Chapter VII: Appendix: 253 (7)

There is also the church of S. Jacques, whose west front has the unusual feature of a sham gable on either side of the real central gable.[27] These gables are above the aisles, and completely conceal their roofs and the clerestory. The nave is of early-pointed date, but very much altered; only the two eastern bays appearing to retain the original triforium and clerestory,--the latter a lancet with internal jamb-shafts, which are continued into the triforium and form a portion of the arcades of four pointed arches which occupy each bay,--an arrangement very similar to that of the clerestory of S. Remi. These two bays are groined with a sexpartite vault, which is slightly domical in its longitudinal section. The alternate piers in the nave consist of coupled columns of very solid character, and with very deep capitals. Some of these columns are regularly fluted. The rest of the nave has been much altered in the fourteenth century, whilst the choir is flamboyant, with aisles of Renaissance style, but groined in stone. The crossing is surmounted by a very large flèche of timber covered with lead, almost completely modernized, but showing still some large three-light windows of middle-pointed style.

The _Maison des Musiciens_, in the Rue de Tambour, is a well-known example of excessively good domestic architecture of the thirteenth century.

From Rheims I made my way by railway to Châlons-sur-Marne, where I was rewarded by the sight of one of the most interesting churches I have ever seen, that of Notre Dame, and of a cathedral of inferior interest. It was the more gratifying to find such really fine work just on the extreme borders of the country to which French influence extended, and beyond which to the eastward the churches appear to be entirely German in their style.

The points of resemblance between Notre Dame de Châlons and the church of S. Remi at Rheims are too obvious to be overlooked. The planning and the general design and detail of their chevets are precisely similar, though the scale of Notre Dame is considerably smaller than that of S. Remi. The former church has however the great advantage of being of the same character throughout, wonderfully little damaged by time, and singularly fortunate among French churches in being under the care of a priest, M. Champenois, whose zeal and enthusiasm for his beautiful church is equalled by the care and skill with which he has himself carried out its restoration. It is the most conservative restoration I have as yet seen in France; it could not be more conservative, and hence it is impossible that it could be better. M. Champenois feels that every stone is a deposit entrusted to him, and I would that we saw signs of such zeal as his rather oftener in the French clergy. Unfortunately, it seems to be too generally the case that they take no interest whatever in the churches which they serve. They have been taught to look to the government as the owner and restorer of all religious buildings, and they have ceased to concern themselves about either the security of their fabrics or the character of their fittings and decorations. Fortunate indeed is it for us in England that the State is not so careful for us as it is in France, for then we should see here, just as we do there, a people utterly careless of the noble buildings which surround them, in place of--as we do here--a people whose love for their old monuments is enhanced and in part created by the fact that they are themselves perpetually invited to help in their restoration and repair.

The church of Notre Dame consists of a nave and aisle of seven bays in length, transepts, and a very short apsidal choir (an apse of seven sides), with an aisle and chapels planned like those of S. Remi, beyond it. There are four towers, two at the west ends of the aisles, and two in the angles between the transepts and the choir. The triforium throughout is large, lofty, and groined. As at S. Remi, the external effect of this church is much inferior to the internal effect. It is rather too heavy and ungainly, and savours much of the character of German Romanesque work. The four towers have the defect of being almost exactly alike, of four stages, richly adorned with round-arched arcades, and rising hardly at all above the level of the ridges of the roof. The south-west tower retains its fine leaded spire, with four tall pinnacles at its base, and a cluster of eight spire-lights about midway: it is an exquisite example of lead-work, and still more precious to us as affording evidence of the extraordinary extent to which decoration was sometimes carried in the Middle Ages. The pinnacles at the base still retain distinct traces of decoration on the lead, each side having a large crocketed canopy, below which is a gigantic figure, in one case of an archer with a bow. The whole is done in white and black only, the ground being the dark lead on which the white lines seem to have been marked by a process of tinning or soldering. It is a kind of decoration which we may well attempt to revive. A spire very similar to the other has recently been erected on the north-west tower, and the western front is now therefore quite in its old state, and singularly well does it look. I almost doubt whether the addition of similar spires to the two eastern towers, for which the Curé is now collecting funds, will really improve the look of the church. With four steeples, it is well that two at least should be pre-eminent, which is the present state of the case; whilst the completion of the others would reduce all to the character of mere turrets--a result not to be desired. The variety of string-courses and cornices throughout the exterior of this church, all filled with sculpture of foliage, gives a very ornate character to the external detail.

The principal entrance is by the south door of the nave. This has been cruelly damaged, indeed nearly destroyed, but what remains is of great interest, owing to its very close resemblance to the noble western doorways of Rouen cathedral; the doorway is double, with eight shafts in each jamb, the alternate shafts having figures in front of them, as in the west doorways of Chartres; whilst the tympanum is similar also, having a figure of our Lord, surrounded by the emblems of the four Evangelists. Portions of archivolt enrichments and other sculpture have been dug up in the neighbourhood of this doorway and carefully preserved, and they appear to me, by their vigour and grandeur of character, to be undoubtedly the work of the same artist, and possibly portions of this once magnificent but now woefully mutilated entrance.

It is in the interior, however, of this church that the effect is finest and the architecture most noble. The whole is very uniform in character throughout, marked by great solidity of construction and proportion, and by the boldness and distinctness of all its architectural detail. The triforium throughout opens with two arches enclosed within another, the spandrels being unpierced, and throughout the church it is groined; nor must I forget to say, that at the present day the spacious area it affords is turned to some account; for, when I was there, on one side they were making the organ pipes, on the other constructing the organ, and in another part the carpenters were busy upon the organ case; and the Curé assured me that he not only had the satisfaction of seeing everything executed in the best possible way, but at the same time there was no inconvenience, and no want of reverence, on the part of the workmen. The clerestory consists throughout of lancet windows, the lower portions of which are filled in with an arcade in the manner I have described in the choir of S. Remi, at Rheims. The sculpture throughout this church, though almost entirely confined to foliage, is very instructive, and at the same time a little puzzling; for we see almost side by side work of the best Byzantine character--almost rivalling the sculpture we see in Venice--and distinctly thirteenth century French work, whilst the building itself shows no corresponding diversity, and I can only suppose, either that the sculpture was in hand much longer than the building of the church, or that two sets of sculptors were at work, the one educated in a Byzantine school, the other influenced by the more developed school of the Île de France.

I have said enough, I trust, to induce others to examine carefully this very interesting church; it is valuable as being a little in advance of the most perfect period of the French pointed style, and as being much more instructive, therefore, than a building which, like the cathedral at Rheims, is in the main a little after the most perfect period, and full, therefore, of symptoms of decline, instead of promise of advance.

From Notre Dame to the cathedral it is a descent from the finest early first-pointed to commonplace middle-pointed, full of German character in its detail. The west front and the whole of the apse have been much modernized, and the finest remaining portion of the exterior is the north transept front. The windows are geometrical middle-pointed of four lights, and the flying buttresses on a large scale, double, and surmounted by pinnacles. There is some good stained glass of late date in some of the aisle windows.

Another church, dedicated, I think, to S. Alpin, has a nave and aisles of six bays groined, without a triforium, and of the same date as Notre Dame. There are transepts and a central tower, and a choir in flamboyant style, and of a most unusual plan; the two arches east of the tower diverge from each other, so that the width of the choir gradually increases up to the point at which it is finished with an apse of three sides. An aisle surrounds the whole, the windows of which retain some very rich stained glass. This choir is the most remarkable example that I have met with of a very late revival of, perhaps, the earliest type of chevet. There are a great many altars in this church, pews throughout with doors, and no sign whatever of any improvement. In Notre Dame, where pews had disappeared and everything was being restored, all the side altars had disappeared, and there was only one altar left besides the principal altar in the choir.

And here I might well conclude these notes of French architecture. From Châlons I went to Toul, and thence by Metz to Trèves, and I found, as might be expected, nothing but German work. At Toul there are two churches, the cathedral and S. Gengoult, both of some interest, and with good cloisters; but it is very remarkable how we find here, not only German detail, but the favourite German ground-plans also; S. Gengoult is a cruciform church, with an apsidal chancel, and a small apsidal chapel on each side opening into the transepts; whilst the cathedral has an apsidal choir without aisles, and a square-ended chapel on each side opening from the transepts. The window tracery in S. Gengoult is perhaps the ugliest ever devised even by German ingenuity, and yet of early geometrical character (_circa_ A.D. 1300), and still retaining much very beautiful glass of the same date. The nave of the cathedral has been recently seated with very smart fixed open seats, of the kind which might have been erected fifteen or twenty years ago in England.

Of Metz I can say but little more than of Toul. The cathedral is undoubtedly magnificent in its scale and general proportions; but its detail throughout is miserably thin and meagre, and the church appears to me to be utterly undeserving of the praise I have heard bestowed on it by some English authorities. Of course, however, the degree of admiration felt for such a building depends very much upon the standard of perfection which each man sets up for himself. If he comes to Metz strongly possessed with a sense of the noble character of German Gothic, of course he will admire this extremely German edifice; if, however, he have the slightest feeling for early French art, I imagine that he will turn away with disappointment and sorrow from this church, so vast, and yet, as compared with fine French churches, so tame, poor, and weak.

The best of the other churches in Metz is that of S. Vincent, a work of better style than the cathedral, and with a well-planned German east end, showing undoubtedly marks of the same hand as (or at least of imitation of) the famous Liebfraukirche at Trèves.

From Metz I made my way by Sierck (whose small church has a groined roof forty feet in clear width) to Saarburg; here the church is noticeable for a tower oblong in plan, and roofed with _two_ thin octagonal spires which unite together at the base; and from Saarburg I went to Trèves.

Trèves well deserves a long notice. Its churches are full of interest, the cathedral for students of early art, and the Liebfraukirche, as being (I think) the most beautifully planned thirteenth century church in Germany. The close juxtaposition of these two churches is singularly effective in all points of view. Then there are the very fine Roman remains, and finally a really enormous number of houses of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, all in very fair preservation. From Trèves, by the interesting abbey of Laach, I reached Cologne, and at once made my way to the cathedral, anxious to see whether the opinions which have grown on me more strongly the more often I have visited it would remain unshaken now that so great progress has been made in the new work. It is impossible to overrate the excellence of all the new constructions; nor are they obviously open to any hostile criticism in regard to their conformity with the general character of the old work; but it is at the same time useless to conceal the fact, that the work is of a poor kind, and that it certainly does not improve as one sees more of it. The only comfort is that the interior will be much finer than the exterior, and that it is worth while therefore, to put up with some shortcomings in the latter in order to obtain what will, no doubt, be the sumptuous effect of space, height, and (I hope) colour, which the former promises to afford. It is much more difficult to spoil the interior than the exterior; it must of necessity be simple and uniform, and it admits of less attempt at enrichment with such crockets and pinnacles as cover the exterior. The south transept front, which is the most conspicuous portion of the new work finished, is, I think, thoroughly unsatisfactory. The crocketed gable over the great window, repeated again just above up the roof gable, is perhaps the most unhappy repetition of a leading line that could have been hit upon. If a gable was necessary over the window, it should have been different in its pitch from the other; and then again, however much the old architect indulged in reedy mouldings and endless groups of crockets, it does seem to be a sad thing that a nineteenth century artist should feel bound to emulate his enthusiasm for such worthless things. I grant at once, that he has done no more than follow precedents. In the old west front of the cathedral, there is scarcely a moulding three inches in diameter, whilst the central doorway between the steeples is very small, and made up of a repetition _usque ad nauseam_ of orders of reedy mouldings and small flowers, and admits not for one instant of comparison with any good examples of French doorways; and, it is indeed very striking how, as one comes fresh from French churches, all this work looks thin, petty, and wanting in expression.

In the sculpture of foliage in the new works, the system seems to be to take sprigs of two or three leaves and fasten them against a circular bell, with no evidence of any kind of natural growth, and no proper architectural function to perform. They seem to require a piece of string or a strap round them to attach them to the bell. The copying of the foliage is perfectly naturalesque, even to the marking of the fibres on leaves which are to be elevated to a great height in the building. I have heard all this sculpture so often referred to in terms of the highest praise, that unpleasant as it is to criticize work executed at the present day, I feel that I am bound to express my dissent from those who so speak of it. The whole work is so famous that all the world is interested in it. English tourists, year after year, going in great numbers on their travels, admire thoughtlessly everything that they see, and architects even seem to me to follow in their wake, forgetting that our true function is not simply to admire the work, because it is a vast and noble enterprise, but to weigh and compare it with the most perfect work we can find, and to endeavour, if the faults we see in it are great, to point them out by way of warning for ourselves and others. Indiscriminate admiration of such a building does enormous mischief, just as a wild enthusiasm for the fourteenth century work which we see throughout Germany would be fatal to the eye and taste of the enthusiast.

Undoubtedly the architect of Cologne has had an office of enormous difficulty. The national enthusiasm, which has raised the funds hitherto expended, must have needed very cautious treatment. It would probably indeed be indispensable that the steeples, if ever completed, should be built exactly on the old plan so curiously preserved and discovered, but the elevation of the transepts, on which so very much of the external effect of the whole church depended, was just one of those points on which the architect might have ventured (one would have thought) to step out of the old path a little, and--just as the old architect when he wanted a perfect ground-plan went to Amiens for his example--he might at this day have gone to Chartres or Amiens, Rouen or Paris, and grafted something of their grace and grandeur on the otherwise merely German conception of façade which he has given us. That this might have been done without detriment to the old portions of the building is I am sure unquestionable; and that if well done it must have resulted in great gain and increased beauty is equally certain. If (as we all, with insignificant exceptions, admit) it is well for us to study early French art as well as English, surely some attention to it must be even more necessary in Germany, whose national art was inferior, in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, not only to that of France, but almost as much to that of England.

SOME CHURCHES OF LE PUY EN VELAY AND AUVERGNE

(From the _Transactions_ of the R. I. B. A. 1889)

In the course of last autumn,[28] after having spent three weeks in climbing Swiss mountains, I was able to devote a few days, on my way home, to a district which, as far as I had been able to gather from books, appeared to contain a mine of interest for the architect, not less than for the geologist and the lover of natural scenery. From Lyon I went by Monistrol to Le Puy, which was the grand object of my tour; thence by Brioude into Auvergne, and through Issoire, Clermont-Ferrand and Nevers, to Bourges and Paris. I was so much struck by what I saw, that, though I am well aware that my visit was too hurried to be at all exhaustive, I think I cannot do better than give you the results of my journey, in the trust that what was full of interest, novelty, and instruction for myself, may be of some use also to others who have not been able to make this journey for themselves. The complete-Gothic architecture of Velay and Auvergne is not, it is true, to be compared to the best work in the north of France. I am not, however, going to tell you about it, but about an earlier style, which, as I hope to show, has special value as illustrating, among other things, the way in which French Gothic was developed from Romanesque and Byzantine buildings; and our attention will, therefore, be almost entirely devoted to buildings which are either Romanesque or Romano-Byzantine in their character, or belonging to the period of transition from those styles to first-pointed. The complete-Gothic buildings are comparatively few, and have no special value; and I shall, probably, not have time now to refer to them even in the most cursory manner.

I will begin with Le Puy, the ancient capital of Velay. The city is crowded up the side of a volcanic rock, one end of which is crowned by the picturesque mass of its Eastern-looking cathedral. It consists of a network of narrow streets not passable by carriages, and reminds one forcibly of some such city as Genoa. Above the rock on which the cathedral is perched rises another, called the _Corneille_, on which are some old fortifications, and which has just been crowned by a monstrous image of the Blessed Virgin, made of the metal of guns taken at Sebastopol, to whose charge I may fairly lay much of the imperfection of my account of the buildings beneath her feet; for I had the ill-luck to arrive at Le Puy only three days before the inauguration of this statue, and I found the whole city so entirely occupied with the preparations for the fête, that it was with the greatest difficulty that I examined the cathedral at all, and into some portions of it I was quite unable to penetrate; whilst the only condition on which I could obtain rooms at an inn was that I should not stop for more than two days, and should make room for some bishop, prince, or cardinal (of whom there were a legion on the road), before the great fête-day. I had to work very hard, therefore, to do as much as I did, and I make no doubt that a more leisurely and uninterrupted examination would have enabled me to discover and do much more. Separated from the great volcanic rock I have already mentioned by one or two furlongs only, is the smaller, but even more striking rock, called the _Aiguille de S. Michel_, and crowned with a little chapel dedicated to that Archangel. It rises, in the most abrupt and precipitous manner, to a height of about 265 feet. The distant background includes a series of truncated conical hills, evidently ancient volcanoes, and from almost every point of view a landscape of the most picturesque and extensive description is seen. Rarely have I enjoyed a more charming ride than that which, for the last twenty miles into Le Puy on the road from S. Étienne, made me generally acquainted with the remarkable physical formation of this mountain district; beautiful throughout, it was at its best just when, some twelve or fifteen miles before I reached the city, I first saw the “angelic” church, as it is styled, standing up boldly on its rock, the centre of an almost matchless landscape.

The story of its claim to this style of “angelic” is this. Bishop Evodius, at the end of the sixth century, on being made first bishop of Le Puy, wished to construct a church; the Virgin, who had before shown to S. George the place where she wished one to be built, appeared to a sick woman on the Mount surrounded by a crowd of angels, and desired her to tell Evodius to proceed at once with his work. After much prayer he went to Rome, and the Pope sent back with him an architect and senator named Scutarius, under whose auspices the church was soon built, and whose tombstone is still to be seen near the transept door. Evodius and Scutarius then started for Rome again, but on the way met two old men, who gave them two boxes of relics, and desired them to return to Le Puy, saying that as soon as they arrived with the relics before the church the doors would open, the bells would ring of themselves, the whole interior would be bright with torches and candles, and they should hear divine melodies, and smell the sweet perfume of the heavenly oil which had served for the consecration of the church by the angels. Everything happened just as had been foretold, and Evodius felt it unnecessary again to consecrate his church, which from that time to the present day has been called the “angelic” church. No doubt you all know how curious a parallel to this legend the history of our own Abbey of S. Peter at Westminster affords.[29] But in searching for information about the churches of Auvergne, I came upon a continuation of the Le Puy legend, to which the Westminster story affords no such parallel. This second legend tells how, when the seraphic basilica of Le Puy had been thus dedicated, S. Anne descended from heaven to visit the palace of her daughter. Not content with this human work, she seized the hammer of the master-mason, and, taking wing, descended on the summit of a hill, and, turning towards Auvergne, which to her mind offered no church worthy of the Queen of Heaven, she threw the hammer, saying as she threw it, “On the place where the hammer falls a church shall rise.” The hammer fell on the right bank of the Allier, and immediately there rose from the soil like a flower the church of Les Chases, which was dedicated forthwith to S. Mary.[30]

Let us now leave legends, and direct our attention to the ground-plan of the cathedral. Its architects have ingeniously contrived to cover the whole of the summit of the rock on which it stands. It consists of a nave with aisles, transepts, a choir, and choir-aisles, and a steeple at the east end of the north choir-aisle. To the south of the cathedral is the modern bishop’s palace, whilst to the north are the cloisters, two grand halls, some ruins, and to the north-east a chapel dedicated to S. John and other buildings. There are entrances in the east walls of each of the transepts, but these were rather intended, I suppose, for the exit than for the entrance of the people, and the mode in which they were admitted forms one of the most striking features of the whole scheme. I said that the church was built on a rock, and its western face, forming one of the principal streets of the city, is so steep as to consist alternately of steps and inclines, until, at a short distance in advance of the west front, it is changed to an almost interminable flight of steps. The grand west entrance is an open porch, like an enormous crypt, beneath the three western bays of the nave and its aisles, whose walls and piers it reproduces in its plan. The steps[31] formerly rose in a straight line, until they came up in the very centre of the church, in the fifth bay of the nave, and in front of the roof-loft, and of the miracle-working image of the Blessed Virgin, which, brought from the East and given to the church by S. Louis, was, until its destruction in A.D. 1789, the greatest attraction for pilgrims in France.[32] This singular entrance, and the mode of exit by the eastern doors of the transepts, gave rise to an old saying, “In Notre Dame du Puy one entered by the navel and went out by the ears.” Unfortunately, however, the central entrance has been diverted, and after ascending a hundred and two steps, and arriving at the Golden Gate, as it was called, the passage branches right and left--on the left ascending into the cloister, and on the right winding round the south side of the church, until the hundred and thirty-fifth step lands the weary pilgrim in the south aisle, near the transept.[33] This, then, is the general scheme of this most singular church. Let me now go on to describe it in detail, beginning with the oldest portion. This comprises the choir, the transepts, and crossing, and the two easternmost bays of the nave. The choir is completely modernized, and I am unable to say whether any portion of the internal arrangement is old. It presents the peculiarity of a square exterior and a circular interior. This is a not uncommon arrangement in the earliest Italian examples of the apse, and is seen at St. Mark’s, Venice, and elsewhere. The arches opening into the choir-aisles are old, and I believe that we may venture to say that the original plan must have been very nearly the same as that of the church of S. Martin d’Ainay, at Lyon, in which the choir-aisles are shorter than the choir, and all are terminated with apses.[34] I shall have other occasion to point out that at a later date the architects of Ainay and of Le Puy must have been the same. The date of the foundation of Ainay is some time in the ninth century, and it was carried on until the end of the eleventh; but the apse and capitals of the columns of the crossing--for the columns themselves are Roman--cannot, I think, be later than about A.D. 940 to A.D. 1000, which latter would, I think, be the date generally accepted for this portion of the work at Le Puy. To proceed with my notice. The crossing is surmounted by a quasi-dome, carried up as an octagonal lantern, much of which has been modernised in restorations, whilst much is quite new; though the universality of the raised central lantern in the churches of the district makes it probable that it is, to some extent, a proper restoration.[35] The transepts are covered with barrel-vaults, strengthened by transverse ribs of a square section below them; the small apses in their end walls have semi-domes, and the tribunes which cross them are groined with quadripartite vaults without ribs. The whole of the nave is covered in the same way as the crossing, each bay being divided from the next by bold transverse arches, and having a quasi-dome, supported by arches across the angles of each compartment, and all of them, in truth, being not domes, but eight-sided pointed vaults, springing from the octagonal bases thus contrived. There are no pendentives, properly so called, and the construction is, I should say, that of men who desired to erect domes, but had no knowledge whatever of the way in which they were constructed in the East; or--to take a more favorable and, perhaps, juster view--of men who, desiring to give a small building the greatest possible effect of space, to roof it with stone (not knowing anything yet about flying buttresses), and to light it from a clerestory, actually solved all these points in a successful way. Where this kind of roof was first attempted I am quite unable to say. Certainly the central lantern at Ainay is so identical in character with some of those at Le Puy, that the same workmen must have executed both; but there seems to be no other example in the same district as Ainay, whereas at Le Puy, and in Velay and Auvergne, everything is more or less roofed on the same principle. The second portion of the cathedral at Le Puy consists of the third and fourth bays of the nave, and the third portion of the fifth and sixth bays.[36]

The latest portion is of early pointed character, and not later in date than _circa_ A.D. 1180 to 1200, and it was at the same time that this was erected that the greater part of the enormous substructure forming the porch was also completed. The aisles throughout the church are vaulted with quadripartite vaults, the three western bays alone having ribs. In the two western bays there are engaged shafts both in the porch and above it in the nave, but the rest of the piers are of the simplest plan, large and generally cruciform in their section, save at the crossing, where the arches are carried on coupled detached shafts. There is much elaborate sculpture introduced in the capitals of the pilasters and columns of the nave, but it is nowhere of any very high merit, and is so inferior in delicacy and beauty to the sculpture of the same age to be seen on the banks of the Rhone, that I should attribute it to a native school of sculptors acquainted, probably, with none but inferior Roman sculpture, from which they endeavoured to develope a style for themselves. A clerestory of wide and rude round-headed windows, one in each compartment, lights the series of domes in a very effective manner.

The arches across the nave are very bold, and, in the wall above them, an opening is pierced under each of the cupolas. As is generally the case, however, in churches covered in this way, very little is seen of the real vault in any general view of the church, these transverse arches only, with the quasi-pendentives above them being seen. The pendentives are true semi-domes, constructed in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and the difference between their plan and the square angle in which they are placed is skilfully concealed by detached shafts, with capitals placed under the pendentives.

I think you will agree with me that considering its early date (no part probably later than _circa_ A.D. 1150 or 1180), it would be difficult to find a grander or more nervous scheme, or one which, with such small dimensions, conveys nevertheless so great an impression of size and importance. The choir-aisles were altered at various times. That on the south has been rebuilt in second-pointed of poor character, and is now a mere passage-way to the modern sacristy, and that on the north was probably interfered with not very long after its first construction, when the great steeple which now abuts upon it was commenced. M. Mérimée,[37] in his very interesting description of the church, suggests that the base of the tower was originally a baptistery, but I see no reason whatever for this suggestion and it is impossible to doubt, when we carefully examine the whole design, that though the steeple was long in building, the main feature in its design was from the first just what we now see it to be. Moreover, the chapel of S. Jean close by is said to have been the baptistery for the whole city until within the last sixty years. The design of the steeple is very bizarre and unusual. It consists of a long series of no less than nine stages on the exterior, and it diminishes rapidly in diameter, and is, perhaps, on the whole, more curious than pleasing in its outlines. If you look at the ground-plan you will see that its construction is most remarkable. The internal diameter of the tower at the base is twenty-four feet six inches, but this is reduced to only twelve feet by four detached piers, one foot ten and one-half inches square. These piers are carried up from the base to the very summit, detached in the three lower stages, and forming part of the thickness of the wall in the portion above. The highest stage of the steeple, twelve feet in internal and sixteen feet in external diameter, is therefore, as nearly as possible, carried up on these four piers, and the rapid decrease in the external dimensions, from thirty-six feet to sixteen feet, was only rendered possible by this very ingenious mode of construction. So far as I know there is only one other example of the same scheme, viz. in the steeple of the cathedral of S. Étienne at Limoges. Here, however, the base is the only portion remaining of the original work, and the columns are cylindrical in place of being square, but it is evident that the intention was the same as at Le Puy. The steeple at Limoges is probably the first in point of date. M. Viollet-le-Duc dates it at about A.D. 1050, but the Abbé Arbellot, in a learned paper on the cathedral, in the _Bulletin_ of the _Société Archéologique et Historique du Limousin_, maintains that it was certainly built before A.D. 1012, when the Bishop Arnaud de Périgeux, after assisting at the consecration of Bishop Gerald at Poitiers, accompanied him to Limoges, and put the cords of the bells into his hands. The lower part of the steeple at Le Puy may, I think, safely be referred to the end of the eleventh century, and its completion to the end of the twelfth, whilst the planning appears to me to be thoroughly characteristic of a Byzantine artist, the construction of the piers in the lowest stage being almost identical with that of the main piers under the domes of S. Mark’s, Venice, and S. Front, Périgueux.

The arrangement of the belfry stage, with its gable on each face, is very noteworthy, and is, perhaps, one of the earliest examples of a type which was developed afterwards into the well-known arrangement of the belfry of the south-west tower at Chartres, and this, with the influence of the churches of the Rhine,[38] developed in almost all subsequent modifications of the spire with its gabled spire-lights; one of the windows under this pediment is planned in a most ingenious manner, presenting externally a semi-dome pierced by two pointed arches; another window is pierced with a trefoil head, the diameter of which is much larger than that of the light it surmounts. This is a favorite form of cusping throughout this district. I have seen it in Lyon, at Vienne, often at Le Puy, at Brioude, at Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, and in the south porch at Bourges; and there can, I think, be little doubt that it is somewhat Eastern in its origin, and analogous to the horseshoe form of arch.

The cloister on the north side of the church appears to be in part coeval with the earliest,[39] or, perhaps, the second portion of the fabric, and in part with the later additions to it. It consists of a simple arcade of round arches on rather solid piers, with a detached shaft on each face. The capitals are all richly sculptured, some with figures, some with foliage. The spandrels of the arches are filled in with a reticulation of coloured stones; above the arches runs a band of similar ornament, and above this again a carved cornice, which in the later part of the cloister forms a sort of frieze. In this portion the arches have sculptured key-stones, a peculiarity which I hardly remember to have met with before in work of the same date. On the south side there are two fluted shafts and one spiral; all the rest are circular, but noticeable for their very considerable entasis. The groining is all quadripartite without ribs, and executed with rough stones, set in concrete, on a centring of boards. The cloister was surrounded on all sides with buildings. On the south is the cathedral; on the east, and opening to the cloister by an arcade of open arches, is a large hall covered with a pointed barrel-vault. This was originally called the choir of S. André, and in it masses in commemoration of the dead were said, and services held on the feasts of the Invention and Exaltation of the Cross, and on the feasts of S. Andrew and S. Eustachius. It was also called “cæmeterium,” being used for the burial of the clergy, and is now called the chapel _des Morts_. On the wall are still to be seen remains of a painting of the Crucifixion, with many prophets and angels, S. Mary and S. John, the sun and moon, etc. In the northern gable of this building is a fine cylindrical chimney, built in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and rising from a fireplace in a chamber over the hall, and of the same date as the hall. M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a drawing of the fireplace, which is of a not uncommon early type, the head projecting considerably on a semicircular plan. At the north end of the _Salle des Morts_ is a passage leading to the cloister, and along the whole northern boundary once stood a vast range of building called the Maîtrise.[40] Nothing now remains of this save its undercroft, which was spanned by bold pointed arches of stone, on which the wooden floor rested. The Maîtrise was pulled down a few years since, and, not long before, a tower close by it, called the tower of S. Mayol, was also destroyed. It is described as an erection of the eleventh century, battlemented, but without machicoulis.[41] It seems to have served as part of the fortification of the church, which was also attended to in an alteration of the building on the west side of the cloister, in the fourteenth century. This building contained, below, a hall on a level with the church, which was the chapel of the Holy Relics; above was the _Salle des États_ of Velay, with a stone barrel-roof, now both thrown into one room. Above these again was an open space under the roof, protected on the side towards the town by a magnificent overhanging battlement and machicolation of the fourteenth century, and quite open on the side towards the cloister save for the stone piers supporting the roof. The machicoulis are some of the finest I have ever seen, and project from the buttresses as well as from the walls. The only access to this stage of the building seems to have been from the roof of the cathedral. Le Puy was, in the first instance, selected as a site for the cathedral because it afforded so secure a refuge from attack, and in later days it seems to have been not less necessary to provide against danger: for among other enemies the Lords of Polignac, whose magnificent castle is visible from the steeple of the cathedral, only some four miles distant, were the most conspicuous as they were also the most powerful. M. Viollet-le-Duc supposes, indeed, that the tower of the cathedral was meant in part for defence; but I see no evidence of this, and possibly he had in his mind the destroyed tower of S. Mayol, which, as well as the double wall of enceinte which formerly surrounded the whole cathedral, was no doubt a purely military construction. Fortified churches are by no means uncommon in this part of France. At Brioude is a painting showing the church entirely surrounded by a crenellated and turreted wall in A.D. 1636; and Royat, near Clermont, and the abbey church of Menat, also in Auvergne, still retains provisions for defence. The _Salle des États_ contained formerly the archives of Velay, and in removing them a few years since (about A.D. 1850) portions of a hanging of blue wool, “semée” with fleurs-de-lys, and adorned with the armorial bearings of Jean de Bourbon, Bishop of Le Puy from A.D. 1443 to 1485, were found.[42] At the same time a curious painting on the east wall of the lower chamber was discovered under the whitewash. It represents four liberal sciences--Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Music--as females seated with ancient worthies at their feet. Priscian sits below Grammar, writing; and two boys, with open books, are on her other side. Logic holds a lizard in one hand and a scorpion in the other, and Aristotle is arguing below. The inscription underneath is--“Me sine doctores frustrâ coluere sorores,” and each figure has a corresponding leonine verse inscribed below. Rhetoric holds a file in her left hand, and Cicero sits at her feet. Music plays an organ, whilst Tubal, with two hammers, plays upon an anvil. There used--according to the “_Chronique des Médicis_”--to be a second painting here with figures of young demoiselles gorgeously clothed, and from the same chronicle it appears that Messire Pierre Odin, official of the Bishop Jean de Bourbon, who died in 1502, presented both:--“Il estait si grant orateur que, par son mellifère et suaviloquent langage, fust commis plusieurs fois estre ambassadeur devers le Pape à la requette du très-excellent et redouté Prince Louis XI. roy de France, lequel dudict Pape obtint grande louange et avoir, ce que il employa en divers façons et moyens en aulmosnes et à la décoration de cette saincte église du Puy.” The picture has considerable merit; its detail is a mixture of Renaissance and Gothic, and the Gothic portion--as for instance, the chair on which one of the figures sits--is not Italian, and I should be inclined to suppose that it was the work, therefore, of a French artist. Its date must be between 1475 and 1502. Louis XI. came to Le Puy on a pilgrimage in 1475.

The external side elevation of the church is best seen from the cloister, and, with a few words upon this, I will leave this portion of the building. Here, even more clearly than inside, the division of the building into work of different epochs is seen. The two bays nearest the crossing have large coupled windows in the aisle, with parti-coloured voussoirs and jamb shafts. The clerestory is very peculiar in its treatment, and undoubtedly very effective; the windows are of one light in each bay and round-headed and on each side of them above the springing there is a recess in the wall, in the centre of which a detached shaft is placed to carry the cornice. A similar recess and a smaller shaft occur immediately over the arch of the window, and the window-arch being built of alternately dark and light stone, and all the sunk panels being filled in with geometrical patterns, composed in the same way, an extremely rich effect is obtained. Recesses of the same kind in the upper part of the walls occur all along the eastern face of the transept at Le Puy; and between the clerestory windows of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont; S. Paul, Issoire; and commonly in Auvergne. But so far as I can judge from the portion of the cathedral in which they occur, and from the early and simple character of the work itself, I am inclined to believe that it is earlier here than in any of the other examples. It would be of great interest to have some more positive evidence on this and other similar questions of date. But, so far as I have been able to discover, there is no such evidence, and we are left in doubt, therefore, whether this portion of the architecture of Velay came from Auvergne, or whether the reverse was the case; as also whether this external decoration of the fabric is coeval with its first erection, or is a subsequent addition.

The two central compartments of the nave have circular windows (sixteen feet in diameter) to light the aisle, and round-headed windows in the clerestory; and between the arches of the latter windows are small arched recesses. In the two western bays the clerestory is similar, save that the intermediate recessed arch is omitted. In both the voussoirs are counter-charged, and the wall from the springing up to the eaves is coursed with stone and lava. The transept gables are only noticeable for the courses of inlaid patterns with which they are enriched. All these patterns are formed with white stone and lava. The latter, indeed, forms the whole ground of the walls, and varies in colour from a greenish grey to black; and the patterns are formed with the darkest lava and stone. The cloister is similarly inlaid above the arches, but it has almost all been restored in a most injudicious manner. They have _struck_ and _ruled_ (I believe that is the technical phrase for this most abominable of inventions, is it not?) an enormous red mortar joint between all the stones,[43] and wherever this has been done the diaper appears to be formed with a chequer of black and red; wherever the cloister has not been retouched the diaper is black and white.

I have left, almost until the last, that which is after all the crowning wonder of this singular church--the western porch. I have already referred to its position and plan. The majesty, I may say the awfulness, of this entrance, can hardly be exaggerated. It owes little to delicate detail or enrichment of any kind, for, though these have been, they are no longer; but it is the gloom and darkness, the simple, nervous forms of arch and pier, the long flight of steps lost in obscurity and crowded constantly (when I saw them) with a throng of worshippers, which constitute the strange charm of this strangest of entrances. I told you that in the nave the two western bays of the aisle alone had groining ribs; in the porch below it is only in the western bay that they are used, and this affords interesting evidence of the very gradual yet regular development of our art.

The spaces below the aisles in the third bay from the west form chapels--that on the right dedicated to S. Martin, and that on the left to S. Gilles. Before the last extension of the building these chapels were at the extreme west end. They have western doorways, which still retain the wooden doors. Each of these doors was of four divisions in height, covered with subjects carved in low relief. They are executed either in cedar or oak (I am uncertain which, for they are covered with paint), and the subjects, inscriptions, and borders are all obtained simply by sinking the ground three-sixteenths of an inch. The figures are, of course, only in outline, but it is still evident that they were carefully painted with draperies, etc., so as to be thoroughly distinct. There is some appearance of the ground having been painted with broad horizontal bands of colour, but the traces are so indistinct that it is difficult to speak positively.[44] The doors are hung folding, and those to the chapel of S. Gilles contain subjects from the early life of our Lord, whilst those in the chapel of S. Martin contain subjects from His Passion. The meeting-rail in the former fortunately contains an inscription of extreme value: “Gaulfredus: me: fct: Petrus: epi”; after which some letters are lost. If my reading of the last letter but one as “p” is correct, I think it leads to a most important inference. No one who looks at the design of these gates can doubt that they are thoroughly Eastern in their character; and, upon searching for the lists of bishops of Le Puy since my return, I was delighted to find that the first bishop of the name of Peter[45] was consecrated at Ravenna by Leo IX. in A.D. 1043, and died at Genoa A.D. 1053, as he returned from the Holy Land. Gates of the same description are said to exist in the churches of Chamaillères and of Lavoulte-Chilhac in the same district, whilst other evidence of intercourse with the East is afforded by fragments of _tissus_ preserved at Monestier, at Pébrac, and at Lavoulte-Chilhac. These _tissus_ are all extremely Eastern in their character, and very similar to the famous cope at Chinon described by M. de Caumont in the _Abécédaire_, and to the Le Mans _tissu_ described by M. Hucher in the _Bulletin Monumental_ (1846, p. 24). The date ordinarily attributed to them is the middle of the eleventh century, which exactly tallies with the return of Bishop Peter from the Holy Land. I dwell on this the more because, if the inference I have drawn from the inscription be true, it gives the date also to the second portion of the construction of the cathedral, to which the chapels in the porch undoubtedly belong; and the result would be that whilst I should date the earliest portion of the church at about the end of the tenth century, or quite the commencement of the eleventh, the second portion would be dated at about A.D. 1050; and, finally, there is little doubt as to the whole having been completed in the course of the twelfth century.[46] These dates are, as in all such cases, of course only approximate; and it is pretty clear that there was seldom any long pause in the works, and the development in their architectural features is therefore very gradual.

The external elevation in the west front is similar in style to the clerestory on the north side, and mainly executed in alternate courses of lava and stone. The aisle-roofs are masked by walls with pediments. Throughout this part of the work you will observe that its early date is proved by the fact that the round arch is almost invariably used for ornament, and the pointed arch only where great strength was required. A great buttress, which had been built against this vast front, was removed during the recent restorations.