The origin of Saint-Godard is unknown, all that can be affirmed is that
there existed anciently on this spot a chapel dedicated to the Virgin.
This latter circumstance induced the belief for a long time, that the
first Cathedral was erected on this place. It will suffice, to establish
the contrary, to say that the church of Saint-Godard, was included
within the interior of the town only at the commencement of the XIIIth
century.
In the year 533, and not 530 as Farin says, whose chronology is often
erroneous, the archbishop saint Godard was interred in the subterraneous
chapel of this church, which then changed its ancient name for that of
the holy prelate, whose remains it had received. Saint-Romain was also
interred in the same chapel.
It was only after different additions that the church of Saint-Godard
became what we now see it. It is one hundred and fifteen feet long, by
seventy eight broad. In 1556, its organ was a very small one; it was
afterwards enlarged; but, in 1562, it was destroyed by the calvinists.
The present organ, which was established in 1640, is the work of a
scotchman, named George Lesselie.
The church of Saint-Godard, when suppressed at the second
circumscription of the churches of Rouen, saw all its ornaments and
riches pass to the parishes of Saint-Ouen and Saint-Patrice. Amongst the
ornaments, we will mention its admirable painted windows, which were the
finest in France, according to Farin and Levieil,[17] whose opinion has
become an authority. A great many of these glasses were broken in the
_chambre aux clercs_ of Saint-Ouen. When, reopened for religious
purposes, in 1806, the church of Saint-Godard became again possessed of
two of its finest windows: that of the chapel of the Virgin, to the
right facing the choir, and that of the chapel of Saint-Nicolas, on the
opposite side. The first represents the mother of the saviour, and the
kings of Judea from whom she was descended. The celestial head of the
Virgin is of astonishing beauty of composition.
The window of the chapel dedicated to Saint-Nicolas represents different
acts of the life of saint Romain; and the painter, one may imagine, has
not forgotten the history of the _Gargouille_. These two windows are
each thirty two feet high by twelve in width. Nothing can be comparable
to the beauty of the colour of these two windows; from thence came the
proverb, in speaking of wine of a purple colour: _It is the colour of
the windows of Saint-Godard_.
[Footnote 17: _The art of painting on glass_. 1774, folio, fig.]