George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers

by George Edmund Street

I must conclude my long notice of this church by some mention of the extensive remains of painted decorations still visible. During the late restorations of the cathedral, I understand from M. Aymard, the greater portion were destroyed. The vaults of the north transept and the semi-domes of its apsidal recesses are still, however, covered with paintings, though they are scarcely intelligible, owing to darkness and dirt. In one of them occurs a figure of our Lord giving the benediction in the Greek fashion, and it is one of the many evidences which may be adduced of the Eastern influence visible here in so many respects, though I am not disposed to lay so much stress upon it as some of those did who engaged in the controversy it occasioned.[47] In the western porch there are also extensive remains of painting; the soffits of the arches in the third bay from the west are all painted, and so too are the walls over the altars in the chapels of S. Martin and S. Gilles. The painting was executed on a thick coat of plaster, and the nimbi are of gold with lines incised on them. No doubt the whole church once glittered with gold and colour, and, seeing how fine its effect still is, we may, aiding the indications still left with our recollections of Assisi, of Venice, and of Padua, people the bare walls once again, and bring before our eyes an interior of the most gorgeous magnificence.

I may conclude what I have to say about the cathedral with a few words about the sacristy and its contents. The building itself is not more than a hundred and fifty years old, and most of its treasures have been lost. The most precious relic still left is a Bible, which, by a note at its end, is stated to have been written by S. Théodulf, Bishop of Orléans, in the ninth century, and sent by him, in accomplishment of a vow, to the shrine of Notre Dame du Puy. It is a quarto of 347 leaves of very fine vellum, some white with black letters, and others purple or violet with gold or silver letters. It contains the Old and New Testament, commentaries on the text, interpretations of Hebrew, Greek and Latin words, and some poems by Théodulf. The pages are interleaved with excessively delicate tissues of various colours and patterns, which appear to be of the same age as the book, and of Eastern manufacture. They are made of china crêpe, cotton, silk, linen, poil-de-chèvre, and camel’s hair, of extreme fineness, and of various colours and patterns.[48] The binding is, however, later, and of red velvet on chamfered oak boards, with good simple metal knobs. There are also preserved here some wax candles, tapering considerably in their length, and stamped with a pattern made by a pointed instrument; and, finally, there is a tippet embroidered with a tree of Jesse, said to have been of Charlemagne’s time. It is not so old as is said, but may possibly be (though I very much doubt it) of the twelfth or thirteenth century, but it has been much damaged by removal from its original ground and by partial re-working. The sacristy also contains a reliquary of very late sixteenth-century date, of which a photograph has been published by M. Aymard, but which was not shown to me; and an almost endless roll of vellum illuminated with a chronological tree of the history of the world.

How much has been lost may be guessed from some statistics which I have come upon as to the number of silversmiths and specimens of their work in Le Puy in the Middle Ages: in A.D. 1408 there were no less than forty resident in the city, whilst as to their work I find in A.D. 1444 there were in the sacristy 33 châsses and reliquaries, 26 chalices, 11 statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels, and other figures, 10 candelabra, 9 crosses, 9 lamps, 9 mitres, crosses with their stems, episcopal rings, crowns for the Virgin, censers, paxes, basins, plates, books with covers adorned with chasings, pearls and precious stones, and many like things; and in A.D. 1475 I find that Louis XI. gave 30 silver marks for a canopy over the miracle-working figure of Notre Dame du Puy, which was made by François Gimbert, a silversmith of Le Puy. Other churches in the neighbourhood have been more fortunate in retaining some of their old plate, and a fair list might be made out, if I had time, of their possession, many of which have been photographed by M. Aymard.

The building of the greatest interest, after the cathedral, is the little church of S. Michel, which crowns the rock fitly called the Aiguille. It is reached by steps winding irregularly round the rock, to the shape of the summit of which it has been most ingeniously adapted. The oldest portion of the building is the square choir, covered with a dome, under which stands the principal altar. To the (ritual) east and north of this are apsidal projections, and to the south an archway, which as it agrees exactly in dimensions with the others, opened, no doubt, into a third apsidal chapel, like the others, whilst the entrance was at the west. This archway now leads into a chapel of very irregular form, part of which extends over the porch of entrance, in the arrangement of which one may trace a certain kind of analogy to that of the cathedral, though it is perhaps older. West of the choir is a nave, somewhat like a cone in plan, and surrounded by an aisle, from which it is divided by arches supported on slender shafts. The choir has a square domical vault, and the chapel over the porch a true dome, the pendentives under which are just like those of S. Fosca at Torcello. The apsidal chapels have semi-domes and the rest of the church has a waggon-vault of very irregular outline. An arcade against the walls of the side corresponds with that between the aisle and the nave. At the end of the nave is the tower, which was probably built at a slightly later date than the main building. The whole interior appears to have been richly painted, but faint indications only of this portion of the decoration remain. In the central dome there is a sitting figure of our Lord on the east side; emblems of the evangelists are at the angles, and angels and seraphim around our Lord. Below these is a line of single figures, six on each side—the four-and-twenty elders—and below this again are subjects, the whole combining together to make a very interesting example of the treatment of the Last Judgement. The dome of the chapel over the porch is also painted with our Lord, angels, and the evangelists.

THE TEMPLARS’ CHURCH AT SEGOVIA

The walls generally are built of lava, though a little white stone is used in the steeple and for the sculptured capitals.

The columns are very small, averaging eight inches in diameter, and decrease considerably in diameter from the base to the capital. The dimensions are exceedingly small, the central choir being only thirteen feet six inches in diameter, and the spaces between the principal columns in the nave varying from four feet to four feet nine inches. The effect is rather that of a crypt, but, in spite of its small size, it is solemn and religious.

The steeple suggests comparison, in some respects, with that of the cathedral; the arches are built with alternately light and dark voussoirs, and there is a peculiar spire-light rising out of the parapet, as to the antiquity of which I have my doubts.[49]

The only part in which any rich decoration has been introduced is the front of the porch. It has a semicircular arch, trefoiled above a horizontal lintel. The walls are richly inlaid, and there is also a good deal of sculpture. In the centre division of the trefoiled tympanum is an Agnus Dei, and there are figures kneeling and holding chalices within the cusps on either side. In the five divisions of the arcaded cornice are—in the centre our Lord, on His right S. Mary and S. John, and on His left S. Michael and S. Peter. The mosaic is executed with black tufa, red and white tiles, and a light yellow sandstone. I know no other example in this district of the use of tiles for inlaying, though M. Mallay mentions one at Merdogne in Auvergne, which he says is of the seventh century, though his dates are not always to be implicitly trusted; but at Lyon, in the extremely beautiful Romanesque domestic building called the Manécanterie, and at a slightly later date in the church of Ainay, in the same city, they are freely used and with admirable effect. Odo de Gissey, in his history of Le Puy, published in A.D. 1619, states that the first stone of S. Michel was laid in A.D. 965, and that the church was completed in A.D. 984, when Guy II. was bishop of Le Puy, “as one may learn from the ancient charter of its foundation, and from other manuscripts which I have read.” Brother Théodore, in his Histoire de l’Église Angélique de Notre Dame du Puy, A.D. 1693, says that the first stone was laid in August, 962, and that his statements are “derived from the deed for the foundation of the church, and from the book of obits in the cathedral.” These dates, if they refer to the existing building, can only do so to the central portion with its apses; the nave may have been added some time in the eleventh century, and the steeple, perhaps, in the course of the twelfth.