Cathedral Cities of France

by R. W. S. Herbert Marshall; Hester Marshall

“Dans les choses nécessaire, l’unité; dans les douteuses, la liberté; dans tous les cas, la charité.” In these few words one may look for the keynote of Bossuet’s whole life. Temperate in all things, yet possessed with an eloquence more moving, it was said, than that of any man since the days of the Christian Fathers, and employed always in the cause of the Church he loved so well, the “Aigle de Meaux” well deserves his place among the greatest ecclesiastics France has ever known, and France, just at this time, was rich in ecclesiastical genius. There was Fénélon at Cambrai and Mascaron at Tulle, there were Massillon and Bourdaloue, Arnauld and Fleury—all of them men of note, both in the pulpit and in the world of books; but Bossuet stands out before them all.

He made an early entrance into the cultivated world, preaching his first sermon, upon a subject chosen at random, in the salon of the Hôtel Rambouillet, when hardly out of his teens; and the Marquis de Feuquières, who had introduced him into this society of Précieuses, soon found reason to be proud of his protégé. The young man was destined to go on as he had begun; a few more years saw him established as Canon of Metz, the close friend of Condé and of the Calvinist Paul Ferri, with whom he never tired of disputing theological questions in a perfectly amicable spirit, acting up to his maxim of “liberty in doubtful things”; and finally his reputation brought him to Paris, where he preached during Lent, 1656, and brought before the world the sermon as he created it, purified from the profanities of an immoral age, strengthened by his steadfast simplicity, and quickened by the fire of his eloquence. Bossuet found that in spite of himself his fame as an orator—a fame after which he had never striven—was firmly established in the capital, and after he had preached before the king in the chapel of the Louvre his success was practically assured. Honours and dignities came fast upon him; he became Bishop of Condom, and in the following year (1670) was entrusted with the education of the Dauphin, while the Académie Française opened its doors to his genius, and in 1681 he was appointed to the See of Meaux. Hardly had Bossuet settled down, however, in the quiet little évêché, with its pleasant green garden, than he was called out again into the world of noise and controversy. In 1682 Louis XIV. convoked the famous assembly of clergy to discuss the breach which had lately disclosed itself between the State of France and the Papacy. The king contended for the right of patronage over any vacant sees or benefices, claiming that so long as they remained unoccupied, their revenues fell due to the Crown; and called together the clergy of the realm to uphold his right and to draw up a code of rules that should set a line between spiritual and temporal authority. Bossuet preached the sermon which was to open the Convocation; and his clear practical sense and eloquent denunciation of the encroachments of the Papacy destroyed the remnants of Pope Innocent’s power in France. He summed up the case in four clauses. First, “That the Pope has no temporal power over kings”; secondly, “That his spiritual authority is inferior to that of a general assembly”; thirdly, “That, in consequence, the use of this authority ought to be regulated by the canons of the Church and by customs generally approved”; and last, “That the papal decision on matters of faith is only infallible by consent of the Church.” Thus did Bossuet establish the privileges and the liberty of the Gallican Church.

As soon as possible the great bishop disengaged himself from the affairs of the nation, and was occupied, not in gaining fresh honours, but with the care of his diocese. The picture of his last years is a graceful and pleasant one, and shows the great man leading the life of a simple country priest; writing sermons in his study or garden, directing his convents, schools and hospitals, visiting his poor and sick people, even catechising the children of Meaux; and at times retiring into the seclusion of the monastery of La Trappe, to gather strength and courage for the better fulfilment of his pastoral duties.

The old timber water-mills behind the Town Hall are the outward sign of one of the great industries of Meaux. They have withstood for many generations the rushing torrents of the Marne, which threaten to undermine the starlings and timbers of the mills and to engulf them in its waters. These for some reason or other are almost as green as the outpourings of the Rhone at Geneva. It would be interesting to know if Meaux possessed any feudal right over the neighbouring peasants, compelling them to come and wait their turn at the mill, and pay whatever price might be demanded, and forbidding them, even in times of heavy yield, to get their corn ground elsewhere. Such oppressions actually existed in the villages attached to the great châteaux, where the seigneur had a right to keep huge rabbit-warrens and pigeon-houses, whose inhabitants devastated, year in, year out, the surrounding crops of the peasants.

The little city of Senlis, with its girdle of Roman walls and watch towers, is one of the most attractive places within reach of Paris. It is situated about thirty-five miles to the northeast, in the midst of the great forest land of Hallatte and Chantilly. Until the dissolution of the Carlovingian empire Senlis enjoyed the privileges of a royal residence, and, indeed, down to the time of Henri de Navarre the kings of France continued to visit the city, and were lodged in a castle built on the site of the Roman prætorium. The ruins of this castle, some of which date from the eleventh century, may still be seen among the attractions of Senlis; and of even greater interest are the Roman ramparts which surround the town and which were built when it still held its position as the township of the Silvanectes. These walls, “twenty-three feet high and thirteen feet thick, are, with those of St. Lizier (Ariège) and Bourges, the most perfect in France. They enclosed an oval area 1024 feet long from east to west and 794 feet wide from north to south. At each of the angles formed by the broken lines of which the circuit of 2756 feet is composed, stands or stood a tower; numbering originally twenty-eight and now only sixteen, they are semicircular in plan, and up to the height of the wall are unpierced. The Roman city had only two gates; the present number is five.”

As one approaches the town from the station through the boulevard, the Renaissance tower of Saint Pierre and the beautiful flèche of the Cathedral stand right ahead. The first of these two churches is now desecrated and converted into a large market hall, having previously been used as cavalry barracks. It is short and broad, having only three bays to the nave, two to the choir, and an apse of three lights; but it has one very marked feature, which is also seen, though to a lesser extent, in the Cathedral of Saint Gatien at Tours—the axis of the choir trends northwards, making with the nave an angle of some seventeen to twenty degrees. There is a certain amount of early Gothic work worth notice, but the prevailing style is Flamboyant; in the two last side chapels of the choir some curious vaulting is to be found, resembling rude attempts at fan tracery with heavy keyed pendants.

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame covers during its construction a period of some four hundred years, and is probably only part of what was originally designed. The glory of the building is the beautiful spire to the south-west tower. Rising from a base octagonal in plan, the angles are lightened by detached pillars supporting a pyramidal canopy; the upper dormer windows are high and lancet-shaped, with the back of their gables sloping downwards and forming a sharp angle with the richly crocketed spire. Internally the church is a mixed product of the Transition and Flamboyant architects; the large clerestory windows may have been rebuilt later when the vaulting was constructed. In the ambulatory behind the altar the twelfth-century capitals remain, showing archaic Romanesque sculpture; and traces of this early work are to be found in many other parts of the building. The large west door is of the Chartres type; in the tympanum are the figures of our Lord and the Virgin Mary, with a representation of the resurrection of the dead; some of the figures are flying upwards, while others are being tenderly awakened by angels swinging censers.

Long before the train arrives at Beauvais the Cathedral is seen like a huge fortress in the distance, overtopping the quiet, modest landscape of the Thérain valley; and its great size is more acutely felt as one approaches its south doorway along the streets of little white-painted houses and shop-fronts. The immediate effect of the interior of this marvellous building is startling. Whatever emotion has been aroused in the architectural traveller by the glories of Amiens, Chartres, or Bourges, is for the moment entirely eclipsed by the first view of the choir of Beauvais, whose clerestory windows soar upwards with such a restless vitality as almost to pierce the vaulting. These choir bays look like shafts of masonry so elongated, so delicate, that one trembles for their stability. And this sensation gradually increases. The sense of strength and repose gives way to a feeling that this great “church in the air” is struggling against dissolution, and that its vast flying buttresses are only just sufficient to withstand the tremendous strain that is constantly being exerted on the building. It is only fair, however, to the architect of Beauvais choir to say that he was hampered by the want of means and probably also by the insufficient site assigned to him for the planning out of his Cathedral. Had he worked under more favourable conditions he would have accomplished “an incomparable work,” for it is not, as Viollet-le-Duc remarks, “the theory” that was fatal to its construction, but the execution, which is poor and mediocre. The lesson learnt from the Beauvais architect’s temerity on the one hand, and from his beautiful disposition of plan on the other, was of the greatest value to the designers of other Cathedrals executed at the same time—notably that of Cologne, which was constructed more or less contemporaneously with Beauvais.