S. Martin founded several churches and monasteries, and many more were dedicated to him after his death. Marmoutier, near Nantes, was a very celebrated convent; and in England there are a great many churches of which he is the patron. S. Augustine, when he came to Britain, found a chapel in the neighbourhood of Canterbury, which had been dedicated to S. Martin as early as the 5th century, and there he baptized his first converts. The church is certainly one of the earliest in England, and the font cannot be later than the 11th century; but whether it be the identical one at which King Ethelbert stood to be baptized in the 7th century is considered doubtful. Still, though much restored from time to time, the building retains numbers of Roman bricks incorporated into its walls; and that Queen Bertha worshipped in a church upon the same spot, or close by, is certain, tradition also pointing to a stone coffin in which she lies.
To return to S. Martin, the legend relates that when he was entering Paris, as Bishop of Tours, he met a wretched leper at the gate, and, filled with compassion and love, he embraced him, and thus healed him of his leprosy. This was the act which King Henri I. commemorated by founding the priory in 1060. His son Philippe I. dedicated the church in 1067, placing the new foundation under the patronage of the abbot of Cluny, of which monastery S. Martin des Champs was the third daughter. Its domains originally consisted of several acres of land, which, as time went on, became more and more valuable; and probably, in consequence of its great wealth, it was governed by a long succession of illustrious men; at first regular, and subsequently, titular abbots, of which class was his eminence the Cardinal Richelieu.
It is owing to the cession of the last of the turrets, built by prior Hugues IV. to the town in 1712, and to the erection of a fountain at its base, that we now possess this fragment of the old wall. The principal gate, dating 1575, and ornamented with statues of the two royal founders, was unfortunately demolished at the same time.
The church belongs to two distinct periods. The nave was built about the middle of the 13th century, and is without aisles or pillars. It is lighted by pointed windows, and covered by a pointed timber roof. The choir and apse belong to the middle of the 12th century, and are peculiar in their arrangement. The choir is raised from the nave, and round it on a lower level are double aisles, divided by clustered columns which support the vaulting. Thus, the choir is approached from the nave by steps in the usual manner; but to enter the apsidal chapels one has to descend three or four steps from the nave. There are a few fragments of tombs with effigies of the priors, and some mutilated stone coffins. All the rest of the contents of the church have disappeared; it is in fact, architecturally, an empty shell. The statue of the Blessed Virgin sculptured in wood, and held in great veneration by the faithful worshippers at S. Martin, was taken to S. Denis. The whole building has been gorgeously decorated in colour, and, if restored to its proper use, would be, after the Sainte-Chapelle, the most interesting church in Paris; but the desecration grates upon our religious sentiments, and the noise of the machinery in motion distracts one's nerves. The study of architecture is not rendered easier by the rattle of a dozen or more steam engines, compared to which the confusion of tongues must have been a very small clatter.
Tradition gives Pierre de Montereau as the architect of the refectory, which is a chef-d'œuvre of the 13th century. It is an oblong building with seven tall, elegant, single-shaft pillars down the centre, dividing it into two equal parts longitudinally. Upon the side walls are an equal number of columns reaching about half-way down, and supported by foliated corbels to match the capitals; the vault, springing from these and the pillars, divide the length into eight bays. The windows consist of two lights surmounted by a rose; but upon one side they have been blocked up. The reading pulpit, which is built into the wall, is a beautiful specimen of its kind. It is lighted from the back by three little windows, and approached by a staircase in the wall, with open arcading to give light upon the refectory side. The building has been decorated with colour, and a painting representing S. Martin dividing his cloak, mediævalized by M. Steinheil—the whole sufficiently harmonious.
The rest of the buildings are modern, or have been modernized; most of the destruction having been perpetrated by the monks, who, like all authoritative Paris of the last century, had Classicism on the brain. At S. Martin, as at S. Nicolas des Champs, S. Germain l'Auxerrois, and S. Séverin (not to mention other churches), Doric columns have taken the place of the old work—they must have been sculptured by the hundred. The chapel of the Virgin, the chapter-house, the old cloister, which, according to Piganiol de la Force, had not the like in Paris, and the statues of divers Kings and Saints, were all swept away to make room for modern improvements; but the refectory was left intact, and having been used as the library, the transformation of the convent into a museum has affected it less than the chapel. As we pass into it from the outer world of trams and omnibuses, with all the va-et-vient of a great city, we seem to be suddenly transported into the olden time—into a world which, if not a better, was certainly a more artistic and a quieter one.
SAINT-MÉDARD.
The French S. Swithin shares with his brethren on the opposite bank of the Seine, les frères Gervais et Protais, a predilection for drenching us on and after his fête day; so that, what with S. Médard's 8th of June, S. Gervais' and S. Protais' 19th June, and S. Swithin's 15th July, we who live upon our respective sides of the ditch may reckon upon a good three weeks of wet, over and above the forty days, if unhappily it rains upon the earlier of those unlucky festivals.
S'il pleut le jour de Saint-Médard,
Il pleut quarante jours plus tard;
S'il pleut le jour de Saint Gervais et de Saint Protais,
Il pleut quarante jours après.