II St. Etienne de Chalons-Sur-Saône
“The cathedral at Chalons,” says Philip Gilbert Hamerton,—who knew the entire region of the Saône better perhaps than any other Anglo-Saxon,—“has twin towers, which, in the evening, at a distance, recall Notre Dame (at Paris), and there are domes, too, as in the capital.”
An imaginative description surely, and one that is doubtless not without truth were one able to first come upon this riverside city of mid-France in the twilight, and by boat from the upper river.
Chalons is an ideally situated city, with a placidness which the slow current of the Saône does not disturb. But its cathedral! It is no more like its Parisian compeer than it is like the Pyramids of Egypt.
In the first place, the cathedral towers are a weak, effeminate imitation of a prototype which itself must have been far removed from Notre Dame, and they have been bolstered and battened in a shameful fashion.
The cathedral at Chalons is about the most ancient-looking possession of the city, which in other respects is quite modern, and, aside from its charming situation and general attractiveness, takes no rank whatever as a centre of ancient or mediæval art.
Its examples of Gallic architecture are not traceable to-day, and of Roman remains it possesses none. As a Gallic stronghold,—it was never more than that,—it appealed to Cæsar merely as a base from which to advance or retreat, and its history at this time is not great or abundant.
A Roman wall is supposed to have existed, but its remains are not traceable to-day, though tradition has it that a quantity of its stones were transported by the monk Bénigne for the rotunda which he built at Dijon.
The city’s era of great prosperity was the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when its fortifications were built up anew, its cathedral finished, and fourteen churches held forth.
From this high estate it has sadly fallen, and there is only its decrepit cathedral, rebuilt after a seventeenth-century fire, and two churches—one of them modern—to uphold its ecclesiastical dignity.
The towers of the cathedral are of the seventeenth century, but the so-called “Deanery Tower” is more ancient, and suggestive of much that is militant and very little that is churchly.
The interior has been restored, not wholly with success, but yet not wholly spoiled.
In plan and arrangement it is a simple and severe church, but acceptable enough when one contemplates changes made elsewhere. Here are to be seen no debased copies of Greek or Roman orders; which is something to be thankful for.
The arches of the nave and choir are strong and bold, but not of great spread. The height of the nave, part of which has come down from the thirteenth century, is ninety feet at least.
There are well-carved capitals to the pillars of the nave, and the coloured glass of the windows of triforium and clerestory is rich without rising to great beauty.
In general the style is decidedly a mélange, though the cathedral is entitled to rank as a Gothic example. Its length is 350 feet.
The maître-autel is one of the most elegant in France.
Modern improvement has cleared away much that was picturesque, but around the cathedral are still left a few gabled houses, which serve to preserve something of the mediæval setting which once held it.
The courtyard and its dependencies at the base of the “Deanery Tower” are the chief artistic features. They appeal far more strongly than any general accessory of the cathedral itself, and suggest that they once must have been the components of a cloister.
The see was founded in the fifth century as a suffragan of Lyon.