Chapter X: Metz

From across the Moselle, on the height just to the south of the city of Metz, is to be had one of those widely spread panoramas which defy the artist or the photographer to reproduce.

There is an old French saying that the Rhine had power; the Rhône impetuosity; the Loire nobility; and the Moselle elegance and grace. This last is well shown in the charming river-bottom which spreads itself about the ancient Mediomatricorum, as Metz was known to the Romans.

The enormously tall nave and transepts of the cathedral of Metz dominate every other structure in the city, in a fashion quite in keeping with the strategic importance of the place from a military point of view.

Time was when ecclesiastical affairs and military matters were much more closely allied than now, and certainly if there was any inspiration to be got from a highly impressive religious monument in their midst, the warriors of another day, at Metz, must have felt that they were doubly blessed.

Since the Franco-Prussian war, Metz, with Strasburg, has become transformed; but its ancient monuments still exist to charm and gratify the antiquarian. Indeed, it was as recently as 1900 that the Tour des Lennyers, a wonderful structure of Roman times, was discovered.

Metz was fortified as early as in the third century, and to-day its walls and moats, though modern,--the work of Vauban,--are still wonders of their kind.

In the Roman period the city was of great importance. In the fifth century it was attacked, taken, and destroyed by the Huns; but, when it was rebuilt and became the capital of Austrasia, its prosperity grew rapidly. In 1552 the Due de Montmorenci made himself master of the city, and some months later Henri II. made his _entrée_. During the winter of the same year it successfully resisted Charles V., thanks to François de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise.

The great abbey of St. Arnulphe disappeared at this time. It stood on the site of the present railroad station, where, in 1902, were found many fragments of religious sculptures, coming presumably from the old abbey.

In 1556-62 the citadel was constructed by Maréchal Vielleville. Within the citadel was the old church of St. Pierre, one of those minor works of great beauty which are often overlooked when summing up the treasures of a cathedral town. The old church dated originally from the seventh century, though reconstructed anew in the tenth, and again in the fifteenth century.

The walls of the surrounding fortifications are of incontestable antiquity. Beneath the pavement of the chapel have recently been found fragments of sculptured stone dating from Merovingian times.

It was during a dangerous illness at Metz that Louis XV. is said to have made the vow which led to the erection of that pagan-looking structure, the church of Sainte Genéviève, more commonly known as the Pantheon, at Paris. It is the largest modern church in France, if, indeed, one can really consider it to-day as a church.

Metz, before its annexation by Germany, was as French as Reims or Troyes. Many of the natives of the city have since left, but they have been replaced by Germans, so the population has not suffered in numbers.

Of a population of forty-five thousand, there are twenty-four thousand soldiers. Hotels, shops, and cafés have become Germanized, but, curiously enough, many, if not nearly all, of the cab-drivers speak French, and French money passes current everywhere.

Certain restaurants preserve what they call the _traditions de la cuisine française_, and in the municipal theatre a company of French players come from Nancy three times a week in the winter season.

Metz, one of the three ancient bishoprics of imperial Lorraine, now forms a part of Elsass-Lothringen, where the German Emperor reigns as emperor and not merely as King of Prussia.

The churches of Metz show very little of Romanesque influences, though it is indeed strong in churches dating from the thirteenth century onward. Early Gothic in nearly every shade of excellence is to be found in the churches of Metz, from the cathedral church of St. Stephen downwards, and, because of this, it is the Continental city where the development of the style can be most thoroughly studied and appreciated.

In many cases there are only fragments, at least, that which is to be admired is more or less fragmentary; but, in spite of that, they are none the less precious and valuable as a record.

Besides its churches, Metz has, in its ancient donjon or castle-keep, a singularly impressive monument of its past greatness, which stands in the _Geisbergstrasse_, or the _Rue de Chèvremont_, as the street is called by the French, for Metz, like Strasburg and the other cities and towns of poor rent Alsace and Lorraine, is even yet a muddle of French and German proper names.

This great pile was doubtless the former royal shelter of Theodoric and others of his line.

To-day Metz is mostly a city of strategic fortifications; but this is but one aspect, and the seat of the renowned bishopric of Lorraine has in its cathedral church an ecclesiastical monument of almost supreme rank.

St. Stephen's Cathedral is a vast structure of quaint and almost grotesque outline, when seen from across the Moselle. Its chief distinction, at first glance, is its height, which seems to dwarf all its other proportions; but in reality it is attenuated in none of its dimensions, and its clerestory is hugely impressive, where one so often finds this feature a mere range of shallow windows.

Among the great churches of Northern Europe, the cathedral of St. Stephen stands third, it being surpassed only by the cathedrals of Beauvais and Cologne.

This fact is frequently overlooked, and ordinarily Metz would be classed with that secondary group which includes Reims, Bourges, and Narbonne; but so accurate an authority as Professor Freeman vouches for the statement.

The clerestory, of a prodigious height, is borne aloft by a series of rather squat-looking pillars, but again figures demonstrate that the cathedral at Metz is truly one of the wonders of its kind.

There is a north tower which is, or was, a part of the civic establishment as well, in that it contained an alarm-bell, similar to those employed in the Netherlands, known as La Mutte. Twin towerlets straddle the nave of the cathedral in a quite unexplainable manner.

Altogether the building has a most remarkable and not wholly beautiful sky-line, to which one must become accustomed before it is wholly loved.

Decidedly the least likable portion of the exterior of St. Stephen's is the west front, which is decidedly incongruous, whereas in most places it is the west front that shines and is truly brilliant. Certainly, in this respect Metz does not follow that French tradition which, in its Gothic churches, it otherwise obeys.

St. Stephen's really rises to almost a supreme height. It has been said to exceed that of Amiens and Beauvais, but this is manifestly not so, for, if the figures are correct, it is some seven feet lower than Amiens and twenty lower than Beauvais. Still, it rises to a daring height, and its "walls of glass," with their enormously tall clerestory windows, only accentuate its airiness and grace.

This last quality is remarkable in Gothic architecture of so early a period, the thirteenth century. At St. Ouen at Rouen, to which its openness may be compared, and perhaps to Gloucester in England, the work is of a much later date.

The interior of St. Stephen's presents an equally marked effect of height and brilliancy, with perhaps an exaggeration of the ample clerestory at the expense of the triforium.

There is a remarkable symmetry in the nave and its aisles; and its strong columns, with their shafting rising to the roof groins, show a method of construction so daring that modern builders certainly would not care to copy it.

The glass of the great clerestory windows in the choir dates only from the sixteenth century, and was designed by one Bousch of Strasburg.

The windows of the north and south transepts are exceedingly brilliant specimens of the mediæval glass-workers' art. There are some fragmentary remains, in the clerestory of the nave, of glass of a much earlier period than that in the choir, possibly contemporary with the fabric itself (thirteenth century). If this is so, it is of the utmost value, worthy to be admired with the gold and jewelled treasures of the cathedral's sacristy.

In the sacristy there used to be the ring of Arnulphe and the mantle of Charles the Great, but doubts have been cast upon the latter, and the former has disappeared.

There is, somewhere about the precincts of the cathedral, a weird effigy of a monster known as the _Grauly_, which, like the _Tarasque_ at Tarascon and the dragon of St. Bertrand de Comminges, is a made-up, theatrical property which even in its symbolism is ludicrous in its false sentiment.

Besides Metz's cathedral, there is the church of St. Vincent on an island in the river, which lacks orientation and faces almost due south. It is as distinctly a German type of church as the cathedral is French; but this is more as regards its outline than anything else, for its Gothic is very, very good. Its interior is dignified, but graceful, though it lacks a triforium.

St. Martin's is a smaller church, but is contemporary with St. Stephen's and St. Vincent's (thirteenth century).

St. Maximin's is a still smaller edifice, and would be called Romanesque if German did not suit it better. It resembles somewhat the parish churches seen in the country-side in England, and is in no way remarkable or highly interesting, if we except the tall central tower.

St. Eucharius's and St. Sagelone's complete the list of the unattached churches of Metz; St. Clement's being but an attribute of the Jesuit college.

St. Eucharius's stands near what we would call the German Gate,--locally known as Deutsches Thor, or the Porte des Allemands,--a mediæval gateway built into, or built around, rather, by the modern fortifications with which the city is protected.

The church is most lofty for its size. Its pier arches are of great proportions, and its clerestory, like St. Stephen's itself, is of more than ordinarily ample dimensions. There is no triforium.

St. Sagelone's remains practically a pure Gothic example of its time, rather later than the rest of its kind in Metz. It has some fine coloured glass, in spite of the fact that its antiquity cannot be very great.

St. Clement's is a dependency of the Jesuit installation, which reflects more credit upon that order than has usually been accorded them in the arts of church-building.

It is a more or less incongruous combination of the Italian and Gothic styles, but blended with such a consummate skill that the effect can but be admired.

In form St. Clement's is frankly a _Hallenkirche_, with the three naves of equal height. In general the nave is late Gothic, with the marked tracery of its time in its fenestration.

The capitals of the piers, supporting the arches between the nave and its aisles, are stately but heavy, according to Gothic standards, and appear misplaced, luxurious though they undeniably are. St. Clement's is supposed to resemble the variety of Gothic which has been employed in Sicily, where Gothic of the best was known, but was used in conjunction with other details, which really added nothing to its value or beauty as a distinct style.

One leaves Metz with the memory full of visions of many churches and much soldiery of the conventional German type.

There is plenty, in all of these towns, to remind one of both France and Germany. In the geography of other times, Metz was Lotharingian; but French was very early the language of the city, and its prelates and churchmen, when they did not use Latin, spoke only the French tongue, and fell under French influences. Therefore it was but natural that the type of Metz's principal church should have favoured the French style, even though it developed German tendencies.