There can be no question but that Charlemagne's church at Aix, while it is itself a rather vivid memory of Ravenna, is the prototype of much church-building elsewhere. The round churches of Germany followed in due course, while, in respect to some details, the cathedral has been claimed to be the forerunner of the true Gothic. At any rate, there is a reflection of its dome in that which terminates the centre of the cross of St. Fédêle at Como. The similarity goes to prove that Charlemagne's industry in church-building in Italy was as great as his desire of conquest.
The church at Aix-la-Chapelle was frankly designed as the tomb of Charlemagne, and that perhaps accounts for the combining of the rotunda of a ceremonial edifice with that of a basilica intended solely for worship. Part of it was undoubtedly the work of the Comacine builders whom Charlemagne brought from Italy, and part is nothing more than an importation or adaptation of classical and Byzantine adornments.
Charlemagne's architects studied geography and climate well when they erected this link between the Romanesque-Lombardic style of the south and the Gothic of the north.
That portion of the present cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle which was built by Charlemagne is the octagonal projection toward the east. It forms a truly regal mausoleum, and for twelve hundred years has well stood the march of time.
It is supposed to have been the most magnificent church edifice of Charlemagne's era throughout all Europe, though it was seriously injured by an earthquake a few years after its completion.
Later it was plundered by the Normans, and it suffered disastrous fires in 1146, 1234, 1236, and 1656, having in consequence undergone many material changes.
Its external features have been considerably added to, but the prototype of the round and octagonal churches, subsequently erected in Germany, is here visible to-day in all its comparative novelty.
The granite and porphyry columns which support the arches giving upon the interior of the octagon were once taken and carried to Paris, but fortunately they were returned and again put into position.
The choir of the church, as it now is, was not begun until 1353, and was finished in the century following. It is pure Gothic of the most approved variety, whereas the octagon church is as pure Romanesque; and the two components do not blend or mingle in the least.
In the roof of the octagon is a remarkable specimen of modern wall and roof decoration, which might better have been omitted.
There is a cloister leading from the northwest chapel which has recently been restored. It is a delightful retreat, and has the "stations of the cross" displayed upon its inner wall.
There are numerous rare and valuable relics in the cathedral; the chief of which is the flagstone, which, bearing the simple words, Carolo Magno, is supposed to cover the actual burial-place of Charlemagne. Above this is a magnificent chandelier, reminiscent of another in the church at Hildesheim, the gift of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
Eight chapels surround the octagon, and in the Chapel of the Holy Cross is a magnificent altar-piece consisting of a crucifix carved in wood.
Most of the kings and queens who were crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle presented articles of value to the sacristy. The most magnificent of these is a sarcophagus in Parian marble representing the Rape of Proserpine.
The marble chair on which Charlemagne was found sitting in his tomb, and upon which the German emperors were crowned, is yet to be seen.
The relics in the cathedral are divided into two classes. In the first class are those which are the most sacred; in the second class are those of lesser importance. The latter are visible at all times; the former only once in seven years, when they are exposed for a fortnight.
The choir-stalls are set against the walls in a curious fashion, and there are chairs instead of the usual German benches for the congregation.
The appearance of this celebrated cathedral from the outside is most curious, since the erections and additions of later centuries have not been symmetrical.
There is a tall, modern spire which is not a beautiful addition, and the magnificent octagon has had a slate roof added, which likewise is a detraction.
St. Adelbert's was another ancient church of Aix-la-Chapelle, but it has given way to a modern edifice bearing the same name, though it is in good taste and most pleasing in its interior arrangement.
The Minoriten Kirche is a monkish foundation of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Its nave and aisles all come under one canopy vault, and its aisleless choir is squared off abruptly with an enormous carved and painted altar-piece of no great excellence.
It is pleasant to recall here that the council of Aix-la-Chapelle made laws, which Charlemagne himself encouraged, referring to the treatment of pilgrims by the hospices which were so generally established throughout Charlemagne's realm in Carlovingian times.
To the ordinary fine for murder there was added sixty soldi more if the person killed were a pilgrim to or from a hospice. Any who denied food and shelter to a pilgrim was fined three soldi. These were the regulations put into effect through Charlemagne's dominions at the suggestion of Pepin II.
XXVIII
LIÈGE
The natural highway from Antwerp and Brussels to the Rhine lies through Liège and Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, as the Germans call the latter.
Wordsworth, in his wonderful travel poem, wrote of the Meuse, which flows by Liège on its way to the Royal Ardennes, in a way which should induce many sated travellers to follow in his footsteps, and know something of the fascinating charm of this most fertile and perhaps the most picturesque of all the rivers of Europe.
"What lovelier home could gentle fancy choose?
In this the stream, whose cities, heights and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the morn with pearly dews.
* * * * * * * * * *
"How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its gray locks clustering in pensive shade,
That, shap'd like old monastic turrets, rise,
From the smooth meadow ground serene and still."
As one journeys on to Liège, Roman influences have left many and visible remains.
Crossing the plain of Neervinden, one enters the province of the Liègeois, where the French were defeated by the Austrians in 1793, thus releasing Belgium from the Gallic yoke.
At Landen one recalls that it is the town of the inception of the family of Charlemagne which gave to France her second race of kings.
Liège has been called the Birmingham of Continental Europe. It might better be called one of the foremost industrial centres of the world, for such it is to-day.
It is beautifully placed in an amphitheatre-like valley, and its tall chimneys, its smoke, and its grind of wheels bespeak an activity and unrest of which the former ages knew not.
Formerly the Liègeois were a turbulent and truculent folk, if one is to believe history.
If, however, one does not care to go back to history, he might turn to the pages of "Quentin Durward" and read of the spirit of romance which once surrounded Liège and its people.
The famous "Legend of the Liègeois" recounts how a working blacksmith found an inexhaustible supply of coals for his forge through the aid of a gnomish old man.
Previously the smith's fires had burned low, and only the old man's song inspired him to forage on the hillside, with the result that the future prosperity of the city grew up from the accessibility of this inexhaustible coal supply.
The old man's story ran thus:
"Wine's good in wintry weather.
Up the hillside near the heather,
Go and gather the black earth,
It shall give your fire birth.
Ill fares the hide when the buckler wants mending,
Ill fares the plough when the coulter wants tending."
When Liège, through its prosperity, had grown to good proportions, its government was assigned to a sort of prelate-proprietor.
These princely prelates were often but lads of eighteen or twenty, who became identified with the Church, frequently enough, simply because of the power it gave them.
The craftsmen and artisans of the city bought many rights from time to time from the bishops, and finally wrested the power from out of the hands of the Church, much as did the burghers of other cities from their feudal lords.
Then followed the struggle, which in Flanders raged perhaps more bitterly than elsewhere in Europe; the rising, where the many fought against the privileged few, and much riot and bloodshed was caused on all sides.
Then came first the burgher heroes of Liège, who, like their confrères in Ghent and Bruges, found in many instances the martyrdom of the patriot.
In the Place St. Lambert formerly stood – until 1801, when it was removed after having been damaged by a mob – the former cathedral of St. Lambert, which took its name from the first bishop of Liège. This ancient cathedral was of much grandeur and magnificence, attributes which the present cathedral of St. Paul decidedly lacks.
It was in this venerable cathedral of St. Lambert that Quentin Durward went to hear mass, as we learn from Scott's novel, and here also, after the famous siege of Liège by Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, the two princes themselves repaired for the same purpose. St. Lambert of Liège and the three Kings of Cologne were, it would appear, the chief patrons to whom Quentin and his early followers made their vows.
The bishopric was founded by Héraclius in 968, and a church, of which the present choir is a part, was built upon the site of the present St. Paul's in the thirteenth century. The see was formerly a suffragan of Cologne, and the only bishopric in the Low Countries except Tournai and Utrecht.
The present cathedral is consistently enough a Gothic church, but it is not a satisfactory example, in spite of its magnificent proportions.
Of a cruciform plan, and with a nave which was only completed in 1528, it is a poor apology for a great Gothic church, such as we know at Metz, Nancy, or even at Brussels.
Its western tower, satisfactory enough in itself, is crowned with a ludicrous spire, which dates only from 1812.
Since St. Lambert's has disappeared, and the present St. Paul's dates only from the ante-Revolutionary days, the chief ecclesiastical treasure of the city is the Église St. Jacques. It was founded in 1014 by the Bishop Baudry II., but the Romanesque tower to the west is of the century following, and the whole fabric was very much modified in 1513-38.
It is a magnificent flamboyant Gothic church of quite the first rank, when compared with others of its kind elsewhere.
It has an ample nave and aisles with a polygonal choir and a series of radiating chapels which are singularly beautiful.
The magnificent north portal is an addition of the sixteenth century.
The interior has been called Spanish in its motive. Certainly it is not quite like any other Gothic forms we know in these parts, and does bear some resemblance to that peculiar variety of Gothic which belongs to Spain.
The choir has some fine glass showing the armorial bearings of former patrons of the church.
There is a beautiful carved stone staircase and much sculptured stonework in the choir.
The organ-buffet is ornate, even of its kind, – a masterpiece of cabinet-making, – and was the work of Andre Severin of Maestricht in 1673.
The left transept, which is some thirty feet longer than the right, has a fine painting of a "Mater Dolorosa," while, opposite, is a stone monument to the founder of the church, Baudry II., of Renaissance workmanship.
St. Jean is another pre-tenth-century foundation of the Bishop Notger, somewhat after the plan of the "round church" at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was entirely rebuilt, however, in the eighteenth century, though the original octagon was kept intact.
At some distance from the city, on a height which may be truly called dominating, is the church of St. Martin, founded in 962, and reconstructed, after the Gothic manner of the time, contemporary with St. Jacques. Of recent times it has been restored. If any separation or division of its parts can be made, one concludes that the choir is German, and its nave French.
In 1246 there was held in this church a Fête Dieu following upon a vision of Ste. Julienne, the abbess of Cornillon near Liège. The fête was ordained by Pope Urbain IV., who himself had been a canon of the cathedral of Liège.
Ste. Croix was another of Notger's foundations, in 979, on the site of an ancient château.
The choir was built toward 1175, and has an octagonal tower with a gallery of small columns just under the roof, after the manner known as distinctly Rhenish.
The church exhibits thoroughly that Rhine manner of building which made combined use of the Gothic and Romanesque, – in bewildering fashion, to one who has previously known only the comparatively pure types of France.
The nave and its aisles rise to the same height, but the apsidal choir is aisleless.
The general effect of the interior is light and graceful, with circular columns in a blue-gray stone, which is very beautiful.
A series of fourteenth or fifteenth century "Stations of the Cross" fill the arches of the transepts; quite an unusual arrangement of this feature, and one which seems well considered.
St. Barthélemy's is Liège's other great church. It is a basilica of five naves and two Romanesque towers. It dates in reality from the twelfth century, but has been greatly modernized.
St. Barthélemy's might have been a highly interesting example of a Romanesque church had it not been desecrated by late Italian details.
St. Barthélemy's has a twelfth-century art treasure in a brazen font, cast in 1112 by Patras, a brass-founder of Dinant on the Meuse. Its bowl depicts five baptismal scenes in high relief, each accompanied by a descriptive legend. Upon the rim of the bowl is the following legend:
"Bissenis bobus pastorum forma notatur,
Quos et apostolice commendat gratia vite,
Officiiq; gradus quo fluminis impetus bujus
Letificat sanctam purgatis civibus urbem."
XXIX
DÜSSELDORF, NEUSS, AND MÜNCHEN-GLADBACH
Düsseldorf
Among æsthetic people in general, Düsseldorf is revered – or was revered, though the time has long since passed – for that style of pictorial art known to the world as the Düsseldorf School.
A remarkably good collection of pictures remains in its art gallery to remind us of the fame of Düsseldorf as an art centre, but to-day its art has become "old-fashioned," and the gay little metropolis has many, if more worldly, counter attractions.
Düsseldorf takes its name from the little river Düssel which joins the Rhine at this point.
The French guide-books call Düsseldorf the "plus coquettes des bords du Rhin"; and so it really is, for few tourists go there for its churches alone, though they are by no means squalid or inferior.
The city was the residence of the Counts, afterward the Dukes, of Berg – for it was made a duchy by the Emperor Wenceslaus – from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.
In 1806 Napoleon made it the capital of a new Grand Duchy of Berg in favour of Joachim Murat. By the treaty of 1815 Düsseldorf fell to Prussia, and became the chief town of the regency of Düsseldorf, and the seat of a superior court of justice.
Occupying the site that it does, on the banks of a great waterway, the city naturally became the centre of an important commerce.
Düsseldorf is the birthplace of many who have borne great names; of the philosopher Jacobi and his poet brother; the Baron de Hompesch, the last grand master of the Order of Malta; Von Ense, the eminent litterateur; the poet Heinrich Heine (who died at Paris in 1855), and the painters Cornelius, Lenzen, and Achenbach.
The principal church edifice is that dedicated to St. Lambert, the Hofkirche. It has a strong and hardy tower, very tall, and surmounted by a slate-covered spire. The ogival style predominates, and the fabric dates mostly from the fourteenth century. Its chief feature is its choir, which is far more ample and beautiful than the nave. The rest of the edifice fails to express any very high ideals of church-building.
At the foot of the apside, behind the choir, is a mausoleum erected in the seventeenth century for the elector, John Wilhelm, who died in 1690.
In the ambulatory of the choir is, on the left, a florid Gothic tabernacle, and by the second pillar of the nave is a colossal statue of St. Christopher. There are many tombs of Jacobeans, and of the Dukes of Berg.
There are also a number of paintings by Düsseldorf artists scattered about the church, but they have not the qualities exhibited by the old Flemish masters, and are hardly worthy of remark.
On the exterior of the southern wall is affixed an immense Calvary, which is theatrical in the extreme, and is not dignified nor churchly.
The Jesuit church is not remarkable architecturally, but there are a number of tombs therein of the princes of the house of Neubourg.
The ruins of the ancient château of Düsseldorf suggest but faintly its former glories before it was destroyed by the French bombardment of the city in the eighteenth century.
It has been restored, in a way, but with little regard for historical traditions, and a part of the edifice was made the home of the famous Düsseldorf academy of painting, founded in 1777 by Charles Theodore and reëstablished in 1822. It gave birth to a celebrated school of painting, now all but dead. Among the famous and well-known names connected therewith are: Cornelius, Schadow, Lessing, Schirmer, Hildebrand, and Koehler; the American, Lentzen; the Norwegians, Tiédemann and Gude; the landscape painters, Weber and Fay; and the historical painters, Knaus, Hübner, and Scheuren; and finally the celebrated engraver, Keller.
The museum and the gallery of paintings are still superb, and form a contribution to the history of the art of all ages which would be quite incomplete without it.
There are ten churches in Düsseldorf, and a synagogue, but in truth there is not much of interest in them all, and the "handsomest city of Germany" must rest its fame on something more than its appeal to the lover of churches.
Neuss
There is not much about the compact, though rather ungainly, little city of Neuss to interest any but the lover of churches, though its history is very ancient, and the development of its patronymic through Novesium, Niusa, and Nova Castra bespeaks volumes for the part it has played in the past.
Its origin dates back to the time of Drusus, and it is mentioned by Tacitus as the winter quarters of the Roman Army. The city was ravaged by Attila in 451, and by the Normans in the ninth century. Emperor Philip of Suabia captured it in 1206, and gave it to the Archbishop of Cologne. A chapter of nobles was founded here in 825, and Count Evrard of Clèves and Bertha, his wife, erected, in the first years of the thirteenth century, its principal church dedicated to St. Quirinus.
This church stands to-day, with its great square tower looming bulkily over the house-tops, and is reckoned as the prototype of many similar structures elsewhere. It has the almost perfect disposition and development of the double apse so frequently met with in German churches.
In general, its architecture is of a heavy order, and the whole structure is grim, though by no means gaunt nor cold.
St. Quirinus is of the epoch when the Romanesque was being replaced nearly everywhere by the new-coming Gothic.
In spite of this, its style is, curiously enough, neither one nor the other, nor is it transition, though the pointed arch has crept in and often eliminated the Romanesque attributes of the round-arch style round about. It is manifestly not transition, because there was no transition here from Romanesque to Gothic. It remained palpably Romanesque in spite of Gothic interpolations.
In the windows one can but remark the indecision which prompted the builders to fashion them in such extraordinary squat shapes, and they certainly serve their purpose of lighting the interior very badly.
The nave and aisles of St. Quirinus are ample, and its spacious männerchöre in the triforium is like all its fellows in the German churches, an adjunct which adds to the general effect of size.
The church dates from 1209, the period when the Gothic influence was not only making itself felt over the border, in the domain of France and Burgundy, but was already extending its influence elsewhere. But here, westward even of the borders of the Rhine, the round arch lingered on, to the exclusion of any very marked Gothic tendency.
There is an inscription in stone on the south wall of the church which places the date of its erection beyond all doubt. It reads thus:
ANNO. INCARNA
DNI. MC.C.V.I.I.I.I
PMO. IPERII. AN
NO. OTTONIS. A
DOLFO. COLON
EPO. SOPHIA. A
BBA. MAGISTER
WOLBERO. PO
SUIT. PMU. LAP
IDE. FUNDAME
NTI. HUI. TEM
PLI. I. DIE. SCI. DI
ONISII. MAR
When a former Count of Clèves founded the primitive church here in the ninth century, it was a collegiate church attached to the abbey of which the mother superior was the Abbess Sophia, presumably the same referred to in the above inscription. The abbey itself was destroyed in 1199 during a civil warfare.
Though not really a massive structure, the church of St. Quirinus is, in every particular, of a strength and solidity which rank it as a masterwork of its age. There is nothing weak and attenuated about it, and its transepts and apses make up in general effect what it lacks in actual area.
The façade is imposing, though decidedly bizarre when compared with the simple flowing lines of Gothic; but, on the whole, the effect is one of a certain grandeur.
The aisles are astonishingly tall when compared with the nave.
There are various meetings of round-arched windows and arcades with those of a pointed nature, but there is not the slightest evidence of a development or transition from one to the other, hence the Gothic strain may be said not to exist.
The general effect of the exterior is polychromatic, which is not according to the best conceptions of ecclesiastical decorations in architecture. A twilight or a moonlight view, however, tones it all down in a manner that makes the fabric appear quite the most imposing church of its size that one may find in these parts.
The great central tower, reminiscent enough of the parish church in England, but not so frequent in Germany, and still less so in France, forms a great lantern which rises over the crossing in a marvellous and exceedingly practical manner, in that it affords about the only adequate means of admitting light into the interior.
The triforium of the nave is the chief interior feature to be remarked, and is most spaciously planned. It forms the männerchöre before mentioned.
The clerestory windows are decidedly Rhenish in character, resembling, says one antiquary, who is a humourist if nothing else, an ace of clubs. At any rate, it is a most unusual and inefficient manner of lighting a great church. These windows are practically trefoils of most unsymmetrical proportions, and are in every way unlovely.
The choir is raised on a platform, beneath which is the crypt. Three flights of steps lead to this platform, which gives it a far more grand appearance than its actual dimensions would otherwise allow.
The choir-stalls are of the fourteenth century, and are the only mediæval furnishings to be seen in the church to-day.
The apses contain only moderately effective glass.
The frescoes in the cupola of St. Quirinus, which are the work of Cornelius of Düsseldorf (about 1811), are most interesting, and are among the most successful of the great number of modern works of their kind to be seen in Germany.
München-Gladbach
München-Gladbach is one of those "snug" little German towns that one comes across now and then when wandering along off the beaten track. Its streets are trim and clean, and its houses likewise, with a brilliancy of fresh paint which is consistently and proverbially Dutch. Beneath one's foot is a sea of cobblestones all worn to a smoothness which argues the tramp of countless hordes of feet over centuries of time, if paving-stones have really been invented so long. With all its air of prosperity and providence, München-Gladbach is not a highly interesting town in which to linger.
Its name is compounded of its prefix, meaning monk's, with its original patronymic, Gladbach. The monks of Gladbach were a part of the establishment which founded the minster church of Gladbach, an old abbey or monastic edifice which stands to-day, a great transeptless thirteenth-century structure with an elevated choir reached from the nave by two flights of ten or a dozen steps.
The crypt is entered from between these two flights of steps, and forms all that is left to mark the primitive church.
The round-arched style and Gothic, of a sort, intermingle in the nave in bewildering fashion until one wonders in what classification it really belongs. The openings from the aisles to the nave are pointed, while above is an unpierced triforium with a clerestory of round-headed arches.
In the aisles are what Jacobean architects called fanlights, a series of peculiarly shaped openings like an oddly shaped fan. They are distinctly Rhenish; indeed they are not acknowledged to be found elsewhere, and hence may be considered as one of the chief points of distinction of this otherwise not remarkably appealing church.
There are no aisles in the choir, which dates from the thirteenth century and terminates with a multi-sided apse pierced by long lancet windows.
The Stadt Kirche of Gladbach, or the parish church as it properly takes rank, is still a Catholic edifice and shows the advantage of having been kept in active use. There is nothing musty or moss-grown about it, but in every way it is as warmly appealing as the monks' church is coldly unattractive.
There is no marked choir termination, its great aisles extending completely to the rear with just a suspicion of a rudimentary pentagonal apse to suggest the easterly end. This is a common enough arrangement in German churches, which more frequently than not, in the fourteenth century, the date of this structure, possessed nothing but a squared-off east end, after the English manner of building.
At the westerly end is a well-planned tower distinctly Rhenish – if it were not it would be thought heavy – and where the choir is supposed to join the nave the roof is surmounted by a tiny spire, which, in truth, is no addition of beauty.
The interior shows great height, and, if of no great architectural splendour, has enough mural embellishment and attractive glass to stamp it as a livable and lovable edifice for religious worship, which is a good deal more than most modern church buildings ever acquire.
The six bays of the nave show pointed arches springing from rounded columns. There is an arcaded triforium, and an elaborate series of clerestory windows which show the geometrical and flamboyant Gothic in its perfection.
The apse is lighted with five windows of great height. The glass is a mixture of colour and monotone, but the effect is undeniably good.
The chancel is so shallow that the choir flows over, as it were, into one bay of the nave, while the choir-stalls themselves are placed in the aisles. Certainly a most unusual, and perhaps a unique, arrangement.
An altar fronts the west end of either range of stalls, and back, at the easterly end of the aisles, is found another altar.
The high altar has a handsome modern screen in the form of a gilt triptych, which is singularly effective and imposing.
Beneath the tower, at the westerly end, is the baptistery, entrance to which from the body of the church is gained through a low, pointed arch.