From its inception, the Gothic of Champagne kept pace with the Ile-de-France Picard school, and in certain characteristics even took the lead of its neighbor. Gerson, Racine, La Fontaine, Gaston Paris, are among the sons of this province whose Gothic art, formulated centuries before them, displays qualities which embody aspiration, sublimity, sanity always and just measure, a singular ease and grace, patience, and science.
From Champagne came the gracious arrangement of planting slender columns and stilted arches at the entrance to radiating chapels. Champagne was the first to use the pier composed of twin columns, first to employ a passageway round the church at the level of the aisle windows, and to place lancets side by side in each bay for the better lighting of the edifice. The region was conservative in clinging to certain Romanesque traits, such as apsidal chapels projecting from the eastern wall of the transept. It employed, as did Normandy and Burgundy, a circulation passage under the clearstory windows. Champagne’s influence spread far afield to Sens, Auxerre, St. Quentin, St. Denis, Metz, Toul, Ipres, Tournai, Avila, León, and York.[151]
Lest these pages should become overloaded, we can merely touch on the beautiful Champagne cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne, an old city which is another treasure house of colored glass. The most interesting windows are in the small church of St. Alpin, whose apse celebrates the Eucharist, the souls in Purgatory, the Corpus Christi procession, lately mocked by the Calvinists. Its Manna in the Desert window is a symbol of the Eucharist. In St. Alpin are the most successful examples of that distinguished phase of vitrine art called camaïeu—of cameo or chiaroscuro effect, using brown-gray hues, the yellow of silver-stain, a pale blue for the sky, and an occasional single touch of superb ruby red. One of the windows of Raphaelesque design represents St. Alpin, bishop of Châlons, meeting Attila the Hun; another, dated 1539, is a rendering of the Vision of Augustus, a theme most popular then.
Peter the Venerable called Châlons “great and illustrious.” Guillaume de Champeaux, one of the most learned men of the age, whose schoolroom was really the beginning of the University of Paris, was bishop of Châlons in 1115 when a young Burgundian named Bernard came to be consecrated abbot of Clairvaux. In the monk of twenty-five, unknown yet to fame, the great teacher was swift to recognize a supreme spiritual genius. In 1147 St. Bernard preached at the dedication of the Romanesque cathedral of Châlons before Pope Eugene III, who had been one of his own Cistercian monks at Clairvaux. The present tower to the north of the choir belonged to the church that Bernard knew. The south tower, its mate, is of the XIII century. The placing of belfries on either side of the choir was a Rhenish trait.
In 1230 Châlons Cathedral was wrecked by lightning. Its reconstruction began with the choir, under Bishop Pierre de Nemours, whose brothers were building-prelates at Noyon, Paris, and Meaux. In 1250 work on the nave was going on, and at the end of the century was built the transept’s excellent north façade. The XVII century erected the unsuitable neo-classic west frontispiece, yet at the same time, curiously enough, the two westernmost bays were constructed in perfect imitation of Apogec Gothic. It remains an open question whether the same Renaissance century made the apse chapels after a fire in 1668. Some say they are of the XIV century, that the choir, as first built, had no ambulatory, but that one was added soon after, with radial chapels.
There is a noble purity in Châlons Cathedral, due in large part to its soaring monolithic piers. No church is richer in tombstones, and its stained glass is plenteous. In the eastern clearstory are three lovely silver and blue XIII-century windows; the north rose of the transept is early XIV century and the first window in the nave’s south aisle is another good example of that period. The same aisle shows a brilliant XV-century light, ruby red in effect, and a window of 1509, wherein the Blessed Virgin’s life is explained by quaint inscriptions. Some XII-century glass from Châlons Cathedral is in the Trocadéro Museum at Paris.
Just as Champagne had proved herself a pioneer in the first days of the national art, so she distinguished herself in later times when Rayonnant Gothic turned to Flamboyant art. Among the few churches built during the transition between those two phases is the cathedral-like Notre-Dame-de-l’Épine, in the fields a few miles from Châlons-sur-Marne, a link connecting St. Urbain at Troyes with the goodly array of Flamboyant buildings that sprang up in the ancient capital of Champagne. The interior proportions of Notre-Dame-de-l’Épine resemble those of Rheims Cathedral, and its rood screen recalls the jubé of the Madeleine church at Troyes.
But revenons à nostro matière, as dear Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, would say. The reason for the wealth of architecture and its allied arts and crafts in the region of which Troyes is the center was because the ancient city, so unnoted in to-day’s activities, lay on the mediæval highway of commerce, and under its enterprising rulers became the scene bi-yearly of a fair to which all Europe flocked. To this day we use Troy weight. The counts of Champagne safeguarded the visiting merchants and fostered commerce by wise laws. Their money passed in Rome and Venice as freely as in Provins and Troyes. Lavish and art-loving were the Champagne rulers; one of them founded Clairvaux in lower Champagne; another rebuilt the Cistercian church of Pontigny, just over the border in Burgundy. They were indefatigable crusaders, some of them winning thrones in the East. And their alliances constantly enriched their stock with new qualities, as when Count Henry the Magnificent wedded, in 1164, the daughter of Louis VII by Aliénor of Aquitaine. That Countess Marie—the suer comtessa to whom her half brother, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, addressed his famous prison song—made of her court of Champagne a school of good manners with all the ceremonial of the Midi’s cour d’amour. What M. Gaston Paris calls poet-laureates’ work, poésie courtoise, became the vogue, and the Countess Marie herself wrote in the troubadour manner. She encouraged the best of the XII-century poets, Crestien de Troyes (d. 1175), suggesting to him the romances of the Breton cycle, Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival.[152] Through Crestien the story of the Holy Grail spread over Europe. In him the trouvères new ideals of chivalry met the Midi’s refined gallantry, and the Celtic themes which he versified brought what was needed of passion and profundity.
All Europe then drew its poetic inspirations from the matière de France, as France in her turn was enriching herself from the inexhaustible matière de Bretagne. The XII-century French trouvères were imitated by the German Minnesingers, by the early songsters of England, Spain, and Portugal, and in Italy the precursors of Dante preferred the use of the Romance tongues of France. In the fecund hour wherein our modern civilization was conceived, France gave to the Western World her architecture, her sculpture, and her poetry. At the cathedral doors of Verona, Roland and Oliver were sculpted.
The international city of Troyes saw the creation of the Templars Order at her Council of 1128, whither had come Hugues de Payns, a knight related to the reigning counts. Taking part in the First Crusade, he proved himself a true prud’homme in Palestine by forming a band of volunteer knights to escort unprotected pilgrims. At the Council of Troyes he won recognition for his monk-knights. St. Bernard championed them, drew up their rule, and gave them their white robe and red cross. With the birth of the national art rose this great military Order and with its decline it was stricken down. When the lust of gain replaced aspiration, men no longer went crusading or built cathedrals.