Le Puy is hoary with history. Perched high on basaltic rocks near the source of the Loire, picturesque beyond description, it stood on the great pilgrimage route from Italy to Compostela, the Via Francigena by which French art and poetry passed into Spain and penetrated to Italy, along whose pilgrim roads are found portal images of the Round Table heroes and the sculptured tympanums of France.[213] The cathedral is built near the top of the town’s hill, and above it on the hillcrest has been set a mammoth statue of Our Lady cast from cannon taken at Sebastopol. In the immediate suburbs rises another mass of volcanic rock, a needle some two hundred and fifty feet in height. The oldest part of the chapel crowning that extraordinary little basalt mountain dates before the year 1000. The sanctuary is trefoil, like the early-Christian churches at Rome, and like St. Laurent at Grenoble.[214] At the end of the XI century St. Michel d’Aiguille was enlarged irregularly. From time immemorial a shrine dedicated to the Archangel has crowned the pinnacle: “In the presence of angels I shall sing my psalms.”
The approach to the cathedral of Le Puy, while less difficult than the precipitous needle of St. Michel, is equally romantic and solemn. You mount the hill by the Street of Tables, so called from the days of pilgrimages, when the merchants’ booths lined it. As you climb, the way changes to a broad flight of steps, more than a hundred, and up and up you mount, with the polychromatic façade of the cathedral rising before you on high. Then suddenly, almost before you are aware of what has happened, you pass right under that western front of the church, ascending always, climbing under the cathedral’s western bays. Formerly you could have mounted right into the very sanctuary itself, coming to it through the pavement. To-day the stairway branches, and you enter the church at the side. Never was there such an approach to the House of Prayer as this, never a more sublime and grandiose conception than the shadowed stair over which hangs the façade. Halfway up, where stand red porphyry columns and doors of chiseled bronze, is carved, “If you do not fear crime, fear to cross this threshold, for the Queen of Heaven wishes a devotion without stain.”
M. Thiollier has shown that the Romanesque school of the Velay region was an intermediary between Burgundy, Auvergne, and the Midi, with the meridional influences the strongest. Le Puy’s choir, transept, and two bays of the nave were erected in the XI century, and of that date is the cloister walk that touches the church. The transept has a tribune at each end. Beyond the chevet stood a tower of which the actual one is a replica. As all the level space available was covered by these structures, it became necessary, when they wished to lengthen the nave in the XII century, to build out from the hill a vast masonry foundation as a platform. It is under those westernmost bays that mounts the stairway of Wonderland. Each bay of the nave is covered by an oblong cupola set on an octagonal base, of a type found again only at Poitiers, in the church of St. Hilaire. At Le Puy the side aisles buttress the cupolas.
No one should miss seeing a XV-century fresco discovered under whitewash, in 1860, in the library off the cloister. The Liberal Arts are symbolized by women of the type of Anne of Brittany with bombous foreheads, and at the feet of each sits a disciple. Thus Aristotle, with the sensitive face of a scholar, is seated at the feet of Logic, and Cicero learns of Rhetoric.
The cathedral of Le Puy has been venerated and visited by practically every ruler of France from Charlemagne to Francis I. This ancient city was almost chosen as the meeting place for launching the First Crusade. Urban II paused here in 1095, and the bishop of Le Puy, Adhémar de Monteil (1087-1100), accompanied him to Clermont, and when the pope’s great rallying speech was ended it was Bishop Adhémar, his face shining with enthusiasm, who first stepped forward to take the cross. Urban appointed him the spiritual chief of the expedition, and his skill in military strategics proved of use since he had been a knight before becoming a churchman. This good man died in the grievous days at Antioch, worn out with his efforts to check disorders in the crusaders’ camp. To Adhémar de Monteil has been attributed the Salve Regina called in the olden times the anthem of Puy. To Le Puy’s famous shrine St. Louis presented a thorn from the Crown he had obtained from Constantinople, and on his way back from his first crusade he deposited in the church the curious image of a black Virgin given him in Egypt.
THE CATHEDRAL OF LIMOGES[215]
Bien me sourit le doux printemps,
Qui fait venir fleurs et feuillages;
Et bien me plait lorsque j’entends
Des oiseaux le gentil ramage.
Mais j’aime mieux quand sur le pré
Je vois l’étendard arboré,
Flottant comme un signal de guerre.
Quand j’entends par mont et par vaux
Courir chevalier et chevaux
Et sous leur pas frémir la terre,
Et gens crier: “A l’aide! A l’aide!”
De voir les petits et les grands
Dans les fossés roulers mourants.
A ce plaisir tout plaisir cède.[216]
—Bertran de Born (1140-1215).
Although in plan, in the mode of construction, in the covering of chapels and various details, the resemblances between the cathedrals of Clermont and Limoges are such that it is thought the same Jean Deschamps designed both, the cathedral of St. Étienne at Limoges possesses its own individual character because of the fine-grained, compact granite of which it is built and the unusual talent of its masons. M. Viollet-le-Duc considered the apse of Limoges one of the most scientific of Gothic constructions. The very beautiful leaf foliage is as crisply cut as when it came from the master’s hand. Full of character are the profiles of the molds used in the triforium for decorative effect.