St Giles' Cathedral

“ Restoration following restoration, chapels of the XVIII century, new vaultings, debased and conglomerate Gothic, and spectacular decorations of gilded wood have destroyed the architectural value and real beauty of the Cathedral's interior. Yet in the dim light, which is the light of its every-day life, the great height of the church and its sombre massiveness are not without impressiveness.
The exterior dominates the city, but it is so hopelessly confused and commonplace that its natural dignity is lost. ”

“ The Mediævalism of the old writers seems an endless pageant, in which indefinitely gorgeous armies “march up the hill and then march down again;” in newer histories this has disappeared in the long struggle of one class with another; and in neither do we reach the individual, nor see the daily life of the people who are the backbone of a nation. Yet these are the people we must know if we are to have a right conception of the Cathedral's place in the living interest of the Middle Ages. For the Bishop's church was in every sense a popular church. ”

“ For so saintly a man must not be taken as a hater of women, or his beatification as the son of a woman would have no sense, and would call his incorruptibility into question, and his saintliness of character in grave doubt.
The chief entrance to the Cathedral was originally in the west end, but when Bishop Pudsey built the Galilee Chapel, a doorway was constructed in the north end, framed in a rich and deeply recessed Norman arch, doing away with the necessity of the great entrance. ”

“ No dates of that period [Pg 106] are sufficiently accurate to rely upon; but its interest lies not so much in chronology as in its portrayal of the general type. The interior is the usual little hall church of the XI century, with its aisle-less nave of five bays, and plain piers supporting a tunnelled roof, with double vault arches. Beyond the last bay, over the choir, is the Cathedral's octagonal dome, and from the rounded windows of its lantern comes much of the light of the interior, which is sombre and without other windows of importance. ”

“ The ninety-three windows of stained glass fill the interior with a soft and richlytinted light, mellower and more gentle than the sombre twilight of the Gothic Cathedrals of Europe. The wealth lavished on the smaller chapels and shrines is prodigious, and the high altar, inclosed within a gilded railing fifty feet high, is probably the most enormous mass of wood-carving in existence. The Cathedral, in fact, is encumbered with its riches. While they bewilder you as monuments of human labor and patience, they detract from the grand simplicity of the building. ”

“ It stands in the midst of the cold, white town, and has a high-shouldered look to a spectator accustomed to the minsters of England, which cover a great space of ground in proportion to their height. The impression the latter give is of magnitude and mass; this French Cathedral strikes one as lofty. The exterior is venerable, tho but little time-worn by the action of the atmosphere; and statues still keep their places in numerous niches, almost as perfect as when first placed there in the thirteenth century. The principal doors are deep, elaborately wrought, pointed arches ”

“ The piers are heavy and severe; and between them are alcoves, used as chapels. The choir, narrower than the nave, is preceded by the usual dome, and beyond it is a little unused apse, concealed from the rest of the interior by a wall. Unimportant windows built with distinctly utilitarian purpose successfully light this small, simple room, and no kindly shadow hides its bareness or diminishes the unhappy effect of the paintings which disfigure [Pg 180] the walls. The Cathedral's exterior is so surrounded by irregular old houses that the traveller had discovered it with some difficulty. ”

“ There is no façade portal, and a small door-way in the north side leads into the great vaulted hall, one of the most usual and commonplace forms of the Gothic interior of the South. This room, which is painted, receives light from a beautiful rose-window at the West, and a series of small roses, like miniatures of the greater one, are cut in the upper walls of the nave; and little chapels, characterised by the same heavy monotony which hangs like a pall over the whole Cathedral, are lost in the church's capacious flanks. ”

“ It is a person, as it were, as well. It would be well, indeed, if it might have communicated a little of its personality to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has a romanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower. One sees from without, at a glance, the peculiarity of the church—the disparity between the romanesque nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a period a hundred years later. ”

“ Architects of the Gothic period were unable to resist the temptation of continuing a Romanesque nave with a choir of their own school, and builders of the XVIII century went still further and added a showy Louis XV façade to a modest Romanesque Cathedral. Some churches, built in times of religious storm and stress, show the preoccupation of their patrons or the lack of talent of their constructors ”

“ In a few seconds its walls are hideously aglow, and the people in the valley—although they know the truth—groan aloud, so real is the illusion. The nave lines of the Cathedral are silhouetted as it burns, the fires along the walls growing brighter, spread gradually at first,—then rapidly, and the whole Cité is the prey of great, waving clouds of flame and smoke. Men and women, as if fascinated by this lurid and magnificent destruction, press forward to get the last view of the Cathedral's lovely rose, or the peaked roof of some tower which is dear to them. ”

“ A few stones still exist of the XI century structure, void of form or architectural significance, and the ancient name of Sainte-Marie-Majeure now protects a Cathedral built in the most depressing style of the industrious Philistines of the XVII and XVIII centuries. It is not a Provençal nor a truly “maritime” church, it is not a fortress nor a defence, nor a work of any architectural beauty. It has blatancy, size, pretension,—a profusion of rich incongruities; and although religiously interesting from its chapels and shrines, it is architecturally obtrusive and monstrous. ”

“ There was a great resort of pilgrims to this shrine in mediæval times. The pavement of the choir is worthy of attention. It is modern; around the lectern are the heads of the twelve Apostles, and of the four doctors of the Church—SS. Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius and Chrysostom. On the east end are representations of the Passover, and some fragments of tesselated pavement are inserted here which came from the Temple at Jerusalem. The stained glass is all modern. The Cathedral has a rare treasure of the seventeenth century, a carved narwhal tusk, beautifully carved by a Flemish artist. ”

“ The first glimpse of the interior is so relieving that one is not quick to notice its lack of architectural unity. The few windows give a soft light, and the brown of the stone has a mellowness that is both rich and reposeful. If the Cathedral could have been finished in the style of the first bays of the nave, it would have been a nobly dignified example of the Romanesque. Could it have been re-built in the slender Gothic of the last bay, it would have been [Pg 87] an exquisite example of Provençal Gothic. ”

“ The greatest credit is due to all concerned in the hazardous and most difficult task of saving the falling tower. The Grammar School was removed from the Lady Chapel, and much done to restore the building to its ancient beauty. In 1871 it was raised to the dignity of a Cathedral; and surely no church more worthily deserved this honour. In quite recent times injudicious "restoration" has wrought terrible mischief. The west front has been entirely modernised, and much else has been "restored" beyond all knowledge of English Gothic art ”

“ It is not bareness, but beautiful firmness, which refreshes and uplifts the heart of man as the sight of some island mountain rising sheer from the sea.
The exterior of the Cathedral, imposing from a distance, is rather complicated in its unfinished compromise of detail. In the XV century, two towers were built which flank the western end as towers usually flank a façade; and this gives the church a foreshortened effect. Of real façade [Pg 260] there is none, and the front wall which protects the choir is plainly temporary. ”

“ The new church of St. Giles’s, says the author of The Review of the Public Buildings, is one of the most simple and elegant of the modern structures: it is 42raised at a very little expence, has very few ornaments, and little beside the propriety of its parts, and the harmony of the whole, to excite attention, and challenge applause: yet still it pleases, and justly too; the east end is both plain and majestic, and there is nothing in the west to object to, but the smallness of the doors, and the poverty of appearance that must necessarily follow. ”

“ Of this building little now remains, it having been destroyed by an accidental fire in 1137. It remained in a desolate state till Archbishop Roger rebuilt the apsidal choir and crypt (1154-1191) . To this was added the south transept by Archbishop Walter de Grey (1215-1255) in the reign of Henry III., whilst the north transept and the central tower were erected by John le Romaine, who was at that time treasurer of the Cathedral. The two transepts, besides the crypt, are the oldest portions of the present building. They belong to the best years of the Early English style. ”

“ The church was finished by the sixty-fifth bishop, Guillaume de la Voulte, in the last years of the XIV century.
To approach the cathedral at its apse end is not so picturesque as from the river side, but it is formidable enough. The prodigious apse rises abruptly, imperiously, from the town square. One fairly shivers beneath its Tolosan brick walls, overtowering and overpowering, broken merely by a few narrow windows—surely the narrowest ever made in a Gothic church—and by uniform bastion-tower buttresses. ”

“ The lateral naves, in contrast, are exceedingly narrow and have high galleries supported by large monolithic columns. These naves are prolonged into an ambulatory, each of whose chapels, in consonance with the Cathedral's colossal proportions, is as large as many a church. The building stone of the interior is grey and pink, with white marble used decoratively for capitals and bases; and these combinations of tints which would seem almost too delicate, too effeminate, for so large a building, are made rich and effective by their very mass, [Pg 60] the gigantic sizes which the plan exacts. ”

“ As we approach, the Cathedral grows much less imposing, and its façade gives the impression of an unpleasant conglomeration of styles. It is not a fortress church, yet it was evidently built for defence; it is Gothic, yet the lightness and grace of that art are sacrificed to the massiveness and resistive strength, imperatively required by southern Cathedrals in times of wars and bellicose heretics. The whole building seems a compromise between necessity and art. ”

“ Republicanism in the south country is not too friendly to the Church, kings and queens no longer come with prodigal gifts, and Sainte-Anne of Apt has not the peasant strength of Sainte-Anne of Auray. And in spite of the great feast-day of July, in spite of Aptoisian pride, in spite of the devotion and prayers of faithful worshippers, the Cathedral of Apt is a church of past rather than of present glories. ”

“ On the centre column is a figure of San Froilan, at one time Bishop of Leon.
A beautiful balustrade follows the sky-line of the whole Cathedral. This is broken by many pinnacles, some of which are spiral, with others on the façades and finishing the supports of the flying buttresses, give the exterior a resemblance to a forest of small spires.
The interior is a marvel of beauty and lightness. The nave and aisles consist of six bays, no lateral chapels disfigure the latter with chirrigueresque atrocities. The triforium runs round the whole Cathedral. ”

“ Then came the trouble of the Reformation period, when altars were destroyed, shrines pillaged of their gold and ornaments, and the whole church ransacked of its treasures. Further spoliation and destruction were wrought by the Parliamentary soldiers under Waller, who "plundered the Cathedral, seized upon the vestments and ornaments of the church, together with the consecrated plate serving for the altar; they left not so much as a cushion for the pulpit, nor a chalice for the Blessed Sacraments ”

“ The northern portal itself is practically hidden by the chapels and cloisters. It is fine Gothic work. A Virgin and Child form a mullion in its centre, while very worldly-looking women parade{116} in its archivolts. Everywhere are the arms of the United Kingdoms. A great portion of the ancient tapestry blue and Veronese red coloring is still preserved, throwing out the old Gothic figures in their true tints.
This aerial tabernacle, so rich and yet so simple, lies in the heart of a city so fabulously old that the Cathedral itself belongs rather to its later days. ”

“ Architects and workmen put their very souls into them and they will always be of interest. It is for this reason, that the casual visitor at all times and in all moods finds them ever a source of constantly renewed pleasure, no matter how many times they may be seen.
Elizabeth Robbins Pennell has expressed this power of Cathedrals to please at all times, even after they have been often seen and are very well known, in a recent number of the Century, in describing the great Cathedral of Notre Dame, "Often as I have seen Notre Dame," she says, "the marvel of it never grows less. ”