In a chapel of Autun Cathedral is a beautiful modern statue of Pope Gregory the Great, presented to Cardinal Perraud (1882-1906) of the French Academy, as bishop of this ancient city whose prelate in the VI century had entertained Augustine and his monks on their way to missionize England. Cardinal Vaughan of Westminster was the donor of this grateful souvenir.
THE HOSPITAL AND ROMANESQUE COLLEGIATE AT BEAUNE[282]
L’art du Moyen Âge—aussi ennemi de l’art académique figé dans ses moules conventionnels que du désordre matérialiste—est une esthétique très simple, très certaine, très puissante et très libre. Cette esthétique n’invoque pas un idéal abstrait; elle impose le culte de la réalité, de la plus humble comme de la plus éclatante; elle pourrait s’appeler un réalisme trancendant, respectant la forme telle que Dieu l’a faite, et en même temps la transfigurant par la grand frisson de l’au-delà.—Robert Vallery-Radot.[283]
The Hospital of the Holy Ghost, built by Chancellor Nicolas Rolin from 1444 to 1457, is a gem of the province, reminding us of the close union of Burgundy and the Netherlands under the four great dukes of the West. The third of those rulers, Philippe le Bon, patronized Jean Van Eyck, as did the enterprising man who was the duke’s chancellor during forty years. For a church at Autun, Rolin ordered of Van Eyck, in 1425, the magnificent Madonna now in the Louvre in which he kneels as donor—a shrewd, hard-featured, capable man.
For his new hospital at Beaune he commissioned Roger Van der Weyden to paint, in many panels, the Last Judgment now in the little museum of the establishment, but originally installed in the large raftered hall. After the Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb it was the most important work of Flemish art undertaken. Philippe le Bon is portrayed in it twice, and so is the donor. The outside of the panels is painted in monochrome—what the French call camaïeu from its cameo effect, and the Italians call chiaroscuro. When this superb painting hung at the end of the hospital hall that ended in a chapel like the XIII-century hospice at Tonnerre, the patients could see it from their beds. The Hôtel Dieu at Tonnerre had been founded by Marguerite of Burgundy, in 1293. After the death of her husband, Charles d’Anjou, whose cruelty roused the Sicilian Vespers, she retired to the city of which she was hereditary countess, and with two other dethroned ladies, the Empress of Constantinople and the Countess of Tripoli, gave herself up to good works. La bonne Reyne, the people called this princess who passed her days serving the sick poor in a hospital where the spirit of the Beatitudes ruled. None was dismissed from its door without new cloak and shoes. To-day the great rafter-covered hall at Tonnerre lies empty; the raising of its pavement has somewhat impaired its proportion.
Beaune’s hospital hall, that indubitably copied Tonnerre’s, serves still the charitable purpose for which it was founded. Its quiet courtyard is a vision of Flanders. In the kitchen the ancient iron crane of the fireplace is ornamented with I.H.S.; the Middle Ages made even work artistic. On feast days, such as Corpus Christi, the quaint half-timber hospice is hung with beautiful XV-century tapestry. It is deemed an honor for the leading families of the region to count one of its members among the nuns whose service is for a few years, after which they may return to their own people.
The collegiate church of Notre Dame at Beaune is a typical Burgundian Romanesque edifice of the XII century, to which the following century added a graceful open narthex of two bays. It possesses seventeen embroidered panels relating Our Lady’s life, presented in 1500 by the Chanoine Hugues le Coq, and held to be among the most lovely tapestries in France, evoking memories of Memling and the Flemish primitives.
AVALLON, MONTRÉAL, FLAVIGNY, AND FONTENAY[284]
L’esprit humain, poussé par une force invincible, ne cessera jamais de se demander: qu’y a-til au delà? Il ne sert à rien de répondre: au delà sont des espaces, des temps, ou des grandeurs sans limites. Nul ne comprend ces paroles. Celui qui proclame l’existence de l’infini accumule dans cette affirmation plus de surnaturel qu’il n’y en a dans tous les miracles de toutes les religions. La notion de l’infini dans le monde j’en vois partout l’inévitable expression. Par elle, le surnaturel est au fond de tous les cœurs. L’idée de Dieu est une forme de l’idée de l’infini. Tant que le mystère de l’infini pesera sur la pensée humaine, des temples seront élevés au culte de l’infini. Et sur la dalle de ces temples, vous verrez des hommes agenouillés, prosternés, abimés dans la pensée de l’infini. Où sont les vraies sources de la dignité humaine, de la liberté, et de la démocratie moderne, sinon dans la notion de l’infini devant laquelle tous les hommes sont égaux?—Louis Pasteur (1822-95; born in Burgundy).[285]
The hill town of Avallon, above the gorge of the Cousin, with a square that would do honor to any capital, makes a convenient center from which to explore various Burgundian churches. Its own church of St. Lazare still possesses the apse and absidioles of the edifice blessed by Paschal II in 1107. The remainder of the church was built in mid-XII century, and the portal (in five orders richly carved, with channeled and twisted columns) belongs to the end of the century. A copy of Avallon’s door is in the Trocadéro Museum at Paris where it can be compared at close range with the two other notable Romanesque portals of the province—those of Autun and Vézelay. The interior of St. Lazare is excessively plain, having a high expanse of unbroken wall over the pier arches, with the clearstory opened merely by little circular windows.