No stranger ever yet entered Cologne without going straight to see its mighty Gothic cathedral. Three things come to him forcibly,—the fact that it was only completed in recent years, the great and undecided question as to who may have been its architect, and the "Legend of the Builder," as the story is known.
There are two legends of the cathedral and its builders which no visitor will ever forget.
The Architect of Cologne
Mighty was Archbishop Conrad de Hochsteden, for he was lord over the chief city of the Rhine, the city of Cologne; but his thoughts were troubled, and his heart was heavy, for, though his churches were rich beyond compare in relics, yet other towns not half so large or powerful as his had cathedrals whose fame extended over Europe, and whose [{233}]beauty brought pilgrims to their shrines, profit to the ecclesiastics, and business to the townspeople. After many sleepless nights, therefore, he determined to add to his city the only thing wanting to complete it, and, sending for the most famous architect of the time, he commissioned him to draw the plans for a cathedral of Cologne.
GENERAL
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COLOGNE
Now the architect was a clever man, but he was more vain than clever. He had a vague idea of the magnificence which he desired to achieve without a clear conception of how he was to do it, or without the will to make the necessary sacrifices of labour, care, and perseverance. He received the commission with great gladness, and gloated for some days upon the fame which would be his as the builder of the structure which the archbishop desired; but when, after this vision of glory, he took his crayons to sketch out the design, he was thrown into the deepest despondency. He drew and drew, and added, and erased, and corrected, and began again, but still did not succeed. Not a plan could he complete. Some were too mean, others too extravagant, and others, when done and examined, were found to be good, but not original. Efforts of memory instead of imagination,[{234}] their points of excellence were but copies of other cathedrals,—a tower from one, a spire from another, an aisle from a third, and an altar from a fourth; and one after another they were cast aside as imperfect and useless, until the draughtsman, more than half-crazed, felt inclined to end his troubles and perplexities by a plunge into the Rhine.
In this mood of more than half-despair, he wandered down to the river's edge, and, seating himself upon a stone, began to draw in the sand with a measuring rod, which served as a walking-stick, the outlines of various parts of a church. Ground-plans, towers, finials, brackets, windows, columns, appeared one after another, traced by the point of his wand; but all, one after another, were erased as unequal and insufficient for the purpose, and unworthy to form a part of the design for a cathedral of Cologne. Turning around, the architect was aware that another person was beside him, and, with surprise, the disappointed draughtsman saw that the stranger also was busily making a design. Rapidly on the sand he sketched the details of a most magnificent building, its towers rising to the clouds, its long aisles and lofty choir stretching away before the eye of the startled architect,[{235}] who mentally confessed that it was indeed a temple worthy of the Most High. The windows were enriched by tracery such as artist never had before conceived, and the lofty columns reared their tall length toward a roof which seemed to claim kindred with the clouds, and to equal the firmament in expanse and beauty. But each section of this long-sought plan vanished the moment it was seen, and, with a complete conviction of its excellence, the architect was unable to remember a single line.
"Your sketch is excellent," said he to the unknown; "it is what I have thought and dreamed of,—what I have sought for and wished for, and have not been able to find. Give it to me on paper, and I will pay you twenty gold pieces."
"Twenty pieces! ha! ha! twenty gold pieces!" laughed the stranger. "Look here!" and from a doublet that did not seem big enough to hold half the money, he drew forth a purse that certainly held a thousand.