X St. Pierre de Montpellier
La Ville de Montpellier
“Elle est charmante et douce...
Avec son vast ciel, toujours vibrant et pur,
............
Elle est charmante avec ses brunes jeunes filles
... le noir diamant de leurs yeux!”
—Henri de Bornier.
Montpellier is seated upon a hill, its foot washed by two small and unimportant rivers.
A seventeenth-century writer has said: “This city is not very ancient, though now it be the biggest, fairest, and richest in Languedoc, after Toulouse.”
From a passage in the records left by St. Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, it is learned that there was a school or seminary of physicians here as early as 1155, and the perfect establishment of a university was known to have existed just previous to the year 1200. This institution was held in great esteem, and in importance second only to Paris. To-day the present establishment merits like approbation, and, sheltered in part in the ancient episcopal palace, and partly enclosing the cathedral of St. Pierre, it has become inseparable from consideration in connection therewith.
The records above referred to have this to say concerning the university: “Tho’ Physic has the Precendence, yet both Parts of the Law are taught in one of its Colleges, by Four Royal Professors, with the Power of making Licentiates and Doctors.” Continuing, he says: “The ceremony of taking the M. D. degree is very imposing; if only the putting on and off, seven times, the old gown of the famous Rabelais.”
Montpellier was one of “the towns of security” granted by Henry IV. to the Protestants, but Louis XIII., through the suggestions of his cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin, forced them by arms to surrender this place of protection. The city was taken after a long siege and vigorous defence in 1622.
Before the foundation of Montpellier, the episcopal seat was at Maguelonne, the ancient Magalonum of the Romans. The town does not exist to-day, and its memory is only perpetuated by the name Villeneuve les Maguelonne, a small hamlet on the bay of that name, a short distance from Montpellier.
The Church had a foothold here in the year 636, but the ferocity of Saracen hordes utterly destroyed all vestiges of the Christian faith in their descent upon the city.
Says the Abbé Bourassé: “In the eleventh century another cathedral was dedicated by Bishop Arnaud, and the day was made the occasion of a fête, in consideration of the restoration of the church, which had been for a long time abandoned.”
It seems futile to attempt to describe a church which does not exist, and though the records of the later cathedral at Maguelonne are very complete, it must perforce be passed by in favour of its descendant at Montpellier.
Having obtained the consent of François I., the bishop of Maguelonne solicited from the pontiff at Rome the privilege of transferring the throne. In a bull given in 1536, it was decreed that this should be done forthwith. Accordingly, the bishop and his chapter transferred their dignity to a Benedictine monastery at Montpellier, which had been founded in 1364 by Pope Urban V.
The wars of the Protestants desecrated this great church, which, like many others, suffered greatly from their violence, so much so that it was shorn entirely of its riches, its reliquaries, and much of its decoration.
The dimensions of this church are not great, and its beauties are quite of a comparative quality; but for all that it is a most interesting cathedral.
The very grim but majestic severity of its canopied portal—with its flanking cylindrical pillars, called by the French tourelles élancés—gives the key-note of it all, and a note which many a more perfect church lacks.
This curious porch well bespeaks the time when the Church was both spiritual and militant, and ranks as an innovation—though an incomplete and possibly imperfect one—in the manner of finishing off a west façade. Its queer, suspended canopy and slight turreted towers are unique; though, for a fact, they suggest, in embryo, those lavish Burgundian porches; but it is only a suggestion, because of the incompleteness and bareness. However, this porch is the distinct fragment of the cathedral which will appeal to all who come into contact therewith.
The general effect of the interior is even more plain than that of the outer walls, and is only remarkable because of its fine and true proportions of length, breadth, and height.
The triforium is but a suggestion of an arcade, supported by black marble columns. The clerestory above is diminutive, and the window piercings are infrequent. At the present time the choir is hung with a series of curtains of panne—not tapestries in this case. The effect is more theatrical than ecclesiastical.
The architectural embellishments are to-day practically nil, but instead one sees everywhere large, uninterrupted blank walls without decoration of any sort.
The principal decorations of the southern portal are the only relaxation in this otherwise simple and austere fabric. Here is an elaborately carved tympanum and an ornamented architrave, which suggests that the added mellowness of a century or two yet to come will grant to it some approach to distinction. This portal is by no means an insignificant work, but it lacks that ripeness which is only obtained by the process of time.
Three rectangular towers rise to unequal heights above the roof, and, like the western porch, are bare and primitive, though they would be effective enough could one but get an ensemble view that would bring them into range. They are singularly unbeautiful, however, when compared with their northern brethren.