ARLES
. The city of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) remained in the shadow of Marseille until 46
B.C., when Julius Caesar established a colony of Roman veterans on the left bank of the
Rhône, called Arelate. Arles developed rapidly under his successors, serving as an
important communications link between Italy and Spain. Its bishopric was founded in the
1st century by St. Trophimus. By the 2nd century A.D., it had acquired substantial
defensive walls and major public-works projects and had supplanted Marseille as the
leading Mediterranean port. Arles became the principal residence of the emperor
Constantine I the Great (ca. 280–337) and was the birthplace of Constantine II (317–
340). In 314, it was the site of the church synod called by Constantine I to deal with the
Donatist controversy.
Following the collapse of the western Roman Empire, Arles became the capital of the
Visigothic leader Euric, and in 536 it came under the control of the Franks. In the early
8th century, Arles was plundered by the Muslims and became a center for Provençal
rebels; Charles Martel had to subdue the town twice before securing control over the
region.
Arles was to play a central role in the history of medieval Provence. It was a major
commercial center, and in 972 its count, Guillaume II, drove the Muslims from their base
at Garde-Freinet. The archbishops of the city were leading figures in the Peace
Movement and the reform of the church in the 11th century. In the 12th century, Arles
became a free city ruled by a podesta, a status it retained until the French Revolution.
Stephen Weinberger
The church of Saint-Trophime at Arles, built during the first quarter of the 12th
century, is one of the most important Romanesque churches of southern France. It
consists of nave and two aisles, each originally terminated in the east by two apsidioles
and the semicircular choir. The nave is tall, thin, and aspiring with high and wide nave
arcades surmounted by a single clerestory window above a horizontal band of ornament.
Nave piers have double responds on all four faces: supporting the nave arcade, the
diaphragm arch over the aisles, and the colonnettes and capitals above the inner respond,
which in turn supports the continuous horizontal frieze by pointed barrel vaults, while the
aisles are vaulted by three-quarters of a barrel vault, strengthened by diaphragm arches
behind each pier. If Burgundian ideas come down the Rhône Valley, they are
overwhelmed by Roman influences in forms and decoration to create a distinct regional,
Provençal Romanesque style.
In the mid-15th century, the shallow Romanesque east end of Arles was replaced by a
deep, handsome Flamboyant choir, ambulatory, and radiating chapels. Ribs melt into the
masonry of vaults, and moldings take on a life of their own. This new east end resulted in
the destruction of a large crypt completed in 1152 to receive the relics of Trophimus.
The cloister for the Augustinian canons of Saint-Trophime is the most important of the
many cloisters in Provençe. Indeed, it can be argued that the north gallery of the Arles
cloister is the finest in western Europe, if the criteria for judgment include architecture
and sculpture and their total interrelationship, as well as the consistency and the high
quality of the sculpture. The north gallery, dating from the late 1140s to early 1150s, is
vaulted by a three-quarter barrel, which drops lower on the garden side of the cloister,
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