There are in Paris three abbey churches that show steps in the transition to Gothic art: St. Germain of the meadows, St. Martin in the fields, and St. Peter’s church on the martyr’s hill, names that keep alive early Christian traditions—the first bishop and martyr of Paris, St. Peter whom always “the eldest daughter of the Church” was glad to honor; St. Martin, first beloved of the apostles of Gaul, and Bishop Germain (d. 576) who founded outside the city walls the abbey called later by his name, and who helped to Christianize the new Frankish conquerors. So disinterested was he that, to feed the poor, he sold a horse given him by the king; whether riding or walking, the saint-bishop ever went in prayer.
The present church of St. Germain-des-Prés has a tower that in part predates the year 1000; it was erected by an abbot who ruled from 990 to 1014, and shows the small stones used at that period. The nave and transept, finished before the XI century closed, under a bishop of Paris who was uncle of Godfrey de Bouillon, comprise the only remaining Romanesque work in the capital. Twice in the XII century the choir was reconstructed by the monks, first about 1125, and at the same time the ancient tower’s upper story was built; and again, after Suger, in 1144, had demonstrated the superiority of Gothic vaulting. St. Germain’s abbot wrote, in 1163, that he had repaired his church in a new fashion. In the ambulatory the round and the pointed arch appeared side by side, and the groin vault was used simultaneously with the diagonals. The capitals were altogether Romanesque, since sculpture changed less swiftly than construction in those transitional years. Perhaps the new choir of St. Germain was not wholly finished when Pope Alexander III dedicated it in 1163, the year that the foundation stone of Notre Dame was laid. The choir’s triforium arches were cut off, later, to lengthen the clearstory windows, and the nave has been revaulted.
In the abbey inclosure a Sainte-Chapelle, a cloister, and a refectory were built by Pierre de Montereau; he and his wife, Agnes, were buried in the chapel. Fragments of his work have been collected in the small garden beneath the Carolingian tower of the abbatial, as well as in the gardens of the Musée Cluny.[88] The Revolution entirely wrecked the monk’s quarters.
St. Germain-des-Prés, in popular speech, was The Abbey. Here gathered the learned men of Paris for mental stimulus. In its priceless library, destroyed by the Revolution, worked those famous scholars Dom Luc d’Achery (d. 1685), Dom Mabillon (d. 1707), and Dom Rivet (d. 1749), whose tireless patience and scrupulous respect for historical truth made the name Benedictine a synonym for “savant.” Three monumental works were begun by the XVII-century reformers who renewed the love of letters in the leading monastic houses of France: the Acta Sanctorum; the annals of the Benedictine Order; and that pride of French letters, the Histoire Littéraire de la France, which to-day the Institute of France is continuing. “Gros livres inutiles,” Voltaire glibly called the invaluable books which for the modern school of mediæval archæology have made flesh-and-blood men of the old prelate-builders of cathedrals.
The parts which have survived of that other notable Benedictine establishment in Paris, St. Martin-des-Champs, are now comprised in the Arts et Métiers establishment. Affiliated with great Cluny, St. Martin’s priory was as like it, said Peter the Venerable, as seal is like signet. To-day in the ancient church is installed an exhibit of machinery. The beautiful hall, once the monks’ refectory, and now a technical library, is thought to be the work of Pierre de Montereau. The slender pillars dividing it into two aisles, the well-carved capitals, the elaborate keystones, and the portal’s foliage all belong to the golden hour of the national art.
For the student it is the choir of the church (c. 1135), built by the prior who surrounded the monastery lands with walls (1130-40), which is of chief interest, for in it were taken marked strides in the advance of Gothic structure. Here first was attempted a double ambulatory, an idea which Suger within a few years was to carry out in its fulfillment at St. Denis. The Lady chapel, a lobed half dome—the sacred trefoil—developed further the ribbed apse first found at Bury (c. 1125); here the ribs are structural, not merely decorative. Like other monuments of the transitional hour, St. Martin used simultaneously intersecting ribs and groins, round and pointed arches. Its XIII-century nave was never vaulted.
The third monument of the capital which shows other stumbling first steps of the national art is the little church of St. Pierre under the towering new basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre.[89] Till the XII century there stood on the site of St. Pierre a church dedicated to St. Denis, for tradition said that the first martyr of Paris had here been interred until his relics were removed to the new abbey of St. Denis on the Roman road outside Paris. In the crypt, by St. Peter’s, on Montmartre, it is said that the earliest Christians of the region held their rites. And to that hallowed spot has come many a soul to beseech enlightenment on the eve of some projected good work. Here, in 1534, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and the first Jesuits passed a night in prayer and vowed themselves to God’s service. Here came St. Francis de Sales before founding the Visitation Order, St. Vincent de Paul before founding the Lazarists, and M. Olier before he organized St. Sulpice. Ursulines and Carmelites also have memories with St. Pierre-de-Montmartre.
A Benedictine priory was installed here by Louis VI and his queen, Adelaide, niece of Pope Calixtus II of the Capetian house of Burgundy. They began the present church as Romanesque, but soon the new system of vaulting was employed. Slowly but consecutively throughout the XII century St. Peter’s church was built. Its oldest Gothic vault is the one over the section of the choir preceding the apse; the stout ribs have profiles like those which Abbot Suger was making about that same time in the forechurch of his abbatial.
The solemn dedication of St. Pierre-de-Montmartre took place in 1147 with Pope Eugene III officiating and St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable acting as deacon and subdeacon. Since the rebuilding of the apse, at the end of the XII century, numerous reconstructions have gone on in order to preserve the revered church.[90]
ST. LOUIS AND JOINVILLE[91]