TRÈVES CATHEDRAL
There are two curious statues in the portal of Notre Dame; one representing the Church and the other the synagogue; the one with a clear, straightforward look in her eyes, the other blindfolded and with the crown falling from her head. The symbol is frequently met with, but the method of indicating the opposition of the new religious law to that of the old is, in these life-size statues, at Trèves, perhaps unique. The figures are somewhat mutilated, each lacking the arms, but in other respects they stand as originally conceived.
The cathedral of St. Pierre et Ste. Hélène is situated in the most elevated portion of the city, and, like the cathedral at Bonn, above Cologne, presents that curious pyramidal effect so often remarked in Rhenish churches.
There is no very great beauty in the outlines of this church, which is a curious jumble[{215}] of towers and turrets; but there are some very good architectural details, quite worthy of a more splendid edifice. Ste. Hélène, the mother of Constantine, herself placed the first stone in the easterly portion of the present church, a fact which was only discovered in the seventeenth century, when the foundations were being repaired. It is supposed originally to have been a part of the palace of the Empress Hélène, afterward converted into a house of God.
One notes in the interior a remarkably beautiful series of Corinthian columns with elaborately carved capitals of the eleventh century. In later years these have been flanked by supporting pillars which detract exceedingly from the beauty of the earlier forms.
In parts the edifice is frankly French Gothic, Byzantine, and what we know elsewhere as Norman,—a species of the Romanesque.
In 1717 the church suffered considerably by fire, but it was repaired forthwith, and to-day gives the effect of a fairly well cared for building of three naves and a double choir.
There are sixteen altars, some of which are[{216}] modern, and two organs, cased as usual in hideous mahogany.
The high altar and the pulpit are excellently sculptured, and there are some notable monuments to former archbishops and electors.[{217}]