The Cathedrals of Northern France

by M. F. Mansfield

I
INTRODUCTORY

No arbitrary territorial arrangement can be made to include with exactness each and every ecclesiastical division, but, since the Royal Domain and the immediately adjacent territory includes the major portion of what are commonly accepted as the Grand Cathedrals, it has been thought permissible, in the present case, to make a further subdivision which shall include Boulogne and St. Omer, north of Paris; eastward to the Rhine and southward to include Dijon and Besançon. A topographer might not make such a division or arrangement of territory; but no other seems possible which shall include the region lying between the extremes of Besançon and Boulogne.

The local characteristics or architectural types differ widely within these limits, both as to style and excellence. In one way, only, have they advanced under conditions of unity, that of the establishment of a Christian church, but, otherwise, now favouring the northern influence and now the southern. The frontier provinces have, as a natural course, been subject to many retarding influences which have been wanting elsewhere; for invasion from without may be depended upon to be as baneful for the preservation of a nation's art treasures as a revolution from within. The Christian element early forced its way among the Franks, and Clovis, at the solicitation of his Christian queen and her bishop, was not averse to adopting what he might otherwise have regarded as a superstition. His conversion at Reims not only fostered and propagated Christianity, but gave an impetus to the foundation and building of churches in a most generous fashion.

The region to the eastward of Paris, which has played no unimportant part in the history of France, while prolific as to varied types of church building, possesses but one example of the very first rank,—and that, as a style which typifies Gothic art, may be said to rank supreme over all others,—Notre Dame de Reims. As the seat of the Metropolitain, and the City of Coronations, it was allied closely with early affairs of Church and State.

The principles and manner adopted by Guillaume of Sens in his great works early affected the style here, as seen by the many transition examples, just as the influence of the Monk of St. Bénigne of Dijon caused the round-arched species of the west of France. At all events the primitive Gothic influences were early at work and in a measure absorbed the Romanesque tendencies which had flourished previously.

The most notable exception, an example of the distinctly southern type, is at Besançon, which has a remarkable array of contrasting style, with the Romanesque, though not of the best, predominating.

With the cathedrals in the extreme northerly section we have little to do,—in fact there is little that can be said. St. Omer is possessed of a wonderful old church which at one time ranked as a cathedral, and which has glimpses here and there of very good Gothic. There are also, in this otherwise not very interesting city, two other church buildings worthy of more than an ordinary amount of attention, the ruins of the Abbey of St. Bertin and the Church of St. Denis.

Boulogne-sur-Mer has a modern pseudo-classical structure built well into the nineteenth century. It is more notable as a monument to the industry of the man who brought about its erection, taking the place of a former structure burnt during the Revolution, than as a satisfactory example of a great church. The same may be said with equal truth of the atrocious Renaissance and Pagan structures to be seen at Cambrai and Arras, though the conditions under which they were built differ. At Cambrai, however, the present building replaces a former structure levelled by fire.

Châlons-sur-Marne,—dear to every French patriot as being renowned for the manufacture of flags, a suffragan of Reims, has a remarkable cathedral of Romanesque foundation of the fifth to the seventh centuries. Its warlike record, from 273 A. D., when Aurelian vanquished Tetricus, to the occupation by the Germans in 1871, is one long succession of military affairs. To-day the city is the domicile of the most important army corps of France.

These towns, with Nancy, Toul, and St. Dié in the valley of the Moselle, complete the list of those cities which by any stretch of territorial boundaries could be classed under the head of "East of Paris."