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Title: A Tour Through Old Provence
Author: Forrest, A. S. (Archibald Stevenson)
Language: English
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A TOUR THROUGH OLD
PROVENCE
THE “MOTOR TOUR” SERIES
=A MOTOR TOUR THROUGH ENGLAND AND FRANCE.= By ELIZABETH YARDLEY.
Cloth gilt, illustrated.
=THE MOTOR BOOK.= A complete work on the history, construction, and
development of the Motor. By JOHN ARMSTRONG. Illustrated with 100
drawings and photographs.
=A TOUR THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA.= By A. S. FORREST. Profusely
illustrated.
⁂ _Other Volumes in preparation._
[Illustration: AVIGNON.
[Frontispiece.]
A TOUR THROUGH
OLD PROVENCE
BY
A. S. FORREST
_WITH 108 ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE AND LINE
DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR_
LONDON
STANLEY PAUL & CO.
31 ESSEX STREET W.C.
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
FOREWORD
Southwards from Valence, the Rhone flows swiftly and silently through a
fertile and picturesque valley, the river broadening as the valley
widens. The undulating valley is filled with vineyards and farms, amidst
which are scattered houses and villages innumerable, with here and there
on rising ground the ruins of an ancient castle or the grey mass of a
city or town of some importance. From the banks of the river, as far as
the eye can reach in every direction, the land was known in Cæsar’s time
as Provincia or The Province, although the term Provence is in these
modern times only applied to the extreme south-eastern portion.
The wayfarer, in this land of sunshine and fertility, passing through
its villages and visiting its towns, will continually meet with those
relics, ruins, and remains which are left like footprints by races,
dynasties, and empires long since passed away. Some of these footprints
are nearly effaced, but others stand out to-day in clear and distinct
outline, recalling whole histories of bygone days. The very appearance
of the people, of their buildings, their manners and customs are as
reminiscent of their remote ancestry as the ancient monuments to be
found in their midst.
Heredity and environment are both important factors in the making of a
race, and it may be that the blue skies and sunlit landscapes, with
their lovely distant prospects, have had as large a share in moulding
the character of the inhabitants of this land to-day as the traits and
tendencies inherited from Phoceans, Gauls, and Romans. Whatever may be
the cause, there is something about this region that makes an
irresistible appeal to strangers from northern lands. Romance is written
so plainly on its face that even “he who motors may read,” and every day
spent among its towns, villages, and castles is filled with vivid
pictures of many of the more illustrious periods of civilisation.
CONTENTS
Page
FOREWORD 5
I. AVIGNON 13
II. VILLENEUVE 75
III. TARASCON 97
IV. LES BAUX 127
V. MONTMAJOUR 159
VI. ARLES 175
VII. NÎMES 219
VIII. ORANGE 253
INDEX (Illustrations) 283
INDEX (Text) 285
LIST OF HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS
AVIGNON _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
INTERIOR OF CHAPEL OF ST. BENEZET, AVIGNON 48
GATEWAY, TARASCON 80
THE POSTERN, LES BAUX 116
MONTMAJOUR 144
THE ALYSCAMPS, ARLES 176
ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES 204
WOMAN OF ARLES 240
_For Index of Illustrations in the text see page 283._
AVIGNON
I
AVIGNON
From whatever direction Avignon is approached, the dignity of its
battlements, the profusion of its belfries, and the towering majesty of
its remarkable palace, call forth the unstinted admiration of the most
surfeited sightseer. But it is from the river that the finest view of
the City of the Popes can be obtained.
The silent gliding waters of the winding Rhone flow in their fleet
course past many a noble town and castle, but in the whole of their long
voyage past none to compare with the glorious town of Avignon.
The richness of the surrounding fields and vineyards dotted with foliage
of varied shape and hue, the extensive plains, with many a rugged
promontory, are a fit setting for the stern and rigid palace that guards
the Papal town. From the eastern horizon the noble Alps look across the
great fertile plain to their distant neighbours the Cevennes. These two
mountain chains enclose the extensive valley of the Rhone, a valley
that has been inhabited in turn by Gauls, Greeks, and Romans, all of
whom have left their marks indelible upon its face. This valley has been
richly prized by those who set foot upon its soil. The mild climate, the
rare atmosphere, and clear blue sky of Provence, have combined to
produce populations profoundly appreciative of the joys and pleasures of
existence, who have each in their own way given expression to their
feelings and emotions in their arts and letters. The Romans sought
expression in their buildings, the Goths in rich and fanciful designs,
and the mingled race of Provençals in their songs and lays.
[Illustration: PAPAL PALACE FROM THE RIVER]
Here is a land that teems with the works of man’s imagination, met with
continually in the massed fortresses and embattled monasteries, the
Roman playgrounds and places of amusement, the peaceful cloisters and
places of worship.
Avignon, the Avenio of the Romans, was a Celtic city (the Sovereign of
the Waters) before its conquest by the great empire-makers of the
pre-Christian era; but its character was changed out of all recognition
by the mediæval inhabitants of the town. It is known to-day as the City
of the Popes, and its fame is inseparably connected with the seventy
years during which seven of the Popes had their residence within its
protecting walls. The “Babylonish Captivity,” as it was called by
Petrarch, which lasted from 1305 to 1375, made history not only for
Avignon but for the rest of Christendom.
[Illustration: M^{T} VENTOUX FROM CARPENTRAS]
The events which led up to the serious step of breaking the continuity
of the Papal residence at the Holy See of Rome are worth recalling.
During the latter part of the first millennium of the Christian era the
power of the Papacy had assumed alarming sway over the many small States
into which Europe had become divided after the fall of the Western Roman
Empire.
The Papal Empire that had arisen had inspired the world anew with the
ancient terror of the name of Rome. The occupant of St. Peter’s Chair
was the maker and unmaker of kings. From the beginning of the eleventh
century this power had been growing, to the great satisfaction of
Churchmen and the keen chagrin of the laity. The scheming ambition of
the Popes knew no bounds, and it culminated in the claim of Boniface
VIII. for the absolute supremacy of the Papacy over all temporal
authorities. It was just at the close of the thirteenth century that the
inevitable conflict came.
Two of the most powerful kings in Europe, Philip the Fair of France and
Edward the First of England, began at the same time to lay an arbitrary
hand upon the revenues of the Church. The English King resisted the
commands of the Pope, who was compelled to give way. Philip was not so
fortunate in his quarrel with Rome, which in the first year of the next
century came to a head. A legate sent by Boniface to Philip behaved
himself so insolently that the French Monarch placed him under arrest.
The Pope, enraged at the indignity offered to his representative, issued
a series of Bulls to the King and Clergy of France, in one of which he
set up the claim that the King of France was subject to Rome in temporal
as in spiritual affairs. This was the first time that such a contention
had been explicitly put forward in an official document, and Philip at
once replied by a rude letter, by publicly burning the Papal Bulls, and
by calling together the three great Orders of his Kingdom, the Nobles,
Commons, and Clergy. This was the first Convocation in France of the
States General, an assembly which four centuries later was to play so
important a part in the Great Revolution.
[Illustration: A TINY HOMESTEAD.]
Boniface strained the Papal Authority to the breaking-point, reached at
last when one of Philip’s nobles, joined with some of the discontented
Colonna in Italy, arrested the Pope himself when on a visit to his
native town, Anagni, a few miles out of Rome. Although the townsfolk
eventually came to the outraged Pope’s assistance and liberated him, the
indignity was more than the choleric Boniface could stand, and he died,
some say of temper, others of a broken heart. The reaction against the
Papacy had set in, and Benedict XI., successor to Boniface, was neither
willing nor able to continue the struggle. Anxious to reinstate the
Papacy in the good opinion of France, he rescinded the excommunication
of Philip and abandoned all pretensions to temporal power.
His occupancy of the pontifical chair was, however, of short duration.
His death brought about a new crisis, for the French and Italian
cardinals, met in conclave, could not agree; and for months the election
of the successor to the chair was delayed. Eventually the powerful
influence of Philip was successful in securing the election of a
Frenchman, Bertrand de Goth or d’Agoust, Archbishop of Bordeaux, whom he
compelled to assume the title of Clement V. and remove the court to
France.
[Illustration: A. FARMHOUSE. NEAR. AVIGNON.]
Provence about fifty years before this period had passed to Charles I.
of Anjou, who inherited the kingdom through his wife, a daughter of the
fourth Raymond Berenger. When their son Charles II. came into his
patrimony of Anjou and Provence, with Naples, he united them, and during
his reign great prosperity came to the kingdom. But upon his death, in
1305, a dispute arose amongst his son and grandsons, their rival claims
being argued at great length in Avignon before Clement V. who was the
feudal superior of the Neapolitan kingdom. His decision favoured Robert
the son of Charles II., who therefore succeeded to the throne, but
afterwards left a troubled inheritance to his granddaughter the
unfortunate Joan.
History is conflicting with regard to the character of this Princess,
and she has her partisans to-day, in the same way as Mary, Queen of
Scots, whose tragic story is very similar.
Joan, or Joanna, reared at Naples in the midst of every luxury and
refinement that the age could offer, was in her early years betrothed to
her cousin Andrew (a son of Carobert, King of Hungary), who, although
brought up along with his wife at the Neapolitan court, inherited the
rough tastes and barbarous manners of his native country.
Their union was the foundation of tragedy and civil war, for Andrew soon
grew imperious, and the princely couple drifted apart; the husband to
assert an independent right to the crown which he only held by virtue of
his wife. He was urging Pope Clement VI. to consent to his coronation
when he was assassinated, some say at the direct instigation of Joan
herself.
The rumours connecting the widow with the crime soon spread, and Louis
of Hungary, brother of the murdered man, invaded Naples to seek revenge.
Joan, who had taken to herself another husband, fled with him to
Provence to take shelter under the Papal See and to raise money and an
army for the protection of her kingdom.
The Pope, after a solemn investigation into the circumstances of the
murder, acquitted Joan of the charge. Taking advantage of her pressing
need, he bargained with her to sell Avignon to him for eighty thousand
crowns. This transaction did little credit to Clement, for although he
and his successors retained the town thus acquired, the money was never
paid--possibly, as is
[Illustration: AN OLD COURTYARD ORANGE.]
thought, on the ground that Joan was amply compensated by receiving the
Papal absolution for the murder of her husband. Certainly Clement would
have no scruples, for his Court was as licentious as it was magnificent.
Amidst its regal splendour gay and beautiful women played an important
part, the Pope himself not impervious to their influence. The Countess
of Turenne, suspected of being one of his mistresses, and as rapacious
as she was handsome, unblushingly sold positions and preferments
procured by her ascendancy.
Joan’s subsequent matrimonial career, although full of variety (she had
in all four husbands), was unproductive of issue; and her presumptive
heir, Charles, Duke of Durazzo, offended at her last venture in
matrimony, took forcible possession of Naples, and, to preclude all
opposition to his newly acquired sovereignty, the deposed Joan was by
his orders removed from his path by assassination.
Avignon was ancient and illustrious before the Popes descended upon it
and added a fresh and brilliant page to its already voluminous history.
Far back in pre-Roman times, and even before the coming of the
adventurous Phoceans, it is probable that some prehistoric Celts had
built a city on these same rocky foundations beside the silvery Rhone.
The Phoceans from Marseilles saw its possibilities, for under them it
became one of the richest cities in the Narbonne, and when, at their
invitation, the Romans overran the valley and drove out the barbarians
who threatened it and every other fertile spot in Europe, they added
further to the fame of Avignon.
Very few vestiges of the ancient Roman town remain to-day. Successive
ages quarried amongst the massive Roman constructions for material to
rebuild their town according to their altering needs. In the Rue des
Grottes, a narrow little street, two blocks away from the west front of
the Papal Palace, the cellars of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century
houses are formed by the arcades of what must have been a vast Roman
building; and minute investigators of the town have fancied they could
trace the foundations of a theatre near to the Place St. Pierre. But
coins and fragments of marble mosaics, Greek and Latin inscriptions,
have been found in plenty all through the city, and are now housed and
guarded in the Calvet Museum, one of the chief attractions of the town.
That Avignon should be lacking in more important Roman monuments such as
are the pride of the neighbouring towns of Arles, Nîmes, Orange, and
others is quite easily accounted for. When one reads of the numerous
invasions and sieges which the city suffered at the hands of vast
barbarian hordes, who swept over the land like a devastating tornado
during the fourth century of our era, and of the perpetual internecine
strife that during the dark ages took place between Visigoths, Franks,
Burgundians, and Saracens, one no longer feels astonished at the absence
of Roman remains of any magnitude.
The true history of the Avignon of to-day starts in the twelfth century,
when, under circumstances of which the details are now obscured by the
mists of time, it became a republic with its own laws and privileges,
endowments and revenues, only restricted by the overlordship of its
Bishop.
The intermarriages of the feudal families, their numerous offspring, and
the frequent divisions and subdivisions of territories and estates led
to endless changes in the map of the southern counties of France. The
quarrels and disputes of the Counts of Toulouse, Provence, and
Forcalquier as to their rival rights of suzerainty over the town led to
the setting up of a republic in Avignon.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms, which at first glance might be
mistaken for a continuation of the great mass of buildings which
constitute the Palace of the Popes, is one of the earliest monuments or
buildings in the town. Standing on an elevated site, the summit of the
great Rock of the Doms, it was constructed early in the twelfth
century, and remains to-day a choice specimen of Romanesque
architecture. Like all the buildings in Provence, it has been carefully
studied and severely criticised, various and conflicting opinions have
been expressed about it, and different dates assigned to it. From the
apex of the small octagonal structure that surmounts the great square
tower of the Cathedral, a gigantic gilded figure of the Virgin looks
down upon the town and surrounding country.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AND PAPAL PALACE. AVIGNON]
It is, as the French writers would say, “in the taste of the eighteenth
century,” hideous and out of place, a blatant, gaudy anachronism that
vividly illustrates the truth of the old adage, “Tastes differ.”
Fragments of an old Latin inscription, removed from its porch and now in
the Calvet Museum, have been cited by some as giving a history of this
building. This stone document claims that the church was “founded by St.
Martha, consecrated by St. Ruf, enlarged by the first Christian Emperor
Constantine, destroyed by the Saracens, saved by Charles Martel, and
restored by the munificence of Charlemagne, and that Jesus Christ came
to consecrate it with His own hand.”
But this legend has been proved to be as unreliable as so many other
ecclesiastical traditions of mediæval times. The porch has also been the
subject of controversy. The pillars with their beautiful Corinthian
capitals are either the remains of some more ancient building, probably
a classic temple, or perhaps mediæval copies of the antique. Above the
door are the faded and damp-stained remains of a fresco of the
fourteenth century. The figures of God the Father and two supporting
angels can be made out, and bear strong traces of Byzantine mannerisms.
If they are, as has been suggested, the work of Simone Martini of Siena,
he displays in this work little of the genius of his great
contemporaries in art.
And here it must be said that Avignon is not so rich in early paintings
or frescoes of the first order as one would expect so mediæval a town to
be.
The church is lit entirely from the dome, and the light that streams
down from the eight windows above the choir is hardly sufficient to
penetrate into the five deep vaulted bays of the nave. The style of the
whole interior, for want of a better name, is called Romanesque, a style
of the transition period between the rigid simplicity of the Roman times
and the flowing ornamentation of the Middle Ages. Many of the most
cherished monuments of the Cathedral were desecrated, pillaged, and
destroyed during the Revolution, Spanish prisoners were lodged in it,
and generally it was about as badly used as any of the religious
buildings in Provence.
It, however, still retains the fine marble chair which is assumed to be
the ancient Papal throne, with the lion of St. Mark and the ox of St.
Luke carved in deep relief on either side of it.
In the small chapel to the right of the choir stands the lovely tomb of
Pope John XXII., an excellent piece of fourteenth-century pointed Gothic
work which suffered much mutilation during the Revolution, when it was
dislodged from its place and the statue of its occupant stolen together
with the statuettes that adorned the niches round its base. The tomb was
restored in the middle of the last century, and is now at rest in its
original position within the little chapel founded by John XXII.
himself. It is a work of great beauty, of slender spires and delicate
mouldings, of pillared niches with finely pierced canopies, of tapering
columns and richly crocketed and perforated gables: a monument all too
elegant for the mentally and physically deformed Pontiff to whose memory
it is erected.
John XXII. was a man of humblest origin, Jacques d’Euse by name, born in
1244 at Euse. Son of a shoemaker, he rose to the most elevated position
of his time; his talents, opportunities, and craftiness combining to
bring about his elevation to the Papal Chair. Superstitious and cruel,
he stooped to methods of revenge that match in diabolic ferocity the
most sanguinary reprisals of the buccaneers. One of his clergy, a
bishop, was by his command flayed alive and torn to pieces by wild
horses.
In his later years John got into sore trouble with the theological
authorities by promulgating the heretical doctrine “that the Saints at
death fell asleep and did not enjoy the beatific vision till after the
resurrection.” Whether this was a genuine conviction with him or no, he
was forced by the religious opinion of his contemporaries to make a
semblance of retracting it, but his monument seems to suggest that he
believed it was to be his only resting-place until the last great day.
His religious intolerance brought the Papacy into grave disrepute, but
his grasping avarice greatly benefited its treasury, for at his death it
was found that he had amassed for it eighteen millions of gold florins
in bullion and about seven millions in plate and jewels.
From the garden of the Rocher des Doms, which rises abruptly to a height
of three hundred feet above the river and looks across the island of
Barthelasse to the town of Villeneuve, there stretches far into the
distance a landscape which excites the imagination of the romantic poet,
delights the eye of the artist, and even moves the prosaic to express
themselves in superlatives.
The old bridge of St. Benezet, or, to be more exact, the three arches
that remain of it, is a distinguished relic of
[Illustration: PONT S^{T} BENEZET AVIGNON.]
the twelfth-century Avignon. It ends abruptly about two-thirds of the
distance across the left branch of the river, which at this point is
divided by the low-lying island of Barthelasse. Grey in colour,
desolate, for traffic has long ceased to clank and rattle over its
narrow causeway, this “fragment” gives a very good idea of what the
ancient bridge must have been when it extended completely over the two
channels of the river, and the island that divides them, right up to the
foot of the menacing square tower of Philip the Fair that guards the
opposite bank.
The silent flowing river with unruffled surface breaks into sound as it
rushes past these remaining piers. The gurgling swish of the hurrying
waters and the sparkling little ripples occasioned by the resistance of
the solid masonry, are the only breaks in the calm monotonous silence
with which the river makes its way down the great flat valley to the
sea. The ancient bridge is deserted, “all the world” no longer dances,
if ever it did attempt such a feat, upon the parapetless ten-foot way;
and the ancient rhyme--
“Sur le pont d’Avignon, tout le monde danse, danse,
Sur le pont d’Avignon, tout le monde danse en rond,”
would to-day be more applicable to the little white ripples that dance
and sparkle in the sunlight as they burst forth from under the venerable
archways. Fifteen other arches continued the bridge in days gone by, but
the townsfolk got tired at last of continually making good the damage
unceasingly inflicted by their enemies upon this highway, and since the
latter part of the eighteenth century it has remained the fragment that
one sees to-day.
[Illustration: PONT S^{T} BENEZET AVIGNON.]
The Bridge of Avignon when it completely spanned the Rhone was not
complete without its legend, a pretty little Provençal story that has
lasted until to-day. The simple folk of Avignon relate how a little
shepherd boy from Viverais, higher up the river, heard of the many
accidents which befell the inhabitants, who had no other means of
crossing the Rhone save by boats, accidents which resulted in great loss
of life. This little shepherd, highly favoured by the Saints, was, like
Joseph of old, a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions--dreams and
visions that roused and inspired him to go to the rescue of the hapless
folk whose lives were in peril every time they crossed the rapids of the
Rhone in their frail craft. Making his way on foot along the river bank
to Avignon, he presented himself to the Bishop of the town; told him of
his dreams and urged him to construct a bridge. Unfavourably received
both by the Bishop and the Provost, the former laughing at and the
latter chastising him, he demonstrated the inspired nature of his
mission by carrying to the river bank with his unaided hands a huge
boulder of rock to serve as the foundation-stone.
This miraculous act, together with his passionate pleading, roused the
townspeople, and without further delay the bridge was commenced. Poor
Benezet, dying before his life-work was completed in 1177, was canonised
by the grateful inhabitants, who have since done full justice to the
little shepherd boy to whom the town owed one of its most useful glories
and lasting treasures. A tiny chapel dedicated to St. Benezet stands
upon the first pier of the ancient bridge, and mass is still said there
every 14th of April, the Saint’s Day.
A lot of water has flowed under the arches of the bridge since the days
when brave knights in shining armour, proud priests in sumptuous robes,
poets, painters, soldiers, courtiers, and the thousand and one mortals
of commoner clay passed over the realised dream of the shepherd lad. It
has served its turn, and now belongs entirely to the bygone age of
chivalry and romance.
One of its contemporaries still exists near the Avignon of to-day--the
ruined church of St. Ruf that stands on the Tarascon road just outside
the city walls. It is all that is left of a twelfth-century monastery,
built by some canons of the Cathedral, who, on separating from their
brother clergy, retired to this spot, whither an ancient oratory, said
to have been founded by St. Ruf, attracted them. The Sanctuary and
tower, or belfry, are all that remain of the once extensive series of
buildings, but the carved capitals of the columns and fine bold apse
bear evidence that it was a church equal in beauty of workmanship to the
Cathedral itself.
[Illustration: RAMPARTS. AVIGNON.]
The buildings already mentioned are the oldest in Avignon, for the
ramparts that exist to-day replace the older ones which were destroyed
after the great siege in 1226. This siege was one of the last incidents
in a war which for wellnigh twenty years wrought devastation throughout
the southern provinces of France.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century there existed a sect known as
the Valdenses, or Albigenses, which had become so strong that Princes
and Nobles were embracing its tenets to the vexation of the Papacy. What
exactly were the beliefs of these heretics it is difficult to determine,
as the accounts handed down to us come from prejudiced sources.
There were those who alleged that the Albigenses professed a distorted
Christianity, grafted on to a degraded pagan mysticism, whilst others,
and amongst these were some of the persecutors, averred that nothing
could be more Christianlike than their behaviour or more blameless than
their lives. Claud, Archbishop of Turin, testifies that they were
“perfect, irreproachable, without reproach among men, addicting
themselves with all their might to the service of God.”
Whatever were their beliefs they held them strongly, and were prepared
to suffer for them even to the death; but more probably it was their
determined opposition to and contempt for the Papal Hierarchy that
brought down upon them its most bitter hatred and unrelenting
oppression. The sect was particularly strong in Languedoc, and from the
town of Albi in that province they took their name. The conflict of the
faiths at last reached such a pitch that the imperious Pope Innocent
III. found it necessary to take steps to preserve his spiritual
authority.
A crusade was proclaimed, and all Christendom was urged to take up arms
under the Pontifical banner for the suppression of the heretics. Raymond
VI., Count of Toulouse, an independent sovereign, who, whilst in no way
sharing their beliefs, was averse to joining Rome in a war upon his own
subjects, refused the Papal appeal for assistance, and was promptly
excommunicated. The awful Ban of the Church was pronounced upon him by a
Legate named Peter of Castelnau, and one of Raymond’s followers, in an
excess of loyalty, put an end with his sword to any such utterances from
the same source in the future. The assassination of his representative
thoroughly enraged the Pope, who issued a Bull imputing that Raymond
was influenced by the devil, and urging all the counts, barons, and
knights of Southern France to pursue his person and occupy and retain
his domains.
[Illustration: A. COUNTRYMAN.]
Thus was the cupidity of adventurous knights appealed to, and whilst the
legions of the Church ostensibly fought for the upholding of the faith,
Raymond of Toulouse was forced into the position of defending his
inheritance. Prompted by fear or contrition, or perchance a mixture of
both, Raymond underwent a most humiliating penance in his anxiety to
propitiate the enraged Innocent. Strong indeed must have been the motive
which induced so powerful a prince to submit to being stripped naked
from head to foot, save for a linen cloth round his waist for decency’s
sake, and being thus led nine times round the pretended Martyr’s grave
in the Church at St. Gilles, his naked shoulders chastised the while
with rods. The penance was accepted and Raymond was absolved, but his
possessions had already been divided amongst the crusaders, of whom
Simon de Montfort was Chief. The Comtat Venaissin was made over to the
Papal See, a transfer in which the inhabitants of the independent town
of Avignon who sided with Raymond did not concur.
Through endless sieges the fortunes of the contending factions
continually fluctuated. Simon de Montfort, now Count of Toulouse,
succeeded in obtaining the re-excommunication of Raymond; but the latter
never forsook the practices of the Holy Church, and with true humility
continued to perform his devotions at the doors of edifices whose
thresholds he was forbidden to cross. At the siege of Toulouse in 1216,
death put an end to the crusading career of de Montfort, but the
struggle went on as bitterly as ever. Every victory of the Papal forces
continued to be celebrated by a massacre of the vanquished.
Raymond VII., a more resolute and energetic man than his father,
ultimately regained the whole of Languedoc, and Amaury de Montfort
sought the protection of his ally Louis VIII. of France, to whom he
ceded the territorial rights acquired by his father. It was whilst on
his way to take possession of his new domain that Louis advanced with a
powerful army upon Avignon, demanding a passage through the town that he
might cross the Rhone by St. Benezet’s bridge. The inhabitants rightly
distrusted the wily pretext, and submitted to a siege rather than open
their gates. After a spirited defence of three months’ duration the town
surrendered, with the stipulation that only the Legate, Romain de St.
Ange, and the chief lords of the crusaders should come within its walls.
On the principle probably that faith need not be kept with heretics the
pledge was broken, and the invading army entered the town, put its
defenders to the sword, filled up its trenches, demolished its ramparts
and towers, and pulled down its strongholds. Moreover, the citizens of
Avignon were heavily fined for their adherence to a heresy which they
were solemnly sworn to abjure for the future; and, as if this were not
enough, they were further compelled to maintain an armed and equipped
body of thirty men in the Holy Land to assist in the recovery of the
sacred tomb from the Saracens.
When Clement V., coerced by Philip the Fair, removed the Papal See from
the Holy City and established his court in Avignon, he arrived in a town
as unlike the existing one as it is possible to imagine, and took up his
abode in the Monastery of the Dominican Friars. For Avignon was to him
merely a stop-gap, and he never relinquished the idea of reinstating the
Papal Chair in Rome.
His successor, John XXII., the shoemaker’s avaricious son, was not new
to Avignon, having been its bishop before his elevation. He at once
enlarged the small palace he had previously occupied; but this edifice
was completely swept away by the building operations of Benedict XII.,
who succeeded him. This Pope it was who erected the greater part of the
mass of buildings which to-day form the most conspicuous and enduring
feature of the town. To call it a palace was a misnomer; it was a
fortress, and one of the best examples of its period. It was a town
within a town, and its designers were not so much concerned with
creating a thing of beauty as in devising a refuge of irresistible
strength. And yet its great plain walls have a beauty all their own,
and the eye never tires of wandering over its various surfaces,
unexpected, irregular, and vast. Its plan follows the irregular shape of
the rock upon which it is founded, and was the work of succeeding Popes
and their architects.
[Illustration: PAPAL PALACE AVIGNON]
Of the seven exiled Popes, two, Benedict XII. and Clement VI., were most
ambitious builders, and we are only to-day beginning to discover the
true merit of the work carried out under their direction. For during the
whole of the nineteenth century the buildings were in the hands of the
military, who transformed and mutilated them in adapting them to their
requirements, and it is only recently that the walls with which they
blocked up doors, windows, and staircases have been removed, as also the
floors and partitions with which they divided the vast chapel and
audience chambers.
Most of the beautiful windows, specimens of early Gothic, which
originally gave character to the whole building and more particularly to
the courtyard into which they looked, disappeared when the place became
a barracks, and were replaced by ugly square openings, totally out of
keeping with the surrounding masonry.
The utilitarian engineer had but little regard for the architectural and
archæological amenities of this monument, and with ruthless hands
desecrated rich carvings and rare frescoes, timbered ceilings and
vaulted roofs; therefore a large expenditure of money, time, and skill
will be required to restore the Palace of the Popes to anything like its
former splendour.
The work of restoration is being carried out under the auspices of a
Government which is animated by a spirit very different from that of
many of its predecessors, and already the imposing audience hall and the
magnificent
[Illustration: ORANGE]
chapel above it have recovered much of their original appearance.
In the Tour Saint Jean are two chapels, one above the other, the upper
dedicated to Saint Martial, a bishop of Limoges, and the lower to the
Saint after whom the tower itself is named. These little chapels were
decorated in the time of Clement VI., about the year 1342.
In the ceiling of the chapel of Saint Martial the vaults are covered
with a series of pictures illustrating the life of the Saint. The colour
is in a brilliant state of preservation, the blues and warm browns being
contrasted so as to give a very rich yet soothing effect. The
irregularity of the designs, placed in an arbitrary fashion in the
spaces between the ribs, strikes one at first as being strangely
affected; but the figures are free and expressive in their action, some
of them being finished with a searching minuteness worthy of the Sienese
School at its best period. The ribs of the vault are decorated with most
beautiful Arabesque patterns, very suggestive of Byzantine mosaics.
In the lower chapel the ribwork is similar but not so elaborate in
detail, whilst the figures illustrating the life of St. John are on a
much larger scale. Unfortunately most of them are headless, a piece of
vandalism attributed to a Corsican regiment under the command of Colonel
Sebastiani, which was quartered in this part of the Palace. The
incentive was not mere wanton disfigurement of the paintings, for the
heads have all been neatly cut round, and most carefully removed, and
the assumption is, that the soldiers earned considerable pocket-money by
disposing of them to collectors. The Colonel has not been held blameless
in the matter, but probably overlooked the depredations of his men
because he enriched his own collection from the same source.
The frescoes in the Garde Robe, a chamber of considerable importance,
have recently been brought to light. The roof of the chamber is not
vaulted, but has heavy wooden beams resting upon stone corbels and
supporting the floor above. The walls of this interesting room are
completely covered with paintings of the fourteenth century by an
unknown artist. These have been restored, and one gets a very good idea
of the original state of the apartment. On a background of grass and
foliage figures in fourteenth-century costumes are depicted, engaged in
the pastimes of the period, hunting, fishing, falconry, and bathing. The
restoration of the
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF CHAPEL OF ST. BENEZET, AVIGNON.]
background has not been very happy, the chalky colour of the new work
being a little too conspicuous.
[Illustration: THE PALACE OF THE POPES]
The question of the restoration of ancient pictures, sculptures, and
buildings is rather a vexed one, but the advocates of the “let alone”
policy seem to overlook the fact that ultimately little would remain, as
only such massive monuments as the Pyramids can resist the ceaseless
ravages of time and the elements. The difficulty is to determine the
right moment to set about repairs which should be neither too long
delayed nor undertaken prematurely; but the process must be a perpetual
one if posterity is to retain the structures and works of earlier times.
The most zealous opponent of restoration could hardly take exception to
the work that has been carried out in the two most important parts of
the building--the great Audience Hall and the beautiful Chapel above it.
The extraordinary plan of placing these two lofty buildings one above
the other was a daring feat of building construction.
The internal structure of both hall and chapel is unexpectedly
beautiful, for the outside of this frowning fortress gives no indication
whatever of the delicate refinement of the roof vaulting, the clustered
pillars, the carved capitals and corbels that it contains. The Audience
Hall, or lower chamber, is divided into two naves by five clustered
pillars, from which the elegant ribs of the vaulted roof outspread
themselves.
This Hall, which was for half a century the chief tribunal of
Christendom, is about 150 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 34 feet high,
and is lit by eleven tall ogival windows, in graceful harmony with the
airy vaulting of the roof. At the top of the great staircase that
ascends from the entrance of the Audience Chamber there was recently
“unearthed,” or unwalled, the main doorway to the chapel above. This had
been built over so completely by the military that its presence was for
years unsuspected. It has suffered much damage, but what remains gives
indication of the rich beauty it once possessed. The Chapel has no
pillars, being one great nave, its vault springing from engaged
clustered columns, that run up the walls between the windows. The
capitals of these columns are the only carving in this vast airy hall.
The original builders, in the flights of their imagination after
spaciousness, gave so little heed to the constructional problems
involved in its achievement, that less inspired but more practical
successors found it imperative to prop the outside wall with a great
flying buttress which arches over a street running past the south side
of the building, and seems to form a portion of the main building.
On the vaults of the upper bay of the Audience Hall there are
fragmentary remains of the frescoes that were executed by some artist or
artists of the Sienese school. The records of a hundred years ago show
that the subjects which could be seen on the walls at that time were a
“Last Judgment,” “The Prophets,” and a “Crucifixion.”
The military gentlemen of the last century are again the culprits: they
could not see the merit or use of preserving such works, preferring to
see the dormitories of their men whitewashed, clean, and bare, as
befitted their occupation.
These few traces of early Italian artists, who were employed by the
wealthy court of the Papacy, are all that now remain of what was one of
the chief glories in the fourteenth century.
As one wanders through the courts, chambers, passages, prisons, and
chapels of the fortress palace, the historical associations they possess
fill the mind more than their present state. Page after page of history
is opened up at every turn, and the Past rises before us, with its
romance and war, cruelty and beauty, voluptuousness and spirituality,
joys and sorrows, ambitions and disappointments, all mixed together like
colours in a kaleidoscope.
The inscription that was found on the porch of the
[Illustration: THE SILVER BELL TOWER
PAPAL PALACE]
ancient Cathedral might well be paraphrased into one that could be
placed upon the Palace.
“Clement V. thought of it; John XXII. founded
it; Benedict XII. built it; Clement VI. enlarged
and enriched it; Innocent VI. added to its glory;
Urban V. chastened it; Gregory XI. abandoned
it; the Anti-pope, Pierre de Luna, defended and
jeopardised it; the Legates vandalised it; the
Brigands of Avignon desecrated it; the Military
transformed it out of all knowledge; and now a
thoughtful Republic is endeavouring to restore it
to its former state.”
Such an inscription would briefly set out the main facts of its long
history for the last six hundred years.
The worldly splendour of the Papal Court at Avignon, under the
Pontificates of Benedict XII. and Clement VI., was notorious throughout
Christendom, and when one reads of the indolent voluptuousness and
dissipations of the debauched clergy who surrounded the Papal throne,
one is quite prepared to learn that the grave scandals shocked even the
lax moralities of the period. It was in vain that the last three
occupants of St. Peter’s Chair in Avignon sought to suppress the
excessive pomp and luxury of their courts. Clement VI. had left behind
him a reputation for being “a fine gentleman, a prince munificent to
profusion, a patron of the arts, but no Saint,” and it is not difficult
to imagine that the example of one in such exalted station was well
calculated to encourage the wealthy churchmen to emulate his
dissipations.
Reformers and disciplinarians were bound to be unpopular with such a
society, and one cannot help feeling that when (urged by the
supplications of the Italians and the fanatical entreaties and vehement
persuasions of St. Catharine, who went in person to plead with the Holy
Father) the earnest Gregory XI. left Avignon, he did so with a feeling
of relief. At his departure, the licence of the clergy increased to such
an extent that Charles V., shocked at the scandals of the Church, could
endure them no longer, and sent soldiers under the command of Marshal
Boucicaut to drive the Anti-pope, Pierre de Luna (Benedict XIII.), from
the place. Pierre de Luna established himself in the Fortress Palace,
and defended it with determination. He destroyed one of the arches of
the Pont St. Benezet to cut off the approaches from the river; and from
the battlements and towers of his castle directed the engines of war
with his own hands on the town and townsfolk, who suffered so severely
that over a hundred houses and four thousand of the inhabitants were
destroyed during the siege.
[Illustration: FRONT ENTRANCE TO THE PAPAL PALACE]
After months of fighting the King’s troops stormed the fortress, and
Pierre de Luna saved himself by means of secret passages and staircases
leading to a vault from whence he got to the river side, and escaping
across the Rhone, sought refuge under the protection of the King of
Spain in his native country. Here, with two vicars, or priests, he kept
up the pretence of being still the Pope, and each day from the top of a
tower he blessed his distant friends and cursed his enemies. At his
death his two followers, both of whom he had made cardinals, met in
conclave, and one elected the other “Pope.” The farce of this schism was
ended by both of the exiled cardinals being bribed into reconciliation
to Rome; one being made Archbishop of Toledo, and the other Archbishop
of Seville.
It was during this siege that the fire broke out by which the Salle
Brulle got its name; but there is another story which attributes the
origin of this name to the brutality of one of the Papal Legates, when,
inviting a number of the leading citizens of the town to a great feast
in the chamber, he left them in the middle of the banquet and blew up
the happy party with gunpowder.
The reason for this “Gunpowder treason” was, that a near relative of the
Legate had been assassinated by some
[Illustration: A TYPE of AVIGNON.]
citizens for taking liberties with a young maiden of good family
belonging to the town. Whichever version is correct, the name has stuck
tenaciously to this chamber. There is another tragedy associated with
this Palace which is famous for evermore. The massacre, which took place
in the Glacière, or Ice Tower, one awful night in the middle of November
1791, at the outbreak of the Revolution, set a fiendish example to the
lawless brutality which, in 1793, expressed itself in a similar way in
the Abbaye Prison in Paris. Jourdain Coupetête, a fierce revolutionary,
had earned his nickname two years previously by decapitating the corpses
of the two Body-guards in the Marble Court of the Palace at Versailles,
at the “insurrection of women.” In June 1791 he was leading a body of
nearly 15,000 men, who called themselves the Brigands of Avignon.
Jourdain had dubbed himself “General,” and with his associates was the
terror of the Royalists.
L’Escuyer, one of the Patriot leaders, accompanied by the crowd, entered
the Church of the Cordeliers to hear Mass, or to mock at it. The
aristocratic Papists (the Church and Royalist faction) resented this,
and their hot southern blood being roused, the two parties came to
blows. In the mêlée L’Escuyer was killed, and this roused the Patriots
to demand an inquest. Impatient of delay, the Brigands under Jourdain
took possession of the Papal Palace, and there imprisoned some hundred
and thirty persons--men, women, and children--in the dungeons of the
Glacière Tower.
Then establishing themselves into a court-martial, with Jourdain as the
judge, these Brigands very quickly disposed of all the prisoners with
the naked sword--a most ghastly slaughter that makes the blood run cold.
When the troops under General Choisi came to the rescue, Jourdain could
not hold the castle, but was forced to take flight, escaping through the
secret passages as Pierre de Luna had done four hundred years
previously.
If Avignon were to be deprived of her grand Papal Palace, she would
still have enough churches and monasteries left to give evidence either
of the great popularity her church enjoyed, or of the power wielded in
the Middle Ages by the religious orders.
[Illustration: ST DIDIMUS AVIGNON.]
Churches and monasteries are scattered lavishly through the town, and
from the rich stores of relics still possessed by them, some slight idea
may be gleaned of the wealth they possessed before the terrible
Revolution. Everywhere the stranger goes the story is the same. Vergers
and guides tell of the past glories of this town: this stood here and
that there; here was a monument, there a shrine; but--they vanished in
the Revolution.
Terrible were these revolutionists of the South; they gathered their
harvests of rich plunder from the Church’s hand with as little concern
as a farmer gathers his corn, or as a beggar his rags. Nothing was
sacred from their vandal hands, and the tables were turned upon the
Church, which in the centuries long gone had taken its heavy toll from
all the country round.
What a grotesque picture the Revolution presents! Grim satire on the
vanity of riches, the pomp of ceremony and fleetingness of power, and
the emptiness of rank. Riches took wings, or rather were carried off on
donkeys’ backs to be melted down into coin and turned into bread for
hungry mouths. Ceremonies, even the most sacred, were mocked at, and
burlesque processions of ecclesiastical pageants excited the ribald
laughter of the crowd. The powerful were humbled to the dust, and rank
lost its head under the cruel slicing invention of Dr. Guillotin.
The Royalist faction in Avignon had always been associated with the
Order of the “White Penitents,” and in the same way the “Black
Penitents” had inherited the independence and rebellious spirit that
animated the followers of Count Raymond of Toulouse. These rival
factions, whose original opposition had been mainly religious, had now
become political, and on the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo their
differences became more accentuated and violent. The Royalists were in
the ascendancy, and they revenged themselves upon their political and
religious enemies with all the fanatical fervour of their Southern
nature.
The aristocratic and religious party had much to remember. The Glacière
massacres of 1791 were perpetrated upon their class, and as in 1795 the
Royalist libertines in Paris had indulged in ghastly reprisals against
the red-capped revolutionaries, the White Penitents followed in Avignon
the fashion set them by the capital. The enforced submission to the
restored Bourbon Dynasty in July 1815 aroused the bitterest resentment
of the Black Penitents and their followers, just as the restoration of
Napoleon had done their opponents earlier in March of the same year.
At Carpentras, about fifteen miles from Avignon, a small garrison of the
republicans, who had kept the tricolour floating until July 15, were
shot down by the Royalist Volunteers, although they had surrendered.
Fanatical crowds of Royalists directed their hatred and anger against
the Protestant section of the community.
[Illustration: STREET STEPS IN CARPENTRAS]
Vindictive murder and pillage spread all over the country towns and
villages. “The White Terror” of 1815 is a thing to remember, or rather
to forget. The diabolical outrages of Jourdain were equalled, if not
surpassed, by the White Penitent Pointu, the Avignon murderer, a leader
of a band as ferocious and bloodthirsty as himself. The military and
civil authorities were powerless to check the excesses of the fanatical
horde that rode roughshod over law and order, morality, decency, and
ordinary human feeling.
Marseilles, Nîmes, Uzès, Avignon, Arles, and Carpentras were all
involved in the White Terror, and one can hardly credit the details of
the cruel crimes committed. Among the victims to the insensate Royalists
was Marshal Brune, passing through on his way from Marseilles to Paris
to defend his conduct to the Government. On reaching Avignon he sought
out quarters in the Hôtel de la Poste. The news of his arrival had
spread along with sinister stories as to his doings during the
Revolution of 1789, and a great mob assembled around the hotel, broke in
and shot the Marshal in cold blood. His body was on its way to burial
when the crowd forced the bearers to change their course and proceed to
the river-side, where a wooden bridge spanned the river. From this they
threw the body of the Marshal into the silent Rhone. The ribald crowd
fired shots into the body as it floated down the
[Illustration: TYPES AT AVIGNON.]
stream, a proceeding which they termed “military honours.” On the arch
of the bridge they wrote “The Tomb of Marshal Brune.” The river,
however, refused the honour, and after twice being washed ashore, the
corpse was taken and buried by two men, who recognised it. The Marshal’s
widow, eventually, had the body disinterred and embalmed. At her
instigation a public trial was held, at which the memory of the dead
man was cleared of the charge of suicide and the body buried at Rioni.
This is one story; a sidelight on the happenings in Beautiful Provence
at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
* * * * *
The Papal Palace in Avignon stands steadfast amidst all the changes that
have come to the city, for its outward features have successfully
resisted the incessant hammerings of time. The work of internal
renovation goes steadily on, whilst the white dust raised by the masons,
who sing at their work, settles in every conceivable resting-place, much
to the discomfort of the inhabitants, especially when the “mistral”
sweeps down and drives this dust, like snow, before it. The old motto of
the city
“Windy Avignon, liable to plague when it has not the wind and
plagued with the wind when it has it,”
still applies, if the plague is interpreted to mean dust.
The inhabitants have been easily moulded by the influence of modernity,
and their principal street boasts of electric light and trams. Fashion
finds ardent devotees in the provincial town, who worship at her shrine
with as much, if not greater, zeal than her votaries in Paris, London,
or New York. The café and the restaurant are held in high esteem, and,
as in all French towns, occupy an important place in the civil life. The
hour ’twixt sundown and the most important of the day, when all Avignon
sits around the well-spread dinner tables, is devoted to the cafés; and
these clubs of the people, deserted and idle at some hours, are full of
joyful life.
On winter evenings the temporary stoves that stand prominently in the
middle of these salons are surrounded by cold-footed mortals, who rest
their extremities upon the encircling fenders. Friends meet, and seated
around marble tables consume café, beer, bright-coloured syrups, and
absinthe according to their fancy. Absinthe is still a popular drink
throughout Provence, in spite of reasoned appeals from the medical
fraternity for its discontinuance. Respectable womenfolk frequent the
cafés with their male relatives and friends, and sip sweet sickly syrups
with the rest. Excess is rare, almost unheard of. Cards are played, the
stakes usually being the cost of the entertainment. During the hour or
so before dinner the café is supreme.
The old folk in Avignon are all happy-looking; the men especially are a
jolly set of fellows, and although the snow of years falls on their
heads and never melts, their hearts are young and warm, secure from
Time’s blighting frosts. They have studied the art of living, under
their blue skies, and have mastered the difficult business.
[Illustration: AVIGNON.]
The girls and women are particularly well favoured, dark, as becomes
their Southern origin, well featured, favouring the Grecian rather than
the Roman type. They have less of the imperious self-conscious dignity
of their sisters in Spain and other Latin countries, and seem frank and
more human and in touch with the life around them. The Church finds in
them its chief adherents, faithful still in a country where once
everybody believed and few inquired, and now, where few believe and all
ask questions. New vistas of thought were opened up in Provence during
the Revolution epoch, and ever since the view has widened. In the
churches nearly all the little brass plates on the prie-dieu chairs have
the prefix Mme. or Mlle. engraved upon them. One seldom comes across
Monsieur.
In summer, when the heat of the brilliant day gives place to the lovely
glow of the Provençal evening, all Avignon sits outside around the
tables that trespass in careless fashion upon the pavements. The gossip
of the day goes round amidst unrestrained laughter and merriment. The
café on the pavement is as truly a Gallic institution as the “Bullring”
is Spanish. Spain carried her “institution” to her remotest colonies,
and France has done the same with the café.
The scene on a summer evening in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in
Avignon is but a repetition on a smaller scale of what may be seen on
any evening from one year’s end to the other in the Cannebière at
Marseilles, or farther distant still, across the Mediterranean in the
Place du Gouvernement in the French city of Algiers.
[Illustration: BOATS ON THE RHONE.]
The Romans introduced their great national institutions for amusement,
the amphitheatre and the circus, into nearly all their colonies, no
matter how distant, and the modern Gaul has emulated the older and far
greater coloniser in this respect. Even on the borders of the Great
Desert the outside café is firmly planted amongst a people who boast a
longer civilisation than their conquerors--a feat which the Romans found
impossible, for the amphitheatre of Rome made no headway amongst the
conquered Greeks.
[Illustration: AVIGNON]
But the Place, with all its gay life upon a summer evening, is not a
lasting memory of Avignon. The picture that remains upon the mind is the
view from the suspension bridge, just where it reaches the isle of
Barthelasse. From this point of vantage Avignon, bathed in the evening
glow, assumes a thoroughly mediæval aspect. The dark masses of the Rocks
of the Dom, the Cathedral, the Papal Palace, the church spires and
belfries are all softened and mellowed in the mystic light of the
afterglow in the west, until fancy suggests that the intervening years
have, in some subtle way, been bridged over, and the beholder is back in
those days when the proud prelates ruled like kings, nay despots, in
this fortress town beside the Rhone.
VILLENEUVE
II
VILLENEUVE
The modern approach to the town of Villeneuve passes the Tower of Philip
the Fair, a huge square block of masonry, erected early in the
fourteenth century on the west bank of the river, at the spot where the
old Bridge of St. Benezet reached the shore. The position was such that
whoever held this tower had complete command of the bridge, and could
render it useless to the inhabitants of Avignon when any conflict arose.
Its presence here proves how determined Philip was to have the Papacy
under his complete control, and at the time of its construction it was
well-nigh impregnable, for it embodied the latest improvements known to
the military genius of that day.
Before this period the battlements of fortresses and castles were simply
a series of embrasures and merlons with narrow oylets perforating the
latter. The engines of war used in laying siege to these buildings were
great battering-rams, with iron points, which laboured incessantly at
the lower portions of the defences, until a breach sufficiently large to
give passage to the attacking party was effected. The defenders’ reply
to this mode of attack was to lower cords or chains from the
battlements, and with them entangle the battering-ram so as to put it
out of action.
The besieging party’s efforts were, therefore, engaged in preventing the
defenders from leaning over the parapets; the archers and bowmen
directing their arrows and quarrels at any and every head appearing at
the embrasures above. Throughout the crusades this was the manner of
defence and attack, and an improvement was introduced by a system of
covering the battlements with temporary galleries, projecting over and
supported upon wooden beams, thrust through holes left for the purpose
in the masonry. This gallery was roofed with wood and tiles, whilst the
floor had gaps between the planks through which the defenders could let
down their ropes and chains or pour molten lead, burning sulphur, stones
and other missiles upon the heads of those who advanced to enter
breaches in the walls.
But in time a method was discovered of successfully
[Illustration: TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR.]
attacking this device of the defending party. Great catapults, the most
ancient of military engines, invented away back in the early classic
times, were now employed to hurl barrels of burning tar up on to the
temporary wooden shelters, which were soon demolished by this means.
[Illustration: A HILL TOP VILLENEUVE.]
For centuries this method of attack and defence flourished, and it was
not until the beginning of the fourteenth century that the machicolated
battlements came into existence. From ancient times the old crenellated
battlements had served through ages that were engaged in fighting. The
ancient Egyptians and Assyrians used them, and it was reserved for the
military genius of the Middle Ages to invent the machicolated parapet.
This consisted of building out from the main walls of the tower or
castle a curtain of masonry, supported by stone brackets. This gave a
thorough protection to the besieged, who could look down through the
apertures between the corbels and drop their missiles, molten lead,
burning sulphur and melted pitch, on to the heads of their assailants.
The Tower of Philip the Fair is built with a machicolated battlement,
and over the small doorway there is an “échauguette,” or small
projecting tower, which commands the entrance. Even if the besiegers
managed to escape the missiles dropped through the floor of the little
tower, and forced their way into the porch, their task was not
accomplished, for from the roof of the narrow passage leading into the
large ground-floor chamber a long chimney runs right up to the top of
the tower and down this projectiles could still be dropped.
The tower contains three lofty chambers, one above the other, each of
which has a finely vaulted roof, the ribs resting upon fantastically
carved corbels. These chambers are in an absolutely perfect state of
preservation, a rare thing in a fourteenth-century building in this part
of the country. The narrow winding staircase lit by oylets, which betray
the thickness of the walls, has at intervals little branch stairways of
only a few steps. These give
[Illustration: GATEWAY, TARASCON.
p. 80]
access to small openings into the shaft that runs from the roof of the
porch to the roof of the building.
If for any reason the roof had to be abandoned, the besieged could still
command the entrance through these apertures. The top chamber in the
tower seems to have been used as a prison at some early time, for it is
covered with pathetic inscriptions, cut with such care that they could
only have been executed by persons upon whose hands the time hung
heavily. One cannot know for certain that they are not the work of a
besieged garrison, or the guardians of the tower, but the presence of
strong iron bars across the outside of the windows, and other evidences,
would indicate that prisoners occupied this tower at some time in its
history; and one would think that all these precautions to prevent the
escape of a prisoner from this lofty room were hardly necessary: unless
indeed the prisoner had a rope or was able to construct a makeshift one
out of his clothing, he would be very unlikely to run far after he had
dropped from this lofty tower on to the rough rocks below.
The stone seat in one of the deep window embrasures in the second
chamber has carved upon it, very neatly, the chequered pattern of a
chess-board, the alternate squares being either raised or sunk. A
similar “chessstone” appears upon the floor of one of the chambers in
the Fort St. André. One can only imagine them to be the work of
prisoners, for, however much time the soldiers of the Guard had at their
disposal, it is incredible they would have allotted themselves so hard
and tedious a task when they could easily obtain a bit of wood to serve
their purpose. And yet, who knows? A prolonged siege might have reduced
the garrison to its last stick, and the horror of their perilous
position may have driven them to seek any diversion to drive away the
contemplation of the fate awaiting them.
[Illustration: WINDOW SEAT. IN THE TOWER OF PHILIP.]
The Fort of St. André commands not only the town which nestles around
its foundations, but the river and the whole of the western side of
Avignon.
When Philip forced the miserable Pope Clement V. to settle in France, he
anticipated the necessity of keeping a strict watch on the Papal
residences, and although the great Palace which now stands in Avignon
was not erected till some years after, Philip had the Fort St. André
built to keep a guard. It was probably the proximity of this formidable
fortress that caused the succeeding Popes to take such care with the
fortification of their residence. It was from this fortress that the
French troops besieged the Papal Palace when Pierre de Luna set up his
pretensions and defended it against all comers.
[Illustration: FORT SAINT ANDRE.]
Two great towers form the entrance to the grounds upon which stood the
Abbey of St. André. During the troublous times of the sixteenth century
these two towers were used as prisons, and the great Hall on the first
floor, the Hall of the Chevaliers, served for a recreation-room. The
flagstones of this great bare apartment are covered with inscriptions
and devices which, although much worn, show that the prisoners who
carved them were educated men of the period. The skill displayed in many
of these elaborate devices is all the more remarkable when it is
remembered that the only instruments used were the soft pewter spoons
the prisoners had for supping soup with. Indications of the prisoners’
thoughts are embodied in the stones. A St. George and the Dragon, a
Crucifixion, cannon, Maltese crosses, a figure of Justice, a device
emblematic of abundance, skulls and crossbones, form some of the
subjects upon which the prisoners tried their spoons and skill; whilst
one by a member of the “Carbonari” recalls memories of Silvio Pellico
and his moving records of a prisoner’s life.
The venerable heavy doors that lead into these gloomy chambers groan
with age each time they turn upon their well-worn hinges; rusty iron
bolts creak out the same melancholy discords that many years ago fell
upon strained ears and sinking hearts.
The twin towers of the Fortress of St. André remain a most imposing
memorial of fourteenth-century military architecture. Standing on a
rock, that at one time was an island of the Rhone, the fort commanded
the surrounding country to an extent that made its presence a
[Illustration: A STREET IN VILLENEUVE.]
menace to the neighbourhood. The walls enclose a site upon which a town
nestled in calm security, and near by the Monastery or Abbey of St.
André, sheltered further by a great belt of pines, rises upon the site
of a still more ancient building now passed out of memory.
Its career has been a chequered one, for it has changed owners with a
bewildering frequency. After the Revolution it was turned into a
military hospital; later it came into the possession of private persons;
and in the second decade of the last century it again became a convent,
inhabited by nuns. Now, unoccupied, it awaits some fresh development,
but who dare prophesy what destiny has in store for it?
The little town beside it is fast tumbling to decay; its dilapidated
walls and roofs straggling in irregular confusion up the rocky hillside.
Higher up, on one of the topmost knolls of the enclosure, a small
ancient chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Belvezet, stands erect and
stern in its simplicity, forsaken and exposed to the mistral’s greatest
violence and the sun’s fiercest bleaching rays.
The town of Villeneuve, that lies below the fortress, sadly belies its
name, for a more concentrated collection of crumbling ruins could hardly
be imagined. The Monastery of the Chartreuse, founded by Innocent VI.
in the middle of the fourteenth century (1352), was for more than four
hundred years one of the most important and prosperous in Languedoc. The
walls enclosing it measure nearly a mile in circumference, and now its
ruins form a squalid little town inhabited by over five hundred human
beings, to say nothing of the domestic animals.
The walls of its crumbling church are fast disappearing, the roof lets
more than daylight in, and what little of it remains affords but a poor
shelter for a few rickety, cumbrous, mud-stained carts and piles of
faggots stored for winter use.
The Gothic tomb of Innocent VI., the founder and patron of this monastic
town (for the Monastery of the Chartreuse was more than a mere cluster
of religious buildings), was only removed from this church as lately as
1835, and placed amidst more secure and fitting surroundings, in the
Hospice of the town.
This beautiful tomb of Innocent, not unlike that of his predecessor
John, in the Cathedral of Avignon, suffered more shameful treatment at
the hands of the demoralised mobs of the first Republic. For years it
lay neglected, amidst accumulating mounds of degrading filth that
threatened to engulf it; till during the reign of Louis Philippe, when
the fires of the Revolution had died down, attention was directed to the
ancient monuments of the country, and amongst other things it was
discovered that this once beautiful and dignified tomb was being used by
some ingenious and impious person as a rabbit hutch. Time’s revenges are
indeed bitter, but its healing power is none the less merciful, and
to-day the tomb receives the homage of pilgrims actuated by more varied
motives than those of former ages.
[Illustration: GATEWAY OF MONASTERY CHARTREUSE.]
Some idea of the enormous power of Monachism, and the attraction it had
for all classes in the Middle Ages, can be derived from the
contemplation of even the ruins of these institutions in the Southern
countries where they flourished.
At the close of the thirteenth and all through the following century the
Monastery and Convent reached the highest developments. The primitive
hermits, who lived in bare seclusion, depriving themselves wilfully of
all but the essentials of existence, were not only fifteen centuries
removed from the powerful and luxurious monks of the Middle Ages, in
point of time; they are for ever unrelated to them in their methods of
existence. The gradual stages in the evolution of the monastic idea melt
into each other almost imperceptibly. From St. Anthony to the Monastery
of Villeneuve is a far cry, and the anchorite of Thebes would have found
it difficult to recognise in the monachism of later years the spirit
that controlled his life.
Instead of the rough cave of nature’s carving, a succession of chapels
richly decorated by the hands of accomplished artists, whose talents
were controlled by monastic wealth, cloisters with carvings that only
practical
[Illustration:.THE FOUNTAIN IN..THE CLOISTERS OF..THE CHARTREUSE.
.VILLENEUVE.]
and well-paid sculptors could achieve, galleries, chapter-houses,
refectories, gardens, kitchens, stables, wine-cellars, all contributed
to the enjoyment of the occupants. The worldly prosperity of the
institution continued right down until the Revolution relieved it of its
wealth and robbed it of its power. There was no lingering period of
decay, but a sudden lightning stroke put an end to the Monastery of the
Chartreuse.
Its architecture represents all the styles of four hundred years. Here
we see an early Roman-Gothic chapel, on whose walls linger remnants of
Italian frescoes, painted when art was breaking away from the archaic
tradition of the earlier Christian schools. Classic Renaissance
sculpture adorns the fine entrance gateway, a masterpiece of the
eighteenth century, the work of de Valfenier. Upon the shield facing the
spectator is the inscription: “Domus Sanctæ Mariæ. Vallis
Benedictiones.”
All through the strange winding lanes, that once were cloisters and
vaulted passages, incongruous squalid makeshift hovels mingle and jostle
with the ancient buildings. In the centre of one of the cloisters there
stands unfinished, but isolated, a classic rotunda that once sheltered a
fountain, one of the latest additions to the monastery when the end
came. At the beginning of the eighteenth century buildings foreign to
the character of the place grew up in the cloisters that surround this
dignified rotunda, but the intervening space has fortunately been spared
to give, as it were, a breathing space to one of the best preserved
monuments in the ruined abbey.
TARASCON
III
TARASCON
Daudet has left on record the feelings of embarrassment that overcame
him whenever he had to pass the little town of Tarascon. From the moment
when the great white towers of the Château René burst upon his view
until it was left behind he confesses to feeling ill at ease. He had
made the name of the sleepy Provençal town almost as famous in the
nineteenth century as it had been in the fifteenth, and yet its natives
were ungrateful and in no way pleased with the new celebrity that had
been thrust upon them.
Tartarin and Tarascon were, however, both pseudonyms; but with the
almost comic seriousness that is characteristic of the Provençal, the
inhabitants of the little town felt convinced that the author was
holding them up to ridicule. The real scene of the cap-shooting parties
that Daudet had in view, when he penned the delightful exploits of the
famous Tartarin, lies about fifteen miles on the other side of the
Rhone. “Tarascon,” with its fine sonorous rolling sound, appealed to the
ear of the author, who little thought that his choice of it as a part
title for his work would draw down upon his head the execrations of a
town. And they put their resentment into deeds too, for the book was
banned and never could be bought in the place. Time works wonders: the
resentment is now forgotten, and the adventures of the famous hero are
pushed under the nose of every passing stranger who puts foot into
Tarascon.
Tarascon is a junction on the Paris-Lyons and Mediterranean system, and
its station is a busy hive of bustling noisy humanity whenever a train
arrives or departs. Few of the many thousands of passengers who pass
through the junction make any stay in the town, although it is well
worthy of a visit. The two “monuments,” as they are called, of the town
are the Château René and the Church of St. Martha. These alone are more
than worth the time taken to examine them, and the town itself is
picturesque enough to warrant an inspection by the casual passer-by and
a more prolonged stay by the lover of out-of-the-way corners.
A wide boulevard, the Avenue de la République (nearly
[Illustration: GATEWAY. TARASCON.]
every little town in Provence has its “Avenue de la République”),
planted with four rows of great plane trees, leads from the station to
the centre of this town of some nine or ten thousand inhabitants. Small
and large cafés, with little and big forecourts framed in front of them
by shrubs growing out of old wine casks which are painted a vivid green
colour, are the most distinguishing features of this boulevard.
It is not difficult to discover the “Château” from any part of the town,
for its great walls tower far above the loftiest buildings. It is one of
the best preserved fortresses of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century
in Provence, and the walls reflect as brilliantly as ever the dazzling
sunlight. Despite their age, they remain fresh and unstained by dirt, an
eloquent tribute to the purity of the Provençal atmosphere. Built upon
rocks that rise abruptly from the waters of the Rhone, it was in days
gone by surrounded entirely by the river, a bridge of three arches
giving access from the landward side across the moat. The moat is now
dry, for the ends of it, which were formerly connected with the river,
are closed, one by the construction of the abattoirs and the other by a
great stone wall which has been built across, to keep the waters out. A
more imposing mediæval castle could hardly be imagined, nor one more
typical of the fourteenth century.
King René, the merry monarch of the land of the Troubadours, had rather
an eventful life. He inherited through his father, Duke Louis II. of
Anjou, the title of King of Naples, and from 1434 onwards was involved
[Illustration: A. BAR. IN. TARASCON.]
in a complication of troubles and wars in endeavouring to gain that
kingdom, as well as those of Sicily and Jerusalem. When luck went
against him and he was imprisoned by Philip of Burgundy, who was the
supporter of the claims of Count Vandemont, he provisionally made over
to his wife, the Duchess Isabella, all his rights, and she became Regent
of Naples, Sicily, Anjou, Provence, etc. René managed at last to ransom
himself from his prison, and made a final attempt to possess himself of
Naples. The Duke Alphonse of Aragon was, however, too strong for him,
and he was reluctantly forced to retire to Provence. His daughter,
Margaret, married Henry VI. of England, and was as unfortunate as her
father in her royal career. Poor old René was the possessor of many
empty titles. He was Duke of Lorraine, King of Naples, King of Sicily
and of Jerusalem, but with them all he never had much power, nor was
possessed of riches commensurate with his high rank. Shakespeare in
_Henry VI._, makes Gloster say of him:
“Unto the poor King Regnier, whose large style
Agrees not with the leanness of his purse,”
and further makes York refer to:
“The type of King of Naples of both the Sicils and Jerusalem.
Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.”
Of all the kingdoms to which he claimed the title, none
[Illustration: KING RENE, CASTLE. TARASCON]
were actually in his possession except the fair country of Provence. He
was a good-natured, easy-going old monarch; gay, and in spite of all the
troubles that overtook him, light-hearted. His daughter’s marriage with
the King of England was unfortunate for all parties concerned, and
instead of René benefiting by the splendid alliance, the poor old King
had frequently to dip his hand deep into his purse to ransom his unlucky
daughter. The court of this old Bohemian was conducted on free and easy
lines; wandering minstrels and errant knights finding hearty welcome
from the King, whose fame was naturally spread far and wide by those
gentry. It was only in the last years of René’s reign that he was able
to reside much at his castles of Aix, Tarascon and Les Baux--a short
period of calm after a stormy life.
He practised the arts of poetry, painting and music, and the surest
passport any knight or troubadour could have to his good will and
patronage was to be proficient in either of these accomplishments. A
good listener might also come in for a share of his smiles, for he was
notoriously fond of singing and reciting his own ballads and verses, or
superintending some pageant or display. His poetic works were published
in four volumes during the last century, but they have never attained
any great celebrity.
Of all his castles, Tarascon is the only one standing in anything like
its original condition. As one looks up at the great round towers that
swell out at the two corners of the main building (on the landward
side), one realises what a sense of security its inmates must have
indulged in, when besieged; and how impotent the attacking party must
have felt. The riverward towers are square, as are the two smaller
towers on the north-east side. There is a girdle of slightly projecting
stone-work upon one of the towers, about three-quarters of the way up,
that conveys very vividly to the eye its great circumference.
Just past the south corner of this vast fortress, the Château de
Montmorency rises on the other side of the river. In the clear air its
outlines are sharp and well defined, and this distant toylike building
helps to accentuate the size of the Château, near at hand. The outer
windows on the great wall are grilled over with strong iron bars, for
the Château is now a prison. These windows have dripstones over them,
the carved ends of which are the only ornamentation on the great bare
face of the building. For the rest, the corbels that support the
machicolated battlements give a play of light and shade that, though
simple, has a very rich effect, when contrasted with the great plain
spaces below. The battlements, with their embrasures and oylets, form a
crown of great dignity to the whole building, and it is in such fine
condition (doubtless carefully restored) that one has no difficulty in
picturing the rich spectacle that must have been presented by a
cavalcade of brightly habited knights and ladies with their attendants
issuing forth on a sunny morning to fly their falcons or to attend some
fête at a neighbouring castle. No finer background for their gorgeous
costumes could be conceived than these plain creamy walls, which the
rounded towers at each corner save from monotony.
From the river the Castle does not present so bold an appearance, owing
to the absence of rounded towers. At a little distance, when its size is
not so apparent, it looks almost Greek in its restraint and refinement;
the row of brackets supporting the overhanging battlements suggesting a
series of dentils under an irregular entablature.
The inside of the Castle is well worth examination, but the prison
authorities are a little particular whom they admit, and the visitor has
to be conducted through the great building by a jailer, who, armed with
great bunches of mediæval keys, unbolts ancient doors on creaking
hinges, and bolts them just as carefully after. The internal
arrangements of a fourteenth-to-fifteenth-century castle are simple, if
massive, and hardly any alteration has been necessary to convert it into
a prison. Very little has been changed since the good old King’s time.
The Chapel has only had a movable wooden partition placed down the
centre of it, to separate the prisoners who have been condemned from
those awaiting trial, when they attend “the service.” The cells for
solitary confinement, with their elaborate blacksmith-wrought
fastenings, would defy the ingenuity of any “Jack Sheppard” seeking to
escape.
[Illustration: KING RENE’S CASTLE]
There is not much carving or sculptured work in the Castle. It has been
sparingly used, except in the porch of the Chapel, which is in fine
ogival style with delicately carved archivolts. The principal chamber of
the King is a noble apartment, in which the ceiling is, or rather was, a
feature. It is heavily timbered, and although the panels have been
removed to enrich some museum or private collection, sufficient remains
to give an idea of the importance of this apartment. The embrasures of
the windows are of the depth of the wall--that is, about twelve
feet--and they form small chambers, around which are great stone slabs,
that were used as seats.
Opening off the Royal Apartment is the Salle du Garde. From this room a
door formerly opened into a passage that communicated with galleries
extending all over the building. On the other side of the circular
staircase, that leads up to the King’s apartment, there is a sexagonal
chamber with a timbered panelled roof. This was occupied by the
ladies-in-waiting on the Queen, whose apartment, immediately above it,
had a fine vaulted roof. In such wonderful preservation are these
apartments of five hundred years ago that they want but tapestries and
furniture to be as habitable as ever they were. One can easily, in
imagination, fill these chambers with the laughing maids of honour,
bending over their tambours and tapestry work, or poring over some book
with its delicately painted pages in which the romances of the
Troubadours were set forth--one reading aloud for the benefit of the
others some long narration of days gone by: perchance the very popular
story, rhymed in true Troubadour fashion, about the inmates of the
Castle of Beaucaire, that from the windows of the King’s and the Ladies’
apartment could be seen so distinctly in the sunlight.
This story of Aucassin and Nicolète has been translated
[Illustration: AN OLD GARDEN. TARASCON.]
from the Provençal language into English by Andrew Lang. It relates how
the Count of Valence was at war with the Count of Beaucaire, and was
always outside the walls of his castle, to the great annoyance of
everybody. The Count of Beaucaire was old and frail, and possessed of
only one son, his hope and pride. This youth, Aucassin by name, was
deeply in love with a dark-eyed maid, a slave girl, Nicolète, that a
captain in the town of Beaucaire had purchased from the Saracens in
Carthage, and had adopted. The old Count, furious at the thought of his
only son making such a _mésalliance_ as to marry a Saracen slave girl,
ordered the young man to go out and fight against the enemy of their
house and to lead the retainers of the family of Beaucaire on to
victory. At the same time the Count prevailed upon Nicolète’s owner to
have her put in seclusion, out of reach of Master Aucassin.
Whilst the youth is wringing his hands in despair, the city is besieged
by the Count Valence, and the old Count of Beaucaire upbraids his son
for his inactivity. Then Aucassin urges his suit to his father; but the
old man will not give way, and only consents to allow the lovers an
interview if Aucassin proves his mettle in the battle that is raging
around them. The bold youth arms himself and rides out of the castle,
and in an absent-minded mood goes right into the arms of the enemy. When
he does realise his position and comes to himself he does doughty deeds,
in his turn taking Count Valence captive, and, returning with him to the
besieged castle, demands that his father should keep his engagement and
grant him the promised interview with his lady-love. The old man
refuses, and Aucassin is so overcome with rage that he releases his
prisoner--an act for which his father puts him in close confinement.
Time passes, Nicolète escapes from her prison and goes amissing. Count
Beaucaire, thinking that all danger to his son is now over, releases him
from prison. One day Aucassin comes across Nicolète in a wood where she
has been hiding, and together they go in a boat and make their escape
down the river, only to be washed out to sea and captured by pirates.
Their troubles are increased by their being separated. Aucassin is
ransomed by his father, and Nicolète is sold to the Saracens. You would
think that this was the end of her tale. No; she escapes disguised and
finds her way back to fair Provence, where she makes a living by singing
ballads up and down the country, eventually arriving at Beaucaire, where
Aucassin is now Count in his father’s stead. Of course he discovers his
long-lost lady-love, and the story ends, as all good stories should,
with the hero and heroine living happily ever after.
From the extensive roof of the Château a great panorama lies before the
spectator. The Rhone for many a mile away to the south glistens in the
sunlight until it is lost to view near the rising ground upon which with
good glasses the Arena at Arles can be discerned. To the north the two
lofty towers of Château Renard rise up, whilst in the far, faint
distance the snow-capped peak of Mont Ventoux floats in the haze.
Provence is well supplied with lofty points of vantage, from which
extensive prospects are before the spectator, and enable him to
understand somewhat why Provence was chosen as a home for chivalry and a
garden for romance. Castles rise up on nearly every point of vantage.
Great cypress-trees shelter the low-lying fields. Farmhouses nestle in
the protection of rising ground, upon which they would not, like the
great stern castles and watch-towers, be able to retain a foothold when
the mistral sweeps the heights. For the elements are at their strongest
in Provence. The sun shines brightly and burns fiercely, the winds blow
violently and chillingly, and the rains fall in terrible earnest in
“this land of plenty.”
Greek, Roman, and Gaul have all fought for existence on nearly every
foot of its great plains and scattered heights, and travellers from
distant lands have often fallen a prey to the dangers that such a
country could so easily harbour.
All around are castles that have stood many a siege when occupied by
warriors whose history was one long
[Illustration: S^{T}. MARTHA’S. TARASCON.]
record of fights against Saracens and infidels abroad, and feudal chiefs
at home.
High up on the walls of the Castle of Tarascon one can see evidences of
the ordinances of later times. The end of the eighteenth century has
left its mark here as on most of the strongholds and buildings in
Provence.
The only other important building in Tarascon is the Church of St.
Martha; but it is the most significant that the little town possesses,
for it perpetuates the legend which gives the town its name.
The story of St. Martha and her victory over the devastating terror of
the country-side, “The Tarasc,” is but a variation of the familiar St.
George and the Dragon legend which embodies the pietistic faith in the
overthrow of evil by good. This legend of St. Martha, along with that of
the “Stes. Maries,” belongs exclusively to Provence, and it permeates
the whole religious tradition of the delta of the Rhone. The story or
legend runs that, after the crucifixion of Christ, the holy women who
had remained faithful to their Lord, Mary Magdalen, Mary the mother of
James, Mary Salome, Martha with Sara, their black servant and Lazarus,
were put in a boat by the Jews and sent out to sea. After an adventurous
voyage of nearly two months, they landed on the extreme west point of
the Camargue in a little village that was inhabited by some poor Phocean
fisherfolk. The legends vary as to the subsequent routes taken by the
illustrious voyagers, but they seem all to agree that Martha found her
way to Tarascon; Mary Magdalen to St. Baume, not far from Marseilles,
where her bones are believed to be under the Chapel of the Grotto; St.
Lazarus accompanied her to Marseilles, where the legend connecting him
with that city is still held in esteem by the pious.
Early in the fifteenth century, King René, who had an excellent taste
for romantic legends, had a vision in which the holy women of “Stes.
Maries” appeared to him and revealed the spot where their mortal remains
were lying neglected. The sentimental King sought them and had them
placed in the church, which he rebuilt on the spot where they first
landed, and altered the name of the church from “Our Lady of the Sea” to
“Les Maries.” Up to this time the little church of the tenth century, at
this spot, went by the name of “St. Mary of the Boats,” or “St. Mary of
the Sea.”
This name was probably but the Christian of an older Pagan name, given
to the church or temple that stood on
[Illustration: THE POSTERN, LES BAUX]
its site, a name likely enough derived from the fame of the Syrian
prophetess Martha, who accompanied Marius on his expedition into Gaul, a
hundred years before the Christian era. And presumably there existed an
earlier temple still upon this lonely swamp, a temple to some deity or
goddess whose protective care the earliest Phoceans sought to procure by
votive offerings. However this may be, René decided that the “Stes.
Maries” were Mary, the mother of James, Mary Salome, and Sara, the black
servant, who had remained in the little seaside village converting the
inhabitants to the Christian faith.
Thus the great patron of romantic story inaugurated a legend that has
persevered until to-day, for pilgrims from all parts still pay visits to
“Les Maries” by the sea, to receive benefits and healing from the relics
of the two Maries which are exhibited annually, whilst the remains of
the black servant, Sara, strangely enough exact and receive homage of
the gipsies from Bohemia.
St. Martha, who went first, on leaving her fellow-voyagers, to Aix,
received there a deputation from a neighbouring place, Tarascon, which
unfolded to her their sad plight. A great monster was ravaging their
country-side, and their only hope was to get some one endowed with
miraculous power to come to their assistance. The good Saint immediately
set out for the terror-stricken town, where she received a great ovation
from the assembled inhabitants. Without delay, armed with nothing but a
small wooden cross, she sought the monster in the woods near by, and on
finding it, held up the sacred emblem in front of it. The monster’s
bellowings ceased at once, for the terror lay dead at her feet, its
great jaws red with the blood of its last victim. St. Martha returned to
the village and exhibited to the grateful populace the monster tied to
her girdle.
King René, fond, as is well known, of pageants, processions, and fêtes,
was the founder of the annual festival of the “Tarasque,” which was
celebrated until quite recently in the month of June. A great pantomime
monster was carried round the streets by sixteen men concealed in its
body. It was led by a village beauty dressed in imitation of the Saint.
The head of the creature had jaws that were movable, and they could be
worked so as to grip any venturesome person who came close enough. When
too hotly assailed by the townsfolk, fireworks were discharged from the
eyes and different parts of the great canvas body. The old traditional
“Tarasque” of great magnificence, which cost nearly £1,000, was,
however, destroyed at the time of the Revolution by the Arlesiens, and
was replaced shortly afterwards by the less imposing contrivance of
to-day. The procession or fête was of a semi-religious character, and
this, together with the rough practical jokes and horse-play that the
people indulged in, led to its being prohibited by the Government in
1904.
[Illustration: The TARASC]
The Church of St. Martha, as might be expected, is full of references
both in stone and canvas to the Lady. The Church itself is, like the
south porch, in the Romanesque Gothic style. Here are paintings by Vien,
the eighteenth-century painter who was the master of David. His
pictures are in a classic style which he lived to see more popular than
it was when he introduced it first, after his long residence in Rome.
They make no great appeal to the tastes of this century, for the severe
and academical style of them is apt to leave the spectator cold and
unsympathetic. The subjects are all relative to the religious legends of
Provence: “The Visit of Christ to St. Martha,” “The Raising of Lazarus,”
“The Embarkation of St. Martha,” “The Landing of Martha at Marseilles,”
“St. Martha preaching the Gospel at Tarascon,” and “The Death of St.
Martha.”
The pictures by Parrocel are not so interesting either from the point of
view of the artist or the seeker after legendary lore.
One of Mignard’s two canvases represents St. Martha attending on our
Saviour. It is significant of the high repute in which the religious
legends of Provence were held, and the wealth of the Church at the
period, that such popular painters of the eighteenth century could be
commissioned to execute pictures recording them.
There is a small picture by Vanloo, “The Death of St. Francis d’Assisi,”
in one of the side-chapels; a very beautiful rendering of a religious
subject that is worth,
[Illustration: A STREET IN TARASCON.]
from an artist’s standpoint, miles of the larger canvases that cover the
main walls. An old altar-piece in another of the shallow side-chapels is
a fine piece of sixteenth-century decorative painting.
Enclosed in a cheap-looking painted cupboard that stands in the sacristy
is the reliquary that holds a “veritable” portion of St. Martha’s skull.
This reliquary is not ancient, but is a reproduction of an original that
was presented to the Church by Louis XI. in 1478, and which, in the
unhappy starvation times of the great Revolution, was sent to the
Genoese merchants by the revolutionaries in exchange for wheat to the
value of £4,000. It was a great loss to the Church in more ways than
one, for in the head of the bust were placed the frontal bones of the
patron Saint of Tarascon. This bust was of solid gold, and round it were
beautiful little enamels which pictured the life of St. Martha; an
exquisite statue of King Louis XI. represented him kneeling in adoration
at the base of the bust. The reproduction is in gilt, and contains a
portion of the base of the Saint’s skull tied with a piece of pink
ribbon. The tomb in the crypt had of course to be opened to obtain
these. Beautiful as the reproduction is, and veritable as is the relic
it contains, it is doubtful if the pious Tarasconaises are reconciled
to the loss of the most precious ornaments that the town possessed.
Down in the dark, damp crypt of the Church, lit only by the entrance,
lies a tomb of real dignity and beauty. This crypt is a part of the
older church of the twelfth century, and is without any particular grace
or beauty, acting as a foil to the monument it enshrines.
This representation in marble of the entombment of St. Martha is of real
merit. The recumbent figure of the Saint lies in a peaceful repose that
is nobly expressed. A figure of Christ supports the head, and one of St.
Fronto the feet. The anachronism of associating St. Fronto, who was a
Bishop of Périgueux in the fourth century, with an event that presumably
took place in the first, does not seem to have troubled the author of
this tomb. But in a land of Romance one should close one’s eyes to such
unromantic things as dates, and accept without question the stories
woven by a clergy that seem to have been largely endowed by the same
spirit that inspired the Troubadours of their sunny land.
LES BAUX
IV
LES BAUX
The little chain of rugged hills with fantastic contours, which breaks
away from the great Alpine range and juts into the peaceful valley of
the Rhone, is called “Les Alpilles,” or little Alps. On the south side
of this small mountain chain, upon cliffs that stand almost isolated
from the main group, lie the ruins of the ancient Provençal town of Les
Baux.
The approach to this extraordinary place from over the mountain chain is
full of interest and surprises, if one starts out from St. Remy, which
lies well over to the north. The ascent by the winding road that curves
and twists round the great hills is a fitting preparation for the
scenery that lies to the south, for the distant hilltops are crowned
with great rocks, carved and chiselled by nature into such shapes that
the eye continually mistakes them for buildings erected by the hands of
men.
The tall cypress-trees that in the plains spire up into the sky
disappear as one ascends, and few shrubs or trees clothe the bald
hillside. Wild thyme and lavender betray their presence by the fragrance
of their perfume. Rabbits burrow amongst the undergrowth; hawks hover
high overhead, and with keen, penetrating vision sweep the rugged
landscape in search of prey. Few other signs of life disturb the quiet
of the lonely hills.
[Illustration: LES BAUX]
From the crest of the chain, just before the descent into the great
plains of La Crau, a weird scene breaks upon the eye. A valley of rocks,
so fantastic, so unearthly, that one can easily credit the Provençal
poet Mistral’s belief that it was here that Dante got the inspiration
for his graphic description of the topography of the infernal regions.
It is a valley of death, of ghosts of skeletons, rocks naked and gaunt,
altogether baffling description.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE LES BAUX]
As the limestone of which these rocks are composed is admirable for
building purposes, quarrymen have been at work upon the scene, and the
great square doorways, or openings, cut into the grotesque formless
masses accentuate the unreality of this spot. One could imagine it
inhabited by strange monsters of human shape bereft of man’s feelings
and emotions. But the wild mysterious grandeur of the valley
constitutes only half the astoundingness of the place. For on a great
precipitous rock, at the end of it, stands the town of Les Baux,
half-built, half-excavated, more than half-ruined, a strange confusion
of man’s and nature’s architecture. Above the town, which is carved and
built upon a plateau half-way up this mountain rock, a castle rears its
ruined towers.
This gaunt fortress looks right over the great, flat plain of La Crau to
the distant blue waters of the Mediterranean, over to the lands about
fifty miles distant upon which one of the world’s most decisive battles
was fought, when Marius with his legions laid 200,000 Ambrones dead upon
the field.
The great plateau of La Crau has undergone much change since Roman
times. In the fifteenth century a canal was dug across its arid surface,
and lands that were once marshy swamps and barren stony ground are
gradually yielding to the persuasive hand of the agriculturist, and
producing rich harvests of grapes and olives, mulberries, and almonds.
In the Middle Ages this stronghold of Les Baux was the capital of one of
the most powerful lordships in the whole county of Provence, and the
independent sovereignty of its rulers was unquestioned by neighbouring
and distant nobles alike. It was an important and celebrated town, its
name familiar wherever the minstrel sang his song or the troubadour his
lay. Its population mustered more than four thousand strong; but that
was long ago, in the days when a highway connected it with Orgon and
Arles. Year by year, ever since this was abandoned, the town’s
prosperity has declined; its churches, convents, and castle have lost
heart, for their inhabitants have fled. The wind howls through its
abandoned ramparts, and the sun’s rays penetrate into once gloomy
dungeons. Yesterday four hundred souls possessed the town; to-day there
are scarce a hundred who find shelter among its ruins; to-morrow Nature
will again take possession, and man’s architectural efforts will have
crumbled away.
Throughout all the many changes that Provence has experienced in its
rulers, the ancient family of Des Baux clung tenaciously to their rock
fortress, and their name was held in high esteem. Their coat of arms, a
star with sixteen rays, can still be seen along with several others
within the ruined Chapel of St. Claude. It occurs also in other parts of
Provence, and typifies the proud claim of the Des Baux to a direct
descent from one of the Kings who, guided by a star, came from the East
to lay rich gifts before the Infant Christ lying in the manger at
Bethlehem. The descendants of the Oriental King, proud of their origin,
added to their titles of Princes of Baux those of Princes of Orange,
Viscounts of Marseilles, Counts of Provence, Kings of Arles and Vienne,
Seneschals of Piedmont, Podestas of Milan, Counts of Milan, along with
many others.
To follow the fortunes of the Des Baux family, the feudal chiefs of the
surrounding country, is to dip deep into the history of Provence, for
their names are constantly cropping up over divisions of land and
inheritance by marriage with neighbouring and distant families. Suffice
it to say that from the time of Count Leibulfe, who founded the house
and lived probably in the eighth century, to that of Honoré Camille de
Grimaldi, from whom the marquisate of Baux was taken by force during the
Revolution, its princes have been related to nearly every great family
in Europe. The Château, which has resisted many a siege, is of almost
monolithic construction; its ramparts, towers, staircases, banqueting
halls carved out of the rocks. The builders have made use of the natural
foundations, and the result of the natural and artificial construction
is one of the most fantastic castles that ever existed.
[Illustration: Church at Château. Renard.]
When René succeeded to the Barony of Baux the town was in a thriving
condition, and in 1444 he set about putting the castle, much battered by
successive sieges, into repair, restoring the ramparts and towers; and,
internally furnishing it with all the resources the period could
command, made it over to his second wife Jean de Laval for her lifetime.
Old King René, artist, poet, and musician, found in Baux an ideal spot
after his own heart. For nearly three centuries Baux had been a
favourite rallying-place for the Troubadours and the ancient “Court of
Love.”
The records of the numerous wars and forays in which the Lords of Baux
and their retainers were engaged have not, however, aroused the curious
interest of later times so much as have the town’s romantic associations
with the literature of the dark ages, written in the dialect of the
Langue d’Oc, better known as Provençal.
This language, which still lingers in the South of France, arose
gradually out of the corrupted Roman dialects of the first centuries,
throughout the colonies occupied by the conquering Empire of the West.
The particular variety of dialect known as Provençal gained a wider
celebrity than that spoken in Iberia, or in the districts north of the
Loire. It was developed from the old Romance language, and about the
eleventh or twelfth century was extensively in vogue among the cultured
classes throughout Europe.
A crop of poets sprang up in amazing profusion in the valley of the
Rhone, and all who had pretensions to learning and refinement wrote in
the language of Romance until well on into the fifteenth century, when a
decay set in and other languages developed into more permanent and
literary forms. The Provençal language, with its smooth and pleasant
sounds, seemed eminently adapted to the feelings and voluptuous thoughts
of a people who delighted in song, music, and the dance.
[Illustration: DAUDET’S WIND·MILL.]
The Troubadours, or finders (inventors), sprang from all classes of the
people, and the admiration which was accorded their productions,
combined with the flattery and praise bestowed upon the authors, tended
to awaken latent vanity and draw thousands into the field of poetry.
Princes and Knights, the aristocracy of the country, entered into this
domain; and lays, thousands of verses long, recounted the adventures of
the Brave Knights who fought for the Cross, and incidentally for
themselves, against Saracens and Turks. The lack of any other
literature, unless among a few obscure monastic students, gave a great
impetus to these lays, written by the Troubadours and sung sometimes by
themselves, but more often by the strolling minstrel who learnt by heart
the long-winded romances.
Of a lower order were the Jongleurs, who entertained the Lords and
Ladies in their great halls in winter, and in the courts and gardens in
the summer months. They were tumblers and acrobats, who practised every
kind of antic and contortion to amuse audiences who knew neither theatre
nor music-hall.
An old romance relates how one of these Jongleurs, fallen upon evil
days, sought refuge in a monastery, where he assumed the cowl.
Distressed at his inability to render the Holy Virgin sacred service,
and worried lest this might be discovered by the inmates of the convent
and lead to his dismissal, at last, in all humility, he betook himself
into a vault at the hour when the monks were engaged in their devotions.
Here, in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, divesting himself of
hooded gown, he went through a series of
[Illustration: A STREET IN CHATEAU. RENARD]
antics and contortions with such determination and fanatic zeal, that at
last he fell in a fainting condition upon the hard cold floor. When he
recovered, he rejoined the brethren in the refectory and partook of
food, which he ate tremblingly and with sore misgivings. The poor
tumbler continued his eccentric devotions at matins and vespers daily,
always in fear that the Abbot should discover his strange worship and
insist upon some more becoming form of service beyond his power to
render. The Abbot and brothers, anxious to know the “why and wherefore”
of the tumbler’s daily visit to the lonely crypt, concealed themselves
to witness his devotions. The astonishment they felt on observing his
extraordinary method of doing homage to the Queen of Heaven was further
increased when they beheld the glorious Lady, crowned and clothed in
shining raiment, accompanied by the angelic hosts, descend from the roof
and minister with loving care to the unconscious acrobat. The unearthly
visitors vanished when the exhausted tumbler revived, and he returned to
his cell, equally unconscious of the heavenly ministrations and the
espionage of his brethren. The story goes on to relate, in the sequel,
how the Abbot honoured the tumbler ever after, admitted him as a
perpetual brother to the monastery, recognised the efficacy of his
worship, and pointed out to those whose sense of religious propriety was
shocked when the story of the tumbler’s carryings on leaked out, that
the true spirit of religious service was of more account than its
method.
This romance throws a little ray of light on some aspects of life in the
Middle Ages, but there are many more, less elevated in sentiment, which
depict the curious conception of chivalry, religion, superstition, and
love common at a period when society was emerging from the darkest age
that Europe has experienced since the advent of civilisation.
The literature and traditions of the Troubadours is extensive, and the
lives of nearly one hundred and fifty of them have been written. Nearly
every king and great prince in the Middle Ages had a troubadour attached
to his court. Richard Cœur de Lion, who had pretensions to poetry
himself, patronised and encouraged some of the most famous of the
fraternity, such as Arnaud, Daniel, Vidal, and Flouquet of Marseilles.
The Princes of Baux were most enthusiastic patrons of the poetic
brotherhood, the tourney, the joust, and that most curious pastime of
the age, the “Court of Love.”
[Illustration: The. Pavilion of Queen Jeanne. Les. Baux]
These parliaments of Love, which were the outcome of the cult of
gallantry, flourished in Provence, and particularly in the romantic town
of Les Baux. The walled “Court of Queen Jeanne,” as it is called, can
still be seen in the valley, and a very beautiful little pavilion of
Renaissance architecture adorns the spot. In this tribunal women were
the only judges and reigned supreme. Troubadours came from all parts to
extol the beauty of their mistresses, and put nice points relating to
the etiquette of gallantry before the Court. Contesting parties argued
out these impossible subtleties with grave seriousness, and the pedantic
ingenuity of the Council and Court was exercised to determine imaginary
cases, in which bright glances, stolen kisses, and furtive
hand-squeezings constituted the most important evidence.
Another part of the diversion offered at these gatherings was the
recital by the princely troubadours of their songs, to the accompaniment
of the viol and guitar, played by themselves or by the jongleurs. It was
at this court that Guillaume de Cabestan sang the praises of the
Princess Bérengère, wife of Lord des Baux, and those of her
sister-in-law, Tricline Carbonnelle. These songs are largely concerned
with the adventures of princes and knights in the domains of Love and
War, and descriptions and histories of violent passions, to which the
warm-blooded peoples of the South were peculiarly subject. So obsessed
were these early poets with the fascination of the greater passions
that one can hardly wonder at some of the fantastic turns their songs
and stories took. Most of them have failed to stand the test of time;
their affectations and pedantic unreality failing utterly to reflect
natural feelings and spontaneous emotions.
The strange relationship that grew up between the troubadours and the
great ladies to whom they offered their platonic admiration and regard,
is sufficient to brand many of the lays with the stamp of insincerity.
Each troubadour was, by a sort of unwritten code, bound to choose some
lady-love; it did not matter if she were married--indeed, she generally
was--and to this divinity, were she fair, fat, or ugly, he offered lays
and songs that praised her beauty in extravagant terms.
As the troubadour was generally dependent on the patronage of the great
for his bread, it was common to select the wife of his patron for this
high honour. Doubtless if the troubadour were of humble or lowly origin,
the difference of his estate from that of the object of his poetic
worship would prevent any undue familiarity being encouraged, although
many of the earlier love-songs of the troubadours affect a deep and
“love-at-a-distance” kind of worship of the fair divinity. There are
many stories told by the troubadours themselves that unblushingly
proclaim that the relationships existing between worshipper and
worshipped were such as to disturb domestic peace; but when outraged
husbands wreaked their just wrath upon these sighing swains, the
sympathy of the narrator of the story is invariably on the side of the
author of the trouble.
One of the best known of these tales is as follows: Guillaume de
Cabestan, before mentioned, made love in troubadour fashion to the wife
of Raymond de Seillans. Raymond, doubtless, saw more in the attachment
than he thought consistent with his honour, and to revenge himself upon
the guilty lovers, he slew the poet, tore out his heart and had it
cooked and served up for dinner. After his unsuspecting spouse had eaten
of the dish, and he had made known to her the loathsome nature of her
repast, the lady lost her reason and threw herself from a window on to
the rocks below.
The Castle of Baux is now a crumbling mass of ruins. Every year sees
additions to the collection of fallen boulders that lie like tumbled
giants on the sloping terrace below.
The only chapel still in use, the best-preserved building
[Illustration: MONTMAJOUR.]
in the dismantled town, is dedicated to St. Vincent, the patron saint of
Les Baux. It has a central nave flanked by two side aisles of unequal
proportions and different dates, and of these the more ancient, to the
right of the entrance, has little side chapels, cut out of the rock
which forms the south side of the edifice.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH LES BAUX]
Towards the end of the last century, for unexplained reasons,
excavations were made in the crypt of the church, and several of the
heavy slabs of stone that covered tombs were raised. Bodies, clad in
rich garments, in a perfect state of preservation, were discovered,
which, however, crumbled away on being handled and exposed to the air.
All that remained were the long tresses of golden hair that belonged to
a young girl, supposed to have been one of the princesses of Baux, whose
wonderful beauty had long ago incited the troubadours to eulogy.
The value of this find was quickly appreciated by the keeper of the
languishing little hotel that stands in the “Place Fortin.” He obtained
possession of the “Golden Tresses,” and, with an eye to business,
altered the name of his hostelry to “A la Chevelure d’Or,” and exhibited
the relic to his customers. After this curious relic was recovered by
Mistral and lodged in the Museum which he founded in Arles, the sign of
the hotel was changed to “The Hôtel Monaco,” a name obviously suggested
by the connection of the town with the Grimaldi family, who were
presented with the marquisate of Les Baux by Louis XIII. in 1642. But
change and decay is the keynote of Les Baux; the name has again altered
with the declining fortunes of the town, and, as if in mockery of the
destitution and poverty that lie around it on all sides, the sign upon
the weather-beaten walls of the neglected hotel reads “Hôtel de
MONTE-CARLO.”
[Illustration: The MANSION of The MANVILLES LES BAUX.]
An old man upon whose hatband the word “Guide” is with difficulty
discerned, one or two stray hungry-looking dogs, a few wild-looking
fowls, the Hôtel Proprietaire, and innumerable flies constitute the
crowd who forgather daily in the most popular resort of the town. The
arrival of a traveller awakens but mild excitement in Les Baux. Two
human hearts may beat a little quicker in the hopes of gain. The dogs
sniff round the stranger with bewildered curiosity, and the flies buzz
gleefully on discovering a new victim to torment. The guide (and a guide
who knows the place is necessary to the stranger), bent with age, is
quite in harmony with the surroundings. With a pathetic humour he leads
his clients up the “Grande Rue,” and tells them, with a smile, that it
is not like the “Cannebière” at Marseilles, for the only café in Les
Baux is the Hôtel de Monte-Carlo.
At every step he points to some ruined doorway with fine carving of the
seventeenth century; windows with beautifully moulded mullions and
inscriptions; houses once inhabited by noble families whose fame still
survives. At every turning, in front of every doorway, in the ancient
chapel, in the roofless convent of the White Penitents, at the cemetery
and the Château, the old man shakes his head and croons to himself in a
voice ineffably sad, “Ah! Les Baux!” Nearly every house in the town is,
in some part, hewn out of the rocks, and what carving and masonry they
possess is generally on their fronts and gables. The
[Illustration: A WINDOW AT LES. BAUX.]
kitchens and cellars are excavated in the rocks. The ruins of the Chapel
of St. Catharine show still the remains of the architecture of the
thirteenth century, but the other four churches that once ministered to
the religious population contain only vestiges of their former style.
Of the larger mansions of the town, the most important is that of the
“Hôtel de Manvilles,” at the end of the Grande Rue, a
fifteenth-to-sixteenth-century building, the chief features of which are
the beautiful windows, framed in with delicate classic pilasters,
supporting entablatures composed of simple and dignified mouldings. On
one of the wings of the building the inscription “Post Tenebras Lux
1571,” on the frieze over a window of great beauty, recalls that Claud
II., one of the counts of this house, espoused, at the instigation of
his Protestant wife, the cause of the party at the Reformation.
The mansion of the Porcelets, near by the Church of St. Vincent, has
been restored, and, after being an orphanage, is now the school for the
handful of children who have had the misfortune to be born amidst these
melancholy surroundings. Few of them will remain in their native town
after they have grown up, and one would imagine that the memories they
will carry away with them of their early days will seem like some
fantastic dream. The Porcelet family were of the highest social rank in
the fourteenth century, and they were also very numerous. These were the
first nobles of the town of Arles and Marquises of Maillane, friends of
King René, and the object of his satire.
Regarding the origin of their name, there is a legend that relates in
detail how a haughty dame of this family flouted and taunted a poor
beggar-woman with having a family too large for a person in her
miserable condition to maintain. The woman was, so the story says,
really a fairy in disguise, who laid a spell on the high-born dame,
condemning her to give birth to as many children as a sow, which
happened to be near by, should bring forth little pigs. In time the sow
had a litter of nine, and when the great dame had, in the course of
time, a family equally large the people nicknamed them Porcelets, a name
that stuck to them ever after.
These legends of the past, when recounted on the spot, have a
fascination that is enhanced by the romantic surroundings.
One stumbles upon curious reminders of feudal customs, such as the deep
narrow cisterns which received a tithe of all the wine made in the
district under the manorial sway of the Des Baux.
Across the wide valley, to the westward, the rocks tower one above the
other and form the hill of Costa Pera. Time and the elements have worn
its face into crevices and wrinkles and honeycombed it with innumerable
caves. Midway up the cliff, there appears a deep hollow which at first
might be mistaken for a well. It is, however, the entrance to a series
of large caverns, that locally go by the name of the Grotto of the
Fairies. Here in the very heart of the rock, cut and worn into weird and
fantastic shapes, are halls, passages, and declivities, twistings and
windings, amongst which the imagination runs riot and calls up the
visions of strange, elfish, unearthly forms to people the uncanny
surroundings.
One can easily comprehend that this grotto became the foundation for
grotesque legends, and how it might readily acquire a reputation for
being the abode of witches who guarded jealously a she-goat made of
solid gold, which was bound to bring fortune and prosperity of every
conceivable kind to the mortal fortunate and daring enough to carry off
the precious curiosity. There are no limits to the phantasms that the
mind’s eye can see in the deep, mysterious recesses, according to its
mood or to the state of the owner’s digestion.
Les Baux has many curious legends and traditions, some of them based
upon actual experiences, slightly exaggerated, and others the effects
of the unaided imagination. Of the latter class, a very beautiful one,
that has formed the subject of many poems, records the death of the last
of the noble house of Des Baux. When the Princess Alix was on her
death-bed, the star which had guided her remote ancestor to Bethlehem’s
manger shone with its last flash of splendour through the window on the
fading princess, and at the moment her soul passed away, the light,
which for a thousand years had been the beacon of this illustrious
family, went out for ever.
[Illustration: On the road to Montmajour]
On the heights above the Grotto of the Fairies are the remains of the
ancient Roman Camp built by the army of Marius, and within its enclosure
the upper casing walls of a cistern remain intact. The remains of
another camp of Marius, which still goes by his name, lie on the hills
that overlook the town from the north. The impregnable nature of these
positions on the hills around Les Baux thus early singled them out for
occupation in times of war and danger, and, when the Phocean colonists
of Arles were driven from their city by the Visigoths, led by Euric, in
the fifth century, they found a refuge on these austere mountain slopes.
Two relics of the Roman times, that have aroused much discussion, stand
at the foot of the powdery cliffs of Baux. One of these is a huge block
of greenish sandstone, about twenty feet high, which has fallen from the
heights above. For years, the three life-size figures that are
sculptured on this stone were regarded in the country as representing
the three Saints, Marie, Martha, and their black servant Sara, whose
bodies were alleged to lie in the church by the sea at Les Maries. About
the middle of last century a tiny chapel, erected in front of the carved
monolith, was dedicated to the three Marys, and called “Les Tremaie.” On
close examination, it is discovered that the figures are dressed in
Roman garments, and although much mutilated and corroded by the weather,
they are unmistakable Roman work of either the first century before or
after the Christian Era. Below the figures is an inscription which is
undecipherable, containing only the characters
F. CALDUS
AE . POSUIT . P.....
The opinion of experts to-day is practically unanimous in making the
three figures represent Caius Marius, Julia Marii, his wife, and Martha,
the Syrian prophetess who accompanied them, and was carried about in a
litter throughout the campaign. If these deductions are correct, it
fixes the date of the monument somewhere about 100 B.C., and gives
further proof of the antiquity of Les Baux.
[Illustration: THE POSTERN
LES BAUX]
The other Roman monument lies at a little distance, and although smaller
is almost as interesting. It has attracted the attention of curious
archæological investigators, who have deduced a variety of origins for
this stone; some making it an ancient sacrificial altar, others a simple
monument to a man and his wife, probably Caius Marius and Julia.
Les Baux has finished its brilliant career, and it seems fitting that
its castle, churches, convents, and mansions should crumble and mingle
with the dust of centuries, vanishing from man’s sight along with the
jousts and tourneys, “Courts of Love,” gorgeous processions, Saints’ day
celebrations, picturesque midnight masses, and all the showy properties
of its once romantic stage.
MONTMAJOUR
V
MONTMAJOUR
Montmajour, or Montmajor as it is often spelt, stands upon a rocky
elevation rising out of the extensive flat plain of La Crau. Its
situation is unique, and was selected away back in the time when the
lands surrounding it were covered with water, and the only means of
access was by boats or rafts. Although the antiquity of the site of the
monastery built upon this erstwhile island is undoubted, the exact date
of the Church and Chapel which constitute the older parts of the group
of buildings there to-day, have been the subject of much debate and
controversy.
For years, nay for centuries, the famous Chapel of the “Holy Cross” was
regarded as a building of the eighth century, the exact date of its
construction being A.D. 779. The authority given was a Latin inscription
now almost illegible, setting forth how the church was built and
dedicated by Charlemagne to commemorate his great victory over the
Saracens, and further recording that the rebuilding by him of the Abbey
of Montmajour was another token of gratitude. Another inscription (more
legible) reads, “Many of the Franks who perished in the combat repose in
the chapel of the Monastery.... Brothers, pray for them.” The
inscription refers, of course, to the Saracenic invasions of Provence
A.D. 732 and 797, the earlier one repulsed by Charles Martel, and the
latter by his grandson Charlemagne. This inscription has, however, to be
ignored and regarded as the work of zealous monks at a much later date,
anxious to add to the lustre of their monastery, and not too scrupulous
in accepting traditions which gave this chapel a celebrity and antiquity
wholly undeserved.
[Illustration: CHAPEL OF S^{TE} CROIX-EN-JERUSALEM.
MONTMAJOUR]
It was early in the last century that the pretensions of the
inscription received their death-blow by the discovery of a hitherto
unnoticed dedication on the pediment of the porch. The reliability of
this find seemed to be confirmed by an ancient charter which attributed
the erection of the building to the Abbé Rambert, and its consecration
too, some three years later. This date obtained right up to the end of
the last century, when expert opinion demonstrated, by external and
internal evidences, that although standing on the site of a much older
chapel, the present one was not erected until late in the twelfth or
early in the thirteenth century.
This little chapel stands about three hundred yards away from the main
buildings of the Abbey. The hard rock all around it is carved out into
long shallow graves, which, with the exception of one, on the sloping
ground near to the larger church of the Abbey, have been opened--that is
to say, the heavy slabs of stone that formerly covered them have been
removed and the bodies have disappeared. This pillage and desecration of
the last resting-places of the brothers of the Monastery was the work of
the revolutionary mobs from Arles, who, not content with rich plunder
obtained in the Monastery itself, sought for any jewels buried with the
dead.
The Chapel of the “Holy Cross” was the mortuary chapel to this cemetery
in the rocks, and the sacredness of the spot made such wide appeals to
the religious superstitions of the age that many distinguished knights
and nobles sought the honour of resting their bones in the enduring
tombs cut in the hallowed rocks of Montmajour. The chapel is built in
the shape of a cross with equal arms, the ends apsidal, buttressed, and
half-vaulted. The square central tower is surmounted by a tiny cupola
immediately above a small bell-lantern tower. The chapel has but three
small windows, intended more to allow the light that was always kept
burning inside the chapel to shed its rays upon the graveyard outside
than to light the interior.
There are differences of opinion as to the original object of the
chapel, but it seems more than probable that the lantern in the roof was
designed to contain the beacon which it was the custom in the Middle
Ages to keep burning at night in memory of the dead.
There is no sculptured ornament in the interior of the chapel. The walls
are severely plain, but they doubtless were at one time covered with
Byzantine frescoes, in harmony with the general architectural style of
this building which stands in isolated dignity upon the rock above the
meres.
[Illustration: MONTMAJOUR.]
The Abbey of Montmajour, now in a ruined state, was in the Middle Ages a
“Benedictine” establishment of great importance and influence, with a
reputation for sanctity that drew thousands of pilgrims annually from
all parts of the world, across the shallow lagoons in boats and on
rafts, the only means of reaching it, until well on into the
seventeenth century. The work of draining La Crau began in the sixteenth
century, and gradually converted the swamp into a fertile plain; but
even as late as the eighteenth century the faithful had to make a part
of their pilgrimage by boat. The Abbey retained its great reputation,
and increased its power during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, and the lofty modern buildings of the seventeenth century
testify to the wealth and ambition of the Order at that time. It,
however, suffered a gradual decline after the issue of an order of Louis
XVI., confirmed by Rome, suppressing its powers. This was only about
three years before the outbreak of the Revolution, which ended for ever
the long monastic career of Montmajour.
The approach to the Abbey, across rich low-lying meadows, dotted with
feathery trees, is romantic and full of charm, and the ancient buildings
stand out like a feudal castle, in strong relief against the sky or
distant hills, according to the direction from which it is approached. A
castle strongly fortified, for the machicolated tower built in the
fourteenth century rises from the most elevated portion of the rock to a
height of nearly ninety feet.
The older parts of the chapel or church, like the buildings at Les Baux,
are for the most part cut out of the solid rock. The earliest part of
the building is hewn in this manner, and in the lowest recesses of the
subterranean church there is a small cell about four and a half feet by
two feet, carved crudely out of the rocks, and containing a massive
stone seat. A small square hole cut in the wall serves to let a stream
of light into this tiny cell, which is known as the Confessional of St.
Trophimus, the apostle of Provence. This cell is at the end of a series
of narrow caves, one of which constitutes the sanctuary, the other
contains two tombs excavated in the rock near its face. The small arched
windows in the masonry which forms one side of these underground chapels
admit the bright light of day, and from them the occupants of the little
sanctuary or vestibule could obtain a magnificent view of the distant
countryside. As the vestibule was used by the brothers when waiting
their turn at the Confessional, these windows would serve to relieve the
monotony of many a tedious hour.
The crypt of the Church of the Monastery is sepulchral and gloomy.
Instead of a staircase a long passage descends with a gentle slope from
the west end of the church above, and leads to the underground chapel,
the reason assigned to this method of entrance being that it allowed of
elaborate processions passing from the ancient to the modern building
with effective decorum. At the end of this long passage there is a
spherically vaulted gallery with seven smaller chapels radiating from
it. A massive altar of great antiquity stands in the middle of the
centre chapel. Entirely free from all rich decoration, the whole place
reeks of the dark ages, a fitting symbol of a period when art was
struggling towards a new expression.
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY. MONTMAJOUR]
The crypt was probably built in the ninth or tenth century, and rebuilt
by the Abbé Rambart towards the end of the eleventh. The church above
was started by the same abbot, but was never finished according to the
original plan, for the west front is a hurried piece of construction
evidently intended to serve until some future date when the Abbey
banking account should be in a sufficiently flourishing state to give an
imposing finish to the building.
The tower of the Monastery, which gives it the appearance of a fortress,
was built in the middle of the fourteenth century, and possesses all the
characteristics of the most advanced military architecture of the
period. Its walls are built of smaller blocks of stone than is usual in
similar buildings of that time. The great hall on the ground floor was
used by the inhabitants of the Monastery as a storehouse, containing
also a cistern into which the water was collected from the roofs, the
overflow finding its way into exterior reservoirs.
The most modern part of the Monastery is to-day in the hands of private
owners, but in such a dilapidated condition that it is almost unsafe to
venture among its tottering walls. These buildings, erected during a
period of the institution’s greatest prosperity, suffered more at the
Revolution than the older parts of the Abbey. If the florid
eighteenth-century buildings were all removed, they would be little loss
to the place from an architectural point of view, for their features
strike a discordant note among the simple early Gothic surroundings.
The cloisters of Montmajour are not very unlike those of St. Trophimus
at Arles, and if the pillars and capitals of the arcade are less
interesting in detail than those of the more famous cloisters, they have
a more pleasing and less confusing effect in the mass. Round the walls
there are several very beautiful tombs with a variety of early styles of
arched canopies--pointed, round, and inflected.
Amongst these is the tomb of Geoffrey VI., a Count of Provence, who died
in 1063. He was a generous patron and friend to the Monastery, and in
the eleventh century conceded, along with other rights, the privilege of
claiming the first sturgeon which should be caught in the river between
Mourrade de Bourques and the sea. This typically feudal privilege was,
until the Revolution, enforced more by way of custom latterly, and a
great procession of holiday-making fishermen, with bands playing and
banners flying, accompanied by innumerable sightseers, came on rafts and
in boats to the Abbey with their offering. Masses were celebrated for
the soul of the good Count, a handsome pourboire given to the fishermen,
the sturgeon cooked and placed upon the already groaning
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY. AT MONTMAJOUR.]
board of the epicurean brothers, and everybody was contented and happy.
[Illustration: NEAR MONTMAJOUR.]
The Benedictine Monastery of Montmajour enjoyed so many other privileges
and bequests that it grew to be one of the richest and most powerful in
the whole of France. No wonder the laity were keen to swell its holy
ranks and enjoy its privileged security and bountiful board, its
immunity from taxation and public service. The amazing contrast to the
luxury of the Abbey’s latter days is the legend of the poverty and
homelessness of those for whom it was founded.
The story runs, or, as the troubadours say, it is told and said and
related, that when Villegis, King of the Goths, who had already
dispossessed the Romans of Arles of their last colony in Gaul,
surrendered to the Frankish conqueror Childebert, the latter, hunting
one day over his newly-acquired territory in the vicinity of Arles, met
with some hermits on a lonely mountain-side whose piety and poverty so
touched the victorious barbaric King that he founded for them the
Monastery of Montmajour.
ARLES
VI
ARLES
It would seem that Arles has been an important city for over two
thousand five hundred years. History can give no authentic records of
its beginnings, but, as is generally the case with ancient towns in a
similar predicament, legend has taken in hand the task of supplying
details, and Arles has its legend, which bears on the face of it some
elements of probability. Massilia (now Marseilles) has evidence to show
that even long before the Phoceans founded their towns in Gaul,
Phœnician seamen, the pioneers of navigation, had discovered its
natural harbour, round which the town of to-day is built. Interesting
relics of these early traders are still in existence; and their
successors, the Phoceans, who undoubtedly were on the scene as early as
600 B.C., must have found on their arrival that the advantages of the
position had been fully appreciated by the earlier settlers, who had
built there a town of considerable importance, but which was then in a
declining state.
The inhabitants of Southern Gaul, a Celtic race, had even at that time
their capital at Arles, and the semi-historical legend runs that King
Nannos, or Nan, was giving a betrothal feast to which all his warriors
were invited, in order that his daughter might choose her husband from
among them--presumably the custom at this period.
When the feast was in full swing a stranger appeared upon the scene, a
handsome young Greek adventurer from Phocea. The Celtic King welcomed
him with an unsuspicious cordiality, and invited him to join the festive
board, which he did, much to the chagrin of the assembled company. The
King’s daughter fell in love with him at first sight and singled him out
for high honour, bestowing upon him her heart and hand, to the
discomfiture of the native warriors, although her father recognised in
her action the guidance of his country’s gods. The lucky Greek received
in dowry with his bride the lands lying around the spot where he first
landed.
He had not, however, a sufficient following of his countrymen with him
to populate his newly-acquired territory, so he had recourse to sending
his galleys back to his native land to gather in recruits. The
newcomers
[Illustration: THE ALYSCAMPS, ARLES.]
brought with them fire from their sacred hearths, a priestess and a
statue of Diana from Ephesus, where they called on their way, in
compliance to the commands of their oracles; and settled down in the
strange country, mixing and intermarrying freely with the native Gauls.
The colony grew and flourished; the quiet of their mercantile existence
varied occasionally by wars and skirmishes with surrounding tribes,
whose jealousy and cupidity was aroused by the rapidly growing
prosperity of the new colony.
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL
ARLES.]
But some centuries later the Massilians were compelled to call in the
assistance of Rome to repel the increasing attacks made upon them and
their colonies by the vast hordes of Teutons, Ambrones, and other
Northern barbarians. The celebrated campaign of Marius was successful,
and gave the conquerors themselves a taste for colonising. The
flourishing state of Arles and Marseilles no doubt incited the Empire
builders to covet the favourable positions occupied by the Greek
settlers.
Cæsar, emulating and surpassing Marius in his campaigning zeal,
conquered all Gaul, and under him the first Roman colonies took a firm
hold upon the fertile regions in the valley of the Rhone. Arles became a
maritime town, which rivalled Marseilles itself. The Celtic inhabitants,
mixed strongly with the Phœnician element, were possessed of arts and
crafts almost as highly developed as those of the conquering Romans. The
city grew in importance until its population numbered 100,000. Traders
from all parts of the world flocked to its markets, everything being
brought to the city either by river-boats up and down the Rhone, or
across the lagoons on rafts, or overland on the backs of mules and
horses. The city could offer to its citizens every luxury known to the
age.
[Illustration: THE ARENA AT ARLES.]
The great amphitheatre, built or commenced during the reign of Claudius
Tiberius Nero, at the time when the power of Rome was at its zenith,
could accommodate nearly 27,000 spectators to witness the wild beast and
gladiatorial shows so popular in Rome at that period. It was constructed
in the early days of amphitheatres, and is perhaps one of the oldest
extant, and gives, together with the Arena at Nîmes, a more vivid
impression of the Empire’s strength and grandeur than any other Roman
monument in France. Although on a much smaller scale than the mighty
Coliseum at Rome (which was built at a much later date and replaced
earlier buildings in that city, could accommodate 100,000 spectators,
and was over 615 feet in length and 510 feet in width, as compared with
the Arena at Arles, 450 feet long and 351 feet wide), it gives some
notion of the important part the amphitheatre played in the life of the
Roman capital.
The amphitheatre at Arles, unlike that of Nîmes, was, if the evidence of
the height of the wall of the Podium enclosing the Arena is trustworthy,
used for the great fights of lions, tigers, elephants, and other
animals, as well as for combats between the gladiators--elaborate and
extravagant spectacles that riveted the attention and ministered to the
enjoyment of the Roman world for a period extending over seven hundred
years. The immense arenas at Arles and Nîmes are proof of the prosperity
of these two colonies. Many of the Greek traditions of the Arlesiens
were lost sight of and contemned by the
[Illustration: ARCHES OF THE ARENA.
NIMES.]
conquerors, but the refined and intellectual amusements of the Greeks
made a slight appeal to the tastes of the warrior race, who overthrew
them, and who built a theatre in Arles, in the first century, under the
strong influence of the Greek element in the colony, an influence that
had made itself felt also in the architecture of the Arena.
Arles has preserved much of this Greek influence up to the present day;
for beauty cannot die--it influences succeeding ages and fashions all
their work, and the sculptures found in Arles are in this respect
superior to those of Nîmes and other Roman provincial towns.
The Venus of Arles, which now rests in the Louvre, compared with that of
Nîmes, gives a forcible illustration of the different characteristics of
Greco-Roman from the more purely Roman art; a subtle difference to
explain, but easily recognised when face to face with the actual work.
The Venus, that should have been one of the most cherished glories of a
city, whose womenfolk have inherited the beauty of their Phocean
ancestors, is lost to it. Discovered in 1651 by two citizens in the
courtyard of their house, built on the site of the theatre, it was sold
to the town authorities for £60, and they, anxious to curry favour with
the “Grand Monarch,” presented it to him in 1683. Louis had the statue
restored and placed among his treasures in the Palace at Versailles,
whence it was removed in the last century to where it now stands in the
Louvre.
The Amphitheatre at Arles is built upon slightly rising ground, and the
practical builders took every advantage of the rocky foundations to save
themselves any unnecessary building, so that the lower galleries of the
edifice only exist on a part of its circumference. The modern buildings
that have sprung up and surrounded it prevent as good a view of the
ensemble as is possible at Nîmes. The interior galleries have stone
lintels instead of the Roman arch as in those of the latter. The
simplicity of the mouldings and carvings of the capitals is more akin to
the Greek than to the later Roman style of architectural decoration, and
although the building is not nearly so imposing as the Nîmes Arena, or
even that vast relic of the Empire at El-Djem in Tunisia, it has many
features that are distinct from either.
From the Rue Voltaire one looks up the broad flight of steps which lead
to the north end of this mass of masonry and sees superimposed stages of
arches; the
[Illustration: ARENA.
NIMES.]
lower series divided by simple square Doric pillars, the upper by
Corinthian columns, only a few of which still possess their capitals.
They are weather-worn and greatly damaged, and it is only by picking out
more or less perfect bits, here and there, that evidence of its original
beauty can be obtained. Internally, great galleries run round the inside
walls, and lead out by flights of steps and passages on to three great
ranges of seats. The original seating arrangements have undergone much
change, but the traces of the disposition of the Cavea can easily be
made out with a little trouble.
The high wall of the Podium is cased with smooth marble, upon the face
of which there is a cornice that in former times supported an extra
gallery, when the performance was not of a character too dangerous to
the spectators. The upper galleries, reserved for the common people and
slaves, have been roughly used, for during the eighth century, when the
city was threatened by an invasion of the Saracens, a large number of
the inhabitants took up their abode within the great ellipse; the arches
were built up, and four towers erected at the north and south, east and
west, turning the place into a vast fortress. Streets were formed in all
directions by the two hundred buildings that grew up, and a marketplace
and church were erected. Right on, until about a hundred years ago, when
it was cleared by the Mayor and municipality, this town remained a
squalid blot upon the city. Two of the four towers still remain.
[Illustration: ARLES]
After the removal of the “town” from the heart of the arena, it was
utilised again for the amusements of the people. The first step towards
re-establishing spectacles was the annual ceremony of branding the
bulls, which was half in the nature of a “bullfight”; and later in the
last century bullfights, very much after the fashion of those of
Portugal, were staged both here and at Nîmes--the bull being played with
in a harmless way without being killed or tortured as in Spain. But this
has not proved sufficiently exciting for the Southern blood, and to-day
tauromachy in its most aggravated forms obtains in the arenas of
Provence: horses and bulls pour out the red heart-blood upon the sanded
arena, as did the gladiators, martyrs, and savage beasts of old; and if
the Greeks have transmitted their beauty to the womenfolk of Arles, the
Romans have been no less successful in implanting in their ancient
colony some of their characteristic love of what, to put it mildly,
might be called exciting pastimes.
The world of to-day looks back with horror on the Roman holidays, which
strangely enough grew out of a religious celebration in honour of the
dead. The despised barbarians of the old world burnt victims on the
funeral pyre; the proud Romans, exulting in their superiority over the
untutored savages, outdid them in barbarity.
The rapid development of the show of dying agony went on from the
earliest times, when slaves were first immolated upon the tombs of the
illustrious dead, until the time when the Gothic King Theodoric took
Arles--one long record of the wanton pouring out of human blood. From an
offering to appease the gods, it grew to be a slaughter for the
gratification of an insatiable lust for bloodshed in the body politic.
The first gladiatorial fighters appear upon the scene about two hundred
years before the Christian era, and the strange funeral custom became so
fashionable that it was a common thing for a son to celebrate his
father’s funeral with a fight in which hundreds of forced combatants
took part and fought to the death. Julius Cæsar gave such encouragement
to the “sport” that peaceful citizens and political opponents grew
alarmed at the rapid growth of the gladiatorial fraternity, who were a
standing menace to their city. But, in spite of the endeavours of the
more enlightened emperors, the passion for the arena increased, as
hundreds of records show. Slaves, prisoners of war, fair-haired Saxons
and tattooed Britons, swarthy Moors and Oriental Turks, criminals and
Christians, were exhibited and put to death by one another in front of
thousands of spectators, who never tired of these holocausts of blood.
To-day in Spain, and in her now lost colonies, similar appetite exists
for the blood of bulls and horses, and all attempts to put down these
gory spectacles meet with violent opposition. The great bullrings in
Spain and Mexico still preserve something of the atmosphere, attentuated
perhaps, that pervaded the arenas of old, and, mild as the exhibitions
are by comparison with the
[Illustration: ARCADE OF ARENA AT NIMES.]
ancient pastimes, they have enough horror to sicken the strong nerves of
Northern people.
One cannot wander about the great corridors, or up and down the giant
stairways of seats of the Arenas at Arles and Nîmes, without being
haunted by the ghosts of the distant past. Here, on the front seats once
reserved for magistrates, senators, and patricians, one can picture the
richly-robed crowds who patronised the ring. There sat the guilds and
corporations whose names were inscribed upon the places reserved for
them, as can still be seen upon the Arena at Nîmes. Higher up were the
plebeians, the common people, the hundred and one unclassed folk who
followed lowly occupations; highest of all, standing outlined against
the sky, the dense crowd of slaves, with straining eyes, stretched
necks, and bated breath, gazed down upon the combatants, who looked like
specks in the distant oval.
A more pleasant train of thought is set in motion by the ruined Theatre
which lies quite near. Dating from about the same time, it betrays even
more of the Grecian influence than does the Arena. It is only, however,
by a close attention to the fragments that lie in a small railed
enclosure at the foot of the Tower of St. Roland, that one can form any
just estimate of the beauty which this example of Greek architecture
possessed. The theatre is in ruins, and the two columns of African and
Carrara marble which still stand amidst the beautiful fragments of
bruised masonry have an interest which, in the light of historical
knowledge, is of pathetic loveliness. The ruins are enclosed by houses
on three sides, the fourth being bounded by the gardens of the town. The
authorities have men at work, keeping the relic from suffering more
damage by the continual wearing of the elements, and the Cavea, or
auditorium, is being renovated, so that, when the restorations in hand
are completed, this part of the construction will regain somewhat of its
former appearance.
[Illustration: The Roman Theatre Arles]
The theatre at Arles is essentially different from that at Orange: the
latter being entirely Roman in style and construction, and adapted for
the performances which, under the Romans, degenerated into such
demoralising obscenities. So degrading did the spectacles become even in
Greek Arles that, during a wave of religious enthusiasm, which swept
over the town in the first Christian centuries, a band of the
townspeople nearly demolished the theatre, breaking up the statues,
altars, columns, and leaving it unfit for further performances.
The theatres of the Greeks, which played an important part in the life
of the people, had developed from simple wooden constructions, liable to
damage by fire, into places highly embellished with sculpture and marble
columns, carefully studied so as to render the acoustic properties
nearly perfect. The arrangement universally adopted throughout the
Ionian Isles and Asia Minor is well exemplified in the Arles theatre.
The large orchestra, floored with beautiful marble, parts of which still
remain, was not intended for the audience. This huge semicircle, which
corresponds to the stalls and pit of the modern theatre, was reserved
entirely for the musicians and chorus, two parallel flights of steps
leading up from it to the narrow stage, making communication easy
between the two divisions of the stage.
This theatre differs from the native Greek theatre in regard to the site
chosen. It was the invariable custom to select a sloping hillside upon
which the Cavea could be easily constructed, but here, at Arles, the
Roman practice has been adopted with a Greek theatre, and the great
semicircular seats of the auditorium are built up on an arcade which
rises up from the level ground. At Orange, oddly enough, the position is
reversed, and a purely Roman theatre is built upon a site such as the
Greeks would have considered perfect. Round the outside of the Cavea of
the theatre at Arles there was a beautifully chiselled frieze, fragments
of which are collected together on the site. It is doubtful if the
theatre had a colonnade behind the top row of seats, as was customary in
the native Greek theatre, but the evidences of the large orchestra, the
narrow stage, the beautiful proscenium, the refined designs of the
mouldings and carvings, are sufficient to stamp this building as Greek.
The persistence of Greek traditions throughout centuries, at Arles, is
curious, but shows how strong the element must have been in the city.
Its position upon the rocky eminence, surrounded by the miasmatic
lagoons, tended, doubtless, to preserve its insularity and the
provincialism which it still enjoys. Even the “tour de Roland,” which
was erected on the southern side of the theatre during the Middle Ages,
has not escaped the classic influence, for the engaged flat columns on
its face have a restraint which would seem to have been engendered by
the graceful beauty of its surroundings.
[Illustration: GREEK TYPE ARLES]
In the early seventeenth-century Church of St. Anne, which stands at the
northwest corner of the Place de la République, or Place Royale as it is
now called, there are gathered together many beautiful fragments of the
sculptured statues, busts, heads, and tombs that have been found in and
around the town. The tombs, both Pagan and early Christian, are of
exceptional historic interest, not only to the townsfolk, but to the
world at large, for by their curious inscriptions much may be gathered
of the occupations followed, and the lives led, by the early inhabitants
of the town. To go through them all would require a work devoted to the
subject alone, but they are varied enough to show that Arles enjoyed a
wide celebrity as a burial-ground.
The Pagan and Christian tombs found in the Alyscamps (Elysian Fields)
have been an inexhaustible mine of wealth, not only to collectors and
museums, but to the inhabitants of the town and surrounding country. The
massive monolithic stone coffins have been turned to use, and in the
district one finds them converted into water-troughs, benches, washtubs,
and even pig-troughs. The dust of the dead of twenty centuries amounts
to very little, and the natives evidently thought it a work of
supererogation to carve, with much labour, the limestone rocks into
articles of daily use when they had such quantities lying ready to their
hands.
The Church of St. Anne forms a very fitting museum for many of the
interesting tombs that have been rescued from the hands of ruthless
utilitarians, and there they can be studied in peaceful and solemn
surroundings. Many of the more imposing of these ancient funeral
monuments are now used as altars in the churches of Provence, as in the
Church of St. Trophimus, immediately opposite the Museum.
The inscriptions on these tombs form an abbreviated biography of the
former occupants of the town. They tell of “Nautæ Arlatenses,” or
boatmen, who plied the craft that carried the merchandise up and down
the Rhone; the “Fabrii navales,” or naval builders, a body that were
held in high esteem by the most exalted in the city; and the naval
architects, a grade higher still, professional gentlemen who mixed with
intimacy with the “Upper Ten”; the “Utriculare,” a separate body of
watermen who plied large rafts, supported by air bladders made of
sheep-and-goat skins, over the shallow lagoons to outlying islands and
to the port of Fos. From this source we learn of the oil merchants and
sail or tarpaulin manufacturers, as well as of the students and scholars
who flourished in the Gallic-Greco-Roman city.
One of the most interesting biographical tombs removed from the
Alyscamps is that of Julia Tyrannia. It records not only the highly
appreciated virtues and accomplishments of this young lady, whose life
was cut short at the
[Illustration: IN A CAFE ARLES.]
age of twenty, but on two panels on one side the musical instruments on
which she performed are cut in deep relief: a lyre, a guitar, very much
like a modern mandoline, a water-organ with nine pipes, one of the
earliest representations of this instrument (there is a similar one
carved in the fourth century on the tomb of Theodosius at
Constantinople), and a syrinx, or panpipes, in a box. Underneath this
latter there is a lamb, which might either typify the gentle
disposition of the occupant or that she was of the Christian faith.
There is often great difficulty in distinguishing between the Pagan and
Christian tombs, owing to the similarity of the symbols used; but in
some cases the newer faith expresses hopes that are lacking in the Pagan
inscriptions, as a comparison of these two free translations clearly
shows:
“Oh grief! how many tears have been shed upon this tomb
Of Julia Lucina, who in life was very dear to her mother:
Cut off in the flower of youth, she lies buried beneath this stone.
Would that she could return!
Were it only to know how great is my sorrow.
She lived twenty years ten months and thirteen days.
Julia Parthenope, her unhappy mother, raised this monument to her.”
And this on the tomb of Concordius, a Christian priest of the fourth
century:
“Irreproachable and pious, pure in life and body,
Concordius, here entombed, lived for eternity.
In his youth he occupied the office of a deacon,
He was afterwards chosen as a priest by the Divine Law.
He had scarcely completed his fiftieth year when
He was transported prematurely into the starry hall of the Almighty,
Where his loving mother and brother aspire to find him.”
The inscriptions on most of the tombs evince that the departed were held
in tender regard by their bereft relatives and friends. Some of them
are quite touching human documents, manifesting the deep attachment that
parents had for their children. Many elaborately carved tombs, with
short stumpy figures, lacking entirely any æsthetic beauty, but full of
ingenuity to express symbolically the Christian story and traditions,
have been found; and one of the latest additions to the Museum is an
early Pagan tomb of great excellence of workmanship, evidently belonging
to the first century of the Christian era. The figures carved round it
have an entirely different character from those on the Christian tombs
of a later date. This was found in La Camargue when the railway to Les
Maries was in course of construction.
The Alyscamps, the vast cemetery, where most of these tombs were found,
lies to the south of the town on the farther side of the broad “Avenue
Victor Hugo.” The antiquity of this burial-ground is indisputable. When
it was consecrated for Christian burial by St. Trophimus may well be a
matter for dispute, for it is a little uncertain who St. Trophimus
really was. He is the apostle of Arles, and legend makes him one of the
companions of St. Paul who accompanied him on his travels; but this
claim was not put forward until the twelfth century, and after the time
when the saint’s bones were transferred from the Alyscamps to the Church
of St. Etienne, now famous as the Church of St. Trophimus. Whoever the
St. Trophimus may have been, there is very little doubt that the Church
of St. Honorat was built by St. Virgil, who probably utilised the site
of an ancient Pagan or early Christian temple.
[Illustration: TOMBS IN THE “ALYSCAMPS” AT ARLES]
The Alyscamps was well supplied with churches and chapels, at one time
possessing as many as nineteen. Even the early Church of St. Honorat,
when it was rebuilt, had chapels added to it by the pious, and still
more by the aristocratic families of the seventeenth century. The nave
of the church is in ruins, although other parts are in tolerable repair.
The pillars, which support the roof and separate the nave from the
aisles, are enormous columns about thirty feet in circumference. The
additions of later times have made the interior plan of the church
rather confusing, and the ruinous state of the exterior gives one the
impression that a bombardment or an earthquake shock have rendered some
assistance in tumbling walls and ceilings to the ground.
All through the Middle Ages the Alyscamps was in high favour as a
burial-ground, and bodies from distant parts were brought to it for
interment, but its popularity declined somewhat after the removal of the
remains of St. Trophimus. At intervals there seemed to be a slight
revival, for we find that chapels were added to the original collection
of buildings as late as the seventeenth century, although before this
period the collector had been busy among the tombs, and Charles IX. (the
same monarch who consented to the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day)
gave away many of the more beautiful of the sarcophagi to his friends
and intimates.
The vast field of tombs rapidly fell a prey to the vandal hands of
collectors, and one can readily understand that
[Illustration: ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES.]
[Illustration: S^{T}. HONORAT ARLES]
the large trade in stone coffins would make folk timid of patronising a
graveyard that was subject to such unholy raids. Much ground of the
Alyscamps has been turned over to the plough, and the railway company
has erected large repairing shops upon a portion of it near the Church
of St. Honorat. A number of the great massive tombs have, however, been
collected and placed at the foot of the tall poplars that line either
side of the avenue that leads from the ruined gateway of the cemetery to
the ancient church. Here and there other monuments and larger vaults
break the monotonous regularity of the long series of stone mausoleums,
but nothing can rob the Alyscamps of the mournful pathos of its history.
The Cathedral of St. Trophimus, which stands opposite the Museum, was
built in the twelfth century, and has a distinguished west portal. The
absolute plainness of the surrounding walls enhances the rich effect of
the deeply recessed arch which springs from the curious sculptured
frieze that forms the lintel of the door. On this porch the
characteristic ornamentations of the Greeks, Romans, and Gauls have all
been pressed into service without injury to one another, although the
spirit that animates the whole is mainly concerned in giving expression
to the Christian story.
The interior of the Cathedral is plain and simple after the elaborate
work of the porch. The nave is separated from the narrow aisles by
clustered pillars, which rise gracefully into lofty ogival vaults. The
effect is a trifle gloomy and severe, but age adds its charm to this
church, as it does to all the ancient buildings of Provence. The
cloisters of St. Trophimus are justly famous, and like those at
Montmajour and St. Paul’s at St. Remy, portions of them date from the
eleventh century. The capitals of the double columns supporting the
arcade in the cloisters at Arles are carved with religious subjects, so
that even in the hours of relaxation, when they were taking exercise,
the brothers had before their eyes, written in the stone, the story of
their faith--right up to date too, for the monster “Tarasque” which St.
Martha slew has not been overlooked, and on one of the capitals the
sculptor has done his best to perpetuate its terrible visage.
Arles has a past unique in the annals of France. Every great movement
that has taken place in the civilised world for the last two and a half
thousand years helped to mould and shape the town one sees to-day. Its
history of traditions reflects something of every period. The greatest,
perhaps, was its connection with the Emperor Constantine, who lived for
a period at the Palace, now ruined, which bears his name. His influence
and tolerance combined to unite, at Arles, Pagan and Christian arts and
religions. Everywhere one sees evidences of the fusion of the Greek and
Gaul, the Gallic-Greek with the Roman, and still more the grafting of
the new faith on to the old Pagan forms.
[Illustration: CONSTANTINE’S PALACE. ARLES]
The city, proud of its traditions, may not be as happy in its relations
with modern life and commerce as it was in the past with contemporary
activities. Marseilles has left it centuries behind in the march of
progress, and the great clumsy river-boats of the Rhone, that lie moored
to the banks at Arles, contrast unfavourably with the ocean liners that
crowd the harbours of the great seaport town. The Greek theatre and the
Roman amphitheatre, built during the Empire’s greatest prosperity, are
surrounded
[Illustration: DOORWAY. AT ARLES.]
with the earliest buildings and primitive arts of the revolutionary
Christianity.
Everywhere in the town one comes across bits of ancient carvings and
sculptures built into modern walls. Even the once palatial residence of
the first Christian Emperor, to whom the town owed much of its
prosperity, is to-day surrounded by humble buildings that thrust
themselves against it with irreverent familiarity.
In the Place Royale there stands a curious obelisk found in the ancient
Roman circus--a link with a still older civilisation. This Egyptian
column was discovered towards the end of the seventeenth century, but
was not placed in its present position till 1829.
It is only natural that Arles, which was probably the first town of any
importance in Gaul to receive the Gospel, should be rich in Christian
traditions and relics, and, if one can give credence to the legends of
the city, it was, in the first century, about thirty years at most after
the Crucifixion, closely in touch with the holy men and women, who are
reputed to have landed at the point where the desolate little village of
Les Saintes Maries still stands. This little town lies not more than
twenty miles from Arles, and although most coastlines alter their
contour and position in very short periods, geologists and scientists
have asserted that the regions of the Camargue have not sensibly changed
for twenty centuries. This fact, together with the recent discovery on
the Camargue of a tomb of the first century, and the inscription found
on the site of the Church of Les Maries, has somewhat revived belief in
the ancient legend that King René popularised when he altered the name
of the Church of St. Marie of the Boats, which dated from the sixth
century, to Les Maries.
The interest that attaches to Christian Arles is deepened when we dip
into the ancient traditions of the town. These old legends of the Saints
period and the stones of Arles all speak of them, and keep alive many
customs that a too prosaic common sense would soon allow to die.
Its population has diminished sadly since the Roman ramparts hemmed in
and fortified the town, but the narrow streets and tightly packed houses
seem hardly enough for the present population, which is barely one-third
of what it was in its palmy days. Its curious twisting streets form a
maze that is puzzling to the stranger, and the four principal places are
replete with bewildering entrances and exits. The Place du Forum is
small and almost modern, squeezed into the very heart of the town.
[Illustration: ARLES]
All that remains of the ancient forum are two pillars supporting a small
entablature, so damaged and shorn of detail as to suggest the art of
Egypt. In front of it stands the statue of Mistral, the poet of
Provence, who
[Illustration: A WELL AT ARLES.]
loved his country, its natural beauty, art, and legends with a passion
that only a native can understand. His patriotism swelled so within him
that he gave the Nobel prize of £4,000, awarded to him in 1904, to the
Museum founded by him in Arles. He sang his country’s praises in
hundreds of poems and verses, and many of them in the Provençal dialect.
He was an enthusiast, whose ardour increased with advancing years. His
statue stands in the busiest, or at least the most characteristic, part
of the ancient town.
What there is of life centres in the Forum, noisy with the stamping of
the fly-tormented cab horses, who stand round the little square waiting
to be hired. Two hotels, four or five cafés and bars, two hairdresser’s
shops, two newspaper and book shops, and one devoted to the sale of
antique curios, make up the Place du Forum. Although the traffic in the
town is small, it creates a deafening noise as it passes over the
cobble-stoned streets.
So familiar are the inhabitants with classic beauty, daily before their
eyes in dying monuments and living womenfolk, that they see no
incongruity in the statuettes of the “Venus of Arles” or other classic
figures being used by shopkeepers to illustrate the application of belts
and surgical appliances and even modern clothing. Extremes meet in
Arles; beauty and decay exist side by side; art and dirt ever did go
hand in hand; and the loveliest women in the whole of France, perhaps in
the world to-day, reek of the most obnoxious odour the nostril ever
encountered, the pungent smell of garlic.
NÎMES
VII
NÎMES
Nîmes, unlike its contemporary and neighbour Arles, has contrived to
flourish even in a prosaic and commercial age. Its industries, light and
refined in character, the weaving of silk and the pressing of the
grapes, are not too violently opposed to its ancient traditions of
beauty and luxurious living. Like Arles, it has an early origin, but of
a religious rather than a mundane order. The Celtic inhabitants of Gaul
fixed upon the site, and gave it a name which in the language of its
founders signifies a spring. The Romans early in the first century
appreciated and coveted the spot, which was soon occupied and named
Nemausus. The mysterious spring that wells up at the foot of the little
mountain Cavalier, sacred to the ancient Celts, assumed great importance
in the estimation of the newcomers. Its fame spread far and wide, and
much of the wealth and ingenuity of Rome was spent in building and
beautifying the city that rapidly grew up from the ruins of the Celtic
town which nestled round the spot where the “God of the fountain”
resided and was worshipped.
[Illustration: STREET IN NIMES]
The Celtic tribes, who were dispossessed or conquered by the invading
Romans, were far from being untutored savages. They knew and bartered
with the Greek colonists at Arles and Marseilles, and Celtic coins and
bronzes discovered in the neighbourhood of Nîmes give abundant evidence
of strong Hellenic influences.
The wondrous spring which gave rise to the ancient city still gushes out
in an inexhaustible volume of water, which finds its outlet through
canals into the Vistre. The Baths, built by Agrippa in the first century
at the foot of the hill, were supplied by the sacred well, and their
[Illustration: ROASTING COFFEE. NIMES.]
extent and elegance show how important and wealthy the colony had
become. Stone terraces, courts, and promenades, ornamented with urns and
statues, are now built upon the site, and the water of the spring is
allowed to overflow into the apartments and chambers of the ancient
Baths. The gardens are very beautiful, the brilliant white of the stone
balustrade, terraces, and steps, contrasting with and adding to the
beauty of the thickly wooded hill that rises at the back. After the
gardens at Arles, and even Avignon, this garden of the Fountain seems
fresh and joyous; there is an air of perpetual youth about it which the
genii of the spring seem unwilling to abandon.
The statues that adorned the place in the Roman days have vanished;
here, as elsewhere, the collector and vandal have had their way with the
smaller objects of art, but the place is not dead nor deserted.
Succeeding ages so felt the beauty of the spot that they have adorned it
with the best works they could produce.
The habit the ancients had of throwing small coins into these waters to
propitiate the gods and goddesses to whom the spot was sacred, accounts
for the almost inexhaustible supply of coins that have been and still
are discovered in the “Spring.” Thousands of these have found their way
into museums and private collections, and amongst them the curious “pied
du sanglier,” a coin which has puzzled many numismatists.
The coin, or medal, has one of its edges extended or drawn out into a
shape resembling the leg of a boar. The obverse of these coins has the
heads of Augustus and Agrippa embossed upon it, with the letters IMP ...
P.P ... DIVIF ..., and on the reverse is a crocodile chained to a
palm-tree, with the letters COL. to the left and NEM. to the right,
separated by the palm-tree. It is thought that the boar’s leg and foot
on these coins, or medals, may be some special compliment to the Gauls,
to whom the boar was sacred. The inscription on the coin is common
enough, and the heads of Augustus and Agrippa are of course meant for
the heads of Octavius Augustus, the grand-nephew of Julius Cæsar,
Emperor in 27 B.C., and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the great general who
was the life-long friend and son-in-law of Augustus.
[Illustration: The Pied de Sanglier]
He was a great benefactor to Nîmes, and built the gigantic Pont du Gard
which brought the water into the town, the spring of Nemausus being too
sacred to use for drinking and domestic purposes. It is in compliment to
Agrippa that the crocodile tied to the palm-tree is stamped on the
reverse of these coins, symbolic of the subjugation of the Egyptian
power when Antony was defeated at Actium. This device of the palm-tree
and crocodile has been adopted as the arms of the town. Agrippa was a
warrior and organiser of the first order, and the honours that his
friend the Emperor showered upon him were no more than he deserved, for
Rome owes to him its Pantheon, and Nîmes its Pont du Gard.
The brilliance of Nîmes at the beginning of the Christian era was
unrivalled in the whole of Gaul. During this epoch, buildings of the
most splendid character sprang up on all sides, until, in the time of
Antoninus Pius (whose father was a Roman Consul in Nemausus), the great
Arena was erected.
The Maison Carrée, which has for centuries excited the admiration of the
civilised world, is the finest classic temple extant. Built during the
first years of the Christian era, it was dedicated to the two sons of
Agrippa, Caius and Lucius, who were adopted by their grandfather, the
Emperor Augustus, at their father’s death. The youths both died young,
and without accomplishing anything worthy of record, but as long as the
Maison Carrée stands their names will go down to posterity.
[Illustration: The Maison Carree Nimes]
The small temple has been portrayed on canvas and paper thousands of
times; familiarity with its graceful form can never exhaust its charms;
measurements and analysis do not assist in making its beauty more
apparent. Kings and Emperors have coveted it, and the miracle is that it
has escaped destruction or removal. Napoleon was contemplating this
latter when more pressing affairs demanded his attention, and Louis
XIV., at the suggestion of the architect Colbert, would have transported
it to Versailles, but the task was found to be impossible. Each
succeeding age endeavours to pay its tribute to this flower of
Greco-Roman art, but none has ever succeeded in describing the
indescribable. Arthur Young, who visited Nîmes in the course of his
travels through France during the Revolution, says:
“I visited the Maison Carrée yesterday evening, this morning, and three
times during the course of the day. It is without comparison the most
trifling, the most agreeable building I have ever seen. Without having
an imposing grandeur, or displaying any extraordinary magnificence that
might create surprise, it rivets the attention. In its proportions there
is a magic harmony that charms the eye. It would be impossible to single
out any special part for excellence of beauty, for it is altogether
perfect in symmetry and grace.”
The temple stands in a square which was the Forum in Roman days; the
remains of the foundations indicate the position which the contemporary
buildings occupied. To-day the square is surrounded with modern
buildings, but sufficient space is left between them and the temple to
permit of its being viewed from all sides.
The modern theatre that stands on the left is classic in style, with
Ionic pillars supporting the entablatures of its porch, but a glance at
it is sufficient to demonstrate to what depths a modern imitation of a
classic style can sink.
The temple, although in good preservation, has in its time seen many
vicissitudes. Towards the end of the
[Illustration: A SHOEBLACK AT NIMES]
Middle Ages it was installed as a town hall or council house, and its
interior fitted to accommodate its new occupiers; but evidently it was
not quite suitable, for, in the sixteenth century, the town authorities
parted with it to a private person, in exchange for a piece of land upon
which they could erect a building more adapted to their requirements.
The new proprietor had little respect for the beauty of the ancient
temple, and had no compunction in altering it to suit his prosaic needs.
It was about this period that the Duchess d’Uzès tried to purchase the
building to serve her and her descendants as a place of sepulture. This
attempt to turn it into a family vault, however, failed; but the noble
lord was more successful who managed to purchase and convert the temple
into a stable, although this vandalism was loudly protested against by
the learned and artistic inhabitants of the city. It changed hands again
and passed into possession of the Augustine friars, who transformed it
into a church or chapel, their occupation being conditional on their
offering up on fête day masses and prayers for their King and Country.
After the Revolution, the Government of the restoration stepped in and
rescued beauty’s temple from further humiliations and abuse, and now a
collection of the rare and precious relics of the most classic town in
France is housed in its choicest building.
The other famous relic of Nemausus, the Arena, has been mentioned
previously in connection with that of Arles. It is in much better
preservation than the latter and more imposing, as it stands where an
uninterrupted view of its vast proportions can be obtained. Smaller in
actual measurement than the arena at Arles, it impresses one as being
much larger. It has had a similar history, however, for in the fifth
century the Visigoths who possessed the town turned it into a fortress,
and the Saracens, who A.D. 719 had made themselves masters of Septimania
or Languedoc, used it as a stronghold until they were driven out by the
powerful Charles Martel.
[Illustration: THE ARENA NIMES]
Later in its history the Arena was occupied by over two thousand
Nimansians, who built within the great ellipse a town of narrow streets
and houses, the endless galleries and arcades offering a series of
almost ready-made dwellings. They had a church too, the remains of which
are being carefully preserved. The exterior of this Arena is pure
Roman, as befits a building built for the Roman national sport. The two
arcades of bold, deep-sunk arches are gloomily mysterious even when the
brilliant sunlight illumines all around. At night the gloom and mystery
increases, and the footfall of the solitary passer-by awakens echoes
through the endless vaults that seem to reach into the beginning and end
of time. And yet when the moon creeps up and throws her pale rays over
the giant seats that rise in circles like the rings on a disturbed pool,
the Arena has a beauty all its own--unpaintable, unspeakable.
The gladiatorial fights would seem to have been the most prevalent kind
of sport that was witnessed in the Arena, for it has been suggested over
and over again that the low wall of the podium would render fights
between wild or ferocious animals unsafe to the most important of the
spectators. On one of the stones in the podium there is, amongst others,
one inscription which has an interest in showing that the important
guilds of Nîmes had places perpetually reserved for them in the
distinguished foremost position of the podium. This inscription reads N.
RHOD. ET. ARAR, XL. DDN. which has been deciphered “Nautæ of the Rhone
and of the Saone, 40 places by decree of the Decuriones of Nemausus.”
The watermen were evidently a guild of considerable social importance to
have such honourable positions assigned to them, unless they were a
similar body to the guilds of our own capital, whose names have little
connection with the occupations of their members.
[Illustration: The VENUS of NIMES.]
The general arrangements of the Arena are similar to those at Arles, but
the whole building is in a much better state of preservation. During the
last few years bullfighting, both in the Portuguese and Spanish
fashions, has taken place regularly in the Arena. In fact, even in the
smaller villages or towns of Provence, the sport is so very popular
that temporary makeshift buildings are often erected, but at Nîmes and
Arles the splendid arenas enable the displays to be witnessed by more
than the present populations of these towns. No use is, however, made of
the great stone corbels that project in two rows round the top of the
exterior walls, and which in Roman times supported great poles from
which enormous sheets of sailcloth were stretched to protect the
spectators from the burning sun.
The gladiators were a large fraternity at Nîmes, and many of the
inscriptions preserved in the Musée Lapidaire refer directly or
indirectly to them. The skill of the different classes of fighters is
recorded along with their domestic virtues--testimony which adds pathos
to their tragic fate. Many of them were good fathers and faithful
husbands, who left anxious hearts behind them when they entered the
arena, and aching voids when they returned no more. The Roman courage of
the professional gladiators was not less terrible than the Roman cruelty
of their employers, and loving hearts were lacerated every time a human
body was butchered to make a Roman holiday.
In the same little museum at Nîmes where these
[Illustration: THE RUINED TEMPLE
OF DIANA. NIMES.]
inscriptions now repose there are many fragments of the most exquisite
carvings, enriched mouldings, and delicate capitals, all of them
speaking eloquently of vanished buildings that adorned the ancient
Nemausus.
Of the two other monuments of the ancient city, mere wrecks of their
former selves, which have claimed the attention of architects, artists,
and archæologists, one, the Temple of Diana, stands in the beautiful
garden of the fountain on the site of a much older temple dedicated to
the nymphs of the waters by the earliest Roman colonists, probably by
Augustus himself. The ruined temple standing to-day was very likely
erected about two centuries later, and the object of its presence on the
spot has caused, as is usual with these early buildings, considerable
difference of opinion; but it undoubtedly had something to do with the
cult of the goddess of the fountain, notwithstanding the presence in it
of niches reserved for the statues of other divinities.
It is a solid structure containing a large hall with a barrel-vaulted
roof in a bad state of repair. The worship of the goddess died out in
the fourth century, and the deserted buildings falling, in the dark
ages, into the hands of the Benedictines, it was given over to the
female devotees of the new religion. These nuns continued in possession
for some six hundred years, a long period during which little is known
of it, except the facts stated.
[Illustration: HOLY ORDERS NIMES]
There is some kind of a record that a fire took place in it about the
end of the nuns’ tenancy, and there seems to be a probability that it
had at that time been turned into a hay store. Its later history is a
long record of disaster, for it was used as a fortress, and war had its
share in bringing about the ruin. But whatever troubles it may have come
through, it has an honoured old age, and all the care and protection
which the appreciative twentieth century can suggest is bestowed upon
it.
[Illustration: GATE OF AUGUSTUS--NIMES]
The other early monument, dating from before the first century, is the
Porte d’Auguste, which was built, 16 B.C., in the ramparts of the town.
It was for defensive purposes, and but little remains of the original
structure save two large arches and two smaller ones, which have still
smaller niches above. In the stormy reign of Charles VI. by his orders a
great fortress was erected over this gateway, and for nearly four
hundred years this, perhaps the earliest piece of Roman architecture in
Nîmes, was buried out of sight and out of ken. The other Roman gates of
Nîmes have nearly vanished, portions only remaining of another fortified
gateway that stood and guarded the southern entrance to the town.
On the summit of the hill from which the spring of Nemausus issues, and
which is 350 feet above the sea-level, there stands an octagonal ruined
tower, that rises to a height of about 90 feet. There is a theory that
the tower stands on the site of a more ancient one, built by a
Phocean-Celtic population to guard their city. The tower was originally
some thirty feet higher than it is to-day. The lower story of the
imposing mass was built round a rising mound of earth which filled up
the interior and made a solid stony foundation for the superstructure.
It is known as the “Tour Magne,” and was built, probably, about the same
time as the Porte d’Auguste, and formed a part of the system of the
town’s fortifications, for it commands such an extensive view of the
country round that there can be little doubt that it was a watch-tower
from which the military of the time could observe the movements of any
threatening danger to their town. The “Tour Magne” must have many
memories; if it could only speak, its autobiography would be full of
magic charm. It could tell of fierce strife and a crowd of stirring
incidents that took place between Roman and barbaric Celt, Visigoths,
Franks, and Burgundians, and of the smaller but fierce struggles of
which no history exists.
[Illustration: THE TOUR MAGNE NIMES.]
But one story has been put on record, the only legend current about the
old fortress, and strangely unconnected with warlike undertakings. In
the sixteenth century a farmer named Trucat heard of a prognostication
made by the noted astrologer Nostradamus to the effect that a
husbandman would make a fortune by discovering a golden cock. Golden
animals and birds seem to have run riot through the imaginations of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The credulous Trucat fondly believed
that he was the fortunate man indicated by the prophecy, and that the
treasure he was to discover lay buried in the rocky earth, which filled
the lower storey of the famous “Tour Magne.”
[Illustration: FRIEZE of 12^{TH} CENTURY on the CATHEDRAL at NIMES]
He set about gaining permission to explore the earth inside the tower.
After some trouble he managed to get the consent of the King, Henry IV.,
to excavate, the condition imposed being that it should all be done at
his
[Illustration: WOMAN OF ARLES.]
own expense, and the King further displayed his characteristic
cautiousness by stipulating that two-thirds of any treasure-trove should
go into the imperial exchequer. The story of the “Golden Cock” ends
tamely enough, for neither the precious bird nor any valuables were
found by the superstitious farmer, whose purse was made much lighter
instead of heavier by his expensive search.
Nîmes, unlike Arles (the Gallic Rome), is still a prosperous and growing
city, a popular place of residence and full of modern life. Its streets,
shops, and open spaces, adorned with modern statues, many of great
merit, are highly appreciated by all classes of its inhabitants, who
delight in the beauty of their town. The older families from the smaller
towns around recognise the attractions of the largest city in the lower
valley of the Rhone, and seek it as a place of residence and retirement.
The modern churches are perhaps beautiful to a modern taste; St. Baudile
with its twin needle-pointed spires, St. Perpetué with its single spire
tapering like a pyramid, or St. Paul with its Roman-Byzantine front,
have a completeness that the Cathedral of St. Castor lacks, but they
have not its old associations. St. Castor is surrounded by houses, and
the only view that can be obtained of it is from the tiny square into
which its west door faces--an unforgettable little picture.
High up just under the pediment there is, carved in deep relief, a
series of figures of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They represent
scenes from the Old Testament, and have the rare merit of telling their
story with a simple directness that cannot fail to be recognised by the
meanest intelligence. It is thought that the Cathedral stands on the
spot that was formerly graced by a Roman temple, and it is a likely
enough supposition, for the early Christians in the southern Gallic
towns generally selected the sites of Pagan temples for erecting places
of worship.
The interior of the church, often restored and rebuilt at later periods,
to-day presents a romanesque appearance, and has a very solemn and
mournful aspect when dressed for a funeral. Curtains of sombre velvet
encase the porch, and the little tapers carried by the mourners throw a
weird light on the procession of priests and choir boys as they pass up
the great central nave. Although the Church is disestablished and
disendowed all through France, the ministrations of the clergy are still
sought when the end comes, and these last rites for the dead are of
daily occurrence in the South.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL NIMES.]
The revolutionary South is very conservative in many of its customs. The
women still gather round the wells to fill their pitchers, and one can
without difficulty eliminate the twentieth century and imagine the daily
scene and life in Roman Gaul. The warm climate and small stuffy rooms of
many of the older buildings induce a preference for the open air, and
one can often see the domestic drudges turning the drums of the
coffee-roasters by the side of the Maison Carrée or sawing logs for
firewood in the old way, holding the saw between the knees and with the
hands passing the timber backwards and forwards over its jagged edge.
From the railway station at Nîmes the broad Boulevard Feuchiers, lined
with four rows of plane-trees, leads to a large open space, the
Esplanade. Round this public circus there is an oval balustrade, the
designer of which seems, perhaps unconsciously, to have been influenced
by the great Arena which stands quite near. Even the stone seats
preserve the Roman traditions in their heavy construction. The most
important café in the town stands in the Esplanade, and in winter the
pavement outside is covered with a thick mat upon which the chairs and
table stand. A great coke stove stands in the middle, and customers sit
round the tables and fire listening to the music until the small hours
of the morning. Paris herself can offer no better fare.
[Illustration: REMOULINS]
The “Pont du Gard,” which was one of Agrippa’s greatest engineering
feats, remains the most colossal Roman monument in France. Remoulins,
the little village that lies nearest to the bridge, is easily reached by
train either from Nîmes or Avignon, and the road along the banks of the
Gard is full of rural charm, for it passes vineyards, homesteads,
ploughed fields, and green pastures. Great steep hills rising up on
either side of the river enclose the valley, and when one suddenly
catches sight of the towering masonry of the aqueduct that spans the
river the sensations aroused are bewildering.
Three great tiers of arches stretch across the river, and frame in the
whole horizon. The wonderful warm colour of the masonry contrasts
against the sky, which, framed in the fifty golden arches, assumes an
intensity that no pigment could reproduce. On closer inspection it is
seen that the stones of which this giant is composed are laid one upon
the other, fitted and adjusted without the aid of mortar, and that even
the smaller arches of the third tier are laid in the same fashion. The
channel, however, which carried the water along the top is lined with
hard cement. This tunnel is partly roofed with large flat stones placed
at intervals, and leaving gaps open to the sky.
[Illustration: AN OLD WATER MILL NEAR THE PONT-DU-GARD.]
To stand on the top of this immense pile of masonry and survey the
valley and distant country is to add a unique sensation to life’s
experiences. The river is far below with a toylike mill upon its edge,
the winding roadway is dotted with specks that look like insects, and
the far-off mountains float like clouds in the distant haze. From
whatever point of view it is contemplated--from above or below--from a
distance or from at hand it fills the mind with an unbounded respect for
the genius of its builders. As in the case of the arenas, mere
measurement fails to convey any idea of its vastness. That it is 880
feet or so long and 160 feet high may be interesting to builders and
engineers, but to the majority of spectators these figures utterly fail
to express anything of the magnificence of the Pont du Gard. Like the
Maison Carrée and the amphitheatres of Nîmes and Arles, the aqueduct has
figured in many a picture and engraving.
The rainbow of stone that fills the sky in Robert’s romantic picture now
in the Louvre conveys some of the beauty of the “Bridge,” but fails to
suggest the grandeur or its size. Agrippa and his soldiers accomplished
more than a difficult engineering feat when they carried the waters of
Uzès through hills and over valleys to their much-honoured colony of
Nemausus. The Pont du Gard is far too noteworthy and imposing a
structure to have escaped the attentions of the romantic imaginations of
the Middle Ages, and a legend has been handed down to the effect that
the Devil himself built it, and required as payment for his stupendous
task the soul of the first living creature who should cross it. The
first living creature was a hare (the natives presumably being backward
in risking their souls); and the Devil, exasperated at the poor reward
for all his trouble, turned the hare into stone, and to-day ingenious
natives point to a curious Roman device carved on the keystone of one of
the arches and call it the hare of the Pont du Gard.
[Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD.]
ORANGE
VIII
ORANGE
Orange seems at first thought more intimately associated with
comparatively modern history than with the fortunes of the Roman
colonists of Gaul. Its name at once recalls the acquisition of liberty
by the Netherlands and the establishment of free institutions in
Britain. But one of the most important monuments of Roman times stands
in the little town, and connects it by stronger links with the early
struggles between the Gauls and the Cimbri and Teutons or the more
disciplined legions of Marius and Cæsar.
Had it not been for the ravages of time and the vandalism of the Middle
Ages, the Triumphal Arch which stands where the Lyons road enters the
town from the north would tell its own story so plainly that
archæological speculators would have been spared much conjecture and
difference of opinion. That this arch commemorates some great event or
series of events of great importance is unquestionable, for its size
places it in the front rank of triumphal arches. Only two extant surpass
it--that of Constantine and the Arch of Septimus Severus at Rome. The
triumphal arch in commemoration of great victories was a purely Roman
institution, and one is immediately faced with the query, when standing
in front of the great archway at Orange, what Roman general and which
victory does it celebrate?
[Illustration: THE ARCH AT ORANGE]
The monument has been studied and examined for nearly three centuries,
and conflicting opinions still obtain concerning it. The arch is in a
good state of preservation in spite of the many dangers it has passed
through. In the Middle Ages one of the de Baux family, who was also a
Prince of Orange, turned the triumphal arch into a fortress, and the
sculptures on the east front suffered much damage. The Prince evidently
treated the great arch much in the same way as his family did the rocks
of Les Baux. He altered and built round it staircases and rooms, and
erected a great tower over the attic, making it the watch-tower or
donjon of a fortress that has vanished centuries ago.
[Illustration: The TOWN HALL. ORANGE.]
Whether these building operations of Raymond de Baux did more to
preserve the arch than to damage it cannot be known, but to-day it
retains many of its original features in remarkably good condition. The
great block of masonry has three arches, the centre one larger than the
other two. On each of its façades there are four fluted Corinthian
columns which support a cornice and pediment of great delicacy. The
sculptures that remain well defined upon the west front are symbols of
battles by land and sea; they tell of captives taken and victories won.
Carved in rich profusion are spears and javelins, arms and armour,
helmets, breastplates and shields, prows of war galleys, rigging, ropes
and anchors, gladiators and slaves, male and female captives.
The different theories as to the origin of this arch have each been
supported by apparently good evidence. Suetonius, the Roman historian of
the first century, is quoted as the authority that Domitius Ahenobarbus
celebrated a triumph in Gaul, which gave his name to the road he
traversed. The Domitian way, the route Domitius is supposed to have
followed, was via Orange, Carpentras, and Cavaillon, and at each of
these places he is reported to have erected the triumphal arches, and
that would make all three of these date from the second century before
Christ.
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES AT ORANGE]
The next theory, which for a long time has had its supporters, makes
Marius the hero whose triumph it celebrates; and they point to the name
of Marius carved on one of the shields of the monument in support of
their contention. Julius Cæsar has been suggested as the possible
builder, and so has Octavius; but the general opinion held to-day is
that it was erected during the reign of Tiberius to commemorate his
overthrow of Julius Sacrovir, who tried to incite the Gauls to rebel
against Rome A.D. 21. This theory has been supported by the discovery of
the marks of nails which held in position the bronze letters of an
inscription removed by Raymond de Baux when he transformed the arch into
a fortress in the thirteenth century. These marks have been supposed to
correspond with the first letters of the name of Tiberius; but whatever
the victory may have been that the triumphal arch commemorates, its
presence in Orange is one of many proofs of the importance of the
ancient city of Arausio.
The ramparts and towers that surrounded the Roman town have all
disappeared. Visigoth and Teuton broke down the power of the Empire,
demolishing its works on every hand. The Saracens in turn possessed the
town, and fierce battles raged around it before Charlemagne drove them
out. In the Middle Ages it was subjected to the continued strife and
warfare of contending feudal factions, but the Arch and the Theatre
remain to speak of its former greatness.
At the opposite side of the town from where the Lyons
[Illustration: THEATRE. AT ORANGE]
road enters it, a great hill rises from the plain, and on its crest the
castle of the Princes of Orange stood in former days. At the foot of the
hill, on its townward side, stands a huge wall, some 340 feet long, 120
feet high, and 13 feet in thickness. One can only stand awestruck in
front of this gigantic structure that overshadows and dwarfs the town.
No wonder that Louis XIV. called it the finest wall in all his wide
kingdom. It awakens emotions akin to those one feels on beholding “The
Pyramids” of Egypt, or its nearer neighbour the “Pont du Gard.”
This wall forms the back of the proscenium of the Roman theatre, and is
the most unique specimen in existence. The great façade, with its
projecting corbels which supported tall masts, its rows of blind and
open arches, even though damaged, much worn, and shorn of its carvings,
has a noble grandeur due mainly to its size. Originally there was a
forecourt, bounded at either end by two projecting structures, which
gave a greater architectural beauty to the pile. The Theatre, although
so purely Roman, is built at the foot of the hill which is used for the
cavea, a practice that was adopted invariably by the Greeks and seldom
by the Romans.
Inside, the stage must have occupied more and the orchestra less space
than in the Greek theatre. The great background formed by the back of
the stage was probably embellished with niches containing statues and
framed with costly marble columns. Over the central or royal door which
opened on to the stage, it is supposed that a colossal statue of an
Emperor was placed, and the whole of the stage was roofed over with a
richly panelled ceiling. In the large wings on either side of the stage
were the dressing-and green-rooms for the actors, as well as waiting-and
refreshment-rooms for the higher social grades of the public. The seats
for the spectators are cut out of the hill, and form an ascending series
of horseshoe-shaped steps which could accommodate about seven thousand
spectators.
[Illustration: THEATRE AT ORANGE]
In the seventeenth century the Princes of Orange, who dwelt in a
stronghold upon the hill overlooking the theatre, attached it to their
castle, converting it into a fortress. Much of its ornamentation
disappeared at this period, and more was destroyed at a later date when
the town was taken by Louis XIV., who ordered the demolition of the
castle and fortress. A squalid town of houses and stables occupied the
interior of the Theatre after this; but happily they were all cleared
out at the beginning of the last century, and to-day the monument is
jealously guarded by a Government department.
From the hilltop behind the castle one looks over a country as rich as
any in Provence. The Rhone glides through meadows, orchards, vineyards,
and great mulberry plantations, past little red-tiled farmhouses, and
long white roads lined by tall poplars and thickset hedges.
Orange is the gateway to Roman Gaul, and its two monuments are a
magnificent introduction to the neighbouring towns of Arles and Nîmes.
There are many curious streets and houses in the town, and the Hôtel de
Ville, which stands in the principal square, is a pleasing bit of
seventeenth-century architecture. Down one of the narrow streets near
the great wall of the Theatre there stands a little church surmounted by
an old crumbling tower. The interior of this ancient little building is
so striking in contrast to the usual magnificence displayed in the
churches of Provence, that one is not surprised to
[Illustration: THE PROTESTANT CHURCH ORANGE]
discover that in it the Protestants of Orange worshipped. The plain
whitewashed walls are reminiscent of the churches of Holland--perhaps
the only association discoverable in the town with the Stadholders, who
were also Princes of Orange. Many of the older streets have quaint
arcades with bold round arches that naturally suggest a Roman origin.
* * * * *
Carpentras lies to the east of Orange and Avignon, about fifteen miles
from either place. In the old days the dusty mud-stained diligences
plied from Avignon to Carpentras, but to-day the cross-country motor-bus
has found in Provence a hearty welcome and plenty of passengers, and the
ancient relationship between the two towns is more closely knit
together. Carpentras is no longer the important town it was before the
Revolution. From being a Roman town of great consequence,
“Carpentorate,” it grew during the Middle Ages to become the capital of
the Papal province, the “Comtat Venaissin.” When Pope Clement V., by the
orders of Philip the Fair, removed his Papal See from Rome, his time was
divided between Carpentras and Avignon, and it was in the former town
that he breathed his last.
In 1305, when Clement took up his temporary abode in Carpentras, it was
strongly fortified with machicolated battlements, towers and gateways,
and all the other accessories of a mediæval town. Churches had been
established for ages, the oldest one, St. Siffrein, dating from the
sixth century. The present Cathedral of that name is the fifth building
that has been erected upon the same site: the first having been built in
the sixth century, the second in the eighth or ninth, the third in the
tenth, and the fourth at the end of the thirteenth century. Nothing
remains of the two earliest, although some parts of the third building
were incorporated in the fourth.
The present church was built by the anti-pope Benedict XIII., who at the
period of the schism had a large following among the clergy of France.
He thought to establish himself and the Papacy in Carpentras, having
previously been kept a prisoner at Avignon by the factions who refused
to acknowledge his papal authority. He was, however, only successful in
retaining the loyalty of a portion of the French Church and nobility,
for a few years later, in 1409, the General Council of Cardinals met at
Pisa, together with the influential envoys of France and England, and
the two rival Popes, Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., were both tried
and deposed for contumacy and the violation of their solemn engagements.
But for this Carpentras might have been a second Avignon.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF S^{T} SIFFREIN CARPENTRAS]
The Cathedral of St. Siffrein, which Benedict started in the Gothic
style, was never completed in a satisfactory manner. The south porch
remains, however, a most beautiful piece of Gothic, with delicately
designed and carved pinnacles and arches, worthy of a much finer
building. The west front of the Cathedral is a makeshift, and although
the flowered pillars in the buttresses are very beautiful, the porch and
doorways are of much later date, entirely out of keeping with the
character of the building. There is plenty of elaborate decoration in
the interior, for the chapels contain pictures by Mignard and Parrocel,
and there are also great decorative pictures of the life of the
name-saint, St. Siffrein, who was the Bishop of Carpentras in the sixth
century.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME CARPENTRAS.]
[Illustration: THE PORTE DE ORANGE CARPENTRAS.]
The Cathedral is the fortunate possessor of one or two nails from the
true Cross, which are exhibited on certain days from a small gallery
that projects into the nave over the south entrance. Over the west
doorway there are four pictures in magnificent carved wood frames which
compel the attention more than the works of art they surround. The
frames are the work of an artist who accomplished much of the beautiful
wood carving in the Cathedral. His name was Jacques Bernas, but the
names of the painters of the pictures have been absolutely forgotten.
In the early part of the nineteenth century Carpentras suffered a severe
loss. The ramparts which had hemmed in and protected the town for five
centuries were pulled down, the lofty Porte d’Orange alone excepted.
This magnificent tower, which is 120 feet high, crenellated with a
machicolated battlement, and pierced with only one comparatively small
entrance, is a perfect example of mediæval defensive architecture. The
houses which now stand on the site of the ancient ramparts look mean and
insignificant; even the great plane-trees that line the broad avenue
which surrounds the town look like dwarfs when compared with the ancient
gate. Quaint flights of steps lead from this avenue up to the town, and
rare picturesque bits of old tiled houses delight the eye at unexpected
turnings.
The town is full of twistings and winding streets, ancient doorways with
richly sculptured fronts, sunny courts, shady boulevards, and charming
vistas. It is delightfully situated, with a lovely country spread like a
rich carpet all around its base. From the courtyard in front of the
Église de l’Observance, the view, over the
[Illustration: THE ARCH AT CARPENTRAS.]
valley in which are the ruins of a Roman aqueduct, to the bare slopes of
the snow-crested Mont Ventoux, is one of varied charm. Groups of little
houses peep out from amongst the trees; clumps of tall cypress, ranged
like a wall of spires, protect the vineyards from the blighting
mistral’s chill; villages nestle in the shelter of trees whose rich
foliage lingers long after summer has departed; a Provençal landscape
lies all around the town, bewitching the eye and captivating the
emotions.
Standing in a small courtyard surrounded by the walls of a
seventeenth-century bishop’s palace, now the Hôtel de Ville, is a small
triumphal arch which has been battered by wind and rain for twenty
centuries. It is only a single arch, and considerable doubt exists as to
its exact age. On the two sides there are sculptured in high relief
figures of captive Gauls. The columns that form each angle of the arch
are little more than fragments, but the engaged columns on the inside
have suffered less. This arch was supposed by some archæologists to have
some connection with the great arch at Orange, but nothing can be proved
with any certainty. It remains one of those puzzling relics of the past
that will continue to provoke differences of opinion until the fabric
crumbles out of human sight and mingles with the dust of ages.
* * * * *
A little local train runs from Tarascon through vineyards, ploughed
fields, and pasture lands, stopping at tiny
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN TO NOSTRADAMUS AT S^{T}. REMY]
wayside shelters too insignificant to warrant a name. Its destination is
Orgon, but about midway between the limits of its journey it stops at
St. Remy, a little town of about five thousand inhabitants. This is a
typical Provençal village, full of traditions, customs, and leisured
existence, like hundreds of others in the Rhone valley, and but for its
close proximity to the ancient Roman town of Glanum Livii, few strangers
would ever walk its streets. It still retains traces of a former
prosperity, and many of the houses in its quaint streets are embellished
with fine portals of the Renaissance architecture.
It has had famous and illustrious citizens too, whom it honours with
statues that ornament the public places. The astrologer, Nostradamus,
who was patronised by the great and believed in by all, lived for some
years in retirement in the little town. It was he who was indirectly
responsible for the ruin of the poor imaginative man who spent his time
and fortune in excavating the ground floor of the Tour Magne in the vain
search for a “golden fowl.” History does not relate if the astrologer’s
prediction “that a farmer would make his fortune by the discovery of a
golden cock” ever did come true, or if the disappointed treasure-seeker
of the Tour Magne ever sought an interview with the prophet.
The oldest inhabitants of St. Remy may tell of the gradual decline in
the splendour of its fate, in the merriment of its song and dance; but
the youngest glory in the Sunday visits of the Cinema. Occasionally a
strolling troupe of players invade the town, and in the open air, with a
sad semblance of gaiety, emulate the “Jongleurs” of old in their efforts
to amuse. But the men in these little villages make their own
amusements, and in the summer evenings they congregate in the public
squares, and under the shelter of the great plane-trees play at their
game of bowls, the same game that is popular in Italy, Spain, and
Portugal, and even across the Mediterranean in Tunis and Algiers. Any
piece of ground, even the highway, will serve for their purpose, and
casual passersby or spectators run no little risks from the balls, which
are not trundled or rolled along the ground, but are thrown high through
the air.
The four cafés which St. Remy boasts are large enough for its wants, and
their clients, dressed in fustian, indulge with temperance in absinthe,
cards, and tobacco, most of them retiring early in the evening, for St.
Remy does not keep late hours like Nîmes or Arles. The Church at St.
Remy is a most imposing building for so small a town; it is classic in
design and modern in construction, but it is built beneath an ancient
belfry with a tapering spire, Gothic and beautiful, a relic of the
fourteenth century.
[Illustration: “OUR LADY OF PITY” S^{T}. REMY]
A long straight road, sheltered and shaded from wind and sun by great
plane-trees that range on either side, leads from the town to the foot
of the Alpilles. The vista is extensive, and the rugged hills that end
it assume the appearance of a gigantic fortress.
Just outside the town, sheltered by a great chestnut-tree, there stands
an ancient church, “Our Lady of Pity,”
[Illustration: A WELL NEAR GLANUM.]
the walls of its beautiful porch abandoned to the bill-poster, and its
steps and floor to the village children. All the way up this white road
there are ancient bits of masonry utilised in modern building, and many
other evidences of the Roman occupation. Here, by the roadside, there is
a curious deep well, with the mouth protected by four great slabs of
stone set on end forming a rough but solid parapet; a tall stone stands
up on end beside the others, and through a hole in it a branch of a tree
is thrust, from which is suspended the pulley-wheel and rope to lower
the bucket into the waters below. Two great troughs carved out of solid
stone lie by the side ready for use as washtubs. They look like tombs
from the Alyscamps at Arles, or possibly some other ancient
burial-ground. Who can say?
[Illustration: TOMB of the JULII]
All the little homesteads have small patios in front or at the sides of
them; vines trail up the columns that support the lean-to roofs, columns
that are either of Roman workmanship or imitations, but the ancient
character is well preserved. About a mile up this road are two monuments
of the earliest Roman time; grey as the hills that form a background to
them, delicate in contrast to nature’s rugged sculptures, they are
memorials of the skill of hands whose work was finished two thousand
years ago. The sculptors have been lavish of their time and talents, and
although the freshness of their delicate and bold carvings has worn off,
time has softened and mellowed them, even as it does a refined or noble
human face. The smaller monument is a specimen of a triumphal arch, much
damaged, but what remains is more beautiful in its proportions and
simplicity than many of the larger triumphal arches found in Provence.
The other monument, the tomb of the Julii, has an inscription on the
architrave of the second story,--SEX. L. M. JULIEI. C. F. PARENTIBUS.
SUEIS. which translated means that the monument was raised to the memory
of their parents by Sextus, Lucius, and Marcus Julii, the sons of Caius.
It is a mausoleum of exquisite symmetry and distinction; on the square
base two bas-reliefs of battle and hunting scenes indicate that Caius
was a warrior who was no less distinguished in the chase than on the
battle-field. The second story is a square turret which has four
niches, and is enriched with fluted columns at each corner; the
entablature above is embellished with mouldings and ornament and
surmounted by a small circular turret, with ten fluted Corinthian
columns, inside of which are two statues wanting the heads. The amount
of well-considered ornament lavished upon these memorials, one of
victories accomplished, the other of the highly honoured dead, is an
eloquent tribute to the sentiments that animated the Romans as well as
to the distinction and skill of their artists.
[Illustration: THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH AND TOMB AT GLANUM LIVII]
These two solitary monuments are all that remain of the ancient city,
but they stand steadfast at the foot of the rugged hills, the faithful
sentinels of a vanished empire. Far removed from the busy life of cities
to-day, they have known in the past the pressure of the multitude and
the noisy hum of humankind, for the ancient town nestled around them on
all sides.
[Illustration: IN A CAFÉ ORANGE.]
How it happened that the Visigoths, who in the fifth century destroyed
the Roman city, allowed the arch to remain, is one of those puzzles that
never will be solved; for on the two sides of the triumphal arch their
ancestors are represented as captives led in chains. Works of art,
precious and beautiful, had no influence to stay their devastating hand;
culture made no appeal to their rugged natures, for in their rage
against their persecuting masters they razed to the ground works of fine
art and beauty that were the pride and glory of the greatest Empire the
world has ever seen.
INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
Alyscamps at Arles, Tombs in the, 176, 203
ARLES, 213;
The Town Hall, 177;
The Arena, 179;
Type, 188;
The Roman Theatre, 194, 204;
Greek Type, 197;
In a Café, 200;
St. Honorat, 205;
Constantine’s Palace, 208;
The Alyscamps, 203;
Doorway, 209;
A Well, 214;
Woman of, 240
Augustus, Gate of, Nîmes, 237
AVIGNON, _Frontispiece_;
Papal Palace, 14, 27, 43;
A Tiny Homestead, 17;
A Farmhouse near, 19;
Pont St. Benezet, 32, 34;
Ramparts, 36;
A Countryman, 39;
The Palace of the Popes, 49;
Types, 59, 66, 69;
St. Didimus, 61
BAUX, LES, 128;
The Castle, 129;
The Pavilion of Queen Jeanne, 141;
The Church, 145;
The Mansion of the Manvilles, 147;
A Window at, 149;
The Postern, 116, 155
CARPENTRAS, Street Steps in, 64;
Cathedral of St. Siffrein, 267;
Notre Dame, 268;
The Porte de Orange, 269;
The Arch, 271
Carrée, The Maison, Nîmes, 225
Cathedral, Avignon, 27;
Nîmes, 243;
St. Siffrein, 267
CHARTREUSE, Gateway of Monastery, 89;
The Fountain in the Cloisters, 91
CLANUM, A Well near, 278;
The Trumphal Arch and Tomb at, 281
Constantine’s Palace, Arles, 208
Daudet’s Windmill, Les Baux, 135
Diana, The Ruined Temple of, Nîmes, 233
Jeanne, The Pavilion of Queen, Les Baux, 141
Julii, Tomb of the, 279
Magne, The Tour, Nîmes, 239
Manvilles, The Mansion of the, Les Baux, 147
MONTMAJOUR, 144, 163, 171;
On the Road to, 153;
Chapel of Ste. Croix-en-Jerusalem, 160;
The Monastery, 166, 169
NÎMES, Arches of the Arena, 181;
Arena, 185, 229;
Arcade, 191;
Street in, 220;
Roasting at, 221;
The Maison Carrée, 225;
A Shoeblack at, 227;
The Venus of, 231;
The Ruined Temple of Diana, 233;
Holy Orders, 236;
Gate of Augustus, 237;
The Tour Magne, 239;
Frieze of 12th Century on the Cathedral, 240
Nostradamus, Fountain to, 273
ORANGE, 45;
An Old Courtyard, 23;
The Arch at, 254;
The Town Hall, 255;
Old Houses at, 257;
The Theatre, 259, 261;
The Protestant Church, 263;
The Porte de Orange, Carpentras, 269;
In a Café, 282
Palace of the Popes, The, Avignon, 49
Papal Palace from the River, Avignon, 14, 27, 43;
The Silver Bell, 53;
Front Entrance to, 57
Philip the Fair, Tower of, Villeneuve, 77;
Window-seat in the, 82
Pied de Sanglier, The, 223
Pont-du-Gard, 249;
An Old Water-mill near the, 247
Remoulins, 246
Renard, Church at Château, 133;
A Street in, 137
René Castle, King, 103, 107
Rhone, 71, 72;
Boats on the, 71
St. André, Fort, 83
St. Benezet, Avignon, Interior of Chapel of, 48
St. Benezet, Pont, 32, 34
Ste. Croix-en-Jerusalem, Chapel of, 160
St. Didimus, Avignon, 61
St. Honorat, Arles, 205
St. Martha’s, Tarascon, 113
St. Remy, Fountain to Nostradamus at, 273;
Our Lady of Pity, 277
St. Siffrein, Cathedral of, 267
“Tarasc,” The, 119
TARASCON, A Gateway, 80, 99;
A Bar in, 101;
An Old Garden in, 109;
St. Marthas, 113;
A Street in, 121
Ventoux from Carpentras, Mount, 15
VILLENEUVE, Tower of Philip the Fair, 77, 82;
A Hill-top, 79;
A Street in, 85
INDEX
Agrippa, 220
Agrippa, Marcus Vispanius, 223
Ahenobarbus, Domitius, 256
Aix, 117
Albi, 38
Alix, Princess, 153
Alphonse of Aragon, Duke, 102
Alpilles, Les (Little Alps), 127
Alyscamps, The, 202
Amphitheatre of Arles, 180
Andrew, son of Carobert, King of Hungary, 21, 22
Arausio, 258
Arles, 175;
legend of the betrothal feast given by King Nannos, 176;
amphitheatre built, 179;
discovery of the Venus of Arles, 183;
removal of the town from the arena, 188;
gladiators encouraged by Julius Cæsar, 190;
restoring of the ruined theatre, 194;
theatres of the Greeks, 195;
tombs found in the Alyscamps, 198;
inscriptions on tombs, 199;
tomb of Julia Tyrannia, 199;
rebuilding of the Church of St. Honorat, 203;
the Cathedral of St. Trophimus built in the twelfth century, 206;
the monster “Tarasque,” 207;
the combining of Pagan and Christian arts and religions, 208;
obelisk found in the ancient Roman circus, 211;
the Place du Forum, 212;
Mistral the poet, 213, 214
Arnaud, 140
Auguste, Porte d’, 237
Avignon (City of the Popes), or Avenio, 13;
“Babylonish Captivity,” the, 15;
threatened by Romans, 24;
Roman monuments, 25;
setting up of a Republic, 26;
paintings and frescoes, 29;
legend of the Bridge of Avignon, 34, 35;
siege in 1226, 37;
conflict of the faiths, 38;
Raymond humiliated, 39;
re-excommunication of Raymond, 40;
work of restoration, 44;
restoration of paintings of the fourteenth century, 48;
restoration of pictures, sculpture, and buildings, 49, 50, 51;
main door to chapel unearthed, 51;
soldiers sent by Charles V. to drive Pierre de Luna from the place, 56;
fortress stormed by King’s troops, 57;
gunpowder treason, 58;
massacre in the Glacière, 59, 63;
the White Terror of 1815, 64;
revolutionists of the South, 62;
garrison of the Republicans shot down by Royalist Volunteers, 63;
Marshal Brune shot, 65;
Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, 71
Barthelasse, 31, 72
Baux, Les, 127;
the approach over Les Alpilles, 127;
canal dug across La Crau, 130;
restoration of the Château in 1444, 133;
Langue d’Oc, or Provençal, used until well on into
the fifteenth century, 134;
romance of a Jongleur, 136;
Court of Queen Jeanne, where women were judges, 141;
Guillaume de
Cabestan slain by Raymond, 144;
excavations made in crypt of the Church of St. Vincent, 145;
origin of the name of Porcelets, 151;
Grotto of the Fairies, 152;
two relics of the Roman times, 254
Baux, Des, 131
Baux, Raymond de, Prince of Orange, 255
Beaucaire, Count, 111
Belvezet, Our Lady of, 87
Benedict XI., 18
Benedict XII., 43
Benedict XIII. (Pierre de Luna), 56, 266
Bérengère, Princess, 142
Bernas, Jacques, 269
Bertrand de Goth, d’Agoust, Archbishop of Bordeaux, 18
Boucicaut, Marshal, 56
Brune, Marshal, 65
Cabestan, Guillaume de, 142, 144
Cæsar, Julius, 257
Caius, 224, 280
Calvert Museum, 25
Camargue, La, 202
Carpentras, 63, 265
Cavalier Mountain, 219
Charlemagne, 160
Charles I. of Anjou, 21
Charles VI., 237
Charles IX., 204
Chevaliers, Hall of the, 83
Choisi, General, 60
Claud, Archbishop of Turin, 37
Claud II., 150
Clement V., 18, 21, 265
Clement VI., 22, 43, 55
Coupetête, Jourdain, 59
Crau, La, 128, 130
“Crucifixion,” 52
Daniel, 140
Daudet, 97
Diana, Temple of, 235
Durazzo, Charles, Duke of, 24
Église de l’Observance, 270
Escuyer, L’, 60
Fairies, Grotto of the, 152
Feuchiers, Boulevard, 245
Flouquet, 140
Forum, Place du, 215
Garde Robe, 48
Geoffrey VI., 168
Glanum Livii, 275
Gregory XI., 56
Grottes, Rue des, Avignon, 25
Henry IV., 240
“Holy Cross,” Chapel of the, 159, 162
Innocent III., Pope, 38
Innocent VI., 88
Joanna, 21, 23
John XXII., Pope (Jacques d’Euse), 30
Jongleurs, 136
Jourdain (Coupetête), 59, 60
Julii, 280
Languedoc, 88
Lapidaire, Musée, 232
“Last Judgment,” 52
Laval, Jean de, 133
Leibulfe, Count, 132
Louis of Hungary, 22
Louis XI., 123
Louis XIV., 225, 259
Louis XVI., 164
Lucius, 224
Massilia (Marseilles), 175
Manvilles, Hôtel de, 150
Maries, Les, 154
Marius, 257
Martel, Charles, 160, 229
Mignard, 268
Monaco, Hôtel, or Monte Carlo, Hôtel de, 146
Montmajour, 159;
dedication of the Chapel of the Holy Cross by Charlemagne, 159;
outbreak of the Revolution, 164;
Confessional of St. Trophimus, 165;
customary offering of sturgeon to Geoffrey VI., 168;
Benedictine Monastery of, 171;
legend of the foundation of the Monastery, 172
Montmorency, Château de, 105
Nannos, King (Nan), 176
Napoleon, 225
Nero, Claudius Tiberius, 179
Nicolète, 110
Nîmes (Nemausus), 219;
the Celtic tribe conquered by the Romans, 220;
baths built in the first century, 220;
coins “pied du sanglier,” 222;
building of Pont du Gard, 223;
the great Arena erected, 224;
the Maison Carrée built during the first years of Christian era, 224;
Arthur Young’s description of the Maison Carrée, 226;
building of town in Arena, 229;
description of the Temple of Diana, 235;
Tour Magne 350 feet above sea-level, 238;
legend of Golden Cock, 239;
customs of the evolutionary South, 245;
legend of the Pont du Gard, 249
Nostradamus, 239, 275
Notre Dame des Doms, the Cathedral of, 26
Octavius, 257
Octavius, Augustus, 223
Orange, Princes of, 259
Orange, 253;
the Triumphal Arch, an important monument of Roman times, 253;
theories as to the origin of the Triumphal Arch, 256;
stupendous wall forming back of the proscenium of Roman theatre, 259, 260;
Princes of Orange converted theatre into fortress, 261;
two rival Popes tried and deposed, 267;
ancient bits of masonry utilised in modern buildings, 278;
tomb of the Julii, 280
Orgon, 275
Palace of the Popes, 26, 44
Papal Palace, 67
Papal Throne, 29
Parrocel, 268
Penitents, Black, 62
Penitents, White, 62
Périgueux, Bishop of, 124
Peter of Castelnau, 38
Petrarch, 15
Philip the Fair of France, 16
Philippe, Louis, 89
Phoceans, 24
Pierre de Luna, 83
Pity, Our Lady of, 277
Pius, Antoninus, 224
Place Fortin, 146
Pointre, 65
Pontiff, 30
Porcelets, 150
“Prophets, The,” 52
Rambert, Abbé, 161, 166
Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, 38
Remoulins, 246
René, Château, 98, 111
René, King (King of Naples), 100, 116, 133
Rhone Valley, 14
Richard Cœur de Lion, 140
Rioni, 67
Rocher des Doms, 31
Rock of the Doms, 26
Sacrovir, Julius, 258
St. André, Fort, 82
St. André, Fortress, 84
St. Anne, Church of, 197
St. Anthony, 90
St. Baudile, 241
St. Benezet, Bridge of, 31, 56
St. Castor, 241
St. Etienne, Church of, 203
St. Francis d’Assisi, 120
St. Fronto, 124
St. Honorat, Church of, 203
St. Martha, 28, 117
St. Martha, Church of, 115
St. Martial, Chapel of, 47
St. Paul, 241
St. Perpetué, 241
St. Pierre, Place, 25
St. Remy, 127, 276
St. Roland, Tower of, 193
St. Ruf, 28, 36
St. Trophimus, Church of, 199
Salle Brulle, 58
Salle du Garde, 108
Sebastiani, Colonel, 48
Septimus Severus, Arch of, 254
Seville, Archbishop of, 58
Suetonius, 256
Tarascon, 97;
the famous Tartarin penned by Daudet banned, 98;
King René involved in a series of complications, 100;
marriage of King René’s daughter, 103;
description of interior of Castle, 106;
the story of Aucassin and Nicolète, 108;
legend of the Tarasc, 115;
King René’s vision, 116;
St. Martha’s triumph over the Tarasc, 118;
pageant prohibited in 1904, 119;
reproduction of the reliquary given up in the starvation
times of the great Revolution, 123
“Tarasque,” 118
Tartarin and Tarascon, 97
Theodoric, King, 189
Tiberius, 258
Toledo, Archbishop of, 58
Toulouse, 40
Trucat, 239
Turenne, Countess of, 24
Tyrannia, Julia, 199
Uzès, Duchesse d’, 228
Valdenses (Albigenses), 37
Valence, Count de, 109
Valfenier, de, 93
Vandemont, Count, 102
Vanloo, 120
Ventoux, Mount, 112
Venus of Arles, The, 183
Vidal, 140
Villegis, King, 172
Villeneuve, 31;
approach to the town, 75;
battlements of fortresses and castles, 75;
stone seat, 81;
indication of prisoners’ thoughts, 84;
the Monastery of the Chartreuse founded by Innocent VI., 88;
Monastery of Chartreuse destroyed by lightning, 93
Ville, Hôtel de, Orange, 262, 272
Visigoths, The, 229, 282
Voltaire, Rue, 184
Young, Arthur, 225
_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
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