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In Troubadour Land

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The reader, probably, has not given a thought to the original purpose of
a battlement, so common on towers and churches and castles. I therefore
venture to show what it was originally. It was a wall broken through
with doorways into the wooden gallery that overhung, and through which
the assailants could be kept from approaching too near to the base of
the walls. But, after a time, these wooden galleries were found to be
inconvenient. Means were taken by the besiegers to set them on fire.
Consequently they were abandoned, and their places were taken by projecting
galleries of stone, supported, not on wooden beams, but on stone corbels,
and it is this second stage in fortification which is called machicolation.
The battlements were retained, but were no longer roofed over. Consequently
it is possible to tell approximately the epoch of a Mediæval fortification,
by a look at the battlements, whether they stand back flush with the walls,
and have the beam-holes, or whether they stand forward, bracketed out from
the walls.

[Illustration: Second stage of battlements.]

Aigues Mortes is a dead town. About a third of the area within the walls is
devoted to gardens, or is waste. The population, which in the thirteenth
century numbered 15,000 souls, has shrunk to a little over 3,000, a number
at which it remains stationary. It does a little sleepy trade in salt, and
sees the barges for Beaucaire pass its walls, and perhaps supplies the
boatmen with wine and bread. The neighbourhood is desolate. The soil is so
full of salt that it is impatient of tillage, and produces only such
herbs as love the sea border. But its lagoons are alive with wild fowl,
rose-coloured flamingoes, white gulls, and green metallic-throated ducks.

And now for Maguelonne. I said that Aigues Mortes was a dead town, but
Maguelonne was the ghost of one. The best way to reach this latter very
singular spot is to take the train from Montpellier to Villeneuve de
Maguelonne, and walk thence to the border of the Etang. There one is pretty
sure to find fishermen--they catch little else than eels--who will row one
across to the narrow strip of land that intervenes between the lagoon and
the sea. The littoral chain here is not of sand and gravel only, for a mass
of volcanic tufa rises to the surface, and originally formed an islet in
the sea, then, when the process began of forming a littoral belt with a
lagoon behind it, the sands clung to this islet and spread out from it to
left and right.

On this volcanic islet stood first a Greek and then a Roman city, but of
its history nothing is known till the sixth century, when it was attacked
from the sea by Wamba, King of the Visigoths. It had been an episcopal city
for a century before. After the Visigoths came the Saracens, who gave the
place their name, and the harbour of Maguelonne was called Port Sarasin.
In 737, Charles Martel, in order to clear the pirates completely out of
their stronghold, destroyed the city to its last foundation, with the sole
exception of the old church of S. Peter. The bishop took up his abode on
the mainland at Villeneuve, and the seat of the bishopric was moved to
Castelnau near Montpellier. For three centuries the islet was abandoned
and left a heap of ruins. But it was restored in the eleventh century. The
walls were again set up, and flanked with towers, and a causeway consisting
of a chain of wooden bridges was carried across the lagoon to Villeneuve.
The entrance to the port was closed lest it should invite Saracen pirates,
and another opened under the walls of the town which could be rendered
impassable by a chain at the first sign of danger. The newly-built town
speedily showed vigour, became populous, and the harbour was filled with
the merchandise of the Mediterranean. Two popes visited the city, Gelasius
II. in 1118, and Alexander III. in 1162. In addition to the Cathedral of
S. Peter, other churches were raised, dedicated to S. Augustine and S.
Pancras. A castle with keep was erected.

For several centuries Maguelonne was a sort of ecclesiastical republic, in
which the bishop exercised the office of president. It became very rich and
luxurious. The bishop, not too scrupulous, forged imitation Saracen coins,
and was called to order for doing this by Clement IV. in 1266. It seemed
to the sovereign pontiff a scandal, not that the bishop should forge the
coins, but that he should forge them with the name of Mahomet on them as
"Prophet of God." In 1331 statutes for the monastery on Maguelonne were
drawn up, which proved that the discipline kept therein left much to be
desired; and a monastic treatise on cooking that came thence shows that the
monks and canons were consummate epicures.

Maguelonne was ruined first by Charles Martel. It was again, and finally
ruined, by Louis XIII. The castle, the walls, the towers, the monastic
buildings--everything was levelled to the dust, with the sole exception of
the cathedral church. The stones of the dismantled buildings encumbered the
ground till 1708, when they were all carried off for the construction of
the new canal which runs along the coast through the chain of lagoons from
Cette to Aigues Mortes.

"A church and its archives," says the historian of Maguelonne, "that is all
that the revolution of fate has respected of one of the principal monastic
centres in the south. A church in which service is no longer said, and
archives that are incomplete. Even the very cemetery of Maguelonne has
vanished, as though Death had feared to encounter himself in this desert,
where naught remained save the skeleton of a cathedral. Yet what dust is
here! Phoenician, Greek, Celtic, Roman, Christian, Mahomedan, French: A few
tombs escaped the observation of the stone collectors of 1708, and even
fewer inscriptions, excepting such as are found within the church, that
is all! What a realization is this of the sentence on all things human,
_Pulvis es_." [1]

[Footnote 1: Germain: "Maguelonne et ses Évêques," 1859.]

[Illustration: East end of the Church of Maguelonne.]

The islet of Maguelonne is but one knot in the long thread of _cordon
littoral_ that reaches from Cette to Aigues Mortes, and it can be reached
on foot by land from Palavas, but the simplest and shortest route is by
boat in half an hour over the shallow mere, nowhere over three feet six
inches deep. The boats of the fishermen are all flat-bottomed, and the men
have to row gingerly, lest their oars strike the bottom, or else they punt
along. One can see as one crosses, the points of rest of the old causeway.
The church, like that of Les Trois Maries, is feudal castle as much
as cathedral, calculated, on occasion, to give refuge within to the
inhabitants of the town, whilst the garrison stood on the flat roof and
showered arrows, stones, molten sulphur and pitch upon the besiegers.
The whole of this coast was liable to the descent of Moorish and Saracen
pirates, consequently the same type of church prevails all along it. The
western tower is ruinous, but the remainder of the church is in tolerable
condition. It is cruciform, with an apse, as but very narrow windows, high
up and few. The roof is slabbed with stone, so as to form a terrace on
which the besieged could walk, and whence they could launch their weapons
through the slots and between the battlements. At the south-west end of the
church is a curious entrance door of the twelfth century, with a relieving
arch of coloured marbles over it, and the apostles Peter and Paul rudely
sculptured as supporters of the arch. They occupy a crouching position, and
are sculptured on triangular blocks. In the tympanum is the Saviour seated
in glory. But what in addition to its quaintness of design gives peculiar
interest to this doorway is the inscription it bears:--

AD PORTVM VITE SITIENTES QVIQVE VENITE.
HAS INTRANDO FORES, VESTROS COMPONITE MORES.
HINC INTRANS ORA, TVA SEMPER CRIMINA PLORA.
QVICQVID PECCATVR LACRIMARVM FONTE LAVATVR.
B. D. IIIVIS FECIT HOC ANNO INC. DO. CLXXVIII.

Let those who will come thirsting to the gate of Life.
On entering these doors compose your manners.
Entering here pray, and ever bewail your crimes.
All sin is washed away in the spring of tears.
Bernard de Trevies made this, A.D. 1178.

Now Bernard of the Three-Ways is a man who did something else--he was a
novelist and a poet. A Canon of Maguelonne, gentle and pure of heart, he
wrote the story of 'Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelone,' a charming
monument of the old Languedoc tongue worthy to range alongside with
'Aucassin et Nicolette.' It has been translated into most European
languages, Greek not excepted, and has become a favourite chapbook tale.
It is still read in all cottages of France, sold at all fairs, but sadly
mutilated at each re-edition, and in its chapbook form reduced to a few
pages, which is but a wretched fragment of a very delightful whole. No idea
of its beauty can be obtained without reference to the old editions, where
it occupies a goodly volume.

The story of Pierre de Provence is not one of extraordinary originality,
but its charm lies in its general tone, healthy, pure, gentle, full of the
freshness of chivalry in its first institution, and of religion in its
simplicity. We probably have not got the poetic romance quite in its
original form as it left the hands of Bernard, for Petrarch, whilst a
student at Montpellier, was struck with it, and added some polishing
touches, and it is the version thus improved by his master-hand that is
believed to have come down to us. I shrink from still further condensing a
story spoiled already by condensation, and yet do not like altogether to
pass it over without giving the reader some idea of it.

The story tells of a Peter, son of the Count of Melgueil, who, hearing that
the King of Naples had a daughter of surpassing loveliness, determined
to ride and see her. He had himself accoutred in armour, with silver keys
on his helm, and on his shield; and when he reached Naples jousted in
tournament before the fair princess, whose name was Maguelone, and loved
her well, and she him. But, alas! the king had promised to give her to the
Prince of Carpona in marriage, and as she felt she could not live without
her Pierre, and Peter was quite sure he could not live without her, they
eloped together. When the sun waxed burning hot she became very weary,
and he led her beneath a tree, and she laid her head on his knee and fell
asleep. Then he saw how she had in her bosom a little silken bag, and he
lightly drew it forth and peered within to see what it contained. Then, lo!
he found three rings that he had sent her by her nurse. Afraid of waking
her, by replacing the bag, he laid it beside him on a stone, when down
swooped a raven and carried it off. Peter at once folded his mantle, put it
under the head of the sleeping girl, and ran after the bird, which flew to
the sea and perched on a rock above it. Peter threw a stone at the raven
and made it drop the bag into the water. Then he got a boat, moored hard
by, jumped into the boat and went after the floating bag with the rings.
But wind and waves rose and brushed him out to sea, and carried him across
the Mediterranean to Alexandria, where the Sultan made him his page. In
the meantime the fair Maguelone awoke in the green wood, and finding
herself alone, ran about calling "Pierre! Pierre!" but received no answer.
She spent the night in the forest, and then took the road to Rome, and
encountering a female pilgrim, exchanged clothes with her. Maguelone
pursued her journey, prayed in S. Peter's Church at Rome, unnoticed by her
uncle, who, with great state, passed by her kneeling there, and threw her
alms. Then she went on to Genoa, where she took boat to Aigues Mortes.
Hearing at this place that there was a little island off the coast suitable
for a hermitage, thither she went, and with her jewels she had brought from
Naples built a little church and a hospital, in which she ministered to
sick people. The Countess of Melgueil, hearing of the holy woman, came to
visit her, and won by her sympathy, with many tears told her how she had
lost her dear son Peter, who had gone to Naples, and had not been heard of
since.

One day, a fisherman caught a tunny, and brought it as a present to the
count. When the tunny was opened, in its stomach was found a little bag
that contained three rings. Now, no sooner did the countess see these than
she knew they were her own, which she had given to Pierre, and she hasted
to tell the anchorite on the isle of the wondrous discovery, and to show
her the rings. It need hardly be told that Maguelone also recognised them.

Now the Sultan of Alexandria had become so attached to Peter, that he
treated him as his own son, and finally, at Peter's entreaty, allowed him
to return to Provence, having first extracted from him a promise to come
back to him. Peter carried with him a great treasure in fourteen barrels,
but to hide their contents he filled up the tops with salt. Then he engaged
with a captain of a trader to convey him across to Provence. Now one day
the vessel stayed for water at a little isle, called Sagona, and Peter went
on shore, and the sun being hot, lay down on the grass and fell asleep. A
wind sprang up. The sails were spread. The captain called Peter. The men
ran everywhere searching for him, could not find him, and at length were
reluctantly obliged to sail without him. On reaching Provence the captain
was unwilling to retain the goods of the lost man, and so gave them to the
holy woman who ministered to the sick in the hospital she had built on a
tiny islet off the coast. One day when Maguelone was short of salt she went
to fetch some from the barrels given her by the ship's captain, and to her
amazement found under the salt an incalculable treasure. With this she set
to work to rebuild the church and her hospital.

In the meantime, Peter awoke, and found himself deserted. For some time he
remained in the island, but from want of food and discouragement fell ill,
and would have died had not some fishermen, chancing to come there, taken
him into their boat. They consulted what to do with the sick man, and one
said that they had best take him to Maguelone. On hearing the name Peter
asked what they meant. They told him that this was the name given to a
church and hospital richly built and tended to by a holy woman, on the
coast of Provence. Peter then entreated them to carry him to the place that
bore so fair a name. So he was conveyed, sick and feeble, into the hostel;
but he was so changed with sickness that Maguelone did not recognise him,
and as she wore a veil he could not see her face.

Now Maguelone, whenever she went by his bed heard him sigh, so she stood
still one day, spoke gently to him, and asked what was his trouble. Then he
told her all his story, and how sad his heart was for his dear Maguelone,
whom he had lost, and might never see again. She now knew him, and with
effort constrained her voice to bid him pray to God, with whom all things
are possible. And when she heard him raise his voice in prayer with many
sobs, she could not contain herself, but ran off to the church, and
kneeling before the altar gave way also to tears, but tears of joy mingled
with psalms of thanksgiving. Then she arose, and brought forth her royal
robes, and cast aside those of an anchorite, and bade that Pierre should be
given a bath and be clothed in princely garb. After which he was introduced
into her presence. Of the joy of the recognition, of the restoration of the
lost son to his parents, of the happy wedding, no need that I should tell.
The church and hostel of Maguelone remained ever after as testimony to the
virtues and piety of La Belle Maguelone, its foundress.

Such is the merest and baldest sketch of this graceful tale, told by the
very man who cut the inscription I copied from the door of the church, in
which he served as canon. When Vernon Lee says of Provençal poetry that
adultery--rank adultery was what it lauded, we must not forget that there
is another side to be considered--and that the Provençal poets turned their
pens as well to drawing pure and artless love.

The land and the old church are now the property of a private gentleman,
a M. Fabre, who has a great love for the place. I remember the church,
when I was a child, full of hay and faggots. It is now restored to sacred
uses, but Mass is only said therein once in the year. The proprietor
has built a farmhouse near it, and has moved his children's bodies to
the old cathedral, and purposes to be laid there himself, when his hour
strikes--surrounded by waters: the sea on one side, the great mere of
Maguelonne on the other.




CHAPTER XVII.

BÉZIERS AND NARBONNE.


Position of Béziers--S. Nazaire--The Albigenses--Their
tenets--Albigensian "consolation"--Crusade against them--The storming
of Béziers--Massacre--Cathedral of Béziers--Girls' faces in the
train--Similar faces at Narbonne, in Cathedral and Museum--Narbonne
a Roman colony--All the Roman buildings destroyed--Caps of
liberty--Christian sarcophagi--Children's toys of baked clay--Cathedral
unfinished--Archiepiscopal Palace--Unsatisfactory work of M.
Viollet-le-Duc--In trouble with the police--Taken for a German spy--My
sketch-book gets me off.


The position of Béziers is striking. It crowns a height above the Orb, its
grand fortified church of S. Nazaire occupying the highest point, where
it stands on a platform. This fine church is not the cathedral. In La
Madeleine is the bishop's throne, a church that, with the exception of the
tower and exterior of the apse, has been modernised out of all interest.
But S. Nazaire is a stately and beautiful church of the twelfth to the
fourteenth century, in the style of the country, very little ornamented
externally, and very strongly fortified; even the windows being made
impenetrable by their strong _grilles_ of iron. There are two western
towers, small, with an arch thrown between their battlements, over the rose
window, and this battlemented archway is in fact a screen behind which
the besieged sheltered whilst they poured down molten pitch on those
who assailed the gateway of the cathedral. For this purpose there is an
open space between the screen and the façade. The apse of eight sides,
internally is fine; and there is a beautiful octagonal apsidal chapel on
the north side, entered from the transept.

Beziers is the scene of a horrible slaughter in 1209, after the siege by
the Crusaders under Simon de Montfort. It had been a headquarter of the
Albigenses. As we are now entering the region reddened with the blood of
these heretics, it will not be improper here to give a little account of
them.

The Albigenses are often erroneously confused with the Waldenses, with
whom really they had little in common. Actually, the Albigenses were not
Christians at all, but Manicheans. The heresy was nothing other than the
reawakening of the dormant and suppressed Paganism of the south of France.
There are plenty of documents which enable us to understand their peculiar
tenets and practices.

[Illustration: Béziers from the river.]

They held a dualism of good and evil principles in the world, equally
matched; and they taught that the evil principle was the origin of all
created matter. Accordingly they rejected the Old Testament, and declared
that all the world and man's body were of diabolic origin, and that the
spirit only was divine. With regard to the person of Christ they were
divided in opinion. Some said He had a phantom body, and that He seemed
only to die on the cross. The real Christ was incapable of suffering. But
another school among them declared that He had a true body born of Mary and
Joseph, and that this was due to the evil principle, and that this body did
hang on the cross. It was the Evil God of the Jews who slew Pharaoh in the
Red Sea. They held that the Good God had two wives, Colla and Coliba, from
whom he had many generations of spiritual beings. Of the Good Christ, the
spiritual, they asserted, that He neither ate nor drank, that He was the
source of all mercy and salvation, but that the Bad Christ was the carnal
one following the Good Christ as the shadow follows the body; that this Bad
Christ had Magdalen as his concubine. They were not agreed as to the future
of man. Some denied the existence of souls, some said that the souls were
fallen angels inhabiting men's bodies, others that the soul was pure and
could only attain to blessedness by emancipation from the body, all the
works of which were evil.

The faithful of the Albigenses were divided into two orders, the "perfect,"
who wore a black dress, abstained from flesh, eggs, cheese, and from
marriage; and the "believers" whose salvation was to be attained by a
certain ceremony called the "consolation." This sacrament of consolation
was performed by one of the perfect laying his hands on the believer; and
after consolation, the newly-consoled must starve himself to death. A great
number of trials of Albigenses have been collected by Limborch in his
history of the Inquisition. One only can we now give. It is that of a woman
who had herself consoled, and sending for a surgeon, ordered him to open
her veins in a bath, that so, the blood running out more freely, she might
sooner die. Also she bought poison, as the bleeding did not succeed, and
procured a cobbler's awl wherewith to pierce her heart, but as the women
with her were undecided whether the heart were on the right side or the
left, she took the poison, and so died. [1]

[Footnote 1: We have got the Acts of the Inquisition at Toulouse during
sixteen years, between 1307-1323. The whole number of cases reported is
932. The usual sentence on one found guilty--unless guilty of causing death
by "consolation"--was to wear a tongue of red cloth on the garments. Of
such there are 174 sentences. If a case of relapse, there was sentence of
brief imprisonment, 218 cases; 38 were reported as having run away; 40 were
condemned to death for having caused the death of dupes by "consolation;"
113 were let off penances previously imposed; 139 were discharged from
prison, and 90 sentences were pronounced against persons already dead.
_See_ Maitland's Tracts and Documents on the Albigenses, 1831.]

We can understand what alarm this great heathen reaction in Provence and
Aquitaine awoke in France, and in the minds of the popes.

Innocent III. at first employed against the Albigenses only spiritual and
legitimate weapons; before proscribing he tried to convert them, but when
they murdered his emissary, Peter de Castelnau, in 1208, he proclaimed a
Holy War against them. It was a war undertaken on the plea of a personal
crime, but in reality for the dispossession of the native princes who
were believed to be in favour of the heresy. "The crusade against the
Albigensians," says M. Guizot, "was the most striking application of two
principles equally false and fatal, which did as much evil to the Catholics
as to the heretics; and these are the right of the spiritual power to
coerce souls by the material force of the temporal power, and the right to
strip princes of their title to the obedience of their subjects--in other
words, denial of religious liberty to consciences, and of political
independence to states."

[Illustration: Béziers.--Church of S. Nazaire.]

In 1208 Innocent summoned the King of France to sweep from southern France
these heretics, "worse than the Saracens," and he promised to the leaders
of the crusade the domains they won of the princes who favoured the heresy.
The war lasted fifteen years (from 1208 to 1223) and of the two leading
spirits, one ordering and the other executing, Pope Innocent III. and Simon
de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During the fifteen years of this
religious war, nearly all the towns and strong castles in the regions
between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne were taken, lost, retaken,
given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the Crusaders with
all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. In the account
of the war by a Provençal poet, we are told that God never made the clerk
who could have written the muster-roll of the crusading army in two or even
three months. One of the first victims was the young and gallant Viscount
of Béziers, who, the same author assures us, was a good Catholic, but whose
lands and towns the rapacious horde lusted to acquire. When they sat down
before Béziers, then the Catholics within the walls made common cause with
the heretics, and refused to surrender.

[Illustration: Fountain in the cloister of S. Nazaire, Béziers.]

Then the city was stormed, the walls scrambled up by a rabble rout of
camp-followers, in shirts and breeches, but without shoes, who burst over
the parapets whilst the envoys of the town were being amused by mock
conferences with Montfort and the other leaders of the crusading host. A
general massacre ensued; neither age nor sex were spared, even priests
fell. It is said that news of what was being done was brought to Arnauld,
Abbot of Citeaux, one of the commanders of the crusade, and he was told
that faithful and heretics were being slaughtered alike. "Slay them all,"
said he, "God will know His own."

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