Chapter L: De Fourcaud (1)

The Fourteenth Century erected in France four churches of a peculiar grandeur and magnificence: the Cathedral of Saint Quentin; the abbey of Saint Bertin, Saint Omer; Saint Nazaire of Carcassonne and Saint Ouen of Rouen. The first two have disappeared, but the two others have come down to us almost intact, and both of them derive their disconcerting basilicas from the end of the Thirteenth Century; Saint Urbain of Troyes is a piece of stone jewelry.

We shall have less trouble in characterizing briefly the marvellous building of Saint Ouen, than in describing Notre-Dame (Rouen). The edifice is longer, less ample, clearer, and more of a unity as far as the structure is concerned, and it is deprived of those brilliant accessories which engross the attention. It is, by all odds, superior in harmony and compactness of the execution and inferior in size. The one attracts poets, the other is preferred by men of learning. Everybody will appreciate the subtlety.

Now, first of all and very briefly, here is the history of this abbey. Upon the ruins of an oratory constructed in this very place by the indefatigable Saint Victrice about 535, Clotaire erected a large church dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the last years of the Seventh Century, Saint Ouen restored it and wished it to be his sepulchre. According to the _Life_ of that great bishop attributed to Fridegode, a monk of Canterbury, it was a building of noble appearance, constructed of square stones in the _Gothic style_. It is useless to discuss these words, quoted on account of their curiosity, but which might well be accounted for by some alteration in the text, and, in any case, have but little meaning for us. After the appearance of the Northmen, the abbey experienced varied fortunes: it was sacked and demolished in 841, repaired in 1046 by the Abbé Nicholas of Normandy, son of Duke Richard III., and it was burned to the ground several times. A fragment of Nicholas’s apsis at the end of the nave is preserved under the name of _Chambre aux clercs_: a portion of the hemicycle arched cul-de-four is ornamented very coarsely, but it is strongly built.

But to resume: there was no glory for the monks of Saint Benoît here until the beginning of the Fourteenth Century and the advent of the Abbé Jean Roussel. This Jean Roussel, born in Quincampoix, near Rouen, and known, nobody knows why, by the nick-name of Marc d’ Argent, was a very original personage. Active, discreet, prudent, energetic, and devoted to everything under his charge, he re-established the monastic discipline and by the wisdom of his administration doubled the revenues; and, as Suger did before him at Saint Denis, he resolved to rebuild his abbey according to the latest developments in architecture. We do not know who was his master in this work; but certainly it must have been some clever man who had carefully studied Amiens, Beauvais, Troyes and Séez. Within a few years, the work was sufficiently advanced for his conception to have become definitive. His successors had nothing more to do than to follow out his ideas. Materials were not stinted. The quarries of Chaumont, Vernon and Saint-Leu furnished their magnificent calcareous stone, of fine grain mixed with silex. As the Abbé was never at a loss for funds, it was popularly imagined that he coined gold, and many a legend exists upon this subject. The truth is, he knew how to economize with large sums, obtained from the King important rights regarding the cutting of wood in the forest Verte and created disinterested good-will around him. In the year 1318, the first stone was laid, and in the year 1339, when he died, more than 79,936 livres (2,600,000 francs of our money) were paid to the stone-cutters. The inscription placed on his tomb, destroyed in 1562 by the Calvinists, described the state in which he left the church, the choir and the eleven transept chapels comprising the large terminal chapel were finished: the large pillars of the transept were only lacking the tower, the two arms of the transept were approaching completion, and doubtless also the nave was quite advanced.

The Hundred Years’ War retarded the work without actually interrupting it. We find Charles VI. in 1380 allowing 3,000 livres to the Abbé Arnaud du Breuil to hasten the work. The portal called _des Marmousets_ at the south arm of the transept is now given over to the sculptors. However the hour for rapid achievement has passed. It is not until 1439 that the two roses of Master Alexandre de Berneval and his legendary pupil unfold at the extremities of the transept. Under Admiral d’ Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen and Abbé of the monastery, the entrance to the choir was closed by a precious Gothic rood-screen; but the nave had yet to be finished, and the central tower and the façade had yet to be done. The Abbé Bohier at the very last of the Fifteenth Century, finished the building. The delicious square tower, eighty-two metres high, set off with bays, with gables and corner buttresses upon which are grafted the flying-buttresses of the octagonal belfry with the open-worked crown, is of the same date, the same style, and, perhaps, of the same hand as the _Tour de Beurre_. We possess the plan of the façade, drawn at this time by an unknown artist. It recalls the taste of the Normans for the porches under bell-towers of which few examples are to be found outside of their province after the Thirteenth Century. This master conceived two large, square towers placed diagonally, of a most original effect of perspective, and beneath which opened two lateral porches whose sheltered arches broke the draughts and were very converging and very convenient for the entrance and exits in and out of the church of the several filing processions. We are astonished to think that such a picturesque arrangement was never carried into effect. The execution of the plan was never commenced. The two bell-towers had been carried up to twenty metres and then abandoned. Their dimensions frightened the architect Grégoire, who in 1840 was charged with enriching Marc d’ Argent’s façade, and he pulled down the stumps to build those two towers with their thin spires and that commonplace façade with its dry lines that we now see.

A glance at the general plan of the building is necessary. Nothing could be simpler than this general arrangement: a polygonal choir and chapels between the buttresses; a lantern in the centre; some rather narrow branches of the transept; a large nave moderately wide, but very long with some quite narrow tributaries. The total length amounts to 138 metres; the width of the nave is restricted to twenty-six. What does this matter if these proportions are well united? What astonishes us beyond everything is the evident charming intention. There are no walls beyond those that are necessary; it is all tracery with support. The second impression is received from the forms; with the exception of a few architectural details in the bay near the porch, the style is perfectly homogeneous. There is no spirit of creation here; it is that admirable spirit of refinement and adaptation of the Fourteenth Century. As at Saint Urbain de Troyes, all the arches spring from pillars and all the ribs return to them, where, to employ the synthetic formula of Viollet-le-Duc, “the piers are nothing more than projections in clusters of the different profiles of the arches.” What then is the use of capitals under such conditions? They are more detrimental than useful. Moreover, you find no trace of them except in the oldest parts of the choir. The ribs of the arches instead of being strictly fastened against the walls cross the mass to leap outside in bracing arches and archivolts. Exactly as at Séez, the triforium drops very low and ends, not in a massive ledge but in a gallery of lace-work, in order to allow you to see from the nave across its spaces between the arches the dazzling lucidity of the windows of the gallery. And everywhere is manifested this threefold intention: elevation, ease and open-work.

And what windows to adorn these masses of filagree work! The most varied, the finest and the richest of the period of Louis XII. at its apogee. Patriarchs and martyrs, prophets and holy abbés, kings and sibyls stand out on all sides in the hues of brilliant and soft jewels. We have no longer the frank mosaic of former days giving life to the light, and bestowing upon it a certain mystical impression; they are not the simple large figures under sumptuous baldaquins brightened with silver gilt; they are, most frequently, the glass pictures of the Renaissance. We are astonished at the perfection of their treatment. Several subjects are those that the Thirteenth Century took pleasure in evoking; witness the legend of the pilgrim of Saint-Jacques, whose son, unjustly hung, is kept on the gibbet by the saint himself and recognized as innocent. Nothing seems to me, however, so memorable here, as much on account of the subject as for the treatment, as the series of sibyls--those pagans to which the Middle Ages had begun to give a Christian fate and which the Sixteenth Century treated so voluptuously. This is why they assume a new importance at Saint Ouen. The artist took pleasure in painting them under the adornments of elegant ladies, in landscapes bristling with buildings. Above all, I cannot forget the charming sibyl of Samos, in her embroidered robe covered with _orfèvrerie_ and jewels, two doves pecking at her feet in the midst of a piece of country scenery, and treated so to speak, in the manner of a portrait. This series of glass extending from one end of the church to the other and almost from top to bottom, forms an immense, translucent and radiant tapestry. It seems as if a breath might annihilate it. But no, it remains hard, rigid and as if incorporate with the very wall. Solid bars of iron, cutting the bays, give it an indestructible armature. The evanescent dream of the period has eternalized itself in a fairy-like vision.

What beautiful roses are cut out in the transept! On the central one, God the Father appears on his throne of gold, above the adoring kings. The other, with its more complicated outlines, shows us the Glory of Paradise. You know the tradition attached to these two architectural flowers with the resplendent lobes? Alexandre de Berneval having designed the first, became jealous of one of his disciples who traced the second, and in anger, killed him. To expiate the crime he had to die by the hands of the hangman. Who invented this story? The master lies yonder, in the second chapel down the nave to the right, by the side of one of his pupils, or, perhaps with his son Colin. Can any one believe that the monks would admit under any pretext beneath the holy vaults the body of an assassin and honour him with a superb sepulchral stone? Upon the stone the two architects live again in their long robes lined with vair, and their large hats. The older, his compass in his hand carving out a quarter-round, the younger one making a plan, the feet of both resting on a lion, and above them a Gothic daïs. The older is Berneval who died in 1440: the inscription tells us this. Of the younger we know nothing, for the inscription concerning him was never made.

There is no fine carving to note in the interior of the abbey. Many of the pillars in the nave were ornamented with statues in the style of the Fourteenth Century, but placed in niches that retreat a little. Broken in 1794, when the building was used as a forge, they have never been restored. The destruction of the rood-screen dates from 1791, at the time of the departure of the monks and the erection of the parish church. This rood-screen must assuredly have spoiled the perspective of a building so frankly conceived for the effect in perspective. But if one wants to delight in sculptured scenes, it is before the _portail des Marmousets_ that he must betake himself. Beneath a finely arched porch, is a door that is condemned to-day. The statue of Saint Ouen, decapitated by the Reformers, and the pier covered with little bas-reliefs, relates in detail the life and miracles of the holy bishop. On the tympanum, three zones of perfect figures describe the death of the Virgin, her funeral, her assumption and her entrance into heaven between two angels who are playing the organ and the rebeck. A curious popular invention has found its place in the funeral scene, where an impious Jew trying to make an attempt upon the coffin has to see the Archangel Michael cut off his hands and St. Peter give them back to him, whilst converting him. This decoration is of an exceptional vivacity and delicacy of carving.

From the public garden, we can take in the development of the apsis. The elegance of design and the working-out are seen in all their grandeur from here. From the pinacled buttresses spring the graceful double flying-buttresses responding exactly to the spring of the arches that are distributed and repeated with such wise judgment. Above the chapels with their pyramidal roofs runs a balustrade of quatrefoils inscribed in a curved quadrangle reproduced at the base of the top. These charming galleries whose stone rivals ironwork, in its extraordinary precision of the cutting, define the essential lines of the plan through the bristling lines of the secondary forms. They represent calm and order surrounded by agitation.

But from whatever point of view you survey Saint Ouen, you will recognize the most exemplary refinement of construction. It is not merely the frame which should be taken as a model with its square and chamfred wood, its suspended binding-pieces, its Saint Andrew’s cross, and its double sabliere plates gathered at the base of the chevrons. In the eyes of architects, the Abbey of the wise Abbé Marc d’ Argent will always be regarded as one of the _chefs d’œuvre_ of the art of building in France.

CARISBROOKE CASTLE

SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE

The Isle of Wight, like Kent, was peopled by Jutes, who, coming in under the wing of the actual conquerors, Cerdic and Cynric, exterminated the existing Romano-British inhabitants at the bloody battle of Wihtgaresbyrg (Saxon Chron.), a name which, omitting the primary syllable, became “Carisbrooke.” The later castle, whose site is actually that of the battlefield of 530, was conferred by the conquerors on their relative Wihtgar. But whereas the Jutes of Kent were the first, those of the Isle of Wight were the last among the English to embrace Christianity, and in the Seventh Century the fine proselytizing zeal of the West Saxons led them to invade and annihilate with their murderous knives the heathen islanders, whose land they annexed to the Wessex diocese.

The island was already found to give the shortest passage between England and Normandy, and for this reason was used in Saxon times, as also by William the Conqueror on some of his journeys to and from Normandy. It was here that he arrested his half-brother, Bishop Odo, as he was on his way to Rome, and here he tarried on quitting England for his last journey to France. William granted the Isle of Wight to William Fitz Osborne, Earl of Hereford, who, it is believed, reared the castle of Carisbrooke, in which Odo was arrested, as he likewise founded the priory adjoining. He had accompanied his leader from Normandy, and was one of his army marshals. Besides having the lordship of this isle, he was made constable of the newly built castles of York and Winchester, and justiciary for the King in the North. On the great mound of the Saxon burh at Wihtgaresbyrg he built a Norman keep, but as he was killed in France four years after coming to the isle, it is probable that the work he began was completed by his son, Roger de Bretteville, who was imprisoned for life by William for levying war against him, all his estates being forfeited to the Crown.

Henry I. next gave the lordship of the isle, with the castle and honour of Carisbrooke, to Richard de Redvers, whose son succeeding him (temp. Stephen) was made Earl of Devon; large additions were made by this family to the castle, which was held by the Redvers until that race ended in an heiress, Isabella de Fortibus, so called from her marriage with an Earl of Albemarle of that name. This lady lived here (1262–1293) and built a large part of the castle, which, at her death, she bequeathed to King Edward I. Afterwards, in the Fourteenth Century, the castle was held by Piers Gaveston, William Montague, the chivalrous Earl of Salisbury, and by Edward, Earl of Rutland, son of Edmund of Langley, fifth son of Edward III. who inherited his father’s title of Duke of York, and fell at Agincourt, when, after his widow, Philippa’s death, the castle and island fell to Humphrey, the Good Duke of Gloucester, in the reign of Henry VI. After him the lordship was enjoyed by several royal and other personages, and lastly by Anthony, Earl Rivers, and his brother, Sir Edward Woodville, who, together with a large force he had raised in the island, fell at the battle of St. Anbyn, in a foolish expedition against the King of France. Since that time Carisbrooke has always been held by the Crown. In Elizabeth’s reign, when preparations were made on the south coast to repel the Spanish Armada, very elaborate outworks were planned and executed at this castle, entirely surrounding it with fortifications of the then new type, escarp and ditch and ravelin and redan, which exist at the present time: but they were never wanted, and only served usefully as a promenade for the royal victim, King Charles, in his imprisonment.

Charles having escaped from his durance with the army at Hampton Court (November 11, 1647), rode to Titchfield, the Earl of Southampton’s place, where he might have sailed by Portsmouth Harbour to the Continent, as his intention was; but, by a mistake, Colonel Hammond, the Governor of the Isle of Wight, was brought to Titchfield, and he conducted the King to Carisbrooke, where he became again a prisoner. Here three attempts seem to have been made, chiefly by some gentlemen of the island, to give him freedom during the twelve months of his detention. On the first of these occasions it was arranged that Charles should pass through the window of his room, and let himself down to the ramparts, below which a guide with a horse was waiting, and a boat was ready to take him to a ship in the offing; but an iron bar in the window prevented his getting through, and so the King had to wave off his friends. The window in question is discernible from the outside of the King’s lodgings; it adjoins the only buttress of the wall, and is walled up. On another occasion implements having been provided for him, Charles managed to saw through and remove the bar which impeded him, and all arrangements were made for his flight, but a rascally officer, one Major Rolfe, was entrusted with the secret and betrayed it. So, when the King was about to make the attempt, he observed below more people than were expected, and wisely decided to remain where he was. It was said that Rolfe intended to have shot the King as he descended. After being there for a year, Charles was removed, with scant ceremony or respect from Carisbrooke. At daybreak one morning a party of soldiers were sent, who, rousing him from bed, took him off to Hurst Castle, a fort on the mainland, standing at the extremity of the spit of land, near Lymington, which stretches across the Solent Strait to within a mile of the opposite island. Here the King was detained for a month, when he was taken to Windsor. To Carisbrooke were sent the two royal children, the year succeeding their father’s judicial murder, but in less than a month the Princess Elizabeth was found dead in her room, her face resting on the Bible given her by her father at their last interview. Prince Henry remained there nearly two years. An attack was made on the castle at the outbreak of the civil war by the mayor and people of Newport, in obedience to the instructions of the Parliament, in order to get rid of the King’s captain, the Earl of Portland, and his successor, Lord Pembroke; and the fortress was yielded on honourable terms. After the Restoration, the governor, Lord Cutts, made great and lamentable alterations in the old fabric, quite modernizing a part of it; but at a recent date the Government have restored the work in a judicious manner, and brought to light some hidden and interesting features.

The Norman keep of Richard de Redvers stands on the ancient English mound at the north-east angle of the inner ward, surrounded by its moat; it is an irregular polygon in shape, a shell keep sixty feet across, with walls of great strength and thickness, the access to which is by a long flight of stairs, the postern being protected by double gates and a portcullis. One room only remains, in which is a deep well, the others are destroyed, but there remains a small staircase to the top, whence a very fine view is obtained; at the foot was a sally-port defended by a bastion, which has disappeared. The entrance is on the west by a fine machicolated gateway, flanked by two round embattled towers, through a high pointed archway with portcullis grooves; all this was built by Anthony, Lord Scales, who had the lordship in 1474, and whose arms are on the gatehouse, as they are on Middleton Tower near Lynn with the Rose of York. Inside are the older gates, with latticed ironwork, and on the right the ruins of the guardhouse, and the chapel of St. Nicholas, built in 1738 on the site of the ancient chapel. On the north are the ruins of the buildings occupied by King Charles, a small room being shown as his bedroom. The governor’s quarters, barracks and other buildings are all of different periods. In the centre of the south wall are remains of a mural tower, and there are the ruins of the Mountjoy, a Norman tower in the south-east corner, the walls here being eighteen feet thick: east are two other towers. Anciently there must have been some outworks, as in the Domesday Survey, the area of this castle is said to be one virgate, or twenty acres.

THE PANTHEON

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

The Pantheon, the most perfect pagan building in the city, was built B.C. 27, by Marcus Agrippa, the bosom friend of Augustus Cæsar, and the second husband of his daughter Julia. The inscription, in huge letters, perfectly legible from beneath, “M. Agrippa, L. F. Cos. Tertium Fecit,” records its construction. Another inscription on the architrave, now almost illegible, records its restoration under Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla, _c._ 202, who, “_Pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultur restitverunt._” Some authorities have maintained that the Pantheon was originally only a vast hall in the baths of Agrippa, acknowledged remains of which exist at no great distance; but the name “Pantheum” was in use as early as A.D. 59.

In A.D. 399 the Pantheon was closed as a temple in obedience to a decree of the Emperor Honorius, and in 608 was consecrated as a Christian church by Pope Boniface IV., with the permission of the Emperor Phocas, under the title of Sta. Maria ad Martyres. To this dedication we owe the preservation of the main features of the building, though it has been terribly maltreated. In 663, the Emperor Constans, who had come to Rome with great pretence of devotion to its shrines and relics, and who only stayed there twelve days, did not scruple, in spite of its religious dedication to strip off the tiles of gilt bronze with which the roof was covered, and carry them off with him to Syracuse, where, upon his murder, a few years after, they fell into the hands of the Saracens. In 1087, it was used by the anti-pope Guibert as a fortress, whence he made incursions upon the lawful pope, Victor III., and his protector, the Countess Matilda. In 1101, another anti-pope, Sylvester IV., was elected here. Pope Martin V., after the return from Avignon, attempted the restoration of the Pantheon by clearing away the mass of miserable buildings in which it was encrusted, and his efforts were continued by Eugenius IV., but Urban VIII. (1623–1644), though he spent 15,000 scudi upon the Pantheon, and added the two ugly campaniles, called in derision “the asses’ ears,” of their architect, Bernini, did not hesitate to plunder the gilt bronze ceiling of the portico, 450,250 lbs. in weight, to make the baldachino of St. Peter’s, and cannons for the Castle of Saint Angelo. Benedict XIV. (1740–1758) further despoiled the building by tearing away all the precious marbles which lined the attic to ornament other buildings.

The Pantheon was not originally, as now, below the level of the piazza, but was approached by a flight of five steps. The portico, which is one hundred and ten feet long and forty-four feet deep, is supported by sixteen grand Corinthian columns of oriental granite, thirty-six feet in height. The ancient bronze doors remain. On either side are niches, once occupied by colossal statues of Augustus and Agrippa.

The Interior is a rotunda, 143 feet in diameter, covered by a dome. It is only lighted by an aperture in the centre, twenty-eight feet in diameter. Seven great niches around the walls once contained statues of different gods and goddesses, that of Jupiter being the central figure. All the surrounding columns are of giallo-antico, except four, which are of pavonazzetto, painted yellow. It is a proof of the great value and rarity of the giallo-antico, that it was always impossible to obtain more to complete the set.

Some antiquarians have supposed that the aperture at the top of the Pantheon was originally closed by a huge “Pigna,” or pine-cone of bronze, like that which crowned the summit of the mausoleum of Hadrian, and this belief has been encouraged by the name of a neighbouring church being S. Giovanni della Pigna.

The Pantheon has become the burial-place of painters, Raphael, Annibale Caracci, Taddeo Zucchero, Baldassare Peruzzi, Pierino del Vaga, and Giovanni da Udine, are all buried here.

The third chapel on the left contains the tomb of Raphael (born April 6, 1483; died April 6, 1520). From the pen of Cardinal Bembo is the epigram:

“Ille hic est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci
Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.”

Taddeo Zucchero and Annibale Caracci are buried on either side of Raphael. Near the high altar is a monument to Cardinal Gonsalvi (1757–1824), the faithful secretary and minister of Pius VII., by Thorwaldsen. This, however, is only a cenotaph, marking the spot where his heart is preserved. His body rests with that of his beloved brother Andrew in the church of S. Marcello.

During the Middle Ages the Pope always officiated here on the day of Pentecost, when, in honour of the descent of the Holy Spirit, showers of white rose-leaves were continually sent down through the aperture during service.

In the Piazza della Rotunda is a small obelisk found in the Campus Martius. Following the Via della Rotunda from hence, in the third street on the left is the small semicircular ruin called, from a fancied resemblance to the favourite cake of the people, Arco di Ciambella. This is the only remaining fragment of the baths of Agrippa, unless the Pantheon itself was connected with them.

Behind the Pantheon is the Piazza della Minerva, where a small obelisk was erected in 1667 by Bernini, on the back of an elephant. It is exactly similar to the obelisk in front of the Pantheon, and they were both found near this site, where they formed part of the decorations of the Campus Martius. The hieroglyphics show that it dates from Hophres, a king of the 25th dynasty.

ST. LAURENCE, NUREMBERG

LINDA VILLARI

Once in the train bound for Nuremberg, every sight on the road seems to bring one nearer to Mediæval Germany, and is a fitting prelude to its charms. The storied prettiness of the Rhine district left behind, ripening vines give way to festoons of hops and plots of tobacco; you pass through forests of fir and larch, and come to fields of gold brocade where the lupines are in bloom. Woodlands merge into pleasant meadows watered by swiftly-running streams; every village is crowned by a ruined castle; and there are storks’ nests on clustered roofs about the red church spires. Flaxen-haired children are driving flocks of fat geese; here and there is a battlemented monastery; then come tracts of moorland flushed pink and purple with heather; you dive into hill-sides; you sight dark masses of pine-trees beyond a winding river crossed by an occasional ferry; you halt at mediæval towns capped by crumbling yellow walls of palace and prison, and before long at the spick and span station of manufacturing Fürth (where most of the toys and wood-carvings are now made). And then you see a confusion of dusky, jagged roofs pierced by lofty spires and high walls; massive towers loom above the greenery of a steep hill-side, and you know that your goal is reached. This is Nuremberg, the “jewel-casket of the German Empire.” Your first impression is that it should rather be named the city of wonderful roofs. Mighty roofs heave their four and five rows of dormers high in air above a forest of lower dwellings, with roofs of every degree of steepness, covered for the most part with small inverted tiles of reddish-brown hue. This arrangement gives them a soft and curious shagginess that greatly adds to their effect. Driving first round the town, before passing its gates, you see that it is almost entirely surrounded by dark-red walls, studded by numerous steeple-crowned watch-towers, and further guarded by a dry moat a hundred feet wide and fifty deep, now draped with vines and planted with vegetables and fruit-trees. The River Pegnitz runs through the city, and issues from it in two arms at either end; its islands and covered bridges, with smaller bridges (_hinterbrücke_) swung underneath, supply deliciously pictorial incidents of towers and sheds and mills and timber-yards, with fascinating peeps up and down stream into the interior of the town.

St. Sebald is the patron saint of the older part of the city near the castle, St. Laurence of the portion across the river, dating from the Thirteenth Century.

Passing through the “Lady Gate,” with its massive Sixteenth Century fortifications, the König’s Strasse lies before us, and we are in the Germany of the Middle Ages. What matter modern shop-fronts or gliding trams? We hardly see them; can only look at the wonderful houses on either hand, their steep, jagged roofs, their gables and stepped gables, their pepper-caster towers, projecting casements, bays and oriels and mullions, carved doors and eaves and balconies, fantastic gargoyles and cross-timbered fronts. In short, all the exquisite irregularities and details of mediæval domestic architecture. And, as we look, we think of Grimm’s household tales, the beloved dog’s eared treasure of our childish days. Yonder broad-shouldered inn, _Zum grünen Weinstock_ (the Green Vine) might well be the lodging where the soldier with the blue light played his naughty pranks on the king’s daughter.

But now the street widens; other gabled avenues branch off from it, and we are face to face with the red-brown bulk of St. Laurence. There it is, the beautiful church of the twin towers, with its sculptured portals and grand wheel windows! It almost seems to fill the square in which it stands, and where ancient red houses, deep-porched with jutting galleries and many-storied roofs are set about the stones of the precincts.

We wandered round the church to admire its exterior, and dally as it were with the wonderland within, but a fierce easterly wind gave an edge to our desire, and we speedily knocked at the side entrance appointed to sightseers. A wonderland indeed--rather a perfect symphony of form and colour! St. Laurence is certainly one of the most beautiful, perhaps one of the finest Gothic interiors in Europe, with a special charm of its own, that makes your first moments in it moments breathless with delight. Presently you begin to analyze your sensations, and study the details of the lovely scene that has stirred your sense of beauty to so reverent a joy. St. Laurence is very lofty and admirably proportioned, being 322 feet long by 104 broad. Its pointed Gothic arches spring from their tall, slender shafts with the grace and somewhat the effect of a grove of palms. Windows of richest stained glass lend a magic glow to the delicate avenues of stone, and on all sides are picturesque details: monuments, statues, paintings, and relics of ancient days. Midway up the nave is suspended the coloured group in wood carved by the famous Veit Stoss, and known as the “Angel’s Greeting.” Sculptured saints and virgins project from the columns, and make you in love with the naïve realism of early German art. One wooden Madonna is absolutely romping with her babe. The side chapels are lined with quaint, rich tapestries from the designs of Albert Dürer, representing Scriptural scenes. There are many pictures of the Nuremberg school, of which the best are those of Wohlgemuth, Dürer’s master; several interesting mural tombs and curious crucifixes. But the chief art treasure of the church is, of course, the Ciborium, or “Sacraments Hauslein” of Adam Krafft, erected against one of the pillars of the choir. It is a poem in stone. Its leading motive is the crown of thorns, but all the scenes of the passion are represented on small tablets in high relief; its base is supported by the kneeling figures of the sculptor and his two assistants. It is in the shape of a five-sided tower, gradually tapering to a curled finial sixty-four feet from the ground. Every detail is a marvel of grace and delicacy, and the faces of Krafft and his men are full of life and expression. They had worked on this masterpiece for four years.

In this beautiful church you are grateful to the happy tolerance that has preserved the art relics of Catholicism in the temple of a purer faith. Nuremberg was one of the first cities to protest against the sale of indulgences, to adopt the tenets of Luther and Melancthon, and in 1530 it subscribed to the Augsburg Confession.

This great change was accomplished in the most peaceable way. One by one, the convents and monasteries were suppressed, and when the Catholic bishop of Bamberg called on the Swabian Bund to oppose these measures by force, he was told that the Bund had no concern in the matter, and that the free city claimed the right of freedom of conscience.

So much for the history, but we cannot leave St. Laurence without relating some of the old-world legends attached to its walls. The cathedral was begun in 1278, but the Fifteenth Century was growing old before its completion; and when the north tower (finished in 1498) was commenced there was a great squabble among the builders. The master mason was unjustly dismissed by the intrigues of two of his men, who were jointly promoted to his post. But the accomplices soon quarrelled, and, vowing a mortal hate, each sought the other’s destruction. One day they had to mount the half-built tower together to inspect the works, and as one leant forward from a window the other rushed on him and tried to throw him out. But the first man turned on his assailant, gripped him hard; both fell and both were dashed to pieces on the stones below. It chanced that their ill-treated predecessor was crossing the square at the time, and was standing still gazing at the tower he was to have built just when his two enemies came crashing down within an inch of him. The town council heard of his miraculous escape, and likewise how the dead men had ousted him from his post. So they reinstated him as master builder, and decreed him the right of recording on the tower stones in what manner God had chastised the guilty and preserved the life of the innocent. But the master builder refused to exercise this privilege, and only craved permission to destroy all trace of the dreadful event. He had the window walled up, and it remained so for centuries. And even after the gilded roof was struck by lightning in 1865, and half the tower had to be rebuilt, the blank window was still left untouched. Only in 1874 public opinion was roused on the subject, and satirical rhymes circulated on the offence to taste of this blind window. So now, north and south towers have an equal number of openings.

Another legend recounts how in the Thirteenth Century a monk was solemnly walled up in the south-western corner of the church, where the bell-ropes hang. The criminal was young, his offence slight, and general horror and pity were excited by his dreadful doom. People shuddered as they passed that darksome corner, but for the sacristan’s pretty daughter it seemed to have a curious attraction. She had wept bitterly on hearing the fate of the young monk whom she had so often seen praying at the altar, but her pity did not affect her appetite, for it was noticed that this had suddenly increased. One day the bell-ringers of St. Laurence were surprised to see a rat spring from a hole in the wall with a fresh cabbage-leaf in his mouth. They talked of the strange sight; a watch was set, search made. And when the hole was enlarged, behold! it led to the niche of the condemned monk, who was found not only alive, but well nourished, after having been buried for weeks! The sacristan’s daughter had supplied him with food through the crack in the wall. The affair made a great noise. It was the hand of Providence cried the townsfolk. And so the prisoner was pardoned, and allowed to go free. There the story ends, but we hold to the idea that he did not go alone.

But the most picturesque of the many legends, of which the cathedral is the scene, is that of the “Mass of the Dead.”

A lady of the Imhoff family, being left a widow in her youth, could in no way resign herself to God’s will, remained sunk in grief and attended every service at St. Laurence in the vain hope of obtaining relief by prayer. Even in the coldest winter season she was always to be seen at early mass. One All Saint’s Eve she was awakened from her first sleep by the sound of the church-bells. The moon was still shining, but the lady thought it was the first break of day, and, rising from her bed, wrapped herself in a thick cloak and hastened across the square to the church. Its doors stood wide open, and an unusually large congregation was already assembled. Kneeling in her accustomed place, she saw that the priest was already bending before the altar, and the candles burnt with so strange a light that the faces of her fellow-worshippers appeared ghastly pale. And when the priest turned she recognized him as one who had died and been buried during the past year. She glanced right and left with terrified eyes, and on all sides were persons she had once known but who were no longer living. As she sank back in her chair in mortal dismay, there glided close to her an old friend whose death she had recently mourned and whose body she had helped to clothe in the garments of the grave. In faint, far-away tones the friend whispered in her ear: “Beloved Clara, as soon as the bell rings for the elevation of the Host fly thou quickly from the church, or Death will chastise thee for disturbing by thy presence the souls of the dead.” And having uttered these words, the form vanished from her side, and Widow Clara fled towards the door as fast as her trembling limbs could carry her. She heard a dreadful rustling and clattering behind; it seemed as though the whole ghostly company were in full pursuit at her heels. As she hurried through the churchyard she saw that all the graves were gaping, and fell fainting on her own threshold. There she was found by her attendants, who, alarmed by hearing her rise and go out in the middle of the night, were coming to seek her just as the church-bell struck one. The moon had gone down, and the deepest stillness reigned in the cathedral precincts. The next day the cloak, which had slipped from the lady’s shoulders in her terrified flight, was found torn into tiny fragments and scattered among the gravestones.

THE TORRE DEL ORO

EDMUNDO DE AMICIS

I arrived at a hotel, threw my valise into a _patio_, and went to roam about the city. It seemed to me to be a larger, a more beautiful and an enriched Cordova. The streets are wider, the houses taller, and the _patios_ more spacious; but the general appearance of the city is the same. Here is the same spotless whiteness, the same intricate network of small streets, the general odour of oranges, the delightful feeling of mystery and that strange Oriental look that produces in the heart that sweet sentiment of melancholy and in the mind the thousand fancies, desires and visions of a far-away world, a strange life, an unknown people and an earthly paradise full of love, delight and peace. In these streets you read the history of the city: every balcony, fragment of sculpture and solitary cross-road recall the nocturnal adventures of a king, the dreams of a poet, the adventures of a beauty, a love-scene, a duel, an abduction, a fable, and a feast. Here is a reminiscence of Maria de Pedilla, there of Don Pedro, farther away one of Cervantes and elsewhere of Columbus, Saint Theresa, Velasquez and Murillo. A column reminds you of the Roman rule; a tower, the magnificence of the monarchy of Charles V.; an Alcazar recalls the splendours of the Arabian courts. Superb marble palaces stand beside modest white houses; the tiny, winding streets lead to immense squares filled with orange-trees; from lonely and silent cross-streets you emerge, after a sharp turn, into a street filled with a noisy crowd. Wherever you go, through the graceful gratings of the _patios_, you see flowers, statues, fountains, rooms, walls covered with arabesques, Arabian windows and slender columns of precious marble; and at every window and in every garden there are women dressed in white half hidden, like shy nymphs, behind the grapevines and rose-bushes.

Passing from one street to another, at last I come to a promenade on the banks of the Guadalquiver, called the Christina, which bears the same relation to Seville that the Lungarno does to Florence. Here you may enjoy a sight that is simply enchanting.

First I went to the famous Torre del Oro. This tower, called The Golden Tower, was so-named from the fact that in it was placed the gold that the Spanish ships brought from America, or because the King Don Pedro hid his treasures there. Its form is octagonal with three receding storeys, crowned by battlements and washed by the river. According to tradition, this tower was built by the Romans and here the most beautiful favourite of the King dwelt until the tower was joined to the Alcazar by a building that was destroyed to make room for the Christina promenade.

This promenade extends from Torre del Oro to the Duke of Montpensier’s palace. It is thickly shaded by oriental plane-trees, oaks, cypresses, willows, poplars, and other northern trees which the Andalusians admire as we should admire the palms and aloes in the fields of Piedmont and Lombardy. A large bridge spans the river and leads to the suburb of Triana from which one sees the first houses on the opposite bank. A long line of ships, _golettas_ (a species of light boat) and barks are on the river; and between the Torre del Oro and the Duke’s palace there is a constant coming and going of boats. The sun was setting. A crowd of ladies swarmed through the streets, troops of workmen crossed the bridge, the ships showed more signs of life, a band hidden among the trees began to play, the river became rose-coloured, the air was filled with the perfume of flowers, and the sky seemed to be aflame.

CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

On the road from Siena to Rome, half-way between Ficulle and Viterbo, is the town of Orvieto. Travellers often pass it in the night-time. Few stop there, for the place is old and dirty and its inns are indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can fail to be struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the level plain upon its mass of rock among the Apennines.

Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which are found like fossils, embedded in the more recent geological formations of Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line to the Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on which Civita Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms and fosses, strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, an almost perfect cube, with walls precipitous to the north and south and east, but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up and leave bare beds of sand and pestilential canebrakes to stretch irregularly round their dwindled waters.

The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley present a sinister contrast to the broad line of the Apennines swelling tier on tier, from their oak-girdled basements set with villages and towers, up to the snow and cloud that crown their topmost crags. The time to see this landscape is at sunrise; and the traveller should take his stand upon the rising ground over which the Roman road is carried from the town--the point, in fact, which Turner has selected for his vague and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. Thence he will command the whole space of the plain, the Apennines, and the river creeping in a straight line at the base; while the sun, rising to his right, will slant along the mountain flanks and gild the leaden stream, and flood the castled crags of Orvieto with a haze of light. From the centre of this glory stand out in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid tufa, vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of churches shooting up above a medley of deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid them all, the marble front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its unfamiliar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these heights there is a sudden fall; and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow there can support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.

The great Duomo was erected at the end of the Thirteenth Century to commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. The value of this miracle consisted in its establishing unmistakably the truth of transubstantiation. The story runs that a young Bohemian priest who doubted the dogma was performing the office of the mass in a church at Bolsena, when, at the moment of consecration, blood issued from five gushes in the wafer, which resembled the five wounds of Christ. The fact was evident to all the worshippers, who saw blood falling on the linen of the altar; and the young priest no longer doubted, but confessed the miracle, and journeyed straightway with the evidence thereof to Pope Urban IV. The Pope, who was then at Orvieto, came out with all his retinue to meet the convert and do honour to the magic-working relics. The circumstances of this miracle are well known to students of art through Raphael’s celebrated fresco in the Stanze of the Vatican. And it will be remembered by the readers of ecclesiastical history that Urban had in 1264 promulgated by a bull the strict observance of the Corpus Christi festival in connection with his strong desire to re-establish the doctrine of Christ’s presence in the elements. Nor was it without reason that, while seeking miraculous support for this dogma, he should have treated the affair of Bolsena so seriously as to celebrate it by the erection of one of the most splendid cathedrals in Italy; for the peace of the church had recently been troubled by the reforming ardour of the Fraticelli and by the promulgation of Abbot Joachim’s Eternal Gospel. This new evangelist had preached the doctrine of progression in religious faith, proclaiming a Kingdom of the Spirit which should transcend the Kingdom of the Son, even as the Christian dispensation had superseded the Jewish supremacy of the Father. Nor did he fail at the same time to attack the political and moral abuses of the Papacy, attributing its degradation to the want of vitality which pervaded the old Christian system, and calling on the clergy to lead more simple and regenerate lives, consistently with the spiritual doctrine which he had received by inspiration. The theories of Joachim were immature and crude; but they were among the first signs of that liberal effort after self-emancipation which eventually stirred all Europe at the time of the Renaissance. It was, therefore, the obvious policy of the Popes to crush so dangerous an opposition while they could; and by establishing the dogma of transubstantiation, they were enabled to satisfy the growing mysticism of the people, while they placed upon a firmer basis the cardinal support of their own religious power.

In pursuance of his plan, Urban sent for Lorenzo Maitani, the great Sienese architect, who gave designs for a Gothic church in the same style as the Cathedral of Siena, though projected on a smaller scale. Fergusson in his _Handbook of Architecture_, remarks that these two churches are perhaps, taken altogether, the most successful specimens of “Italian pointed Gothic.” The Gottico Tedesco had never been received with favour in Italy. Remains of Roman architecture, then far more numerous and perfect than they are at present, controlled the minds of artists, and induced them to adopt the rounded rather than the pointed arch. Indeed, there would seem to be something peculiarly Northern in the spirit of Gothic architecture: its intricacies suit the gloom of Northern skies, its massive exterior is adapted to the severity of Northern weather, its vast windows catch the fleeting sunlight of the North, and the pinnacles and spires which constitute its beauty are better expressed in rugged stone than in the marbles of the South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for their effect upon the advantages of sunlight or picturesque situations. Many of them are built upon broad plains, over which for more than half the year hangs fog. But the cathedrals of Italy owe their charm to colour and brilliancy: their gilded sculpture and mosaics, the variegated marbles and shallow portals of their façades, the light aërial elegance of their campanili, are all adapted to the luminous atmosphere of a smiling land, where changing effects of natural beauty distract the attention from solidity of design and permanence of grandeur in the edifice itself.