Gluges is on the Dordogne near Martel, where high up in the cliff, difficult of access, is the fortified cave-castle of Guillaume Taillefer, son of Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse, who was created Lord of Quercy in 972. Nearly on the level of the river is a cave half walled up, with traces of fresco on the walls, of course much later than the time of Taillefer. A modern house has been built on the platform that has been levelled, and much of the wall demolished; the upper fortified cave has an opening in the wall, pointed, of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In much the same condition is another cliff castle in the rocks of the valley of the Alzou, between Grammat and Rocamadour, a little above the cascade of the mill Du Saut.

I have elsewhere [Footnote: "A Book of the Cevennes," Lond., J. Long.] given an account of the curious castle of La Roche Lambert at Borne in Haute Loire, built in a basaltic cleft through which roars the river. It is the theatre of George Sand's novel, Jean de la Roche. "I may say without exaggeration that I was reared in a rock. The castle of my fathers is strangely incrusted into an excavation in a wall of basalt 500 feet high. The base of this wall, with that face to face with it, identically the same rock, forms a narrow and sinuous valley, through which winds and leaps an inoffensive torrent in impetuous cascades. The Chateau de la Roche is a nest of troglodytes, inasmuch as the whole flank of the rock we occupy is riddled with holes and irregular chambers which tradition points out as the residence of ancient savages, and which antiquaries do not hesitate to attribute to a prehistoric people.

"The castle of my fathers is planted high up on a ledge of rock, but so that the conical roofs of the tower just reach above the level of the plain. My mother having poor health, and having no other place to walk save one tiny platform before the castle on the edge of the abyss, took it into her head to create for herself a garden at the summit of the crag on which we were perched midway."

In Cantal at Roqueville are the remains of a castle excavated out of the rocks. Between Jung-Bunzlau and Boehm-Leipa in Bohemia is the rock- castle of Habichstein. Two lakes lie in a basin of the hills that are well-wooded up their sides, but have bare turfy crowns. The upper lake is studded with islands. Between this and the lower lake stands an extraordinary hump of sandstone, on a sloping talus. This hump has much resemblance to a Noah's Ark stranded on a diminutive Ararat. The rock is perforated in all directions with galleries and chambers, and contains a stable for horses and for cattle, which, however, is no longer accessible. On the summit of the rock rises a keep very much resembling a Pictish broch. Habichstein belongs to the Wallenstein family that possesses a stately schloss at the head of the upper lake. It has been abandoned for, probably, two hundred years, as it can never have been a comfortable residence; moreover, the sandstone is continually breaking away. Below the hill and castle is the village. In 1811 there was a fall of the rock, and again in 1815, when it crushed three of the houses beneath.



Another and still more curious cliff castle in Bohemia is that of Burgstein. There are several on the frontier of the Wargau and the Hardt in North Bohemia, where the German and Czech languages meet, but it is not possible here to describe them all. Burgstein is the most curious. It consists of an isolated mass of sandstone springing out of level land, an outlying block of the Schwoik chain. Formerly it rose out of a lake or marsh, but this is now drained. The entrance is through a narrow gap in the rock by a flight of steps that lead into a court on all sides surrounded by sheer precipices except towards the North-west, where a gap was closed by a wall. Out of this court open caves, one was formerly the smithy, another the guard-room, a third the stable, and in a recess is the well. From the court access to the main structure is obtained by a rift in the sandstone commanded by the guard-room, and up which ascends a stair of 15 steps that leads to a second rift at right angles, up which leads a further stair of 76 steps, and from the landing 37 descend to a lower portion of the rock, a platform with a breastwork of wall, important for defence of the entrance.

The steps lead to various chambers, and to an open court that looks out over the precipice, and has on one side scooped out of the rock a watchman's chamber, and on the other an armoury, where pilasters on each side supported shelves on which helmets and breastplates were laid; and beyond this is a guard-room. The summit of the rock has on it a lantern that lights an underground chapel, and formerly contained a bell, also a modern summer-house. As the rock was commanded from the south by a spur of the Schwoik range, when cannon were introduced, a new mode of access was devised on the north side, a passage in loops was constructed leading to the upper court. The castle called in Czech, Stolpna, or the pillar, is first mentioned in the fourteenth century. The great highroad to and from Boehmisch-Leipa passed near it, and it became the stronghold of a Raubritter, Mikisch Passzer of Smoyn, who became such a terror to the neighbourhood that the Sixtowns league of Lausitz in 1444 attacked it with 9000 men, broke down the dam that held back the water, and made of the rock an islet in a lake and constrained Mikisch to surrender. Soon after, however, he recommenced his lawless proceedings, and was again attacked in 1445, and after a siege that lasted five weeks, forced to quit his fortress. At the end of the seventeenth century Burgstein was converted into a hermitage and Brother Constantine, the first hermit, either enlarged or dug out the present chapel and built the lantern above, through which it obtains light. He did more, he carved a figure of himself looking through a telescope, life size, and planted on the summit of the rock. On the occasion of the Prussian invasion of Bohemia the image was assumed to be a spy, and the Germans fired at it and greatly damaged the figure, and were much puzzled at being unable to prostrate the dauntless spy. The present possessor of the rock castle has had the figure restored. Burgstein remained the abode of a hermit till 1785, when the reforming Joseph II. abolished all hermitages, and turned out every hermit in his dominions. And now, back to the Jura limestone again. A few words must be given to Kronmetz in Tirol, at the mouth of the Val di Non, opening into the Etschthal.



This castle belonged to the Bishops of Trient, and was intended by them to serve as a place of "ward and custody" against invading or marauding bands.

But quis custodiet custodies? It was granted in fief to two brothers Von Leo, who turned it into a robbers' nest, so that the neighbourhood rose in arms in 1210 and stormed it. Then the bishops confided it to the Herren von Metz, and they carried on a feud with their overlord, the bishop.

At last it came to the Counts von Firmian, who, in 1480, built a more convenient mansion at the foot of the cliff, and turned the old castle into a hermitage.

The castle, that is in a fair condition, occupies a broad cleft in the rock, only accessible by a narrow path cut in the rocks on the west side. It consists of an outer court and an inner court, protected on the side of the precipice by a stout wall, behind which were originally chambers, as windows in the wall and beamholes show to have been the case. There is a donjon that reaches to the overhanging rock and a ruinous chapel with apsidal east end. The cleft runs further east, but is blocked with a wall.

Another cliff castle, of which Merian, in his Topographia, 1640-88, gave a picture to arouse interest and wonder, is that of Covolo, at one time in Tirol, now over the Italian border. His description of it is as little accurate as his illustration. As a matter of fact, although it is certainly a cliff castle, constructed in a cave, it is accessible on foot, and it is by no means necessary to be conveyed to it by a windlass. Indeed it would not be easy to erect a crane on the platform of the castle that could haul up men and provisions from below.

A more famous fortress in a cave is that of Schallaun in the Puxerloch. Here is a grotto in the face of the precipice, 75 feet above the valley. The cliff itself is 4500 feet high. The castle consists of two stages, the outer court is at a lower level than the face of the cliff, and the opening of the grotto. Entrance was obtained through this outer court that was reached by a path cut in the rock, and from it by a stair also rock-hewn. A second court was reached, above this was again a third within the cave. On the right hand the cave branches out into a long inner cleft that was closed at one time by a door, and was probably used as a cellar. The main cavern also runs by a narrow passage deep into the heart of the rock to a pool of crystal clear water, never failing. The main building—hardly a donjon, was occupied till late in last century by an old mason who patched it up and made it habitable. At a little distance to the east is a smaller cave also with a wall in front of it, and this is said by the peasants to have been the kitchen of the castle, and to have been reached by a wooden gallery from the main building. According to tradition, Schallaun derives its name from Chalons. In the time of Charlemagne a knight of Chalons named Charlot eloped with a Saxon princess, and took refuge in this cave. It became a den of thieves, and Margaret Maultasch (Pouchmouth) took and dismantled it. According to another story the castle served as the haunt of a shadowless man. Unlike Camizzo's hero, he had not sold his shade to the devil, but by a lapse of nature had been born without one. This proved to him so distressing, and so completely interfered with his matrimonial prospects that he took refuge in the Puxerloch, where he was in shadow all day, and his peculiarity could not be noticed; he issued from it only on moonless nights, on one of which he carried off a peasant maid—and she never knew that he was shadowless, for he never allowed her to see his deficiency. Historically very little is known of the Schallaun castle, which is to its advantage, as when these castles are mentioned in chronicles, it is to record some deed of violence done by the occupants. In 1472 it belonged to the knightly family of Sauran, but they sold it. It is now the possession of the Ritter von Franckh. [Footnote: In "Unser Vaterland, Steiermark," Stuttgart, n.d., p. 47, is a representation of the Puxerloch, but it resembles much more Kronmetz. It gives towers and walls and gates that do not exist in the Puxerloch.]

Perhaps the nearest approach to the Puxerloch castle in France is the Roc de Cuze near Neussargues in Cantal. In the face of the cliff is a cave that has been converted into a castle, a wall closes the mouth, and there is a tower. Another fortress completely carved out of the rock is at Roqueville.

I will now deal with the third class, rock towns and castles combined. And I can afford space to treat of but one out of the many that would enter more or less into the category.

Although Nottingham town does not occupy the top of a rock, its castle that does cannot be passed by without notice, because that rock is perforated with galleries and has in it a subterranean chapel.

The castle, now bereft of its ancient splendour, of its coronet of towers, was built by William the Conqueror on the summit of a precipitous height rising above the river Leen. It was dismantled by Cromwell, and what remained was pulled down by the Duke of Newcastle, who erected on its site the uninteresting and unpicturesque mansion that now exists.

The castle was long considered impregnable; and to it Queen Isabel fled with Sir Roger Mortimer, whom she had created Earl of March, and she held it with a guard of one hundred and eighty knights. King Edward III with a small retinue occupied the town. Every night the gates of the fortress were locked and the keys delivered to the Queen, who slept with them under her pillow. Sir William Montacute, with the sanction of the young king, summoned to his aid several nobles on whose fidelity he could depend, and obtained Edward's warrant for the apprehension of the Earl of March. The plot was now ripe for execution. For a time, however, the inaccessible nature of the castle rock, and the vigilance with which the gates were guarded, appeared to present an insuperable obstacle to the accomplishment of their designs. However, Sir William Eland, Constable of the Castle, was won over, and he agreed to admit the conspirators. In the words of an old chronicler, the Constable said to Montacute, "Sir, woll ye unterstande that the yats (gates) of the castell both loken with lokys, and Queen Isabell sent hidder by night for the kayes thereof, and they be layde under the chemsell of her beddis-hede unto the morrow ... but yet I know another weye by an aley that stretchith out of the ward, under the earthe into the castell, which aley Queen Isabell ne none of her meayne, ne the Mortimer, ne none of his companye knoweth it not, and so I shall lede you through the aley, and so ye shall come into the castell without spyes of any man that bith your enemies." On the night of October 19, 1340, Edward and his loyal associates before midnight were guided through the subterranean passage by Eland, and burst into the room where the Earl of March was engaged in council with the Bishop of Lincoln and others of his friends. Sir Hugh Trumpington, Steward of the Household, a creature of Mortimer, attempting to oppose their entrance, was slain. The Earl himself was seized, in spite of the entreaties of Isabel, who, hearing the tumult, rushed from her chamber, crying "Fair son, spare my gentle Mortimer!" Both were secured. The next day, Edward announced that he had assumed the government, and summoned a Parliament to meet at Westminster on the 26th November. No sooner had this Parliament met than a bill of impeachment was presented against Mortimer. The peers found all the charges brought against him to be "notorously true, known to them, and all the people." And he was sentenced to be drawn and hanged as a traitor. Mortimer was executed at Tyburn, and the Queen Mother was sent under ward to the manor of Rising. The passage by which the conspirators entered, and by which the Earl was conveyed away, goes by the name of Mortimer's Hole to the present day.

. If I were to attempt to deal with castles and towns on rocky heights I would have to fill pages with descriptions of Capdenac, Najarc, Minerve, Les Baux, San Marino, San Leo, and many another, but inasmuch as they are on rocks instead of being in rocks, I must pass them over.

A fourth class of cliff castle, neither the habitation of a routier nor the residence of a feudal seigneur, is that which commands an important ford, or the road or waterway to a town, and which was, in point of fact, an outpost of the garrison.

I can describe but a few.

The Emperor Honorius had conceded to the Visigoths all that portion of Gaul that lay between the Loire and the Pyrenees. The Visigoths were Arians. Far from imitating the Romans, who respected the religion of the vanquished, and cared only that the peoples annexed to the Empire should submit to their administrative and military organisation, the Visigoths sought to impose Arianism on the nations over whom they exercised dominion. The bishops and priests protested energetically against this tyranny, and the Visigoths sought to break their resistance by persecution and exile, but gained nothing thereby save bitter hostility. In the year 511 an event took place that gave to the Aquitanians their religious liberty. The Franks were their deliverers.

Clovis, who coveted the rich provinces of the South, profited by the religious antagonism existing between the Aquitanians and the Goths to gain the confidence of the bishops to whom he promised the destruction of Arian supremacy. And as he had obtained the strongest and most numerous adhesions in Poitou he resolved there to strike a decisive blow.

He prepared his expedition with such secrecy and moved with such celerity that Alaric II., King of the Visigoths, did not become aware of his peril till the army of Clovis was on the confines of his realm. He threw himself into Poitiers, and assembled all the forces he was able to call together. Clovis crossed the Loire at Tours, and directed his march towards Poitiers; he passed over the Creusse at Port de Pilles, and reached the Vienne. The season was the end of September, and there had been so much and such continuous rain that the river was swollen, and he could not cross. Accordingly he and his army ascended it on the right bank seeking for a ford.

He reached Chauvigny, where was a ford, but this was now found impracticable. On the left hand of the present road to Lussac-le- Chateau is a stony, narrow, waterless valley, up which formerly ran the old Roman highway. At the 21/2 kilometre stone is a dense thicket of oak coppice, clothing the steep side of the valley. By scrambling down this, clinging to the oak-branches, one reaches a bluff of chalk rock, hollowed out by Nature at the foot to the depth of 10 feet, and running horizontally to the length of from 32 to 34 feet, and terminating in a natural barrier of rock. It contracts in one place so as to form two chambers. Now this gallery is closed towards the valley by a screen of six huge slabs 8 and 9 feet long, 8 and 9 feet high, and 4 feet thick. They have apparently been slung down from above, and caught and planted so as to wall up the open side of the recess. And at the north end another block, now broken, was set at right angles so as to half close the gallery at the end, leaving a doorway for access to the interior. The attempt to plant these huge slabs on a steep slope was not in every case successful, for a couple slid down the incline, but these served to form a heel-catch to those who did remain erect. Local antiquaries pronounce this to be a fortified cave, unique of its kind, devised to protect the road to Lussac, at the strategical point where it could best be defended. I have myself no manner of doubt that it was a so- called demi-dolmen, a tribal ossuary of neolithic man. Not only is it quite in character with his megalithic remains scattered over the country, but treasure-seekers who in digging displaced and brought down one of the side slabs found two diorite axes, one of which I was fortunate enough to secure. Persons in Gaulish or post-Roman times would not have dreamed of going to the enormous labour and attempting the difficult task of forming the sides with stone slabs, but would have closed the recess with a wall. The cave goes by the name of La Grotte de Jioux (of Jove) which in itself hints its remote antiquity.



But, although I do not believe that this cave was constructed as a military vidette and guard-house, I have no doubt whatever that it may have been so used, and it is very probable that at this point took place the first brush of Clovis and his Franks with the enemy, for the valley bears the name of Le Vallon des Goths. Alaric knew, what Clovis did not, that there was a ford at Lussac, and if he had any military foresight, he would plant a body of men across the road in the throat of the valley to intercept the Franks on their way. As it was, the Franks pushed on, and seeing a deer wade across the river at Lussac, raised exultant shouts, plunged into the Vienne, and crossed. The result was the battle of Voulon, in which the Arian Goths were defeated, and their empire broken down. [Footnote: This decisive battle is located at Vouille to the north-west of Poitiers; but local historians are convinced that the site was Voulon to the south of Poitiers. See Thibaudeau, Abrege de l'Histoire de Poitou, Niort, 1889.] The Grotto of Jioux was but an accidental outpost, but those I am about to describe were artificially contrived for that purpose.

In the broad valley of Le Loir below Vendome, the great elevated chalk plateau of Beauce has been cut through, leaving precipitous white sides. At one point a buttress of rock has been thrown forward that dominates the road and also the ford over the river. Its importance was so obvious that it was seized upon in the Middle Ages and converted into a fortress. The place is called Le Gue du Loir. Not far off is the Chateau of Bonnaventure, where Antoine de Bourbon idled away his time drinking Surene wine, and carrying on an intrigue with a wench at le Gue, whilst his wife, Jeanne d'Albret, was sending gangs of bandits throughout her own and his territories to plunder, burn, and murder in the name of religion. But Antoine cared for none of these things. At Bonnaventure he composed the song:—

Si le roi m'avait donne Paris, sa grande ville, Et qu'il me fallait quiter L'amour de ma mie, Je dirai au roi Henri (III.) Reprenez votre Paris, J'aime mieux ma mie Au Gue, J'aime mieux ma mie.

Moliere introduced a couplet of this lay into his Alceste.



The rock has been excavated throughout, and in places built into, and on to. Two flights of steps cut in the cliff give access to the main portion of the castle. That on the right leads first of all to the Governor's room, hewn out of a projecting portion of the rock floored with tiles, with a good fireplace and a broad window, commanding the Loir and allowing the sun to flood the room. The opening for the window formerly contained a casement. There is a recess for a bed, and there are in the sides numerous cupboards and other excavations for various purposes. This chamber is entered through that of the sentinel, which was also furnished with a fireplace. The stair leads further up to a large hall artificially carved out of the chalk, but not wholly, for there had been originally a natural cavern of small dimensions, which had a gaping opening. This opening had been walled up with battlements and loopholes, but the old woman to whom the rock or this portion of the rock belongs, and who is a cave-dweller at its foot, has demolished the wall to breast-height, so as to let the sun and air pour in, for she uses the cave as a drying place for her wash. From this hall or guard-room two staircases cut in the rock lead to other chambers also rock-hewn higher up.

The second main stair outside gives access to a second series of chambers.

Unfortunately, some rather lofty modern buildings have been erected in front of this cliff castle, so as to render it impossible to make of it an effective sketch or to take a satisfactory photograph.

Still more interesting is La Roche Corail below Angouleme on the river Charente, opposite Nersac and the confluence of the Boeme with the Charente. Where is now a bridge was formerly a ford. The castle of Nersac commanded one side of the valley, and La Roche Corail the other. This cliff castle was at one time very extensive. The rock rises from a terrace partly natural and partly artificial, on which a comparatively modern chateau has been erected that masks the rock-face. But on entering the court behind the chateau the bare cliff is seen with a yawning opening halfway up, and indentations in the wall of rock show that at one time there were hanging barbacans and chambers suspended before the rock as well as others hewn out of it.

To reach the interior it is necessary to enter a grange that has been built at right angles to the rock, and in it to mount a ladder to another granary that occupies a floor of solid rock. Thence a second ladder leads into the caves. Formerly, however, the ascent was made by steps cut in the side of the cliff, and openings from within enabled the garrison with pikes to precipitate below any who were daring enough to venture up the steps uninvited.

The ladder gives admission through a broken door cut in the rock into a long vaulted hall, that was formerly floored across so as to convert it into two storeys. [Footnote: Actually the doorway and three lower openings look into the dark granary. In the illustration I have shown them as letting light in, as intended originally.] The lower storey or basement opens on the left-hand side into a second cave, and the upper by a passage cut in the rock communicated with another range of chambers looking out of the face of the crag by artificial windows. Immediately in front of one entering the hall is the portal of admission to another very large hall that had originally well-shaped windows, and a door leading on to the wooden balcony, but this has all been broken away forming the ragged opening seen from below.

In 1534 Calvin was staying in the adjoining parish of S. Saturnin with a canon of the cathedral of Angouleme, who had a good library, and was disposed to favour him. The house is pointed out, but it has been rebuilt or altered. A cavern there is also shown to which Calvin retired to meditate on his Reform. It is now a cellar full of casks, wheelbarrows, and rubbish. It was never a very pleasing resort, and he preferred to come to La Roche Corail where, in the cavern just described, he had more space, and less likelihood of being disturbed. And here it was that he wrote his "Institute of the Christian Religion." One is disposed to rest here for awhile and muse, and consider what a manufactory of explosives this cavern was. From this vaulted chamber was launched that doctrine which was to wreck nearly every church in France and drench the soil in blood. I do not in the least suppose that Calvin saw any beauty in the view through the gap in the rock—not in the island below with its poplars and willows whose branches trail in the bottle-green waters of the Charente—not in the lush meadows with the yellow flags fluttering by the waterside—not in the grey towers of Nersac castle and church rising above dark woods, flushed orange in the setting sun against a purple sky. I do not suppose that he noticed the scent of the wallflowers growing out of every fissure wafted in on the summer air. There was logic thought in his head, but no poetry in his heart, no sweetness in his soul. He looked across in the direction of Angouleme, and wished he had a ladder and a hammer that he might smash the serene face of the Saviour looking down on the city from the western gable of the cathedral. Five and twenty years must elapse before that wondrous domed pile was to be wrecked by the Huguenots, his disciples. But here it was, in this cavern, that he elaborated his system of reform, treating Christianity as a French peasant treats an oak tree, pollarding it, and lopping off every lateral, natural outgrowth. Assuredly, many a volatile superstition had lodged in its branches, and many a gross abuse couched under its shadow. But these might have been scared away without mutilating the tree till it was reduced to a stump. He desired, doubtless, to bring back the Church to the condition in which he supposed it had been when born. But one cannot reduce an adult to the simplicity and innocence of childhood by stripping off all his clothes, and denying him the conventional figleaf.



Having shattered the Catholic faith by the crowbar of his logic, he sought to build up a grotto out of its fragments, and call it a church. His "Institute of the Christian Religion" was published the following year. It produced the desired effect at once. There were many reasons why it should. Earnest and devout souls were troubled at the sight of a Christianity that was so in name but had little Christianity in its practice. They felt that the Church had drifted far out of its way and had grounded on quicksands, and they thought that the sole way of saving the hulk was to cast all its precious lading into the sea. Christ's Church had been founded on a rock, it had withstood the rain and the flood, but was crumbling down with dry rot. Calvin would have neither the rock nor the sand. Into the mud he drove the piles by the strokes of his genius, on which to erect the platform that was to uphold the conventicle of his followers, and if that did not stand, it would at least mark its site by their dejections. And dejections there are everywhere, where the Calvinists were, wrecked churches, mutilated monuments, broken glass, and shattered sculpture. Ruskin, remarking on some delicate carving at Lyons, under a pedestal, observes that the mediaeval sculptors exhibited absolute confidence in the public, in placing their tenderest work within reach of a schoolboy's hand. Such, however, was the love of the beautiful generally diffused, that objects of art were safe from destruction or defacement. But with the outburst of Calvinism all those affected were inflamed with a positive hatred of the beautiful in art. If this had been confined to the destruction of images to which idolatrous worship was offered, it would be explicable and justifiable, but it extended to the most innocuous objects. Delicate tracery such as adorns the west front of the church of Vendome, a lace-work of beautiful sculpture representing trailing roses and vines, birds and reptiles, was ruthlessly hacked. Churches, cathedrals, were blown up with gunpowder—such was the fate of the cathedrals of Montauban, Perigueux, and Orleans. Beza himself rolled the barrels of gunpowder to explode under the great piers that sustained the central tower of Orleans. [Footnote: In 1769 Montgomery was preparing to blow up the beautiful Cathedral of Condon, only consecrated thirty-eight years before, but accepted as its ransom from the inhabitants the sum of 30,000 livres.]

The cry for reform was loud, and rang from every quarter of Europe except from the Vatican, where the Pope, like Dame Partington with her mop, thought to stay its progress. The grandsons of the old routiers cried fie on this quiet life, and snuffed the air for rapine. The nobility were out of pocket and out at elbows, and looked with avaricious eyes on the fair and broad lands of the Church, and their fingers itched to be groping in her treasury, and they hoped to patch their jerkins with her costly vestments. Court favourites were abbots in commendam, held prebendaries, without being in holy orders, sixfold pluralists abounded, ecclesiastical hippopotami, that might fairly be hunted. All kinds of interests were enlisted against the Church, good and bad, sincere and hypocritical, only a spokesman was needed, a trumpet sound to call to the battle, and Calvin proved the spokesman, and his "Institute" was the trumpet note.

An outpost station that is curious and puzzling is La Rochebrune on the Dronne, below Brantome. The road to Bourdeilles and Perigueux runs immediately below a chain of very fine chalk cliffs, and there is but just space for it between the steep slope below them and the river. At one point about a mile and a half below Brantome, the cliff is broken through, where a lateral valley opens on that of the Dronne: here there is a talus overgrown with box and juniper leading up to a rock, of inconsiderable height, with some holes in it, overhanging, and capped with brushwood that at one time also covered the slope below the rock.

By the roadside, immediately under this rock, is the opening into a cave that admits into another much larger, and lighted from above, and in which at the extremity is a passage leading upwards, now choked with earth and stone.

The original entrance to the cave has been destroyed through the widening of the highroad, so that it is now impossible to tell whether it was effectually concealed or whether precautions had been taken for its defence.

At one spot only in the rocks above is there a gap, and through that gap, probably once walled up, access is obtained into a sort of circular courtyard, where there are traces of a fireplace, and where is a stone bench. From this court a spiral staircase, rock-hewn, leads to the platform on top of the rocks. In the wall on the right of the court is a doorway neatly cut in the chalk, square-headed and adapted for a framed door that could be strongly barricaded. Immediately within is a quadrangular pit sunk in the floor, now choked with stones. This, in such a position, could not be a silo, it probably was the opening through which those who entered the cave from below, by the road, made their way into the interior of the fortress. Stepping over this pit one enters a hall with six large round holes cut in the roof communicating with an upper chamber, and receiving a borrowed light through them. A spiral staircase at the side furnished with meurtrieres through which the besieged could stab at their enemies, leads to the upper hall or chamber, which is lighted by two rude windows, one high up, the other low down, and with a bench recess opposite them. But the strange and perplexing feature of this room is that it has in the floor eight round holes, each large enough to let a man fall through. Six communicate with the chamber below, but the other two open under the overhanging cornice, outside the castle. One of the holes—opening into the nether chamber, is precisely where would rest the feet of men seated on the bench. There is no trace of a groove to receive covers to these holes.

It has been conjectured that this strange construction was a granary, in which the peasants concealed their corn; but there are difficulties in accepting this theory. The Rochebrune commands the road, and a hiding place would assuredly be located in the depths of a wood, away from a highroad, in some secluded valley. It has been conjectured that the holes served for discharging the corn into the lower chamber. But why carry it by a narrow winding stair aloft to pour it down into a nether cave, when the latter, the supposed granary, itself was at once accessible through the doorway? Moreover, two of the holes open outwards, and not into the supposed store-chamber. It may be said that these were for hauling up the sacks of corn, but the incline on which they open is so steep, that it would be a prodigious waste of labour to drag the corn up under the cornice in which they are, whereas the other ascent is easy. The precautions taken to provide means of stabbing at an assailant point to this having been a fortress. My interpretation of the puzzle is this: first, that the left hand stair leading to the summit of the crag enabled one of the defenders to light a beacon, so as to warn the people of Brantome when danger threatened; that next, the garrison, which could not have comprised more than five or six men, as Rochebrune is very small, retired within the rock. If this courtyard were invaded, they escaped into the lower chamber and barred the door, and were able to thrust at assailants through the slots. But if the door yielded they would scramble up the rock stair into the upper apartment, and as the enemy broke into the lower cavern, they stabbed and thrust at them through the six holes in the floor. Should their position be rendered untenable, they could slip through the two holes that opened outwards, into the brushwood and so effect their escape; for these holes would not be perceived, or their purpose understood by besiegers unfamiliar with the castle.

Usually, over the floor, riddled like a colander, planks were laid, that on emergency could be turned up on their sides. I may add that the windows opening outwards are purposely so inartificially made that no one passing along the road underneath would suspect that there was a fortress above his head. He would certainly suppose that these holes were natural, such as are commonly found in the chalk cliffs. In fact the first time I visited Brantome, and walked down the river to Bourdeilles, I passed this rock and entertained no suspicion that it contained anything remarkable, that it was as a matter of fact, a mere shell, with all the artificial work within.

Why was it that every city—nay, every little town—had to be not only walled about but to have its outposts? Because France was not a nation, only a congeries of individualities. As Michelet says of the fourteenth century: "The kingdom was powerless, dying, losing self-consciousness, prostrate as a corpse. Gangrene had set in, maggots swarmed, I mean the brigands, English and Navarese. All this rottenness isolated, detached the members of the poor body from one another. One talks of the Kingdom, but there were no States General, nothing at all general, no intercommunication, the roads were in the power of cut-throats. The fields were all battlefields, war was everywhere, and none could distinguish friend from foe."

How needful these outposts were may be judged from what Froissart says: "Rogues took advantage of such times (of truce), and robbed both towns and castles; so that some of them, becoming rich, constituted themselves captains of bands of thieves; there were among them those worth forty thousand crowns. Their method was to mark out particular towns or castles, a day or two's journey from each other; then they collected twenty or thirty robbers, and travelling through by-roads in the night-time, about daybreak entered the town or castle they had fixed upon, and set one of the houses on fire. When the inhabitants perceived it they thought it had been a body of soldiers sent to destroy them, and took to their heels as fast as they could" (Bk. i., c. 147).

Passing on from the outposts to towns, or defences to highways, we must glance at such as guard the approaches to countries, or such as Gibraltar that commands the great waterway between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Gibraltar is certainly the most complete and marvellous of all cliff castles. This is too well known to English travellers to need description here.

The French Gibraltar, Urdos, commands one of the passes through the Pyrenees. It is hewn out of the mountain in a buttress of rock, and rises in stages from the road to the height of 500 feet. Externally the mountain looks harmless enough. A cave opens here, and a rift there, and a few streaks of masonry may be noticed, but actually the mountain is riddled with galleries, batteries, and long flights of stairs, and hollowed out for ammunition and other stores; and it is capable of containing a garrison of three thousand men.

Faron also, 1660 feet high, with its magnificent precipices of salmon- coloured limestone, commanding both the harbour of Toulon and the Bay of Hyeres, is capped with fortifications and pierced with batteries, casemates, and chambers for military stores, a position made by Nature and utilised with supreme skill. Nor must the chain of rock-forts of Campi delle Alte and of Mont Agel above Monaco, dominating the Corniche road be forgotten, ready to drop bombs amidst an army from Italy venturing along that splendid road, nor must Besancon be forgotten, occupying its inaccessible rock—inaccessible that is, to an enemy.

"Oppidum maximum Sequanorum," as Caesar described it in his day; "natura loci sic muniebatur ut magnam ad ducendum bellum daret facultatem."

Ehrenbreitstein faces the opening of the Moselle into the Rhine; and Frankenfeste holds the key of the Brennerpass; and Dover Castle commands the strait at its narrowest. Koenigstein crowning a precipitous rock 748 feet above the Elbe, though in Saxony is garrisoned by Prussians, guards the pass down the river from Bohemia; and Peterwardein is a rock-built fortress, that has been called the Ehrenbreitstein and Gibraltar of the Danube. What are these frontier fortresses but the same on an extensive scale as the Gue du Loir, the Roche Corail, and the Rochebrune? In the Middle Ages every city, every little town had to have its outposts and watch-tower on the look-out for the enemy, and to break the first impetus of an attack. But now it is not the town but the nation that has to gird itself about with frontier fortresses.



CHAPTER VII

SUBTERRANEAN CHURCHES

When the periods of persecution of the early Christians had come to an end, and they were able in security to assemble for worship, two distinct types of Church contested for the supremacy—the Basilican and the Catacumbal.

Even during the times before Constantine, when persecution was in abeyance, Christians had been accustomed to gather together for the Divine mysteries in private houses. But after that Christianity was recognised and favoured, the wealthy and noble citizens of Rome, Italy, and Africa, who had become Christians, made over their stately reception halls, or basilicas, to be converted into churches. These basilicas, attached to most palaces, were halls comprising usually a nave with side aisles separated from the nave by ranges of columns, and an apse at the extremity of the nave in which the master of the house was wont to sit to receive his clients and his guests. This is the type upon which cathedral and parish churches in east and west are modelled. But the early Christians had become accustomed in times of danger to resort to the subterranean chapels in the Catacombs. The poorer members doubtless preferred these dingy meeting-places to the lordly halls of the nobles, and the slaves could not feel their equality with their masters under the same roof where they had served, and been whipped, as in the Catacombs, where all were one in fear of their lives and in the darkness that, buried distinction. Moreover, the cult of the martyrs had grown to a passion, and it had become customary to commemorate their nativities as it was called, i.e. the anniversaries of their deaths, at their tombs in the Catacombs. It was there that the faithful habitually prayed, it was near the bones of the Saints that it was believed special sanctity dwelt, and that prayers were most effectually answered through their intercession; and it was there, ad martyres, that they themselves purposed to be laid in expectation of the Resurrection.

In Rome, the tombs of the martyrs continued to enjoy popular favour, and to attract crowds, till the incursion of the Lombards, when, to save the relics of the Saints from profanation, they were transferred to the basilicas within the walls, whereupon the Catacombs ceased to interest the faithful, that were neglected and allowed to fall into oblivion. Gaul rejoiced in having had its soil watered with the blood of many witnesses to the Faith, consequently it had numerous hypogee chapels, and when, to the Martyrs were added hermits, abbots, bishops, devout women, and confessors of all descriptions, their underground tombs became extraordinarily numerous, and were resorted to with great devotion. Such was the origin of the crypts found in profusion in France, not under cathedrals only, but under parish and monastic churches as well. The whole population having become Christian, the resort to these subterranean chapels became so great as to cause inconvenience, and the bishops proceeded to "elevate" "illate" and "translate" the bones of the saints from their original resting-places to the basilicas above ground. Thereupon the crypts lost most of their attraction, and the worshippers gathered about the altars in the upper churches to which the bones had been transferred.

In Britain, where there were no early martyrs save Alban at Verulam, and Julius and Aaron at Caerleon, the type of church from the beginning was basilican, as we may see by that unearthed at Silchester, and that of S. Martin at Canterbury.

It was the same in Germany and throughout Northern Europe.

John and Paul were chamberlains to the Princess Constantia. They had in some way incurred the anger of the Emperor Julian, and he sent orders for their despatch in their own house on the Coelian hill. They were accordingly executed in their bath, and were buried in the cellar under their mansion. At once a rush of the devout of Rome took place to the Coelian to invoke the aid of these new martyrs. The visitors picked off the plaster, scribbled their names on the walls, applied kerchiefs to the tomb, and collected the dust, stained with the blood of the chamberlains. Pope Hadrian IV., 1158, built a basilica on top of the house, driving the foundations through it, and transferred to this upper church the bones of SS. John and Paul. At once the stream of devotion was deflected from the substructure to the superstructure, and the former was filled up with earth and totally abandoned.

Herbert Spencer has established in his "Principles of Sociology" that the mausoleum was the egg out of which the temple was evolved. The first cave-dwellers buried their dead in the grottoes in which they had lived, and themselves moved into others. They periodically revisited the sepulchres to bring offerings to the dead. In time the deceased ancestor became invested by the imagination of his descendants with supernatural powers, and ascended from stage to stage till he was exalted into a deity. Thenceforth his cave became a temple. Ferguson, writing of the Chaldaean temples, and indicating their resemblance to tombs says, "The most celebrated example of this form is as often called (by ancient writers) the tomb or the temple of Belus, and among a Turanian people the tomb and the temple may be considered as one and the same thing." [Footnote: Clement of Alexandria (Exhort. to the Heathen) had already said, "Temples were originally Tombs." Cf. also Eusebius (Praep. Evangelica ii. 6) heads the chapter, "The Temples of the Gods that are none other than Tombs."]

In the primitive Church there were, as we have seen, churches which had no connection whatever with sepulchres, and chapels underground that contained tombs. The current of popular feeling set so strongly towards the latter that the Popes yielded to it, as did also the Bishops, and converted every basilica into a mausoleum by the transfer to it of the bones of a saint.

But that was not all. The Holy Mysteries had been celebrated in private houses and basilicas on wooden tables, sometimes square, but often round, and with three legs. An illustration is in the cemetery of S. Calixtus, of the latter half of the second century, where a priest is represented celebrating at what looks like a modern tea-table. According to William of Malmesbury, S. Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester (1062-1095), destroyed the wooden altars in his diocese, which had been universal in England, altarea lignea jam inde a priscis diebus in Anglia. But with the transformation of the basilica into a mausoleum, the altar was also transformed into a sepulchre. If it did not contain the entire body of a saint, it had a hole cut in it to receive a box containing relics; and the Roman pontifical and liturgy were altered in accordance with this. The Bishop on consecrating an altar was to exact that it should contain relics, and the priest on approaching it was required to invoke the saints whose bones were stored in it. [Footnote: Pontifex accepta mitra, intigit policem dextrae manus in sanctum Chrisma et cum eo signat confessionem, id est sepulchrum altaris, in quo reliquiae deponendae. Pont. Roman. The priest on ascending to the altar kisses it, and refers to the relics contained in it. "Oramus te, Domine, per merita sanctorum tuorum quorum reliquiae hic sunt—ut indulgere digneris omnia peccata mea."] The cavity in the slab to contain the relics was liturgically entitled sepulchrum. The change from a table to a tomb involved a change of material from wood to stone.

The dedication of a church to a saint in the Latin Church implies the presence in the sepulchre of the altar of the relics of that saint. From the Roman point of view, a dedication without the relic is unmeaning. Among the Celts this was unknown, with them a church took its name after its founder, and the founder of a church dedicated it by a partial fast of forty days, and prayer and vigil on the spot. The early basilicas of Rome also took their titles from the families that surrendered their halls for Christian worship. The introduction of dedication to deceased saints marks unmistakably the transformation of a church from a basilica to a mausoleum.

It is certainly remarkable that whereas in Paganism the identification of the tomb with the temple passed away, and the temple acquired independence of such association, in the Latin Church the reverse took place; there the church unassociated with a tomb—a basilica in fact— was converted into a sepulchral monument.

The reverence of the early pontiffs shrank from dismembering the bodies of the saints. To Queen Theodelinda Pope Gregory I. would accord only oil that had burnt in the lamps at their tombs, or ribbons that had touched them. Gregory V., in 594, wrote to Constantia Augusta, who had built a church in honour of S. Paul, and craved a portion of his body: "Dear lady, know that the Romans when they give relics of the saints are not accustomed to parcel up their bodies, they send no more than a veil that has touched them." [Footnote: Baronius, Hierothonie de J. C., Paris, 1630, p. 173.]

But when the Latin Church was constrained by the force of popular prejudice to transform all her sacred temples into sepulchral churches, there was no help for it; the bodies of the saints had to be torn in pieces for distribution. A toe, a finger was taken off, legs and arms were amputated, the vertebrae of the spine were dispersed over Christendom, the teeth were wrenched out of the jaws, the hair plucked from head and chin, moisture exuding from the body was carefully cherished, and bones were rasped to furnish a little sacred phosphate of lime to some church clamorous to be consecrated.

A plateau to the south of Poitiers had long borne the name of Chiron Martyrs. Chiron means a heap of stones, but why the epithet of Martyrs attached to the heaps of stones there nobody knew. The old Roman road leading to and athwart it was named La Route des Martyrs, also for no known reason. But in October 1878 the plateau was being levelled by the military authorities, when it was discovered that the stones were actually broken tombs, and that they were clearing a pagan Necropolis. Soon they came on a portion where were sarcophagi orientated and crowded thickly about a subterranean building. The distinguished antiquary, Le Pere de la Croix, now undertook the investigation, and discovered that these latter were the tombs of Christians, and that they surrounded a hypogee Martyrium. This was excavated and proved to be a chapel erected over the bodies of certain martyrs of Poitiers, of whom no records had been preserved, or at all events remained, whose very existence was unknown; also, that it had been constructed by an abbot Mellebaudes at the end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh century. It contained an altar built up of stone, plastered over and painted, measuring at the base 2 feet 8-1/2 inches by 2 feet 2 inches and 3 feet 7 inches high. Also sarcophagi for the bodies of the martyrs there found, also one that Mellebaudes had prepared for himself. In the floor were many graves, possibly of his kinsfolk. Numerous inscriptions in barbarous Latin, some paintings and carvings, were also found. Among the latter a rude sculpture represented two of the martyrs, Hilarius and Sosthenes, who had been crucified. A bracelet of amber and coloured glass beads, amber ear-rings, and bronze ornaments were also discovered.



Mellebaudes certainly built his mausoleum where there had been one earlier, that had become completely ruinous, for he complains that he had not been able to recover all the bones of the martyrs that had been laid in it. This destruction had probably been effected by the Visigoths, and the building by Mellebaudes took place some time after the defeat and expulsion of these Arians in 507. The final ruin of the Martyrium he raised may have been the work of the Saracens in 732. [Footnote: For full account with plates see P. Camille de la Croix, S. J. Hypogee Martyrium de Poitiers, Paris, 1883.]

The hypogee was sunk nine feet in the rock, but the roof must have shown above ground. A window was to the east. S. Avitus in the sixth century speaks of the wondrous skill of architects in his day, who contrived to introduce daylight into the crypts. It is evident that no glass was inserted in the window, although the use of glass for windows was becoming general in the sixth century; and Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, died 609, and Gregory, Bishop of Tours, died 595, both speak in terms of admiration of the glazing of windows for churches. It may well be understood that in the mind of the people long after the stream of public devotion had been directed to the churches above ground, a liking for those that are excavated underground should remain. Indeed, it is not extinct yet, as any one may see who visits the church of Ste. Croix at Poitiers, or S. Eutrope at Saintes, or S. Martin at Tours, to mention but three out of many. In all these are mere empty tombs, yet they are the resort of numerous devotees. The darkness, the mystery of these subterranean sanctuaries, impressed the imagination. Accordingly we find, especially in France, many cave-churches. Indeed they are so numerous that I can afford space to describe but a couple of the largest. Many are small, mere chapels, and shall be dealt with under the heading of hermitages.



Few scenes of quiet landscape can surpass that of the valley of the Dordogne from the road between Sauveterre and Libourne. It broke on me upon a breezy spring morning. The Dordogne, broad and blue, swept through the wide valley between banks dense with poplar and osier. The whole country wore a smiling aspect; the houses, built of 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 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 arches. Forty-seven additional marble steps, descending in a broad flight nineteen feet wide, lead down a further depth of thirty-five feet, and here you are surrounded by monkish sites and sacred spots. The whole place is, in fact, two distinct natural caves, enlarged and turned to their present uses with infinite care. Far below the ground you find a church thirty-one yards long and nearly seven wide, lighted by many lamps, and are shown the tomb of the father and mother of the Virgin, and that of Joseph and the Virgin herself. And as if this were not enough, a long subterranean gallery leads down six steps more to a cave eighteen yards long, half as broad, and about twelve feet wide, which you are told is the Cavern of the Agony." [Footnote: Geikie (C.), "The Holy Land and the Bible," Lond. 1887, ii.p.8.]

Stanley says: [Footnote: "Sinai and Palestine," Lond. 1856, p.150.] "The moment that the religion of Palestine fell into the hands of Europeans, it is hardly too much to say that as far as sacred traditions are concerned, it became 'a religion of caves,' of those very caves which in earlier times had been unhallowed by any religious influence whatever. Wherever a sacred association had to be fixed, a cave was immediately selected or found as its home. First in antiquity is the grotto of Bethlehem, already in the second century regarded by popular belief as the scene of the Nativity. Next comes the grotto on Mount Olivet, selected as the scene of our Lord's last conversation before the Ascension. These two caves, Eusebius emphatically asserts, were the first seats of the worship established by the Empress Helena, to which was shortly afterwards added a third—the sacred cave of the Sepulchre. To these were rapidly added the cave of the Invention of the Cross, the cave of the Annunciation at Nazareth, the cave of the Agony at Gethsemane, the cave of the Baptism in the Wilderness of S. John, the cave of the Shepherds of Bethlehem. And then again, partly perhaps the cause, partly the effect of the consecration of grottoes, began the caves of the hermits. There were the cave of S. Pelagia on Mount Olivet, the caves of S. Jerome, S. Paula, and S. Eustochium at Bethlehem, the cave of S. Saba in the ravine of Kedron, the remarkable cells hewn or found in the precipices of the Quarrantania or Mount of the Temptation above Jericho. In some few instances this selection of grottoes would coincide with the events thus intended to be perpetuated, as for example, the hiding-place of the prophets on Carmel, and the sepulchres of the patriarchs and of Our Lord. But in most instances the choice is made without the sanction, in some instances in defiance of, the sacred narrative."

It is questionable whether Dean Stanley is right in attributing the identification of caves with sacred sites to Europeans, it is probable enough that the local Christians had already fixed upon some if not all of them. After the pilgrims or the Crusaders had come in their thousands and visited the holy sites, they returned to their native lands deeply impressed with the association of caves with everything that was held sacred, and this, added to the dormant sense of reverence for places underground consecrated to holy purposes that had come to them from their parents, must have tended to the multiplication of subterranean churches.

In some venerated caves and in certain crypts are springs of water that are held to be invested with miraculous properties. The crypts of S. Peter in the Vatican, S. Ponziana and S. Alessandro, have such flowing springs. In the crypt of the church of Gorlitz is a well, and from that of the cathedral of Paderborn issues one of the sources of the river Pader. The Kilian spring rises in the crypt of the New Minster in Wuerzburg. Out of the cave of the monastery of Brantome, to be described in another chapter, streams a magnificent source. Most of the water is employed for the town and for the washerwomen, but one little rill from it is conducted to an ornate fountain, that bears the name of S. Sicarius (Little Cut-throat), one of the Innocents of Bethlehem slain by order of Herod. It is explained that by some means or other Charlemagne obtained his bones, but how the infant of a Hebrew mother acquired a Latin name has not been attempted to be explained.



CHAPTER VIII

ROCK HERMITAGES

There is an account in the Times' Correspondent's record of Colonel Younghusband's expedition to Lhasa that when read haunts the imagination. It is the description made by Mr. Landon of a Buddhist monastery, Nyen-de-kyl-Buk, where the inmates enter as little children and grow up with the prospect of being literally immured in a cave from which the light of day is excluded as well as the society of their fellow-men, there to spend the rest of their life till they rot. Horace may say:

Jubeas miserum esse, libenter Quatenus id facit;

but few Christians can feel this towards another human being, though of another race, religion, and under another clime.

"These men," said the abbot to Mr. Landon, "live here in the mountain of their own free will; a few of them are allowed a little light whereby reading is possible, but these are the weaker brethren; the others live in darkness in a square cell partly hewn out of the sharp slope of the rock, partly built up, with the window just within reach of the upraised hand. There are three periods of immurement. The first is endured for six months, the second, upon which a monk may enter at any time he pleases, or not at all, is for three years and ninety-three days; the third and last period is for life. Only this morning," said the abbot, "a hermit died after having lived in darkness for twenty- five years." Mr. Landon goes on to say: "Voluntary this self-immolation is said to be, and perhaps technically speaking it is possible for the pluckier souls to refuse to go on with this hideous and useless form of self-sacrifice, but the grip of the Lamas is omnipotent, and practically none refuse."

He describes a visit to the cell of one of those thus immured: "The abbot led us into a small courtyard which had blank walls all round it, over which a peach-tree reared its transparent pink and white against the sky. Almost on a level with the ground there was an opening closed with a flat stone from behind. In front of this window was a ledge eighteen inches in width with two basins beside it, and one at each end. The abbot was attended by an acolyte, who, by his master's orders, tapped three times sharply on the stone slab. We stood in the little courtyard in the sun and watched that wicket with cold apprehension. I think, on the whole, it was the most uncanny thing I saw in all Tibet. What on earth was going to appear when that stone slab, which even then was beginning weakly to quiver, was pushed aside, the wildest conjecture could not suggest. After half-a-minute's pause the stone moved, or tried to move, but it came to rest again. Then, very slowly and uncertainly it was pushed back, and a black chasm was revealed. There was a pause of thirty seconds, during which imagination ran riot, but I do not think that any other thing could have been so intensely pathetic as that which we actually saw. A hand, muffled in a tightly wound piece of dirty cloth, for all the world like the stump of an arm, was painfully thrust up, and very weakly it felt along the slab. After a fruitless fumbling the hand slowly quivered back again into the darkness. A few moments later there was again one ineffectual effort, and then the stone slab moved noiselessly again across the opening. Once a day water and an unleavened cake of flour is placed for the prisoner upon that slab, the signal is given, and he may take it in. His diversion is over for the day, and in the darkness of his cell, where night and day, noon, sunset, and the dawn are all alike, the poor soul has thought that another day of his long penance was over."

Here is another account from the pen of Sven Hedin.

He visited the monastery of Sumde-pu-pe, where was a hermitage consisting of a single room five paces each way, built over a spring that bubbles up in the centre. Inside the hermit had been walled up with only a tiny tunnel communicating with the outside world. Once inside, he was never again to see the light of day nor hear a human voice. The man Sven Hedin saw had been immured for sixty-nine years, and wished to see the sun again.

"He was all bent up as small as a child, and his body was nothing but a light-grey parchment-like skin and bones. His eyes had lost their colour, and were quite bright and blind. Of the monks who sixty-nine years before had conducted him to the cell not one survived.... And he had scarcely been carried out into the sunlight when he too, gave up the ghost." [Footnote: "Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet," Lond. 1910.]

S. Theresa once said that she had a vision of Hell. The torture did not consist of flames, but in being planted opposite a blank wall, on which to gaze through all eternity. The hermit in a Buddhist cell must have undergone this torture till all intelligence, all consciousness, save desire for food, was dead within him.

There have been horrible instances of voluntary immurement in Christian Europe, and above all in the Christian East; but not quite—though very nearly—as bad as this. Moreover, not one line, not a single word in the Scriptures inculcates such self-annihilation. Christ set the example of retirement from the world into the wilderness for forty days, to a mountain apart for one night, to teach men occasionally and for a limited period, to withdraw from the swirl of business and the clatter of tongues. And S. Paul retired from the society of men after his conversion to gather his thoughts together, and prepare for his great missionary work. But that was something altogether different from ascetic abnegation of life and flight from its responsibilities.

The peopling of the solitudes of Syria and Egypt by solitaries was due, not to flight from persecution, but to revulsion from the luxury of the great cities, and very largely as an escape from compulsory military service. It was not a new thing. Judaism had been impregnated with Buddhism, or at all events with Brahminism, and with ideas of asceticism. The Essenes and Therapeutae lived, the first in the time of the Maccabees upon the shores of the Dead Sea, and the last two centuries later, in Egypt. Both inhabited cells in the desert, preserving celibacy, renouncing property, pleasure, and delicate food, and consecrating their time to the study of the Scriptures, and to prayer. And yet celibacy was in violation of the principles of Judaism, which required every man to marry, in the hopes of becoming a progenitor of the Messiah. Further, they rejected the bloody sacrifices of the law, and would have nothing to do with the temple at Jerusalem. We can see by Philo's "On the Contemplative Life" how completely Alexandrian Judaism had sucked in Buddhist doctrine, and how Therapeutic asceticism formed the bridge from Buddhism to Christian monachism. In the same places where Essenes and Therapeutae had been, there later we find Christian solitaries. "We can have no doubt," says Ferdinand Delaunay, "that the Therapeutic Convents which perhaps gave the first signal for conversion to the new faith, served also as the cradle for Christian monachism. History shows us, hardly a century later, this flourishing in the same localities on the borders of the lake Mareotis, and on the heights of Nitrea. And we cannot doubt but that Christian solitaries continued at Alexandria the work of their Jewish predecessors, and endeavoured to make their oracles serve for the propagation of the Gospel." [Footnote: Delaunay (F.), Moines et Sibylles, Paris, 1874, p. 316.]

The language in which Philo describes the Therapeutae might be applied to the Christian monks of Egypt. I must condense his rambling account. The Therapeutae abandon their property, their children, their wives, parents, and friends and homes, to seek out fresh habitations outside the city walls, in solitary places and in deserts. They pray twice in the day, at morning and evening, and the interval is wholly devoted to meditation on the Scriptures and elucidating the allegories therein. They likewise compose psalms and hymns to God, "and during six days each, retiring into solitude, philosophises, never going outside the threshold of the outer court, and indeed never looking out. But on the seventh day they all assemble, and sit down in order, and the eldest, who has the most profound learning, speaks with steadfast voice explaining the meaning of the laws."

They wore but one garment, a shaggy hide for winter, and a thin mantle for summer. Their food was herbs and bread, and their drink water. Philo concludes his account thus: "This then is what I have to say of those who are called Therapeutae who have devoted themselves to the contemplation of nature, and who have lived in it, and in the soul alone, being citizens of heaven and of the world, and very acceptable to the Father and Creator of the universe because of their virtue; it has procured them His love as their most appropriate reward, which far surpasses all the gifts of fortune, and conducts them to the very summit and perfection of happiness."

It was not among the Jews alone that the solitary life was cultivated. In the Serapium of Thebes were also heathen monks leading a very similar life. That Persian Manichaeism had infected Jews and heathen as well there can exist little doubt. [Footnote: Philo gives an account of the sacred banquets of the Therapeutae that strongly reminds us of the Agapae of the Early Christians.]