_Saints and Barbarians_
The early Christians of Chartres were scattered and their churches
destroyed during the final persecution under Diocletian. When,
therefore, the disciples of S. Denis, S. Chéron and S. Martin came
preaching the Gospel through the valley of the Loire, they found but few
faithful among the descendants of those who had been converted by the
first missionaries. The evangelisation of the Province by S. Martin, the
great Bishop of Tours, was commemorated in the title of the church, ‘S.
Martin rendant la vie,’ in reference to one of his miracles, and in that
of the Monastery S. Martin-au-Val, as also in the window in the
clerestory of the nave of the Cathedral (north) and of the choir.
Soldier, hermit, bishop and saint, he established the monasteries of
Gaul. Two thousand of his disciples followed him to the grave, and his
eloquent historian, Sulpicius Severus, challenges the desert of Thebais
to produce, in a more favourable climate, a champion of equal virtue. S.
Chéron, after completing his work at Chartres, turned his steps towards
Paris, but was assassinated on his way at a place since named S.
Chéron-du-Chemin. His martyrdom is represented in a bas-relief of the
south porch of the Cathedral.
Then Castor, Bishop of Chartres, profiting by the protection of
Constantine, built a second basilica, larger than the first, erecting
upon the old site a chapel to the ‘Virgin who shall bear a son,’ and,
above it, the main church and the principal altar.
Meanwhile the Roman Empire in Gaul was tottering to its fall. That
confederacy known as the Franks, which had been formed of the
unconquered tribes that dwelt about the Lower Rhine and the Weser, had
overrun Spain and Mauritania, and had been flung back from Gaul by the
brilliant efforts of the Emperor Probus. Again reduced by Julian, they
remained for some time loyal allies of the Empire. But under Clodion,
the first of the long-haired kings of the Merovingian dynasty whose name
and actions are mentioned in authentic history, they advanced as far as
the Somme, and established a Gallic kingdom between that river and the
Rhine. On the death of Clodion, his two sons quarrelled over their
inheritance; one of them obtained the protection of Rome, the other
allied himself with Attila. For the King of the Huns eagerly embraced an
alliance which facilitated the passage of the Rhine and justified the
invasion of Gaul.
[Illustration: Gargoyle on South Arch]
Chartres seems to have escaped as by a miracle the murderous attack of
the Huns and Franks. She owed perhaps to the obscurity of her position
the immunity which Paris owed to the prayers of S. Geneviève. But
Orléans was besieged and defended successfully by Anianus, a bishop of
primitive sanctity and consummate prudence, until the arrival of the
Roman and Gothic armies compelled Attila to withdraw his innumerable
host of marauders, and at length to give battle and suffer defeat in the
plains of Châlons. (451 A.D.)
CHURCH OF S. AIGNAN.
Was this Anianus that S. Aignan who founded the church which now bears
his name; the S. Aignan who, with his three sisters, Donda, Monda,
Ermenonda, endowed it, and was buried in the ancient crypt of that
church?[16] On his tomb there was formerly to be read this couplet:--
‘Corpus in his cryptis Aniani præsulis olim
Carnutum recubat, spiritus astra colit.’
(The body of Aignan, once Bishop of the Chartrains, lies in this crypt:
his soul is in Heaven.) The crypt (restored sixteenth century) and the
windows of this church are well worth seeing. The lower windows have
nine of them sixteenth-century[17] glass, and nine of them nineteenth
century, chiefly by Lorin of Chartres, whose _atelier_ is in the
picturesque Rue de la Tannerie. The upper windows are chiefly
seventeenth-century heraldic. The church was often burnt down in the
Middle Ages, and for the last time in the sixteenth century.
The architecture is therefore in the style of the Renaissance, though
the main entrance belongs to the fourteenth century. The small entrance
on the left of the façade is pleasing. The church was sacked during the
Revolution and all its artistic treasures stolen. The building itself
was used as a magazine, a prison and a military hospital till 1822, when
it was restored to religious use by private generosity. The painfully
unsuccessful polychrome decorations perpetrated by M. Boeswilwald make
it impossible to remember the interior with any pleasure. Perched, as it
seems, in the air, the exterior, beheld from the boulevards and bridges
south-west of the town, forms, with S. Père and the Cathedral, one of
the most prominent features of the most unforgettable view of Chartres.
But the tower is destitute of grace, and the building, as a whole,
devoid of any beauty of form.
If the nave were worthy of the apse and crypt, it would be another
matter, and S. Aignan would be worthy of its place between S. Père and
Notre-Dame. Approach it from the Rue Saint-Pierre by the steps of
Saint-François, and the east end of the church with the enormous
buttresses which support it, and the massive buttressed walls of the
street which hold up the old parish cemetery, now the garden of the
_Presbytère_, give you the impression of a mighty fortress frowning
above you. But seen from a distance this effect is lost.
There is a legend in connection with this church worth recounting.
A poor tailor of Chartres, the story runs, made a contract to deliver
himself body and soul to the Devil at the end of the year if his
daughter should recover her health and make the fine marriage on which
she had set her heart. At the date fixed when the tailor must fulfil his
part of the bargain Satan appeared. It was evening. The man’s wife
threw herself on her knees, and by her prayers and entreaties obtained
the concession that the infernal treaty should not be enforced so long
as the candle burning in the cottage should last. Then the cunning wife
rose from her knees, blew out the candle and ran full speed with it to
the Church of S. Aignan, where she hid it near the present stoup, in the
first pier on the left at which the masons were then working. Wonderful
to relate, the pier was immediately completed, and the candle hidden
within it safe from the clutches of the Evil One.
* * * * *
Fifty years after the Battle of Châlons, the Franks, under Clovis,
established the French monarchy in Gaul. It was not established by the
force of arms alone.
The Merovingian King had always allowed his Gallic subjects free
exercise of religious worship. Now, at the instance of his wife,
Clotilda, niece of the King of Burgundy, he listened to the Bishop of
Reims. He and his followers, who were equally ready to follow him to the
battlefield or the baptismal font, were received into the Catholic
Church at Reims.
This meant that Clovis had on his side the hundred prelates who, under
the Roman Empire, had gradually acquired a sovereign power throughout
Gaul in matters temporal as well as spiritual. He paid the price in rich
gifts to their churches. ‘S. Martin,’ he remarked on a famous occasion,
‘is an expensive friend.’ It was to this alliance with the Church that
the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul was largely due. The
valour, policy and seasonable conversion of Clovis soon added the
Northern Provinces of Gaul to his kingdom, whilst the great prelates
were left free to strengthen their own hold over the people with whose
instructions they were entrusted. And with the Franks the social system
of nobles and serfs, which was the basis of mediæval life, was
introduced.
The Dark Ages creep on. The Frankish conquest of Gaul was followed, says
Gibbon, by ten centuries of anarchy and ignorance.
So far as Chartres is concerned, the conversion of Clovis is connected
with the name of her first authentic bishop, Solemnis,[18] whom he
caused to accompany and catechise him on his campaigns. It is even
stated, though without sufficient reason, that Clovis founded the Abbey
of S. Père (St. Pierre), of which the extremely interesting
fourteenth-sixteenth century church is now all that remains. The rest is
cavalry barracks.
Of the secular history of Chartres under the succeeding Merovingian
Kings there is nothing worth relating. Whatever there was of sweetness
and light in this barbarous epoch survived in the cloister, not the
court. One turns with relief from the records of the quarrels and crimes
of Clother and his sons to the story of some saintly life like that of
S. Lubin, shepherd, monk, hermit, Abbé of Brou, and lastly, Bishop of
Chartres in succession to S. Ethère. S. Lubin was a typical and charming
saint, whose name and fame still live in the hearts of the people.
His charity to the poor, his compassion for the sick and infirm was
without limit. Thus, when Malledegonde, sister of the young Calétric,
who lay at death’s door, asked the holy Bishop of Chartres for some
drops of oil blessed by his hands, he did at once that which she had not
dared to ask. He came in person to the bedside of her dear invalid,
bathed his forehead, and prayed that he might be restored to health.
Then the young man opened his eyes, and seizing the aged bishop’s hand
declared that he was healed. A bas-relief on the south porch of the
Cathedral portrays this incident in stone. In glass, a bishop and
enthroned, you may see the saint in the second window of the northern
clerestory of the nave. From that moment S. Lubin continued to take a
paternal interest in the lad, and on his death Calétric succeeded him as
Bishop of Chartres. S. Calétric,[19] according to his panegyrist,
combined every virtue with every accomplishment, and was, in fact, the
personification of that Roman urbanity which the rude manners of the
French had almost banished from the Gallic world. His tomb, as we have
already seen, is now in the Cathedral crypt, whither it was removed from
the Chapel of S. Nicholas, when that building, which was formerly
adjacent to the apse of the Cathedral, was destroyed in 1702 to make
room for the present bishop’s palace.[20] S. Lubin, like most of the
bishops of the sixth and seventh centuries, was still less fortunate in
the place of his burial. He was interred in the crypt of
S. MARTIN-AU-VAL,
which probably marks the site of the chief extra-mural cemetery of the
Chartres of those days. This asylum of the dead was more than once
profaned by the ravages of the Northmen and the excesses committed
during the civil and religious wars. The nave and aisles were seriously
damaged in the fourteenth century by the bands of English soldiers and
marauders who overran the country at that time. The Huguenots, also,
under Condé (1568) utterly devastated the church crypt, violating the
tombs of the bishops and wantonly burning the building. The tomb of S.
Lubin, indeed, was flung out of the church and was long used for
domestic purposes, until at last it was cracked by the frost. Even then
it was not safe from the utilitarian spirit of the day. It was turned to
account when the foundations of the cemetery wall were being
constructed.
The Church of S. Martin-au-Val was restored in 1659. It now serves as a
chapel for the Hospice S. Brice, where between three and four hundred
inmates are provided for.
It is not without reason that I have spoken of this chapel here, for it
is the most important illustration of the Merovingian period at
Chartres. Leave the Place Michel and go down the Rue S. Brice till you
come to the Rue Vangeon, which is the first street to your left. The
simple front of the church with its three little turrets is now before
you.[21] Go to the chief entrance of the _Hospital_ and say that you
wish to see the crypt. It lies beneath the raised pavement of the choir,
and it is evident that the greater part of it, like the nave, choir and
choir aisles, is tenth-century work. You will have noted in this
connection the bold abaci of the piers of the nave and the peculiar
elongated, round-headed arches of the choir arcade. But here in the
crypt, besides the interesting capitals of the detached piers which
support the vaulting, are two capitals of extraordinary interest. They
are of grey marble in the western hall, on either side of the tablet to
Bishop Lescot. Sixth century; Merovingian; crude and barbaric as the age
which begot them, there is yet a vigour and directness about these
carvings which make them not merely curious or grotesque. Nor are they
meaningless. They represent, in the symbolic fashion of old days, the
principle of life and death, of good and evil. They were intended, even
then, as a warning to the faithful who approached the sanctuary, as a
reminder of the fact that ‘the stones shall cry out.’ On the one
capital, then, we have a scene of peace and love: two doves supporting
the crown of peace, two others kissing. The other capital presents us
with a scene of terror. An enormous, savage beast is seen emerging from
a forest and seizing a man whose arm it has already half devoured. His
friend, meanwhile, has gone to summon aid and is now returning, bringing
to succour him a man with a lance....
There is one other matter to mention with regard to this church. That S.
Aignan, of whom we have already spoken, and who, some think, was Bishop
of Chartres in the third century, was found here, it is said, at the
moment of his nomination, lost in prayer. The brethren had to drag him
hence by force and carry him on their shoulders to be consecrated in the
Church of Notre-Dame. Ever since then the Bishops-elect of Chartres pass
the night preceding the day of their solemn entry into the town in pious
retreat at S. Martin-au-Val.
Under Clotaire II. the French monarchy was re-established and united.
The Chartrain territory was joined to Neustria and thus passed under the
government of Pépin d’Heristal, Charles Martel and Pépin-le-Bref[22]
successively. And Charles, before becoming King and Emperor under the
name of Charlemagne, also ruled Neustria. Pépin, his father, who with
the aid of the Pope Zachary, had added to the authority of Charles
Martel the crown of Clovis, proved by many gifts to the Church that the
gratitude of the Carlovingians could be adequate to its obligations.
Among his gifts it is recorded that he assigned to Notre-Dame de
Chartres part of the forest of Yveline. Ten years before Pépin was
established on the Merovingian throne Chartres had suffered from one
among many bitter experiences of the violence of the times.
The annals of Metz record that Hunald, son of Eudes, Count of Aquitane,
revolting against Pépin and Carloman, threw himself upon Chartres in
745, sacked and burnt it, and ‘did not spare the church consecrated to
the Mother of God.’ This incident was but a fore-taste of the long and
ruinous struggle which the Chartrains were destined to maintain against
the invasions of those men of the North, whose appearance on the shores
of the Baltic had drawn prophetic tears, it was said, from the eyes of
the invincible and enlightened Charlemagne.
The church damaged by Hunald was doubtless the one which had been built
in the fourth century. The wooden roof and supports were probably
consumed by the flames on this occasion, but the thick Roman walls of
the ancient basilica--such as you see in the martyrium--would survive
many a burning. The church therefore was easily and quickly restored by
Bishop Godessald, and was ere long the scene of a memorable event.
Charles, son of Pépin, King of Aquitaine, had been made prisoner in the
kingdom of his uncle, Charles-le-Chauve. He was taken before the
meeting of the Estates held at Chartres (849), and there he made a
declaration aloud from the ambo of the church to the effect that if he
turned ecclesiastic it was of his own free will and for the love of God.
He was blessed by the bishops and shorn, clad in the garb of a monk and
sent to the Monastery of Corbie. Such was one of the ways in which one
got rid of a dangerous rival in those days.
It was during the reign of this grandson of his, Charles-le-Fauve, that
the storm foreseen by Charlemagne broke over France in a series of
thunderbursts, destroying the fruits of his firm administration and wise
encouragement of learning.
Warned by the troublous experiences of the times, the Chartrains were
not ill-prepared for defence. But their fortifications were of no avail.
We will tell the story as it is told by the monk Paul in his Latin
_Cartulaire de Saint Père de Chartres_, which was written between 1066
and 1088:--
‘Chartres at that time’ (858) ‘had a large population and was the
richest of the cities of Neustria. It was very famous by reason of the
magnitude of its walls, the beauty of its buildings and its cultivation
of the fine arts.[23] But there burst upon Neustria a Pagan race from
across the seas, who came in their huge beaked boats, and baring the
sword of their iniquity cruelly laid waste almost the whole country.
They destroyed many seats of the holy and gave them over to the
devouring flames: towns, when they took them, they razed to the ground,
and the Christians they either slew or led into captivity and sold into
everlasting bondage. So furious was the rage of the heathen that they
rowed up the Seine ravaging the land on every side, and at length
coming to the city of Chartres strove to take it, whilst they laid waste
the surrounding territory and rendered it uninhabitable. The city thus
cut off from support, and reduced by the loss of many citizens and the
enfeeblement of others, was surprised by a night attack and taken. All
the Christians were slaughtered like sheep. And the city, which had
formerly endured unshaken a ten years’ siege by Julius Cæsar and had
repelled the Roman and Argolic armies, for it was built of huge squared
stones and strengthened by lofty towers, and was indeed on that account
named The City of Stones, and it rejoiced in an abundance of aqueducts
and subterranean ways by which it could be supplied with all provisions,
was now permitted by Heaven to be burnt and utterly razed to the ground
by a nation that knew not God. But the patience of God, which thus
corrects the worldliness of His people in order that they may not perish
hereafter, did not permit the cruelty of those barbarians to pass
unavenged. For the Franks gathered from all sides and hastened to the
spot where the enemy had left their boats upon the River _Diva_. There,
meeting them as they returned laden with spoil, they fell upon them with
so violent an onslaught that the Northmen went down before them as in
autumn the leaves of the forest fall before the blasts of the north
wind.’
So the good monk, with an indignant energy that is almost eloquent. The
discerning reader will be able to separate in this story the wheat from
the chaff. But the fact is certain that Hastings it was who took
Chartres upon this occasion. He burnt the town and put to the sword the
good Bishop Frotbold, with many of his followers who had sought refuge
in Notre-Dame. The church itself, and the Abbeys of S. Père and S.
Chéron, he gave to the flames.
THE VEIL OF THE VIRGIN--THE CATHEDRAL TREASURY.
Three years later Charles-le-Chauve, paying one of his frequent
pilgrimages to the shrine which he afterwards described as the first
seat of the Virgin in France, beheld the ravages of Hastings. Partly
perhaps as a consolation to the inhabitants for their losses, he now
made their church the depository of one of the most precious relics of
the Virgin known to Christendom--her veil or inner vestment,
presented[24] by the Empress Irene to the Emperor Charlemagne at
Constantinople. It is and was known as the Sancta Camisia, or, in
popular parlance, the Sainte Tunique or Chemisette. Hence the form by
which it is represented in the arms of the chapter and in the
innumerable emblems which from the thirteenth century onwards have been
prepared in metal or ware as tokens for the pious pilgrim. The immediate
result of the possession of this sacred veil and the miracles it wrought
was an influx of pilgrims to Chartres, who brought wealth enough to
enable the Bishop Gislebert to restore the ruined church. He would seem
to have still followed the lines of Castor’s church, but he extended it
eastwards, over and beyond the Gallo-Roman wall, raising the new
sanctuary of the choir so that the floor was two or three yards higher
than that of the nave, as in the case of the Church of S. Martin-au-Val,
and constructing out of the martyrium a crypt where the veil might be
kept safe in the time of danger.
It was not long, if we may believe the chroniclers, before the love and
reverence with which all the inhabitants regarded this relic was to be
justified and the reputation of the veil as the palladium of the town
established.
It was in the year 911 that the Northmen, who had now come to regard
Neustria as their own, burst for the last time on the land of France.
The people of La Beauce fled to the forests and the churches for refuge;
but the forests were soon in flames and the churches were destroyed by
the ruthless invaders. The refugees fled with their flocks to seek
protection within the walls of Chartres. With them they brought the
relics of S. Piat,[25] as some years before they had brought the body of
S. Wandegisile to aid them in their defence. For the Normans were
coming, those ‘barbarians from across the seas,’ and at their head was
Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, Rollo, ancestor of the Conqueror,
plundering and pillaging churches and abbeys in a fit of religious
madness, so the monkish chroniclers aver, against the priests who had
converted to Christianity the children of Odin. He had made a vain
attempt upon Paris, and now had come down the Seine, rowing as far as he
could, then, leaving his ships, marched upon Chartres and invested it.
But he was obliged to raise the siege. The dry fact of history probably
is that the approach of Robert, Duke of France, with the aid of the Duke
of Burgundy and the Count of Poitiers, compelled Rollo’s men, who were
anxious lest their return should be cut off and were disheartened
already by their failure to take Paris, to retire when they failed to
take Chartres at the first assault. But the traditional account is
certainly more picturesque. At the crisis of the siege it was to the
Bishop Gasselin, ‘a holy man, glorious and just and true,’ that all men
looked for comfort and courage. So Bénoit, the Anglo-Norman trouvère,
tells us in his poetical history of the Dukes of Normandy. And Robert
Wace,[26] Jehan le Marchand[27] and the monk Paul[28] agree with him in
his description of the wondrous episode which ensued. For a bishop,
Gasselin was indeed a bishop, potent in prayer and skilled in that art
of destroying the human species which is war. He put his trust in
Heaven, but did not disdain human succour. He summoned the Dukes of
Burgundy and France to his aid. Then, on the day when he learnt that
they were at hand, he left the walls on which he had kept watch and ward
in prayer, and, ‘_tout esploré et larmoyant_,’ called the people to the
Cathedral. There he first celebrated Mass and offered supplications;
next, leaving the altar, he gave absolution to the multitude.
Thereafter, having put on his pontifical robes, he, preceded by a
cross, led the citizens in armed procession back to the walls. Suddenly,
above the gate which is called New, he unfurled as a banner the sacred
veil, flung open the portals, and bade the people fight boldly.
‘Vers la bataille vait le pas
Tote la ville sune à glas.’
The sortie was well timed, for just at that moment the helmets and
bucklers of the advancing Burgundians and Franks were seen glittering in
the distance. The besieged fell with resistless enthusiasm upon the
astonished enemy. The enemy, dazed by the glory of the precious relics,
caught between the sallying citizens and the relieving force, retreated
to the Hill of Lèves and there entrenched themselves. So terrible had
been the slaughter that the bodies of the slain (says Paul the monk)
heaped in the Eure for a while completely choked the stream. And they
tell us that the Place des Épars,[29] in which to-day the principal
hotels of the town are found, owes its name to the flight of the Normans
who were scattered on this occasion (_s’éparpillèrent_). Others,
however, more prosaically explain the name as meaning the ‘hub’ whence
the various roads of the province diverge.
It was at this juncture, when Rollo had rallied his men at Lèves, that
the Count of Poitiers arrived on the scene, and bitterly he reproached
his brothers of Burgundy and France for having given battle before he
arrived. In high dudgeon he set off in pursuit of the enemy. But the
Northmen outwitted him. Rollo despatched three soldiers into the plain
to sound trumpets and thus draw off the enemy to engage an imaginary
foe, whilst he and his followers effected their escape.
This signal victory long left its mark on the land. The plain near the
gate where the Normans were defeated was known thereafter as the Field
of the Repulse or of the Men Repulsed.[30] And the first bas-relief on
the south side of the choir screen, which represents the bishop
displaying the holy veil to the besiegers, also commemorates this event.
The veil was brought back in triumphant procession to the Cathedral, and
shortly afterwards a skilful goldsmith of the town, Teudon by name,
constructed a very rich and beautiful casket of gold and cedar wood to
contain it. Many miracles were wrought in favour of the devout who
sought the aid of the Virgin, like Edward III. of England and Henry IV.
of France, by passing under this coffer. Numerous knights who carried
the token of the veil were rescued from the greatest dangers, and women,
especially queens, who wore taffeta imitations of it, were protected in
the pains and perils of their travail. Countless rings and priceless
jewels were inlaid in the sides of the casket and hung upon it by the
grateful or the expectant, so that it soon became the most valuable
treasure of Chartres, in a treasury, that is, of mediæval jewellery such
as we have to make a very systematic effort even to imagine.[31] ‘The
still extant register of the furniture and sacred apparel leaves the
soul of the ecclesiologist athirst.’ The register to which Pater refers
in the sentence I have just quoted was composed in 1682, and an
annotated edition of it has been published by M. Merlet (_Catalogues des
Reliques et Joyaux de Notre-Dame de Chartres_). The curious reader will
peruse with astonishment and scan with regret the long list of precious
offerings which the exactions of kings, the exigencies of warfare and
the rapacity of the revolutionists have caused in great part to
disappear.
The veil, together with the casket in which it had lain for nearly 800
years, was seized during the Revolution. The casket and jewels were
sold. The veil, though rent in twain, was recovered, but not in its
entirety (3¼ yards by 6 feet). It is kept now in two coffers of cedar
wood, covered with silver gilt. Beneath the veil is another known as the
Veil of the Empress Irene, which is made of embroidered Byzantine stuff
of the eighth century. The visitor to Chartres should on no account omit
to see these curious relics, and the extremely rich enamelled triptich
of the School of Limoges (thirteenth century, but in part eighteenth
century restoration). For the rest, though the Casket of Teudon, which
was valued in 1562 at £8980, without counting the diamonds and rubies,
enamels and pearls which adorned it, has disappeared; though the head
and the slipper of S. Anne are gone and the relics of many another
saint; though the golden eagles of S. Eloi, the sapphires of King
Robert, and the gems of Henry III. of England; though cameos and
crucifixes of emerald or agate, crystal or ivory, have, like the
tapestries of Queen Bertha and the golden girdle of Anne of Brittany,
with its fifteen rubies, ten sapphires and sixty-four pearls, and the
flagon which contained the blood of Thomas-à-Becket, all been seized and
sold by sacrilegious hands, yet there remain to be seen the delicate
incense-boat, given by Miles d’Illiers, Bishop of Luçon, in 1540, the
graceful chalice of Henry III. (1582), and the green marble altar of the
English, dedicated by them in 1420, when Chartres was in their hands.
You will also notice a medal, which was struck to commemorate the
outbreak of cholera in 1832 and the part played by the _Sainte Chemise_
at that time. For not once only, or only in the mediæval days, has the
veil of the Virgin played a part in the history of Chartres. It was
taken at the height of the plague, in obedience to the clamour of the
people, in solemn procession through the streets, and from that moment,
it is said, the plague was stayed, and all who were ill, save two, who
had mocked at this act of piety, recovered.
Nor should it be forgotten that it was the possession of this veil
which, when Fulbert’s Cathedral had been burnt down in 1194, stimulated
the desire and provided the means to build a still larger and more
beautiful cathedral, worthy to contain it, and to be, in the words of
the chroniclers, ‘the very couch and chamber of Our Lady.’[32]
A few months after his defeat before Chartres, Rollo the Ganger married
the daughter of Charles-le-Simple and embraced the Christian faith.
Neustria was ceded to the Normans. Their depredations ceased for a
while, but, under the young Duke Richard of Normandy, fifteen years
later, there was a heathen reaction in Pirates’ land. Their fleets once
more swarmed up the Seine, and Chartres was the central point of their
attack. United in its defence, loud and frequent rang the cry of the
House of France, ‘Montjoie!’ mingled with that of the Counts of Chartres
and Vendôme, ‘Chartres et Passavant!’
‘Frachois crie Mont-joye et Normans Dez-aie,
Flamans crie Afras et Angevin ralie,
Et li cuens Thiebaut Chartre et Passavant crie.’
WACE--_Roman de Rou._
But soon these visitations ceased. Gradually heathen Norman pirates
became French Christians, their descendants feudal nobles, and Pirates’
land the most loyal of the fiefs of France. Christianity was embraced by
all, from duke to peasant. By the people it was welcomed with an almost
passionate fanaticism. Every road was crowded with pilgrims. Monasteries
rose in every forest glade, cathedrals in every town. The Abbeys of S.
Père, S. Chéron and S. Martin, and the Churches of S. Lubin and S.
Laumer in the neighbouring vineyards, were re-established and restored.
The Church of Bishop Wulphard was built, and this restoration of
religious centres meant, in a brutal age, the assertion of the rights of
humanity, in an age of ignorance the encouragement of learning, of
science and art, in an age of devastation the promotion, by means of
pilgrimages, of industry and commerce. The growing number of windmills,
wine-presses and tanneries on the monastic properties is the index of
the civilising influence of the monks. The fragments of their castles
remain as the sign of the more picturesque but less admirable occupation
of the knights of chivalry.