Chapter XXVIII: Liège

The natural highway from Antwerp and Brussels to the Rhine lies through Liège and Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, as the Germans call the latter.

Wordsworth, in his wonderful travel poem, wrote of the Meuse, which flows by Liège on its way to the Royal Ardennes, in a way which should induce many sated travellers to follow in his footsteps, and know something of the fascinating charm of this most fertile and perhaps the most picturesque of all the rivers of Europe.

"What lovelier home could gentle fancy choose?
In this the stream, whose cities, heights and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the morn with pearly dews.

* * * * *

"How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its gray locks clustering in pensive shade,
That, shap'd like old monastic turrets, rise,
From the smooth meadow ground serene and still."

As one journeys on to Liège, Roman influences have left many and visible remains.

Crossing the plain of Neervinden, one enters the province of the Liègeois, where the French were defeated by the Austrians in 1793, thus releasing Belgium from the Gallic yoke.

At Landen one recalls that it is the town of the inception of the family of Charlemagne which gave to France her second race of kings.

Liège has been called the Birmingham of Continental Europe. It might better be called one of the foremost industrial centres of the world, for such it is to-day.

It is beautifully placed in an amphitheatre-like valley, and its tall chimneys, its smoke, and its grind of wheels bespeak an activity and unrest of which the former ages knew not.

Formerly the Liègeois were a turbulent and truculent folk, if one is to believe history.

If, however, one does not care to go back to history, he might turn to the pages of "Quentin Durward" and read of the spirit of romance which once surrounded Liège and its people.

The famous "Legend of the Liègeois" recounts how a working blacksmith found an inexhaustible supply of coals for his forge through the aid of a gnomish old man.

Previously the smith's fires had burned low, and only the old man's song inspired him to forage on the hillside, with the result that the future prosperity of the city grew up from the accessibility of this inexhaustible coal supply.

The old man's story ran thus:

"Wine's good in wintry weather.
Up the hillside near the heather,
Go and gather the black earth,
It shall give your fire birth.
Ill fares the hide when the buckler wants mending,
Ill fares the plough when the coulter wants tending."

When Liège, through its prosperity, had grown to good proportions, its government was assigned to a sort of prelate-proprietor.

These princely prelates were often but lads of eighteen or twenty, who became identified with the Church, frequently enough, simply because of the power it gave them.

The craftsmen and artisans of the city bought many rights from time to time from the bishops, and finally wrested the power from out of the hands of the Church, much as did the burghers of other cities from their feudal lords.

Then followed the struggle, which in Flanders raged perhaps more bitterly than elsewhere in Europe; the rising, where the many fought against the privileged few, and much riot and bloodshed was caused on all sides.

Then came first the burgher heroes of Liège, who, like their confrères in Ghent and Bruges, found in many instances the martyrdom of the patriot.

In the Place St. Lambert formerly stood--until 1801, when it was removed after having been damaged by a mob--the former cathedral of St. Lambert, which took its name from the first bishop of Liège. This ancient cathedral was of much grandeur and magnificence, attributes which the present cathedral of St. Paul decidedly lacks.

It was in this venerable cathedral of St. Lambert that Quentin Durward went to hear mass, as we learn from Scott's novel, and here also, after the famous siege of Liège by Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, the two princes themselves repaired for the same purpose. St. Lambert of Liège and the three Kings of Cologne were, it would appear, the chief patrons to whom Quentin and his early followers made their vows.

The bishopric was founded by Héraclius in 968, and a church, of which the present choir is a part, was built upon the site of the present St. Paul's in the thirteenth century. The see was formerly a suffragan of Cologne, and the only bishopric in the Low Countries except Tournai and Utrecht.

The present cathedral is consistently enough a Gothic church, but it is not a satisfactory example, in spite of its magnificent proportions.

Of a cruciform plan, and with a nave which was only completed in 1528, it is a poor apology for a great Gothic church, such as we know at Metz, Nancy, or even at Brussels.

Its western tower, satisfactory enough in itself, is crowned with a ludicrous spire, which dates only from 1812.

Since St. Lambert's has disappeared, and the present St. Paul's dates only from the ante-Revolutionary days, the chief ecclesiastical treasure of the city is the Église St. Jacques. It was founded in 1014 by the Bishop Baudry II., but the Romanesque tower to the west is of the century following, and the whole fabric was very much modified in 1513-38.

It is a magnificent flamboyant Gothic church of quite the first rank, when compared with others of its kind elsewhere.

It has an ample nave and aisles with a polygonal choir and a series of radiating chapels which are singularly beautiful.

The magnificent north portal is an addition of the sixteenth century.

The interior has been called Spanish in its motive. Certainly it is not quite like any other Gothic forms we know in these parts, and does bear some resemblance to that peculiar variety of Gothic which belongs to Spain.

The choir has some fine glass showing the armorial bearings of former patrons of the church.

There is a beautiful carved stone staircase and much sculptured stonework in the choir.

The organ-buffet is ornate, even of its kind,--a masterpiece of cabinet-making,--and was the work of Andre Severin of Maestricht in 1673.

The left transept, which is some thirty feet longer than the right, has a fine painting of a "Mater Dolorosa," while, opposite, is a stone monument to the founder of the church, Baudry II., of Renaissance workmanship.

St. Jean is another pre-tenth-century foundation of the Bishop Notger, somewhat after the plan of the "round church" at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was entirely rebuilt, however, in the eighteenth century, though the original octagon was kept intact.

At some distance from the city, on a height which may be truly called dominating, is the church of St. Martin, founded in 962, and reconstructed, after the Gothic manner of the time, contemporary with St. Jacques. Of recent times it has been restored. If any separation or division of its parts can be made, one concludes that the choir is German, and its nave French.

In 1246 there was held in this church a _Fête Dieu_ following upon a vision of Ste. Julienne, the abbess of Cornillon near Liège. The fête was ordained by Pope Urbain IV., who himself had been a canon of the cathedral of Liège.

Ste. Croix was another of Notger's foundations, in 979, on the site of an ancient château.

The choir was built toward 1175, and has an octagonal tower with a gallery of small columns just under the roof, after the manner known as distinctly Rhenish.

The church exhibits thoroughly that Rhine manner of building which made combined use of the Gothic and Romanesque,--in bewildering fashion, to one who has previously known only the comparatively pure types of France.

The nave and its aisles rise to the same height, but the apsidal choir is aisleless.

The general effect of the interior is light and graceful, with circular columns in a blue-gray stone, which is very beautiful.

A series of fourteenth or fifteenth century "Stations of the Cross" fill the arches of the transepts; quite an unusual arrangement of this feature, and one which seems well considered.

St. Barthélemy's is Liège's other great church. It is a _basilica_ of five naves and two Romanesque towers. It dates in reality from the twelfth century, but has been greatly modernized.

St. Barthélemy's might have been a highly interesting example of a Romanesque church had it not been desecrated by late Italian details.

St. Barthélemy's has a twelfth-century art treasure in a brazen font, cast in 1112 by Patras, a brass-founder of Dinant on the Meuse. Its bowl depicts five baptismal scenes in high relief, each accompanied by a descriptive legend. Upon the rim of the bowl is the following legend:

"_Bissenis bobus pastorum forma notatur,
Quos et apostolice commendat gratia vite,
Officiiq; gradus quo fluminis impetus bujus
Letificat sanctam purgatis civibus urbem._"