The Tower of the Inquisition appears to date from the reign of Philip the Bold. It is a beautiful building of four storeys which in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, sheltered the ecclesiastical tribunal the name of which it bears.
Before the Revolution, the city was deserted; in 1744, the bishop followed the general example and left his old palace of the Thirteenth Century. The new régime was not equally just. For a long time, the city remained a military post, mutilated by military genius, on the pretext of maintaining and improving it; a great number of towers were razed and transformed into low curtains, absurd defences which could not have held out two hours against a strong attack. This admirable collection of mediæval military art was exposed to the greatest danger; let us thank the archæologists who interested the State in the preservation of these venerable remains. Restored to-day with a reverent care, the old citadel is assured a long life. As for the City herself, she can never become what she was in the Thirteenth Century, a rich and populous town, but she will certainly remain forever an admirable museum, where everyone who is interested in national history will come to study the military art of old France.
THE CATHEDRAL OF MODENA
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
The student of the Romanesque who transports himself suddenly from the Arno and the Apenines to the river-basin of the Po will find himself spirited away into a new architectural world. Let him flit from Pisa to Modena. Pistoia, a city of high interest on other grounds, will not long detain him. A single noble campanile is attached to a basilican duomo which would hold a third or fourth-rate place at Lucca, and which at Pisa no one would think of mentioning at all. But at Modena his halt must be longer. The church of Pisa and the church of Modena are contemporary buildings, and the Great Countess is honoured as a benefactress by both; but they are as unlike one another as any two buildings of the same date and general style well can be. At Modena we get our first glimpse of the genuine Lombard form of the Italian Romanesque, a form wholly unlike either the domical or basilican type, and which makes a far nearer approach to the Romanesque of the lands beyond the Alps. The approach is indeed only an approach; the duomo of Modena is Italian, and not English, French, or German; still it is a form of Italian far less widely removed from English, French, or German work than the style of Pisa or St. Vital. As at Pisa, the architect seems to have halted between two opinions. The church is cruciform, but the transepts have no projection on the ground-plan; there are real lantern-arches, not obscured as they are at Pisa, but they do not bear up any central dome or tower. The lantern-arches are pointed; but here, as at Pisa, the pointed form is more likely to be Saracenic than Gothic. Without, three eastern apses, rising from between pinnacles of quite Northern character, group boldly with one of the noblest campaniles of Italy, which is certainly not improved by the later addition of a spire. The great doorways rest on lions; the west front has a noble wheel window; the greater part of the outside is lavishly arcaded, but the arcading is of a different type from the long rows of single arcades at Lucca and Pisa; the favourite form at Modena is that of several small arches grouped under a containing arch.
THE CATHEDRAL OE MODENA, ITALY.
With such an outside, we are not surprised to find, on entering the church, an elevation more nearly after the Northern type than anything which we have yet seen in Italy. At Pisa we saw an arcade, triforium, and clerestory; but the triforium was not so much the Northern type itself as the Northern type translated into Italian language. But at Modena we find as genuine a triforium as in any minster of England or Normandy. Its form indeed seems somewhat rude and awkward, as if the containing arch had been crushed by the lofty clerestory above. And eyes familiar with Norman detail may possibly be amazed at the sight of mid-wall shafts, and those of a somewhat rough type, showing themselves in such a position. But the mid-wall shaft is constructively as much in its place in a triforium as it is in a belfry window, and in the whole elevation there is nothing lacking. There is pier-arch, triforium, and clerestory, and the deep splay of the highest range hinders the presence of any continuous blank spaces such as we have seen in the Basilican churches. The capitals are a strange mixture of classical and barbaric forms, and in the alternate piers, supporting the arches which span the nave, we find huge half-columns, which form a marked contrast to the tall slender shafts commonly used in like positions in Northern churches. Altogether the Cathedral of Modena is strictly an Italian church, yet the approaches to Northern forms are very marked, and they are of a kind which suggests the direct imitation of Northern forms or the employment of Northern architects.
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS, FRANCE.