II St. Sauveur D’Aix
Aix, the former capital of Provence, one of the most famous ancient provinces, the early seat of wealth and civilization, and the native land of the poetry and romance of mediævalism, was the still more ancient Aquæ Sextiæ of the Romans—so named for the hot springs of the neighbourhood. It was their oldest colony in Gaul, and was founded by Sextius Calvinus in B. C. 123.
In King René’s time,—“le bon roi” died at Aix in 1480,—Aix-en-Provence was more famous than ever as a “gay capital,” where “mirth and song and much good wine” reigned, if not to a degenerate extent, at least to the full expression of liberty.
In 1481, just subsequent to René’s death, the province was annexed to the Crown, and fifty years later fell into the hands of Charles V., who was proclaimed King of Arles and Provence. This monarch’s reign here was of short duration, and he evacuated the city after two months’ tenure.
During all this time the church of Aix, from the foundation of the archbishopric by St. Maxine in the first century (as stated rather doubtfully in the “Gallia Christiania”), ever advanced hand in hand with the mediæval gaiety and splendour that is now past.
Who ever goes to Aix now? Not many Riviera tourists even, and not many, unless they are on a mission bent, will cross the Rhône and the Durance when such appealingly attractive cities as Arles, Avignon, and Nîmes lie on the direct pathway from north to south.
Formerly the see was known as the Province of Aix. To-day it is known as Aix, Arles, and Embrun, and covers the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône, with the exception of Marseilles, which is a suffragan bishopric of itself.
The chief ecclesiastical monuments of Aix are the cathedral of St. Sauveur, with its most unusual baptistère; the church of St. Jean-de-Malte of the fourteenth century; and the comparatively modern early eighteenth-century church of La Madeleine, with a fine “Annunciation” confidently attributed by local experts to Albrecht Dürer.
The cathedral of St. Sauveur is, in part, an eleventh-century church. The portions remaining of this era are not very extensive, but they do exist, and the choir, which was added in the thirteenth century, made the first approach to a completed structure. In the next century the choir was still more elaborated, and the tower and the southern aisle of the nave added. This nave is, therefore, the original nave, as the northern aisle was not added until well into the seventeenth century.
The west façade contains a wonderful, though non-contemporary, door and doorway in wood and stone of the early sixteenth century. This doorway is in two bays, divided by a pier, on which is superimposed a statue of the Virgin and Child, framed by a light garland of foliage and fruits. Above are twelve tiny statuettes of Sibylles or the theological virtues placed in two rows. The lower range of the archivolt is divided by pilasters bearing the symbols of the Evangelists, deeply cut arabesques of the Genii, and the four greater prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
Taken together, these late sculptures of the early sixteenth century form an unusually mixed lot; but their workmanship and disposition are pleasing and of an excellence which in many carvings of an earlier date is often lacking.
The interior shows early “pointed” and simple round arches, with pilasters and pediment which bear little relation to Gothic, and are yet not Romanesque of the conventional variety. These features are mainly not suggestive of the Renaissance either, though work of this style crops out, as might be expected, in the added north aisle of the nave.
The transepts, too, which are hardly to be remarked from the outside,—being much hemmed about by the surrounding buildings,—also indicate their Renaissance origin.
The real embellishments of the interior are: a triptych—“The Burning Bush,” with portraits of King René, Queen Jeanne de Laval, and others; another of “The Annunciation;” a painting of St. Thomas, by a sixteenth-century Flemish artist; and some sixteenth-century tapestries. None of these features, while acceptable enough as works of art, compare in worth or novelty with the tiny baptistère, which is claimed as of the sixth century.
This is an unusual work in Gaul, the only other examples being at Poitiers and Le Puy. It resembles in plan and outline its more famous contemporary at Ravenna, and shows eight antique columns, from a former temple to Apollo, with dark shafts and lighter capitals. The dome has a modern stucco finish, little in keeping with the general tone and purport of this accessory. The cloister of St Sauveur, in the Lombard style, is very curious, with its assorted twisted and plain columns, some even knotted. The origin of its style is again bespoke in certain of the round-headed arches. Altogether, as an accessory to the cathedral, if to no other extent, this Lombard detail is forceful and interesting.