above four angels holding trumpets, and uppermost the Saviour and three angels with the implements of the Saviour's passion in their hands; it is called the angel's column or Erwin's column. On the large pillar which unites the nave to the chancel, are two inscriptions in commemoration of the famous preacher Geiler of Kaysersberg who, for many years, displayed his eloquence from the pulpit of the Cathedral. In this same aisle is erected the statue of bishop Wernher, meditating the design of the church laid before him. Opposite this statue, the work of Mr. Friderich, is the celebrated.

Astronomical Clock.

As early as 1352 an astronomical clock was begun under bishop Berthold of Bucheck, and finished two years after by an unknown artist, in the time of John of Lichtenberg. It was fixed to the wall facing the present one. The frame-work of that first clock was all of wood; the stones that formed its basis are to this day seen projecting from the wall. It was divided into three parts; the lower part contained a universal calendar; in the middle was an astrolabe, and in the superior division were seen the three wise men and the Virgin Mary carved in wood; the wise men bent every hour before the Virgin, by means of a peculiar mechanism, which at the same time put in motion a chime of harmonious sounds and a cock crowing and flapping his wings.

The exact time at which this clock, which in the fourteenth century must have been a wonderful piece of workmanship, and was called the clock of the three sages, ceased going, is not known: it had been stopped for a long time, when in 1547 the magistrate of the town decided on having another made and putting it opposite the old one, in the very place the clock now occupies. Three distinguished mathematicians furnished the plan and superintended the execution of it: they were Dr Michel Herr, Christian Herlin, professor of mathematics at the school of Strasburg, and Nicholas Prugner, who, after preaching the reformation at Mulhouse and at Benfeld, occupied himself at Strasburg with mechanics and astrology. These three learned men began this work, but did not terminate it; it was resumed in the year 1570 by a pupil of Herlin, named Conrad Dasypodius of Strasburg, where he was a professor of mathematics. Dasypodius drew the design of the clock, but its execution was confided to two skilful mechanics of Schaffhouse, the brothers Isaac and Josiah Habrecht; Tobias Stimmer, also of Schaffhouse, had the charge of the paintings. This master-piece of the mechanical art of the sixteenth century was completed in 1574; it ceased going in 1789. As the exterior distribution of the present clock is nearly the same as that of the old clock, we shall abstain from describing the latter. In 1836 the corporation of the town of Strasburg adopted the resolution of causing this curious monument to be repaired. To Mr. Schwilgué, a distinguished mechanician of Strasburg, his native place, this remarkable work was entrusted; he began it the 24th of June 1838 and finished it at the end of 1842.

It is one of the most beautiful pieces of workmanship of our age; its mechanism is entirely new and in accordance with the present state of the science of astronomy, which as is well known, has attained a very high degree of certainty and exactness. Mr. Schwilgué has not made use of any of the pieces of the old clock, which are deposited in the chapel of the Œuvre-Notre-Dame; by comparing them with the pieces composing the new clock, one may judge of the progress of science and of the talents of the modern artist. M. Schwilgué preserved of the former clock only its fine case, the paintings and ornaments of which were carefully repaired. In this he had many difficulties to overcome, as well for the proper arrangement of this mechanism and lodging it in a space that was often very limited, as for making the old signs or indications accord with the movements of the clockwork. Of these many were marked only in painting, and must have been renewed after a certain time, as for instance those for the eclipses, which now by a most ingenious mechanical combination will henceforth last for ever. The little statues which hitherto had no articulation, are now moveable; the twelve Apostles have been added to the former number of them. The figure of Death, formerly on the same level with that of Jesus-Christ, is now placed in the centre of figures representing the four ages of life and striking the quarters of hours; the idea of assigning this place to the image of death is assuredly a more rational and finer one than that which prevailed in the old distribution of the figures. Childhood strikes the first quarter; Youth the second; Manhood the third, and Old Age the last; the first stroke of each quarter is struck by one of the two genii seated above the perpetual calendar; the four ages strike the second. Whilst death strikes the hours, the second of these genii turns over the hourglass that he holds in his hand. The image of the Saviour stands now on a higher ground; at the hour of noon the twelve Apostles pass bowing before him; he lifts up his hand to bless them, and during that time, a cock, whose motions and voice imitate nature, flaps his wings and crows three times.

Mr. Schwilgué has altered the old calendar into a perpetual one with the addition of the feasts that vary, according to their connexion with Easter or Advent Sundays. The dial, nine metres in circumference, is subject to a revolution of 365 or 366 days, according as the case may be. Mr. Schwilgué has even indicated the suppression of the secular bissextile days. He has moreover enriched his work by adding to it an ecclesiastic compute with all its indications; an orrery after the Copernican system, representing the mean tropical revolutions of each of the planets visible to the naked eye, the phases of the moon, the eclipses of the sun and moon, calculated for ever; the true time and the sideral time; a new celestial globe with the procession of the equinoxes, solar and lunary equations for the reduction of the mean geocentric ascension and declension of the sun and moon at true times and places. A dial placed without the church and showing the hours and days, is put in motion by the same mechanism of the clockwork.

The camerated roof of the back part of the chancel was formerly covered with paintings executed in 1686 representing Dooms-day. A few paintings only adorned till now the interior of the Cathedral, among which the most remarkable oil-paintings, executed by artists of Strasburg, are: the Shepherd's Adoration, by Guerin, the Laying in the tomb, by Klein; the Ascension, by Heim, and some others. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the chancel was several times and in different ways enlarged and disfigured by ornaments little correspondent with the elegance and grandeur of the gothic order. Tribunes, stairs and wainscots that formed a strange contrast with the rest of the edifice were added. The altar, adorned in 1501, with fine figures carved in wood by Master Nicholas of Haguenau, was changed in 1685 by order of bishop William Egon of Fürstenberg; that new altar, covered with a baldachin, was destroyed by fire, and in 1765 the present one, which has nothing in its form worthy of notice, was erected. Great repairs were begun some years ago under the direction of the city corporation, struck, as every body was, by the great disproportion between the chancel and nave. It was resolved to restore the chancel to its primitive form and arrangement, and thus to reestablish the due proportions between that part and the rest of this magnificent church. This great labour is now finished. Their natural complement, as required by the style of this part of the pile and its extensive fronts and arch-roofs, is the execution of a certain number of monumental paintings, intrusted to two distinguished artists, Prof. Steinle, Director of Städel's Institute in Frankfort a/M. and the historical painter Steinheil in Paris, a native Alsacian. The former is charged with the execution of the fresco-paintings in the chancel and lateral naves, whilst the latter undertook the reestablishment of the paintings that represent the Dooms-day on the upper wall of the chancel, in front of the great nave. Both works, begun in 1876, came in sight for the visitors of the Cathedral, at the end of 1878.

In restoring to this part of the edifice its former appearance, it has highly augmented the effect produced on the inward aspect of the Cathedral; now also may be decided the question, hitherto doubtful, of the exact time at which the chancel was built; with certainty, it may already be said, that it was not erected, as was often affirmed, in the time of the emperor Charlemain.