Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3

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A cardinal's hat cost from 15 to 40 florins, and in 1348, 150 florins were
paid for one piece of scarlet for the pope, and 75 to 100 florins for the
garniture of a riding cloak. Clement VI. spent 1,278 florins in the
purchase of cloth of gold, woven by the Saracens of Damascus; one payment
to Jacopo Malabayla of Arti for summer and winter clothing for the papal
household amounted to 6,510 florins, and the same obviously Hebrew
merchant received 10,652 florins in 1341 for cloth and ermine and beaver;
in 1347 Clement's furrier received 1,080 ermine skins, whereof 430 were
used in one cloak, 310 for a mantle, 150 for two hoods, and 88 for nine
birettas; in 1351, 2,258 florins went to Tuscany for silk, and 385 for
brocade to Venice.

The richness of the papal utensils beggars description; jeweled cups,
flagons of gold, knife handles of jasper and ivory, forks of mother-of-
pearl and gold. A goldsmith in 1382 was paid 14 florins for repairing two
of the last-named implements. The flabelli, or processional feather fans,
cost 14 florins; Benedict XIII., paid 300 florins for an enameled silver
bit; the Golden Roses cost from 100 to 300 florins. Presents of jewels
were costly and frequent. Gregory XI. gave 168 pearls, value 179 francs,
to the citizens of Avellino; Clement VII. presented the Duke of Burgundy
with a ring of gold, worth 335 florins; an aguiere of gold and pearls,
valued at 1,000 florins, and two tables each over 200 florins. Richer
gifts were lavished on sovereign princes. Reliquaries were of prodigious
value; the gold cross containing a piece of the true cross at the
Celestins weighed fifteen pounds. In 1375 a silver arm for the image of
St. Andrew cost over 2,566 florins.

The cardinals were equally munificent. The most striking example of lavish
splendor is afforded by the State banquet given to Clement V., by the
Cardinals Arnaud de Palegrue and Pierre Taillefer in May, 1308. Clement,
as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts and twenty
chaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest tapestries
from floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple pile; his state-
bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with white ermine; the
sheets of silk were embroidered with silver and gold.

The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires, who each
received silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the hosts. Fifty
cardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet, which consisted
of nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven dishes in all. The
meats were built up in fantastic form: castles, gigantic stags, boars,
horses, etc. After the fourth service, the cardinal offered his holiness a
milk-white steed worth 400 florins; two gold rings, jeweled with an
enormous sapphire and a no less enormous topaz; and a bowl, worth 100
florins; sixteen cardinal guests and twenty prelates were given rings and
jewels, and twelve young clerks of the papal house and twenty-four
sergeants-at-arms received purses filled with florins.

After the fifth service, a great tower with a font whence gushed forth
five sorts of choicest wines was carried in; and a tourney was run during
the interval between the seventh and eighth courses. Then followed a
concert of sweetest music, and dessert was furnished by two trees--one of
silver, bearing rarest fruits of all kinds, and the other loaded with
sugared fruits of many colors. Various wines were then served, whereupon
the master cooks, with thirty assistants, executed dances before the
guests. Clement, by this time, having had enough, retired to his chamber,
where, lest he might faint for lack of refreshment during the night, wine
and spices were brought to him; the entertainment ended with dances and
distractions of many kinds.

There is no reason to believe that the Avignon popes, either in their
household expenditure or in their personal luxury, were more extravagant
than their Roman predecessors or successors. Yet amid all this luxury,
strange defects of comfort appear to the modern sense. Windows, as we have
seen, were generally covered with wax cloth or linen, carpets were rare,
and rushes were strewn on the floors of most of the rooms. From May to
November, 1349, more than 300 loads of rushes were supplied for use in the
dining-rooms and chambers of the apostolic palace. Subsequently mats were
introduced, and in 1352 Pierre de Glotos, mat-maker to the palace of our
lord and pope, was paid for 275 cannae of matting for the palace of
Avignon and for the palace beyond the Rhone and the new chapel.

The Walls of Avignon

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]

Intimately associated with the history of the palace of the Popes of
Avignon is that of the unparalleled circuit of walls and towers which
defended the city from the scourge of organized robber bands during the
fourteenth century. The earliest quadrilateral fortifications embraced a
relatively small area consisting of the Rocher des Doms and the parishes
of St. Agricol, St. Didier, and St. Pierre; these walls, demolished and
rebuilt on a more extensive scale in the twelfth century, embraced an area
easily traceable on the modern map, from the Porte du Rhone, round the
Rues du Limas, Joseph Vernet, des Lices, Philonarde, Campane, Trois
Colombes, to the Rocher.

It was these fortifications that the Cardinal St. Angelo forced the
citizens to raze in 1227. Until the acquisition of Avignon by Clement VI.,
the city was an open one and only defended by a double fosse. The origin
of the papal walls has already been traced, and their subsequent fate may
now be briefly given. The assaults of the Rhone proved more destructive
than human artillery. The walls and towers having been hastily raised,
towers fell by reason of bad foundation, and the upkeep of the
fortifications was a continual drain on papal and communal finances.

In 1362 an irresistible flood of waters overthrew the Fortes St. Michel
and Limbert, and large breaches were often made by these recurring
inundations. Moreover, the expansion of the city of old and the need of
access to the suburbs involved frequent displacement and opening of new
gates. In 1482 the whole system of the defensive works was modified to
meet the new situation caused by the introduction of gunpowder. The gates
most exposed to attack were further defended by outworks, that of St.
Lazare having been fortified during the rule of Giuliano della Rovere by
the addition of a powerful bastide, with three round towers, a drawbridge,
a new fosse which communicated with the great fosse before the main walls.
Other modifications took place during the Huguenot wars.

Notwithstanding many repairs during the intervening centuries, the
fortifications had, under the second Empire, suffered sad degradation, and
at length Viollet-le-Duc was entrusted with their restoration. The famous
architect set to work on their southern side and had completed about one-
third of the restoration when the disastrous issue of the Franco-Prussian
war arrested all further progress until the Third Republic feebly resumed
the task. The walls along the Rhone, especially useful in time of flood,
were backed with stone, their battlements and machicoulis renewed. The
visitor, however, will need no reminder that the present passive aspect of
the ramparts conveys but a faint impression of their former state, when a
broad and deep fosse, seven feet by twelve, washed their bases, above
which they raised their once impregnable curtains full thirty feet.

Two of the old gates have been demolished--the Porte de Limbert in 1896,
and the Porte de l'Oulle in 1900--the former, many times repaired, was the
only existing example of the external aspect of a medieval gate, the
latter had been rebuilt in 1786 in the Doric style. A new gate, the Porte
Petrarque, now the Porte de la Republique, was erected by Viollet-le-Duc
when the walls were pierced for the new street; the Porte St. Dominique is
also new. These noble mural defenses, three miles in circuit, twice
narrowly escaped demolition--at the construction of the railway, when they
were saved by a vigorous protest of Prosper Merimee, and in 1902, when, on
the pretext that they blocked the development of the city, the
municipality decided to demolish the unrestored portions. Luckily the
intervention of a public-spirited Prefect of Vaucluse proved successful,
and they were again rescued from the housewrecker's pick. No visitor to
Avignon should omit to walk or drive round the famous ramparts.

Their stones have been subjected to careful scrutiny by antiquarians and
the masons' marks (tacherons)--about 4,500--carefully examined and reduced
to about four hundred and fifty types. Opinions differ as to the meaning
of these curious signs, but there is little doubt that M. Maire's
suggestion is the correct one--the workmen were paid by the piece, and
each had his own private mark which he cut on the stones he laid and thus
enabled the foreman to check his work.

We begin at the Porte du Rhone, and skirt the older part of the walls on
the northwest with their different style of corbels and machicoulis. M.
Maire has no hesitation in assigning this portion to the time of Clement
VI., by reason of the coarser nature of the masons' marks. Turning
southwards, we pass the Porte St. Dominique, and reach the Porte St. Roch
(formerly the Porte du Chamfleury, and only opened at plague times) and
the Porte de la Republique. We soon note the unrestored portions, the site
of the old Porte Limbert, and turn northward to the Porte St. Lazare.

Before we reach this gate we may fitly make a digression, and in pious
memory of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetiere to the
grave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within the
cemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue 2.
A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's memory
--the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for woman. It
is pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of his
gentleness and generosity behind him at Avignon. His house, a charming
little hermitage approached by an avenue of plane trees not far from the
cemetery, was sold in 1905, and a few relics were bought and still are
cherished by the rare friends the somewhat self-centered philosopher made
in the city. The present owner has preserved the library and study, where
the "Essay on Liberty" was written, much as it was in Mill's days.

To the peasants who met the tall, bent, spare figure, musing and
botanizing along the country lanes and fields, he was known as "Monsieur
Emile." Before he left the city on his periodical visits to England, Mill
was wont to leave 300 francs with M. Rey, pastor of the Protestant Church
in Avignon: two hundred for expenses of public worship; one hundred for
the poor, always charging M. Rey to write to England if any further need
arose.

Mill, a great Englishman of European fame, to the amazement of his French
friends, was followed to his last resting-place by no more than five
mourners. As we write news comes that the civic authorities have decided
to recall to posterity the association of the great thinker with Avignon
by giving the name of Stuart Mill to a new boulevard, and that a bust has
been unveiled to his memory near the pleasant city he loved so well. Mill
was much gratified that his pamphlet on "The Subjection of Women"
converted Mistral to the movement for their enfranchisement, and their
legal equality with men.

Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge

By Thomas Oakey

[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P.
Dutton & Co.]

The royal city of Villeneuve, altho geographically and politically
sundered from Avignon and the County Venaissin, was socially and
economically bound up with the papal city. The same reason that to-day
impels the rich citizens of Avignon to dot the hills of Languedoc with
their summer villas was operative in papal times, and popes and cardinals
and prelates loved to build their summer places on the opposite bank of
the Rhone.

How silent and neglected are the streets of this once wealthy and
important city! How degraded its monuments, how faded its glory! In the
hot, dusty afternoon, as the cranky old omnibus rattles along the narrow
High Street, it appears to awaken echoes in a city of the dead.

Making our way northward, we pass the restored seventeenth-century portal
of the palace of the sainted Cardinal of Luxembourg; the weather-worn,
neglected, late Renaissance portal of the so-called Hotel de Conti; the
ruined Gothic portal of the palace of Cardinal Pierre de Thury, through
which we pass to the old court-yard and a chapel subsequently restored and
now used as the chapel of the Grey Penitents.

We pass many another relic of departed grandeur, and beyond the Place
Neuve on our right come upon a great portal which opens on a vaulted
passage leading to one of the most bewildering and extraordinary congeries
of ruined monastic buildings in France, now inhabited by a population of
poor folk--two hundred families, it is said--who, since the Revolution,
have settled in the vast buildings of the once famous and opulent
Charterhouse of Villeneuve. Founded by Innocent VI., three years after his
elevation to the papal chair, and enriched by subsequent endownments, the
Charterhouse of the Val de Benediction, the second in importance of the
Order, grew in wealth and importance during the centuries until it was
sacked and sold in small lots during the Revolution to the ancestors of
the present occupants.

The circuit of its walls was a mile in extent; its artistic treasures were
prodigious. The Coronation of the Virgin came thence; the Pieta of
Villeneuve, now in the Louvre; the founder's tomb; the high altar of Notre
Dame at Villeneuve, and a few other relics, alone survive of its vast
possessions. The scene resembles nothing so much as a city ruined by
bombardment or earthquake, but how long the wreck will remain in its
present picturesque and melancholy condition is difficult to forecast. The
state is slowly buying out the owners, and doubtless ere many years are
passed the more valuable artistic remains will have been swept and
garnished and restored.

As we return from the Chartreuse we turn left along the Place Neuve, and
climb to the mighty fort of St. Andre, which occupies the most venerable
site in the royal new city, for on the hill where it stands tradition
relates that St. Cesarie, Bishop of Arles, was buried, and that there, in
the sixth century, the first Benedictines settled. The primitive
settlement, destroyed in the ninth century, was extensively rebuilt in
980, and within its walls, churches were dedicated to St. Andrew, St.
Michael, and St. Martin. In the twelfth century the rich and powerful
monastery, a strongly fortified, self-sufficing community, was held under
the counts of Toulouse, and from their overlordship it was subsequently
admitted by the counts to be within the territory of the republic of
Avignon, whose consuls in 1210 compelled the abbot to demolish his walls
and promise never to rebuild them.

In 1292 Philip the Fair was permitted to settle a small community there,
to whom he accorded in 1293 valuable privileges and the same protection he
granted to his good city of Paris. Philip, to whom the position was
valuable as a frontier post, erected a castle there, maintained a royal
garrison, and the new settlement became known as the New Town
(Villeneuve). The walls and towers then raised were rebuilt in 1352 by
John the Good, who exacted a toll, known as St. Andrew's penny, for
maintenance on all merchandise that passes through the Senechaussee of
Beaucaire.

Of these majestic ruins, restored in the sixteenth century and again in
recent times, the Tour des Masques at the west angle with its simple
battlements is the oldest portion, the massive machicolated towers that
frown over the main entrance having been raised by John the Good. The
ruined ravelin dates back to the seventeenth century. We enter and stroll
about the desolate interior, crowned by a tiny Romanesque chapel of the
twelfth century, that well deserves its name of Our Lady of the Fair View
(Notre Dame de Belvezet), with a graceful apse (restored). From its
summit, or from the tall old watch-tower of the monastery, a marvelous
view is obtained of the gaping ruins of the Charterhouse of Avignon, the
County Venaissin, the Cevennes, Mount Ventoux, and the distant Alps.

In the later years of the monarchy a post of artillery was stationed in
the fort, and it was from the fire of a battery planted there that a young
captain of artillery, one Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1793, overawed the city
of Avignon, which was occupied by the Marseillais federalists who had
declared against the Convention; and it was with the cannon seized at St.
Andre that Bonaparte marched to Toulon and expelled the English from its
harbor.

The papal soldiery were ever objects of scorn to the royalists of
Villeneuve, who dubbed them "patachines" ("pestacchina," Ital. for
slipper), and taunted them with drilling under parasols--a pleasantry
repaid by the Italians who hurled the epithet "luzers" (lizards) against
the royalists, who were said to pass their time sunning themselves against
the hot rocks of Villeneuve.

Descending the stately stairway that leads to the foot of the Rocher des
Doms, and turning to the left, we soon reach the house of the "gardien du
pont," who will admit us to all that remains of the miraculous pontifical
structure of the twelfth century. The destructive hand of man and the
assaults of the Rhone have dealt hardly with St. Benezet's work. Ruined
during the siege of 1226, it was repaired in 1234-37, and in 1349 knit to
the papal fortress at the Avignon end. In 1352, when Clement VI. rebuilt
four of the arches, it is described as of stone and wood; it was cut
during the siege of Benedict XIII., and repaired, or rebuilt, in 1418 and
1430; in 1602 three arches collapsed; in 1633 two more fell, and in 1650
the gaps were bridged by wooden struts and planks, which were carried away
in 1670 by ice-floes.

Owing to the interminable dispute between the monarchy and the papacy as
to liability for its repair, each power claiming jurisdiction over the
Rhone, all attempts to preserve it from ruin were abandoned in 1680, when
Louis XIV. refused either to allow the legates to take toll for the
necesary repairs, or to undertake them himself.

Little is known of the original bridge, which consisted of twenty-two
semi-circular arches (Viollet-le-Duc gives eighteen), much lower than the
present elliptic ones, which date back to the thirteenth century,
according to Labaude--or to the fifteenth century, acording to other
authorities--when the bridge, having proved too low-pitched, was raised to
its present level, and the flood arches over the piles were built. The
four subsisting arches were, with the bridge chapel, restored during the
last century. The old bridge formed an elbow upstream on the Villeneuve
branch of the Rhone.

The chapel of St. Nicholas, too, has suffered many vicissitudes. The
primitive Romanesque building was raised to the level of the new footway
by dividing the nave into two floors and building a flight of steps,
supported on a squinch arch, down to what then became the lower chapel.
Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored and
reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was added,
whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of these
modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic nave and a Romanesque apse,
whereas the upper chapel has a Gothic apse and a Romanesque nave.

The "Pont d'Avignon" is known to every French-speaking child, and with
many variants the old "ronde" is sung and danced from the remotest plains
of Canada to the valleys of the Swiss Alps. The good folk of Avignon,
however, protest that their "rondes" were not danced perilously on the
narrow Pont St. Benezet, but under its arches on the green meadows of the
Isle de la Barthelasse, and that "Sur" in lieu of "Sous" is due to
northern misunderstanding of their sweet Provencal tongue.

Orange

By Henry James

[Footnote: From "A Little Tour In France." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
1884.]

I alighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil monuments.
The collection consists of but two objects, but these objects are so fine
that I will let the word pass. One of them is a triumphal arch, supposedly
of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnificent in
its ruin, of a Roman theater. But for these fine Roman remains and for its
name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone--
which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant--to help it to a
physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things that this obscure French
borough--obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio
must have been, judging it by its arches and theater, a place of some
importance--should have given its name to the heirs apparent of the throne
of Holland, and been borne by a king of England who had sovereign rights
over it. During the Middle Ages it formed part of an independent
principality; but in 1531 it fell, by the marriage of one of its
princesses, who had inherited it, into the family of Nassau. I read in my
indispensable Murray that it was made over to France by the treaty of
Utrecht.

The arch of triumph, which stands a little way out of the town, is rather
a pretty than an imposing vestige of the Romans. If it had greater purity
of style, one might say of it that it belonged to the same family of
monuments as the Maison Caree at Nimes. It has three passages--the middle
much higher than the others--and a very elevated attic. The vaults of the
passages are richly sculptured, and the whole monument is covered with
friezes and military trophies. This sculpture is rather mixed; much of it
is broken and defaced, and the rest seemed to me ugly, tho its workmanship
is praised. The arch is at once well preserved and much injured. Its
general mass is there, and as Roman monuments go it is remarkably perfect;
but it has suffered, in patches, from the extremity of restoration. It is
not, on the whole, of absorbing interest.

It has a charm, nevertheless, which comes partly from its soft, bright
yellow color, partly from a certain elegance of shape, of expression; and
on that well-washed Sunday morning, with its brilliant tone, surrounded by
its circle of thin poplars, with the green country lying beyond it and a
low blue horizon showing through its empty portals, it made, very
sufficiently, a picture that hangs itself to one of the lateral hooks of
the memory. I can take down the modest composition, and place it before me
as I write. I see the shallow, shining puddles in the hard, fair French
road; the pale blue sky, diluted by days of rain; the disgarnished
autumnal fields; the mild sparkle of the low horizon; the solitary figure
in sabots, with a bundle under its arm, advancing along the "chaussee;"
and in the middle I see the little ochre-colored monument, which, in spite
of its antiquity, looks bright and gay, as everything must look in France
of a fresh Sunday morning.

It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Roman theater,
which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did not prevent me
from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through a succession
of little streets concerning which I have no observations to record. None
of the Roman remains in the south of France are more impressive than this
stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises above the place, which was
formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by a citadel of the Romans,
then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razed by Louis XIV.

Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-six meters high, and
composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone, simply laid one on the
other; the whole naked, rugged surface of which suggests a natural cliff
(say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human, or even of
Roman labor. It is the biggest thing at Orange--it is bigger than all
Orange put together--and its permanent massiveness makes light of the
shrunken city. The face it presents to the town--the top of it garnished
with two rows of brackets, perforated with holes to receive the staves of
the "velarium"--bears the traces of more than one tier of ornamental
arches; tho how these flat arches were applied, or incrusted, upon the
wall, I do not profess to explain.

You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems in proportion about as
high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into the lodge of the custodian,
who introduces you to the interior of the theater. Here the mass of the
hill affronts you, which the ingenious Romans treated simply as the
material of their auditorium. They inserted their stone seats, in a
semicircle, in the slope of the hill, and planted their colossal wall
opposite to it. This wall, from the inside, is, if possible, even more
imposing. It formed the back of the stage, the permanent scene, and its
enormous face was coated with marble. It contains three doors, the middle
one being the highest, and having above it, far aloft, a deep niche,
apparently intended for an imperial statue. A few of the benches remain on
the hillside, which, however, is mainly a confusion of fragments. There is
part of a corridor built into the hill, high up, and on the crest are the
remnants of the demolished castle.

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