[CHAPTER XI]
Tournus is an attractive old town, lying asleep on a hill beside the Saône. Through it ran, north and south, the old Roman road of Agrippa. Its chief monument, the church of the ancient abbey of St. Philibert, whether viewed from within or from without, is one of the most striking examples I know, of the barbaric majesty of early Burgundian art. The grim façade, with its two-storied narthex of three bays—the oldest Clunisian porch—and its machicolations and towers, recalls the fortified churches of Provence and Languedoc, built when the southern land still shook with fear at the thought of the northern "crusaders," or the sea-pirates of the south. Nor does the sight of the interior do other than confirm that impression.
Passing through the lower storey of the gloomy portal, that might well have served to imprison the bodies of men—just as, symbolically, it was a shadowy ante-chamber, a purgatory of souls not yet fitted for the full light of Paradise—we emerged into a church whose rugged strength had in it something awful and menacing, suggestive of a period even more barbaric than that eleventh century in which the nave and narthex were built.
This impression may possibly have a historical as well as an imaginative basis, owing to the fact that the church has been twice destroyed—first by the Huns, and later by fire—both disasters occurring so soon after construction, that the original design may have been adhered to closely.[130]
Several points of detail catch the eye immediately, especially one most unusual feature—that the axes of the barrelling are at right angles to the longitudinal axes of the church. One notices also the great height of the aisles, and the transfer of capitals from their usual position on the columns of the nave, to the vaulting shafts. The aisle columns are engaged in the wall. The apse has a fine ambulatory, and five square radiating chapels. This part of the church dates from the latter part of the eleventh century, and contrary to the evidence of the square chapels, which are somewhat Cistercian, was built under Clunisian influence. Roman example also is apparent. Over the transept is a fine central tower of the twelfth century, beneath which is a dome with Burgundian fluted pilasters. The general barbarity of the romanesque is lightened in the apse by carved shafts, of great delicacy and beauty, which have been selected by Viollet-le-Duc for illustrating the section on colonnettes in his "Dictionnaire Raisonné."
The lower part of the narthex, or rather its extraordinarily massive pillars, are generally attributed to the tenth century; the towers, both of which have some good carving, to the eleventh; and the upper part of the south-west tower to the twelfth. The upper chamber of the narthex, loopholed in several places, was probably intended for the defence of the abbey,[131] further security being afforded by the enceinte and gate, of which the round tower opposite formed part. A door opened from the upper narthex to the interior of the church, so that defenders might attend the office.
The crypt, which occupies the whole of the space beneath the choir, has many pillars, so cunningly disposed that they give to this part of the church an appearance of much greater size than is really the case. It contains several relics of the past, notably a wooden vierge of the twelfth century, the sarcophagus of St. Valérien, and a twelfth century fresco, the earliest of its kind in the department. The central chapel in the crypt is the best part of the building, architecturally; though the beautiful columns and capitals of the eleventh century, including two Roman ones, do not harmonize well with the primitive roof.