A Book of the Pyrenees

by S. Baring-Gould

The ancient Palais de Justice, much purer in style than the Loge, adjoins it, separated from it only by the old house of the consuls, now the Hôtel de Ville. The old Palais has beautiful windows, with trefoil heads cut in the block, unmoulded, supported by dainty columns. But the most strikingly picturesque edifice of Perpignan is the Castelet, erected between 1367 and 1369, with the town gate of Notre Dame (1481) at one side of it, all constructed of tiles like the cathedral. The bold projecting machicolations, and the octagonal turret surmounted by a small cupola, have a pronounced Spanish character.

When one passes out of the Porte Notre Dame the Promenade des Platanes is reached, a boulevard shaded by magnificent plane trees, but all inclined from the north, from the terrible Tramontane wind, which is the scourge of the plain of Roussillon. Here on Shrove Tuesday evening hundreds of maskers dance under the leafless branches, and sometimes in spite of the cutting wind and dropping rain. The promenade is then railed in, and soldiers are stationed to act as sentinels to prevent the crowd entering and interfering with the dancers. But the waltz music is too exhilarating to allow these sentinels to soberly pace their distances, and I have seen them holding their rifles and pirouetting up and down their beats with them as if their firearms were lovely partners.

Beyond the Basse, where it flows into the Tet, is the faubourg Notre Dame, very animated and peopled in part with gipsies, or gitanos. They speak a language of their own, a mixture of Arabic, Castillian, and Catalan. They are first mentioned in Roussillon in an ordinance of 1512, that required them to be cudgelled out of the country. It does not seem that this order produced the effect desired, for they have been found, and still are found, throughout the department, mainly engaged in selling mules.

The first station out of Perpignan on the line to Barcelona is Elne, long the seat of a bishop. It was the ancient Illiberis. The name tells its origin. It derives from the Iberian, and signifies the New City; and shows that it was a town founded by these people before they were expelled or subjugated by the Celts, who invaded the country in the fourth century before Christ. When Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees he planted his headquarters here, and hither came the heads of the Gaulish tribe to make terms with him against Rome. At the same time they made complaint of the conduct of some of his Carthaginian soldiery. Hannibal listened to their grievances, and decided that in any further cases of misconduct by his soldiers these should be tried by a court composed of the wives of the Gauls.

The Romans, when they occupied the land, neglected Illiberis, and planted a colony at Ruscino. The town dwindled to insignificance till Constantine refounded it and called it after the name of his mother, Helena; and this is the name it now bears, transformed into Elne. It was the scene of the assassination of Constans, the son of the great Constantine. He was an indolent, weak, and debauched prince, monarch of the West. Whilst hunting in Gaul he received tidings of the revolt of Magnentius, that the soldiers had mutinied, and that emissaries had been dispatched to kill him. He fled to Illiberis, but was overtaken here and put to death in 350, in the thirtieth year of his reign.

Devastated by the Arabs, we do not hear of a bishop of Elne till 783. After that the lordship of Elne was shared between the bishop and the chapter. The seat of the bishop was removed to Perpignan in 1602.

Elne occupies a sandstone rock, about which this town is built, and is divided into the upper and the lower town. It is a dull and sleepy place, that wakens into life only on the festival of SS. Eulalia and Julia, when there is much merry-making with processions, music, and dancing. Portions of the walls and some of the gates remain; but the great object of interest is the cathedral, with its superb cloisters of white marble. The exact date of the rebuilding is not known, but the church was complete in 1069. Externally it is constructed of rubble stone in herring-bone, set in mortar. The west front has a crenellated gable between two towers of unequal size and height. The loftiest is a bold structure that has had buttresses added to it much later, in 1415. The western doorway is unornamented. The plan of the church is a nave with side aisles and no transepts. It is very plain within as without, with huge piers supporting round-headed arches and vault. The high altar was of silver, and dated from 1069, but was sent to the mint at Perpignan to be coined into money in 1721. The new altar-piece is as Prosper Mérimée described it—“a masterpiece of meanness and bad taste.”

The original choir stalls were fine. A writer in 1787 says of the woodwork: “It is grand, and remarkable for the beauty of the stall-work covered with sculpture of the end of the thirteenth century, as is known by an inscription on one of the stalls.” All this has disappeared.

In the sacristy is preserved a little bell with the date on it, 1554, ornamented with a figure of Apollo playing on the rebec, a monkey doing the same, and dancing bears, an eagle, a rabbit, and a boar.

But the great glory of Elne is its cloister raised on a terrace of the ancient acropolis of Illiberis, on the north side of the cathedral. Entrance to it is obtained by a doorway, which for the purity of its style and the sobriety of its ornamentation deserves notice. The arch is pointed, and of marble, alternatively white and red, and dates from the fourteenth century. The ironwork of the door is simple but graceful. Alart, the historian and antiquary says: “Without dispute, from the point of view of art, and from the historic reminiscences attached to it, the cloister is the most remarkable and precious relic that remains of Roussellonnaise architecture.” It was begun in the twelfth century, but was continued and retouched in the fourteenth, so that whereas some of the capitals and columns are of Byzantine or Romanesque design, others have Gothic ornament. All is in white marble, and the sculpture is of exquisite delicacy: foliage, figures of every description are there in lavish profusion. The pillars are coupled, some twisted, some plain. The very bases are enriched with ornament.