Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe by Sabine Baring-Gould (best ereader for pc .TXT) 📕

freestone, looked fresh and comfortable, and were surrounded by their gardens. The maize-fields were as a rippling green sea. The flax-fields in bloom were sheets of the tenderest blue, and those of the _Trifolium incarnatum_ red as blood, and the road was like a white ribbon binding together a variegated wreath. To the north of the Dordogne rose a grey cluster of buildings, the old town of S. Emilion, famous for its wine. It occupies the edge of a plateau. The only business pursued therein is the making of wine and of macaroons.

The entrance to S. Emilion is not striking. None of its buildings, except the keep of its castle are visible. The road dives into a grove of acacias, and then enters the town by a narrow street. The acacias were a mass of pink and white blossom, exhaling a sweet fragrance.

In the middle of the eighth century lived a hermit named Emilian, born of obscure parents at Vannes in Brittany. He became known to the Count of that place, who took him into his service, where he showed himself profusely charitable to the poor with his master's substance. This led to his ignominious dismissal, and he wandered into the Saintonge, entered the Benedictine Order, and became baker to the monastery. But he proved so objectionable there that he was turned out. So he wandered further south, and finding a rock in the forest above the Dordogne, wherein was a small cave, out of which flowed a spring, he took up his abode therein. His fame soon brought disciples to him, and gathered admirers about him; and after his death in 767, a monastery of Benedictine monks was settled there, and a town sprang up about it.

The cave of S. Emilion still remains. In face of it rises a mass of rock with abrupt scarp towards the west and the market-place. Thence a street slopes up to the platform on the top of the rock. The front of the rock has an ambulatory before it pierced with windows and doors, and through these latter access is obtained to the interior of the rock, which is hollowed out into a stately church, dedicated to the three kings, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.

This monolithic church has for its base a parallelogram measuring 120 feet by 60 feet. It is composed of two portions of unequal height. The anterior portion is a vestibule, narthex, or ambulatory to the church, and is only 21 feet high. The windows in this are of the flamboyant order, and the principal doorway is richly sculptured. The body of the church into which this vestibule opens is 95 feet long and 60 feet high. The body consists of a nave and side aisles, all excavated out of the living rock. Six windows light the interior, the three in the flamboyant style already mentioned, and above, set back the whole length of the narthex under circular-headed arches, are three plain, round-headed windows, like a clerestory, opening into the nave and aisles, one window in each.

Looking from the market-place at the church the spectators would suppose that the nave ran parallel with the vestibule, but this is not the case, it is at right angles to it.

The small upper windows cast but a chill and feeble light into the vast cavern, so that the choir and chapels are buried in perpetual twilight. The windows in the vestibule do very little towards the illumination of the interior. At the extremity of the nave, which is raised on steps to form a choir, anciently stood the high altar, but this has been removed. Above, where it was can be discerned faintly through the obscurity, a bas-relief rudely sculptured, but very curious. It occupies the entire width of the choir; on the right is an angel playing upon a stringed instrument, with outspread wings, as if in the attitude of soaring, and on the left, perched on a rock, is a monstrous animal with gaping jaws, bristling mane, and raised paws. In the midst of the group is a little old man armed with a stick, apparently repelling this monster. It has been conjectured that this is intended as a representation of the saint himself ready to deliver his votaries from the jaws of Hell. But it is more probable that the whole subject is allegorical of Death, armed with his scythe between the powers of Light and of Darkness. The choir arch is one of the boldest and most original conceptions in this marvellous temple. It consists of two gigantic angels carved out of the sandstone, with their feet upon the piers on each side, and their heads nearly meeting at the crown of the vault. Each has four wings, the two smaller wings are raised about their heads, forming a nimbus to each. The other two wings are depressed. These mighty angels were formerly whitened and partially gilt, and the effect of the great figures looming out of the dark vault is most impressive.

On the right side of the nave, at the spring of the arches, between two of the piers, is a centaur armed with a bow, cut in the stone, and on the opposite spandril are two goats, disposed back to back, also cut in the rock. On one of the piers is an inscription graven regarding the dedication of the church, but unfortunately the date is illegible. The exterior of the church is adorned with a noble portal, richly sculptured, of much later date than the church within.

On entering the church through this rich portal a feeling of astonishment comes over one. The exterior in no way corresponds with the interior, which is void of ornament. The piers are massive parallelograms without mouldings, the arches between them semicircular, stilted, perfectly plain; a string alone marks the rise of the arch from the pier.

In the floor of one of the aisles is a hole through which a descent was anciently made into the crypt below the church; this crypt also is hewn in the solid rock, and has a funnel-shaped dome, a spiral flight of steps was cut in the rock round it descending from the church into the crypt. The descent must have been hazardous in the extreme unless the stairs were provided with a balustrade, of which at present no trace remains.

Admittance into the crypt is also obtained through a door cut in the face of the rock, but this was made in 1793 when the soil and the bones of the old canons of the Church of the Three Kings were required for saltpetre to make gunpowder for the armies of the Republic. Over the door is a mask carved in the stone and a little window; above the monolithic church, standing on the platform of rock, is the exquisite flamboyant spire, not communicating with the church beneath, also a modern _salle de danse_.

Another subterranean church as interesting but not as well preserved is that of Aubeterre in Charente, on the Dronne. By the valley of the Dronne all movement of troops from the Limousin and Perigord into the Saintonge took place, and the rock of Aubeterre was considered of so great military importance that a strong castle was constructed on the summit, and its possession was contested repeatedly during the Hundred Years' War and the wars of religion. Its position was peculiar in this also, that it was in the seneschaute of the Angoumois, in the diocese of Perigueux, and for the purpose of taxation in the Limousin.

The town is built in the form of an amphitheatre on a chalk hill that commands the Dronne. The hill is precipitous in parts, and is everywhere so steep that the roofs of the houses are below the gardens of those above them, and the saying there is, "Mind that your cattle be not found in your neighbour's stable by tumbling through the roof." The castle occupied a height cut off from the town by a deep cleft, that has its sides pierced with caverns, and its store chambers and cellars are dug out of the rock. But the most curious feature of Aubeterre is the monolithic church of S. John beneath the castle. The doorway admitting into it is on the level of the street, and gives access to a charnel-house with what would be termed _arcosolia_ in the catacombs, on each side, and the floor is humpy with graves. This is 70 feet long by 16 feet wide. On the right hand it gives admission through a doorway cut in the rock to the church itself, consisting of a nave and side aisle divided from it by massive monolithic piers, very much decayed at the top. It is lighted by three round-headed windows like a clerestory without glass. At the further end is an arch admitting to an apse, in the midst of which is an octagonal monolithic tomb of Renaissance style, with columns at the angles, and surmounted by the statue of Francois d'Esparbes de Lussac, Marshal of Aubeterre, and the much mutilated figure of his wife in Carrara marble.

A gallery excavated in the rock above the arch into the apse is continued the whole length of the aisle, and turns to admit into the seigneural gallery or pew high up over the entrance whence he and his family could hear Divine Service.

On the right-hand side of the nave opens a second charnel-house, called by the people "the Old Church," also with its _arcosolia_; there is also a door by which exit is obtained into a small cemetery overgrown with briars and thorns, and with the head-crosses reeling in all directions, and utterly neglected. For centuries not this yard only, nor the two charnel-houses but also the floor of the church, have served as the burial-place of the citizens of Aubeterre, and the floor is raised four feet above that of the apse though frequent interments. The last head cross I noted within the church bore the date 1860.

The height of the church is said to be fifty feet. The castle above was sold about sixty years ago to a small tradesman of the town, who straightway pulled it down and disposed of the stones for building purposes, and out of the lead of the gutters, conduits, and windows made sufficient to pay the purchase-money.

Then he converted the site into a cabbage garden and vineyard. Not content with this he brought a stream of water in to nourish his cabbages. This leaks through and is rapidly disintegrating and ruining the church beneath, that was protected so long as the castle stood above it. Seven years ago the arched gallery in the aisle was perfect, now it has crumbled away. The piers were also intact, now they are corroded at the top. A stream pours down through the vault continuously by the monument of the Marshal. The church is classed as a _monument historique_, nevertheless nothing was done to prevent the damage effected by the destruction of the covering castle, and nothing is done now to preserve it from utter disintegration.

In my opinion the apse was excavated to receive the monument, which consists of a mass of chalk in position, with a hole on one side to receive the coffins let down into the seigneural vault; and this could not have been there with a high altar behind it. In a lateral chapel is a hole in the vault, through which the ropes passed to pull the bells that were hung in a tower above, but which has been destroyed.

In 1450 Aubeterre was in the possession of the English, and they sold it to the Count of Perigord. When the Huguenot troubles began, the Lord of Aubeterre threw himself into the movement and appropriated the lands and revenues of