When the Romans came they established on this secluded spot an imperial city. It seems to have been not so much a military station as an outpost of the picturesque faith of Rome, a kind of Canterbury in the backwoods of Provence. They called the place Ventium, and some indication of its ancient boundaries can still be traced. It is known to the historian by its temples. How many of these buildings existed is a matter of doubt, but certain it is that the pious Roman, toiling up to Ventium from the coast, would see afar off, standing up against the hills, the white columns of the temples to Cybele and to Mars. Of these shrines no vestige now remains. The stones have been scattered and have become mere material in the mason’s hands. Some have helped to build a Christian church, others to found a city wall or to give dignity to the house of a medi?val burgher.[9]
There are many Roman inscriptions still in Vence. They have been found in all sorts of odd places, on street walls, in gardens, in cellars, as well as on certain stones in the old church. From these fragments, as disjointed and as incongruous as the mutterings of a sleeping man, a broken history of Ventium, in the years before and just after Christ, has been pieced together.
The inscriptions are, in a general way, commemorative. There is one, for instance, to Lucius Veludius Valerianus, decurion of Vence, to record the fact that he had filled the functions both of magistrate and of priest. With his name is associated very prettily that of his wife Vibia, for she no doubt shared both his honours and his trials. Vibia, we may suppose, had left the gay and resplendent city of Rome to follow her adventurous husband into the wilds of Gaul, and was not a little proud of the position he had made in the lonely and solemn city. One might guess that it was Vibia who suggested the inscription. It is notable, moreover, that the most prominent word in the whole tablet and the one in the largest letters is UXORI (wife). Indeed, this word occupies an entire line to itself. It would seem as if Vibia wished to make it emphatic that she was a wife, and not otherwise.
If any of the inhabitants of the old town could come back to life again I should especially like to witness the meeting, in the main street, between Vibia and her successor in office, the mayoress of Vence of to-day. They would be a strange couple, strange in dress, in bearing and in speech, as odd as if a person wore on one foot a dainty Roman sandal and on the other an American boot. The two ladies would have, however, this in common—the country they gazed across would be as familiar to the one as to the other.
There is among the many writings in stone one which refers to the goddess Cybele and the ceremony of the Taurobolium. This pagan ceremony was both a sacrifice and an act of purification. Its symbolism is of interest when viewed in connection with that of the Christian church which directly followed upon the old faith. A bull was sacrificed to the goddess. The animal was placed upon a grating or latticed stage over a pit. In the pit crouched the penitent. The blood of the bull, as it poured over the body of the penitent, washed away all sin, all impurities and stains, and gave to the man thus made regenerate a new and holier life.[10]
Vence was at an early period converted to Christianity. The identity of the missionary who brought about this change is not clearly established; but the work is generally ascribed to St. Trophime. The body of St. Trophime lies in the old cathedral of Arles, in that church which bears his name. Among the ruins of the abbey of Montmajour, near Arles, is his cell, a little rock sanctuary buried in the very bowels of the earth.
A bishopric was founded in Vence as early as 374. The city became a prominent and influential centre and its bishops were, with scarcely an exception, illustrious men. Most of these prelates are buried in the cathedral of the town. The tombs of two of the very earliest, viz. St. Veran and St. Lambert, occupy chapels in that sanctuary.
A famous ecclesiastic was Bishop Godeau. He was born in 1605 and took orders when he was thirty years old. He was a man of great learning and one of the founders of the French Academy. He was highly esteemed, not only by the people of Provence but also by the Papal Court and the counsellors of the king. “The epitaph of Bishop Godeau,” writes Hare, “commemorates the favourite of Richelieu, who obtained his good graces by dedicating to him a paraphrase of the Psalms, which begins with the words ‘Benedicite omnia opera Domini,’ on receiving which the powerful cardinal said, ‘Monsieur l’Abbé, vous me donnez Benedicite, et moi je vous donner Grasse.’ The Pope afterwards allowed Godeau to hold the bishopric of Vence with that of Grasse.”[11]
The worthy bishop died as he would have wished to die. In Holy Week in the year 1672 he was singing the Tenebr? before the altar of his cathedral of Vence.[12] The Tenebr? represent a very beautiful service of the Catholic Church. A candlestick bearing fifteen candles is placed in the sanctuary. These are lit when the service begins. At the end of each Psalm or Canticle one of the candles is extinguished to express the desertion of Our Lord by His apostles and disciples. At last only one candle remains. It signifies the Light of the World, and when it is taken down and placed behind the altar it serves to symbolise the burial of the Redeemer of Mankind. On the occasion of the celebration at Vence as the last candle was being extinguished the good bishop fell dead upon the altar steps.
VENCE: THE EAST GATE AND OUTER WALL
Bishop Surian who succeeded to the see in 1727 had a somewhat romantic career. He began life as a shepherd boy. Finding this existence intolerable he ran away from home with the very inadequate sum of 35 sous in his pocket. Falling in with men who perceived his ability he was educated by them and admitted, in due course, to the priesthood. It is said that he lived as frugally when he was a bishop as he did when he was tending sheep on the hillside.
On the outbreak of the French Revolution, the bishop of Vence, Bishop Pisani, fled and joined that vast body of some 4,000 priests who left the country in order to avoid the penalties which the Revolution imposed. Pisani was the last bishop of Vence, for the see was never restored.
In early days Vence belonged to the bishops, the Church being the ruling power in the pious town. When Vence came into the possession of the Villeneuves—the lords of Villeneuve-Loubet—the seigniorial rights over Vence were divided between the bishopric and the Villeneuve family. The Villeneuves fled from France at the time of the Revolution and although they returned when the Terror had passed away it was only to rid themselves of their lands in Provence and seek a habitation elsewhere.
Vence being a devout town and one prominent in all ecclesiastical affairs it is no matter of surprise that it became deeply disturbed by the “new religion” as taught and stoutly maintained by the Huguenots. It is further no matter of surprise that the dissenters made this stronghold of the Church a special object of attack and that Vence became a conspicuous scene of their protestings.
The position assumed some gravity when the Huguenots did more than protest against forms of worship and took to arming themselves with weapons of war. They went further. They became clamorous and threatening and made it clear that they were no longer to be put off by mere academic arguments or quotations from the Fathers. Moreover this conflict between the Protestant and the Catholic involved certain political issues which were outside the burning questions of creed; and thus it was that men were drawn into the quarrel to whom matters of State were more important than matters of doctrine.
The trouble came to a head in 1560. The bishop at the time was a Grimaldi, while the castle of Villeneuve was possessed by his uncle, a Lascaris. On the Catholic side, therefore, Vence was solid and prepared to take prompt action to crush the revolt. A body of some three hundred men was raised to deal with the Huguenots, but, in spite of the all-pervading power of the Church there were Huguenots in Vence and the vicinity and they, in turn, raised men to support their cause. A Huguenot gentleman, with the pleasant name of René de Cypières, also collected a squadron of forty horse to help those who espoused the reformed faith.
Vence thus became in this fair area of France the Defender of the Faith. The governor of the town issued an order forbidding the citizens to harbour or conceal a Huguenot in any house, garden or vineyard. The bishop denounced the Protestants as “vagabonds and seditious men.” What terms the Huguenots, on the other hand, applied to the bishop are not known, but they were certainly not lacking in invective for the contest was bitter.
Life in the cathedral town must have been very unpleasant about this period. So keen was the dispute that everyone must, of necessity, have taken sides. Friends broke from one another after an intimacy of a lifetime; lovers parted; the Catholic wife left the husband who had turned Huguenot; while families who were united by ties that had endured for generations now found themselves scowling at one another from opposite camps. Children were forbidden to speak to old playmates, and the little girl who had been so sweet to her boy friend now put out her tongue at him when they passed in the street.
In 1562 there seems to have been a lull in this unhappy quarrel and even a sign of tolerance, if not of peace; for the Huguenots, although forbidden the righteous city of Vence, were allowed to hold meetings without its walls.
The fire was, however, only smouldering. The truce was little more than a pretence. The quiet in the streets was ominous. Although the sun shone upon the faithful town a black cloud that betokened a storm was rising in the south. In 1582, with a rumble of thunder and a darkening sky, the tempest burst. A Huguenot army was advancing upon Vence.
It is necessary to pause here for a moment to record the fact that ten years before this time Vence was approached by a far more terrible and crafty enemy than the Huguenot; for in the year 1572 the army of the Black Death marched into the town. It crept through the open gates, for no one saw it. It set out to strangle and kill without remonstrance, for no one heard its footsteps. It spared neither the armed nor the helpless. It struck down the captain of the guard as he strutted on parade as well as the child who toddled up the cathedral steps to peep in at the door. It felled the lusty armourer at his forge and the maiden singing over her needlework.
As many as could flee from the town fled, including the bishop who sought refuge in St. Paul du Var. Grass grew in the empty streets, the silence of which was broken only by the rumble of a cart laden with dead and the tolling of a weary bell. The passer-by, with his cloak drawn over his face, slunk down a by-way when he saw another coming. The shops were closed; the market-place still, or traversed by a starving dog seeking his master whom he would never find. Here a door would be standing open, day after day, because the very last dweller in the house had crawled out into the street to die, while from an open window would hang the head of a woman whose last cry for help had been unheeded.
One would have supposed that this common disaster would have made for peace, but it only served to deepen the dissent; for the Catholics ascribed the visitation to the heresies of the Huguenots, while they, in turn, regarded the Black Death as a mission from God to punish the Church for its misdeeds.
The position of affairs when the war burst upon Vence in 1582 was as follows: That corner of Provence to the west which bordered on Marseilles, and which would be behind a line drawn—let us say—from Aix-en-Provence to Brignolles, was in the hands of the Church party. On the east the Duke of Savoy, with 2,000 men, was moving from the Italian frontier to the support of his friends at Marseilles. His concern in the conflict was based upon political rather than upon religious grounds. He was, in fact, taking advantage of the discord that raged on his borders. Between these two forces was the open country, in the centre of which was Vence.
Now the Huguenot army was advancing from the south, from the shelter of the Esterel mountains. It was led by a very remarkable man, by name Lesdiguières. He was young, brilliant, daring and ever victorious. Nothing could stand in his way; nothing, indeed, dared stand in his way, for his very name inspired terror.
He had two things to accomplish—one was to cut off the advancing army of the Duke of Savoy and prevent it from reaching Marseilles, and the other was to destroy the city of Vence, the outpost of Marseilles and the holder of the pass.
Vence stood alone in the way as the Defender of the Faith. It was the centre stone of the position. So long as Vence held it was well for those who were fighting the battle of the Church. If the faithful city fell the outlook was unthinkable.
Lesdiguières the invincible appeared before Vence, surrounded it with his troops and his cannon and laid siege to it. It must have been a terrific conflict, for so much depended upon the issue, and the Ven?ois were well aware what would happen to them and their town if once the Huguenot captain got possession of the gates.
Beyond the fact that the loss on the side of the besiegers was very great, no details as to the actual storming of the city nor of the deeds of the defenders have survived. What is known is that the great adventure failed. The doughty Lesdiguières, hitherto invincible, raised the siege and retired again to the south beyond the Esterels.
Vence was saved, the prestige of the Church upheld, and a turn was given to events which can only be appreciated by imagining what would have been the history of Provence, and possibly of France, had the faithful city fallen.
Many of the Huguenot leaders and adherents rejoined the Church of Rome, old family feuds were forgotten, old friends shook hands again who had shunned one another for years, the Huguenot lover became Catholic and led his bride to the very altar he had fought to destroy. Even that hardy fighting man, the fierce, impetuous Lesdiguières, came back to the Church of Rome. He was, it is true, long in coming, for his reconciliation was not made until forty years had passed after the great failure of his life before the walls of Vence.
[9]
“Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France,” by E. W. Rose.
[10]
“Voyages dans les Départements du Midi de la France,” by A. L. Millin, 1808. “La Chorographie et l’histoire de Provence,” by Honoré Bouche, 1664, p. 283.
[11]
“The Rivieras,” by Augustus J. Hare, 1897, p. 47.
[12]
“The Maritime Alps and their Seaboard,” by Miss C. L. N. Dempster, 1885.
VENCE: THE CHURCH AND COURT OF BISHOP’S PALACE.