Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1

by Elise Whitlock Rose

“THE INTERIOR HAS A SHALLOW, GRACEFULLY BALUSTRADED BALCONY.”—AVIGNON. [To List]

These additions, superimposed ornamentations, and rebuildings, together with the very substantial substructure of the primitive Cathedral, form to-day a small church of unimpressive, conglomerate style, and except for its history, unnoteworthy. It is therefore a church whose interest is almost wholly of the past; and the traveller goes back in imagination, century after century, to the era of Papal residency, when the Cathedral was not only ecclesiastically important, but architecturally in its best and purest form. This church, which Clement V found on his removal to Avignon, and which may still be easily traced, was of the simple, primitive Provençal style. No dates of that period are sufficiently accurate to rely upon; but its interest lies not so much in chronology as in its portrayal of the general type. The interior is the usual little hall church of the XI century, with its aisle-less nave of five bays, and plain piers supporting a tunnelled roof, with double vault arches. Beyond the last bay, over the choir, is the Cathedral's octagonal dome, and from the rounded windows of its lantern comes much of the light of the interior, which is sombre and without other windows of importance.

The façade is architecturally one of the most significant parts of the church. Above the portal the wall is supported on either side by plain heavy buttresses, and directly continued by the solid bulk of the tower. In 1431 this tower replaced the original one which fell in the earthquake of 1405. It is conjecturally similar, a heavy rectangle which quite overweighs the church; plain, with its stiff pilasters and two stories of rounded windows; without grace or proper proportion, but pleasing by the unblemished severity of its lines. Above the balustrade with which the tower may be properly said to terminate, the religious art of the XIX century has erected as its contribution to the Cathedral a series of steps, an octagon, and a colossal, mal-proportioned statue of the Virgin. These additions are inharmonious; and the finest part of the façade is the porch, so classic in detail that it was formerly supposed to be Roman, a work of the Emperor Constantine. Like the rest of the church, its general structure is plain and somewhat severe, with small, richly carved details, in this instance closely Corinthian. The rounded portal of entrance is an entablature, enclosed as it were by two supporting columns; and above, in the pointed pediment, is a circular opening curiously foreshadowing that magnificent development of the North—the rose-window. Passing through the vestibule, whose tunnel-vault supports the tower, the minor portal appears, almost a replica of the outer door, and the whole forms an unusual mode of entrance, graceful in detail, ponderous in general effect. Far behind the tower of the façade rises the last significant feature of the exterior, the little lantern. It is an octagon with Doric and Corinthian motifs, continuing the essential characteristics of the interior, and exceedingly typical of Provence.

“THE PORCH SO CLASSIC IN DETAIL.”—AVIGNON.
From an old print [To List]

Into this church, with its few, unusually classic details, its Provençal simplicity, its very modest size and plainness, the munificence of papal pomp was introduced. This was in 1308, an era of papal storm and stress. Not ten years before, Boniface VIII, with the tradition of Canossa spurring his haughty ambitions, had launched a bull against Philip III, whom he knew to be a bad king and whom he was to find an equally bad, rebellious Christian. “God,” said the Prelate, from Rome, “has constituted us, though unworthy, above kings and kingdoms, to seize, destroy, disperse, build, and plant in His name and by His doctrine. Therefore, do not persuade thyself that thou hast no superior, and that thou art not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy; he who thinks thus is insensate, he who maintains it is infidel.”

Past indeed was the time of Henry of Germany, long past the proud day when a Pope received an Emperor who knelt and waited in the snow. Philip burned the Bull; and to prevent other like fulminations, sent an agent into Italy. Gathering a band, he found the aged Pontiff at Anagni, his birthplace, seated on a throne, crowned with the triple crown, the Cross in one hand and in the other Saint Peter's Keys, the terrible Keys of Heaven and Hell. They called on him to abdicate, but Boniface thought of Christ his Lord, and cried out in defiant answer, “Here is my neck, here is my head. Betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die like him, I will at least die Pope.” For reply, Sciarra Colonna, one of his own Roman Counts, struck him in the face. Buffeted by a noble, and openly defied by a king, Boniface died “of shame and anger.” A month later, this same king rejoiced, if nothing more, at the death of the Pope's successor; and in the dark forests of Saint-Jean-d'Angély, Philip bargained and sold the great Tiara to a Gascon Archbishop who, if Villani speaks truly, “threw himself at the royal feet, saying, 'It is for thee to command and for me to obey; such will ever be my disposition!'” As was not unnatural, the will of the French king was that the Pope should remain within the zone of royal influence. So Clement lived at Bordeaux and at Poitiers, and finally retired to the County of Venaissin which the Holy See possessed by right, and established the pontifical court at Avignon.

This transfer of the papal residence to Avignon has left many and deep traces on the history of French Catholicism. The Holy See was no longer far remote; the French ecclesiastic desirous of promotion had no dangerous mountains to traverse, no strange city to enter, no foreign Pontiff to besiege, ignorant or indifferent to his claims. The next successor of Saint Peter would logically be a Frenchman, and there was not only a possibility, but a probability for every man of note, that he might be either the occupant of the Sacred Chair or its favoured supporter. So Avignon became a city of priests as Rome had been before her; and as France was the richest country in Europe and the Church regally wealthy, splendour, luxury, and constant religious spectacles rejoiced the city, and Bishop, Archbishop, and Abbot, brazenly neglecting the duties of their Sees, lived here and were seldom “in residence.” Every one had a secret ambition. Of such a situation, the Popes were not slow to reap the benefits. Difference of wealth, which brought difference of position, counted much and was keenly felt. Abbots of smaller monasteries found themselves inferior to Bishops, especially in freedom from papal interference; while from the inherent wealth and power of their foundations, the heads of the great monasteries ranked sometimes with Archbishops, sometimes even with Cardinals. The Pope had the right to elevate an Abbey or a Priory into a Bishopric, and those who could offer the “gratification” or the “provocative,” might reasonably hope for the desired elevation which at once increased their local importance, belittled a neighbouring diocese, and freed them to some extent from the direct intermeddling of the Pope. The applications for such an increase of power became numerous, and by 1320 a number of Benedictine Abbeys had been made Bishoprics. Their creation greatly decreased the direct and intimate power of the Papacy, but temporarily increased the papal treasury; and John XXII, who left ten million pieces of silver and fifteen million in gold with his Florentine bankers, seems to have thought philosophically, “After us, the deluge.”