Joris-Karl Huysmans

“ And as they walked, talking of the Cathedral, Durtal exclaimed,—
"Is it not a monstrous thing that in the splendour of this Cathedral of Chartres it is impossible to hear any genuine plain-song? I am reduced to frequenting the sanctuary only at hours when there is no high service going on. Above all I avoid being present at High Mass on Sundays; the music that is tolerated infuriates me! Is there no way of having the organist dismissed, and a clean sweep made of the precentor and the teachers in the choir-school, of packing off the basses with their vinous voices to the taverns? ”

“ Those of Notre Dame de Paris are thick-set and gloomy, almost elephantine; cleft almost from top to bottom by deep bays, they seem to mount slowly and with difficulty, and stop short, crushed as it were by the burden of sins, dragged down to earth by the wickedness of the city; we feel the effort with which they rise, and we are saddened as we contemplate those captive masses, all the more depressing by reason of the dismal hue of the louvre-boards. ”

“ In the time of Charles V. the Order of Carmelites renewed in Flanders the mystical prodigies which, four centuries before, in the Middle Ages, the Dominicans had accomplished in the Monastery of Unterlinden at Colmar.
"How such women as these carry one away and throw one, as it were! What strength of soul we see in this Marie Marguerite! What grace must have sustained her, that she could thus shed all the natural frenzy of the senses, and endure so cheerfully and bravely the most overwhelming sufferings!
"Well, now, shall I harness myself to a history of this venerable Abbess? ”

“ It has not the flaming raptures of the mystical Gothic, which finds utterance in all these soaring shafts of stone; the Romanesque lives self-centred, in reserved fervour, brooding in the depths of the soul. ”

“ Thus, even better than at Chartres, at Reims, and at Rouen, this humble sanctuary, built by Benedictine monks whose names are unknown, represents in its serpentine line, in the perspective of its aisles and the obliquity of its vaulting, the allegorical presentment of our Lord on the Cross. In all other churches the architects have to some extent imitated the cadaverous rigidity of the head fallen in death ”

“ It may be noted incidentally that the length of the cathedral figures the long-suffering of the Church in adversity; its breadth symbolizes charity, which expands the souls of men; its height, the hope of future reward; and we can then proceed to details.
"The choir and sanctuary symbolize Heaven; the nave is the emblem of the earth; as the gulf that divides the two worlds can only be passed by the help of the Cross, it was formerly the custom, now, alas, fallen into desuetude, to erect an enormous Crucifix over the grand arch between the nave and the choir. ”

“ Now consider the systematic deviation of the axis of the building; it imitates the attitude of a body bent over from the upright tree of sacrifice, and in some cathedrals—for instance, at Reims—the narrowness, the strangulation, so to speak, of the choir in proportion to the nave represents all the more closely the head and neck of a man, drooping over his shoulder when he has given up the ghost.
"This twist in the church is to be seen almost everywhere—in Saint Ouen and in the Cathedral at Rouen, in Saint Jean at Poitiers, at Tours and at Reims. ”

“ The two towers at Amiens, built, like those of the Cathedrals at Rouen and at Bourges, at different periods, do not match. They are of different heights, lame against the sky; another that is really magnificent in its solitude, and putting to shame the mediocrity of the two belfries lately erected on each side of the west front, is the Norman tower of Saint Ouen, its summit encircled by a crown. ”

“ Here was the same mystical conception of a long-drawn body and an ardent soul, which, unable to free itself completely from that body, strove to purify it by reducing it, refining it, almost distilling it to a fluid. ”

“ Others seem to have about them the children born in their image, little spires, all round them; some are covered with bosses, knobs, and blisters; others pierced like colanders and strainers, in patterns of trefoils and quaterfoils that seem to have been punched out; here we find some that are covered with ornament, with teeth like a rasp, ridges of notches, or bristling with spines; others are imbricated with scales like a fish, as we see in the older spire at Chartres; and others again, like that at Caudebec, display the emblem of the Roman Church, the triple crown of the Pope. ”

“ But allow me to assure you that though the Cathedral scorns Gregorian chants, here, at Chartres, at the little Seminary, at the church of Notre Dame de la Brèche, and at the convent of the Sisters of Saint Paul, they are sung after the Use of Solesmes, so that you can alternately attend that church and those chapels and the Cathedral, since perfection is to be found in neither. ”

“ It is almost certain that the arcades of the forest were the starting-point for the mystic avenues of our aisles. And again, look at the pillars. I was speaking of those at Beauvais as suggesting the beech and the reed; if you think of the columns at Laon, they have nodes all up their stems, resembling the regular swelling of bamboos, to the point of imitation. Note also the stone flora of the capitals and the pendants of the vault, terminating the long ribs of the arches. Here the animal kingdom seems to have inspired the architect. ”

“ It must constantly be repeated; every part of a church and every material object used in divine worship is representative of some theological truth. In the script of architecture everything is a reminiscence, an echo, a reflection, and every part is connected to form a whole. ”

“ Living the austere life of a Carmelite, which she aggravated for herself by fearful mortifications, she was always tolerant to others, and although she was known to murmur, so great were her bodily sufferings, "Till the Day of Judgment, none can ever know what I endure!" ”

“ As a writer, no doubt she is not supreme, and the poverty of her borrowed style is sometimes painful; still, considering that she lived in the seventeenth century, she was at any rate not a mere scribbler of vapid aspirations, like most of the prosy pietists of the time. ”

“ We must wait till the end of the fifteenth, when France drew breath, to see architecture start into life once more.
"It must be added that frequent conflagrations at various times destroyed a whole church, and that it had to be rebuilt from the foundations; others, like Beauvais, fell down, and had to be reconstructed, or, if money was lacking, simply strengthened and the gaps repaired. ”

“ It filled more than a hundred phials, each containing two ounces, several of them being still preserved in the Carmels of Belgium; and her remains when buried were not decomposed, but had assumed the golden brown colour of a date.
"A book might really be written on the life of this admirable woman," thought Durtal. "And then what a group of wonderful nuns were those about her! The convents of Antwerp, Mechlin, and Oirschot swarmed with saintly nuns. ”

“ The plan and photographs of this basilica are to be found in an interesting volume that I can lend you; the author, the Abbé Picardat, is the Curé of the church. You will from them readily perceive that the curve of the plan is that of a body leaning on one side, drawn out and bending over.
"And the movement of the body is represented by the curve of the axis, beginning at the very first bay and continued along the nave, the choir, and the apse to the end, which bends aside to imitate the droop of the head. ”

“ Would you like me now to inform you in a few words as to the allegories set forth in the aisles?"
And on seeing Durtal agree by a nod, the priest went on,—
"You are, of course, aware that almost all our cathedrals are cruciform. In the primitive Church, it is true, you will find that some were constructed of a circular form and surmounted by a dome. But most of these were not built by our forefathers; they are ancient temples of the heathen adapted by the Catholics, with more or less alteration, to their own use, or imitated from such temples before the Romanesque style was recognized. ”

“ Yes, and like other Gothic cathedrals, it is the completest and most trustworthy collection of symbolism; for the allegories we fancy we can interpret in Romanesque churches are on the whole but artificial and doubtful—and that is quite conceivable. The Romanesque is a convert, a pagan turned monk. It was not born Catholic as the pointed arch was; it only became so by baptism conferred by the Church. Christianity discovered it in the Roman basilica, and utilized while modifying it ”

“ This Chapter, filled up exclusively from the ranks of rich and high-born women, while the Abbess, nominated by the Sovereign, assumed the title of Princess of Nivelles, led a devout and frivolous life, passing strange. Not only might these semi-nuns go out walking whenever they thought fit, they had a right to live at home for a certain part of their time, and might even marry after obtaining the consent of the Abbess. ”

“ It is all very well for those who sin to be sad; but we ought to have twice as much joy as the angels, since we, like them, fulfil the will of God, and we, in addition, can suffer for His glory, which they can never do. ”

“ Most of the artists who built them are unknown; nay, the age of the stones is rarely a matter of certainty, for the greater part of them have been wrought upon by the alluvium of ages.
"They almost all cover intervals of two, three, or four centuries each; they extend from the beginning, of the thirteenth century till the first years of the sixteenth.
"And on reflection that is very intelligible.
"It has been accurately remarked that the thirteenth century was the great period of cathedral-building. It gave birth to almost every one of them ”

“ Meanwhile a good man, one Sylvester Lindermans, had determined to found a Carmel on an estate he possessed at Oirschot, in Holland. As is ever the case when a convent is to be established, tribulations abounded. It seemed, in fact, that the time was ill-chosen for transferring the Sisters to a town in arms against the Catholics, across a country infested by bands of armed Protestants. ”

“ Now behind this altar we find the apse, assuming in most cathedrals the form of a semicircle. There are exceptions; to mention three: at Poitiers, at Laon, and in Notre Dame du Fort at Étampes the wall is square, as in the ancient civic basilicas, and does not describe the sort of half-moon, of which the significance is one of the most beautiful inventions of symbolism. ”