Beneath the choir is a vast, antique crypt, which contains yet other sarcophagi filled,[{274}] presumably, with human bones. The pavement is composed of fragments of antique mosaic.
The Jesuit church at Cologne is one of the few Renaissance examples on the Rhine. It is, however, most unchurchly, when judged by French standards.
Certainly this German example is highly beautiful both in design and execution; but it is not churchly, and its great cylindrical columns, strung together by a gallery, give the appearance of a foyer in an opera-house or of a modern railway-station, rather than that of a place of worship.
It is all nave; there are no transepts, and there is no choir properly speaking, but merely a chancel, not very deep and again very unchurchly, with two ugly lights on either side, and a sort of pagoda-like screen which is decidedly theatrical. The carving of the pulpit and the disposition of all the decoration is extremely bizarre, but undeniably excellent in execution.
Cologne is an archbishopric which has for suffragan sees, Trèves, Münster, and Paderborn.
The abbeys and churches which were erected in Cologne, when the archbishop first[{275}] took up his residence there in the latter part of the eighth century, were numerous and exceedingly rich in endowment. So much was this so that Cologne was given the name of the "Holy City of the north."
The Jews of Cologne were a numerous body, but a decree of 1425 drove them all from the city. In 1618 a new decree likewise expelled the Protestants. Time regulated all this, but in those days Cologne clung proudly to the position which she had attained as a champion of the orthodox religion.
In all, there were two abbeys, two collegiate churches, the cathedral, forty-nine chapels, thirty-nine monasteries, two convents for women, and many commanderies of the Teutonic order and the Order of Malta.
Near Cologne is the fine old Cistercian abbey of Altenburg. It contains some very ancient coloured glass, perhaps the most beautiful of its era extant, for it is thought to date from between 1270 and 1300, when the art first attained any great excellence.
That which remains to-day shows foliage and diaper in great variety, with no figures whatever, this being a distinct tenet of the Cistercian builders, who, in the severity of their[{276}] rule, frowned down all decorative effects that bordered upon the frivolous.