CHAPTER VII
OLORON
Iluro—Road over the port—The beret—Three parts to the town—How the bishop got a cathedral—The porch—Ste. Croix—Bishop Roussel—Frightened to death—Escot—Independent Republic—Emigration—Sarrance—The Heptameron—Accous—Story of Loustaunau—Osse—Urdos, the French Gibraltar—Mauleon—Espadrillos.
Oloron is the ancient Iluro, in Gallo-Roman times one of the twelve cities of Novempopulania, and of importance as the key to the passage of the Pyrenees by the Val d’Aspe over the Somport.
The Roman road branched off from the Via Aurelia at Lescar, crossed the Gave de Pau, and struck direct for Oloron, where, doubtless, soldiers and merchants and travellers in general rested before undertaking the passage of the mountains. The Roman road, after crossing the chain, descended to the plains, and ran straight as a bird-line for Saragossa. At Escot a Latin inscription remains, cut in the rock by the wayside, commemorating the remaking of the road under the direction of one, Valerius Vernus.
Oloron is a busy town, carrying on the manufacture of the beret, the tam-o’-shanter, wherewith every Basque and Béarnais covers his head.
The town is prettily situated at the junction of the Gave d’Aspe and the Gave d’Ossau, which divide it into three parts. One, Ste. Marie, was for long the communal centre and the residence of the bishops of Oloron. The old feudal city is staged up a hill between the two rivers. In it is the church of Ste. Croix, built in 1080 by the Viscount Centule IV. Centule had married a distant cousin, Gisela. But he coveted the fair lands of Bigorre, to which Beatrix, daughter of Count Bernard II, was the heiress.
Amatus, Bishop of Oloron and the papal legate, was in want of a cathedral; so they put their heads together, and Amatus undertook to obtain the annulling of the marriage with Gisela by Pope Gregory VII. The Pope wanted money, Centule wanted Bigorre, and Amatus a cathedral. Gregory made no difficulties, so Gisela was repudiated, and sent to end her days in a convent, as though she were the guilty party. Amatus was paid for his help in this scandalous job by being given a cathedral, and Centule, in the exuberance of his delight at becoming possessed of the rich heiress, built as well the church of Ste. Croix.
It was easy for any man with means in those days to wriggle out of an union that was inconvenient. The Popes had drawn up a catalogue of relationships within which degrees marriage was prohibited, unless a dispensation had been procured argent comptant. Kinship to the seventh degree, affinity as well as consanguinity, could be pleaded. Spiritual relationship through sponsorship at the font also served. Right or wrong in the matter was not considered. It was a contrivance of the Papacy for extortion of money.
The church of Ste. Marie is the ancient cathedral. The most ancient portions belong to the eleventh century. Externally it is not a striking edifice; nevertheless it is one of the most curious in the South, and has just one splendid feature—the sculptured porch, which is the basement of an enormous and massive tower, pierced by arches. Beneath this is a beautiful portal, round-headed, containing a double entrance, the doorways parted by a pillar. The sculpture of tympanum and archivolt are excellent for their period. A man once caught, plucked, and cooked a nightingale. With such a voice it ought to be excellent eating, he argued. But when he set his teeth in it, his judgment on the nightingale was, “Vox et præterea nihil.” So, with such a throat one might reckon on a magnificent interior, but within the church responds not at all to the conceptions raised by the portal, and answers little to the idea formed of a cathedral.