The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X

In 1830 another bouleversement took place, and the law of the Constituante was promulgated once more; but inasmuch as some former heroes had found their way, through change of opinion, into the sewers, it was decreed that nobody's ashes should be considered worthy of burial in the national Walhalla until ten years had elapsed from the time of death. Thus citizens could be turned into les grands hommes in a comparatively short period, as compared to the years often required for beatification or canonization. The second Republic also busied itself with lowering the cross, and replacing the inscription Aux grands hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante. It was used as an ambulance during the 1848 troubles, but restored to divine service by that devoted son of the Church, Louis-Napoléon, soon after his iniquitous massacre of the people in the streets of the city; and then, having endowed himself with Imperial honours, he obtained the aid of the archbishop to create a number of chaplains to serve at the altar of S. Geneviève. The decree of 1851, which took "ultérieurement des mesures pour régler l'exercise permanent de culte catholique," only lasted nineteen years. When the city was besieged, the permanency of the services exploded like the bombs from Mont Valérien, and the crypt became a powder-magazine. The church was shored up, the windows were bricked, and the interior was filled with some 30,000 bundles of straw, as a precaution against the enemy's artillery. But the German invasion left the building as it found it, and the troubles in the immediate future were the work of the Comité central. The soldiers were replaced by National Guards, who began their occupation by industriously sawing off the arms of the crosses upon the pediment, and at the summit of the dome, and converting the emblems of Christianity into flagstaffs for the red flag of the Commune. From the 26th March until the 24th May it waved aloft in all its pride; but upon the latter day it saw the church occupied by the Versaillais, who entered just in time to save the building from the vengeance of the Fedérés, who had threatened it with fire. Like all the other churches and public buildings, the Panthéon suffered far more from the shells of the Communists than from those of the enemy; and it took some years before all the repairs were executed, and "le plus beau gâteau de Savoie qu'on est jamais fait en pierre"78 was restored to its former condition. Some few years ago the Republic suppressed the chaplains, and re-converted the church into what the Parisian press fondly calls "their Westminster"; and the next grand homme who was laid in "the most lovely gâteau de Savoie" was, oddly enough, Victor Hugo himself. He was buried there immediately after his death; but it is not likely that posterity will ever wish to reverse our judgment of the poet's greatness, or look upon him as anything but one of France's noblest sons.

The sculptures of the pediment, representing that sentimental personage La Patrie accompanied by Liberty and History, are by David d'Angers. La Patrie is throwing crowns about to its great men; Liberty is fabricating the crowns, and History is religiously writing up the names, that there may be no mistake. Civilians stand on the right, messieurs les militaires are relegated to the left, while several young men and youths are labouring vigorously in order to attain in the future their right to be amongst the elect. It is no case of Angels and scales, no weighing of good and bad deeds; the services of Madame la Justice are not even required; it is simply Patriotism which selects and serves up for glory those who have deserved well of their country. The bas-reliefs of the peristyle are by Nanteuil. Here La Patrie, holding a palm in one hand, is guiding with the other one of her sons who has died in her service; while Renown is puffing away at a trumpet to herald forth the deeds of this devoted hero. In another bas-relief Art and Science are honouring the country by their works; a warrior is, one knows not why, refusing the crown tendered to him; and a woman, representing Study and Intellect, is propounding the advantages of Education to the mothers who have brought their children to Madame la Patrie. The bronze doors are the work of Destouches, and recall, in style of ornamentation, those of Ghiberti at Florence.

The interior is, no doubt, grand. Originally lighted by windows in the walls, it is now somewhat dark and sombre, suitable to a temple for the repose of the dead. The walls have been covered with paintings, which partially relieve the dull monotony of the stone; but a building devoid of sunlight must of necessity be gloomy in a city the sky over which is, for half the year, grey and colourless.

Although the first of the 425 steps leading to the summit of the dome is upon the level of the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, the view is not nearly so interesting as from the latter. There is no river winding at our feet, and none of those guardian monsters who gaze at the city from the heights of the cathedral.

The decoration of the interior is now almost completed, and, whether for good or for evil, it is irrevocable. It was not probable that so artistic a nation as the French would allow such a building to remain in an incomplete state; they would rather run the risk of perpetuating failure than leave the work undone. We English are different. S. Paul's is double the age of the Panthéon, and we are still squabbling over its decoration; we hang up designs and drag them down again, we lay out enormous sums in the embellishment of the altar, and then we spend ever so much more in trying to circumvent our neighbours, and get rid of the ornament. It is a fate not necessarily peculiar to our country or this city, because at Brompton a magnificent church has been designed, built, and decorated in a few years, a model of refinement, beauty, and grandeur. But the embellishment of S. Paul's is attempted by spurts only, and up to the present time has left much to be desired.79 That may perhaps be an advantage; if nothing is done, there can be nothing to regret. But the French have acted otherwise, and the Panthéon embellishment is almost an accomplished fact.

With one or two exceptions, the painting of the church has been confided to artists with reputations, wearers of the palm-embroidered coats; the procession of decorators being led by Baron Gros and Gérard, who covered the dome with pictures in the false, pretentious style of the First Empire, leaving it a glowing mass of bad taste, as a warning to their successors. Baron Gros was a great painter, an early naturalist, as witness his Battlefield of Eylau, in the Salle des Sept Cheminées of the Louvre. There is an amount of realism in the painting of the dying and the dead, of the snow and the "man of bronze," that is not surpassed by the realists of the day. But when he set to work upon Saints and Angels, he must fain idealise and sentimentalise; and so, instead of having a S. Geneviève in modest dress as befits a village maiden, we see a sprawling lady in flowing garments of silk and satin, receiving her guests of kings and queens in a cloudy apartment of the seventh heaven.

The first, or one of the first walls attacked by the decorator was Alexander Cabanel's. Here we have the Great works of S. Louis treated in the academic fashion. Learned in composition and refined in style, with a good deal of historical truth in costume and character, it is nevertheless crude and harsh in colour, unharmonious, stagey, and completely undecorative. The best of the panels is S. Louis learning to read at his mother's knee, which has a certain pathos in the fair child's expression.

The Coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III. in the old basilica of S. Peter, by Henri Lévy, looks as if it had lost its way, or had been taken to the Panthéon until a suitable dwelling could be found elsewhere. Like Cabanel's S. Louis, it is neither Classic, nor Mediæval, nor Modern – simply weak and smooth, respectable and historic, after the manner of the Delaroche school. It is a pity, for, in other hands, these subjects would have been a treasure. Think of the charming frescoes by Olivier-Merson in the gallery of the Cour de Cassation of the Palais de Justice, how exquisite is the simplicity of the boy king, and the grave beauty of his mother. The Coronation of Charlemagne is composed as an academician would be sure to conceive the subject. A flight of steps, with the emperor sitting at the top; churchmen and laymen adoring, and an Angel swooping down with a crown. At the bottom of the steps, a warrior standing with sword and shield, and a sitting monk instructing some children from an open book.

Completely opposed to these works are the panels of Puvis de Chavannes, one of the first decorative artists of our time. His painting is vague, and somewhat foggy; his figures are clumsy, thick of ankle, neck, and wrist, but otherwise attenuated to the last degree; and were it not that the far-off people are smaller than those near the spectator, no one would know that they are on different planes, for of aërial perspective there is none. Yet there is a certain purity of sentiment about this, as in all M. de Chavannes' work, which is almost Archaic. The very dulness of the surface and the opacity of the medium employed render these pictures a suitable wall covering for Soufflot's grandiose classicality. The treatment is dignified, poetic, refined, but at the same time intensely modern and realistic – witness a hen and chickens picking up some grain in the foreground, and the charming vistas of landscape background. The colour is tame, and all the members of the Geneviève family are remarkable for plainness, not to say ugliness of face and clumsiness of figure; but the feeling which pervades the whole work is that of a sort of Pagan Renaissance, suitable to Soufflot's "gâteau de Savoie."

The first of the series, properly entitled La jeunesse et la vie pastorale de Sainte-Geneviève represents the maiden praying, while a woodcutter and his wife are looking on. The centre and principal compartment is occupied with the discovery by S. Germain of her little saintship, surrounded by her father and mother and a small and admiring crowd. On the left, boatmen are contemplating the scene from the river bank, while upon the right is an old man trying to bend his knee to receive the good bishop's blessing. A youth, sick unto death, and a poor little beggar are being led to the man of God, and two women hurry up from milking to see what is going on. The Seine flows through the pastures of Nanterre, and Mont Valérien smiles down upon the company, not having yet learned the art of war. This is all delightfully pastoral and naïve. The little maid's face, as she looks up at the good bishop, is sweetness itself; the parents bend their heads, and a neighbour holds up her wee swaddled babe; but the ensemble is marred by the parrot-like profile of S. Germain and the general ugliness of the company. Ugliness is a veritable passion with Puvis de Chavannes, a gospel which he never loses faith in, a partner allied to eccentricity in all his works.

In another panel we see Faith, Hope, and Charity watching over the child's cradle, by which is a lamb, the emblem of innocence, purity, and the pastoral life. Above is a frieze of saints, illustrating the national religious history of France; SS. Paterne of Vannes, Clément of Metz, Firmin of Amiens, Lucien of Beauvais, Lucain of Beauce, Martail of Limoges, Solange of Berry, Madeleine and Marthe of Provence, Colombe of Sens, Crépin and Crépinien of Soissons, Saturnin of Toulouse, Julien of Brioude, Austremoine of Clermont, Trophime of Arles, and Paul of Narbonne.

The picture by Th. Maillot is equally wanting in aërial perspective, but instead of an obscuring fog overwhelming the good citizens of Paris who are pouring down the "mountain" with S. Geneviève's châsse, a glaring sun cuts out the figures from the background. The scene represents a procession through what is now the market of the Place Maubert. It was the 12th of January, 1496; so says a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Rain had been pouring down incessantly for an unnatural period, although there was then no Eiffel tower upon which to lay the blame. What was to be done? Clearly an appeal must be made to the patron Saint, and her intercession supplicated to stay the flood. And so the bishop, the abbot, and the canons regular and secular, trudged barefooted down the montagne bearing the châsse containing the relics of the maid of Nanterre. An account of the event is given in a letter from Erasmus to his friend Nicholas Werner. The sage was ill of a fever at the time, but that did not prevent him from taking part in the procession, and we easily recognise his familiar physiognomy in the foreground of M. Maillot's work. "Il y a trois mois qu'il pleut ici, sans cesse. La Seine étant sortie de son lit, a inondé la campagne et la ville. La châsse de Sainte Geneviève a été descendue et portée en procession à Notre-Dame. L'évêque, accompagné de son clergé et du peuple, est venu au-devant. Dans cette auguste cérémonie, les chanoines réguliers, précédés de leur abbé marchant nu-pieds, conduisaient les reliques et quatre porteurs en chemise étaient chargés de ce précieux fardeau. Depuis ce temps le ciel est si serein qu'il ne peut l'être davantage."

The bishop is represented with a gilt mitre, the abbot wears a white one. Behind them are the provosts, the military, the magistrates, the canons, and the people, the procession terminating with the king's drummers and trumpeters. The crowd of people seem to be walking, or rather tripping down a very perpendicular street, to cross a zigzag wooden bridge with no side rails. The horizon is close to the top of the frame, so that the châsse appears to be falling off the shoulders of the men who are carrying it, and the people seem to be stepping down a steep incline. The colour is bright, and the costumes are picturesque, the whole picture having the effect of an early Flemish work, or of a page torn out of an old manuscript; so early is it in style that it is as incongruous in its place as would be a van Eyck, or a van der Weyden. Imagine Raffaello and Michael Angelo decorating S. Peter's after the manner of Giotto, Botticelli, or Ghirlandajo, and you have no greater incongruity than Maillot's fresco in S. Geneviève. Placed in S. Germain l'Auxerrois, or Notre-Dame, the picture would be in keeping with the architecture; in the Panthéon one feels that the decoration preceded the building.

Totally different in style, but equally out of keeping with the building, are the noble pictures of J. P. Laurens, The last moments and the funeral of the Saint. The artist has endeavoured to depict the semi-barbarous Gallo-Roman period. S. Geneviève, old and dying, is surrounded by women who are bringing their children to receive her last blessing. Rich and poor, nobles and serfs, old men and children, matrons and young girls, priests and soldiers – all are tearful at their approaching loss. Splendidly drawn and full of vigour and dramatic power (which are the characteristics of all M. Laurens' works) the pictures are somewhat black in colour; and, by reason of their very strength, they look completely out of harmony with the cold, grey purity of this Classic temple. M. J. P. Laurens is a grand artist, a lover of dramatic effect and movement, but in the Death of S. Geneviève he is subdued and reposeful. The grouping of the figures round the bed of the Saint, the wistful gaze of the children, and the prayerful expression of the mothers, are all most truthfully rendered; but might not the Saint have had a little more beauty; might she not have been a little idealised?

M. Bonnat's Martyrdom of S. Denis is well known. The Saint, just decapitated, clutches at his head; upon the block blazes a nimbus of the sun tribe; above is an Angel, hurrying down with a palm and crown; general consternation is depicted upon the faces of the assistants, as might be expected. It is a masculine work, full of power, but over dramatic and heavy in colour.

Of J. E. Delaunay's work we can form no idea yet awhile; he began it, but death cut him off too soon, and another must finish it. One of France's greatest artists, the painter of the Peste à Rom in the Louvre, is not likely to have failed in his designs for the Panthéon. Baudry was also commissioned, but he, too, went all too soon, or we might have had some panels which would have been fit pendants to those of Puvis de Chavannes.

The Return of Clovis from Tolbiac, by M. Joseph Blanc, is also academic and correct; superb in drawing, and sober of colour, its chief interest is in the fact that it contains contemporary portraits – Gambetta, Arago, Lockroy; and Coquelin figuring as a monk.

Jeanne d'Arc is no more fortunate here than elsewhere; it seems as if she were an impossibility in art. When one contemplates the number of painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians who have essayed her history and sung her praises, one is appalled by the results. One of the most sublime pages of history; the finest character among heroines; the grandest of women, of patriots, and of dreamers; the most modest, the most saint-like, the most unselfish of warriors, la Pucelle seems to oppress everyone who tries to depict any scene from her life. Perhaps the greatest success of modern times is Frémiet's fine Renaissance statue in the Place des Pyramids. Very beautiful also is Bastien-Lepage's Jeanne as a whole; but the figure does not possess the nobleness which one attaches to the militant maiden. Certainly M. Lenepveu's compositions form no exception to the general failure of Jeannes d'Arc. The maid is tied to the stake surrounded by a goodly assemblage of faggots; one monk reads, another flings a cross into her hands – as if the poor maid had objected to the cross! Soldiers are all about, and old Rouen at the back is picturesque with its gabled houses, and the cathedral in the distance. A man is just seizing a torch, and you know the end is near; but you are not impressed; you either do not care, or you do not realise the horror. But it is popular with the populace, and so serves one purpose for which it was painted – that of pointing a moral of patriotism and unselfish devotion almost unique but for the recent example of Garibaldi.

Last, but not least, charming in design, refined, and quite in harmony with the style of the building, are the mosaics of A. E. Hébert, which are among the best works of the artist, and quite exempt from the affectation and sentimentality which, somewhat too often, mar his pictures. These compositions occupy the apse. In the centre Le Christ montre à l'ange de la France les grandes destinées du peuple dont il lui confia la garde. Below this are the words: Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. At the side of the Saviour is the Blessed Virgin interceding for France; near her, the patroness, clad as a shepherdess, with a lamb under her arm, is praying for the city under the symbol of a ship. Above are the following subjects, The baptism of Clovis by S. Remi in the presence of S. Clotilde; S. Louis seated between Justice and Power; Jeanne d'Arc listening to the voices.

The ornamental framing of the several pictures has been executed by a master of decorative art, the late V. Galland. The borders are formed of garlands of flowers in a low scale of colour, which are divided at regular intervals by tablets bearing inscriptions and monograms. On the whole, the decoration of the Panthéon gives little encouragement to other nations who are desirous of covering large surfaces of wall in their public buildings. The art seems to be lost; for if the greatest of the French painters have, from one reason and another, failed to produce an harmonious scheme of decoration, who is likely to succeed? At best, the church presents a sort of pot-pourri. No schools are so dramatic as the French; and yet these wall paintings fail to impress us in the same way as do those, for example, of the Riccardi Palace, by Benozzo Gozzoli. It is probably the religious spirit which is wanting. We can draw better and paint better than the early Italian or Flemish artists – but the sentiment is lacking; and thus, whether we turn to Paris or München, to Berlin or London, we find the decoration of large buildings, and particularly of churches, more or less a failure. Perhaps the worst examples are the terribly dismal, cold, maudlin Nibelung series at München, compared to which the Panthéon is Raffaelesque. Had Puvis de Chavannes been allowed to do the whole church, the result would have been certainly more harmonious, and possibly more edifying; but though gaining in harmony, the frescoes might possibly have lost in variety. Sometimes too much of a good thing results in a wearisome monotony.

Sculpture will also be represented later on by a group of the Revolution, by Falguière; and doubtless we shall have monuments to Victor Hugo, Rénan, and other grands hommes, from their grateful country. Let us hope the decoration may always be as Catholic as heretofore; for S. Louis, Clovis, Geneviève and Jeanne d'Arc form as much a part of the history of France as do Voltaire, Mirabeau, Danton, and Dumouriez. We may not care to sing the "Marseillaise" with Camille Desmoulins, and we may wish we could forget the fourteenth Louis and all the Napoléons; but it is as foolish to deny their influence upon the nation as to sponge out the fact recorded on a door-head that Louis-Napoleon joined the Louvre and the Tuileries.

SAINT-GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS

Between the years 420 and 430, the ancient British church became infected with the heresy of Pelagianism, "which budded forth afresh into this island," as Camden says; and the orthodox clergy, being unable to stay its progress, sent to Gaul desiring assistance. Thereupon a synod of the Gallican church was held, and it was determined to send Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes, to confute the heretics. The date assigned to this event by Prosper, a contemporary writer (and also Camden), is 429; but he makes no allusion to Lupus, whose participation in the mission rests upon the evidence of Constantius of Lyons, the biographer of S. Germanus. This Lupus was a brother of Vincent of Lerins, a famous teacher, and the author of A Defence of the Catholic Faith, a book which was of much use to Cranmer and Ridley at the time of the Reformation. The meeting appointed for the public disputation with the Pelagians is supposed to have taken place at Verulam, now S. Albans, Hertfordshire, in 429; and according to the Venerable Bede's account, the heretics came to the council in great pomp, and advocated their cause with much "inflated rhetoric." But to no end. Germanus and Lupus silenced them with overwhelming arguments, and they were utterly discomfited. Bede's account is so quaint, and shows so great a difference between a 5th and a 19th century council that it is worth while to quote it in full: "An immense multitude was there assembled with their wives and children. The people stood round as spectators and judges; but the parties present differed much in appearance. On the one side was divine faith, on the other human presumption; on the one side piety, on the other pride; on the one side Pelagius, on the other Christ. The most holy priests Germanus and Lupus permitted their adversaries to speak first, who long took up the time and filled the ears with empty words. Then the venerable prelates poured forth the torrent of their apostolical and evangelical eloquence. Their discourse was interspersed with scriptural sentences, and they supported their most weighty assertions by reading the written testimonies of famous writers. Vanity was convinced, and perfidiousness confuted; so that at every objection made against them, not being able to reply, they confessed their errors. The people, who were judges, could scarce refrain from violence, but signified their judgment by their acclamations."

It is worth noting that at this time the people were the judges in matters theological. Rather a different state of things from that which now prevails at Rome and other places; but perhaps a return to primitive custom might not tend to increase peace, or help us out of our theological troubles.

When the meeting of the synod was over, Germanus and his companion seemed to have helped the Britons in a war against a wandering contingent of Pagan Saxons and Picts, and by a simple stratagem, worthy of a better cause, routed the enemy. Germanus assembled the British troops in a hollow surrounded by hills, and enjoined his followers to shout "Alleluia" three times. This they did, and the echo taking up the sound, produced such an effect upon the enemy that they took flight for fear of the multitude which they thought had come out against them. The battle took place, as Constantius relates, "when the sacred days of Lent were at hand, which the presence of the divines rendered more solemn, insomuch that those instructed by their daily preaching flocked eagerly to the grace of baptism. For the great multitude of the army was desirous of the water of the laver of salvation. A church formed of interwoven branches of trees is prepared against the day of the resurrection of our Lord, and though the expedition was encamped in the field, is fitted up like that of a city. The army wet with baptism advances, the people are fervent in faith, and neglecting the protection of arms, they await the assistance of the Deity. In the meantime, this plan of proceeding, or state of the camp, is reported to the enemy, who, anticipating a victory over an unarmed multitude, hastened with alacrity. But their approach is discovered by the scouts; and when, after concluding the solemnities of Easter, the greater part of the army, fresh from their baptism, were preparing to take up arms and give battle, Germanus offers himself as the leader of the war." Such is Constantius' account of the opening of the battle, which may be completed with Fuller's: "God sent a hollowness into the hearts of the Pagans; so that their apprehensions added to their ears, and cowardice often resounded the same shout in their breasts, till beaten with the reverberation thereof, without striking a blow, they confusedly ran away; and many were drowned for speed in the river Alen, lately the Christians' font, now the Pagans' grave. Thus a bloodless victory was gotten, without sword drawn, consisting of no fight, but a fright and a flight; and that 'Alleluia,' the song of the saints after conquest achieved, was here the forerunner and procurer of victory; so good a grace it is to be said both before and after a battle."