XXII St. Pierre de St. Claude
St. Claude is charmingly situated in a romantic valley of the Jura.
The sound of mill-wheels and the sight of factory chimneys mingle inextricably with the roaring of mountain torrents and the solitude of the pine forest.
The majority of the inhabitants of these valleys lead a simple and pastoral life, with cheese-making apparently the predominant industry. Manufacturing of all kinds is carried on, in a small way, in nearly every hamlet—in tiny cottage ateliers—wood-carving, gem-polishing, spectacle and clock-making, besides turnery and wood-working of all sorts.
St. Claude, with its ancient cathedral of St. Pierre, is the centre of all these activities; which must suggest to all publicists of time-worn and ennuied lands a deal of possibilities in the further application of such industrial energies as lie close at hand.
In 1789, when Arthur Young, in his third journey through France, passed through St. Claude, the count-bishop of the diocese, the sole inheritor of its wealthy abbey foundation and all its seigneurial dependencies, had only just enfranchised his forty thousand serfs.
Voltaire, the atheist, pleaded in vain the cause of this Christian prelate, and for him to be allowed to sustain his right to bond-men; but opposition was too great, and they became free to enjoy property rights, could they but once acquire them. Previously, if childless, they had no power to bequeath their property; it reverted simply to the seigneur by custom of tradition.
In the fifth century, St. Claude was the site of a powerful abbey. It did not become an episcopal see, however, until 1742, when its first bishop was Joseph de Madet.
At the Revolution the see was suppressed, but it rose again, phoenix-like, in 1821, and endures to-day as a suffragan of Lyon et Vienne.
The cathedral of St. Pierre is a fourteenth-century edifice, with later work (seventeenth century) equally to be remarked. As a work of restoration it appears poorly done, but the entire structure is of more than ordinary interest; nevertheless it still remains an uncompleted work.
The church is of exceedingly moderate dimensions, and is in no sense a great achievement. Its length cannot be much over two hundred feet, and its width and height are approximately equal (85 feet), producing a symmetry which is too conventional to be really lovable.
Still, considering its environment and the association as the old abbey church, to which St. Claude, the bishop of Besançon, retired in the twelfth century, it has far more to offer in the way of a pleasing prospect than many cathedrals of greater architectural worth.
There are, in its interior, a series of fine choir-stalls in wood, of the fifteenth century—comparable only with those at Rodez and Albi for their excellence and the luxuriance of their carving—a sculptured Renaissance retable depicting the life of St. Pierre, and a modern high-altar. This last accessory is not as worthy an art work as the two others.