XX
STE. CÉCILE D'ALBI
The cathedral of Ste. Cécile d'Albi is one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most curious, in all France. It possesses a quality, rare among churches, which gives it at once the aspect of both a church and a fortress.
As the representative of a type, it stands at the very head of the splendid fortress-churches of feudal times. The remarkable disposition of its plan is somewhat reflected in the neighbouring cathedral at Rodez and in the church at Esnades, in the Department of the Charente-Inférieure.
In the severe and aggressive lines of the easterly, or choir, end, it also resembles the famous church of St. Francis at Assisi, and the ruined church of Sainte Sophie at Famagousta in the Island of Cyprus.
It has been likened by the imaginative French—and it needs not so very great a stretch of the imagination, either—to an immense vessel. Certainly its lines and proportions somewhat approach such a form; as much so as those of Notre Dame de Noyon, which Stevenson likened to an old-time craft with a high poop. A less æsthetic comparison has been made with a locomotive of gigantic size, and, truth to tell, it is not unlike that, either, with its advancing tower.
The extreme width of the great nave of this church is nearly ninety feet, and its body is constructed, after an unusual manner, of a warm, rosy-coloured brick. In fact the only considerable portions of the structure not so done are the clôture of the choir, the window-mullions, and the flamboyant Gothic porch of the south side.
By reason of its uncommon constructive elements,—though by no means is it the sole representative of its kind in the south of France,—Ste. Cécile stands forth as the most considerable edifice of its kind among those which were constructed after this manner of Roman antiquity.
Brickwork of this nature, as is well known, is very enduring, and it therefore makes much for the lasting qualities of a structure so built; much more so, in fact, than the crumbling soft stone which is often used, and which crumbles before the march of time like lead in a furnace.