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Art and Learning at Paris

Two epoch-making developments—the creation of Gothic architecture and the rise of the University of Paris—synchronise with the period covered by the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. Louis, and may now fitly be considered.

The memory of the Norman terror had long passed from men's minds. The Isle de France had been purged of robber lords, and with peace and security, wealth and population had increased. The existing churches were becoming too small for the faithful and new and fairer temples replaced the old: the massive square towers, the heavy walls and thick pillars of the Norman builders, blossomed into grace and light and beauty. Already in the beginning of the twelfth century the church of St. Denis was in urgent need of extension. On festival days so great were the crowds pressing to view the relics, that many people had been trodden under foot, and Abbot Suger determined to build a larger and nobler church. Great was the enthusiasm of the people as the new temple rose. Noble and burgess, freeman and serf, harnessed themselves like beasts of burden to the ropes and drew the stone from the quarry. A profound silence reigned, broken only by the murmur of those who confessed their sins when a halt was made. A trumpet sounded, banners were unfurled, and the silent host resumed its way. Arrived at the building the whole multitude burst forth into a song of praise. All would lend their aid in raising the new house of God and of His holy martyrs, and the burial-place of their kings. In 1161 Maurice de Sully, a peasant's son, who had risen to become bishop of Paris, determined to erect a great minster adequate to the demands of his time. The old churches of Notre Dame and of St. Stephen[58] and many houses were demolished, and a new street, called of Notre Dame, was made. Sully devoted the greater part of his life and private resources to the work. The king, the pope, seigneurs, guilds of merchants and private persons, vied with each other in making gifts. Two years were spent in digging the foundations of the new Notre Dame, and in 1163 Pope Alexander III. is said to have laid the first stone. In 1182, the choir being finished, the papal legate, Henri de Châteaux-Marcay, consecrated the high altar, and in 1185 the Patriarch of Jerusalem celebrated mass in the choir. At Sully's death, in 1196, the walls of the nave were erect and partly roofed, and the old prelate left a hundred livres for a covering of lead. The transepts and nave were completed in 1235.

In 1240 an ingenious and sacrilegious thief, climbing to the roof to haul up the silver candlesticks from the altar by a noose in a rope, set fire to the altar cloth, and the choir was seriously injured. Sully's work had been Romanesque, and choir and apse were now rebuilt in the new style, to harmonise with the remainder of the church. By the end of the thirteenth century the chapels round the apse and in the nave, the Porte Rouge and the south portal were added, and the great temple was at length completed. The choir of St. Germain des Prés and the exquisite little church of St. Julien le Pauvre were rebuilt at the end of the twelfth century, and the beautiful refectory of St. Martin des Champs was created about 1220. But the culmination of Gothic art is reached in the wondrous sanctuary that St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world of religion and poetry—tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries of divine love—expressed in the marvellous little church, in the fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior faithfully reproduces the mediæval colour and gold. During the Revolution it was used as a granary and then as a club. It narrowly escaped destruction, and men now living can remember seeing the old notices on the porch of the lower chapel—Propriété nationale à vendre. All that remains of the relics has long been transferred to the treasury of Notre Dame. The old Quinze-Vingts, the Chartreux, the Cordeliers, St. Croix de la Bretonnerie, St. Catherine, the Blancs Manteaux, the Mathurins and other masterpieces of the Gothic builders have all disappeared.

Gothic architecture was eminently a product of the Isle de France. "France not only led," says Mr. Lethaby, "but invented. In a very true sense what we call Gothic is Frenchness of the France which had its centre in Paris." The thirteenth century rivals the finest period of Greek art for purity, simplicity, nobility and accurate science of construction. Imagination was chastened by knowledge, but not systematised into rigid rules. Each master solved his problem in his own way, and the result was a charm, a variety, and a fertility of invention, never surpassed in the history of art. Early French sculpture is a direct descendant of Greek art, which made its way into Gaul by the Phœnician trade route, and the Merovingian Franks were always in touch with the Eastern Mediterranean, and with the stream of early Byzantine[60] art. French artists achieved a perfection in the representation of the human form which anticipated by a generation the work of the Pisani in Italy, for the early thirteenth-century statues on the west front of Chartres Cathedral are carved with a naturalness and grace which the Italian masters never surpassed, and the marvellously mature and beautiful silver-gilt figure of a king, in high relief, found in 1902 immured in an old house at Bourges and exhibited in 1904 among the Primitifs Français at the Louvre, was wrought more than a century before the birth of Donatello. Some fragments of the old sculptures that adorned St. Denis and other twelfth and thirteenth-century churches may still be found in the museums of Paris. The influence of the French architects, as Emile Bertaux has demonstrated in the first volume of his Art dans l'Italie Méridionale, extended far beyond the limits of France, and is clearly traceable in the fine hunting-palace, erected for Frederic II. in the thirteenth century, at Castello del Monte, near Andria, in Apulia. But of the names of those who created these wonderful productions few are known; the great masterpieces of the thirteenth century are mostly anonymous. Jean de Chelles, one of the masons of Notre Dame, has left his name on the south portal and the date, Feb. 12, 1257, on which it was begun, "in honour of the holy Mother of Christ." He was followed by Pierre de Montereau, "master of the works of the church of Blessed Mary at Paris," whose name thus appears in a deed of sale dated 1265. The Sainte Chapelle is commonly attributed to Pierre de Montereau, but the attribution is a mere guess.

Nor did the love of beauty during this marvellous age express itself solely in architecture. If we were asked to specify one trait which more than any other characterises the "dark ages" and differentiates them from modern times, we should be tempted to say, love of brightness and colour. Within and without, the temples of God were resplendent with silver and gold, with purple and crimson and blue; the saintly figures and solemn legends on their porches, the capitals, the columns, the groins of the vaultings, the very crest of the roof, were lustrous with colour and gold. Each window was a complex of jewelled splendour; the pillars and walls were painted or draped with lovely tapestries and gorgeous banners: the shrines and altars glittered like Aaron's breastplate, with precious stones—jasper and sardius and chalcedony, sapphire and emerald, chrysolite and beryl, topaz and amethyst and pearl. The Church illuminated her sacred books with exquisite painting, bound them with precious fabrics, and clasped them with silver and gold; the robes of her priests and ministrants were rich with embroideries. "People," said William Morris, "have long since ceased to take in impressions through their eyes," indeed so insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight possesses him and he averts his gaze.

Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of noble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: so was spinning. Apothecaries and lawyers were artists: so was a tailor. Dante[62] uses the word artista as denoting a workman or craftsman, and when he wishes to emphasise the degeneracy of the citizens of his time as compared with those of the old Florentine race, he does so by saying that in those days their blood ran pure even nell' ultimo artista (in the commonest workman). Let us be careful how we speak of these ages as "dark"; at least there were "retrievements out of the night." Already before the tenth century the basilica of St. Germain des Prés was known as St. Germain le doré (the golden), from its glowing refulgence, and St. Bernard as we have seen, declaimed against the resplendent colour and gold in the churches of his time. Never since the age of Pericles has so great an effusion of beauty descended on the earth as during the wondrous thirteenth century in the Isle de France and especially in Paris.[63]

We pass from the enthusiasm of art to that of learning. From earliest times, schools, free to the poor, had been attached to every great abbey and cathedral in France. At the end of the eleventh century four were eminent at Paris: the schools of St. Denis, where the young princes and nobles were educated; of the Parvis Notre Dame, for the training of young clercs,[64] the famous Scola Parisiaca, referred to by Abelard; of St. Genevieve; and of St. Victor, founded by William of Champeaux, one of the most successful masters of Notre Dame. The fame of this teacher drew multitudes of young men from the provinces to Paris, among whom there came, about 1100, Peter Abelard, scion of a noble family of Nantes. By his wit, erudition and dialectical sublety he soon eclipsed his master's fame and was appointed to a chair of philosophy in the school of Notre Dame. William, jealous of his young rival, compassed his dismissal, and after teaching for a while at Melun, Abelard returned to Paris and opened a school on Mont St. Genevieve, whither crowds of students followed him. So great was the fame of this brilliant lecturer and daring thinker that his school was filled with eager listeners from all countries of Europe, even from Rome herself.

Abelard was proud and ambitious, and the highest prizes of an ecclesiastical and scholastic career seemed within his grasp. But Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, had a niece, accomplished and passing fair, Héloïse by name, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the great teacher. It was proposed that Abelard should enter the canon's house as her tutor, and Fulbert's avarice made the proposition an acceptable one. Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother tongue, a facile master of versi d'amore, which he would sing with a voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years of age: Héloïse seventeen. Amor al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,[65] and Minerva was not the only goddess who presided over their meetings. For a time Fulbert was blind, but scandal cleared his eyes and Abelard was expelled from the house; Héloïse followed and took refuge with her lover's sister in Brittany, where a child, Astrolabe, was born. Peacemakers soon intervened and a secret marriage was arranged, which took place early one morning at Paris, Fulbert being present. But the lovers continued to meet; scandal was again busy and Fulbert published the marriage. Héloïse, that the master's advancement in the Church might not be impeded, gave the lie to her uncle and fled to the nuns of Argenteuil. Fulbert now plotted a dastardly revenge. By his orders Abelard was surprised in his bed, and the mutilation which, according to Eusebius, Origen performed on himself, was violently inflicted on the great teacher. All ecclesiastical preferment was thus rendered canonically impossible; Abelard became the talk of Paris, and in bitter humiliation retired to the abbey of St. Denis. Before he made his vows, however, he required of Héloïse that she should take the veil. The heart-broken creature reproached him for his disloyalty, and repeating the lines which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cornelia weeping for Pompey's death, burst into tears and consented to take the veil.

A savage punishment was inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts on Fulbert's ruffians, who were made to suffer the lex talionis and the loss of their eyes: the canon's property was confiscated. The great master, although forbidden to open a school at St. Denis, was importuned by crowds of young men not to let his talents waste, and soon a country house near by was filled with so great a company of scholars that food could not be found for them. But enemies were vigilant and relentless, and he had shocked the timid by doubting the truth of the legend that Dionysius the Areopagite had come to France.

In 1124 certain of Abelard's writings on the Trinity were condemned, and he took refuge at Nogent-sur-Seine, near Troyes, under the patronage of the Count of Champagne. He retired to a hermitage of thatch and reeds, the famous Paraclete, but even there students flocked to him, and young nobles were glad to live on coarse bread and lie on straw, that they might taste of wisdom, the bread of the angels. Again his enemies set upon him; he surrendered the Paraclete to Héloïse and a small sisterhood, and accepted the abbotship of St. Gildes in his own Brittany. A decade passed, and again he was seen in Paris. His enemies now determined to silence him, and St. Bernard, the dictator of Christendom, denounced his writings. Abelard appealed for a hearing, and the two champions met in St. Stephen's church at Sens before the king, the hierarchy and a brilliant and expectant audience; the ever-victorious knight-errant of disputation, stood forth, eager for the fray, but St. Bernard simply rose and read out seventeen propositions from his opponent's works, which he declared to be heretical. Abelard in disgust left the lists, and was condemned unheard to perpetual silence. The pope, to whom he appealed, confirmed the sentence, and the weary soldier of the mind, old and heart-broken, retired to Cluny; he gave up the struggle, was reconciled to his opponents, and died absolved by the pope near Chalons in 1142. His ashes were sent to Héloïse, and twenty years later she was laid beside him at the Paraclete. A well-known path, worn by generations of unhappy lovers, leads to a monument in Père-la-Chaise Cemetery at Paris which marks the last resting-place of Abelard and Héloïse, whose remains were transferred there in 1817.

It is commonly believed that Abelard's school on Mont St. Genevieve was the origin of the Latin Quarter in Paris, but the migration to the south had probably begun before Abelard came, and was rather due to the overcrowding of the episcopal schools. Teachers and scholars began to swarm to the new quarter over the bridge where quiet, purer air and better accommodation were found. Ordinances of Bishop Gilbert, 1116, and Stephen, 1124, transcribed by Félibien, make this clear. So disturbed were the canons by the numbers of students in the cloister, that externes were to be no longer admitted, nor other schools allowed on the north side where the canons lodged. The growing importance of the new schools, which tended to the advantage of the abbey of St. Genevieve, soon alarmed the bishops, and the theologians were ordered to lecture only between the two bridges (the Petit and Grand Ponts.) But it was Abelard's brilliant career that attracted like a lodestar the youth of Europe to Paris, and made that city the "oven where the intellectual bread of the world was baked." Providence, it was said, had given Empire to Germany, Priestcraft to Italy, Learning to France. What a constellation of great names glows in the spiritual firmament of mediæval Paris: William of Champeaux, Peter Lombard, Maurice de Sully, Pierre de Chartreux, Abelard, Gilbert[66] l'Universel, Adrian IV., St. Thomas of Canterbury, and his biographer John of Salisbury. Small wonder that the youth of the twelfth century sought the springs of learning at Paris!