You will wonder that I have yet said nothing of St. Jean, the cathedral, yet there I have been many times. We visited it again yesterday. The architecture of the nave is of the time of Philip Augustus. The choir is celebrated as the spot where Gregory the Tenth held the second council general of Lyons, in the year 1274. Its members occupied themselves with the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and in memory of this reconciliation two crosses, one Greek the other Roman, were placed at the extremities of the high altar. Among the treasures preserved by the church are the lower jaw of St. John the Baptist, (you may remember I saw part of his skull at Amiens,) and the small ivory horn which belonged to Roland, nephew of Charlemagne, and Ariosto’s hero. The house of Mont d’Or, which took its name from the fertile mountain which rises just outside Lyons, and extends into Beaujolais, still bearing the same name, prided itself on tracing its descent from Roland. Before 1562 this family was one of great consequence, and the seigneurs of Mont d’Or had the right of repairing to the abbey of St. Barbe on Ascension Day, and taking from the hands of the abbot, who at that period had it in keeping, the famous ivory horn, which they might twice sound and exhibit to the people. During the war of 1562, between Catholics and Huguenots, this relic was lost, and continued to be so during two hundred years, when it was once more recovered, and placed in the treasury of St. Jean. In one of the side aisles is a clock, greatly admired by the good people of Lyons—marking hour, day, year, temperature, and I do not know what beside, and having figures, which, when the hour strikes, perform various evolutions; it is a frightful machine, between thirty and forty feet high. Near the principal entrance is the beautiful chapel of the Bourbons, with its arched and fretted roof, and fine stained glass, commenced by Charles of Bourbon, cardinal, and archbishop of Lyons, who was godfather to King Charles the Eighth, and who lies interred in this chapel, beneath a white marble mausoleum; it was finished by his brother, Peter of Bourbon, called Sire de Beaujeu, who married Louis the Eleventh’s daughter, Anne. The motto of his house reappears everywhere: “N’espoir ne peur.” They held ambition, as well as fear, beneath their dignity. The delicate carving of the stonework reminded me of Scott’s description of Melrose; for one might indeed fancy that some fairy had wreathed the leaves and flowers and petrified them by a spell. A circumstance concerning this cathedral I must mention to you. When the first Villeroy, whose family has since filled honourable posts in Lyons, was raised to the dignity of archbishop here, the members of the chapter (who, from the third century, when they counted among their body nine sons of kings and one of an emperor, had been men of the proudest families of France, and styled themselves not canons, but Counts of Lyons) demurred ere they admitted to be their archbishop, one whose birth did not rank with theirs, as his great-grandfather was the first of his name who had held any employ, and his father the first who had borne a title. Notwithstanding the refusal of the counts, Louis the Fourteenth found means to force them to obedience. When the archbishop harangued the chapter, he took for text the words of the Psalmist:
“The stone which the builders rejected has become the headstone of the corner.”
The discourse which followed was an insulting one for the canons, but the dean had sufficient presence of mind to reply only by reciting the next verse of the same psalm:
“This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.”
We re-crossed the Pont de l’Archevêché on our way to St. Nizier. Almost behind the Hôtel de l’Europe is a “Place,” and the theatre of the Célestins, where once stood the monastery. The family of the Pazzi, illustrious in Florence, and the Medici’s mortal enemy, had taken refuge in Lyons, and been followed here by many of their faction. In the church of the Célestins they erected a superb monument; and Marie de Médicis, on her arrival at Lyons to espouse Henry the Fourth, visited the churches of the city, and perceived this mausoleum. In indignation at finding so splendid a memorial of those whose ancestors had been the assassins of some of her own, she commanded it to be broken, and only a few of its ornaments escaped destruction. Not far from the Célestins there formerly stood another monastery, that of the Jacobins, or Dominicans. Humbert de la Tour, last sovereign prince of Dauphiny, ceded his province to Philip of Valois, in despair at the death of his only son, André. It was said he had been its cause; for that sojourning at Lyons, and playing with his child at a window which overlooked the Rhone, the boy slipped from his arms, and fell into the rapid river.
In the year 1345 Pope Clement the Sixth preached a second crusade. Humbert obtained the command of this expedition, and embarked at Marseilles with his wife, who insisted on sharing his fatigues and dangers. On their return from the Holy Land, where he had been successful against the Saracens, she died at Rhodes, and some time after this second loss he took the vows in the Dominican monastery at Lyons, and was afterwards prior of the Jacobin convent in Paris.
The outside of St. Nizier has been partly modernized. Within, it is remarkably beautiful. We found a procession of priests and children, who had made their “première communion” in the morning. The little girls marched first very peaceably, and looking pretty, with white frocks and veils; of the foremost ten chosen for good conduct, the first carried a silver crucifix, beneath a miniature tent bed, from whose top depended long white ribands, which the remaining nine held. After the girls came the boys, ignoble looking ragamuffins, not having the advantage of veils to hide their sunburnt faces, pushing for their places, and squabbling for the streamers in a way not edifying. The male and female troop joined in the psalm with the priests and enfans de chœur, making altogether an indescribable howl.
I mentioned to you the votive offerings I have remarked in some Catholic chapels, but nowhere have I seen them abound as in one here dedicated to Ste. Philomène; the walls are literally covered. Among a multitude of dolls’ heads, hands, and arms, I noticed a garland of artificial roses, framed and glazed; this was entitled, “Vœu de Reconnaissance.” A little picture beside it represented a little lady in blue, kneeling by a red bed, looking to an angle of the ceiling, where stood (air-supported) a saint, crowned, and wearing a gold petticoat; below, “Vœu à Ste. Philomène.”
The grandest of the water-colour drawings was the “Chasse Miraculeuse de Ste. Philomène.” Its upper part was divided into various small compartments, each representing an episode of her life. In the first she stands before a tribunal, below, “Jugée;” in the second, tied to a tree, stuck all over with arrows, below, “Percée;” in the third, tumbling over a bridge, below, “Précipitée;” in the fourth, taken out of the torrent, and her head cut off, below, “Décapitée.” At the bottom of the picture she is placed on the Chasse Miraculeuse, finely dressed and her eyes open, I presume all attempts to murder her having failed.
The Place des Terreaux is at no great distance from the church of St. Nizier. The Hôtel de Ville forms one side; in its vestibule are two fine groups in bronze, by Couston:—the Rhone, a majestic male figure, resting on a lion; the Saône, gentle as her own course, couched on a lioness. The chief interest of the Place des Terreaux for us was, in its recollections of the death of De Thou and De Cinq Mars, who perished here on the scaffold, one like a saint, the other like a Roman.[[2]]