Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe - Sabine Baring-Gould (books to read to improve english TXT) 📗

the ecclesiastical foundations in the town. Francois d'Aubeterre was involved in the conspiracy of Amboise, and was sentenced to death, but pardoned. He deemed it expedient, however, to go to Geneva, where, as Brantome informs us, he turned button-maker. In 1561 he was back again in Aubeterre, and converted the monolithic church into a preaching "temple," sweeping away all Catholic symbols, and it remains bare of them to this day. His brother, Guy Bonchard, Bishop of Perigueux, was also an ardent Calvinist, and used his position for introducing preachers of the sect into the churches. Although disbelieving in Episcopacy, he did not see his way to surrendering the emoluments of his see. He was deposed in 1561, and Peter Fournier elected, whom the Huguenots murdered in his bed 14th July 1575.

In 1568 Jeanne d'Albret issued orders to the gangs of men she sent through the country to lay hold of the royal revenues, to sequestrate and appropriate all ecclesiastical property, to raise taxes to pay themselves, and to require all municipalities to furnish from four to five soldiers apiece to replenish their corps.

Jeanne's power extended over Lower Navarre, Bearn, the land of Albret, Foix, Armagnac, and other great seigneuries. Through her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, she could rule and torture Perigord, the Bourbonais, and the Vendomois. She had good cause to be offended with the Pope, for in 1563, with incredible folly, he threatened her with deposition from her throne, a threat he could not possibly execute. By enrolling and sending forth over the south to ravage and confiscate, she was a second Pandora letting loose the hurricane, slaughter, fire, famine, and pestilence, leaving Hope locked up behind.

Aubeterre played a conspicuous part in the wars of religion, and the Catholics in vain essayed to take it. The seigneur could always draw from the bands of Calvinist soldiery to hold it, and it remained in their power till the peace of La Rochelle.

I might include Rocamadour in the Department of Lot among the interesting rock churches. It consists of a cluster of chapels clinging to the rock or dug out of it, and looking like a range of swallows' nests plastered against the face of the cliff. The people of the place fondly hold that Zaccheus, who climbed up a sycamore tree to see Our Lord pass by, came into Quercy, and having a natural propensity for climbing, scrambled up the face of the precipice to a hole he perceived in it, and there spent the remainder of his days, and changed his name to Amator. No trace of such an identification occurs before 1427, when Pope Martin V. affirmed it in a bull, although in the local breviary there was no such identification. It is extremely doubtful whether any saint of the name of Amator settled here, the story concerning him is an appropriation from Lucca. [Footnote: _Analecta Bollandiana_, T. xxviii., pp. 57 _et seq_.]

But I will not describe this, one of the most remarkable sites in Europe, as I have done so already in my "Deserts of Southern France," and as of late years it has been visited by a good many English tourists, and the French railway stations exhibit highly coloured views of it, turning Rocamadour into a national show place.

At Lirac, in Gard, is La Sainte Baume, a small church or chapel, excavated out of the rock, 60 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 30 feet high. It is lighted by an aperture in the vault. Three other caves behind the choir are almost as large.

At Mimet, in Bouches-du-Rhone, is the church of Our Lady of the Angels, hewn out of limestone rock, with stalactites depending from the roof.

At Peyre, near Millau, in Tarn, is the church of S. Christophe, scooped out of the living rock, with above it an old crenellated bell tower.

At Caudon, on the Dordogne, now in the parish of Domme, the old parish church is monolithic, entirely excavated in the rock, but with a structural bell-cot above it. As already mentioned, Caudon was a parish, but as owing to the devastations of the Companies, all the inhabitants had deserted it and fled to Spain, it was annexed to Domme. What is curious is that before it had been carved out of the limestone as a church there had been cave-dwellers in or about it, that have left their traces in the sides of the church. The Marquis de Maleville, who has his chateau near, has put the church in thorough repair, and it is still occasionally used.

Natural caves have been employed as churches or places of worship. Thus the Grotte des Fees, near Nimes, was used by the Calvinists for their religious assemblies before 1567, when they obtained the mastery of the town, sacked the bishop's palace, and filled up the well with the Catholics, whom they precipitated into it, some dead and others half alive.

The Grotte de Jouclas, near Rocamadour, served the villagers of La Cave till the parish church was rebuilt. At Gurat, in Charente, the church of S. George is hollowed out of the rock; it dates from the tenth century, it is believed, and preceded the present parish church, which was erected in the eleventh century, and is Romanesque. In the valley of the Borreze, near Souillac (Lot), is a cave in which bones of the _ursus speloeus_ have been found. It is used as a chapel to Notre Dame de Ste. Esperance.

At Lanmeur, in Brittany, is the very early crypt of S. Melor, a Breton prince put to death about the year 544. The legend concerning him is rich in mythical particulars. His uncle, so as to incapacitate him from attaining the crown of Leon, cut off his right hand and left foot. The boy was then provided with a silver hand and a brazen foot. One day he was seen to use his silver hand in plucking filberts off a tree, whereupon his uncle had him murdered. The crypt is the most ancient monument of Christian architecture in Brittany. It measures 25 feet by 15 feet 6 inches, and is divided into a nave and side aisles by two ranges of columns hardly 4 feet high, sustaining depressed arches not rising above 3 feet 6 inches, and decorated with rudely sculptured trailing branches.

A still more curious subterranean chapel is near Plouaret, in Cotes-du- Nord. It is, in fact, a prehistoric dolmen under a tumulus, on top of which a chapel was erected in 1702-4. The descent into the crypt is by a flight of steps. The primitive monument consisted of two huge capstones of granite supported by four or five vertically planted uprights, but one, if not two of the latter have been removed. At the east end is an altar to the Seven Sleepers, and the comical dolls representing them stand in a niche above the altar.

In the north-west of Spain, at Cangas-de-Ones, near Oviedo, is a little church of probably the tenth or eleventh century, built on top of a cairn that covers a dolmen. This latter consists of a circular chamber into which leads a gallery composed of fifteen upright slabs, covered by four others. The dolmen served as a crypt to the church, and from it have been recovered objects in stone and copper of a prehistoric period. A writer in the seventeenth century says that in his time devotees regarded the dolmen as the tomb of a saint, and scrabbled up the soil, and carried it away as a remedy against sundry maladies. [Footnote: _Revue mensuelle de l'ecole d'Anthropologie_, Paris, 1897.]

The Bretons have a ballad, _Gwerz_, concerning the former monument. It is a miraculous structure dating from the Creation of the World: "Who will doubt that it was built by the hand of the Almighty? You ask me when and how it was constructed. I reply that I believe that when the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all were created, then was this also made."

Although the dolmen is no longer underground, I must refer to that of Confolens near S. Germain-sur-Vienne, because it was originally under a tumulus. It is a dolmen, of which only the cover, a huge mass of granite remains intact, in an island of the Vienne. Underneath the slab are sculptured a stone axe with handle, and one without, also a cross. The capstone rests on four pillars of the twelfth century. Mr. Ferguson erroneously claimed the dolmen as evidence that rude stone monuments continued to be erected till late in the Middle Ages. But, in fact, the pillars are not of equal length, their capitals are not in line, nor are their bases. What is obvious is that the rude stone supports were removed one by one, and the Gothic pillars inserted in their place were cut exactly to the length required. Thus altered, the dolmen served as a baldachin or canopy over the stone Christian altar that is still in place beneath it. About this monument a chapel had been erected with apse to the east, measuring 36 feet by 15 feet. This has been destroyed, but the foundations remained till recently. The cross on the capstone was cut when the prehistoric monument was converted to use by Christians. To descend to the floor of the chapel a flight of steps had been constructed. The chapel was dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen.

In Egypt, in the Levant, cave-churches are common. The chapel of Agios Niketos, in Crete, is now merely a smoke begrimed grotto beneath a huge mass of rock on the mountain side. The roof is elaborately ornamented with paintings representing incidents in the Gospel story, and the legend of S. Nicolas. Though it is no longer employed as a church, an event that is said to have happened some centuries ago invests it with special regard by the natives. The church was crowded with worshippers on the eve of the feast of the patron, when the fires which the villagers who had assembled there had lighted near the entrance, where they were bivouacking for the night, attracted the attention of a Barbary corsair, then cruising off the island, and guided him to the spot unobserved. Suddenly and unexpectedly he and his crew, having stolen up the hill, burst upon the crowd of frightened Cretans. The Corsairs thereupon built up the entrance, and waited for day, the better to secure their captives for embarkation. But happily there was another exit from the cavern behind the altar, and by this the whole congregation escaped into another cave, and thence by a passage to a further opening, through which they stole out unobserved by the pirates.

The rock-hewn church of Dayn Aboo Hannes, "the convent of Father John," in Egypt, near Antinoe, has its walls painted with subjects from the New Testament; the church is thought to date back to the time of Constantine.

The passion for associating grottoes with sacred themes is shown in the location of the site of the Nativity at Bethlehem. There is nothing in the Gospel to lead us to suppose that the event took place in a cave, though it is not improbable that it did so. The scene of the Annunciation was also a rock-hewn cave, now occupied by a half- underground church, out of which flows the Virgin's Fountain.

In Gethsemane, "the chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin, over the traditional spot where the Mother of our Lord was buried by the Apostles, is mostly underground. Three flights of steps lead down to the space in front of it, so that nothing is seen above ground but the porch. But even after you have gone down the three flights of steps you are only at the entrance to the church, amidst marble pillars, flying buttresses, and pointed