XIII St. Etienne de Toulouse
The provincialism of Toulouse has been the theme of many a French writer of ability,—offensively provincial, it would seem from a consensus of these written opinions.
“Life and movement in abundance, but what a life!”... “The native is saved from coarseness by his birth, but after a quarter of an hour the substratum shows itself.”... “The working girl is graceful and has the vivacity of a bird, but there is nothing in her cackle.”... “How much more beautiful are the stars that mirror themselves in the gutter of the Rue du Bac.”... “There is a yelp in the accents of the people of the town.”
Contrariwise we may learn also that “the water is fine,” “the quays are fine,” and “fine large buildings glow in the setting sun in bright and softened hues,” and “in the far distance lies the chain of the Pyrenees, like a white bed of watery clouds,” and “the river, dressed always in smiling verdure, gracefully skirts the city.”
These pessimistic and optimistic views of others found the contributors to this book in somewhat of a quandary as to the manner of mood and spirit in which they should approach this provincial capital.
They had heard marvels of its Romanesque church of St. Saturnin, perhaps the most perfect and elaborate of any of its kind in all France; of the curious amalgamated edifice, now the cathedral of St. Etienne, wherein two distinct church bodies are joined by an unseemly ligature; of the church of the Jacobins; and of the “seventy-seven religious establishments” enumerated by Taine.
All these, or less, were enough to induce one to cast suspicion aside and descend upon the city with an open mind.
Two things one must admit: Toulouse does somewhat approach the gaiety of a capital, and it is provincial.
Its list of attractions for the visitor is great, and its churches numerous and splendid, so why carp at the “ape-like manners” of the corner loafers, who, when all is said, are vastly less in number here than in many a northern centre of population.
The Musée is charming, both as to the disposition of its parts and its contents. It was once a convent, and has a square courtyard or promenade surrounded by an arcade. The courtyard is set about with green shrubs, and a lofty brick tower, pierced with little arched windows and mullioned with tiny columns, rises skyward in true conventual fashion.
Altogether the Musée, in the attractiveness of its fabric and the size and importance of its collections, must rank, for interest to the tourist, at the very head of those outside Paris itself.
As for the churches, there are many, the three greatest of which are the cathedral of St. Etienne, St. Saturnin, and the Église des Jacobins; in all is to be observed the universal application or adoption of des matériaux du pays—bricks.
In the cathedral tower, and in that of the Église des Jacobins, a Gothic scheme is worked out in these warm-toned bricks, and forms, in contrast with the usual execution of a Gothic design, a most extraordinary effect; not wholly to the detriment of the style, but certainly not in keeping with the original conception and development of “pointed” architecture.
In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc thoroughly and creditably restored St. Saturnin at great expense, and by this treatment it remains to-day as the most perfectly preserved work extant of its class.
It is vast, curious, and in a rather mixed style, though thoroughly Latin in motive.
It is on the border-line of two styles; of the Italian, with respect to the full semicircular arches and vaulting of the nave and aisles; the square pillars destitute of all ornament, except another column standing out in flat relief—an intimation of the quiet and placid force of their functions.
With the transition comes a change in the flowered capitals, from the acanthus to tracery and grotesque animals.
There are five domes covering the five aisles, each with a semicircular vault. The walls, with their infrequent windows, are very thick.
The delightful belfry—of five octagonal stages—which rises from the crossing of the transepts, presents, from the outside, a fine and imposing arrangement. So, too, the chapelled choir, with its apse of rounded vaults rising in imposing tiers. This fine church is in direct descent from the Roman manner; built and developed as a simple idea, and, like all antique and classical work,—approaching purity,—is a living thing, in spite of the fact that it depicts the sentiment of a dead and gone past.
It might not be so successfully duplicated to-day, but, considering that St. Saturnin dates from the eleventh century, its commencement was sufficiently in the remote past to allow of its having been promulgated under a direct and vigorous Roman influence.
The brick construction of St. Saturnin and of the cathedral is not of that justly admired quality seen in the ancient Convent of the Jacobins, which dates from the thirteenth century. Here is made perhaps the most beautiful use of this style of mediæval building. It is earlier than the Pont de Montauban, the churches at Moissac or Lombez, and even the cathedral at Albi, but much later than the true Romanesque brickwork, which alternated rows of brick with other materials.
The builders of Gallo-Romain and Merovingian times favoured this earlier method, but work in this style is seldom met with of a later date than the ninth century.
The Église of St. Saturnin shows, in parts, brickwork of a century earlier than the Église des Jacobins, but, as before said, it is not so beautiful.
When the Renaissance came to deal with brique, it did not do so badly. Certainly the domestic and civil establishments of Touraine in this style—to particularize only one section—are very beautiful. Why the revival was productive of so much thorough badness when it dealt with stone is one of the things which the expert has not as yet attempted to explain; at least, not convincingly.
The contrasting blend of the northern and southern motive in the hybrid cathedral at Toulouse will not remain unnoticed for long after the first sensation of surprise at its curious ground-plan passes off.
Here are seen a flamboyant northern choir and aisles in strange juxtaposition with a thirteenth-century single vaulted nave, after the purely indigenous southern manner.
This nave nearly equals in immensity those in the cathedrals of Albi and Bordeaux. It has the great span of sixty-two feet, necessitating the employment of huge buttresses, which would be remarkable anywhere, in order to take the thrust. The unobstructed flooring of this splendid nave lends an added dignity of vastness. Near the vaulted roof are the only apertures in the walls. Windows, as one knows them elsewhere, are practically absent.
The congregations which assemble in this great aisleless nave present a curiously animated effect by reason of the fact that they scatter themselves about in knots or groups rather than crowding against either the altar-rail or pulpit, occasionally even overflowing into the adjoining choir. The nave is entirely unobstructed by decorations, such as screens, pillars, or tombs. It is a mere shell, sans gallery, sans aisles, and sans triforium.
The development of the structure from the individual members of nave and choir is readily traced, and though these parts show not the slightest kind of relationship one to the other, it is from these two fragmentary churches that the completed, if imperfect, whole has been made.
The west front, to-day more than ever, shows how badly the cathedral has been put together; the uncovered bricks creep out here and there, and buildings to the left, which formerly covered the incongruous joint between the nave and choir, are now razed, making the patchwork even more apparent. The square tower which flanks the portal to the north is not unpleasing, and dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The portal is not particularly beautiful, and is bare of decorations of note. It appears to have been remodelled at some past time with a view to conserving the western rose window.
There are no transepts or collateral chapels, which tends to make the ground-plan the more unusual and lacking in symmetry.
The choir (1275-1502) is really very beautiful, taken by itself, far more so than the nave, from which it is extended on a different axis.
It was restored after a seventeenth-century fire, and is supposed to be less beautiful to-day than formerly.
There are seventeen chapels in this choir, with much coloured glass of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, all with weird polychromatic decorations in decidedly bad taste.
Toulouse became a bishopric in the third century, with St. Saturnin as its first bishop. It was raised to the rank of archiepiscopal dignity in 1327, a distinction which it enjoys to-day in company with Narbonne. Six former suffragan bishoprics, Pamiers, Rieux, Mirepoix, Saint-Papoul, Lombez, and Lavaur were suppressed at the Revolution.
In the magnificent Musée of the city is un petit monument, without an inscription, but bearing a cross gammée or Swastika, and a palm-leaf, symbols of the divine Apollo and Artemis. It seems curious that this tiny record in stone should have been found, as it was, in the mountains which separate the sources of the Garonne and the Adour, as the Swastika is a symbol supposedly indigenous to the fire and sun-worshippers of the East, where it figures in a great number of their monuments.
It is called, by the local antiquary, a Pyrenean altar. If this is so, it is of course of pagan origin, and is in no way connected with Christian art.