The Rayonnant chevet of Bordeaux Cathedral and its transept, two of whose towers are spire-crowned, compose an effective architectural group, with a detached campanile in the gardens. In order to give employment to the poor, Archbishop Pierre Berland, who had been a shepherd’s son, erected the graceful, isolated tower for bells to hang in, “that God might be praised in the sky.” And the same generations built St. Michel’s tower (1472-92), the highest beacon in southwest France, mutilated mercilessly by M. Paul Abadie’s restoration. The lifeless church before which it stands is proof of how much needed was the vim, even if often exaggerated and bizarre, of the late-Gothic movement. M. Enlart considers Bordeaux and Bayonne[221] to be two of the principal doors by which the English Curvilinear style entered France. There its name is Flamboyant Gothic. And yet in this same Midi, M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, who denies the English origin of French late-Gothic architecture, claims to have found proof of his theory that already in Apogee Gothic and in the Rayonnant hour were developing the characteristics of the final phase. One cannot help but feel that the English builders’ partiality for exuberant decoration had something to do with the making of such towers as St. Michel and the Pey Berland. The landscape round Bordeaux is as rich in sky-pointing spires as Calvados in Normandy.
When, in 1451, the English surrendered Bordeaux, the great Dunois, Jeanne d’Arc’s companion in arms, was received as conqueror in its cathedral (where in 1376 the Black Prince had accepted the citizens’ oath of fealty to his father), and to the ringing of bells and cries of “Noël,” Archbishop Pierre Berland and the chief men of the town swore to be loyal subjects of France.
Among the ancient churches of historic interest in Bordeaux is Ste. Croix, rebuilt by Charlemagne when Saracens destroyed it, and again remade (1099) as Romanesque according to the school of Poitou. Under its tower, Gothic ribs were used early in the XII century. The church was partly wrecked in 1179 and revaulted at the end of the XIII century. In the sculpture of the rich façade is a certain Assyrian note. M. Brutails complains that Abadie, the restorer, made of the frontispiece a neo-Angoumois work and that the north tower is entirely of his building.
Memories of the great Emperor Charles haunt the former cathedral of Bordeaux, St. Seurin. Fundamentally it belongs to the cupola type of edifice, and though incessantly rebuilt up to the XV century, it presents the aspect of a Romanesque church. The south portal (c. 1260), sculptured with elaborate foliate ornament, has images of unequal merit. In St. Seurin, says tradition, Charlemagne paused, in 778, with the bodies of the heroes of Roncevaux to be buried at Blaye, his nephew Roland and that paladin’s comrade, Sire Olivier, and Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, who fought pagans—par granz batailles et par mult bels sermuns. On the altar of St. Seurin the emperor laid the horn that Roland blew in his last extremity, the olifant which the Midi folk say still echoes in the Pyrenean gorges:
Vient à Burdele la citet de valur,
Desur l’alter seint Sevrin li barun
Met l’olifant, plein d’or et de manguns,
Li pélerin le veient ki là vunt.[222]
(Came to Bordeaux the city of great price,
And on the shrine of Baron St. Seurin,
The olifant Charles laid, filled full with gold,
And to this day pilgrims can see it there.)
The XX-century pilgrims to the old city on the Garonne must remember that the Chanson de Roland was written a long, long time ago, and that to-day the olifant of the paladin lives only in the pages of French history, where its place is as secure as the standard of Jeanne d’Arc. À la peine, à l’honneur. Without St. Seurin’s church we might have forgotten a proud page of Bordeaux’ past.
TOULOUSE[223]
Ici, dans Toulouse, je sens palpiter
La prodigieuse histoire du libre Languedoc!
Et je vois Saint-Sernin, la grande église romane, ...
Et le rempart où la pierre écrasa l’oiseau de
Proie que je ne veux pas nommer....
À Toulouse vivante, à Toulouse qui chante,
J’élève mon salut et je dis: Ville sainte!
Au soleil à jamais épanouis-toi puissante!...
L’âme du Midi réfugiée en toi,
Chevaleresque et digne, tu as traversé les âges!
—Frédéric Mistral, at the Jeux Floraux of Toulouse, 1879.[224]