The Lake of GenevaMorris, Joseph E. (Joseph Ernest)
History
The Lake of Geneva
Morris, Joseph E. (Joseph Ernest)
Geneva, Lake (Switzerland and France)
splendid new Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, in the Rue des Casemates.
Then it had no front, in the ordinary sense, towards the lake; and
the islands in the Rhone were laden with quaint old tenements.
Moreover, the whole city was then surrounded by a ring of many-angled
fortifications in the familiar manner of Vauban.
[Illustration: THE JURA RANGE FROM THONON, HTE. SAVOIE.]
If the actual birth-place of Jean Jacques Rousseau in the Grande Rue
has perished, no better piece of luck has befallen the house, at No.
11, Rue des Chanoines (now relabelled Rue Calvin), in which Calvin,
as recorded by an existing tablet, resided from 1543 to his death in
1564. To find authentic associations with Calvin we must pass into
the former Cathedral, now the Protestant Church of St. Pierre, where
is still preserved a chair on which he is said to have sat to preach.
The Cathedral itself, however, is his truest monument, for in this
he constantly preached, and in this he delivered judgment. This last
is a grand old Romanesque pile, with transeptal towers like those at
Exeter; but sadly disfigured externally by an atrocious, Classical,
eighteenth-century west front. This, with its Corinthian pillars, might
be well enough elsewhere, but is quite out of keeping, like the west
front at Fécamp, in Normandy, with the older work behind. It must also
be acknowledged that here, as at Lausanne, the austere Calvinistic
furniture is wholly out of keeping with an interior that was obviously
intended for elaborate Catholic ritual. In a very odd position, at
the south-west corner of the nave, is the striking fifteenth-century
Chapel of the Maccabées that was built in 1406 by Cardinal Jean de
Brogny, who was Bishop of Geneva between 1423 and 1426. The curious
name is met with again as far away as Amiens, and may possibly derive
from "macabre," the Chapel of the Dead: Brogny, indeed, is said to
have built this chapel with a view to his own future interment. In
the body of the church there are really several points to notice,
though at first its general aspect is repellently cold and bare. In
the chancel and south nave aisle remain a number of old stalls with
misericordes, one of the last of which is unexpectedly carved with a
frog. Other stalls have canopies, apparently much restored, the backs
of which are sculptured with figures of Prophets and Apostles, greatly
recalling those in the not far distant French cathedral of St. Claude.
Included among the rest are David and the Sybil, who was credited with
prescience of the coming birth of Christ:
"Teste David cum Sybilla."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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