III St. Reparata de Nice
“What would you, then? I say it is most engaging, in winter when the strangers are here, and all work day and night; but it is a much better place in summer, when one can take their ease.”
—Paul Arène.
Whatever may be the attractions of Nice for the travelled person, they certainly do not lie in or about its cathedral. The guide-books call it simply “the principal ecclesiastical edifice... of no great interest,” which is an apt enough qualification.
In a book which professes to treat of the special subject of cathedral churches, something more is expected, if only to define the reason of the lack of appealing interest.
One might say with the Abbé Bourassé,—who wrote of St. Louis de Versailles,—“It is cold, unfeeling, and without life;” or he might dismiss it with a few words of lukewarm praise, which would be even less satisfying.
More specifically the observation might be passed that the lover of churches will hardly find enough to warrant even passing consideration on the entire Riviera.
This last is in a great measure true, though much of the incident of history and romance is woven about what—so far as the church-lover is concerned—may be termed mere “tourist points.”
At all events, he who makes the round, from Marseilles to San Remo in Italy, must to no small extent subordinate his love of ecclesiastical art and—as do the majority of visitors—plunge into a whirl of gaiety (sic) as conventional and unsatisfying as are most fulsome, fleeting pleasures.
The sensation is agreeable enough to most of us, for a time at least, but the forced and artificial gaiety soon palls, and he who puts it all behind him, and strikes inland to Aix and Embrun and the romantically disposed little cathedral towns of the valley of the Durance, will come once again into an architectural zone more in comport with the subject suggested by the title of this book.
It is curious to note that, with the exception of Marseilles and Aix, scarce one of the suffragan dioceses of the ancient ecclesiastical province of Aix, Arles, and Embrun is possessed of a cathedral of the magnitude which we are wont to associate with the churchly dignity of a bishop.
St. Reparata de Nice is dismissed as above; that of Antibes was early transferred or combined with that of Grasse; Grasse itself endured for a time—from 1245 onward—but was suppressed in 1790; Glandève, Senez, and Riez were combined with Digne; while Fréjus has become subordinate to Toulon, though it shares episcopal dignity with that city.
In spite of these changes and the apparently inexplicable tangle of the limits of jurisdiction which has spread over this entire region, religion has, as might be inferred from a study of the movement of early Christianity in Gaul, ever been prominent in the life of the people, and furthermore is of very long standing.
The first bishop of Nice was Amantius, who came in the fourth century. With what effect he laboured and with what real effect his labours resulted, history does not state with minutiæ. The name first given to the diocese was Cemenelium.
In 1802 the diocese of Nice was allied with that of Aix, but in the final readjustment its individuality became its own possession once more, and it is now a bishopric, a suffragan of Marseilles.
As to architectural splendour, or even worth, St. Reparata de Nice has none. It is a poor, mean fabric in the Italian style; quite unsuitable in its dimensions to even the proper exploitation of any beauties that the style of the Renaissance may otherwise possess.
The general impression that it makes upon one is that it is but a makeshift or substitute for something more pretentious which is to come.
The church dates from 1650 only, and is entirely unworthy as an expression of religious art or architecture. The structure itself is bare throughout, and what decorative embellishments there are—though numerous—are gaudy, after the manner of stage tinsel.