Toulouse - the Cathedral and Saint-Sernin
Excerpts from 'The Cathedrals of Southern France' by T Francis Bumpus, 1895
This is the only part of France in which the almost exclusive employment of brick on a large and important scale can be studied. Examples of this kind of construction are fewer and less important generally than those of Germany, Italy and Belgium. Stone is so plentiful throughout France that there are but few districts in which there was any or much advantage in the use of brick; and consequently that practical good use which made medieval architects always prefer the cheapest good material to any other, involved as a matter of course the general use of stone. It is in this southern province of France of which I am now writing, more than anywhere else, that old brickwork is to be seen, and to Toulouse, its most important city, I must first take my readers. Here almost all the churches are of brick, and of extreme interest, and all ages.
Let us first look at the cathedral of Saint Etienne. This strange church consists of an early nave, to the north-east angle of which was added, in the fourteenth century, a nobly-proportioned choir with aisles, procession path and chapels (both lateral and radiating) on northern lines, but in many of its features and details quite local. This grand choir overtops by far the older portion of the church, and was evidently begun with the intention of some day completing the transepts and of building a nave in place of that which still fortunately stands. I say fortunately, not because the whole work is now harmonious, for it is very much the reverse, but because this old nave happens to be a work of extreme value and interest.
[The choir is placed off-centre to the nave.] The effect of this eccentricity is undeniably picturesque, and the emerging from the speluncar, aisleless nave into the lightsome choir is attended by a sensation similar to that which one experiences on passing from the lower to the upper churches of the Sainte Chapelle at Paris and Saint Francis at Assisi.
The nave of this cathedral is said to have been built by Count Raymond VI whilst he was besieged by Simon de Montfort in Toulouse, and with this date the character of the work fairly accords. The side walls are low and perfectly plain, and the enormous (and almost unequalled) span is covered with a simple quadripartite vault of brick. Here both the filling in of the vaults and the ribs which carry them are all of brick, the ribs plain and square in section, and the whole impressive rather for its extreme simplicity and fine scale than for aught else. Yet it would be wrong to deny the architect all credit for refinement, for at the west end there are some windows – a large, boldly-mounted circular one flanked on either side by a lancet – set within an equally bold arcading in the wall, and this arcading is carried upon shafts whose capitals are carved so delicately and beautifully as to make a real sunshine in a shady place.
The vault is very domical in its transverse section, and the three bays are divided by bold coupled shafts with sculptured capitals which carry transverse arches (or ribs) no less than three feet six inches in width. Such a work as this is not only valuable to us in showing a very grand example of one of the aisleless naves so often seen in the south-west of France, but still more as showing that it may be successfully executed in brick without any exaggerated – indeed almost without any – adornment, and yet with very grand effect. There is something so impressive in the vast dimensions of this nave that much elaborate ornament would be altogether out of place, and the refinement of the sculpture amply answers the purpose of showing that the artist had the power, where he had the will, of introducing delicate ornament with success.
The long choir, begun in 1272 on the northern plan, with a five-sided apse, very narrow aisles, lateral chapels, and well-developed triforium and clerestory, is on the whole a very imposing structure, though not so harmoniously proportioned as its contemporaries at Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges and Rodez, being somewhat too broad for its height. The vaulting was not completed until 1502.
Saint-Sernin
The vastest and most impressive Romanesque church in the south of France, and interesting as exhibiting, with the smaller church of Conques in Aveyron, the earliest example of the chevet, is that of Saint Sernin in Toulouse. This great church, finished very much as it now stands, in 1097, is nearly 400 feet long by more than 200 feet in width at the transepts. It has a nave with two aisles on each side, eleven bays in length; square-ended transepts with aisles all round, and an apsidal choir opening with eleven arches into the procession path. Two apsidal chapels project from the eastern aisle of either transept, and five from the ambulatory behind the choir. The construction is interesting as affording one of the finest examples of a widely-spread class of churches in which the nave is roofed with a barrel vault, and the triforium gallery over the inner aisle with a half-barrel vault, forming in fact a continuous flying buttress to resist the thrust of the nave roof.
The bases of the columns are of stone, and there is one course of stone above them; but above this everything inside the church is of brick, save the circular vaulting shafts and the detached columns of the triforium. The bricks measure 10 by 5 inches by 1 ｾ inches, and the mortar joint is very thick. Externally a good deal of stone is used in window jambs and arches, in the cornices, and in some parts of the walls in horizontal courses alternately with brick. The bricks are all a deep red colour...
This Aquitanian type of church, as represented by Saint Sernin at Toulouse, was introduced into Spain in the twelfth century. The peculiarities of this type of church may be thus enumerated. The ground-plan has usually nave and aisles, transepts, central lantern and a chevet, with a déambulatoire and chapels opening into it, a space being left between each chapel.
The famous church of Santiago at Compostela is one of this class. With the exception that it is entirely of stone it is an exact reproduction of the Toulousain church, both churches having been planned upon a peculiar system of proportions based on the equilateral triangle. Santiago, again, was copied in the cathedral of Lugo.
There is no clerestory in the nave of Saint Sernin, nor in that of Conques, Saint-Gaudens and many more of similar Romanesque character in this part of France. The omission of this member is what we might naturally expect where the dimension of height is not considered the one of greatest importance and where strong and abundant light is not required. And it must be remembered that the barrel roof, which is common to all these churches, itself occupies much of the space filled up by the clerestory of the north...
The solidity with which these two great churches at Toulouse and Conques were built, and the general narrowness of their proportions as compared with the domical churches of Northern Aquitaine, enabled the architects to attempt some imposing erection at the junction of the four arms, which is the spot where height should always be aimed at. The central steeple of Saint Sernin is a very remarkable work, and may be considered the prototype of a class of steeple that seems to have been pretty liberally dispersed throughout the country surrounding Toulouse. It is octagonal in plan, rises in five stages, each of smaller diameter than the one below, and terminates in a low spire rising from behind an open parapet composed of semicircular arches on pillarets, and having a pinnacle at each angle.
The angular-headed openings which form such a characteristic feature in the architecture of this part of France, and which are redeemed from ugliness by their quaintness and depth, as well as by being at times intermixed with arches, either round or pointed, would lose their meaning if built with a short, thick brick. The large, thin, tile-like brick here in use is difficult to arrange satisfactorily in an arch shape, but is easily and strongly laid in the so-called 'straight sided arches'. The western façades have a certain amount of piquancy, at least to a northern eye, and occurring as they do in a country rich in Romanesque remains, which latter are always grand and severely impressive, even when ornamented with the most delicate and elaborate carving, these lighter erections of the fifteenth to the seventeenth century offer a most suggestive contrast, even as that between the fierce, savagely earnest life of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the more polite and courtier-like ages in which they were built. There is also something of an Eastern, semi-barbaric splendour about them, reminding one of the Saracens who overran this district, and who have there left their traces even to the present day.
photos by Kathleen Conklin, notafish, and Michael Bryan, on Flickr
