How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Elizabeth Boyle O'Reilly

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СКАЧАТЬ diagonal-crossing ribs are round. Too wide an expanse of plain wall space was left between tribune and clearstory, for it was to take half a century longer before architects dared fill their entire upper wall with windows. Like Notre Dame of Paris, the tribunes open on the middle church by wide, graceful arches. And this smaller Notre Dame also has western towers that are connected by an open colonnade. The collegiate has no transept, and one recalls that neither had Paris Cathedral in its first plan. The flying buttresses here are among the first ever made. A striking feature of the exterior of the church is the row of litt ble oculi that light the tribunes over the aisles, some of which have been changed to windows of Rayonnant tracery. The deep galleries once were entirely vaulted by transverse half cradles borne on low lintels, an experiment in masonry roofing first tried at Tournus, but which never became popular; at Caen the tribunes of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes had been vaulted by similar half cylinders whose axial lines were at right angles to that of the nave.

      The first Gothic rose window of big dimensions adorns the west façade of Mantes collegiate. It is what they call plate tracery—that is, the pattern is formed of voids, the window being a group of variously shaped openings, and not, as in bar tracery, a single opening with the pattern made by solids, or stone mullions. The western rose at Laon stands halfway between plate and bar tracery. Mantes’ rose was the prototype for that at Chartres.

      Like most of the larger XII-century churches, the sexpartite system of vaulting was used. Mantes also followed Noyon and Senlis in having alternating piers and, like Noyon, it showed the Rhenish trait of a western transept, formed by the two lower stories of the towers and the westernmost bay of the middle vessel. Two of the portals are of the XII century, but the largest—the one under the south tower—was made by Raymond du Temple. And probably that same XIV-century architect of Charles V added the gracious chapel of Navarre which is among the best works of Rayonnant Gothic. In it are four charming statuettes of the donors, the princesses of Navarre, portrait work showing personal mannerisms. When the sister of the art-loving Valois king, Charles V, married Charles the Wicked (a scion of Capetian stock who was count in Évreux and king in Navarre) she brought the town of Mantes in her dowry, and it was probably her daughters who are sculptured in this chapel of Navarre—their gift to Mantes collegiate.

      On the site of the present church once stood a Romanesque edifice built by funds donated by William the Conqueror on his deathbed, to atone for his having set fire to the ancient church (1087). Angered by a coarse joke of the French king’s, he had sworn his usual oath, “by the splendor and resurrection of God,” that he would light a hundred thousand candles when he went to his churching Mass; so he marched against his tormentor and set fire to Mantes that lay in his path. For, as Mr. Henry Adams has picturesquely expressed it, “Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest in arms, as in architecture.” As the corpulent Conqueror rode around the place, his horse stumbled, and from the injury then received he died in Rouen in a few weeks. That burning of Mantes by the Duke of Normandy and King of England has been called the prelude to the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, whose actual span was from 1337 to 1453. And in a way Waterloo was its epilogue. The shoulder-to-shoulder fight of the ancient rivals, from 1914 to 1918, let us hope, has put the seal on their pact of peace.

      THE CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX[100]

      Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!

       White Horsemen who ride on white horses, the Knights of God!

       They, for their Lord and their Lover have sacrificed

       All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod!

       These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night,

       Swept, and they wake in white places at morningtide. …

       Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go;

       White Horsemen who ride on white horses, oh, fair to see!

       They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow,

       White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: forever He!

       —Lionel Johnson, Te Martyrum Candidatus.[101]

      To decipher Meaux Cathedral has been a student’s tour-de-force, so early and unceasing have been its rebuildings. With Troyes and Séez, it was the only Gothic cathedral that had a flaw in its structure. Begun with the choir, in the last decades of the XII century, it still retained the Romanesque idea of deep galleries over the side aisles. Whether poor foundations were laid or whether the tribune vaults were made too cumbersome, the edifice gave signals of insecurity from the start.

      As the XIII century opened, the transept and that part of the nave near it were building with the tribunes still, although by that time such galleries had fallen into disuse. Repeated restorations delayed the works. Cracks continued to show until, about 1270, when the collapse of the whole church was threatened, a complete reconstruction was undertaken by Bishop Jean de Poincy.

      Already, in 1220, the choir had been redone and two more chapels added, making five apsidioles in all. In 1270 they demolished throughout the church the tribunes over the side aisles, and thus the aisles became twice their intended height. In the first three bays of the choir were retained the arches of the tribune, so that now certain bays of the choir aisles open on the central vessel by pier arcades surmounted by false-tribune arches. Striking effect is made in the nave by some giant cylinder piers whose height is double what was originally planned and whose capitals are gems of interpretative sculpture, vine leaf and fern. Much mechanical dexterity was shown in the recutting of piers and the elimination of the tribunes, but even now a few of the shorter columns are to be found embedded in the newer parts, and a few sections of the triforium show their primitive plan.

      By the time Meaux Cathedral was completed it was practically an edifice of the end of the XIII century. Its chief patroness was the queen of Philippe-le-Bel (St. Louis’ grandson), the Jeanne of Champagne who brought that rich province to the Crown, as well as the kingdom of Navarre, the same princess who encouraged Joinville to write his reminiscences. The city of Meaux was in her dowry, and they say that her portrait was carved on a keystone of the choir. When she died, in 1305, she named the bishop of Meaux as her executor and donated a legacy to his church.

      A well-known XIV-century architect, Nicolas de Chaumes, worked on the west façade, two of whose portals are of that period, and one of the XV century. Unfortunately, use was made of a soft stone which time has sadly eroded. Flamboyant Gothic sculpture, with foliage in gracious disorder, appears in the western bays: the undulating flora of the XIV century, and the nervous, deeply indented, pointed leaves of the XV century when such complicated forms as the curly cabbage were taken as models. Wiser were the earlier sculptors who had interpreted and arranged their leaves with architectural fitness. The south portal of Meaux’s transept must have had in mind St. Stephen’s door of the cathedral at Paris. At Meaux the sculptured figures show certain mannerisms, such as the throwing out of one hip, a trait soon to be exaggerated. The carvings throughout the church were mutilated by the Huguenots in 1562, and from that date no further work was done on the edifice. One tower of the façade remains painfully stunted.

      The church of Meaux would stand well in the front rank of Gothic cathedrals were it not for certain flaws of proportion. Such exceptionally high side aisles call for a nave twice as long, and the clearstory appears dwarfed by the lofty pier arcades of the chevet. Yet though made piecemeal, and without uniformity of style in its main parts, Meaux possesses a unity of its own, and its effect as a whole is one of elegance and even radiance.

      The tomb of its greatest bishop is an immense slab of marble in the pavement of the choir. Bossuet devoted himself to his diocese for over twenty years (1681–1704). Frequently he preached in the cathedral built by the generosity of Jeanne of Champagne, the founder of the College of Navarre, where he had studied in his СКАЧАТЬ