Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1Rose, Elise Whitlock
Religion
Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1
Rose, Elise Whitlock
Cathedrals -- France; France -- Description and travel
In 1060, after the destructive vicissitudes of the early centuries,
Archbishop Rostaing d'Hyeres issued a pastoral letter appealing to
the Faithful to aid him in the re-building of a new Cathedral; and it
may be reasonably supposed that the nave which is at present the south
aisle, the baptistery, and the Cloisters were the buildings that were
dedicated less than fifty years later. They are the only portions of the
church which can be ascribed to so early a period, and with the low door
of entrance, the single nave and the adjoining cloister-walk, they
constitute the usual plan of XI century Romanesque. Considering this as
the early church, in almost original form, it will be seen that the
portal is a very interesting example of the Provencal use not only of
Roman suggestion, but of the actual fragments of Roman art which had
escaped the invader; that the south aisle, in itself a completed
interior, bears a close resemblance to Avignon; and that the Cloister,
although now very worn and even defaced, must have been one of the
quaintest and most delicate, as it is one of the tiniest, in Provence.
Three sides of its arcades support plain buildings of a later date; the
fourth stands free, as if in ruin. Little coupled columns, some
slenderly circular, some twisted, and some polygonal, rest on a low
wall; piers, very finely and differently carved, are at each of the
arcade angles; the little capitals of the columns were once beautifully
cut, and even the surfaces of the arches have small foliated disks and
rosettes and are finished in roll and hollow. Unfortunately, a very
large part of this detail-work is so defaced that its subjects are
barely suggested, some are so eaten away that they are as desolate of
beauty as the barren little quadrangle; and the whole Cloister seems to
have reached the brink of that pathetic old age which Shakespeare has
described, and that another step in the march of time would leave it
"sans everything."
[Illustration: THE CLOISTER.--AIX.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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