Chapter VIII: Appendix: 253 (8)

I observed before that there are doorways on the east side of both transepts--the “ears” referred to in an old saying. The south transept door is in itself remarkable for the peculiar form of the cusping of its arch, and still more for the magnificent porch built over it. The date of this is the latter part of the twelfth century. It is open on the south and east sides, and abuts on the church on the west and north, occupying the re-entering angle between the transept and choir aisle. The arch is remarkable for a rib detached below the arch, and connected at intervals with it by columns, so as to have the appearance of being suspended. My impression is that the architect feared that his arch had not sufficient abutment, and hoped by bringing some of the weight on to the lower rims of the arch to remedy this defect. The whole detail of this porch is a very rich kind of pointed, full of half-Romanesque and half-Byzantine detail. The groining, in alternate coloured courses, is quadripartite, but has the very rare feature (in France) of ridge ribs. Above the porch is a room or chapel, to which I omitted to gain access. Over the door of the other (north) transept a great arch, thrown from the cathedral to the chapel of S. Jean, carries another chapel, lighted with a first-pointed triplet. This door is square-headed, and covered with rich though rude ironwork. The door-handles have a resemblance to one in the cathedral at Trèves made by Jean and Nicholas of Bingen, which struck me, and was remarked on also, I find, by M. Mérimée. The lintel of the door is deeper at the centre than at the sides of the door, pediment-like, and has figures of our Lord and the Twelve Apostles carved on it, whilst above, under a circular arch, is another figure of our Lord, with an angel on either side. The whole has been very much mutilated and all the figures are hacked to pieces. The ground was painted, and no doubt the figures were also, and the woodwork of the door was covered with linen or leather under ironwork.

The very ancient chapel of S. Jean is close to this door, and by its side is a fifteenth century archway. The chapel is arcaded on its south side and pierced with very simple windows. Some antiquaries assert that it is a piece of Roman construction, and it is not impossible, though I should be much more inclined to call it tenth century work. The chapel has a rude quadripartite vault, and its apsidal chancel is roofed with a semi-dome.

I must conclude my long notice of this church by some mention of the extensive remains of painted decorations still visible. During the late restorations of the cathedral, I understand from M. Aymard, the greater portion were destroyed. The vaults of the north transept and the semi-domes of its apsidal recesses are still, however, covered with paintings, though they are scarcely intelligible, owing to darkness and dirt. In one of them occurs a figure of our Lord giving the benediction in the Greek fashion, and it is one of the many evidences which may be adduced of the Eastern influence visible here in so many respects, though I am not disposed to lay so much stress upon it as some of those did who engaged in the controversy it occasioned.[47] In the western porch there are also extensive remains of painting; the soffits of the arches in the third bay from the west are all painted, and so too are the walls over the altars in the chapels of S. Martin and S. Gilles. The painting was executed on a thick coat of plaster, and the nimbi are of gold with lines incised on them. No doubt the whole church once glittered with gold and colour, and, seeing how fine its effect still is, we may, aiding the indications still left with our recollections of Assisi, of Venice, and of Padua, people the bare walls once again, and bring before our eyes an interior of the most gorgeous magnificence.

I may conclude what I have to say about the cathedral with a few words about the sacristy and its contents. The building itself is not more than a hundred and fifty years old, and most of its treasures have been lost. The most precious relic still left is a Bible, which, by a note at its end, is stated to have been written by S. Théodulf, Bishop of Orléans, in the ninth century, and sent by him, in accomplishment of a vow, to the shrine of Notre Dame du Puy. It is a quarto of 347 leaves of very fine vellum, some white with black letters, and others purple or violet with gold or silver letters. It contains the Old and New Testament, commentaries on the text, interpretations of Hebrew, Greek and Latin words, and some poems by Théodulf. The pages are interleaved with excessively delicate tissues of various colours and patterns, which appear to be of the same age as the book, and of Eastern manufacture. They are made of china crêpe, cotton, silk, linen, poil-de-chèvre, and camel’s hair, of extreme fineness, and of various colours and patterns.[48] The binding is, however, later, and of red velvet on chamfered oak boards, with good simple metal knobs. There are also preserved here some wax candles, tapering considerably in their length, and stamped with a pattern made by a pointed instrument; and, finally, there is a tippet embroidered with a tree of Jesse, said to have been of Charlemagne’s time. It is not so old as is said, but may possibly be (though I very much doubt it) of the twelfth or thirteenth century, but it has been much damaged by removal from its original ground and by partial re-working. The sacristy also contains a reliquary of very late sixteenth-century date, of which a photograph has been published by M. Aymard, but which was not shown to me; and an almost endless roll of vellum illuminated with a chronological tree of the history of the world.

How much has been lost may be guessed from some statistics which I have come upon as to the number of silversmiths and specimens of their work in Le Puy in the Middle Ages: in A.D. 1408 there were no less than forty resident in the city, whilst as to their work I find in A.D. 1444 there were in the sacristy 33 _châsses_ and reliquaries, 26 chalices, 11 statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels, and other figures, 10 candelabra, 9 crosses, 9 lamps, 9 mitres, crosses with their stems, episcopal rings, crowns for the Virgin, censers, paxes, basins, plates, books with covers adorned with chasings, pearls and precious stones, and many like things; and in A.D. 1475 I find that Louis XI. gave 30 silver marks for a canopy over the miracle-working figure of Notre Dame du Puy, which was made by François Gimbert, a silversmith of Le Puy. Other churches in the neighbourhood have been more fortunate in retaining some of their old plate, and a fair list might be made out, if I had time, of their possession, many of which have been photographed by M. Aymard.

The building of the greatest interest, after the cathedral, is the little church of S. Michel, which crowns the rock fitly called the Aiguille. It is reached by steps winding irregularly round the rock, to the shape of the summit of which it has been most ingeniously adapted. The oldest portion of the building is the square choir, covered with a dome, under which stands the principal altar. To the (ritual) east and north of this are apsidal projections, and to the south an archway, which as it agrees exactly in dimensions with the others, opened, no doubt, into a third apsidal chapel, like the others, whilst the entrance was at the west. This archway now leads into a chapel of very irregular form, part of which extends over the porch of entrance, in the arrangement of which one may trace a certain kind of analogy to that of the cathedral, though it is perhaps older. West of the choir is a nave, somewhat like a cone in plan, and surrounded by an aisle, from which it is divided by arches supported on slender shafts. The choir has a square domical vault, and the chapel over the porch a true dome, the pendentives under which are just like those of S. Fosca at Torcello. The apsidal chapels have semi-domes and the rest of the church has a waggon-vault of very irregular outline. An arcade against the walls of the side corresponds with that between the aisle and the nave. At the end of the nave is the tower, which was probably built at a slightly later date than the main building. The whole interior appears to have been richly painted, but faint indications only of this portion of the decoration remain. In the central dome there is a sitting figure of our Lord on the east side; emblems of the evangelists are at the angles, and angels and seraphim around our Lord. Below these is a line of single figures, six on each side--the four-and-twenty elders--and below this again are subjects, the whole combining together to make a very interesting example of the treatment of the Last Judgement. The dome of the chapel over the porch is also painted with our Lord, angels, and the evangelists.

The walls generally are built of lava, though a little white stone is used in the steeple and for the sculptured capitals.

The columns are very small, averaging eight inches in diameter, and decrease considerably in diameter from the base to the capital. The dimensions are exceedingly small, the central choir being only thirteen feet six inches in diameter, and the spaces between the principal columns in the nave varying from four feet to four feet nine inches. The effect is rather that of a crypt, but, in spite of its small size, it is solemn and religious.

The steeple suggests comparison, in some respects, with that of the cathedral; the arches are built with alternately light and dark voussoirs, and there is a peculiar spire-light rising out of the parapet, as to the antiquity of which I have my doubts.[49]

The only part in which any rich decoration has been introduced is the front of the porch. It has a semicircular arch, trefoiled above a horizontal lintel. The walls are richly inlaid, and there is also a good deal of sculpture. In the centre division of the trefoiled tympanum is an Agnus Dei, and there are figures kneeling and holding chalices within the cusps on either side. In the five divisions of the arcaded cornice are--in the centre our Lord, on His right S. Mary and S. John, and on His left S. Michael and S. Peter. The mosaic is executed with black tufa, red and white tiles, and a light yellow sandstone. I know no other example in this district of the use of tiles for inlaying, though M. Mallay mentions one at Merdogne in Auvergne, which he says is of the seventh century, though his dates are not always to be implicitly trusted; but at Lyon, in the extremely beautiful Romanesque domestic building called the Manécanterie, and at a slightly later date in the church of Ainay, in the same city, they are freely used and with admirable effect. Odo de Gissey, in his history of Le Puy, published in A.D. 1619, states that the first stone of S. Michel was laid in A.D. 965, and that the church was completed in A.D. 984, when Guy II. was bishop of Le Puy, “as one may learn from the ancient charter of its foundation, and from other manuscripts which I have read.” Brother Théodore, in his _Histoire de l’Église Angélique de Notre Dame du Puy_, A.D. 1693, says that the first stone was laid in August, 962, and that his statements are “derived from the deed for the foundation of the church, and from the book of obits in the cathedral.” These dates, if they refer to the existing building, can only do so to the central portion with its apses; the nave may have been added some time in the eleventh century, and the steeple, perhaps, in the course of the twelfth.

At the foot of the flight of steps which leads up to the picturesque entrance of this little chapel are the remains of a small detached building, probably a residence for a sacristan or priest.

Very near the Aiguille of S. Michel is a curious chapel. It is an octagon, with an apse projecting from the eastern face, the octagon covered with an octagonal domical vault, and the apse with a semi-dome. The walls are arcaded inside and out below the vault, the internal arches springing from engaged shafts in the angles. Some of the arches outside are cusped in the usual way, the cusping not starting from the cap with a quarter-circle, but with a half-circle, the same as all the rest. There are doors in the west and north sides, with tympana filled in with mosaic, and the wall in the spandrels between the arches outside is also inlaid. The exterior of the apse is not visible, but I found, on making my way into the cottage and barn built against it, that it is perfect and undamaged. The popular opinion at Le Puy is that the chapel is an ancient temple of Diana, a fiction which a minute’s examination destroys. M. Didron maintains that it was a mortuary chapel, and he refers to the chapel of S. Croix, at Montmajour, as an example akin to this. M. Mérimée, on the other hand, says that the Templars had property in the Faubourg de l’Aiguille, and compares it to the similar oratory of the Templars at Metz, and he might have added the curious Templars’ church at Laon as another case in point.[50]

This concludes my notice of early buildings in Le Puy, and I have no more than time to catalogue the church of S. Laurent, famous for the monument of the Constable Duguesclin, a large second-pointed building of poor character, and very Italian in its plan and design,[51] and with an enormous sham front; the gabled end of the hospital chapel, with its fifteenth-century bell-turret; a pretty little fountain, and a large number of picturesque houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and a very scanty remnant of a gateway at the bottom of the town, called, I think, the Porte de Panessac, against the proposed destruction of which I find M. Aymard protesting only a few years back in the _Bulletin Monumental_.

About four miles to the north of Le Puy, close to the ruins of the magnificent castle of Polignac, is the Romanesque church of the village. This is parallel triapsidal in plan, and the piers are planned, as are those in the cathedral, in the shape of a cross, with columns in the re-entering angles. The little church at Monistrol is a good example of the Le Puy style applied to a very small building; and the church at Le Monestier, which has many features of similarity to the cathedral at Le Puy, and is rich in early plate, ought not to be forgotten, but I am unable to speak of it from personal inspection.

I will now turn to the churches of Auvergne. Though numerous, they are so much alike in their character, details, and design, that a description of their peculiarities need not be so long as might be supposed. These churches all lie in a group together, Clermont-Ferrand being their geographical centre,[52] and to its north are Riom, Volvic, Menat, Mozat, and Ennezat; to the east Chauriat; to the west Royat and Orcival; and to the south S. Nectaire, S. Saturnin, and Issoire.

Beyond the bounds of the province, at Brioude, at Conques, at Toulouse, and in the church of S. Étienne at Nevers, there are, among many others, examples of precisely the same description of design and construction.[53]

It will be well to describe the general type of these churches, and then give a few notes as to particular examples. In plan they consist of a nave and aisles, western narthex and steeple, central dome and steeple, transepts with apsidal chapels on the east, and apsidal choirs with the aisles continued round them, and four or five apsidal chapels round the aisle. Under the choir is sometimes a crypt, in which, in addition to the columns under the columns of the apse, are four shafts which were intended for the support of the altar, and whose presence certainly seems to suggest that it must have been a baldachin and not merely an altar that they were designed to support.[54]

The naves are roofed with waggon-vaults, either with or without cross ribs below them. The aisles have quadripartite vaults without ribs, and the triforia above them are roofed with a continuous half barrel-vault, which resists the thrust of the vault of the nave, and is, in truth, a continuous flying buttress. The triforia galleries are lighted with small windows, and this, the only light analogous to a clerestory, being entirely inadequate, the effect of the nave roof is generally very gloomy. The transepts are vaulted with barrel-vaults like the nave, and in one or two instances are divided in height by a sort of tribune level with the triforium. At Brioude, where this arrangement is seen, there is an original thirteenth-century open fireplace in the tribune, and M. Mérimée ingeniously suggests that the noble canons of Brioude, for they all had the rank of Count, were in the habit of hearing mass before a good fire; but it is fair to them to say that the fireplace is in the east wall, and that I saw no signs of an altar near it. The crossing under the tower is generally roofed either with an octagonal vault or with a circular dome with an opening in the centre. To resist the thrust of this dome on the north and south sides the upper vaults of the triforia are continued on between the transepts and the crossing, or else vaults of the same section are introduced at a higher level, where the central dome is raised (as it often is) higher than the barrel-roof of the nave. The western steeple, as well as the centre lantern, was sometimes domed; and that at Brioude is a most valuable example of the best type of dome in the district. The choirs are vaulted with waggon-vaults terminating with semi-domes, and the apsidal chapels are also each covered with a semi-dome. The columns are generally square, with half-columns engaged on three, and sometimes on four sides, the latter only when the main vault of the nave has transverse ribs below it. The columns round the apse are circular, and detached shafts against the apse walls carry the groining, and occasionally shafts are introduced inside and outside the window-jambs of the choir. In the nave and triforia, the windows are generally very plain with a label containing a billet-moulding, though the latter have sometimes, as at Notre-Dame-du-Port and Issoire, jamb-shafts. The capitals of the columns are carved with great richness, sometimes with foliage, but often with Scripture subjects. At S. Nectaire, for instance, perhaps the most elaborate of all these churches in this respect (M. Didron is my authority), the capitals round the apse have subjects from the New Testament, four on each capital. Frequently griffins and other animals are carved, and in one case, at Brioude, is a demon holding an open book on which is written the sculptor’s name, which does not seem to be a very complimentary arrangement. It is in the earlier examples that sculpture of subjects and figures is commonly seen, and, as the style developed more towards Gothic, foliage took the place of subjects. The arcades are remarkable for their generally lofty proportions. They are of course not so lofty as pointed arcades, but they have seldom, if ever, the heavy and low proportion commonly found in the arcades of Romanesque buildings. The arches are generally semicircular, and in the apses stilted.

The walls were probably covered with paintings of Scripture subjects. At Brioude there is some of this decoration remaining in a chapel dedicated to S. Michael in the gallery over the narthex. The semi-domes of the apsidal chapels in this church were also richly painted, and in one of them traces of colour exist all over the window-jambs. At Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, in cleaning the nave, after removing seven or eight coats of whitewash, considerable traces were found of gilding on the capitals, and if this portion of the church was thus highly decorated, there can be no doubt that the colouring of the choir was at least equally sumptuous.

A stone seat is in some cases continued all round the walls of the apse and its chapels inside and out, and in one or two cases the iron grilles still remain. The only instance of the old pavement that I saw was at Brioude, where it is composed of black and white stone in chequers; but this is a mere fragment and of poor design.

The entrance to the crypts is by stairs from the transepts or crossing. The staircases to the upper portion of the building are variously placed. At Notre-Dame-du-Port they are in the middle of the north end of the aisles; at Brioude, in the transepts, and also at the west end; and in this church, an enormous wooden stair leads from the south door up to the chapel of S. Michael over the narthex.

On the exterior the designs are as much alike as in the interior. The aisle walls are divided into bays by pilasters, above which arches are turned over the aisle windows, and then above are the windows lighting the triforia, which are generally more richly decorated than those below, and form part of an arcade with carved capitals and moulded bases. The walls are finished by a boldly-projecting cornice supported on large corbels. The transepts are buttressed at the angles, have a heavy engaged column in the centre, from which two arches spring, within which are pierced two windows; above these are other windows, either two or three lights, and the gable is either filled in with mosaic or pierced with more windows. It is on the exterior of the apse that the main effort at display is made, and the more ornate examples of the style, as Notre-Dame-du-Port, Issoire, and Brioude, are singularly rich in their effort. The two former examples are of very nearly the same date (about A.D. 1080 to A.D. 1130); the latter is considerably later (probably _circa_ A.D. 1200). I will describe Notre-Dame-du-Port first. Here the transept-chapels are much lower than those of the chancel, and the latter (four in number) have cornices below the cornice of the aisle, and gable walls are raised on the aisle walls to receive their roofs, which would otherwise run back to the clerestory. There are windows between each of the chapels, and a great part of the beauty of the effect, both internally and externally, is to be attributed to this fact. I am not sure that the whole arrangement is not a modification of the original plan, for on close examination I found that the labels of the large windows between the chapels are returned and mitre with another label against which the chapels are built, and which might very well have formed part of an arcade pierced at intervals with windows. In the neighbourhood, about half-way between Clermont and Issoire, at S. Saturnin, there is a church precisely similar to what this would have been without its chapels, and the eccentric position of the chapels at Notre-Dame-du-Port, there being none opposite the centre,[55] would be just such as would have been rendered necessary if it had been desired to add them after the work had progressed somewhat towards completion. In any case, however, there could not have been any great interval of time between them, and probably the chapels and the clerestory are of exactly the same age. The whole of this apse is full of beautifully inlaid patterns, made with red and black scoriae and white stone. The enrichment is always confined to the walls above the springing of the windows, and does not generally extend quite to the cornice. The spaces between the corbels under the cornice are inlaid and the under side of the cornice is carved with a sunk pattern and in some cases appeared to me to have been coloured. Between the clerestory windows is precisely the same arrangement of shafts supporting a flat lintel under the cornice that I described in the first portion of the clerestory of Le Puy, and here, as there, the recessed wall is all inlaid.

At Issoire the general scheme is precisely similar. Here, however, a square chapel juts out from the centre of the apse, and the question arises whether this is an original arrangement. The suggestion I should throw out here, as at Clermont, would be that this is the only original chapel, and that the others were added, just as those at that place may have been. In both these churches the buttresses are alternately rectangular and circular, and the latter are always finished with carved capitals.

S. Julien, at Brioude, is an example of a later date, but it adheres closely to the same type, save that there are five apsidal chapels; and though the windows are much more elaborate, having jamb-shafts and moulded arches, and being arranged in a regular arcade of triplets in the clerestory, there is much less positive effect of decoration owing to the comparatively small amount of inlaying.

The churches at Brioude and Issoire are both on a much larger scale and generally finer than Notre-Dame-du-Port.

Lastly, I come to the steeples of these churches. Of these there were generally one or two at the west end and one over the crossing. I believe that not one of those over the narthex now remains, though two or three have been recently rebuilt. Those at the crossing were treated in a singular manner. The eastern wall of the transept, carried up much above the height of the walls of the apse, forms an enormous mass for the support of the steeple, and is arched and pierced with windows, or inlaid. The steeples seem generally to have been octagonal, and to have consisted of two stages arcaded and sometimes shafted at the angles, and capped with stone spires sloping at an angle of about sixty degrees. The steeple at Issoire is quite modern, and I believe no authority existed for it. That of Notre-Dame-du-Port is also new, the finish having been a bulbous slated erection, with an open lantern at the top, only a few years ago. Ancient examples, more or less perfect, still exist at S. Saturnin, Ennezat, Orcival, and S. Nectaire, and all of these are octagonal. These churches tally with most other early churches in this feature of central steeples.

I have not yet mentioned the roofs. In those which I was able to examine, they are covered with slabs of stone, supported from the stone roofs without any use of timber whatever. The ridges are also of stone, elaborately carved, and the whole construction seems to be as imperishable in its scheme as anything I know of the kind.

The churches of the Auvergnat type present so little variety, and were built within so short a space of time, that a description of each of them in succession would be wearisome. Of course there are some variations. S. Amable at Riom, for instance, has the main arches pointed, whilst the triforium arcade is round-arched, and the vault of the nave is also pointed instead of round. The vault of the nave of Issoire is another example of a pointed vault. At S. Nectaire the usual piers in the nave have given way to columns. At Brioude, the style reached its perfection, and, indeed, I know few effects more striking in every way than that of the aisles round the choir; the roof, constructed as a regular barrel-vault and without any ribs, seems to be true in principle, and to carry the eye on even more agreeably than our ordinary Gothic vaulting of circular aisles, in which the eye is often distracted by numbers of conflicting lines of ribs. The wall arcades between the chapels recall the peculiar form of trefoil to which I have before had to refer, and it is again met in the triforium of the south side of Notre-Dame-du-Port.

The doorways appear to be of two kinds; one enriched with sculpture, the other with inlaid work. Of the former the south door of Notre-Dame-du-Port is a fine example. The opening is square, covered with a pediment-like lintel, on which are sculptured in low relief the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptism of our Lord. Above the lintel is a round arch, under which is a figure of our Lord, seated, with a seraph on either side. Against the wall, below the lintel on each side of the door, are figures of Isaiah and S. John the Baptist. In the much-altered church at Mozat,[56] near Riom, is a door of a somewhat similar kind, and both are very like the doorway in the north transept of Le Puy. At S. Nectaire is an example of a door with the tympanum filled in with mosaic.

The masonry is usually of wrought stones squared, but not very neatly put together. M. Mallay, the architect of Clermont, who has restored some of them, ascertained the curious fact that the stone-masons who wrought the stone for the arches, and wherever else superior work was required, marked their stones with the usual mason’s mark, whilst those who wrought the stones for plain walling, jambs, and quoins, made no mark; and he found that precisely the same masons’ marks occurred at Issoire and Notre-Dame-du-Port; whilst the details and plan of Orcival, a few miles south-west of Clermont, are again so identical with both of these, as to leave little room for doubt that it was executed by the same workmen; and I found another evidence of the way in which details were repeated, in some fine ironwork in the south door of Brioude, which occurs again at Orcival.

The arches are generally built with small stones of the same size and of even number, so as not to allow of a keystone. M. Mallay says that the mosaic work in the walls of these churches had wide joints of red mortar, projecting from the face of the wall. These mortar joints in the restored work appeared to me to be a bad modern device, and I think that the evidence in their favor ought to be very strong to be convincing.

The proportions of these churches are very similar. At Issoire, the width from centre of aisle wall to centre of nave column is one-fourth of the whole width, equal to the width from centre of nave columns, and to the diameter of the chapels in the apse, and one-half the height of the aisle, and one-fourth that of the nave. The height from floor to ridge is equal to the extreme width at base of walls. At Notre-Dame-du-Port the same kind of proportion exists, but from the outside of the buttress to the outside of the nave pier is one-fourth of the whole width.

I must now, before I conclude, say a few words as to the date of these churches, for which M. Mallay[57] is inclined to claim rather too great an age. He dates most of them (conjecturally) in the tenth century, though he admits that buildings in which the pointed arch is introduced may be as late as the twelfth century; and he considers the date of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, as _circa_ A.D. 863 to 868. He founds this belief on the fact that no lava was used in its construction, and that the mosaics in its walls were formed of scoriae found on the surface of the soil. He considers that lava was not used until the eleventh century, but he must also prove (which he has not done) that stone was never used in Auvergne after the lava had once been admitted. M. Mallay depends no doubt to some extent on the admitted date of the nave of S. Amable, at Riom, where the main arches are pointed, as A.D. 1077. But the presence of the pointed arch proves nothing as to date, for we see it long before this in S. Front, at Périgueux; and in every other respect there is no doubt that S. Amable presents every evidence of being older than Notre-Dame-du-Port, and others of these churches, in which none but round arches occur.

On either side of Auvergne there are other churches, of precisely the same character as to plan and mode of construction, the dates of which are pretty certain. One is S. Étienne, at Nevers, which was commenced in A.D. 1063, and completed and consecrated on the 13th December 1097. The plan of this church is similar in nearly every respect to that of the Auvergne churches. But, so far as one may judge of date from style, I should have no hesitation in saying that this church must be older than either Issoire or Notre-Dame-du-Port. It is ruder in character, there is very little sculpture on the capitals, which are mostly a sort of rude imitation of Doric, and in the transepts there are not only round arches, but also some straight-sided.

At Conques, south of Auvergne, is another church on the same plan as S. Étienne, Nevers, in almost every respect, which there is little doubt was completed in the first half of the eleventh century, by the founder Abbot Odalric. Then again to the west there is the church of Moustier-neuf, Poitiers, commenced in A.D. 1069, and consecrated in A.D. 1096, which has a _chevet_ evidently formed upon the same type as Conques; and at S. Hilaire, in the same city, consecrated in A.D. 1069, whilst the ground-plan of the chevet is just the same as that of Conques, the nave columns are analogous, there, to the half barrel-vaults of the triforium in Auvergne. Now none of these churches is earlier than the beginning of the eleventh century, and yet it is hardly credible that a province shut in as Auvergne was should have received a perfect and complete new style, or invented one and carried it to the degree of finish and perfection at which it had arrived when Notre-Dame-du-Port was erected, without our being able to trace, somewhere, the source from which it was developed. I believe, however, that its origin may be traced if we examine carefully the architecture of the church of S. Front at Périgueux, commenced in A.D. 984 and completed in A.D. 1047. This church, founded on the same type as, if not copied from St. Mark’s, Venice,[58] exercised a vast direct influence on the architecture of the day. It is seen most clearly in churches which are, like itself, cruciform, without aisles, and covered with domes. The churches of Auvergne, and those other examples to which I have referred, seem to me to be clearly derived from S. Front, or from the Eastern models on which it too was founded. The east end of St. Mark’s presents a circular wall, with a succession of semicircular recesses or apses in its thickness. S. Sophia contains the same feature, though differently treated. The Roman circular buildings which have so much in common with early Byzantine architecture have the same feature; and S. Vitale, Ravenna, whether it is Romanesque or Byzantine in its origin, is planned in a similar way. The architect of S. Front evidently copied his apses from these models, only converting the recesses of St. Mark’s into chapels projecting from the walls.[59] The Auvergne architects attempted to combine the plan of the basilica, with its nave and aisles, with the features which were seen at S. Front. They retained its external wall and projecting chapels, therefore, but placed within them the cluster of columns round the apse forming an aisle between the chapels and the choir. By this simple and natural modification of the S. Front plan to meet the necessities of their triple-aisled churches they at once invented, one may almost say, the perfect French chevet. I know no other churches in France of the same age which appear to have suggested so much in this respect; and you will realize it if you compare their plans with, among others, those of Bourges cathedral, S. Pierre at Bourges, S. Martin at Étampes, Chartres cathedral, the destroyed church of S. Martin at Tours, and finally what is, I think, almost the best complete Gothic plan, that of Rouen cathedral. In every one of these we see the surrounding aisle lighted by windows between the chapels, and the chapels are distinct and well-separated on the exterior, precisely as in these older churches in Auvergne. These buildings, therefore, have great value, not only as illustrating a chapter of the history of our art, but because the chapter which they do illustrate is just one of the most interesting I can conceive; being that which explains how and by what steps Gothic architecture, of which, as our national style, we are so justly proud, was developed from the noble architecture of the old Romans and Greeks, an architecture to which we owe, among other things, this great debt of gratitude, that it naturally led up to, and rendered possible, a Westminster, a Chartres, an Amiens, and all the other glories of our Christian architecture.

You will have gathered that there are many similar features in the churches of the two provinces which I have been describing. They are shortly these: vaults and quasi-domes alike, and carried on the same kind of squinches or pendentives; the decoration with mosaics and its detail; the design and treatment of doors, either sculptured or inlaid; the form of trefoil cusping of arches, character of mouldings, sculpture, and decoration with painting, all of these are the same throughout both districts. The only marked difference, and it is important, is in the ground-plan, the cathedral of Le Puy having no chevet, but an east end derived from Romanesque rather than Byzantine precedents; and the other churches in its neighbourhood are generally similar in their plan.

There are two important heads of my subject to be shortly discussed before I conclude. One of them refers to roofing; the other to coloured decoration. First, as to roofing. I have already explained how this was executed; let us now consider why the modes which we see were adopted. At S. Front the experiment was tried of covering a nave and transepts with a succession of domes resting on pendentives, and supported on pointed arches spanning the nave. These domes were the only covering of the church, and were visible on the outside as well as on the inside. At Conques, the architect, unable to carry domes on the comparatively delicate piers which were all that were required for the division of a nave from its aisles, contrived a barrel-vault for his nave, the thrust of which was resisted by the half barrel-vault of the triforium; a device not improbably obtained from Byzantine churches: for if we compare the section of S. Sophia with that of the crossing and central dome of Notre-Dame-du-Port, we shall find the semi-domes affording abutments for the great domes in the former, absolutely identical in their section with the half barrel-vault, which forms the abutment on the north and south sides of the central dome of the latter.[60] But it was impossible to obtain any light for a clerestory roofed and supported in this fashion, and one is rather disposed to wonder how it was that so many churches should have been built on the same gloomy scheme. It was, no doubt, because in that part of France wooden roofs were thought to be undesirable, and no other economical way was seen of combining the nave and aisles with what was intended to be an indestructible stone roof. I need hardly say that at the same period, in the north of France, in Normandy, and in England, the nave was seldom, if ever, roofed with anything but timber, and the aisles only were vaulted in stone.

At Tournus, on the Saône, another device was adopted to serve the same end as the Auvergne roof, but admitting of a clerestory: this was the covering of the nave with a succession of barrel-vaults at right angles to the length of the church, and supported on bold transverse arches. But I doubt whether it was ever repeated on a nave, though there are several examples of aisles thus roofed;[61] and it was, no doubt, ugly and ungainly. The Le Puy architect devised yet another plan, which combined to some extent all the others, and this was, as I have explained, a succession of domical vaults, which, while it was much lighter and more practicable (owing in part to the difference of scale) than the S. Front plan of a series of genuine cupolas, achieved, nevertheless, much of the effect that was there gained. A very small portion only of the weight of the vault exerted a direct lateral thrust, and it was possible, therefore, to erect such a roof upon a clerestory; and though the transverse arches limit the height of the building in one respect, in another there is no question that the height is apparently much increased; for in looking down the interior it is impossible ever to see the apex of any of the domes, and the vault lost behind the transverse arches gains immensely in mystery and infinity, so as to produce the effect of a larger and loftier building than the reality. But, on the other hand, the disadvantages were great: the piers between the nave and its aisles were so large as to render the aisles nearly useless; and I can hardly wonder, therefore, that the example set here was not generally, if, indeed, at all followed.

It is doubtful where the kind of vault used at Le Puy was first devised. The central dome of S. Michel de l’Aiguille is, perhaps, the oldest of all, and this is, in fact, a square dome, if one may use the expression. The octagonal dome-vaults of the cathedral are probably a little later, but that over the crossing of the church of Ainay at Lyon may possibly be older. A comparison will make it evident that one is copied from the other; and if the Le Puy vault was derived from Lyon, it becomes possible to make the important inference that it was an Eastern influence travelling up the Rhone and distinct from that which is seen at Périgueux, to which we owe this kind of domed roof. Further evidence of this is found in the pendentives of the dome at Brioude,[62] which are identical in intention with the plan of the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, at Constantinople, and yet quite unlike the kind of pendentive common in churches of the S. Front type. They are, in fact, the Le Puy and Ainay pendentive reduced to the very simplest conditions. The invention of the flying buttress adumbrated in, and possibly suggested by, the quadrant vaults of Auvergne, finally stopped these various endeavors after new forms of roofs, and set men to work to see how it might most readily be made to serve the boldest and most airy system of design and construction; and in the rage for these, that old system of roofing with domes, which had been, so far as is known,[63] first tried in France at Périgueux, and had afterward spread with such rapidity over a very large district, though with many modifications and variations, was entirely ignored or forgotten. Is it well that we too should ignore it? It is clear that the disciples of the Gothic school may claim it as their own with just as much truth as any other school can; and in some form or other it is often so attractive, so majestic on a large scale, so impressive even on a small scale, that few of us who have much work to do should altogether eschew all use of it, or treat it as though it were the exclusive property of the architects of Classic and Renaissance buildings. I do not feel, however, as most who write on the subject seem to do, that our domes must invariably be supported on what are called true pendentives. I think they are not beautiful, and I do not see that they are especially scientific. The S. Front pendentives are mere corbellings out of the wall, and in truth only imitations of pendentives. At S. Mark’s they are formed with a succession of arches of brick work across the angle of the dome, though this construction is not visible, and these, I suppose, are all wrong; but they are very similar in their intention to the kind of pendentive which I have had to illustrate to-night, and which is in truth much more Gothic and picturesque in its character than the true pendentive, for it admits of any amount of decorative sculpture, and is really precisely similar in its object to the squinches under our own English spires.[64]

I will add but a few words as to the constructional polychromy which distinguishes the exterior of the churches throughout this volcanic district. So far as I have seen, it was never, save in Le Puy cathedral, admitted into the interior,[65] and this is much to be regretted, because it seems that the vaults of their naves, the domes of their crossings, and the semi-domes of their sanctuaries, would have afforded most admirable fields for this kind of decoration. As I have stated, the walls were once covered with painting, and as long as this existed a mosaic of black and white and dull red would have been valueless; but now that the iconoclast, the whitewasher, and the restorer have done their worst, the want of some decoration on the otherwise bald surface of the vaults is painfully felt everywhere. Externally the coloured materials are used in two ways; sometimes the whole of the wall is built of the dark volcanic products, and patterns are obtained by the occasional use of white stone or by alternate courses of this and the darkest scoriae that can be found. Or else the walls generally are built of stone, and the patterns only formed with the dark material. Here, too, as is the case in all old examples of coloured constructions with which I have ever met, the colours follow the natural course of the construction. At Le Puy, for instance, the courses are alternately light and dark, producing bold horizontal bands of colour. The arch stones are continued generally in one line of colour all across an arch, even when it consists of several orders, and from the arch on into the wall. The bands of ornament are similarly arranged in horizontal stripes, generally placed where they will dignify and give value to some very prominent architectural member. They never occur below the line of the springing of an arcade, and are richest under cornices and between their corbels. And when we consider the date at which this inlaid work was executed, and compare it with what we know of our own art at the same period, or, indeed, with that of any other portion of the country which is now France, we cannot too highly extol its delicacy and grace and its carefulness of design and execution. I believe that we may regard the whole of the work in Velay and Auvergne as that of native artists. The detail of sculpture is, when compared with such work as is to be found in Provence, exceedingly rude. It is vigorous, indeed, but wanting in that extreme delicacy and refinement which marks the work of the early Provençal artists.

Were I to attempt to say anything about the buildings of a later date, it would be impossible to do more than give a catalogue, which would be as unintelligible as it would be tedious. I will only say, therefore, on this head, that Clermont cathedral well deserves careful study, and is rich in very fine glass; that at Montferrand may be seen as large a collection of mediaeval houses of all dates as in almost any small town that I know; that Riom possesses a fine S. Chapelle; and that in the abbey of La Chaise-Dieu is still preserved a very rare and complete series of tapestries of the sixteenth century. Besides these, a large number of articles of church-plate are to be found scattered up and down in the village churches, and all this goodly store of antiquities is set before you in a province whose physical features are so full of interest and beauty as in themselves to make a journey through Velay and Auvergne one which none will repent having undertaken.