“Quand il s’agit d’une jolie et gracieuse naïveté de langage, on dit aussitôt pour le définir: C’est de la langue d’Amyot.”—Sainte-Beuve.

[305] Congrès Archéologique, 1907, on Dijon, Charles Porée; p. 546, “Les caractères distinctifs des écoles gothiques de la Champagne et de la Bourgogne,” E. Lefèvre-Pontalis; A. Kleinclausz, Dijon et Beaune (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); ibid., “L’art funéraire de la Bourgogne,” in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1901-02; ibid., Claus Sluter et la sculpture bourguignonne au XVe siècle (Paris, 1906); Abbé L. Chomton, Histoire de l’église St. Bénigne de Dijon (Dijon, 1900), folio; G.T. Rivoira, Lombardic Architecture, vol. 2, chap. 1, on St. Bénigne (tr. London and New York, 1910); Chanoine Thomas, Épigraphie de Notre Dame de Dijon (1904); H. Chabeuf, “Tête sculptée à Notre Dame de Dijon,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1900, vol. 43, p. 472; ibid., Dijon, monuments et souvenirs (Dijon, Damudot, 1894); H. Havard, éd., La France artistique et monumental, vol. 6, p. 26, Cunisset-Carnot; Alphonse Germain, Les Néerlandais en Bourgogne, 1909; Raymond Koechlin, La sculpture belge et les influences françaises au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1903); Louis Courajod, Leçons professées à l’École du Louvre, 1887-96. Vol. 2, Origines de la Renaissance (Paris, Picard et fils, 1901), 3 vols. On the sculpture at Dijon, see MM. Paul Vitry, Louis Gonse, Léon Palustre, André Michel; A. Humbert, Sculpture en Bourgogne (Paris, H. Laurens); Ernest Petit, Hist. des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne (Dijon, 1905), 9 vols.; B. de Barante, Hist. des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois (Paris, 1825), 12 vols.; Petit-Dutaillis, Charles VII, Louis XI, et les premières années de Charles VIII (Paris, Hachette, 1902); Abbé Chevalier, Le vénérable Guillaume, abbé de St. Bénigne (Dijon, 1875).

[306] “La gloire de Bossuet est devenue l’une des religions de la France; on la reconnaît, on la proclame, on s’honore soi-même en y apportant chaque jour un nouveau tribut. Bossuet, c’est le génie hébreu, étendu, fécondé par le Christianisme, et ouvert à toutes les acquisitions de l’intelligence, mais retenant quelque chose de l’interdiction souveraine. Il est la voix éloquente par excellence, la plus simple, la plus forte, la plus brusque, la plus familière, la plus soudainement tonnante.”—Sainte-Beuve.

No city has been more prolific in notable sons than Dijon, where, as Voltaire said, “le mérite de l’esprit semble être un des caractères des citoyens.” Among them are Rameau, the musician (1683-1764), who founded French opera and discovered important laws in harmony; he and his descendants were exempted from tithes by their native city; Dubois, the sculptor (1626-94), whose Assumption and the high altar of Notre Dame, Dijon, are his best works; the critic and philologist, La Monnaye (b. 1641); the playwright, Crébillon (d. 1762); Piron, the witty epigrammatist (d. 1773); the learned Président de Brosse (1709-77), whose Lettres d’Italie are full of Burgundian vivacity and salt, and whose friend, Buffon, the naturalist (1707-88), though born at Montbard, was educated in Dijon, where his father was counselor in the parliament. The grandmother of Madame de Sévigné, St. Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, founder of the Visitation Order, was born at 17 rue Jeannin, 1572. Her father was a president of Dijon’s parliament. The sculptor Rude was a son of Dijon (d. 1855), and in this same city that had produced St. Bernard and Bossuet, the most eloquent preacher of the XIX century, Lacordaire, spent his childhood and youth, as his mother came of an old legal family here. Léon Deshairs, Dijon, architecture des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1910).

[307] Tournus abbey (Saône-et-Loire), when founded, was affiliated with the Columban tradition. From 946 to 980 the church was rebuilt, and again from 1008 to 1028, under the auspices of William of Volpiano, abbot of St. Bénigne. On its outer walls are Lombard mural arcaded bands. The massive forechurch, or narthex of three bays, has two stories of different dates, the lower one about 950, and the upper about 980. The vault of the latter—a cradle carried on brackets—is the earliest example extant in France of a wide-span masonry roof at such a height. Tournus exemplified the militant spirit of Burgundy’s Romanesque school by experimenting with every kind of vault, cradle, half cradle, transverse cradle, and groin. The pier arcades of the main church are of William of Volpiano’s time. The transept and choir are early XII century, and in that same period the reconstructed nave was covered by an experiment in stone roofing which never made a school; it had been used in Persia in the VI century. A series of half barrels borne on lintels were placed side by side across the wide nave, from north to south, instead of one long tunnel vault from east to west. The system allowed for the better lighting of the upper church, and as each barrel vault was buttressed by the one next it, only at the east and west ends of the edifice was abutment required. Congrès Archéologique, 1899, pp. 223, 236; and 1909; Clement Heaton, in Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3d series, 1909.

[308] Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire de l’Architecture, vol. 4, pp. 131-147; Huysmans, L’Oblat, chap. 5, on Notre Dame of Dijon. In his story, which is the continuation of En Route and La Cathédrale, Huysmans described the closing of the Burgundian monastery of Val des Saints near Dijon. His theory is that by such acts the balance of good and evil in the world is destroyed, since no longer is propitiatory self-sacrifice and prayer offered to heaven for the sins being committed on earth: “Il faut s’attendre à ce que le Bon Dieu tombe sur nous ... pour remettre les choses en place, et vous savez comment il procède, dans ces cas là, il vous accable d’infirmités et d’épreuves.”

[309] A clockmaker named Jacquemart made such works, hence their name. Originally only one figure struck the hours on the big bell. Then a wife, Jacqueleine, was given to the bell-knocker, and after a local wit had rallied the couple on their childless state, first one child, Jacquelinet, was added, and then another, Jacquelinette, and the industrious children now ring the quarter hours on the little bells.

[310] Works of St. Bernard, edited by Mabillon (Paris, 1669-90), tr. by Eales and Hodges (London, 1889), 4 vols.; E. Vacandard, Vie de Saint Bernard (Paris, Lecoffre, 1895), 2 vols.; other studies of the saint, by Eales (London, 1890) and R. P. Ratisbonne; De Dion, Étude sur les églises de l’ordre de Cîteaux; Arbois de Jubainville, Étude sur l’état intérieur des abbayes cisterciennes et principalement de Clairvaux au XII siècle (Paris, 1858); Lucien Bégule, L’abbaye de Fontenay et l’architecture cistercienne (Lyon, 1912); Camille Enlart, L’architecture gothique en Italie (Paris, 1893); ibid., En Espagne et en Portugal (Paris, 1894); ibid., “Villard de Honnecourt et lex Cisterciens,” in Biblio. de l’École des chartes, 1895; Bulletin Monumental, 1904, André Philippe, on Cistercian churches; John Bilson, The Architecture of the Cistercians; Their Earliest Churches in England (London, 1909); also in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1909; Marcel Aubert, on Cistercian churches in Germany.

[311] The castle of Fontaine-lès-Dijon was held by Bernard’s lineage till the XV century. To-day the site is covered by an unfinished commemorative church. The village church is of the XVI century.

[312] As at Cîteaux, scarcely an ancient vestige remains at Clairvaux. The XII-century monastic storehouse now serves as a house of detention. All trace of St. Bernard’s tomb has been lost. The Revolution finished what the Huguenot wars and the absentee commendatory abbots began.