The convent no longer exists, but there is a large cloister of the XIth century at the west end of the church, which was restored a few years ago. In this church, there are mural paintings of the early Cologne school, representing the wise and foolish virgins, numberless saints, the raising of Lazarus, and the founders of the church with their children. As in duty bound, Plectruda is properly conspicuous; her effigy in basso-rilievo beneath the great east window is a very interesting work of the Xth century, and, on one of the towers, her sculptured figure appears between two angels, who are conducting her to her eternal home.
All the churches are more or less interesting, none more so than that of S. Gereon, founded in the IVth century. S. Gereon was the commander of a Roman legion, and he and his companions, 700 in number, were murdered by order of Diocletian upon the spot where the church was built by the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.
The style is Byzantine, and very singular. The body of the church, preceded by a large portico, presents a vast decagonal shell, the pillars of whose internal angles are prolonged in ribs, which, centring in a summit, meet in one point and form a cupola, one of the latest examples known. A high wide flight of steps, rising opposite to the entrance, leads to an altar with an oblong choir behind it, from whence other steps again ascend to the sanctuary, a semicircular apse, belted, like the cupola, by an open gallery with small arches and pillars resting on a panelled balustrade.
The rotunda is surrounded by ten chapels, in which are the tombs of the martyrs. The walls are encrusted with their skulls, and, in the subterranean church, the pavement and walls are formed by the tomb-stones covering the holy dust. In the lower church is the tomb of S. Gereon, and in one of the chapels is a mosaic [pg 618] pavement laid in the time of the Empress Helena. Behind the stalls of the clergy are hangings of Gobelin tapestry, portraying the history of Joseph and his brethren.
The baptismal font of porphyry, immensely large, was a present from Charlemagne; and, as the lid is too ponderous for any one to lift, there is a little machine that takes it off when required. We remained a long while in this very delightful church, and, by the time we left, what with Helen and Constantine, Diocletian and Charlemagne, we felt quite like an animated verd-antique, so intensely Roman and Catholic had we become.
Afterwards we proceeded to S. Ursula's, where the cruel Roman emperor was exchanged for the barbarian Huns. S. Ursula's history was done in English by the old sexton, who finished every sentence by assuring us that S. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins met with their untimely fate from the barbarian Huns, who massacred them in cold blood. We made a stride of a few centuries, became Gothic, and extended our hatred to the barbarian Huns. As in S. Gereon, the bones of the martyrs are built in the walls for a space of two feet the whole extent.
In the Golden Chamber we saw the shrine of S. Ursula, the relics of S. Margaret, a thorn from the crown of Our Lord, and one of the vases used at the marriage feast of Cana, that witnessed the first miracle of the God-man. Link by link we were carried to the days when Our Lord was incarnate on the earth; we do not need such testimony to assure us of the truth of our holy faith, but, when we touch the vase that has been touched by Our Lord, our senses are awed by the thought of the God-like condescension of him who became man, who lived like us, who mingled in our joys and sorrows, that we might become greater than the angels.
The Cathedral of Cologne, the queen of pointed architecture, erected on the site of a church founded in 814 by Archbishop Hildebold, and more beautiful than even we could imagine it, familiar as we were with it by picture and description, was commenced in August, 1248, by Archbishop Conrad, of Hochstaden. The works were for some years pushed on with great activity under the direction of Master Gerard von Rile, a builder of whom nothing more is known than that he died before 1302.
In 1322, the choir was completed and consecrated; then the building went slowly on until 1357, when the works were discontinued for a long time. In 1796, the cathedral was converted by the French into a warehouse, and it had very nearly become a ruin in 1807, when the brothers Sulpice and Melchior Boisserée drew attention to it by their illustrated work on its history. In 1824, the work of restoration was commenced, but little progress was made until, in 1842, the idea of completing the cathedral was conceived, and an association was formed to collect subscriptions for this purpose; and now the entire edifice will soon be finished if the works are carried on as zealously as they have been of late.
The glorious roof, arching 150 feet in the air, is magnificent; every day new beauties are added; four hundred men are daily at work, the stones are all cut, and in ten years at least this triumph of genius will be ready to receive the homage of all true lovers of art. The shrine of the Three Kings is superb—gold adorned with precious stones. There are the heads of the three men who came in faith, and bowed in all their pride and majesty before the infant Jesus in the [pg 619] manger; their names, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, are encrusted in rubies above the crowns that encircle their brows. Their bodies were brought from S. Eustorgio, in Milan, by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, after the taking of that city, and presented by him to Archbishop Rainoldo, who deposited them in the ancient cathedral July 23, 1164; from whence they were removed into the present chapel in 1337.