Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Up the Moselle - Part 1
UP THE MOSELLE.
PART I.
The following inscription is to be seen on the Red House Hotel, the old Council House of Trêves:—
Ante Romam Treviris stetit annis mille trecentis
Perstet, et æternâ pace fruatur. Amen.
As Punch’s artist once delineated an invading Frenchman in London shaking his fist at the inscription “Waterloo Place,” so we can imagine the standard-bearer of Cæsar’s tenth legion shaking his eagle with indignation at this most impudent legend, if he ever entered the capital of the Treviri, and if it was there when he entered it. It was bad enough to assert that Trêves existed thirteen hundred years before Rome, without insulting the mistress of the world by abbreviating the first syllable of her name. However, the sanctimonious “Amen” at the end stamps the inscription with the era of dog-latin at once. Probably the monks did not make it, or they would have known better than to make a false quantity, but some burgomaster, who wished to show off his latin verse-writing, and had not been sufficiently birched at school to enable him to write it correctly. We cannot believe this legend on its own merits, though it may be true; for Trêves is without doubt one of the most ancient towns in Europe: so ancient in fact that its foundation has been attributed to one Trebeta, the step-son of Semiramis, the Assyrian empress, whose story resembles that of Bellerophon in the Greek legend. But nothing is historically known of Trêves till the Roman times. Then the chief city of the Treviri became under the empire the metropolis of the north. It is said to have contained more than 100,000 inhabitants, and this is by no means incredible, when the extent of the old Roman wall is taken into consideration.
The fate of Trêves is the exact reverse of that of many large modern cities. They have outgrown two or more enclosures of walls, as population and prosperity increased. Trêves has on the contrary shrunk into itself. First it fell in from the proportions of the large square Roman wall, which was built after the constant model of a winter camp to about half the area, and was enclosed in its mediæval wall, two sides of which coincide with its north-western angle. Even this diminished area grew depopulated internally; houses fell to ruin, and gardens took their places, so that at the present day when the tide may have turned a little, it contains about 17,000 inhabitants. The houses have shrunk to the sides of the principal streets. The depopulation of Trêves is easily accounted for by its annals. Scarcely any town in Europe has been taken and retaken so often, or been so often given up to plunder and devastation. This is owing to its position on the frontier of France, and its natural accessibility and weakness. That so many of its old monuments still remain is due to the religious character of Trêves in the middle ages; and its many ecclesiastical foundations, which even the roughest of mankind respected then. But in the French Revolution, which spared nothing human or divine, even the shrines were violated, and the privilege of sanctuary which was once able to screen malefactors, became unavailing to save the sanctuaries themselves.
A new hope, however, has dawned for Trêves with the epoch of railroads. At present it is accessible by rail, but it is out of all the great lines of traffic; and those whose business or pleasure takes them thither, must go out of their way. If a line of rail should be completed to Cologne, there would doubtless be a great increase in the commerce of the town, which consists principally now as it always did, in wine. Those golden days of prosperity might return when, under the imperial government of Rome, a wine canal was found necessary to transport the produce to Cologne. But at present if the grass does not absolutely grow in the main streets of the town, their quietness would suggest the idea that the population are careful to weed it out, to prevent the disgrace. Grass grows, and also blue and yellow flowers, and small shrubs too, in the chinks of that glory of Trêves the Porta Nigra, a circumstance which adds greatly to the picturesqueness of its appearance, and the fact that some radical townsmen have proposed the uprooting of these seems to confirm the suspicion that the old deserted streets might be periodically weeded, like the White Horse on the side of the Berkshire Downs.
We will suppose ourselves put down at the station after being whirled along the wonderfully pretty banks of the Saar, and diving through a multitude of tunnels on our way from France, then driven to the Red House Hotel, on which stands the conceited legend referred to above. The Red House is an Inn like the Ritter at Heidelberg, which ought to command custom from its antique beauty alone, if its entertainment were not so good as it is. We enter it through au old archway with an ornamented roof. In the midst is a court that reminds one of Italy, with a balustraded gallery above it, and on the ground a large group of orange trees, guelder roses, &c., in pots, mingled with bright coloured flowers, which charmingly contrast with the antiquity of the place. The rest is in keeping. At the table-d’hôte, along with a bottle of the delicate Theirgärtner, the head waiter hands us a folded paper having on the one side a plan of Trêves, an engraving of the Red House, and a list of trains; on the other, a panorama of the Moselle from Trêves to Coblenz, with representations of eight of the principal lions of Trêves. The post of honour among these belongs to the Porta Nigra. This splendid old Roman gate is built of red sandstone, which has become of so dark a colour by age as to justify the name of the Black Gate, especially as contrasted with the light buildings around. This building has a spectral grandeur in the moonlight, which is in fact the light in which to see all the grim and grand monuments of the conquerors of the world, from the Coliseum downwards. Second only to the monuments of Egypt in massiveness, they disdain the delicate filagree work of the Greek chisel, the beauty of which must be seen in full sunlight, and imagination connects them all with that boast of Virgil, that while the cunning of sculpture was more suited to other hands, Rome’s mission was the subjugation of the world, and her mercy was only to be bought at the price of unconditional submission. This aspect of the Porta Nigra might suggest an illustration to Dante’s Inferno, when the gate of the Land of the Lost is described.
Per me si va nell’ eterno dolore
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
***
As the great Roman city of the Treviri was probably built after the model of a winter camp, this Porta Nigra would stand in the place of the Porta Prætoria, whilst the gate corresponding to the Decumana would have been at the other end of the long street, by the present church of St. Matthias; the Porta Principalis dextra would have stood by the site of the Amphitheatre, and the Porta Principalis sinistra would have opened on the Moselle bridge. The Porta Prætoria was always turned towards the enemy. The permanent enemy to the permanent camp was the still unsubdued German. The Roman may have thought that the barbarian, who had no architectural glories but the rocks of his forests, might be overawed by the aspect of such a symbol of power. To the fact that he was so for a time the prosperity of Trêves in the Roman times is owing; but when Rome became weak in the centre, her boundaries were broken in upon, the wild spirits outside rushed through the magic circle which she had drawn round her conquests, and very soon tore her to pieces. Her monuments were left to attest her ambitious aspirations and their vanity, like the remains of that tower of Shinaar with which the mighty masons of old thought to scale heaven. The Porta Nigra is a double gateway with two towers on each side, one of which possesses still its entire four storeys, while the other is shorter by one storey. There are two storeys above the archways containing halls, which were doubtless in former times used for municipal purposes, but have now become repositories for antiquities. On the right side from the Simeon’s Strasse is to be seen what remains of a mediæval addition, dating from the time when the Black Gate was turned into the church of St. Simeon. This adaptation, which probably, as in so many cases of the antiquities of Rome, tended to the preservation of the ancient monument, though by a parasitical addition, was made by Archbishop Poppo in the eleventh century. Napoleon in 1804 ordered all later additions to the Porta Nigra to be destroyed, but the work was neglected till carried out by Prussia in 1816. Still a portion of the Christian building remains on the right of the gate as we look at it from the town. Some believe the Porta Nigra to have been older than the Romans, but it appears without sufficient data. Those who have seen the aqueduct at Jouy aux Arcs near Metz, and the Pont du Gard in Provence, must be struck by the similarity of the conception. There is a stern, simple grandeur about the Black Gate of Trêves which tells of the most palmy and secure days of the Roman dominion. We should rather be inclined to ascribe it to the age of Hadrian than that of Constantine, when the taste of the day would probably have treated the subject with more adventitious ornamentation. As it stands it is a model of sublime symmetry: arches on arches, pillars on pillars. The capitals of the pillars have no curling ears like those of the Ionic order, no leafy elegance like the Corinthian. They are simply bevilled blocks or dice, and the neatly adapted stones rest in their places by their own weight, in scorn of mortar, as the Roman legionaries kept their ranks by weight of armament and martial will. Time has beautified the dark red sandstone here and there with shrubs and flowers, and married ancient art to ever-young nature. Vegetation gives to ruins the venerable character that grey hair gives to man.
If we return from the Porta Nigra to the market-place, we shall see in front of our head-quarters at the Red House an ancient cross, resting on a pillar, with steps at the base. It is some 800 years old, and bears this inscription, in Latin:
In memory of signs of the cross which came down from heaven upon men, in the year of our Lord’s incarnation, DCCCCVIII., and in the second year of his bishopric, Heinrich the archbishop set me up.
It is more than doubtful whether the cross itself is the original one, while the pillar on which it stands is apparently Roman. This prodigy of bloody signs of the cross falling from heaven on people’s clothes, suggests the prodigies we read of in Livy; to avert the consequences portended the cross was erected as a piaculum. It is not unlikely that some natural phenomenon such as a peculiar sort of red blight-rain was at the bottom of this story, as of all others of the same kind. In heathen times it would have been said to have rained blood. It is but a step from the market-place to the cathedral, which constitutes with the Liebfrauenkirche a single block of buildings. The whole structure is more historically curious from the varieties of styles, than beautiful. The original building of the cathedral was a palace of the empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, resting on four great granite pillars; a fragment of one of these, seven feet in diameter, lies before the north door of the church. It was found in 1614, when the Elector Lothar von Metternich had a vault prepared in the church. The building was restored in the eleventh century by Archbishop Poppo, who surrounded with pilasters the old pillars, whose Corinthian capitals are still to be seen, and supported the original arches with new ones. This restoration enlarged the church by one-third, and so zealous was he in the work, that he was killed by a sunstroke while contemplating its progress. Archbishop Hillin, in the latter half of the twelfth century, was also surprised by death when building the part to the east. The cathedral was burnt a second time in 1717, having suffered previously in the same way towards the end of the Roman dominion. It was restored in 1723 by the Elector Franz Ludwig, and received its present cruciform shape. It is 132 paces long by 52 broad. It has three naves and a double choir, and no less than sixteen altars. The chief dome, which rested on the four great granite pillars, is still ninety feet high. What is the history of these pillars? It is impossible to say precisely. But there are some facts which might tend to solve the problem of their origin. In a wood not far from the station of Bensheim on the Bergstrasse, situated on the side of the Felsberg, in the Odenwald, is a round basin in the midst of the forest, bare of vegetation, and filled with huge boulders of different shapes, more or less rounded, which may be easily traversed by stepping from one to the other. A hidden stream gurgles below them. How they came there is a question. They might have been dropt from some huge eddy, or have sunk together from the subsidence of some primæval glacier. The whole phenomenon is called now the Sea of rocks, which from its limited extent is a misnomer. A little way above this are some rocks hewn by human hands, amongst them one called the Altar-stone, and another near it called the Giant Column. This is an unfinished pillar of granite, lying along in the wood. It is possible that the Romans, finding here such blocks as suited their vast works at Trêves, may have used this hill as a quarry, and that this very column was being shaped with the intention of sending it down the Rhine, and up the Moselle to Trêves, when the barbarians from Swabia drove off the workmen, and interrupted the work. The Giant Column is thirty-two feet long, and at top three and-a-half feet, and at bottom four and-a-half feet, in diameter.
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Porta Nigra, at Trêves.
Most of the treasures of the cathedral of Trêves were dispersed in the chaos of 1792, but the great relic of all, the Holy Coat without seam, is there still. This was said to have been brought from the east by the sainted empress Helena. It was found in an old altar at the end of the twelfth century, when Archbishop Johann was engaged in altering the church, and shut up in the newly erected altar of St. Peter. When the Emperor Maximilian I. came to Trêves to hold a diet in 1512, the coat was found, on opening St. Peter’s altar by Archbishop Richard, in an old wooden chest, with one of the dice which the Roman soldiers used, and a rusty knife. In 1514 the same archbishop and elector obtained leave from Pope Leo to exhibit the coat once in every seven years, with full absolution to all those who might undertake a pilgrimage to see it. This period, however, was not more accurately kept than the septennium of English parliaments, for favour was shown to visitors of unusual distinction. In the storm of the French revolution the coat was saved to Augsburg, then the residence of the last elector of Trêves, Clement Wenceslaus, and brought thence with great pomp in 1810, and exhibited in the cathedral to the sight of 250,000 people. Its last exhibition was, if we mistake not, in 1847. There is no seam, or sign of needlework, to be seen in the coat. Tradition says, it was woven by St. Mary for our Saviour in his childhood, and grew larger with his growth. It consists of a reddish-coloured stuff. One of the nails of the cross was said to have been with it at first, but has been lost or subtracted.
The Liebfrauenkirche clings to the side of the cathedral: it was begun somewhat earlier than the cathedral at Cologne—in the thirteenth century, the best period of early gothic. It is seventy-five paces long by sixty-two broad. The two churches together form a contrast; the round arches and general Romanesque style of the cathedral being joined to the gothic body of the lesser church, but there is a correspondence between the tower of the church and the lesser tower of the cathedral: both appear either to have at one time supported handsome spires, or to have been interrupted and plainly finished for want of leisure or money.
The spires, including the central one, which belongs to the cathedral, consist but of high gables carried to a point. From the cathedral with its satellite church (an arrangement also to be seen at Eurfurt in Thuringia), we pass on to the Basilica. This ancient hall is a fine specimen of the noble monotony of Roman architecture. It was probably older than Constantine, having been built for the same purposes for which town halls are used now. It has been made use of in different ways in the course of centuries, but Frederick William IV., of Prussia, restored it to its ancient form, and of late years it has been used as a Protestant Church. It is a simple hall 220 feet long by 98 broad, and 97 feet high, lighted by a double row of windows, and the roof and walls are painted internally. From the Basilica we have a large open space to cross which is now used as a parade-ground for the Prussian troops. This is called the Pallast-platz or palace-square. It was formerly said to be haunted by a Roman ghost of peculiar ghastliness—either the spirit of Rictiovarus, who, under Diocletian, was a notorious persecutor of the Christians, or of Catholdus, who built the amphitheatre which lies beyond, and is said to have thrown his unfaithful wife from the top of it. In the first years after the French Revolution it was able to terrify even the sceptical French sentries, as it stalked across the parade-ground and vanished in the ruins of the Roman baths. Orders, however, having been given to the soldiers to fire upon it, if it came again, the apparition discreetly disappeared for good. Passing over this haunted ground along the remains of the mediæval walls, we come to those beautiful ruins called the Roman baths. We are glad to see that the Prussian government has taken measures for purchasing some of the surrounding land, so that the excavations may be continued, and it is probable that valuable discoveries will be made. Nothing can be fairer than the aspect of these ruins in their summer dress; they show to perfection how beautiful an effect may be gained by variegated courses of bricks and tiles. The colours doubtless are, in a great measure, due to time, and exposure to sun and rain. The site of the ruins, when we saw them at the beginning of July, was a perfect botanical garden of every species of wild flower, whose bright coloured blossoms sparkled like gems on the worn edges and in the interstices of the masonry. Through the broken arches an exquisite vignette of the cathedral and other buildings of the town may be seen.
These baths are constructed on a vast scale, with every convenience known to the Romans,—hot-air chambers, flues and cooling-halls. The round swimming-bath is of remarkable size, and suggests the idea that the baths must have been built for accommodation of the Trêves public in general, rather than have formed part of a buried palace. More will be known when the ground has been further explored. Their neighbourhood to the site of the amphitheatre suggests the idea that it was there that the “swells” of Trêves adorned themselves for the savage spectacle, against the moral pollutions of which their physical cleanliness was a very insufficient safeguard.
The remains of the amphitheatre are seen at the foot of a hill to the south-east of the town, in the midst of vineyards and gardens. Unlike the Colosseum at Rome and the amphitheatre at Verona, very little remains of the stonework of these buildings, whose fate it was, like that of the Colosseum, to be used as a quarry in the middle ages. In the grass-covered hollow which now represents the Trêves arena, besides the imposing remains of the main entrances, there is little to tell its story but the two openings in the walls which led from the dens where the wild beasts were kept. From north to south the diameter is 225 feet, from east to west 157. The oval building accommodated 57,000 persons, while the arena at Verona could hold 70,000, and the Colosseum at Rome 87,000.
In this now quiet spot, grass-grown and flowery, used as a safe play-ground for the rising generation of Trêves, as we saw it, Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome (if he was so), caused several thousands of Franks, taken in war, with their leaders—Ascarich and Ragail—to be torn to pieces by wild beasts “to make a Roman holiday.” This monster butchery of men by beasts took place in 306 A.D., and was repeated in 313 on many thousands of captured Bructeri.
The history of Trêves, lying as it did on the outskirts of the Roman dominion, shows the short-sightedness of these savage proceedings. A warning had been given in 261 A.D., when the Trêves territory was devastated by the Alemanni. In 388 the Franks, now grown the stronger, inflicted a signal defeat on the Roman generals Quintinus and Heraclius. In 447, Trêves was harried by the Huns, and finally passed from the Romans to the Franks in 464.
We may be sure that pretty summary vengeance was exacted on account of the blood-baths of the amphitheatre, which were more worthy of his present Majesty of Dahomey than of the great Constantine, whose panegyrist (!) says that, in 313, the beasts lost all their fierceness in consequence of the number of victims they had devoured. As it gets dark, the broken sides of the entrance to the amphitheatre might be imagined in the uncertain light to be two profiles of huge ghosts, holding up their hands in defiance of each other.
The ruin of this great Roman work was consummated by Archbishop Johann, in 1211, giving up the materials to build a house in Trêves, with the quaint remark in the deed of gift, that “these walls had never been of any use yet, and were never likely to be of any for the future.” These are the principal sights of Trêves. A walk in and about the town will discover a multitude of others, such as portions of old monasteries (one of which has turned into the present theatre), and fragments of Roman houses and fortifications. The bridge itself, which spans the Moselle, is of undoubted Roman origin, and led up to what was probably the Porta Principalis sinistra of the Roman winter camp.
As we return to our quarters at the Red House we observe the fountain of St. Peter standing in the market-place, with the image of the saint at the top. It received its present form under an Elector Johann von Schonenburg. It is surrounded by images of four virtues, with caricatures of their opposite vices. Of the older fountain which stood in its place the story is told that the Elector Jacob von Etz, when he entered into Trêves, caused his cook to ride through the streets with a ladle as long as a lance, and when he came to the fountain to skim the water, to show how he meant to deal with the liberties of the people.
Our Red House must not be supposed to have derived its name from the red colour with which it is now washed, which probably was given it on account of the name. As it was, the old Council House or Rath Haus, the corruption into Roth Haus would be natural, especially with the thick pronunciation of the people in these parts. The character of the Trêves people in the middle ages was that of great jollity and philosophic indifference to the sieges, sacks and military occupations which they had to endure so repeatedly.
When the Landgrave Albert of Brandenburg took Trêves in 1552, he was long looking for the municipal authorities, in order to make a requisition upon them for provisions for his soldiers. Hearing at last that they were all carousing and playing at dice in the Rath Haus, he had a few shots fired into the windows, by which method he succeeded in placing their services immediately at his disposal. It appears that the citizens possessed that kind of courage of which Aristotle quotes, as an example, the ass, which even by the best applied blows cannot be deterred from finishing his dinner of thistles.
At about five miles from Trêves, on the former consular road which led to Rheims, near the junction of the Moselle and Saar, there is a most remarkable monument of the Roman times. This is the pillar of Igel. The Emperor Caligula was said to have been born there, and some think it was put up to commemorate this event, but most authorities look upon it as a family monument of the Secundini. The stone of which it is composed is a firm whitey gray sandstone. The governor of Luxembourg, to his shame, once tried to carry away the monument piecemeal, but only partially succeeded. Amongst the sculptures subtracted was one of a beautiful nymph resting on an urn. The stones were subsequently made over to a tradesman in Luxembourg, who made them into steps for his house. Goëthe speaks of this monument in terms of high approbation as a work of art.
The principal members of the Secundini family appear to have been agentes in rebus, that is, officers appointed to provide for the commissariat of troops, general intendants and postmasters. The monument is covered with sculptures, part of which denote the pleasant lives of the persons commemorated,—part record the employments in which they were engaged. They represent incidents of the navigation of the Moselle, and of the hall of business, with the Secundini at work, while the three large figures are supposed to pourtray the ceremony of betrothal, and there is added to them the picture of a family banquet. Nothing is more remarkable, as connected with Roman monuments, than the absence of the mournful element. The skull and cross-bones belong to a period of corrupted taste. The dead are thought of by the classics as those who have ceased to labour, as Death is symbolised on a Pompeian monument by a ship entering the port. With a beautiful simplicity Christian Germany still speaks of the departed as “those who have gone home.” This elegant pillar of Igel is more than seventy feet high, and sixteen feet broad at the base. It is square, and brought to a point above swelling into a crest, so that the whole might be compared to a square bottle of cut-glass with a highly ornamented stopper. One who has time to spend in and about Trêves has much more to see. At Ruver are the remains of an aqueduct which lead to the amphitheatre, and there is a votive monument to Diana in a wood between Echternach and Bollendorf. This goddess appears to have been as popular with the Treviri as the corresponding Greek divinity Artemis was with the Ephesians. In the year 72, we find St. Eucharius stirring up the people to break certain statues of Diana which stood on the site of the present fantastic church of St. Matthias. We can easily believe the huntress-goddess to have been worshipped in the neighbourhood of the Ardennes and Eifel, which still glory in real wild beasts. A dip into the history of Trêves would at once explain the present shrunk state of the city. Storms of Franks, Alemans, Huns, Normans, and in later times of Spaniards and French, and the two contending parties in the Thirty Years’ war, have swept over it; and it appears to have had its share of mediæval pestilences, the drainage which was, no doubt, perfect under the Romans, having fallen most probably into neglect under the auspices of its Archbishop Electors. Not that the government of these could be compared to a mere priestly government of the present day, for such men as the Johanns, Cunos and Baldwins of Trêves could wield the sword and mace with as much effect as the crozier, and it is more likely that the physical well-being of their subjects suffered more from temporal than spiritual distractions. Trêves has been honoured or disgraced by the residence of several Roman Emperors, since the time when Julius Cæsar was brought in, A. D. 54, to mediate in the quarrel between Cingetorix and Induciomarus, which was ultimately settled in the manner usual with the Romans, by taking possession themselves of the disputed territory.
In the rebellion of Civilis, recorded by Tacitus, Trêves joined the insurgents, and was consequently taken by Petilius Cerealis. As allies and enemies of the Romans the Treviri were chiefly distinguished in the arm of cavalry.
As time went on, and Trêves acquired more and more of an ecclesiastical character, many holy men took up their residence or sought asylum there. Amongst them was the famous Athanasius, who lived here in exile for more than two years in the reign of Constantine. Trêves was visited in his rambles by the erratic St. Martin, in the fourth century, who worked miracles long remembered, and in the twelfth by the more authentic St. Bernhard of Clairvaux, who came preaching a crusade, and attesting his mission by the usual signs and wonders.
If the projected railroad is completed between Trêves and Cologne, the old town will probably enter on a new lease of life; but the present is the time for those who are curious in history and antiquities to pursue their investigations, as modern improvements have a tendency to choke antiquity. At present, Nature holds her own in Trêves. The remains of ancient art have become part of Nature, and the memorials of the mighty dead are mellowed in tint by the same sunshine which glorifies the living vineyards and flower-gardens. To Trêves applies, even better than to Paris, that expression of Mrs. Barrett Browning in “Aurora Leigh,”—
The city swims in verdure.
Its site is as perfect as can be conceived, standing as it does by a lovely river, in the midst of an amphitheatre of pleasant and finely-broken hills.