It had long been the ambition of Cologne to build a Cathedral in keeping with the growing ambition of the Archbishopric. Both Mayence and Treves had great Cathedrals. The Cathedral at Mayence had been four times destroyed by fire within the past two centuries and had arisen like an ecclesiastical phœnix in greater splendour after each conflagration. That of Treves had been built on the site of the Roman Basilica, and was said to rival the ancient edifice in size and magnificence. The ill-fated Engelbert took the first steps towards the beginning of a Cathedral in Cologne that would at least equal those of Mayence and Treves, but his assassination ended the scheme for a time. His successor did nothing, and now that Konrad von Hochstaden was Archbishop he was ambitious to link his name with the commencement of an edifice that would eclipse anything then in existence. It was his intention to employ the greatest architects in Germany, and when this determination spread abroad, it caused many artists more or less known to submit plans to him, but none of these met the Archbishop's entire approbation.
There came a man from a small village near Cologne who desired to submit designs for a great church, but being without influence and without wealth he never succeeded in gaining audience with the princely Archbishop. He had no gold with which to bribe attendants and no highly placed friends who could whisper a word for him at the proper moment. Yet he had one friend who believed in him. Father Ambrose, clerical secretary to the Archbishop, was a native of the small and insignificant village of Riehl near Cologne, where the man ambitious to build a Cathedral lived, and Meister Gerard, the architect, was well known to him. Ambrose spoke once or twice to Konrad regarding this man, but the Archbishop was then busy with the secret envoys from Treves, and while war is being concocted, churches must stand in abeyance. When these secret negotiations were completed, Father Ambrose again attempted to bespeak a hearing for his fellow-townsman. The Archbishop, however, was not then in the architectural mood, and Ambrose feared his request had been inopportune.
"You are a good man, Ambrose," said the Archbishop, "but persistent. Now let me tell you finally what my purpose is. It is not a village church I wish to see builded, but a Cathedral that will outshine Imperial Rome herself. Therefore it is not a village architect I am on the outlook for, but one who will prove the modern brother of the builder of the Parthenon in Athens."
"I know not who built the Parthenon, my Lord," said the monk, with the dogged pertinacity of the North German, "but it may have been a village architect, despised by the great of Greece."
"It may indeed be so. Whence comes this architect of yours?"
"From Riehl, my Lord."
"From Riehl, indeed! You might at least have given us a town the size of Bonn. From Riehl!" The Archbishop threw back his head and laughed.
"'Can any good come out of Nazareth,' quoth they of old," said the monk, solemnly. The Archbishop became instantly serious.
"Ambrose, that smacks strongly of the sacrilegious."
"I may put it thus then—'A prophet is not without honour but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house,'" said the monk, giving the quotation in Latin.