George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AT SOISSONS

Few things are more impressive than the cathedral of Laon, even in its present state: and what must it not have been with its central steeple and the six towers and spires which once adorned its several fronts, rising, as they all did, from the summit of a mighty hill, seen on all sides for many a long mile by the dwellers in the plain which stretches away from its feet! And yet, magnificent as is the cathedral of Laon, it is one only among many; and such a city as Soissons, inferior as it is in situation, affords nevertheless in its architectural remains, matter of almost equal interest.

The general view of Soissons, obtained from the distance, is striking only for its architectural character. The effect is mainly attributable to the fact, that in addition to the cathedral, with its lofty south-west steeple, the town also contains the west front, with two towers and spires, of the ruined abbey of S. Jean des Vignes. It is to this ruin that the eye first turns in anticipation of discovering the famous cathedral of the city; but a little acquaintance with the details of the two buildings leaves no room to doubt that the cathedral, with its lonely steeple, is nevertheless by very much the most interesting and noble example of art which the city contains.

Let us at once, then, bend our steps thither. We shall find a church, the greater part of which dates probably from the end of the twelfth or the first years of the thirteenth century, whilst its plan is very remarkable, and its details in some parts of exquisite beauty. In plan it consists of two western towers (one of which only is built), nave and aisles of seven bays, transepts (of which more presently), a choir of five bays, and an apse of five sides; chapels are obtained between the buttresses of the choir, and the apse is surrounded by an aisle and five chapels; these chapels are circular in plan at the ground line, octagonal above, and are groined with a vault which covers the aisle also; this is a mode which is seldom satisfactory in execution, and a falling off from the structural truth of those plans in which the groining of each chapel is complete in itself, and distinct from that of the aisle. The south transept is finished with an apse, and has a small circular chapel of two stages in height attached on its south-eastern side. The north transept is square-ended and of later date.

It is impossible to examine Soissons cathedral without having recollections of several other churches forced upon the mind. At Noyon, for instance, we have a grand example of a church of the same date, both of the transepts of which are apsidal; but the south transept of Soissons has a great advantage over its neighbour, in that it has an aisle round the transept opening with three arches, supported upon slender and lofty shafts, into each bay, both on the ground level and in the triforium. Indeed there are few fairer works of the period than this south transept of Soissons; for whether we regard its plan, general scheme, or detail of design and sculpture, all alike show the presence of a master hand in its conception and execution;—the same hand, I suppose, as is seen at Noyon, but at a slightly later period. Then, again, a comparison of Soissons with Meaux will show so great a similarity of plan, dimensions, and design in their eastern apses, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they were the works of the same man, and at about the same time. And each of these churches has nevertheless some one special feature of its own, wherein it is unique and unmatched; Soissons has its exquisite south transept, Noyon its western porch, and Laon its cluster of steeples, by which every one who has seen them must especially have been struck.

One of the features which most marks the churches of this school is the fourfold division in height of the main walls. There is first the arcade, then the triforium[24] (which is large, groined, and lighted with its own windows), then a blank arcade which is analogous to the triforia of our English churches, and lastly the clerestory. I cannot say that this arrangement is ever pleasing. The clerestory always looks disproportionately small and dwarfed, and the blank arcade below it rather unmeaning, whilst all the divisions have the appearance of being cramped and confined. At Soissons it occurs in the south transept, but not in the nave—where we see the usual triple division. Some of the capitals here are well sculptured, though generally very simply, and in the transept they are often held with iron ties (as in Italian examples) to resist the thrust of the groining. I should notice that the whole of the walling in this transept is circular on plan; this is generally a mark of early date, and though it gave rise to some complexity in the arches and groining, it undoubtedly often produces a very charming effect. The windows of the three eastern chapels are full of richly-coloured early glass, rather rudely drawn and executed; some of it, I suspect, came from the clerestory, the eastern portion of which is still full of similar glass. The clerestory has large lancet windows and flying buttresses of two stages in height, with the arches supported upon detached shafts, and a passage behind the lower order on a level with the sill of the clerestory windows.

On the exterior, one of the most noticeable features is that the ridge of the south transept roof rises no higher than the eaves of the rest of the church. Yet such is the care with which the design is managed, that this smallness of scale is not noticed, until from a distance a general view of the building is obtained, when it looks undoubtedly very lop-sided.

From the cathedral one goes naturally to the ruined but still imposing church of the great abbey of S. Jean des Vignes. The west front of this church is exactly in a line with that of the cathedral, at a distance of about a furlong; and standing on higher ground, and still retaining its two towers and spires, it produces a greater effect in the general views of the city. It is now the centre of the arsenal, with powder-stores, piles of shot, and various other preparations all around it, which afford subject for rather gloomy forebodings, in case Soissons should again suffer (as it has so often already suffered) the danger of a siege. The remains of the church are almost confined to the steeples and west front. The lower portions of these date from the thirteenth century, but the upper portion is all of a very ornate and rather late middle-pointed style; they are very pyramidal in their outline, and have a rather heavy arrangement of pinnacles at the base of the spires. The belfry-window of the north-west tower has a very large stone crucifix contrived against its monial and tracery; there is a canopy in the tympanum over the head of our Lord, and the tracery seems to have been designed with a special view to the introduction of the figure. The spires are crocketed on the angles, scalloped on the face, and pierced with alternate slits and quatrefoils. The sculpture of this front is not of very good character. From the south of the south-west tower extends a remarkably fine portion of the domestic buildings of the abbey, two stages in height, and eight bays in length. Its south end has the favourite French arrangement of a central buttress between two large circular windows, with two lancet windows in the gable. On the west side each bay has a fine simple pointed window: whilst on the east side the lower part is concealed by the cloister, and the upper stage has a row of plain circular windows, similar to those at the south end. The steep-pitched roof still remains, and the whole building is a very fine relic, even among the relics of this kind in which France is so peculiarly rich. The remains of the cloister are in a very dilapidated state. Drawings which I had seen of it had prepared me for earlier and better work than I found. I imagine that it is not earlier than circa A.D. 1300. The sculptured foliage is in exact imitation of nature, very pretty, and no more. It is, however, singularly instructive, as it illustrates just the kind of work which our English carvers are most prone to introduce just now, and which is generally (as it is here) very ineffective for want of due architectural subordination. The windows of this cloister are of four lights, with geometrical tracery; but the chief peculiarity is the treatment of the buttresses, which are angular on the face, and above the springing of the windows crocketed on the angles. Had the sculpture been fifty years earlier in date, it would, I have no doubt, have been a singularly beautiful cloister. A doorway which opened from the cloister to the church is peculiarly flat in its mouldings and sculpture, but remarkable for the still existing traces of painting over its whole surface. The foundations of the east wall show that the church was not of any great length from east to west.

The church of S. Léger is the finest edifice after these of which the city can now boast. Anywhere its transepts and choir would be of great interest for their early thirteenth-century date, and their good architectural character. The church consists of a nave and aisles of six bays (of which the four western are Renaissance), transepts of two bays in depth, and a choir without aisles, which has one bay of sexpartite groining, and an apse of seven sides. The detail is very much the same as in the cathedral. The clerestory windows in the apse are lancets, and in the rest of the church of two lights with tracery, consisting of a cusped circle within an enclosing arch. In these Soissonnais churches the label generally has a ball or four-leaved flower at intervals. There is a procession path or passage, with openings in the buttresses, round the church outside the clerestory windows, dividing the church very markedly into two divisions in height, and recalling to memory the very similar arrangement in the church of S. Elizabeth at Marburg. The transept has fine angle pinnacles and a large three-light window with early tracery, whilst the cloister is somewhat similar to that of S. Jean des Vignes. Stepped gables are a favourite feature here even in early work. The aisles of S. Léger are so finished, as is also an early building by the side of the cathedral.

The church of S. Pierre, which is desecrated, has a west front of much interest. It has a nave and aisles, three western doorways (whereof the central is pointed, the others round), and a single wide, round-arched window over each door. The detail is peculiar,—of late Romanesque character, and effective. Only two bays of the nave remain. The labels and string-courses have a dogtooth enrichment, whilst the cornice above them is adorned with a regular acanthus-leaf. The shafts of the west door are fluted; and in this, as in the quadruple arrangement in height, which I have already noticed as a frequent characteristic of the Soissonnais churches, I suspect we may trace the influence of the grand church of S. Remi at Rheims.