The Spell of Switzerland

by Nathan Haskell Dole

“Yes, it’s sandstone.”

“It is called Lausanne stone. A good many of the old houses are built of it, and it came from just one quarry, now exhausted, I believe. It seems to have run very unevenly. Some of the big columns are badly eaten by the tooth of time; in others the details are just as fresh as if they had been done yesterday. Notice those quaint little figures kneeling and flying in the ogives of the portal; some are intact, others look as if mice had gnawed them. It is just the same with some of the fine old houses; one will be shabby and dilapidated; the very next will be well-preserved.”

“I think it is a rather attractive colour—that greyish-green with the bluish shadows.”

We stood for a while outside and looked up at the mighty walls and the noble portal. We walked round on the terrace from which one gets such a glorious view.

There is something solemn and almost disquieting in a religious edifice which has witnessed so many changes during a thousand years. Its very existence is a curious and pathetic commentary on the superstitions of men. Westerners, interpreting literally the symbolism of the Orient, believed that the world would come to an end at the end of the first millennium. It was a terrible, crushing fear in many men’s minds. When the dreaded climacteric had passed and nothing happened, and the steady old world went on turning just as it had, the pious resolved to express their gratitude by erecting a shrine to the Virgin Mother of God. Before it was completed its founder was assassinated. In the thirteenth century it was thrice devastated by fires which were attributed by the superstitious to the anger of God at the sins of the clergy and of the people. The statue of the Virgin escaped destruction and the church was rebuilt between 1235 and 1275. When it was consecrated, in October, 1275, Pope Gregory X, with the Emperor, Rudolf of Hapsburg, his wife and their eight children, and a brilliant crowd of notables, cardinals, dukes, princes and vassals of every degree, were present. The great entrance on the west was completed in the fifteenth century. The nave is three hundred and fifty-two feet long; its width is one hundred and fifty feet and it is divided into eight aisles. There are seventy windows and about a thousand columns, many of them curiously carved.

The well-known Gate of the Apostles is in the south transept. It commemorates only seven of them, though why that invidious distinction should have been made no one knows. Old Testament characters fill up the quota. These worthies stand on bowed and cowed demons or other enemies of the Faith.

In the south wall is the famous rose-window, containing representations of the sun and the moon, the seasons and the months, the signs of the zodiac and the sacred rivers of Paradise, and quaint and curious wild beasts which probably are visual traditions of the antidiluvian monsters that once inhabited the earth, and were still supposed to dwell in unexplored places.

The vaulting of the nave is sixty-two feet high. It gave plenty of room for the two galleries which once surmounted the elaborately carved façade. One of them was called the Monks’ Garden, because it was covered with soil and filled with brilliant flowers.

Back of the choir is a semicircular colonnade. The amount of detail lavished on the various columns is a silent witness of the cheapness of skilled labour and of the time people had to spend. The carved choir stalls, completed in 1506, were somehow spared by the vandal iconoclasts of the Reformation; but thirty years later Bern, when taking possession of Lausanne, carried off eighteen wagon-loads of paintings, solid gold and silver statues, rich vestments, tapestries, and all the enormous wealth contributed to the treasures of the church.

We were fortunate to find the cathedral still open, and in the golden afternoon light we slowly strolled through the silent fane—the word fane always sounds well. We paused in front of the various historic tombs. Especially interesting was that dedicated to the memory of Otho de Grandson, who, having been charged with having instigated the murder of Amadée VII, was obliged to enter into a judicial duel with Gérard d’Estavayer, the brother of the fair Catherine d’Estavayer whom he expected to marry.