CHAPTER XVII

MAGUELONNE

Maguelonne—the dwelling on the Pool.

The name has an aroma of romance, and a sort of tender melancholy which penetrates to the imagination before one knows whether it is a city or a mountain or some gloomy castle in an old fairy tale.

Once it was a splendid city spreading along the shores of the lagoon; now there remains but a solitary church, one of the characteristic fortress-churches of the Midi, a bare, primitive-looking building, closely protected on three sides by a grove of dark trees, in the centre of a little island formed by the sea and the lagoons which run, like an enamelled chain, all along these mournful coasts.

One can reach the island by boat across the lagoons from the little cardboard town of Palavas where the people of Montpellier go in summer for sea-bathing. In very calm weather it is possible to approach the isle by sea. The church is a most singular piece of early Christian architecture, without a window in the white, thick walls; and above, one sees the curved machicolations, as in a fortress, whence boiling lead and oil could be poured down on the heads of Saracen assailants, those terrible enemies of whom the ancient church builders stood in such dread.

Of the original Mother Church of St. Peter there has survived only the principal nave, "flanked before the destruction of the city with several towers."

It has "curved machicolations going from one buttress to the next," and is considered one of the most complete types of the fortified churches of the Middle Ages, "which are ranged in a line along the coast."

The church of Maguelonne has fine Romanesque windows, and arches of full half-circle, and resembles a fortress almost more than a church.

The inside is very dark and solemn, stirring in the grave simplicity of its style. True ProvenÇal Romanesque in its structure of vast arches and apses; the Roman idea but little modified except in the capitals of the columns where the classic flow and grace yields to the naÏvetÉ of early Christian sentiment. Indeed, that sentiment very seriously pervades the whole building. There is none of the sumptuous triumphant spirit of a grand classic edifice, although the general lines are the same in both cases. A careful draughtsman, conscientiously rendering the church of Maguelonne, might produce a portrait correct and unrecognisable, as many portraits are; the bare lines without the meaning behind them, the matter without the spirit; and a portrait of that sort might be indistinguishable from that of some great Roman interior—palace, bath, hall of justice. The painted hall of the Villa Madama on the hillside above the Milvian bridge near Rome is constructed on the same broad scheme of arch and apse, and above, on vault and spandril, garlanded, arabesqued, a riot of rosy gods and goddesses—the exquisite work of Giulio Romano—voluptuous, expansive, rich in beauty and power. Maguelonne with its classic structure—a style which had been developed during centuries for stronger and stronger expression of Pagan magnificence—nevertheless breathes forth the sentiment of poverty and asceticism, the spirit that drove men and women into the wilderness, that set them writhing under the consciousness of sin, or exalted them to the state of emotion wherein the pains of martyrdom were transfigured into ecstasy. Truly a thing of potency the human spirit! How, by the same general means, it can express emotions at once so strong and so completely opposed is one of the great mysteries of art.

Maguelonne is the last relic of the splendid city of that name which stood on the opposite shores of the lagoon, its towers mirrored in the blue water. The island was first the site of a Greek settlement, then of a Roman town—once attacked by Womba, King of the Visigoths; finally the Saracens built a city there which Charles Martel destroyed when he changed for good and all the fortunes of Europe by the great victories which turned back those marauding people just at the critical moment when they were on the point of becoming masters of Christendom. For many years it was the site of a famous monastic establishment which has earned a reputation for a mild and beneficent and altogether admirable administration of great wealth and greater power.

Maguelonne is famous for its charming old story of "Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne," known in most European countries among the people, and sold at fairs and markets for a few pence. It was written by a deacon of Maguelonne, Bernard of the Three Ways, about whom one desires in vain to know more. The story is of lovers parted, wandering; exchanging rings which are carried off by ravens and finally turn up miraculously inside a tunny fish caught on the coast, and so lead to the meeting and reunion of the despairing Pierre and Maguelonne.

There are a few small buildings near the church, in one of which live the woman and her family who look after it. They do not trouble the visitor with gratuitous information, but hand him the key and leave him severely alone, unless, indeed, he is adventurous and elects to go on the roof. Then a boy unlocks the staircase door that gives access to that windy spot, and amuses himself by sliding down the stone slabs of the roof while the visitor turns to admire the view of sea, mountains and lagoons spread forth in a brilliant circle round him. The remarkable and characteristic roof, however, is what he comes officially to see. It is formed of thick, overlapping slabs of stone laid at a gentle slope, and is considered a marvel of architectural skill.

How the problem of weight distribution is solved is, indeed, difficult to understand. The builders of these early churches perhaps knew some of the secrets of the Roman architects who at Nimes, in the Temple of the Nymphs, have erected a seemingly miraculous ceiling composed of heavy square stones which are guilty of the misdemeanour of existing in their places "without visible means of support." The feat is accounted for, though it is scarcely made clear, by the fact that on their upper surfaces the stones are cut so that they are thicker and heavier on one side than on the other, and thus the weight is thrown obliquely from stone to stone across the roof, instead of downwards, a method involving elaborate mathematical calculations and perfection of workmanship.

The twentieth century has no monopoly of ingenuity after all!

Maguelonne makes a beautiful, sad picture as one leaves it to pass down to the sea. The blank walls with their arched machicolated abutments—recalling the fortifications of the Papal Palace—look bare and acquainted with adversity in the blinding sunshine. On the side of the lagoons the protecting pines crowd round the building like a sacred grove; and through their branches the sea-wind makes a low, ominous music.