Gaul

GAUL. - Thus the ancients called the country comprised between the Mediterranean, the Alps, the Rhine, the Ocean, and the Pyrenees, which they subdivided into G. Narbonensis, Aquitania, Lugdunensis, Belgica.

I. EVANGELIZATION

The region, entirely pacified and organized by Augustus, had soon reached a notable degree of civilization and tranquility; relations both of commerce and of political and administrative business with Italy and with Rome were continuous, the roads numerous and well maintained, the river routes widely used. The Provençal coast, much frequented by Greeks and Orientals by ancient tradition, must have been very busy, since as early as ca. 600 B.C. the Phocaeans of Asia Minor had founded there, actively and prosperously, their colony of Μασσαλία (Marseille), and dominated the excellent route of penetration toward the interior offered by the Rhone. It is very probable that in the Massaliot region some Christian report may have arrived very early, and the fact would find a parallel in Puteoli, another place closely connected with the East, where St. Paul found in the year 60 a nucleus of Christians of some importance. It does not appear, however, that the traditions of late origin about the coming to Provence of Lazarus, the risen man of Bethany, and of his sisters Martha and Magdalene can be taken into consideration.

In II Tim. IV, 10 St. Paul laments that he is almost alone, and among the names of the disciples who are far away he mentions a Crescens who went to Galatia. Not all the codices, however, have Γαλατίαν; others have Γαλλίαν, and the most ancient interpreters, Eusebius and Theodoret, did not even raise the question whether Gaul could be meant, but referred the passage to Galatia. In any case, of this mission of Crescens there is no further news.

There is then the question whether St. Paul went to Spain. That he intended to, is undoubted; he himself says so clearly in Rom. 15, 24, and a passage of St. Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians (V, 7), in which it is said that the Apostle did not reach the crown of martyrdom until after he had touched the extreme West, would seem to favor an affirmative thesis. If St. Paul went to Spain, it is more than probable that he chose the sea route and did not wish to cross the Alps, and in that case, given the custom of ancient navigators to sail along the coast, there will have been a stop at Massilia, which the Saint certainly will not have failed to turn to account. In any case Battifol asked himself why St. Paul spoke of Spain and not of Gaul and Africa. Would it not be, by chance, because in those provinces others had already gone? Let one remember what the Apostle says of his own reluctance to go and work in a field already sown by others (Rom. 15, 20).

In any case we are always in the realm of possibilities, just as the attributions to the 2nd century of some epigraphic text or of some sarcophagus found in Gaul, and held to be of that age only on the basis of doubtful paleographic or art-historical criteria, are of an entirely hypothetical value. To have a first sure documentation of the presence of Christians in Gaul one must go down to the year 177 A.D. To the events of that year refers a letter that the Christians of Lugdunum (Lyons) wrote to their brethren of Asia and Phrygia to narrate to them the glorious end of a group of Christians killed with barbarous torments out of hatred for their faith. The tragic event of Lugdunum was almost certainly the first case of anti-Christian persecution in Gaul, as Sulpicius Severus acknowledges: «sub Aurelio deinde, Antonini filio, persecutio... agitata, ac tunc primum inter Gallia martyris visa, serius trans Alpes Dei religione suscepta» (Chron., II, 32).

At the head of the church of Lugdunum, having been made its bishop after the storm had passed, remained the presbyter Irenaeus. A native of Asia, where in his youth he had listened to St. Polycarp of Smyrna, he is one of the greatest figures of 2nd-century Christianity. It is not known when and why he came to Gaul; certainly he carried on there a fervent and luminous work both as bishop and as a learned writer and defender of the Christian Faith, enjoying great prestige. He was in fact able to intervene with wise counsels of moderation in the dispute between the Church of Rome and the Churches of Asia concerning the date of the celebration of Easter, succeeding in persuading Pope Victor I not to wish, for a question of no vital importance, to separate the Churches of Asia from the mystical body of the universal Church.

Only for Lugdunum are there episcopal lists going back to before the 3rd century (L. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, Paris 1907-19), which does not mean that the existence of other episcopal sees must forthwith be excluded, many having been the sees that cannot exhibit ordered and complete lists of their bishops. In any case it is certain that the further back one goes in time, the more one will find episcopal sees reserved for the major cities alone.

Gregory of Tours says that in the year 230 «septem viri episcopi ordinari ad praedicandum in Gallia missi sunt» (Hist. Franc., I, 30), but the report does not enjoy much credence among scholars. More reliable is the report in a letter of St. Cyprian of the years 251-55, that the bishop of Lugdunum and other «episcopi in eadem provincia constituti» denounced to Pope Stephen I their colleague Marcian, bishop of Arles, whose conduct in the question of the Novatian schism did not seem beyond reproach. Christianity therefore continues to spread, and other episcopates have been established. Among the most singular Christian monuments to be remembered is a Greek inscription found at Autun (Augustodunum) with complicated and unclear formulas that somewhat recall the mysterious language of the Gnostics. There is no agreement among the many scholars who have dealt with it about the date to be assigned to it, which oscillates from the 2nd to the 6th century A.D. (cf. H. Leclercq, Autun, in DACL, I (1924), coll. 3188-3216).

A great silence follows concerning the Christian affairs of Gaul down to Diocletian; to this period may refer some Christian inscription, mostly sepulchral, of unknown persons, and some martyrs are attributed to it, but in late narratives that do not merit trust. The last persecution, that of Diocletian, should have taken place in Gaul as well, but the Caesar placed in charge of it, Constantius Chlorus, applied the provisions of that edict only very rarely and partially. Moreover, the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian, the succession shortly afterward of Constantine, and the decrees of toleration of Galerius and of Constantine and Licinius (the so-called edict of Milan of 313), freed the Churches of Gaul and of the whole Empire from every fear of persecution. And not long afterward the Christian religion, at first placed on a par with the others, became the preferred one, and the public worship of the old Greco-Roman religion was subsequently proscribed. Every difficulty, however, was not removed, for certain heresies arose and spread tenaciously, two of which especially concern Gaul: Donatism and Arianism. The first, which arose, to tell the truth, in Africa, found in Gaul, in a council convoked by Constantine at Arles, judgment and condemnation. Arianism enjoyed for some time also the favors of the imperial court, for example, of the emperors Constantius II and Valens and of the empress Justina, mother and guardian of the young Valentinian II. Against Arianism fought energetically also a great bishop of Gaul, Hilary of Poitiers, who was also punished by the emperor Constantius with exile in Phrygia.

In Gaul itself centers of heresies are kindled: Prosper of Aquitaine begs St. Augustine to combat the errors of a group of heretics of Marseille, and the Saint sends two of his treatises: On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance. And other ecclesiastics of Gaul flourish in this time for doctrine and for holiness: Sulpicius Severus, St. Paulinus retired to Nola, St. Hilary of Arles, St. Germanus of Auxerre, Avitus of Vienne, Sidonius Apollinaris, St. Martin of Tours, St. Remigius of Reims, who he had the fortune to baptize the king of the Franks Clovis (in the year 496), the first of the barbarian rulers to be converted to the Catholic faith, without having passed through the Arian heresy.

II. PALEOCRISTIAN SCULPTURE

At the decline of the Empire, the West had lost the cult of form, but the art of Christian funerary relief kept alive the tradition of Greco-Roman sculpture of the Constantinian age down to the era of the barbarian invasions. One can trace its slow decline from Arles and from Narbonne, where the workshops were in full activity in the middle of the 4th century, down to Marseilles where, at the end of the Theodosian era, a workshop arose near the abbey of St. Victor, founded in 415, and down to Aquitaine where funerary relief disappeared shortly afterwards, to be replaced by barbarian decoration.

Arles is the city that Constantine had chosen as the capital of his Empire. In 395 it became the seat of the praetorian prefecture of the Gauls; its funerary sculpture is essentially Roman; its workshops disappeared together with the ruin of the Empire at the time of the revolutions that mark the Empire of Honorius (410-20), whereas at Marseilles, a city that remained after the Roman conquest, on the margin of the Empire, the sarcophagus workshops arose later and followed the artistic evolution of the 5th century, which links them both to the art of Ravenna and to that of Visigothic Aquitaine.

Since the sarcophagi found in the north of Gaul are products exported from the south, the chronology of funerary art in Gaul is reduced to the southern provinces; it reveals a succession of workshops extending from Constantine down to the Frankish conquest. The two artistic centres are Arles and Narbonne; that of Arles ceased at the beginning of the 5th century, while Marseilles was in full efficiency in the first half of that century; in Languedoc and in Aquitaine, the Visigothic domination, by concession of Honorius (413), was established at Toulouse; until the victory of the Franks at Vouillé (507) it would extend over the Gévaudan, the Rouergue, the Velay, Languedoc; this domination sees and perhaps stimulates a survival of the workshop of Narbonne, which by then was linked to the art of Toulouse and to the rise of workshops in the valley of the Garonne that maintained the traditions of Greco-Roman sculpture, transforming them however profoundly down to the first years of the 6th century.

The sarcophagus of Arles modelled its architectural forms on the continuous frieze, on the little arches with columns or trees, on the strigils, on the Roman type which in turn represents a fusion of the Greco-Asiatic sarcophagus of the Sidamara type and of relief of pagan tradition. As in the preceding centuries, one may consider that a certain number of sarcophagi of the "beautiful style," with strongly accentuated reliefs, with drill work in the small columns, in the heads, in the limbs that stand out from the bare background and in which one observes the contrast of shadows and lights owing to the exaggerated use of the drill, according to the technique of Anatolia, are imports from Asia Minor and above all from Italy; the sarcophagi are generally of Pentelic marble from Asia Minor, of Proconnesian marble, in the Propontis, which gave greater transparency and a warm colour to the modelling: such are the sarcophagi of the Constantinian and Theodosian era representing Christ's farewell to the disciples prostrate and weeping at his feet (replica in Florence), those of Hydria Tertulla and of Concordius bishop of Arles (d. in 375-80) and in general the sarcophagi in high relief and with continuous frieze.

Nevertheless, in the second half of the 4th century one can assert the existence of a school of Arles by reason of the identity of workmanship of the sarcophagi in Carrara marble with those of St-Béat, which were not exported to Italy and were therefore worked on the spot. The type of local sarcophagus, conceived in imitation of Rome, with the same imitations from pagan funerary art in the decoration, is generally divided into little arches and panels of strigils that simplify the composition: scenes of the Nativity, the Orant, Christ holding the cross, surrounded by two adorants in the central panel; but the school of Arles likewise initiates the compositions of the continuous frieze, in particular the crossing of the Red Sea, of which seven or eight examples are known (Museum of Arles, St. Trophime, Nîmes, castle of Candiac at Bellegarde, Moustiers-Ste-Marie, tomb of Louis the Pious in the Museum of Metz). The reliefs are not very high, the folds broad and rectilinear, the use of the drill moderate in the hair, in the joining of the lips, in the nostrils, etc., the eye is incised at the centre and not at the inner corner, as was customary on Roman high reliefs.

The sarcophagus of Geminius of Cologne, administrator of the five Provinces, who died at Arles in the first decade of the 5th century and is preserved at St. Trophime, may be considered as the last product of this workshop; it possesses all the characteristics of the school of Marseilles, which succeeds that of Arles.

The sarcophagi of Marseilles with little arches supported by columns or by trees, on the Arles type, have in fact an entirely different style that links them with the sarcophagi of Ravenna and of Aquitaine; the technique of the drill becomes ever rarer and, reduced to a series of holes to remove the piece without deepening at the beginning of the cap of the hair, ends by disappearing; the composition is simplified; the scenes with several figures in search of perspective representing the great biblical events or the miracles of the Lord are replaced by scenes of Apostles isolated in the little arches without depth or in rectangular niches according to the custom of Toulouse; the folds of the garments become flat and the attitudes of the figures animated and declamatory; the dynamism of movement makes up for the plastic value of the figures. One sees appear the symbolism of the sheep or of the lambs, of the deer drinking at the spring, allegories almost unknown to the art of Arles and which evoke the art of the relief and of the mosaics of Ravenna.

Such are the characteristics that appear in the sarcophagi of Narbonne, of Clermont in Auvergne, of Rodez, of Toulouse, of Castelnau-de-Guers, of Mas-St-Antonin, etc. They give an ever more reduced place to the figures, isolated in the little arches, sometimes adorned with half-open draperies, on the type of the porticoes of the mosaic of St. Vitale of Ravenna. Subjects taken from ancient themes, such as the Good Shepherd, Daniel among the lions, the Nativity, Adam and Eve, the Dioscuri, still appear sporadically in the central panel of the sarcophagi and on terracotta slabs coming from the decoration of churches in the west. But floral ornamentation tends ever more to invade the field and to replace human representation, which on the contrary tends to disappear with the Frankish conquest. The expressionist modelling of the figures, according to a process more pictorial than sculptural, marks the end of Greco-Roman art; the dissociation of the Empire, from 410 onwards, is reflected in the new decorative tendencies that reveal the predominance of the art of the peripheral provinces of the Empire, the art of Ravenna and that of the Visigoths, over the classicism of Rome. Thus there is established, starting from Arles and from Narbonne, the chronological chain of a sculpture heir to those workshops of Greco-Roman sculpture that kept alive at Arles, capital of the Roman province and last bastion of Romanity, the heritage of the Empire down to the reign of Honorius, and at Marseilles and at Narbonne in Visigothic Aquitaine the last reflection of "humanism."

BLIT.: F. Benoit, Le Musée des crypes à St-Victor de Marseille (Mémoires de l'Institut historique de Provence, 1954); id., Les cimetières suburbains d'Arles dans l'antiquité chrétienne et au moyen âge, Roma 1935; id., Le Musée lapidéte d'Arles, Parigi 1936; id., Fragments de sarcophages chrétiens datés, in Bull. Soc. nat. Antiq., 1938; id., Fragments de sarcophages inédits, in Riv. di arch. cristiana, 17 (1940), pp. 248-70; id., Marbres employés en Provence à l'époque gallo-romaine, in Bull. Soc. nat. Antiq. de France, 1934-1944; id., Nouveau sarcophage des adorants, in Riv. di arch. cristiana, 26 (1950); E. Le Blant, Etude sur les sarcophages chrétiens d'Arles, Parigi 1878; id., Les sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule, ivi 1886; G. Rodenwaldt, Szulemarkophae, in Mitteilungen d.

deutsch. Arch. Instituts, Röm. Abt., 38-39 (1923-24), p. 1 sgg.; M. Lawrence, Citygate sarcophagi, in The Art Bulletin, 10 (1927), p. 1 sgg.; L. Coutil, L'art nérovingien et carolingien, Bordeaux 1931; M. Lawrence, Columnar sarcophagi in the Latin West, in The Art Bulletin, 14 (1932), p. 103 sgg.; G. Wilpert, Sarcofagi, M. von Schoenbeck, Die christliche Stethophosphatität unter Konstantin, in Mitteilungen d. deutsch. Arch. Instituts, Röm. Abt., 51 (1938), p. 238 sgg.; A. C. Soper, The Latin style on Christian Sarcophagi of the Fourth Century, in The Art Bulletin, 19 (1937), p. 148 sgg.; J. B. Ward Perkins, The sculpture of Visigothic Franc, Oxford, in Soc. of antiquaries of London, 1938; Fr. Gerke, Die christl. Sark. der von Konst. Zeit, Berlino 1940; M. Lawrence, The sarcophagi of Ravenna (College Art Association, 1945, Study, 2); B. Huguet, Arte paleocristiana, in 4th century, VIII, Pamplona 1949.