[222] Léon Gautier, éd., Chanson de Roland (Tours, Mâme, 1895), section 297, l. 3684.
[223] Congrès Archéologique, 1874 and 1906; H. Graillot, Toulouse et Carcassonne (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Jules de Lahondès, Toulouse chrétienne; l’église de St. Étienne, cathédrale de Toulouse; ibid., “Les chapiteaux de St. Sernin de Toulouse,” in Mém. de la Soc. archéol. du Midi de la France, 1897; Anthyme Saint-Paul, “St. Sernin,” in Album des monuments du Midi de la France, 1897; in Bulletin Monumental, 1899; and in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1905, vol. 48, p. 145; Abbé Lestrade, Histoire de l’art à Toulouse (Toulouse, 1907); H. L. Gillet, Histoire artistique des ordres mendiants (Paris, 1912); A. Marignan, Histoire de la sculpture en Languedoc des XIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris, Bouillon, 1902); Alexis Forel, Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols.; Roschach, Le musée de Toulouse, “Inventoire des richesses d’art de la France: ministère de l’instruction publique” (vol. 8), (Paris, 1908), 4to; Martin, L’art roman en France (Paris, 1910); H. Revoil, L’architecture romane du Midi de la France (Paris, 1873-90), 3 vols.; R. de Lasteyrie, L’architecture religieuse en France à l’époque romane (Paris, 1912); Vie et Vaissette, supplemented by Du Mège, Molinier, and Roschach, Nouvelle histoire de Languedoc (Toulouse, Privat, 1872-92), 15 vols.
[224] Frédéric Mistral, Poèmes (Paris, Charpentier-Fasquelle, 1912).
[225] “Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars.”—Prov. ix:1.
[226] From the Chapelle de Rieux at the Cordeliers came some curious statues which are now in the Museum of Toulouse. Their date is certain, 1324 to 1348, yet their realism is of the XV century. Again Languedoc proved precocious in sculpture. In the Museum is a XIV-century statue of Bishop Guillaume Durandus, author of Rationale.
[227] When Moissac was affiliated with Cluny and reformed, its church was rebuilt by Abbot Durand, whose image adorns a pier of the cloister’s east gallery. The walls of the nave belong to the edifice consecrated in 1063. That church of three aisles was remade with cupolas and blessed in 1180, and of the same date are the fortified narthex and its tower. Owing to those defenses the celebrated portal is in the south wall of the porch, not in the church axis. The Gothic ribs beneath the tower are rectangular and three feet wide. In the XIV century the cupolas were replaced by diagonals. The cloisters were begun about 1100 under Abbot Ansquitil, who made the pier images, also the marble parts of the portal, its trumeau, and the Visitation. Abbot Roger (1115-31) finished the cloisters, inscribing the carved Scripture scenes of the capitals. During the first quarter of the XII century Moissac’s imagery passed from the squat, coarsely executed figures of the cloister piers to the appealing, etherealized types—“fluides créations du Languedoc”—the Annunciation group. Mr. A. Kingsley Porter thinks that door-jamb-figure sculpture was first used by Guglielmo at Modena Cathedral (c. 1100), and from Italy passed into southern France. The current of art flowed in the opposite direction, too, for the coupled colonnettes, typical of the Romanesque cloisters of Provence, Languedoc, and Spain, soon found their way across the Alps, where early examples are to be seen at Verona and Aosta, and at the cathedral door of Verona are Languedoc’s elongated figures with crossed feet. The Portico de la gloria at Santiago sets forth the vision of John the Beloved at Patmos quite as Moissac’s tympanum presents it. Congrès Archéologique, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 43, 303; E. Rupin, Abbaye et les cloîtres de Moissac (Paris, Picard, 1897); André Michel, “Sculpture romane de Moissac,” in Bull. de la Soc. Archéol. du Midi de la France, 1899 to 1901; Roger Peyre, Padoue et Vérone (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens).
[228] The master of French iconography, M. Émile Mâle, is on the eve of publishing a work on XII-century imagery, of which he says, “The art of Languedoc undulates like a flame in the wind, that of Provence seems cast in bronze.”
[229] Paradiso, xii:70-73.
“Dominico fu detto; ed io ne parlo
sì come dell’agricola, che Cristo
elesse all’orto suo per aiutarlo.
Ben parve messo e famigliar di Cristo.”
(“Dominic was he named; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ chose for his orchard to bring aid to it. Well did he show himself a messenger and a familiar of Christ.”)