_A French Town_
Lapis de pariete clamabit, et lignum, quod inter juncturas
aedificiorum est, respondebit.
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF FRANCE]
If the Norman capital that Philip Augustus added to the royal domain
of France was not particularly rich, as I have shown, in architectural
beauty, it possessed something more enduring even than stone, more
vital than any school of architecture, something also far more
precious as an indication of coming prosperity and strength; and this
was the beginning of the independence and wealth of the citizens of
Rouen, as symbolised by the beginning of their Commune. This spirit of
independence, and bold assertion of consecrated privilege, was not
limited to the laymen. Perhaps its most unexpected expansion is to be
found in that Privilège de St. Romain exercised by the Cathedral
Chapterhouse, whose beginning has been already mentioned in the fables
of the Church (see pp. 38 to 41). To appreciate the state of things in
this connection, which Philip Augustus found in Rouen, you must recall
two facts that I stated in earlier pages. They are, first, the
institution of the Foire du Pardon by the Conqueror (see p. 69), and,
second, the opportunity offered for experiments in independence
whether civic or ecclesiastical, by the years of Stephen's anarchy in
England, and of Henry Plantagenet's minority in France (see p. 84)
between the years 1135 and 1145.
I am enabled to limit the date of the beginning of the Privilège de
St. Romain to this particular interval, because a formal inquiry in
1210 established the facts, on sworn testimony, that there had been no
objection made to the privilege in the reigns of Richard Coeur de
Lion or of Henry II., and the details given of the procession to the
Norman castle and the visit of the canons to the dungeons show that
the machinery of ceremonial had already advanced to a certain degree
of age and elaboration. In the first of these reigns there is indeed
definite reference to the fact that no prisoner was released in 1193,
because the Lion-hearted Duke was himself a captive; and as a graceful
recognition of this courtesy the Chapter were permitted to release two
prisoners in 1194 to compensate for the voluntary lapse of one year.
This again would show that the privilege was already known and
recognised as traditional and proper. We can go still further back in
the process of limitation; for Orderic Vital, who died in 1141,
describes the first bringing of St. Romain's body to the Cathedral,
and says nothing either of the dragon or the privilege; nor, indeed,
could the essential part of the ceremony known as the "_Levée de la
Fierte_" have taken place before the jewelled shrine had been made
(see p. 98) to hold the sacred relics which the prisoner bore upon his
shoulders. Now it is not likely that Henry Plantagenet, when he came
into his kingdom in 1145, would have permitted so grave a limitation
of the royal prerogative to arise for the first time; and, on the
other hand, it is extremely probable that it should arise during the
years of his minority, when, as we have seen, experiments in
independence were quite the fashion. It is therefore practically
certain that the Privilège de St. Romain began soon after 1135,
though not so late as 1145.
The year 1210, already mentioned, is the first date on which an actual
record exists of the liberated prisoner's name. His crime is not
mentioned, though we know that it involved the penalty of death. But
the date is important because of the inquiry insisted on by the
governor of the Castle, when the Chapter of the Cathedral claimed his
release by exercising their famous Privilege. When the dispute was
referred to Philip Augustus, who was naturally anxious to conciliate
the powerful clergy in his new domains, the chevalier Richard (who was
the military protector of the abbey of St. Medard at Soissons), was
given to the canons, and in gratitude for this escape from mortal
peril,[22] he granted the Cathedral the perpetual rent upon his public
mill.
[Footnote 22: "Cum essem in periculo corporis mei in regio carcere
apud Rothomagum detentus," he says.]
From this case it is clear that so glaring a renunciation of the
incommunicable sovereign rights of life and death could only have been
successfully obtained by the regular intercession made to each duke
for the release of one prisoner every year; and the origin of that
intercession can be explained with perfect probability by the
persistent mediæval custom of the "Mysteries" or Miracle Plays, which
came into fashion as soon as the confrèries of various trades had been
consolidated, just about the time the craft guilds appeared in
England, in 1130, a date that fits in very well with the beginning of
St. Romain's "privilege." These Mysteries or Miracle Plays were, as
has been noticed, often performed in the Parvis of the Cathedral, and
their first object was to represent the truths of Scripture to the
people in the most intelligible and picturesque way. Ascension Day was
one of the festivals of the Church which most especially needed some
such educational and popular celebration, to impress upon men's minds
how Christ by ascending to His Father to free them from the Devil and
from everlasting death, had opened wide the gates of heaven, and
_taken captivity captive_. No more striking significance could have
been given to the meaning of the festival than by the public release
of a prisoner who had been condemned to death. By slow degrees this
release became an annual grace accorded to the Church in its holy
office of public instructor.
And it was no new thing to invest with such extraordinary privileges
the powerful princes of a church which was the visible representative
of Divine Providence on earth.[23] The bishops of Orléans, for
instance, possessed even until the last years of Louis XV. the
prerogative of pardoning every single criminal in the prisons on the
day of their solemn entry into their episcopal see. This, at first
sight, appears a wider power than any possessed by a bishop of Rouen,
who, on one day in the year, voted as a canon in his Chapterhouse for
the release of one prisoner and his accomplices. But the opportunity
of the bishops of Orléans came only once in a lifetime, that of the
Chapterhouse of Rouen was renewed against all opposition every year
for some six centuries, and M. Floquet has discovered a manuscript
which proves that the prerogative of pardon was granted in addition,
within certain limits, to the bishop by virtue of his office, as it
was in 1393, when Guillaume de Vienne entered his diocese in state on
a Sunday in September 1393. Yet no historian seems yet to have
noticed this most striking fact. How it must have impressed the
popular imagination may easily be estimated from the known horrors of
the dungeons and "lakes of misery" in which, at Rouen and most
mediæval cities, the criminals were condemned to linger. The
"resurrection of the dead" would be no exaggerated description for the
act of pardon which released a prisoner from the hideous dens of a
twelfth-century jail. Certainly no act could more clearly fix on all
men's minds the meaning of a sacred season and the power of the
Church.
[Footnote 23: Outside France the Bishop of Geneva is a famous example
of this ecclesiastical right of pardon; and even limiting ourselves to
French Territory, apart from Orléans, we shall find instances at Laon,
at Vendôme on the Fête of St. Lazare, at the Petit Châtelet of Paris
on Palm Sunday, and at Embrun. But in none of these cases is there
either proof or record of so continuous and persistent an exercise of
the privilege as is found at Rouen.]
In 1135 the great fête of St. Romain, the most important yet held in
Rouen, had been instituted for only about fifty years. Its pardons,
its processions, and its fair were still fresh in the popular
imagination, and would be very likely to be secured as the chief
attraction in the first great "Miracle-Play" that was given under the
patronage of the Church at Ascension-tide, for they kept alive the
memory of the patron saint of Rouen, who had delivered his city from
the Dragon of Idolatry by means of a condemned prisoner. So the idea
of the Ascension Mystery became inextricably connected with the great
saint of the town, yet the Privilège itself was not exerted on his
feast day, the 23rd of October, but on Ascension Day, when the Virgin
was also represented as crushing the serpent's head. For two days in
the great Ascension Festival the flaming monster was moved before the
cross through all the streets of Rouen. On the third day, which was
Ascension Day itself, the dragon followed, bound and vanquished,
behind it.
So it is that we find this first recorded prisoner, Chevalier Richard,
speaking of the "Privilège" as "_en l'honneur de la glorieuse Vierge
Marie et de Saint Romain_."[24] By 1210, therefore, these two holy
names had become definitely associated with the "Levée de la Fierte,"
and the _fierte_ was already raised upon the shoulders of the prisoner
to signify the new yoke of the Christian religion which he took upon
him in exchange for the sins from whose consequence he had been
mercifully delivered. Where Chevalier Richard, in 1210, raised the
jewelled shrine of the relics of St. Romain, at the chapel of the old
castle of the Dukes of Normandy, on the very same spot did Nicolas
Béhérie and his wife raise it in 1790, on the last occasion when the
"Privilège" was exercised. The custom had continued through the
centuries in the place of its origin, though Norman castles had been
replaced by the prison of Philip Augustus, though the Baillage had
been built, though the Englishmen under Henry V. had taken the town,
though the Conciergerie of later reigns existed. The conservatism of
the Church had led her thus unconsciously to preserve the secret of
the origin of her Privilege from the days when the prisons of the last
Norman dukes had been the only appropriate scene for her most striking
and gorgeous public ceremony.
[Footnote 24: With this phrase in 1210 compare the words recorded in
MS. 69 in the Rouen Library, where the privilege is spoken of as
"_accordé à la Sainte vierge Marie et au bienheureux Saint Romain_,"
in 1299.]
The little open chapel built upon the same spot now (see p. 37), saw
the last deliverance of 1790, and still preserves the name of the
"_Fierte St. Romain_." An excellent and well-proportioned example of
the architecture of the sixteenth century, it was used for the first
time in 1543, and shows in every detail of its construction and
arrangement that it was expressly planned for this especial ceremony.
Of the ceremony itself I shall have more to say later on. For the
present I must content myself with this necessary explanation of its
origin and locality. From the lists of the prisoners I shall very
frequently have occasion to take a striking example of the manners of
the time, as the tale of the city is gradually unfolded, in which this
Privilège de St. Romain is perhaps the most exceptional and striking
feature. But it is only by the second half of the fourteenth century
that the names are written down with a sufficient regularity to admit
of useful reference. During the thirteenth century, at which I have
now arrived, there are only three names actually preserved, though the
continuation of the Privilege is fully proved by the inevitable
quarrels between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, of which
conspicuous examples occur in 1207 and in 1299.
The canons did not shrink from laying the town under an interdict when
the lawyers proved recalcitrant, and took every opportunity to enforce
the recognition of their permanent right of choosing their prisoner at
the season of the year consecrated to the exercise of their peculiar
privilege. The same Bailly of Rouen who had objected to this in 1299,
found, to his cost, that it was dangerous to repeat his attempts to
thwart the ecclesiastics. For when their freedom of choice was again
infringed only three years afterwards, the Chapter brought the sacred
shrine to the chapel in the Place de la Vieille Tour, and, after
explaining what had happened to the people, they left this venerated
palladium of the town out in the open square until their privileges
had been recognised. For the Thursday of Ascension Day, for the Friday
and Saturday following, it remained there guarded by certain of the
clergy and by many pious citizens. Each day it was solemnly visited by
a procession from the Cathedral, accompanied by a sympathising crowd
that daily grew larger and more vehement. By the Sunday morning the
Baillage gave in, and the canons released the prisoner with a ceremony
that was more than usually impressive after the opposition that had
preceded it.
Such quarrels were the more probable just now, because the
ecclesiastics were thus tenacious of their "privilège" just when the
infant commune was beginning to feel its strength, when commerce was
becoming regular, and even a town militia makes its appearance; for
the "Compagnie de la Cinquantaine," sometimes called the Arbalétriers,
were able to trace back their foundations to 1204, when an inquiry was
held and their privileges confirmed more than five hundred and fifty
years afterwards. The commune itself was also fully approved by Philip
Augustus, who confirmed its possession of certain common lands in the
suburbs which had been granted by Duke Richard. By the same date the
"bourgeois" or sworn freemen were exercising the free choice of their
twelve councillors and twelve aldermen, and sent up to the King from
among them three candidates out of whom His Majesty selected the Mayor
of Rouen; and this civic constitution lasted until 1320. It was
revised by St. Louis, in 1255, and the same king reformed the civic
expenditure by establishing the Chambre des Comptes which held its
sittings in later centuries in the Renaissance building north-west of
the Cathedral. In 1220 the commune obtained from the King for an
annual rent of 40 livres, the house and land of the Earl of Leicester
close to the Porte Massacre, and the Church of Notre Dame de la Ronde,
and there they built the Belfry Tower and the Hôtel de Ville, which
lasted until 1449 and is still represented by the buildings in the Rue
de la Grosse Horloge above the famous archway near the Hôtel de Nord.
This fief of the Earl of Leicester was but one of the many
acquisitions by which Philip Augustus gradually bought out the feudal
barons and made sure of Normandy. Other property of the Montforts, and
of William the Marshal[25] are examples. And if the King allowed his
burgesses their Hôtel de Ville, we may be sure he destroyed the
castles of the barons whenever it was possible. Even that ancient
fortress of the Dukes of Normandy, called the Tour de Rouen, or the
Haute Vieille Tour, he pulled down, destroying their double wall and
filling up their triple moat, and erected on the "Place Bouvreuil" the
new castle of the kings of France, with its six towers and the donjon
keep which still exists, and is called the Tour Jeanne d'Arc. The
other buildings only lasted until 1590, though a mill could be seen
for almost another century which was still worked by the water that
ran from the stream of Gaalor which supplied the well of the
castle-keep, and was used later on for many other fountains in the
city. By 1250 it had already been led through underground channels to
the Rue Massacre, and by 1456 the Fountain of the Town Belfry was
established which is now represented by the Fontaine de la Grosse
Horloge, built in 1732. The waters themselves come originally from a
spring near the foot of the Mont-aux-Malades. In his new castle Philip
Augustus ordained the Échiquier de Normandie, as the supreme Tribunal
of Justice in the province, whose courts were to lie alternately at
Rouen, Caen, and Falaise.
[Footnote 25: M. Paul Meyer, head of the École des Chartes, has, I
hear, just discovered a mediæval poem about this interesting person,
called the "Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal." It was in the British
Museum, and his edition will be of great interest to British history.]
Soon afterwards the land occupied by the palace of William the
Conqueror was nearly all given up to the burgesses for purposes of
their trade. They were permitted to extend the buildings to the quays
provided they did not intercept traffic on the river. By 1224 the
drapers had obtained lands in the forest of Roumare for the proper
manufacture of their woollen stuffs, which were always a staple of
commerce in Rouen, and they used these "Halles" for the exhibition and
sale of their wares. The courtyard must have looked very much as it
does to-day, with the addition of cloisters and open shop-fronts. By
1325 commerce had grown there so much that "sales in the dark" had to
be forbidden by law. St. Louis granted the extension of the
market-halls over the whole ground on which the Norman dukes had
built, and established in 1256 the market called "Marché de la Vieille
Tour." This king was an especial friend of the Archbishop Odo Rigaud,
and both were zealous in the reforms necessary to Church and State. In
1262 the Cathedral gave up to the King certain possessions outside the
town in exchange for the public mills of Rouen; and property was
further centralised by the royal charter granting these Halles, with
the Marché de la Vieille Tour, for an annual rent to the mayor and
burgesses of the town, who were also given full rights of possession
in the streams of Robec and Aubette. St. Louis also established the
right of the citizens to insist on their debtors coming to Rouen
itself to adjust their legal difficulties, and further assisted
commerce by prohibiting strange merchants from retail trade in the
city, and by making all Jews wear a circle of yellow (called rouelle)
on back and breast, as a distinctive mark.
The commercial privileges which I have already mentioned (see p. 85)
were fully confirmed by Philip Augustus, especially with regard to
exports to Ireland, while Louis IX. continued the gradual
consolidation of the river trade in the hands of the Rouen merchants.
What this involved, may be seen from the case which was brought before
the Parliament of Paris in 1272, when the Mayor of Rouen had seized
six barrels of wine which a landowner was bringing (as he asserted)
from his vineyards to his own house by river. Every quay along the
bank was rapidly taken possession of by the merchants, and by 1282 the
famous "Clos aux Galées," between the Rue du Vieux Palais and the Rue
de Fontenelle, was built in the parish of St. Eloi as a dockyard for
purposes of commerce and of war. But not long after this the space
appears to have been needed for other purposes, and the real "Clos
des Galées" was moved across the river to the other bank at the end of
the Empress Bridge, or "Pont de Mathilde." In a charter of 1297, the
change is marked by the name, "Neuves-Galées," and this occurs again
in 1308. It is remarkable as the first arsenal ever used for artillery
in France; for cannon, arms, and powder were all stored here in later
times, and here were built the ships that fought in the Hundred Years'
War by Charles VI., out of wood from the forests of Roumare. Just
before the great siege by the English in 1418 the citizens destroyed
it, but the name remained in the hostelry called the "Enseigne de la
Galère." Then the "Grenier à sel" and the "Hôtel des Gabelles" were
built on the same spot; and finally you can only imagine very vaguely
where the first dockyards of Rouen were when you look now at the
Caserne St. Sever.
In tracing out the changes that have come in each century to the
aspect of the town, it is not often we shall find a locality so
persistent in its character as the Place de la Haute et Basse Vieille
Tour, when once its military strength had been changed into commercial
convenience. The older castle, originally built more to the north-west
by Rollo, between the Church of St. Pierre du Chastel and the Rue des
Charrettes, had long ago absolutely disappeared, and its place was
taken by a Franciscan convent, given to the brethren in 1248 by
Archbishop Rigaud, who had been originally a monk of the Order; and
the ruins of their building may be seen in the street which, as Rue
des Cordeliers, still preserves their name. Another change that is
still recorded in the nomenclature of the streets took place when
Louis VIII. allowed the inhabitants to build gardens and almshouses in
what had once been the moat of the old town walls. This you may trace
in the name of the Rue des Fossés Louis VIII., formerly the Rue de
l'Aumône. In the same way the Rue des Carmes preserves the fact that
the Carmelite monks brought by St. Louis from the Holy Land, migrated
to the street that bears their name in 1336, and remained there for a
very long time.
But everything did not go smoothly in the streets of Rouen while these
pacific changes were in progress. In 1213 the town was filled with the
levy of counts, barons, and knights, with all their men-at-arms, whom
Philip was collecting to attack the King of England; and in 1250 a far
more disorderly and plebeian assembly gathered under the leadership of
André de St. Léonard to express in the practical form of riot and
pillage their disapprobation of the ten per cent. exacted by the
Church for grinding corn in the ecclesiastical mills. Near the Pont de
Robec and the Rue du Père Adam flour and wheat were forcibly stolen,
but Archbishop Odo Rigaud soon asserted his authority, by fining the
ringleader 100 marks of silver, equivalent to about £2000 sterling,
and the dissatisfaction ceased. In the next year a rising, that had
some slight degree of religious colour in it, gave a good deal of
trouble, not to Rouen only, but to the rest of France. Bands of
peasants, styling themselves "Pastoureaux," asserted their indignation
at the captivity of King Louis IX. by chasing the archbishop out of
his cathedral. From the fact that they had been joined, not merely by
all the lazy ruffians of the neighbourhood, but by some burgesses, and
even by certain municipal office-holders, we may infer that the
privileges or prerogatives of the Church were once more the real
objects of the dispute. Though the ecclesiastics were as usual strong
enough to exact a public apology and absolution from the mayor and his
councillors, the strange frenzy spread to the Provinces; men averred
that the Holy Virgin and her angels had appeared to urge them to
release St. Louis, and it was necessary for Queen Blanche herself to
intervene before the trouble was stopped in Paris and many parts of
France.
This widespread affection felt for St. Louis may, perhaps, be
explained not only by his personality, but by the fact that he was
always moving from one part of his dominions to another, in spite of
the obvious inconveniences of mediæval travel. I have already noticed
some of the things he did for Rouen on his various visits. But such
pilgrimages as that of 1255 to Adam Bacon, the solitary abbot of St.
Catherine, cannot have failed to increase his local reputation. He
celebrated Christmas here in 1264, after another short visit
previously on his way from Pont de l'Arche to Bec, and in 1269 he came
again from Port-Audemer. On every such occasion he prayed in the
churches and left offerings suitable to his rank; he ate in the
refectories with the monks, he dispensed alms to the poor, and gave
money or its equivalent to the hospitals. His charity was, indeed,
extraordinary, for Queen Margaret's Confessor has related that he not
only fed the hungry at his every meal, but went round the beds in the
sick houses, smoothing the pillows of the sufferers, speaking to them,
and trying to supply their wants.
It was when King Louis came with his mother, Blanche of Castile, to
keep the Christmas of 1255 at Rouen, that the greater part of the
choir, transept, and nave of the Cathedral as we see it now was
finished. The monastical developments of previous centuries had done
their work; the power of the great abbots and priors, which raised
them into feudal dignitaries, with large wealth and wide possessions,
had reached its limit. The rise of the communes in every town, and the
passion for civic liberty which accompanied them and gave them birth,
as we have traced it in Rouen, was taken advantage of by the
archbishops in those fruitful years which lay between 1180 and 1240.
The royal power, personified here by Philip Augustus, was as much
concerned as the burgesses in the diminution of feudality. Even the
great secular nobles were not averse to encouraging a movement that
appeared to counteract the importance of their most dangerous
ecclesiastical rivals. So that religious and political motives came
together, just at this one momentous period, to produce an enthusiasm
for building which has never been equalled before or since. The
gradual development of the sacred edifice from the crypt, like that
catacomb of St. Gervais, through the form of the Roman basilica, with
its simple nave and round apse, to the new developments of choir and
chapels, introduced by Suger, had not proceeded without leaving on the
finished product--which has been called Gothic--the traces of its
growth. And this is one reason why, until the fourteenth century at
least, the Cathedral retained the mingled characteristics of a
building that was both civil and ecclesiastical, that was used both
for the divine offices and for political, even military assemblies.
In what I shall have to say of the architecture called Gothic,[26] I
would not have it thought that I exclude the praise of beauty from
every other form of building, for there are Renaissance buildings, for
instance, in Rouen alone that would contradict such barren dogmatism
at the outset. The reserve and the harmonious proportion of the Cour
des Comptes have a value of their own quite independent of the Gothic
unrestraint and revelry of carving in the Portail des Libraires. But I
cannot conceal my preference for one form of beauty over another, my
delight in the most organic form of art the world has ever seen, the
true "master art" of Gothic, as opposed to that "looking backward"
which was the Renaissance, to that defiance of the rule of progress
which bade men advance to different developments of organic living
forms in every single branch of life, except in the greatest art of
all. The Middle Ages had inherited a direct succession of harmonious
forms, one rising out of another until the perfection was attained.
Then came the Black Death, and the no less fatal scourges of
Commercialism and Bureaucracy. Men's thoughts apparently became so
riveted upon the grave that they must go back to the art of the dead
Romans and the formalism of classical examples to keep breath in their
bones at all. And even so, they informed the skeleton with a new life.
In such new creations of the aged spirit as the French Renaissance
Châteaux of Touraine, or Rouen's Hôtel Bourgtheroulde, they showed
what vigour there was left, if only it had been permitted to remain
original. Nor is there any hope of betterment in architecture, or any
art, to-day, until something of the spirit has come back to us which
made each citizen proud of the house he lived in, or of the House of
God he helped to build, until the love of workmanship that built the
old cathedrals has returned.
[Footnote 26: In the matter of this word "Gothic," I am of the opinion
of Rénan, who writes: "En Allemagne jusqu'au quatorzième siècle ce
style s'appela '_opus Francigenum_,' et c'est là le nom qu'il aurait
dû garder." If it is too much to expect of future writers that they
will give up the phrase, let them at least follow the advice of Mr
Moore and limit "Gothic" to the French pointed school of the Ile de
France. Our own architecture has already received quite enough
additional labels to prevent confusion.]
Through those doors, which were shut sternly in the face of princes
under the Church's ban, the poor man gladly passed from the hovel that
was his home. Out of the dark twisting streets whose crowded houses
pressed even against the walls of the Cathedral, the humblest citizen
might turn towards the beauty of a building greater and more wonderful
than any that his feudal lord could boast. He found there not merely
the sanctuary, not merely the shrine of all that was holiest in
history or in creed, but the epitome of his own life, the handicrafts
of his various guilds, as at Rouen, the tale of all his humblest
occupations, the mockery of his neighbours' foibles, the lessons of
the horror of sin. For before the end of the thirteenth century, the
handicraftsmen, associated into such guilds as we have seen in Rouen,
had not only won their freedom from arbitrary oppression, but had
secured so large a share in the government of the towns, that within
the next fifty years, the heads of the communes were nearly always the
delegates from the craft-guilds. The zenith of Gothic architecture
coincided with this period of their triumph; its bright, and
glittering, and joyful art spread all over the intelligent world, and
more especially in France; it was not contented with merely
architectural forms in colourless cathedrals, but decorated them with
carvings painted in gay colours, used every space for pictures, drew
upon all literature for its materials. In Dante, Chaucer, and
Petrarch, in the German Niebelungenlied, in the French romances, in
the Icelandic Sagas, in Froissart and the chroniclers, you may find
the same spirit; and each town smote its own epic into stone upon the
walls of its cathedral. Every village, even, had its painter, its
carvers, its actors; the cathedrals that have remained are but the
standard from which we may imagine the loving perfection to which
every form of craftsman's art was carried. And their work gives us
such pleasure now because they had such intense pleasure in doing the
work themselves.
[Illustration: A MASON AT WORK, FROM A MISERICORDE IN THE CHOIR OF
ROUEN CATHEDRAL]
For the masons had gone to their new task with a will. Freed from the
thick and shadowy archways piled upon heavy piers, which had obscured
the old priestly and dogmatic Romanesque, the builders of the new
cathedral revelled in the new found Gothic of the people, and raised
their soaring arches to the sky, and crowned their pinnacles with
wreaths that flamed into the clouds. And upon every inch of wall they
wrote and wrought upon the living stone, "magistri de vivis
lapidibus," until every detail of the world of worshippers was
gathered up and sanctified by this expression of its new found
meaning, as a part of the mystery and the beauty of holiness.
It is significant of the democratic nature of this architectural
outburst, that the first communes signalised their liberty by the
earliest cathedrals, at Noyon, Soissons, Laon, Reims, Amiens, in the
capital of France, and in the capital of Normandy. It was early in
this same century (1203) that Normandy became part of the crown domain
together with Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou, and Limousin. Before the
century was done, Languedoc, the County of Toulouse, part of Auvergne,
and Champagne were also included in the royal domain. More than this,
the Head of the Church himself had come in 1309 to live in Avignon,
and this movement had, no doubt, its effect upon religious sentiment
in the nation to whose charge St. Peter's representative committed
himself; for religion had of course the greatest part in a movement
that could never have been so widespread and so creative without its
powerful motives; but, even in spite of the immense impulse given by
the crusades, religion would never have got its opportunity at all, if
"politics" had not at the very moment been ripe for contemporaneous
expansion, if the people and the King had not simultaneously been
ready to give expression to a movement in which liberty and unity were
the greatest factors. Thus it is that the cathedrals are the first
visible basis of that French nationality into which the scattered
provinces of Gaul had expanded, the first germ of that creative genius
of French art which has not yet lost its right of place in Europe,
the first clear record of the national intellect. And the people were
not slow to recognise the meaning of the carvings that were placed
where all who ran might read, placed there by men of like passions
with themselves, copied often so directly from themselves, that the
cathedrals may be regarded as the great record of the ancestry of the
common people. The emblazoned tomb, or the herald's parchment, might
fitly chronicle the proud descent of the solitary feudal lord; but the
brothers and kinsmen of his dependents were carved in their habits as
they lived upon the church's walls, and there they work at their
appointed tasks, and laugh at their superiors, unto this day. So the
people filled their church with throngs of worshippers, with
merry-making crowds, with vast audiences of the great mediæval Mystery
Plays, with riotous assemblages sometimes not too decent, whose rough
humour has been preserved for us in the thousand grotesque carvings of
the time.
I have been at this length in explaining the building of the
cathedrals, because it would be impossible for you, without some such
suggestion of their origin, to realise the meaning of the carvings
which cover the great north and south porches of the transept at
Rouen. I choose them first out of the mass of detail and construction
in this enormous and heterogeneous building, because they are most
typical of the feeling which gave it birth, and of the craftsmen who
worked upon it. It is well-nigh impossible to attempt any explanation
of the many styles, from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, which
are commingled, superimposed even, without any feeling in the mind of
the architect, for the time being, except that of the imperious need
for self-expression, regardless of the fashions of his predecessor. In
the great western façade this mingling of the styles is most
observable. The angle towers are absolutely unlike, the arches are
broken, the pinnacles are smashed short off, niches are mutilated,
and arabesques are worn away, yet in the healing rays of moonlight,
the whole composes into a mysterious beauty of its own that will not
bear the strict analysis of glaring day.
But the Portail aux Libraires which Jean Davi, the architect of the
Chapelle de la Vierge, built for Archbishop Guillaume de Flavacourt in
1278, will bear microscopic examination in every part, and the
reverently careful restorations carried out some time ago by MM.
Desmarest and Barthélemy have only brought to light the exquisite
perfection of the original work. This gate to the northern transept
got its name from the special trade which gradually was connected with
that portion of the Cathedral bounds. I have already noticed how the
Parvis was filled with various shops and booths, and this space before
the northern gate was similarly appropriated by booksellers until at
least some time after the sixteenth century was over. What I have to
say now is connected with the actual portal itself. The forecourt once
filled with bookstalls, that leads up to it, was only decorated in
1480 by Guillaume Pontifz, who also erected the fine screen that opens
into it from the Rue St. Romain. On the east side of this court you
may see St. Geneviève standing with a Bible in her left hand, and a
candle in her right. Upon one shoulder a tiny angel tries to kindle
the light, while on the other a wicked little devil with a pair of
bellows is perched ready to blow it out again. The panel decoration
upon the buttresses of this north door has been selected by Mr Ruskin
as the high-water mark of Gothic tracery before its decline began. It
takes the form of blind windows carved upon the solid stone, and is
certainly an exquisite example of varied, yet severe proportion and
arrangement. Its plan expresses the true qualities of the material
with a right regard for mass in decoration, rather than for line, the
fatal change which wrought so much damage after the earlier ruling
principle had been given up.
[Illustration: PORTAIL DES LIBRAIRES (DOOR OF NORTH TRANSEPT OF ROUEN
CATHEDRAL)]
This same acute observer, blessed with more leisure time than I have
ever had in Rouen or elsewhere, was able to make certain remarks on
the detailed carvings of the door itself, which must be at least
suggested in any other description. My own count of the separate
carvings does not agree with that made by Mr Ruskin, and in a mere
matter of mathematics I may be bold enough to differ publicly, where
agreement is so inevitable with the main thesis of his argument. Some
idea may be obtained of the work expended on this one portion of the
Cathedral alone, when I say that in the centre of the door is a square
pedestal, on each of whose four sides are five medallions vertically
arranged. Within the great encompassing arch, on each side, is a
cluster of three more square pedestals similarly decorated. The arch
itself has seventeen medallions upon each pillar, the top five on each
side being cut in half by a moulding. Beyond the arch to right and
left are two other pedestals with the same five ornaments on their two
faces. Thus, if you count the smaller pillars only, there are
twenty-four rows of five, or 120 medallions, and adding those on the
arch, you get a total of 154. Even this is not all; for on each
medallion or panel its separate bas-relief is contained within a
quatrefoil. None of their arcs are semi-circles, and none of their
basic figures are squares, for each panel is slightly varied in size
from its neighbours. The result is that intervals of various shapes
are left at each of the four angles of every quatrefoil, and into each
interval is fitted a different animal, which gives the astonishing
result of 596 minor carvings in this one doorway, all of them
representing living things, and all of them subsidiary to the larger
subjects which they frame. If you measure these tiny sculptures you
will find the base of the curved triangle they adorn to average
about four inches long, its height being just half that distance. When
you look closer at those which are least worn away you will find them
clearly enough carved to represent unmistakably in one instance the
peculiar reverted eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and ready to
run away with it; in another, the wrinkled skin that is pressed over a
cheekbone by an angry fist; in a third, the growth of wing and scale
upon a lizard.
Think of the life and energy that were pulsing through the brain of
the craftsman who could so fill the surface of the stone. Think of the
time that he was ready to give up to patient chiselling at this one
task till it was perfect to his mind. And then consider more closely
the quatrefoils, small in themselves, which are yet far larger than
the details which surround them. The best known is one that has
suffered terribly in the wear and tear of nearly six centuries. It is
the famous bas-relief of the hooded pig playing on a violin, a motive
which recurs at Winchester and in York Minster. Its fingers are placed
so accurately upon the bow that the method of playing has formed a
type of late twelfth-century style in all collections of musical
antiquities. The Minstrel's Gallery in Exeter Cathedral may profitably
be compared with it. This accuracy of execution in an essential detail
shows the patient copying from life which accompanied--and indeed was
necessary to--the vivid imagination that could create so many
non-existent monsters. For among all these grotesque chimeras and
fantastic mixtures of the animal and human element you will notice the
creative faculty in its strongest development. These strange beasts,
half man and half a goat, part woman and part fish, have each of them
a reality of individual life, a possibility of visualised
construction, that is marvellous in its appeal to the spectator.
Another violin player appears upon this same door, this time with a
human head set on the body of a beast, and beside it some small
animal dances to the tune.
The mediæval carver was no mystic symbolist. But he felt so much and
so vividly that when two strongly opposed ideas came into his head at
once he had to express himself by throwing them together into one
newly-forged creation of a woman-ape, or a dog-man. He had besides his
own thoughts all that strange gallery to draw from, of sirens,
harpies, centaurs, which a dying mythology bequeathed. You may trace
most of the Metamorphoses of Ovid on the walls of the cathedrals. Then
there were the queer bestiaries of his own doctors, the early
Mandevilles, the Presterjohns of the twelfth century, the Munchausens
of all time. From these he inherited the Sciopod upon the door of
Sens, the cynoscephalae, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their
shoulders." He lived, too, in an age far more pictorial, far more
given to the living allegory, than any centuries to which the cold
print of a book alone appealed. Architecture, as he knew it, ceased
when printing became cheap. But in his days the Bible of the people,
the encyclopaedia of the poor, the general guide to heavenly or
terrestrial knowledge of the mass of worshippers, was what they saw in
the Mystery Plays, or what was carved for them (often inspired from
the same dramatic source) upon the walls of their cathedrals. When he
had tried all these, there remained the thousand simple incidents of
daily life, such as the mother welcoming her child which is on this
Portail des Libraires and was copied from it (as is the case in six
other instances) in the misericordes of the choir in 1467, or the man
who steals clothes from the line as Falstaff's ragged regiment did (a
ruffian who is no doubt commemorated also in the name of Rue
Tirelinceuil at Rouen), or the burglar walking off with a chest upon
the southern transept, while the owner soundly kicks him and tries to
take it back.
This southern door is called the Portail de la Calende from the
confrèrie of that name, but the derivation is rather uncertain, and
some authorities consider it refers to certain ecclesiastical
assemblies, distinct from the synod, which were held four times a year
in this part of the Cathedral. The plan of the quatrefoils is much the
same as that of the "Libraires." Within the tall embracing arch it is
indeed identical, but upon the arch itself fourteen panels are set on
each side, and outside it are no less than three double clusters both
to right and left, which increases the total of panels to 227. In this
enormous number, I have already mentioned one; but perhaps the best
known is that which illustrates a very popular mediæval legend, the
"Lai d'Aristote," which also recurs in the misereres of the choir. It
suggests the eternal supremacy of woman over man, even the wisest, by
representing the typical philosopher of the middle ages saddled and
bridled by a gay lady of Alexander's court, who sits upon his back and
whips him heartily. This is rather difficult to see, as it is high up
on a buttress beneath a statue at the side of the Rue des Bonnetiers.
From mythology you will find here countless sirens, some playing
instruments before their victims, others, like the mermaid of the
fable, admiring themselves in mirrors and waving a seductive comb.
There is also yet another violin player, with his back towards you,
playing to a dancer who is posturing head downwards on his hands, like
the daughter of Herodias upon the west façade.
I have already given the name of one of the master-masons who were
associated with this great pile of buildings, where the sound of
chisel and mallet can have scarcely ever ceased from the twelfth
century to the sixteenth. But Jean Davi's work was necessarily one of
the last finishing touches upon a building that others had reared in
the mass for him to decorate in detail. The various churches that had
been consecrated on the same spot have been recorded in their turn,
from the first primitive shrine of St. Mellon, in the fourth century,
to that greater fane seen by the Conqueror, which was almost entirely
burnt in 1200. The lower part of the Tour St. Romain is certainly a
part of the cathedral St. Maurilius consecrated. To say exactly when
the work of reconstruction was begun which St. Louis saw completed has
puzzled antiquarians far more diligent and learned than I am. But M.
Viollet le Duc has pointed to unmistakable signs of work earlier than
the rest in the two circular chapels of the apse, in the chapels of
the transept, and in the two side-doors of the western façade, which
open to the aisles. M. de Beaurepaire has also demonstrated, from a
close study of the Chapterhouse accounts, that when Richard de Malpalu
was dean in 1200, one Jean d'Andeli is spoken of as "Cementario, tunc
_magistro_ fabrice ecclesiae rothomagensis." He was also a relation of
one of the canons. The _Chronique du Bec_ gives the credit of
initiating the design to Ingelramus, or Enguerrand, from 1200 to 1214;
but this does not contradict the possibility of partners in the work,
and that the choir at any rate was done before the Norman influence
was much affected by the Ile de France, may be seen at once in the
fourteen tall and strong round pillars with their simple capitals and
massive round arches, which produce a very fine effect of pure
solidity amongst the lighter pointed work surrounding them. After
Enguerrand came "Durand le Machon," who dwelt in the same house that
Jean d'Andeli had held on lease, and after him, again, the name of
Gautier de St. Hilaire occurs before that of Jean Davi towards the end
of the thirteenth century.
[Illustration: ROUEN CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-WEST]
The period of the first coming of Philip Augustus in the ten years
after 1210 is strongly marked by the influence of the Ile de France,
and by the French Gothic work of Suger, which at first swept out of
its path every other style with which it came in contact. But by
degrees the Norman transition re-asserts itself, and the northern
pointed work made its appearance, whose history is completed in
England, and is a different school from the Gothic on the French side
of the Channel. But every century and every style seems to have had
its say and left its mark upon the fabric of Rouen. After the
thirteenth century had built choir and transepts and a great part of
the nave, and before its close had begun the decoration of the
magnificent side portals, and the refinement of the Lady Chapel, the
first thing the fifteenth century did was to enlarge the windows of
the choir after its own manner, and widen the windows of the nave as
well. The only names we find in the fourteenth century are that of the
architect of a rose window in the nave and a tomb of Charles V.,
which have both disappeared, and that of Jean de Bayeux, the builder
of the civic belfry tower at the Hôtel de Ville. But the perpetrator
of the enlarged choir windows was Jehan Salvart, who worked for Henry
V. during the English occupation, and is forgiven much, because he was
with Le Roux at the finishing of the exquisite church of St. Maclou.
The glass was put in by Jean Senlis.
I may as well complete the tale of architects now that I have begun
it, though the detail of their work is fitter given in the order of
its making, later on. But it is so rare that these master-masons have
left any traces of themselves at all, that I may perhaps be pardoned
for giving the full list that is hardly possible in any other great
cathedral in the world. Jean Roussel succeeded to his father of Bayeux
in 1430, to be followed in 1452 by Geoffroi Richier for eleven years.
Guillaume Pontifz was perhaps the greatest contributor of any of these
later men. In the thirty-four years of his office, the stalls of the
choir, representing the various crafts, were carved by several
workmen, whose names will be given later, at the cost of nearly 7000
livres, borne by the Cardinal d'Estouteville, the Portail de la
Calende was completed, a new top placed upon the Tour St. Romain, a
frigid and unpleasing staircase built in the north transept to lead up
to the canon's library, and the courtyard, with its entrance screen
placed in the Rue St. Romain before the Portail des Libraires. He also
began the Tour de Beurre, but left it to be finished by Jacques Le
Roux, who had done so much for St. Maclou, but died a poor man in
1500, and was buried beneath the organ. Within the part of this tower
that he built was hung the great bell "Georges d'Amboise," the biggest
outside Russia, which shared with "Rouvel" the affection of the
citizens, which rejoiced the heart of Francis the First, and cracked
with grief in 1786 at being called upon to ring for Louis XVI. It was
his nephew, Rouland Leroux, whose help was called in when the canons
desired to embellish their west façade and have a finer central door.
This work was begun in 1508 with the money of Georges d'Amboise, and
Pierre Désaubeaulx did the central tympanum. Jean Theroulde, Pierre
Dalix, another Leroux, Nicolas Quesnel, Hance de Bony, and Denis
Lerebours worked at the statuettes. A screen of open work (carrying
the clock) was raised in front of the rose window, and four turrets
were added, of which but one remains. So Rouland Leroux finished his
contract in 1527, having left for himself a greater fame in the
masonry of the central tower, whose base he rebuilt after the old
stone spire had been destroyed by fire, and especially in the tomb of
Cardinal d'Amboise, than ever he will gain by the patchwork of the
west façade. What he could do with a free hand and his own designs to
begin with, may be imagined from the fact that he built the Bureau des
Finances on the opposite side of the Parvis and laid the first plans
for the Palais de Justice. No wonder that he worked at Havre, at
Beauvais, and at Angers, as well as in his native town.
I shall hardly be blamed, I think, if among the full tones of a praise
that must become monotonous, a single note of regretful
misunderstanding cannot remain quite unheard; and I must confess that
in this western front so many unfinished and supervening designs occur
that I find myself unable to imagine the meaning of its builders.
Considering, first of all, the arrangement of its detail, I find
elaborate flower-mouldings and renaissance-work placed so high up that
they can barely be distinguished as anything save light and shade,
whereas upon the Portail des Libraires all such delicate work ceases
at about 9 feet high, and the upper carving is done boldly in broad,
simple masses for an effect of distance. But if this is bad flamboyant
work, the central gate itself is purer, and perhaps among the finest
examples existing of the flamboyant style. There are four strings of
niches round this porch from the ground to the top of the arch, each
holding two figures; every detail in them and about them is worked
with the most elaborate and tender patience, full of imaginative
carvings, trellised with leaves and blossoms deep wrought in the
stone. At this part of the western front and at the northern side-door
I could never tire of looking. But the whole façade I had to give up
in despair, save when the moonlight softened it into a tracery of
lacework climbing to the sky, as delicate as the pattern of white
spray upon a rising wave.
The masonry upon the central tower I have already mentioned. In 1544
it was crowned, by Robert Becquet, with a light spire of wood, 132
metres in height, that was burnt by the lightning in 1821.[27] The new
cast-iron erection, with which it has been replaced, may best be
described as possessing half the height of the Eiffel Tower with none
of the excuses for the Colonne de Juillet, of which M. Alavoine, its
architect, was also the designer. For the present I need only add that
both the western towers could actually be placed, all but their last
two metres, inside the nave of Beauvais. The nave of Rouen is but 28
metres high, and 136 in length, from the Portail to the apse of the
Chapelle de la Vierge; and as a matter of possible proportion it is
interesting to note that the old spire could just have lain down
inside it. At first it had no chapels, but these were built later on
between the buttresses, as was done at Notre Dame in Paris. The
transept measures 50 metres in breadth, which is just the height of
the great lantern above it, that is beneath the central tower.
[Footnote 27: In 1897 two men were still alive who saw it burn, and
all the gargoyles vomiting molten lead; they were M. Noël the
Librarian, and le père Pepin, janitor of the Town Belfry.]
From here, as from the heart of Normandy, flowed the life blood of
Rouen through her arteries of traffic clustering round the great
Cathedral. Within its walls the noblest of her dead are gathered,
returning to the central shrine that gave them birth and being. With
the completion of the first main bulk of its design the story of the
town that built it is brought to a definite point of development. I
shall no longer be obliged to go even as deeply as I have hitherto
felt necessary into the details of the civic history, for Rouen is
henceforth a part of France, and the seal of her nationality is
stamped large upon her. Till now, she has been slowly growing out of
the mists of aboriginal antiquity, through Merovingian bloodshed, to
become the pirate's stronghold, and then the capital of the Northmen's
Duchy. When she had fulfilled her mission by carrying French arts and
Norman strength into the English kingdom, she lost a little of that
individuality of character which I have traced through former pages,
just as a mother loses the first bloom of her girlhood when her son is
born. Though Rouen once more passed for some years into the possession
of an English king, the days of her captivity--with its culminating
shame--are as little agreeable for us to hear, as for her citizens to
remember, and Englishmen will no longer take that vital interest in
her each year's growth, with which a grandson reads the memoirs of his
forefather.
So I have somewhat altered the plan of the next chapters in accordance
with what I suspect to be the sympathies of those who have done me the
honour to follow me thus far.
If you are content to let me guide you further among the many
buildings, whose very origin I have not yet had time to trace, you
will find that to nearly every one of them may be attached some
brilliant episode that stands out in a century, or some overshadowing
personage whose life-story dominates a generation of his
fellow-citizens. So that, as we visit these old walls together, they
shall speak to us in no uncertain voice, of the lives of those who
built them, and of the progress of the town. Until now, there have
been but few buildings to which I could point as the visible witnesses
of my written word. So that my story has had to proceed but slowly on
its way, without the illustration which your eyes in Rouen streets
could give it, making a gradual ground-work of which there are hardly
any traces left. But with the building of the Cathedral I have reached
a point where the tale of civic, or religious, or private houses that
are still to be seen, is the tale of Rouen, told on pages well-nigh
imperishable. These mile-stones on our road henceforth become so
frequent, that in passing from one to the other, I shall have hardly
any need to fill the gaps in a history that is at once more modern,
and more easily understood. And as we left off with the highest
expression of religious fervour, the Cathedral, we may well pass on,
for the sake of contrast, to the most visible sign of purely municipal
development, the belfry of the old Hôtel de Ville, the famous
buildings of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge.