Close to the great gate of the Abbey, in the Rue d'Avril, a narrow street leading upwards out of the Rue de la République, are a number of those Romanesque houses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for which Cluny is famous. Up to about sixty years ago, whole streets of this little Burgundian town had remained for seven or eight centuries almost unchanged, but the utilitarian and commercial spirit of the age has made itself felt, even in this out of the way corner of Burgundy, and, one by one, the Romanesque houses are disappearing. Two remain, however, in the middle of the town; and, in addition to those in the Rue d'Avril, there are two adjoining one another in the Rue de la République, above the Hotel de Ville. Beside these is a house of the fifteenth century. Indeed, it would be still possible, in this town, to trace the evolution of domestic architecture, almost without a break, from the twelfth century to the present time.
The Romanesque houses of Cluny follow, pretty closely, a general type. The window arcades reveal at once the great influence of the abbey church. The majority of these houses are what we call terrace-built; and are entered from the street by a door which opens into the front room, or shop, and leads up the staircase to the first floor. At the back of the front room or shop was an open court yard, with a well in one corner of it. Across the court yard a covered passage led to a kitchen at the back. The upper floor was similar in design, with a roofed gallery leading to a room above the kitchen. The first floor front room was the bedroom of the tenant, his wife, and children; while the servants and apprentices did as best they could in the attic above; for the practice of rigidly separating the sexes did not come in until the twelfth century. Each house showed a pleasing elevation, and was erected with a solidity and elegance of design far excelling anything seen in the same class of building to-day. The shop front was formed by one great arch, without windows, but closed at night by a shutter, which, dropped during the day, formed a counter for the exhibition of the shopman's wares. Customers did not enter the shop, but transacted their business across the counter, and no tradesman might call a purchase from another shop until the latter had finished his business. Different trades were kept together in particular streets—hence such names as the Rue des Tanneurs, which still exists in Cluny. Above the ground floor were two other stories, of which the upper one was generally lighted by an arcade of round-headed arches, imitated from the Abbey, with sculptured piers or colonnettes, surmounted by a carved cornice or architrave, and protected by overhanging eaves.[93]
These charming houses were among the earliest examples of domestic architecture in stone, and it is very interesting to notice that the builders have made no attempt to adhere to the principles of wooden construction; but have followed the right masters, the ecclesiastical builders. One of the best of the old houses is that popularly known as the Hotel des Monnaies, on the right as you go up the Rue d'Avril. In this case the windows are square-headed, but the most interesting characteristics are the projecting chimney, and the great arches, revealing the extraordinary thickness of the walls, a feature which lends some colour to the legend that this is the old mint of the Abbey. I will not mention any more particular houses; only let me assure the reader that he who walks the streets of Cluny remembering that the older portions of it are built with the very stones of the ruined abbey, will assuredly have his reward.
The churches of the town are not particularly interesting. St. Marcel, a somewhat barrack-like building of the twelfth century, at the station end of the town has a good Clunisian clock-tower. The building is roofed with wood, because, having no buttresses, it would not stand the thrust of vaulting. The église Notre Dame, in the centre of the town, is more attractive; though its thirteenth-century façade is mutilated. Birds rest upon the backs of the gargoyles, and upon the ends of the broken shafting; and dirty children play, all day long, upon the steps of the porch. The interior, however, has some good work in the capitals, mouldings, and vaulting shafts of the nave. The engaged vaulting shafts of the aisles are probably remains of an older church, as they have squared plinths and clawed angles, transitional in style. If anyone cares to see to what a plight the lost art of making stained glass can come, let him look at the tympanum of the door of Notre Dame de Cluny. The building adjoining the church has a Renaissance door, and a thirteenth-century arcade on the upper floor.
There are two other houses, at least, in Cluny, to which, I suppose, I should draw attention. The first of them is the Hotel Dieu, a seventeenth-century building on the site of the old hospital of Cluny, of which a few vestiges yet remain. Neither the architecture, nor the kindred arts of that period, have ever aroused much enthusiasm in me; consequently, I remember almost nothing of the fabric itself, and my general impression is little more than a blaze of garden flowers, tempered by delicious palm-leaves, and dotted here and there with pale invalids, chatting in groups, or walking or sitting beside the flowers. Within the entrance hall the frail voices of nuns earnestly intoning prayers in unison awakened the religious spirit within me far more effectively than had the deserted nave of Notre Dame, or of St. Marcel. Their solemn chant and the austere cleanliness that reigned everywhere, awed me so that I crept out on tip-toe into sunlight again, without more than a glance at the famous Bouillon statues that I had come there expressly to see.
The Cardinal de Bouillon, abbot of Cluny from 1683 to 1715, had intended to erect, to the memory of his father and mother, at the southern end of the small transept of the abbey church—opposite to the Chappelle Bourbon—a monumental tomb that should be worthy of a family and individual so illustrious as that brother of Turenne, who had faced Richelieu, and played a leading part in the Fronde.
But the cardinal had reckoned without Louis XIV. That monarch, hearing of the project, made further inquiries; and decided, as the report of d'Aguerriau, which preceded the royal veto, put it, "That every part of this design tended equally to preserve and immortalize, by the religion of an ever-durable tomb, the too-ambitious pretensions of its author towards the origin and grandeur of his house."