By reason of this--except for its hotels and cafés--Clermont-Ferrand is justly entitled to rank as one of the most ancient and important centres of Christianity in France.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de CLERMONT-FERRAND_]
Its cathedral is not of the local manner of building: it is of manifest Norman example. But the Église Notre Dame du Port is Auvergnian of the most profound type, and withal, perhaps more appealing than the cathedral itself. Furthermore the impulse of the famous crusades first took form here under the fervent appeal of Urban II., who was in the city at the Council of the Church held in 1095. Altogether the part played by this city of mid-France in the affairs of the Christian faith was not only great, but most important and far-reaching in its effect.
In its cathedral are found to a very considerable extent those essentials to the realization of the pure Gothic style, which even Sir Christopher Wren confessed his inability to fully comprehend.
It is a pleasant relief, and a likewise pleasant reminder of the somewhat elaborate glories of the Isle of France, to come upon an edifice which at least presents a semblance to the symmetrical pointed Gothic of the north. The more so in that it is surrounded by Romanesque and local types which are peers among their class.
Truly enough it is that such churches as Notre Dame du Port, the cathedral at Le Puy, and the splendid series of Romanesque churches at Poitiers are as interesting and as worthy of study as the resplendent modern Gothic. On the other hand, the transition to the baseness of the Renaissance,--without the intervention of the pointed style,--while not so marked here as elsewhere, is yet even more painfully impressed upon one.
The contrast between the Romanesque style, which was manifestly a good style, and the Renaissance, which was palpably bad, suggests, as forcibly as any event of history, the change of temperament which came upon the people, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
This cathedral is possessed of two fine western towers (340 feet in height), graceful in every proportion, hardy without being clumsy, symmetrical without weakness, and dwindling into crowning spires after a manner which approaches similar works at Bordeaux and Quimper. These examples are not of first rank, but, if not of masterful design, are at least acceptable exponents of the form they represent.