_The Revolution--S. Père_
The events recorded in the last chapter, culminating in the coronation
of Henri Quatre in the Cathedral of the town which, as the Huguenot
King, he had besieged three years before, are the last in which Chartres
played a part of real importance in the history of France. She suffered,
indeed, during the troubles of the Fronde, both from the massing of
troops that occurred continually about her borders, and from many
serious attacks of plague and famine, for which they were doubtless, to
a large extent, responsible. But the trials which she had undergone had
damped her military ardour. Bitter experiences in the past had exhausted
the vehemence of her enthusiasm. Henceforth she lays aside her militant
character and devotes herself to the peaceful pursuit of a quiet
municipal life. The part she takes in politics is distinguished by
ecclesiastical sobriety and commercial prudence.
An excellent college, founded by a good merchant, Pocquet by name,
sprang into prominence in the life of the town, whilst the citadel,
established by Henri Quatre at the Port S. Michel, is declared to be no
longer needed. It is handed over, in 1600, to the citizens, and
converted again into a church. And the Huguenots, so much has the spirit
of the age changed, are provided with a church, so that each may worship
in peace according to his own conscience.
The year 1623 saw two changes which affected the nominal position of
Chartres and continue still to affect it. In the first place the diocese
of Chartres became in that year the first suffragan of the newly-created
Archbishopric of Paris, and, in the second place, the Duchy of Chartres,
definitely and officially united with the crown, passed to Gaston, Duke
of Orléans, and has ever since remained in the house of Orléans. The
Duchy, it will be remembered, had been created by François I. in favour
of Rénée, daughter of Louis XII. Louis XIII. now bought it back from the
Duke of Nemours, and himself, Duke of Chartres, visited the town in
October of the same year. (It was on a previous occasion that, as the
historian Doyen narrates, he came to pay his devotions at the shrine of
Notre-Dame, and thereafter was indulging in a game of tennis at the
court in the market-place when he was informed that there was a certain
woman there who played a strong game. He sent for her and played a set
with her. But she beat him. _Cette femme prit un caleçon et gagna le
roi, en jouant par-dessous la jambe._) Three years later he presented
his brother Gaston, on the occasion of his marriage and in exchange for
the Duchy of Anjou, with the County of Blois and the Duchies of Orléans
and Chartres. On the death of Gaston, the opponent of Mazarin, the Duchy
of Chartres reverted to the Crown again, but Louis XIV., a few weeks
afterwards, settled it, together with the Duchy of Orléans as an
appanage, on his only brother, Philippe, on the occasion of the marriage
of that prince with Henrietta of England. Since that time the title of
Duke of Chartres has always been the appanage of the eldest son of the
house of Orléans.
For the rest, Chartres passed more and more into the condition of a
_Ville de Province_, where only the echoes of what is being said and
done in Paris and France are to be heard.
The mystic heresy of the _Illuminisme_, propagated by the ‘alumbrados’
of Spain, appeared here in the first half of the seventeenth century,
but was routed out before long. The method by which it was crushed is,
however, significant. This heresy represented a revolt against the
hierarchy of the Church. It rejected all dogmas and all ministers of
religion. The chief exponent of it at Chartres was a hermit who took up
his abode in the woods of Lèves, and soon secured a strong following
among the unlettered classes. The heretics, in fact, began to make such
progress in La Beauce and Picardie that Richelieu became alarmed. The
Government gave orders that the sect was to be exterminated. The hermit
of Chartres was therefore arrested and sent to Paris, where he recanted
his errors.
He and his followers, in earlier days, would doubtless have been burnt
at the stake without more ado. Now, such has been the growth of the
central power, they were merely sent to Paris and converted. The
punishment of heterodoxy had become generally much less severe. Very
little hanging was now done for conscience’s sake. We only come across
one instance of a monk being hung at this time, and that was for
celebrating Mass without having been ordained priest.
Throughout the succeeding centuries, then, the political action of
Chartres is reduced to that of an ordinary commercial municipality. It
suffered none the less in common with the rest of France from all those
causes which had issue in the Revolution. The crash of 1789 was
precipitated by the coincidence of two events--the imminent bankruptcy
of the Government and the great famine which, following on one of the
worst winters on record, produced universal rioting throughout the
country and ended in pure anarchy. For the Government, having no money
and no credit, could not feed the people. The people might bring the
King from Versailles and sack the Bastille but that did not make bread
cheaper. The Constituent Assembly was as helpless as the King. The
pressure in Paris was worse in October than during the siege by the
Prussians. These famine riots continued in Paris and all over the
country till good harvests came. Then the country would have settled
down. But the Revolution had been begun, and, under the extreme party,
with the aid of the Jacobin clubs, was destined to bring in its train
the Reign of Terror. The Girondins wished for war and that the country
should not settle down.
The Government had been more or less insolvent since 1715, but since
1783 the share taken by France in the War of American Independence had
rendered total failure inevitable. The wealth of the country was not
small and it was rapidly increasing. But the Government had for years
put an immense strain upon their preposterous financial system, and the
ridiculous machine had now completely broken down. Since 1783, one
Superintendent of Finance after another had declared that the only
possible way to avert bankruptcy was to introduce a sweeping change in
the system of taxation. As soon as they came to that conclusion they
were dismissed, for Louis XVI., who half knew that they were right,
could not stand against his Court. But in the year 1788 the fact became
too obvious. The Superintendent Necker declared that, unless some reform
were undertaken, bankruptcy, in a few months, was inevitable. Now, the
National Debt was held almost entirely by the official class in France,
to whom, therefore, even the loss of their privileges, which consisted
to a large extent in not paying taxes, seemed better than the
bankruptcy of the country. Necker advised the King to summon the
States-General and to carry out reforms in connection with it.
The demand for it to be summoned was already loud. It was the old
Parliament of France, but it had not met since 1614. Then it had
consisted of three separate houses, the Nobles, the Clergy, and the
Third Estate, each acting independently of each other and enjoying the
right of presenting petitions to the King. How the Third Estate asserted
itself and, after the States-General had been converted into the
Constituent Assembly, proceeded to fulfil its Tennis-Court Oath and to
give a Constitution to France we need not repeat here. What from the
point of view of the story of Chartres requires to be noticed is that
the new Constitution, which was gradually drawn up between the years
1789-1791, represented to a great extent the ideas implied in the list
of grievances, _cahier des plaintes_, submitted to the Chartrain
representatives of the Third Estate. They had had a sufficiently bitter
experience in past years of the heavy and unjust incidence of taxation,
and the congestion and confusion of the judicial system, which, together
with the existence of the official class, were the real grievances of
the age. The administrative arrangements of the new Constitution
embodied the theories of Rousseau, who advocated extreme democratic
decentralisation. For this was a panacea which the followers of Diderot
and the Encyclopædists, believing that the correction of bad laws and
bad government would produce the millennium, that, in fact, you can
change the character of the whole by changing the arrangement of the
units, imagined would cure all the evils of Society. Almost all real
power, therefore, was taken from the King and placed in the hands of
municipal and village Councils, of what Carlyle called ‘forty thousand
sovereign bodies.’ One need not emphasise the grim comment passed by
history upon these theories.
So far as Chartres was concerned they had their immediate and lasting
effect in a decree of the National Assembly, dated January 15, 1790,
which constituted our town Capital of the Department of Eure-et-Loir and
gave it a departmental administration. The bishopric was preserved, and
only a court of appeal was wanting. The assembly of citizens, some 1500
in number, met and elected the members of the new municipal body, which
included a mayor, eleven municipal officers, twenty-four _notables_, and
a _procureur de la commune_.
Besides drawing up a new Constitution, the Constituent Assembly had been
busy promulgating a series of decrees, of which some, such as those
bringing in a new financial system, proved inoperative, and others, such
as that concerning seigneurial dues, were concerned with abolishing what
had already ceased to exist. But their decrees concerning the Church had
some effect, and that bad. In the first place, the whole property of the
Church was confiscated and tithes were abolished. In the second place,
under the civil constitution of the clergy, all beneficed clergy were,
it was decided, to be beneficed by the State (July 12, 1790). Thirdly,
all beneficed clergy were required to submit themselves to free election
at the hands of laymen, and to undertake the discharge of their holy
office only after swearing a solemn oath to obey the rules of the new
Constitution. This decree was an immense blunder. It was offensive in
the extreme to every good Roman Catholic, to whom the spectacle of a
purely lay power interfering in questions of ecclesiastical discipline
was unbearable.
The Pope intervened and forbade the bishops to take an oath which
involved the renunciation of all Papal claims. The greater number of
bishops and clergy obeyed the Papal order, and were supported by the
majority of the lower orders in whom the love of the Church was still
quite strong and deeply rooted. At Chartres, M. de Lubessac refused to
take the oath, and the assembly of departmental electors met and
appointed in his place Nicolas Boisnet, a doctor of theology and vicar
of the parish of S. Michel. He was a worthy man who for forty years had
offered an example of all the Christian virtues, and he only accepted
the See of the civic episcopate on the express condition that he would
render it to him who had abandoned it when he should see fit to come and
take it again.
Meantime the revenues of the Church had been sequestrated, and the
Chapter, yielding to force, had passed out of existence. It was after
this fashion that religion, like the monarchy, was provided with a
Constitution.
The Girondin Clubs had taken possession of Chartres as of the other
towns. They soon had their way, and France was at war with Prussia and
Austria. That war was entered into without any very definite plan or
enthusiasm by the Allies, who expected a mere parade march to Paris and
an opportunity of aggrandisement for themselves. But France, thinking
that the victory of the Allies would mean the restoration of the old
_régime_, took the war very seriously from the beginning. A voluntary
movement of unequalled size and enthusiasm took place in the spring of
1792. Eure-et-Loir furnished several battalions of volunteers, and
Chartres gave to France, as captain of their first battalion, the young
and chivalrous Marceau. The vigour of this resistance surprised the
Allies, who in the face of it would have been at a loss to know what to
do if they had arrived at Paris. Instead of exerting themselves,
therefore, they fell back upon the frontier. But their advance had
proved fatal to Louis, who must have hoped for their success. As they
advanced the panic in Paris had increased. The crisis came with the 10th
of August, on which day a big mob rising, clearly engineered by the
Girondins, drove the King to seek safety in the Assembly, whence he
passed to spend his last sad hours in the Temple prison, and finally to
meet death on the scaffold. Meanwhile, the Girondin leaders dictated
three decrees to the Chamber. The King was suspended from his functions,
the new Commune of Paris was recognised, and it was decided to summon an
extraordinary National Convention, a single Chamber with powers to do
what it pleased, elected by universal suffrage. To that celebrated
Assembly Chartres contributed some very notable deputies. The upheaval
of public opinion in the town is indicated by its representatives, for
among them was Jérôme Pétion, Mayor of Paris in 1792 and President of
the Convention, and Brissot de Warville. These men were Girondins, and
when the party split in two they remained Girondins and suffered death
in the following year at the hands of the extreme section, the Jacobins.
As a Girondin town Chartres, then, was typical of the provincial towns
of France. For while as to political theory Girondins and Jacobins were
agreed in aiming at an ideally democratic Republic extremely
decentralised, on the practical question of ways and means they
differed. The Girondins insisted, in spite of the war, on carrying out
their decentralising projects at once, but the Jacobins recognised that
if Paris was to be defended at all in the ensuing campaign of ‘93, a
strong central government, a dictatorship in fact, was absolutely
necessary. The soul of the Jacobin party was Danton, the one man neither
fanatic nor fool, and he saw not only the necessity for improvising a
strong central government, but also how it could be done. It could be
done by means of the organisation supplied by the political clubs
scattered through France, and by terrorising the majority. For the
numbers of the Jacobins were always small, but the audacity of their
measures produced the illusion of power. Paris was cowed, the Girondin
party crushed by force, and the Jacobin conquest of France, after the
suppression of the risings in the Girondin provincial towns, for a while
complete.
The Reign of Terror had begun and lasted till July 1794. It lasted, in
other words, till the Jacobin party had done that side of its work,
which was thoroughly national and popular, and, thanks to its conduct of
the war, under Carnot, the danger on the frontier had ceased. Then the
Jacobin Government fell at once. It was because they were doing their
work with regard to the war, and no one else could do it, that France
tolerated the policy of brigandage and butchery by which they
governed;--for this reason, and because those most likely to resist were
away at the frontier, and also through fear. For the Jacobins were an
organised party, and the rest were a chaotic mass of individuals.
Therefore they slew not less than thirty thousand men and women of all
classes. A minority that had begun to rule by terror, they could not go
back. They felt the weakness of their position, and went on increasing
the pressure, themselves almost mad with terror. Individual zeal was
required to make up for their lack of numbers. A scrutiny was held of
their own members, and those who showed a lack of energy were expelled
and guillotined. They executed also that they might confiscate, and thus
provide the sinews of war. And an official theory, stated by the chiefs
and formulated by Robespierre, was not lacking to justify their
[Illustration: Rue des Béguines]
behaviour. Owing to centuries of despotic government, it was said, the
mass of Frenchmen were corrupt and unfit for citizenship in the ideal
Republic that was going to be established. They must wipe out the bad
blood.
In this matter of wiping out bad blood a certain amount of moderation at
any rate was observed at Chartres. But, short of bloodshed, every
outrage and abomination conceivable by a horde of raging maniacs was
solemnly proposed and perpetrated. The priceless treasure of the
Cathedral was looted, and all the churches pillaged. The leaden roofs
thereof, and the bells of the Cathedral, and all leaden tombs that could
be found, were melted down to supply the army with money and with
cannon. It was decreed that every statue within and without the
Cathedral should be destroyed. The work of destruction had already begun
on the north porch, when a member of the Convention, Sergent Marceau,
raised his voice against the measure, and, in the interest of art, the
decree was repealed. But next day, at a meeting of the Chartrain Club, a
member arose, and, declaring that the Cathedral dominated this
Republican city too much, proposed that it should be destroyed. The
proposal was considered, and actually adopted.
But the Cathedral of Chartres was in the end allowed to stand. For a
curious reason. It was found that the difficulty of getting rid of the
vast masses of _débris_ would be insuperable. No citizen would undertake
to allow the fragments of the building to be cast upon his land, and,
seeing that the town would be endlessly encumbered by them, it was
decided that the Cathedral should not be destroyed.
But, if not destroyed, it must be profaned. Hideous orgies were prepared
to celebrate the Feast of Reason. The group of the Assumption in the
choir was converted into a group more conformable to the patriotic
sentiments of the moment by setting a red cap on the head of the Virgin,
and placing a pike in her hand. The marbles of the choir were inscribed
with Republican maxims, and in the centre of the sanctuary a miniature
mountain was raised. On the summit was reared a statue of Reason,
leaning against an oak, on the highest branch of which was perched a
cock holding in his beak a tricolour. The Temple of Reason was
inaugurated by a sermon, in which the citizens were informed that they
had recovered their liberty, and were once more men, pure as Nature
herself. This discourse was followed by a musical drama, entitled
_Reason Victorious over Fanaticism_, in which Watchfulness, in a robe
sown with eyes, and Fanaticism in priestly garb figured, with Rousseau
and Voltaire as acolytes of the former. Philosophy then engaged and
easily vanquished with argument Fanaticism, who, seeing himself beaten,
hurled himself, shrieking abuse, on Watchfulness. But the cry, ‘To
Arms!’ was raised, and lo! the Republic, in the guise of a woman in a
tricolour robe, rose from a cavern near and cast down Fanaticism,
pierced him with a dart, broke the altars and trampled under foot a
crucifix. Then a machine in the form of a cloud raised the Republic to
the mountain top and set her beside the statue of Reason.
And M. Thirion, of the Convention, closed the proceedings with an
address.
These profane and grotesque celebrations were followed up a month later
(December 23, 1793) by a bonfire, which was lit in front of the Porte
Royale on the day which would have been Sunday had not Sundays been
abolished. Into this bonfire were hurled all ornaments of the Church
which were not of precious metal--books and wooden crucifixes and
statues. And with them was burnt the ‘Druidical Statue,’
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.
On the civil side, bread riots and brigandage were the order of the day
at Chartres, but at last, under the Directory, comparative quiet began
to be restored. The town, however, was accused of not supporting that
highly centralised administration with sufficient warmth, and, indeed,
Delarue, the deputy of the Five Hundred, made a report, in which he
stated that the Chartrains ‘had furnished arms and ammunition to five
hundred brigands to suppress the liberty of the legislative body.’ The
municipal administration defended themselves vigorously against this
charge. It was probably true enough that Chartres was not in favour of
the Directory, which, from the beginning, rested on the support of the
army, and thus began that process which was to end in the
Consulate--when the army set up its own man. From this time forth the
army is France. It had been enormously improved since 1792. Out of the
unskilled rabble that had fled before the Allies without striking a blow
it had been converted into an organised machine. Under Carnot, at the
War Office, good men were coming to the front. In 1796 they took the
offensive, and arranged a big triple advance upon Vienna. Jourdan was to
advance from the Netherlands, Moreau from Alsace, Bonaparte through
North Italy. The brilliant successes of the latter covered the failure
of the other two, who were beaten back to the French frontier. But
before their retirement the Battle of Altenkirchen had been fought, and
there had fallen the young Chartrain, General Marceau--François Séverin
Marceau-Degraviers--whose statue stands in the centre of the Place des
Épars. He was only twenty-seven years of age at the time of his death.
His praises were pronounced to the Council of the Five Hundred by his
old friend and comrade in arms, Jourdan, who secured for his mother a
handsome pension. Marceau represents to the Chartrains the ideal of that
military ardour which is the keynote of modern France.
Nothing could be more eloquent of the difference between mediæval and
modern France, of the change from the rule of Church and King to the
domination of the established army, than the present state of the old
Benedictine Abbey of S. Pierre, locally called S. Père, and its
precincts. For the site of the old dormitory, refectory and cloisters is
now used for cavalry barracks, and Chasseurs d’Afrique now stable their
horses where once the cloistered monk tended his garden and fish ponds.
The church itself is one of the most remarkable in existence, and would
doubtless be better known had Chartres no Cathedral. As it is, the
magnificence of Notre-Dame obscures the excellence of the smaller
church, and obliterates from the memory its striking characteristics. In
any other town its glass alone would bring pilgrims from afar. For not
only are the thirty-six great lancet windows of rare beauty, being
filled, to a great extent, with thirteenth and fourteenth-century glass,
but the impression which they give you on first entering the church is
almost unique. The apse is ablaze with colour, the triforium of the
choir glazed, chiefly in grisaille, and the delicate triforium of the
nave is topped by huge lights of colour and grisaille, which are
interrupted by hardly any framework of stone. It seems as if the whole
of the upper part of the building were one continuous sheet of glass
gloriously coloured. The effect, indeed, is scarce an illusion.
For the monks of S. Père have taken up the idea of the flying buttresses
where the builders of the Cathedral had left it. We have seen (p. 189)
how those builders had felt their way with the buttresses of the nave,
and developed those later ones of the choir. In happy rivalry of the
Cathedral, our monks now, it would appear, determined to show the full
possibilities of the idea. They built a temple of glass and supported it
with flying buttresses. Windows took the place of walls in their church,
and the walls were set several yards outside the windows. That is the
effect of this amazing _tour-de-force_ as you look at it from the east
or west. The line of buttresses show like the solid wall of the church
without. Yet so cunningly were those buttresses arranged to carry the
thrust of the building, that the church, windows and roof and all, still
stands unimpaired.
Something of the history of this once large and famous abbey we have
already given in the course of our extracts from the Chartulary of S.
Pierre, which was written in great part by the monk Paul in the eleventh
century. There is an old tradition, quite devoid of foundation, that a
church was built at Chartres in honour of S. Peter, who then held the
See of Rome, by S. Potentian and his disciples. This church, tradition
further asserts, was connected with an abbey by Clovis, and endowed by
Queen Clotilda on the death of her husband. However that may be, the
church was certainly founded by the middle of the seventh century, and
probably the monastery also. They grew and flourished exceedingly in
spite of wars and sieges, burnings and bishops, and waxed in wealth and
importance to such an extent as to provoke serious jealousy in the
hearts of the clergy and adherents of Notre-Dame. Thus, even as early as
the year 840, we find the monks asserting the rights of their
constitution against the Bishop Hélie, and refusing to recognise the
episcopal jurisdiction. The bishop did not hesitate to have recourse to
arms. The very threshold of the Church of S. Père was stained with
blood. The greater part of the monks were forced to flee from their
monastery, whilst the prelate seized all the precious ornaments and
property that belonged to them, and left but a bare sustenance for the
small band of brethren who had dared to remain. The hand of the Northman
completed, in 857 and 911, the ruin of the abbey thus begun by the
bishop, and it was not till 930 that that ‘noble, rich and virtuous
prelate,’ Aganon, built on the site of the ruins a vast monastery and
great church, and restored to the brethren and canons thereof their
confiscated vineyards and property. The work of the material and
spiritual reformation of the monastery was continued by his successor,
Ragenfroy. To this period must be referred the great square western
tower, of which we have spoken as being contemporary with the Cathedral
of Fulbert (_see_ p. 66 ff.). It is even possible that it formed a part
of the church reconstructed by the Bishop Aganon about the year 940. It
is certainly much the oldest portion of the building. The rest, together
with the monastic buildings, perished in the great fire which destroyed
the town and damaged the Cathedral in 1134. After that disaster the monk
Hilduard was entrusted by his abbot with the task of rebuilding the
church of the monastery, and he began to work in the year 1150. After he
had finished the choir, however, lack of funds brought matters to a
standstill. A wall was built across the western end of the choir in
order to enclose it. But whilst the foundations of this wall, which was
meant to serve as a temporary west end, were being dug a discovery was
made, the result of which was quickly to furnish the means needful for
continuing the construction of the church. A small vaulted chamber was
opened, in which was found the body of S. Gilduin. Miracles began to
occur. The faithful flocked to the new shrine, bringing rich gifts, and
about the year 1210 the building was again able to be taken in hand. The
church was completed. But when this was done, either because they were
not content with the choir of Hilduard, as being unworthy of the later
nave, or because it was already in need of repair, the monks of S. Père
rebuilt the choir towards the end of the reign of S. Louis. The apse was
finished in or about the year 1310. The monks made it, as it were,
almost one sheet of glass, and supported their beautiful, if daring,
creation by a series of sixteen buttresses without, which are higher,
lighter and more graceful than those of the nave. A beautiful
thirteenth-century doorway on the north side of the church is the
remaining feature of note on the exterior. But, in spite of the variety
of dates to which the various portions of the building belong, it is, as
a whole, singularly well proportioned and full of grace.
Within, since the Revolution, when the tombs of Fulbert and many other
bishops were destroyed together with much valuable and artistic
furniture, carved stalls and a Renaissance jubé, there are two main
attractions--the windows and the Limousin enamels. But before speaking
of them we must mention the epitaph of Robert, son of Richard, first
Duke of Normandy, who was _not_ Archbishop of Rouen, as the inscription
which is in the aisle states. Also the very rich and graceful triforium
of the nave, and the later and still more delicate triforium of the
choir, cannot fail to please.
The unique gallery of fourteenth-century glass presented by the windows
of S. Père is, as M. l’Abbé Bulteau remarked, arranged methodically in a
carefully-considered combination and not according to the whims of the
various founders, as was to a large extent the case with the
thirteenth-century lights of the Cathedral. On the left-hand side of the
nave are represented the Apostles and episodes from the Gospel story; on
the right, the Confessors and incidents drawn from the lives of the
martyrs; in the choir, martyrs, prophets and saints group round our
Saviour, who, as a little child, is borne on His mother’s arm, and as a
grown man hangs upon the tree of the Cross.
All the windows of the church, therefore, viewed thus, seem to converge
towards a common centre, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.
The scheme of the majority of windows is the presentation of large
single figures of stained glass surrounded by broad bands of grisaille.
On the north or left-hand side, beginning from the west end, next the
old tower, are two Apostles, set in a broad frame of grisaille.
These two Apostles are S. James the Less and S. Matthias. The next
window gives S. Jude and S. Barnabas, and the next two tell the story of
S. John the Baptist--(_a_) Baptizing Jesus; the daughter of Herodias
demanding his head and presenting his head in a charger to her mother;
John showing the Divine Lamb to his disciples. (_b_) The announcement to
Zacharias; his childhood, preaching, and answering Herod. The fifth
window shows S. Andrew (with a book) and S. John (with a book open). In
the next S. Bartholomew holds a cutlass and S. James a book, whilst the
seventh and eighth recount the history of S. Peter. For the seventh
shows him with his disciples, healing a man born blind, preaching, and
being delivered from prison by an angel. In the eighth S. Peter receives
the keys, appears before Nero, confronts Simon, is crucified and taken
up to heaven.
S. Thomas and S. Philip, S. Matthew and S. James fill the ninth and
tenth windows. The eleventh and twelfth recount the chief incidents in
the life of Jesus Christ. In the eleventh, the entry into Jerusalem, the
Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the
‘Touch me not’ are represented, and in the twelfth the disciples of
Emmaus, S. Thomas, the Ascension, Pentecost and Judgment. On the
right-hand or south side of the nave we are shown the Confessors and
incidents from ecclesiastical history. The first, next to the tower,
gives S. Benedict and S. Maur, for the Church of S. Père, it will be
remembered, was the church of a Benedictine monastery. The second light
gives S. Avitus and S. Laumer. The third relates the legend of S. Agnes;
she repels the son of the Proconsul and her modesty is miraculously
shielded; she is burnt at the stake and transferred. The story of S.
Catherine, who disputed with the Emperor and converted the heathen
philosophers and led them to martyrdom, is told in the fourth.
S. Malard and S. Solemnis, S. Lubin and S. Martin fill the fifth and
sixth. The seventh and eighth, which are now in a deplorable condition,
once illustrated the lives of S. Denis and S. Clement, the pope and
martyr. S. Gregory and S. Sylvester fill the ninth, the Virgin and
Child, with the donor kneeling below, the tenth.
The eleventh traces the history of the parents of the Virgin. Joachim
and Anna are repelled by the priest, Anne by her servant. Joachim feeds
his flocks; an angel appears to him and also to S. Anne, who goes out
and meets her husband at the gates of Jerusalem. She gives birth to
Mary, who presents herself at the Temple and marries Joseph.
The twelfth window portrays further scenes in the life of the
Virgin--the Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Christ, Adoration of the
Magi, the Presentation and Death of Mary.
The windows of the choir, with the exception of those in the apse, are
of thirteenth-century glass. In them the patriarchs, prophets and
personages of the Old Testament are shown, to the number of forty,
carrying palms in their hands, and speaking, apparently, to each other.
The six apsidal windows contain the most brilliant glass in the abbey.
They are as remarkable, so M. l’Abbé Clerval observes, for elegance of
design as for vivacity of colouring. Each of them holds four life-size
figures of bishops or apostles surrounded with rich architectural
ornamentation; whilst the heads, divided into three quatrefoils, give
scenes of martyrdom and an angel bearing a crown for the martyred saints
below.
The grisailles of the triforium were replaced in the early part of the
nineteenth century by some glass painted in 1527 by Robert Pinaigrier,
which had been saved from the adjacent Church of S. Hilaire, destroyed
during the Revolution. Unfortunately they have been arranged with
extraordinary indifference to their meaning, and pieces of glass have
been stuck in pell-mell according as they happened to suit the shape of
the window or convenience of the glazier. The result is that windows
which, both in colouring and design, were quite exceptionally good have
been deprived of all the charm of their design and much of the effect of
their colour.
The lower series of windows of the church are for the most part modern.
They represent chiefly scenes from the Gospel story of the life of
Christ and come from the hand of M. Lorin, the glass-painter of
Chartres, whose _atelier_ is in the Rue de la Tannerie.
Leaving the study of the glass you should now go to the apsidal chapel
dedicated to the Conception. This chapel has been restored and
polychromed by M. Paul Durand, and contains a statue of the Virgin by
Bridan and the tombstone of Simon de Beron, Canon of Chartres in the
twelfth century. But it is the magnificent Limoges enamels of Leonard
Limousin, 1547, which we wish to see. They are ranged round the walls of
the chapel, and in order to see them you must ring the bell near the
chapel railings and summon the attendant.
These enamels, which are of extraordinary beauty and size (24 x 10⅝),
exquisite in colour and shading, and are in perfect preservation, come
from the chapel of the famous Château d’Anet, which Diane de Poitiers
built, _voulant une œuvre toute Française_, and of which Henri II.
wrote to his Queen--
‘S’il vous souvient, Madame, d’avoir lu
En quelque livre élégante et eslu
Le dessein rare et la description
De quelque lieu beau en perfection
Je vous supply imaginer et croire
Que c’est d’Annet le pourtraict et l’histoire.’
This magnificent château, the noblest type of the Renaissance in France,
was destroyed to a large extent (1799-1810,) but was in great part
restored by the late M. Moreau. Lying, as it does, on the Évreux line,
it is quite worth stopping to see. But the tourist may be grateful for
the information that it is 1½ kilomètres from the station, and is
only shown on Thursdays and Sundays.
The beautiful enamels before us, so rich in their varied shades of blue,
were presented by Henri II. to the lovely and accomplished mistress,
who, in spite of her years, had won his heart when he was but a lad of
thirteen.
They had been wrought for François I. by the famous Léonard
Limousin,[101] after the designs of Michel Rochetel. The date (1547)
and the initials and salamander of François bear witness to this fact,
and the initials L. L. on the handle of the sword of S. Paul and beneath
S. James the Less proclaim the artist.
The panels represent the twelve apostles, with their characteristic
emblems, and each apostle is set in a framework of Renaissance
ornament--genii and fantastic animals and garlands of flowers.
There is nothing else in S. Père of sufficient interest to detain us.