Haut-paays of Nice,
Counter-Reformation, Nissart Baroque and Salt Road (s)
Nice high country,
the salt roads,
Prosperity vectors
Between 350 and 830m, some of the villages in the region still cultivate on the slopes of the sandstone massif of green-blue fields of olive trees, adorned without landscape concern (the mountain setting is sufficient in itself) local species, cypress, mimosa for the less elevated.
Higher on the Vésubie, it is the usual medium mountain species that take place with a beautiful majesty.
These villages are all located more or less directly on the famous Route du Sel, less the one which linked Nice to Turin, sometimes with various variants of route (see the map of routes at late 17th century).
Moon more or less borrowed the Vésubie valley and passed through St-Martin-Vésubie to the west with a variant via Lucéram, to cross the passes.
The other was passing via Sospel, followed the deep Roya valley to the east and headed towards the Col de Tende.
Historians know how to find the paths worn by the passage of convoys of pack-mules, as in this illustration in the Roya valley.
Those roads have undoubtedly contributed to the prosperity of the villages crossed. The Royal Route has further strengthened the local wealth of some of them, between conflicts and rivalries.
Most of these villages also often benefited from a relative administrative autonomy within the county of Nice, during the long period of the Duchy of Savoy and sometimes even from the Middle Ages.
Their identity, their originality, their appetite for independence have been shaped and strengthened.
Yes, but why the salt?
Vital salt
First the salt is essential for the life of the cells of living organisms, in the well-known form of sodium chloride (NaCl). It is in particular necessary to digestion, to the functioning of the nervous system, to the regulation of blood volume.
So even nowadays, herbivorous animals eat salt blocks when given the opportunity in pastures (see the advertising card for "Au Lion" salt) .
Prehistoric hunters naturally found it in killed game.
But having become sedentary, farmers, and therefore consuming less meat, the need for salt (but who knows how?) became imperative to them in everyday life.
Salt, a natural preservative
For a long time, too, man has wondered how to preserve its food between production (hunting, harvesting, seasonal or occasional ...) and survival consumption (necessarily continuous), ... well before knowing the refrigerator.
It is still the same salt that provided for millennia (from 6000 to 4000 BC until the 19th century) the answer to this question, adding to the first dire need.
The salt in which we coat the food to be preserved dehydrates these indeed.
In doing so, he inhibits the development of microorganisms that degrade them, and stops that of bacteria at the origin of fermentation when the salt level is greater than 15%.
Illumination on the gabelous trail
The radeur, salt tax officer (salt customs officer), measures the salt by shaving it on the bush (who is not a kid from Marseille)
In Guérande
A salt caravan at rest
Among the commodities traded, rice from the Po plain represented an important part.
He would have been introduced or developed by Cistercian monks in the 12th (other sources say the 14th) century, responsible for enhancing the immense unhealthy delta.
In the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci, again, is responsible for organizing the hydraulic system for the cultivation of rice in the region.
For our region visited, the production of salt was done at the "salines de Hyères".
With flat-bottomed barges, salt, transported by sea to Nice, was picked up by mule caravans.
They set off slowly along the Paillon valley towards the passes of the Alps to reach Turin. Each mule wore on average 80 kg of salt distributed among several jute bags.
St-Martin-Vésubie, then called St-Martin-Lantosque, saw up to 10,000 mules per year pass through it in the 15th century.
The city is then an important storage place. Its prosperity is assured.
Passing the passes is only possible between July and September, at best, by taking the Gordolasque valley or the Boréon valley. The most accessible pass was that of Madone des Fenestres.
The passage through the Tende pass, which was then developed, more accessible throughout the year via the Roya valley (towards Saorge in the accompanying illustration) will contribute to the relative decline of St-Martin, in particular to the benefit of Sospel.
In addition, the dehydrated food loses weight and bulk, which makes it easier to transport and store.
Consequently, the consumption of salt increased sharply. It was therefore necessary to find the supply routes of the precious commodity from the production sites.
So precious that it was used as a currency of payment, and that it is to his name that we owe that of "salary".
The Caesar's Roman armies "preserved olives, radishes, and other vegetables in brine, which gave rise to the word salad, which means" savory food. "
Counter-Reformation and Nissart Baroque
Despite frequent historical vicissitudes, this prosperity acquired from 16th to 18th century translated and is still illustrated by baroque art.
Indeed, the Duchy of Savoy, soon to be kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, anchored in Catholicism even became a local branch of the Leaguers, and vigorously opposed the Protestant Reformation.
Calvin by Le Titien
In reaction to the proximity of the stronghold Geneva of Calvin, the duchy will to apply the Counter-Reformation in its midst more than elsewhere.
In terms of the arts, the baroque which is one of its manifestations, finds here one of his chosen lands.
St-Pierre-de-Vienne Church in Austria, example of 18th century Baroque
In our villages visited in any case, if the baroque impregnation marked the architecture, it did so with a little less excess and excess than those that we can see. elsewhere (example of the Austrian church of St-Pierre-de-Vienne).
Often the older church has been "baroque" in its interior decorations, or the baroque church has been built keeping the square bell tower. old, dark and severe, with a pyramidal roof, like at Coaraze or Belvédère.
At Belvédère, in ocher tones
Original counterpoint to the baroque surge, the Blue Chapel of Coaraze, on the side of the sandstone massif above the village, displays as a weather vane the famous lizard which according to legend explains the toponymy of the village ("short tail" or "cut tail").
We note here that the lizard is represented still whole, before the autotomy, or then after the abandoned tail has grown back ...
To visit the chapel, you must obtain the loan of the key from the friendly owner of the central bar of the village; and of course do not forget to give it back to him on the way down.
Baroque art
Baroque (so named retrospectively and pejoratively in the 18th century, which in Portuguese means "misshapen pearl" or "irregular pearl"), was born in the 16th century of the Council of Trent (1542 to 1563), at the same time that it was founded the order of the Jesuits.
All this to fight Protestantism and convert to the Roman faith those who adopted the reformed religion.
To the severe and austere artistic expression of the Reformation embodied in the pale, emaciated and ascetic face of Calvin, it was necessary to oppose an art capable of "to win back souls", to impress the lost sheep, by demonstrating the expression of the power of the "Catholic God".
Baroque art is its vector.
We can caricature, because reality is always more nuanced, wonder if baroque art would have existed without Calvin and the Lutheran Reformation. Or what it would have been without this counter-reformist push.
From the Council of Trent, therefore towards the end of the 16th century, baroque art will develop until the beginning of the 18th century.
the spectacular, the most emotional, must surprise the faithful, dazzle them, upset them, to bring them back into the fold of Catholicism.
To show the power of the Catholic Church in the face of the Reformation, the baroque style was then characterized from Italy where it was born, by the freedom of forms, a profusion of ornaments, the size of the works. often disproportionate. He will dare new colors, new materials, will embody the inner feelings of the characters represented, the passion of the soul, "heightened religious ecstasy".
The artists create a whimsical universe, where one takes advantage with intensity of the play of light, of contrasts, where one truly "stages", where one adorns with gold, where one exploits the malleability of stucco. .
We will appeal to the very striking technique of trompe-l'oeil.
Comparatively, in France, if the rise of the Baroque began under Henri IV then Marie de Médicis, it was shunned by Louis XIV.
In its major development, not only we create sacred works (churches, chapels, organs, ...) and profane (palaces, doors, fountains, fortifications, ...) baroque, but we also "baroque" more sacred places. old.
Then later, these excesses will reach their climax and will be revealed with the rococo style.
This art offer sometimes even a little beautiful simplicity in some chapels, other times develops squares, richer and more colorful facades, bell towers of glazed tiles.
Probably depending on the local level of prosperity and wealth of the clergy and nobility.
Perhaps in the end, this is what specialists call "Nissart-Ligurian" art or even otherwise "Alpine or Piedmontese baroque art"
There remains a very marked, endearing identity, enhanced by the purity of a constant sky.
It is first of all the local materials that we use: lime, torrent sand, wood (spruce, larch, ...), stone, first local, then extracted further.
Lack of time, because of work in progress or because the The site is simply inaccessible, we will not see the interior of the Piedne-Haute, La Bollène-Vésubie, Lucéram or Belvédère churches.
In any case, it is the two or three churches visited in St-Martin-Vésubie which present the most baroque abundance.
A sign of the opulence of the city in the past, even more than Sospel for example?
Even the Chapel of Mercy below on the left side when you go down the central street of Doctor Cagnoli with its fairly simple facade conceals an altar with twisted columns whose decoration looks like a variation of fresh butter stucco (or meringue whipped cream depending on the gourmet mood of the moment) well loaded.
The large monochrome frescoes inside, strongly expressive depict scenes from the life of Christ. They were painted in 1962 by Angelo Ponce de Leon, at the same time as other notorious artists produced beautiful sundials.
It is this tone that led to the renaming of the chapel, which the inhabitants previously called otherwise.
One of the old names is ND-du-Gressier. It echoes the sandstone of the massif, on which, around the chapel - not yet blue - the inhabitants came, it is said, to dry figs.