The chief Gothic churches of the Midi were built in the second half of the XIII and the first part of the XIV centuries. First there rose in central France the sister cathedrals of Clermont and Limoges—northern Gothic infused with the regional spirit. Directly derived from them are the cathedrals of Toulouse and Narbonne. Albi Cathedral was not begun till 1282. The choir of Bordeaux, built by the first of the Avignon popes, is a classic of Rayonnant Gothic, and so is that jewel of Carcassonne Cité, the whilom cathedral of St. Nazaire. St. Sauveur, at Aix-en-Provence, the cathedral of Rodez, and Béziers’ fortified church were the work of the successors of the apogee period of Gothic. At Montpellier, Mende, La Chaise Dieu, and Avignon, the XIV-century popes, all of whom were meridionals, built Gothic halls and chapels.
Memorable and interesting as are the Gothic monuments of the Midi, the traveler carries away the impression that the inmost soul of these central and southern provinces lingers most happily in the venerated shrines of Our Lady and St. Michael at Le Puy, in such churches as Notre Dame-du-Port, St. Sernin, St. Trophime, in the sculptured portal of St. Gilles, and in Maguelonne’s isolated cathedral of St. Peter.
CLERMONT-FERRAND[206]
Si c’est un aveuglement surnaturel de vivre sans chercher ce qu’on est, c’en est un terrible de vivre mal en croyant Dieu.... La conduite de Dieu, qui dispose toute choses avec douceur, est de mettre la religion dans l’esprit par les raisons, et dans le cœur par la grâce.—Pascal (1623-62; born in Clermont).
In mediæval reckoning that mountainous, central province of France which was called Auvergne was counted in Languedoc. Therefore, to place the cathedral of Clermont in this general group of Midi Gothic is permissible. It is a daughter of Amiens, of the northern French type, and yet it belongs in a marked degree to its own volcanic region of mountains and storms. In it is the endurance and sturdy individuality of Auvergne, the inmost heart of France, where the Romanesque work may be said to be indigenous, so directly does it derive from the local traditions of Rome grafted on those of Gaul, and scarcely touched by those of Byzantium.
The chief Gothic church of Clermont has in it much of Romanesque austerity. The black lava of which it is built sets it apart among French cathedrals. “A pious fear of God makes itself felt in this spot,” wrote a son of Clermont, Gregory of Tours, of the cathedral governed by Bishop Sidonius Apollinaris, Gallo-Roman and “last zealot for Latin letters.” And though not a stone of the present edifice is of historian Gregory’s day, one often murmurs in its precincts, “Terribilis est locus iste,” and one often experiences in this abode of Jehovah the Lord, un frisson d’âme à la Pascal. In Clermont, where even the serene Gothic art could not free itself of the fire-torn mountains around, the somber soul of Pascal first experienced religion. That he should overstress the fall of man and original sin, what wonder? But Jansenist in temperament though he was—overwhelmed by man’s nothingness and God’s grandeur—the mystic Pascal was no rigid pessimist. Cathedral and man of genius both preach the resurrection after the fall, both have the upward surge of hope, even as the fearful summit of the Puy-de-Dôme, standing over Clermont, outsoars the storm clouds hiding its base, to rear its head in sunlight.
For all its soberness, the cathedral of Clermont has the true Gothic sweep of the spirit au-delà. Happy the traveler who first approaches it at sunset, coming slowly across the mountain-walled plain, out of the Forez hills of rushing torrents where is set the Chaise Dieu. The cathedral crowns the foothill around which has settled the city, and as it stands silhouetted against a bluish haze of mountain—the extinct crater, the Puy-de-Dôme—it fulfills the ideal of a church crowning a city.[207] Seen from the town, the massed volcanic hills are sufficiently near for their woods and villages to add picturesque details to the ever-changing views, yet not so close that they hang oppressively over the city. Other views of the cathedral can be gained from the foothills around Royat, whose small, sturdy church was fortified to bar the valley into the huge mountain behind it.
Lava stone is dusty black, therefore on closer inspection Clermont Cathedral has somewhat the aspect of the smoke-stained churches in manufacturing centers. The gray-black Volvic stone is of better effect within the church, though at first that interior may strike a chill. Lava does not lend itself to sculptural decoration. However, the essential lines of Clermont are of such masterly proportions, of so grand a simplicity, that deeper and deeper grows the influence of this church on those who frequent it. The diagonals etched black against the white vault panels fall with peculiar ease and vigor on the tall dark piers. The slenderness of those clustered columns is not foolhardy, since lava has much resistant force. The single aisles of the choir and the double aisles of the nave rise to half the height of the church, and we have seen at Bourges and Le Mans that when pier arches are above the average height there is given to an edifice a note of exotic beauty. Like Amiens, the height of this church is three times greater than its width. Its vista is closed imposingly; the imaged windows of its high apsidal chapels appear symmetrically behind the arches that surround the sanctuary.
The story of the chief church of Auvergne interests the archæologist. The crypt belonged to the previous Carolingian church, and so did the two western towers until the XIX century. M. Viollet-le-Duc removed the ancient belfries, extended the nave by two bays, and built the present towers, whose sky-pointing spires are superb in the general view of Clermont, but whose details can be criticized, as, for instance, the blocking of corner niches by pinnacles when the purpose of a niche is to hold a statue. Modern Gothic is too often a cold, hard imitation. The stair approaches here lack the old-time amplitude of the triple portals.
The XIII-century cathedral of Clermont was practically the first Gothic monument raised in Auvergne, which province adhered stubbornly to its own exceptional Romanesque architecture. The first stone was laid in 1248, in the same year that Cologne Cathedral was begun. The founder, Bishop Hugues de la Tour, had attended the dedication of the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, and then had returned to Clermont to begin his own cathedral. That same year he started out as a crusader, in the train of Louis IX, but as he died in Egypt the work on the church was not continued seriously till 1253, when St. Louis helped to raise to the see of Clermont his friend Guy de la Tour, nephew of Hugues. Belonging to a feudal family of great possessions, the new bishop, too, was able to be munificent toward his cathedral.