In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc

by S. Baring-Gould

Arles streets are about the worst paved in Europe. They are floored with the cobble-stones rolled down by the diluvium, and torture the feet that walk over them and rick the ankles. There are two melancholy inns in the Place du Forum, and it is hard to choose between them, probably it does not much matter. I was given a bed-chamber in one where neither the door nor the window would shut, and where there were besides two locked doors that did not fit, and as the mistral was blowing, my hours in that room were spent in a swirl of draughts. Moreover, an old party with bronchitis was in the adjoining room, also suffering from the draughts, and in despair of recovering his health in such a situation. I complained, and was given another room where the draughts were the same, but I was without my coughing and hawking neighbour. No wonder that I was charged half a franc per night for my candle. It guttered itself in no time into the tray of the candlestick, as it was blown upon from four distinct directions simultaneously.

Arles—when not in a mistral—is charming, but the charm is in the past. There one must be a laudator temporis acti, for the present is wholly wretched and bad. The fact is, Arles had a glorious past, from which it has been falling throughout the Middle Ages till it reached a point approaching extinction, and it has not as yet realised that better days are shining before it, and that there is a future to which it may look up.

So depressed did Arles become some time ago, that its only lively trade was in old coffins. It had a vast cemetery outside its walls, crammed with memorials of the dead of all ages; and as the curators of the museums of Paris, Marseilles, Avignon, Aix, &c., thirsted after sarcophagi, the mournful Arelois went to their necropolis, dug up as many as were wanted, and forwarded coffins to those who had made requisition for them.

Arles is planted upon a nodule of limestone rock that rises out of the diluvium of rolled stones. In former times it was almost the sole dry spot to be found for miles round, and as the dead of Pagan and Christian times alike seem to have objected to wet beds, their bodies were transported from all the country round to the plateau east of Arles and there entombed. This plateau was called the Elysian Fields, now Alyscamp, and is so thick with tombs that you walk over them as you follow the road that runs along the plateau. You see the grass at the side dead in one place, there is a tomb there; you see a bit of white marble cropping up in another, that is a tomb. You see a great stack of stones heaped up by the side of a railway cutting, they are all tombs. You look at the cutting itself, and see that to a certain depth it is honeycombed with tombs, some cut through, some sticking out. In every farmyard the pigs eat out of old sarcophagi. The fountains squirt into them, the bacon is cured in them. The farrier dips his hot iron into a sarcophagus. In the churches the altars are made of them. The foundations of the houses are laid in them. The very air seems to be pervaded with the dust of the dead, and this dust lies heavy on the spirits and energies of the inhabitants.

But what an age we live in! Utilitarian and disrespectful of the past! The other day a cargo of mummied cat-deities arrived at Liverpool and was sold for manure. At Arles, the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway Company has bought up the Elysian Fields to convert them into a factory for their engines. The company are excavating Les Alyscamp for this purpose, throwing about the sarcophagi, Pagan or Christian, or using them for building materials—and sawn in half they make decent quoins for a brickshed—and strewing the dust of the dead of ages under the wheels of the locomotives.

One undesecrated, unrifled headland remains above the factories, on which is a venerable but abandoned church. The company would grub that up too, but the proprietor will not sell, as he believes the tradition that an incalculable treasure is hidden somewhere among these tombs.

But the Arelois not only expropriate the tombs of their forefathers, they have given away or sold other things as well. On the Alyscamp is the venerable church of S. Honoré, half ruinous, in which, underground in the crypt is the ancient baptistery that had served the first Christians when the church was young. It was furnished with a large porphyry circular vessel for immersing adults. Louis XIV. saw it, coveted it for some water-works, and got the Arelois to give it him. Among the ruins of the theatre was found a Venus of Greek workmanship and of Parian marble. They sent it away also; it is in Paris.

The old church of S. Honoré is now reached by a long avenue of poplars lined with Pagan Roman tombs. The nave of the church is in ruins, but the choir is in tolerable condition, and is the most interesting portion. It consists in fact of an early Romanesque basilica with three aisles ending in three apses. The pillars separating nave from aisles, three on each side, are great drums ten feet in diameter. The later, ruinous nave contains the reputed chapel of S. Trophimus, apostle of Arles. When the fourteenth century church was added, this little chapel was left standing within, and though now crumbling, it is comparatively watertight. It has, however, undergone recasing in Renaissance times, and to understand its structure the chapel must be entered. It is then seen to have been an open porch of four semicircular arches, and may possibly have been erected over the tomb of S. Trophimus. The only ornament about it is a moulding, which may give its date.

S. Trophimus, reputed apostle of Aix, is now said to have been that Asiatic who was a companion of S. Paul mentioned in Acts xx. 4, xxi. 27-29, and 2 Tim. iv. 12, 20. But the very early diptychs of the church of Arles mention S. Dionysius as the first prelate, and the cathedral was built in 625 by S. Virgilius, and dedicated to S. Stephen. It did not take the title of S. Trophimus till the twelfth century, when the relics of this saint were brought to it from the little chapel just described. The exact date was 1152; the tradition of S. Trophimus having been one of the disciples of Christ and companion of S. Paul arose about this time. Not a trace of such a tradition appears in the Provençal poem composed by an eye-witness of the translation of the relics.

There was, no doubt, a bishop of this name at Arles, and probably early, but the first whose name is authenticated is Martianus, who followed the Novatian heresy in 254. Gregory of Tours—and his testimony is confirmed by a MS. of the fifth century—says that S. Trophimus was sent into Gaul in the consulship of Decius and Gratus, i.e., 250, and that he was the first bishop of Arles, and Gregory of Tours is the earliest and most reliable authority that we have on the beginnings of the Christian church in Gaul.