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The Cathedrals of Southern France. Mansfield Milburg Francisco
Читать онлайн.Название The Cathedrals of Southern France
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Автор произведения Mansfield Milburg Francisco
Жанр Книги о Путешествиях
Издательство Public Domain
What most histories do not tell is that the cathedral of St. Pierre d'Angoulême, with the cathedral of St. Front at Périgueux and Notre Dame de Poitiers, ranks at the very head of that magnificent architectural style known as Aquitanian.
St. Ansone was the first bishop of the diocese – in the third century. The see was then, as now, a suffragan of Bordeaux. Religious wars, here as throughout Aquitaine, were responsible for a great unrest among the people, as well as the sacrilege and desecration of church property.
The most marked spoliation was at the hands of the Protestant Coligny, the effects of whose sixteenth-century ravages are yet visible in the cathedral.
A monk – Michel Grillet – was hung to a mulberry-tree, – which stood where now is the Place du Murier (mulberry), – by Coligny, who was reviled thus in the angry dying words of the monk: "You shall be thrown out of the window like Jezebel, and shall be ignominiously dragged through the streets." This prophecy did not come true, but Coligny died an inglorious death in 1572, at the instigation of the Duc de Guise.
This cathedral ranks as one of the most curious in France, and, with its alien plan and details, has ever been the object of the profound admiration of all who have studied its varied aspects.
Mainly it is a twelfth-century edifice throughout, in spite of the extensive restorations of the nineteenth century, which have eradicated many crudities that might better have been allowed to remain. It is ranked by the Ministère des Beaux Arts as a Monument Historique.
The west front, in spite of the depredations before, during, and after the Revolution, is notable for its rising tiers of round-headed arches seated firmly on proportionate though not gross columns, its statued niches, the rich bas-reliefs of the tympanum of its portal, the exquisite arabesques, of lintel, frieze, and archivolt, and, above all, its large central arch with Vesica piscis, and the added decorations of emblems of the evangels and angels. In addition to all this, which forms a gallery of artistic details in itself, the general disposition of parts is luxurious and remarkable.
As a whole, St. Pierre is commonly credited as possessing the finest Lombard detail to be found in the north; some say outside of Italy. Certainly it is prodigious in its splendour, whatever may be one's predilections for or against the expression of its art.
The church follows in general plan the same distinctive style. Its tower, too, is Lombard, likewise the rounded apside, and – though the church is of the elongated Latin or cruciform ground-plan – its possession of a great central dome (with three others above the nave – and withal aisleless) points certainly to the great domed churches of the Lombard plain for its ancestry.
The western dome is of the eleventh century, the others of the twelfth. Its primitiveness has been more or less distorted by later additions, made necessary by devastation in the sixteenth century, but it ranks to-day, with St. Front at Périgueux, as the leading example of the style known as Aquitanian.
Above the western portal is a great window, very tall and showing in its glass a "Last Judgment."
A superb tower ends off the croisillon on the north and rises to the height of one hundred and ninety-seven feet. "Next to the west front and the domed roofing of the interior, this tower ranks as the third most curious and remarkable feature of this unusual church." This tower, in spite of its appealing properties, is curiously enough not the original to which the previous descriptive lines applied; but their echo may be heard to-day with respect to the present tower, which is a reconstruction, of the same materials, and after the same manner, so far as possible, as the original.
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