_A City of Churches_
Et concupiscet Rex decorem tuum quoniam ipse est Dominus
Deus et adorabunt eum. Et filiae Tyri in muneribus vultum
tuum deprecabuntur; omnes divites plebis. Omnis gloria ejus
filiae regis ab intus, in fimbreis aureis, circumamicta
varietatibus.
A walk from Rouen to St. Sever will leave you with the impression that
Rouen has so many churches that she has to turn many of them into
shops, while St. Sever has so many shops that several of them have had
to masquerade as churches. But the many "sacred buildings" you may see
to-day are not much more than half of the churches and chapels of the
sixteenth century which rose after the English garrison had
disappeared. With the few exceptions I have already noted, Rouen has
been almost entirely reconstructed since 1450, and in nothing can this
be realised so well as in its churches. When Charles VII. first rode
into Rouen, of the greater churches only the Cathedral was within a
little of completion. St. Ouen hardly suggested yet the building that
appears to-day.
As I have said, it was during the English occupation that the nave was
begun. The beautiful central tower was only finished by Antoine
Bohier, who did much to make perfect the building that we see to-day
as the fifth church on the same site. It received its name from St.
Ouen, who was buried in the second church in 689. The monastery which
was added to the third church was under the rule of Nicolas de
Normandie, son of the second Duke Richard, in 1042. This was destroyed
by the usual fire, and the rebuilding was assisted by the Empress
Matilda and Richard Coeur de Lion. The little remnant of beautiful
Romanesque called the Tour aux Clercs, probably formed the northern
apse of its transept. When this church in turn was burnt in the same
fire that destroyed the original churches of St. Godard and St.
Laurent, the monks fled to Bihorel with what could be rescued of their
archives and their "treasure." At last, Abbé Jean Roussel, called Marc
d'Argent, started the noble fabric that, mutilated as it is, is still
one of the finest monuments of later "Gothic" in existence. His first
meeting of architects and master-masons was called in 1321, and then
was in all likelihood decided the outlines of that mighty plan which
took a century and a half to approach completion--and well-nigh half a
hundred architects.
From the ancient refuge of his monks, the land on which their feudal
justice was administered, from the slopes above Bihorel, Marc d'Argent
looked down and watched the first walls and buttresses of his Abbey
rise from the soil. In that valley the quarries from which he drew his
stone could still be seen scarce twenty years ago, with huge blocks of
stone, rough-hewn nearly five centuries before, still resting upon
mouldering rollers. He gathered funds from the Abbey Forests (which
gave their timbers too) and from the generous donations of the pious.
After twenty-one years of work, in which all his monks assisted the
masons, he had spent about five million francs (in modern values), and
by 1339 had finished the choir and chapels, the huge pillars beneath
the central tower, and part of the transept. Of the first real "Maître
d'oeuvre," as so often happens in the tale of the Cathedrals,
nothing is known. But the monks carved the clear keen features of his
face upon the funeral stone, 7-1/2 feet high and 4 feet broad, that is
in the Chapelle St. Cécile, and beside it is a detailed drawing of one
of the arches of the choir. Jean de Bayeux went on with the work from
1378 to 1398, and his son Jean was Master Architect from 1411 to 1421.
How intensely enthusiastic the monks were to complete their Abbey may
be seen from their quarrel with the Town Authorities in 1412 and 1415,
when every workman and every penny in the town was gathered to help
strengthen the fortifications against the English. But the monks of
St. Ouen refused assistance in money or in kind, lest by so doing they
should cripple their beloved building. And their confidence was
perhaps justified in that Alexandre de Berneval, who was the architect
from 1422 to 1441, worked under the deliberate encouragement of the
English garrison. His tomb is near that of the first unknown Master,
and the plan of his famous Rose window for the south transept is
carved as his most fitting epitaph.
The two Bayeux had done the interior of the south door of the
transept, but it was Berneval who did the chapel of SS. Peter and
Paul, and his son who, after 1441, worked at the central tower, the
gem of the exterior. This younger Berneval lies buried near his
father, and the plan of his octagonal "drum" is set above his grave.
To that first magnificent conception the crown was not added until
Antoine Bohier's days, between 1490 and 1515, for whom Jacques
Theroulde worked chiefly. The same Abbot completed the Sacristy, but
the rest of his additions were not so fortunate in their execution,
for the style of the end of the fifteenth century did not mate happily
with the earlier work. The carvings and general style of the south
portal, called "des Marmousets," is for instance a striking
deterioration from the bold conceptions and brilliant handiwork upon
the great transept gateways of the Cathedral. He added four more bays
to the nave, using simple instead of double buttresses, flamboyant
work instead of rose windows, longer arches, and a lower line of
capitals. Under Cibo, his successor, the last four bays of the nave
were finished, and a splendid beginning made to the west front that
has perished utterly, and been replaced by the miserable monstrosity
of a frigid and ill-proportioned "restoration." Seldom has that
much-abused word so richly deserved all the invective that could be
heaped upon it. By Lelieur's plan we know that in 1525 the western
front of Cibo scarcely can be said to have existed. But it cannot
have been long after the reign of Francis I. that Cibo's architect
carried his west front between 40 and 50 metres high, because the
crest and devices of that monarch were preserved in the old work. In
1846 it will hardly be credited that so much of that old work still
remained as may be seen in the drawing, copied from the sketch of a
contemporary architect, which I have reproduced on page 236. From this
it will be observed that one of the most ingenious and original
devices of the Middle Ages at their close had been developed for the
entrance to St. Ouen.
[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL WEST FRONT OF ST. OUEN WHICH WAS PULLED
DOWN TO ERECT THE MODERN FAÇADE]
A glance at the western façades of the Cathedral and of St. Maclou
will make clearer what I have to say. For the Cathedral is in almost a
straight line along its west front, though the two towers at each end
give almost a suggestion of a retreating curve. St. Maclou, on the
other hand, shaped like the eastern apse of most churches, has a bold
curve forwards from north and south, meeting in the central door which
projects some way beyond the side doors on its own façade, as may be
seen from Miss James's particularly instructive drawing in the
frontispiece. St. Ouen presented the only remaining third possibility,
a curve inwards, in which the central door was pushed back, and at an
angle on each side of it the arched portals of the aisles curved
forwards, and above them rose two towers, each a reduced copy of that
larger exquisite central tower which crowns the Abbey. Though the old
masonry remained, and though a complete working drawing of the whole
façade was discovered in the archives of the town, the job of pulling
everything down and building the new and horrible spires was given to
an architect who had already destroyed an old tower in the angle of
the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, and had made a "grille" for
its façade filled with inconsequent anachronisms and errors.
After this, your only consolation will be to pass through the western
gates as swiftly as may be to the interior. Its whole length is 416
feet 8 inches, and the vault is 100 feet high; the nave is 34 feet
broad, and the aisles 22 feet. This magnificent fabric has had hard
usage. After being sacked when it was scarce completed, by the
Protestants in 1562, it was turned into a museum by the Revolution,
and in 1793 was used as a blacksmith's shop for making arms. Yet
nothing can efface that first breathless sense of soaring height and
beauty which impresses you on your first entrance as you look up to
the great windows of the clerestory, with the saints upon their
silvery glass, set between the long slender shafts of columns that
spring straight from the ground, and leap upwards like a fountain
clear and undivided to the keystone of the roof. Though I was
unwillingly bound to confess that even the old Rose windows
disappointed me, the bunch of glaring cauliflowers which is the new
western Rose is worse than anything in any building of this size and
general beauty. But the other windows are an abiding joy, made of that
exquisite moonlit glass, in which the colours shine like jewels, and
are set as rarely.
Nor is the Church without its claim to right of place in history as
well as art. For the old Abbey of St. Ouen was one of the most
considerable in Normandy. It held fiefs not only in the city, but in
the Forêt Verte outside, and lands all over the province, with the
right of nomination to very many livings. From the Pope himself the
Abbot held, since 1256, certain valuable privileges in conferring
minor dignities, and in the list of those who held that splendid post
after the uncle of the Conqueror, are the names of d'Estouteville, de
Lorraine, de Bourbon, de Vendôme, de la Tour d'Auvergne, and lastly
Étienne Charles de Lomenie de Brienne, who was found dead in his bed
when the warrant had gone out for his arrest in 1794. In 1602 only was
the ceremony of the "Oison bridé" given up, which commemorated the old
privileges of the Abbot's Mills. Even longer lasted the ancient
ceremony by which the monks received every archbishop on his entrance
into Rouen, and on his death watched for the first night by his bier
in their own abbey. In their cemetery you have already seen Jeanne
d'Arc go through her mockery of "abjuration." Within it, too, her
memory was "rehabilitated." In this church young Talbot was laid to
rest, who fell in the English wars. In its cemetery was received James
II. of Gt. Britain, who was escorted, on his flight from England, by
armed citizens of Rouen from the Chartreuse of St. Julien to the
Abbey.
[Illustration: THE NAVE OF ST. OUEN]
And it may be that the old Sacristan, for your good fortune, will be
living still to tell you of the greatest Englishman he has ever heard
of, John Ruskin, who often looked into that quaint mirror of Holy
Water, and watched the strange reflection of the arches soaring
upwards in the nave.
It was in the Abbey of St. Ouen that on a May Day of 1485, Charles
VIII. held a great assembly to deliberate over the concessions to the
town after his famous entry into Rouen. To welcome him, poets,
machinists, actors, tableaux vivants, marionettes, songs, comedies,
and "mysteries," were gathered together regardless of expense. The
Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon had arrived before him, and on the
twelfth of April they were presented by the Chapterhouse with six
gallons of wine of two sorts, and with loaves of the famous bread,[57]
in return for which each gave a golden crown to the Cathedral
Offertory. Two days afterwards arrived the King himself from Pont de
l'Arche with a large and brilliant suite, including the second Louis
de la Tremouille, who fought on every battlefield from St. Aubin du
Cormier to Pavia, Philippe de Commines the historian, the "Comte de
Richemont," soon to be King of England, and many others.
[Footnote 57: Perhaps it was in honour of these legendary loaves that
the acrostic of SAC BLÉ was composed from the six dioceses dependent
on the archbishopric of Rouen; Séez, Alençon, Coutances, Bayeux,
Lisieux, Evreux.]
On his way from the Faubourg St. Sever to his lodgings in the Château
de Bouvreuil, five stages greeted his progress with loyal allegories.
Each bore its title written above in letters of gold or blue or rose
upon tin plates. The first was labelled "Repos Pacificque," and
represented by means of seven personages an acrostic on the royal name
of Charles. The second was "Ordre Politique," and was of a most
amazing ingenuity, for no less than forty-four persons were shown on
three stages one above the other which all turned round slowly on one
piece of timber. On the lowest appeared John the Evangelist with a
little angel by his side pointing him upwards to the splendours of the
Apocalypse; in the middle twenty-four aged harpers sat and harped,
with "lutes and rebecqs" in their hands; at the top shone the "Agnus
Dei," the lamb of Rouen from the civic arms, amidst a cloud of
evangelists and rainbows. On the third stage, labelled "Uncion des
Rois," was figured, with divers changes of scene, the coronation and
anointing of David, all arranged by Master David Pinel in token of the
joy of Rouen that Charles VIII. had been anointed with the holy oil at
Reims which had given strength to Charles VII. to turn out the hated
English. "Espoir en la croix" was represented on the fourth by the
victory of Constantine over Maxentius, with several "tirements de
courtines" or changes of scene. The fifth, styled "Nouvelle Eau
Célique," showed the blessings of the new reign after the sufferings
of the old one by a fountain which watered the Tree of the People, so
that leaves by a marvellous device appeared to flourish naturally
upon it, while wine was poured out from beneath for every passer-by to
drink, and five fair damsels sang harmoniously. That evening all the
shepherds and shepherdesses and other characters in these moving
"histories" came down and played a "mystery" before the King. But
perhaps the thing that pleased the young Charles most of all, was that
gay procession of young gentlemen of Rouen which caracoled before him
on horseback, under the leadership of no less a personage than his
majesty the King of Yvetôt, the captain of the City Bridge. (See
footnote on page 36.)
In the next days he promised to confirm the charters of the town,
assured the canons in the exercise of the Privilège St. Romain, and
asked that the procession of the prisoner might pass by his château,
which was the more appropriate as the man released had been condemned
to death for killing a groom attached to one of the royal suite, who
had given wanton and continued provocation. Not till the seventeenth
of May were the requests both of the ecclesiastical and the civic
authorities fully granted at St. Ouen; the spokesman for each had been
Maître Michel Petit, the "chantre" of the Chapterhouse, and by that
one fact, if by no other, King Charles must have been properly
impressed with the importance of the Church in Rouen.
Before he left the city, he could have seen the exquisite little
shrine of St. Maclou in all the fresh untainted delicacy of its first
achievement. "The eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Rouen," this
marvellous church was the result of one perfect and harmonious plan,
and inasmuch as the design of its originator has been faithfully
completed, it is far more of an architectural unity than its larger
rivals, the Cathedral or St. Ouen. Of these three either one would
make the reputation of an English town alone, and the jewelled
chiselling and admirable proportions of the smallest of them make a
fitting complement to the heavy splendour of the Cathedral on the one
hand, and to the dizzy altitudes of the Abbey on the other.
The first Maclou, as may be imagined, was a Scotchman. He fled to
Brittany, became Bishop of Aleth, and died in the Saintonge in 561.
Ever since the tenth century a shrine had been erected to his memory
outside the earliest walls of Rouen, in that morass which gives its
name to the Rue Malpalu in front of the present church. Twice burnt
and twice rebuilt, it became a parish church within the walls by 1250.
A larger building was soon necessary; even during the miseries of the
English Occupation it was determined to make the new church worthy of
the town that already held the Cathedral and part of St. Ouen; and
before 1500 indulgences had been granted by Hugues, the Archbishop, by
Cardinal d'Estouteville, and by twenty Cardinals of Rome, to raise
sufficient sums of money. In 1437 Pierre Robin, one of the royal
architects from Paris, was paid 43 livres 10 sols for a plan and work
that must have been begun some eighteen months previously with stone
quarried in Val des Leux and Vernon. In 1470 Ambroise Harel was
"Maître de l'oeuvre," and in 1480 the same Jacques le Roux finished
it who worked in the Cathedral. Of individual bequests that of Jean de
Grenouville, who was buried in the Chapelle de la St. Vierge in 1466,
gave most help. From 1432, when the irreparable ruin of the old church
was first recognised, until 1514, the accounts for only seven years
have been preserved. In 1520 the spire of wood and lead above
Gringoire's lantern was placed on Martin Duperrois' platform, to which
a man might ascend without the help of any ladder. In 1735 this was
removed, and in 1795 the lead was melted into bullets, and the six
bells of 1529 were recast into cannon. In 1868 M. Barthélemy erected
the stone Pyramid 83 metres high to hold the fine new bells.[58]
[Footnote 58: M. de Beaurepaire has collected a few other names
connected with the building. It was first dedicated when Arthur Fillon
was the vicar, who was a friend of Cardinal d'Amboise and afterwards
Bishop of Senlis. After the disappearance of Pierre Robin, the first
architect mentioned, another stranger called Oudin de Mantes is given
control, with lodgings provided for him in the Rue du Bac. In 1446
Simon Lenoir of Rouen (who took Berneval's place under the English)
worked at this church.]
The famous carved doors have been attributed to Jean Goujon, though
there is only one figure (the "Caritas" on the left panel of the
central porch) that I can believe to be his own workmanship. In all
the idea of plan is much the same. There are two divisions, of which
the lower contains the "practicable entrance," and is guarded by a
caryatid on each side supporting two male figures. Along the lintel
runs a line of brackets alternating with cherubs' heads supporting
seven figures, four males in high relief with three females in low
relief behind them. These figures in turn carry a square panel, carved
in high relief above them, representing different scenes on each door,
chiefly suggested by the story of the Good Shepherd which is so
appropriate to the staple industry of the town. They were begun by
1527 and finished before 1560. Jean Goujon was born in 1520, and was
killed during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew while carving on the
Louvre. In 1540 he is known to have been at Rouen, and in the next
year he worked both here and in the Cathedral. So that he may well
have given the design for what he did not personally execute, though
no documents exist to prove either.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. MACLOU
STAIRCASE TO THE ORGAN LOFT]
But if the doors are a trifle disappointing, though only so because of
their great reputation, they certainly did not deserve to be mutilated
by the Huguenots in 1562; and in 1793 when a barrelmaker's child was
slashing the heads of the statues with an axe, the crowd could think
of no better comment than "Celui-là sera un fameux patriote!" Of the
façade they were intended to adorn, which was probably the work of
Ambroise Harel, I have already spoken in describing the exactly
reverse plan of the original west front of St. Ouen. It is one of the
most delightful tours de force I know in architecture, and when Miss
James was drawing for me the frontispiece which adorns this volume,
she pointed out that the idea of the curve had been deliberately
emphasised to the spectator's eye by building the side porches
narrower, and crowning them with lower crests than is the case in the
central entrance. The central tympanum represents the Last Judgment,
with the Pelican above it that typifies the Resurrection. You may
appreciate at once the delicate tracery of lacework in stone which
covers this exterior and also the affection felt for its beauties by
their guardians, if you will examine the model laboriously built up in
wood and paper by an old vicar in the sixteenth century. His ten years
of loving toil have been preserved in the Musée des Antiquités, and
few better proofs exist of contemporary appreciation of the fine arts.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. MACLOU. CARVED OAK PANEL FROM THE CENTRAL
DOORS]
The interior is scarcely less interesting, though it has suffered very
much from modern religiosity. Only forty-seven and a half metres long,
by scarcely twenty-five in width, its height is nearly twenty-three
metres in the three bays of the nave, rising to thirty-nine at the
lantern. Its greatest treasure now is the exquisite Escalier des
Orgues, from which the staircase to the organ loft at Ely was
imitated. This was built in 1519 for two hundred and five livres by
Pierre Gringoire, "Maistre Machon de Rouen." In examining more closely
that fragment of it, of which a plaster cast has been made for the
Musée du Trocadéro in Paris, I could not help being struck with the
general resemblance of its plan to the more famous staircase which
adorns the exterior of the wing of Francis I. at the great château of
Blois in Touraine, which was built almost at the same time, from the
designs (as I have attempted to prove elsewhere) of Leonardo da Vinci,
and was decorated later on with statues by Jean Goujon. This sculptor
was only born the year after St. Maclou's staircase was finished, but
the main lines of the structure are so suggestive of the earlier work
that I cannot but imagine this fine piece of French Renaissance to be
a deliberate copy, by a master strong enough to retain his own
originality of treatment, of the main design that appears in the
courtyard of Blois.
[Illustration: TOUR ST. ANDRÉ]
Not all the churches of which Rouen is so full can boast even that
measure of preservation which storm and time and the more devastating
hands of man have spared to the three noblest of her religious
monuments. Of St. André, for instance, only the tower remains, that
stands alone above the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, like the Tour St. Jacques in
Paris, as an admirable specimen of the later Gothic architecture. A
still finer relic of an older past is that old church of St. Pierre du
Chastel, which is now turned into a stable and coach-house at No. 41
Rue Nationale. Unless you look for it, you will miss altogether the
great statue of David and his harp, which is the one massive
decoration of its strong and simple tower, and the carvings which may
still be traced through the neglect and mutilation of centuries upon
its western door. More degraded still, to even baser uses, is the
Church of St. Cande le Jeune, which has become some kind of an
electric manufactory, and may now be chiefly traced by the huge
chimney which obstructs the sky as you look up the Impasse Petit Salut
towards the Tour de Beurre of the Cathedral. Just opposite the
entrance to the public library is another instance of barbarous
neglect: the Church of St. Laurent. Once used as a magazine of shops
of every kind, sometimes a lost home for decrepit carriages, sometimes
a drying-house for laundry-women, these exquisite ruins of Renaissance
architecture have at last been rescued by the civic authorities, if
not from evident decay, at any rate from further mutilation. The tower
alone--but one among so many in Rouen--would be the proudest
possession of many a larger English town. The balustrade is decorated
by a pattern of letters, which pathetically express their hope of
better treatment in the battered legend: "Post Tenebras Spero Lucem."
Close to these eloquent ruins is a church that has had a somewhat
better fate, for if St. Godard has been rather roughly treated, the
beauty of its stained-glass windows has saved it from absolute
destruction. In the chapel of St. Peter, due east at the end of the
north aisle, is the great window that was made in 1555 to represent
St. Romain, who is shown at the top, on the left hand, dragging the
Gargouille of Rouen to destruction with his sacred stole (see p. 39).
Lower down, on the right, you must look at the King seated in his
royal chair, and the hounds at play before him on the carpet. In the
south aisle the corresponding window to the east has a tree of Jesse
in its upper part, and beneath is one of the finest examples of
sixteenth century painting in Rouen, work that reminds you of the work
of Rembrandt. Of these five figures of old men, the last two on the
right are especially worthy of attentive study. They were done in
1535. To the right of this window in the same chapel, looking
southwards, is another fine window of about the same date, said to be
copied from a design by Raphael and his school, of the life and
genealogy of the Blessed Virgin; but it is not so strong or original
in treatment as the last. Beneath it are two kneeling figures carved
upon the tomb of the family of Bec de Lièvre.
[Illustration: ÉGLISE ST. LAURENT]
In the Rue Jeanne d'Arc is another church, St. Vincent, that must be
visited. I have spoken already of the little labourer in tunic and
breeches, with a sack of salt upon his back, who stands upon the
outside of the buttress to the south of the choir, and looks towards
the river. It commemorates the fact that, by letters patent delivered
by Charles VI. in 1409, the church (which was then much nearer to the
river) was allowed to take toll of every cargo of salt which came into
the port, a privilege which was exchanged in 1649 for an annual
payment of 140 livres. Begun in 1511--or, as some say, 1480--after the
plans of Guillaume Touchet, St. Vincent certainly comes after St.
Maclou in order of merit. Its choir alone is a magnificent specimen of
the architectural possibilities of the smaller churches, and must have
been finished before 1530, when Touchet's supervision ended. The
splendid flamboyant western porch is not shown in Lelieur's plan of
1525, and was probably a later addition. The name of Ambroise Harel
has also been connected with the work, but I have been unable to
satisfy myself of the exact portions for which he may have been
responsible.
It is chiefly admired, and wrongly so to my mind, for the treasures of
its interior. These consist not merely in the wonderful series of
sixteenth century tapestries, of which M. Paul Lafond has published a
detailed description, but in the stained-glass windows, of which the
most celebrated represents the ass of St. Anthony of Padua kneeling
before the Holy Sacrament. The design is taken, it is said, from a
drawing of Dürer, to whom also is ascribed the original suggestion for
the window at the west end of the first aisle, of the Virgin and
Apostles. North of the choir is an interesting glass-painting of the
buildings of Rouen.
But slightly west of the northern end of the same street you will find
windows in the Church of St. Patrice which I think infinitely
preferable, of their kind, to those which are the especial pride of
St. Vincent. They are very justly placed in the first class of the
"monuments historiques" de France. As you enter the transept, turn due
south, and the first window on your right is the "Woman taken in
Adultery," which was moved here from the old church of St. Godard.
The inscription on it is "Honorable homme maître Nicole Leroux
licentie es loix advocant et Marie Bunel sa feme ont donne ceste
vitreau moys de may lan de grace 1549 priez dieu pour eulx." In the
right hand corner you may see the good William praying with his son
behind him, and his wife in black is further off to the left with her
six daughters behind her, two of them in "cramoisy taffetas, trimmed
with northern peltry." In the Chapel of the Virgin in the north
transept, the left hand window of the three over the altar depicts the
life of St. Fiacre and St. Firmin, and was put up in 1540 in the days
when Pierre Deforestier was in office, and François Baudoin was
prévôt. Of the three you see when looking due north, the farthest to
the right in the transept was placed there in 1583, "à l'honneur du
grand roy des roys de St. Louis roy de France;" the middle window
shows St. Eustace suffering martyrdom in the brazen bull which is
being heated red hot, while above St. Hubert meets his miraculous
stag. The farthest window to the left is dated 1538; it is the best,
and Jean Cousin has been suggested as its designer. The donor prays in
the right hand corner, and his wife with a daughter behind her is in
the left. A well-drawn figure of an angel announces his message to the
Blessed Virgin who is reading, and in the middle of the composition,
near the bottom, lies a corpse in a winding-sheet.
The large window at the extreme end of the north aisle is also very
fine. At the top is a woman in a car triumphing. Below, on the left,
are Adam and Eve. Next to them is the Devil, and Death, whose swarthy
skin is wrapped in a winding-sheet that seems to belly in the blasts
of Hell. The story of Job that is painted in the first window on the
left in the north aisle, also came from old St. Godard. And all this
wealth of stained glass is shown off wonderfully well in a church
that is not too large to lose its full effect, and is planned with
only a few light columns in the interior to impede the view of all of
them from the centre of the nave.
To three other of the many ecclesiastical buildings of Rouen can I
direct you before closing this Chapter of Churches with the Cathedral
that is mother of them all: St. Eloi, St. Vivien, and the Abbaye de
St. Amand. As you walk northwards from the river into the town up the
Rue St. Eloi, the church from which it takes its name shows a fine
south door that closes the perspective of the street. The design of
the west entrance is bold and good, but the queerly mathematical plan
of the Rose window above it, with its three triangles crossing in the
circle, has not a very happy effect. The church now is little but the
ruins of what was once a magnificent building and is used as the
"Protestant Temple." The whole of the Place St. Eloi is worthy of a
closer inspection than can be gained by merely walking through it,
which you will be tempted to do at much too fast a pace on learning
that the Rue du Panneret at its north-east angle leads directly to the
Maison Bourgtheroulde in the Place de la Pucelle. Another
characteristic little square is the Place St. Vivien which cuts the
Rue Eau de Robec in two portions. If you are lucky enough to be there
on a twenty-ninth of August you will see the famous Fête St. Vivien in
full blast, with booths and merry-go-rounds, and travelling theatres,
even a "Théatre Garric à 8 heures, Nouveau Spectacle!" But do not go
on into the further recesses of the Eau de Robec without looking at
the church, and give your keenest glances to the fine square tower
with its octagonal spire that is classed among the Monuments
Historiques. Of the ancient Abbaye de St. Amand there is perhaps less
left than of any of the ecclesiastical buildings in this chapter. Its
origin has been described already (see p. 71), and the gable with its
buttressed wall that you can see best in the Rue St. Amand from the
Place des Carmes are almost the only stones remaining of an
institution that once took a very prominent part in the ecclesiastical
ceremonies of Rouen.
For when an Archbishop died, the Abbess of St. Amand took from his
dead finger, as the funeral procession passed her gates, the ring that
she had placed upon it at his installation. On the 19th of July 1493,
that ring still shone upon the hand of Robert de Croixmare, whose
corpse had just been brought into the Cathedral choir, arrayed in
state, with mitre on head, and crosier in hand, with all his robes of
office on him. That night the bier rested in the Abbey of St. Ouen,
and as it passed the Abbey of St. Amand on its way back to burial, the
Abbess must have wondered, as she claimed her ring, on whom she would
bestow it next. The canons of the Cathedral were even more hasty in
their eagerness to settle the important question, and the body of
their late superior had been scarcely laid in state within their choir
before they were deliberating in the Chapterhouse about his probable
successor. As a mere matter of form--and we know how tenacious were
these canons of their rights and usages--they had sent word to the
King that the election of the next Archbishop was proceeding; and
their dismayed astonishment may be imagined when a message came from
Charles VIII. that he "neither admitted nor denied their privilege to
re-elect."
The King was not long in enlightening his faithful subjects as to his
wishes in the matter. Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Narbonne, and
lieutenant to his friend Louis of Orléans in the Governorship of
Normandy, was clearly pointed out as the royal candidate, without any
room for misunderstanding. The Duke of Orléans himself joined in the
"request" that savoured far too much of a command for ecclesiastical
independence. As if this were not enough, messengers from the Court
arrived post-haste; Baudricourt, a Marshal of France, no less; Jean du
Vergier, a financial officer of the town; and M. de Clérieu, the royal
chamberlain; all these actually arrived to "negotiate" (presumptuous
word!) with the free and independent Chapterhouse. In great perplexity
were both the canons and the town officials, upon whom commands, no
less imperative, had also been laid; for the Chapterhouse would
naturally not hear one single word from the civic officials on the
subject of their election, and even to the royal messengers they would
only reply that, at the election-day, some three weeks hence, "His
Majesty should have no just cause for complaint."
Three weeks, however, gave them time for profitable reflections. When
next the royal messengers appeared in the Chapterhouse, in the persons
of the President of the Parliament of Paris, and the Grand Seneschal
de Brézé, their reception was not so chilling as before. Every
preacher in the town had exhorted his congregation to pray that God
would direct their proper choice. The revered shrine of St. Romain,
that Fierte which represented the proudest token of ecclesiastical
liberty, had been borne in solemn procession round the town. Public
sentiment had been intensely agitated by the unwonted course events
had taken. On the fateful 21st of August the Cathedral was packed with
hundreds of the faithful, eager to be first to hear the decision of
the canons. By three o'clock the ten bells of the Cathedral had
summoned the canons to the matins which preceded the election that was
to release the Church from widowhood, and give to Rouen a new
archbishop. At last the Chapter assembled, the doors were shut, and
every avenue to the Chapterhouse was strictly guarded. At the last
moment an aged canon, rising from his death-bed to exercise his most
cherished privilege, tottered into the assembly to select a friend to
vote for him, and went back to die.
Suddenly the door of the Chapterhouse opened again, and Étienne
Tuvache the Chancellor uttered in a loud voice his last summons to all
those who had the right to vote that they should forthwith enter. When
it had closed again--for there was no reply--the solemn oath was
administered to every canon that he would rightly and reverently
choose the candidate he honestly thought best. Any excommunicated
person was warned to retire, and Masselin the Dean began his
exhortation on the importance of their choice. When he had finished,
all save the electors themselves withdrew, and on the flagged floor of
the Chapterhouse the canons knelt to the singing of the "Veni
Creator," and prayed for inspiration. Suddenly all leapt to their feet
at once with one united shout of "Georges d'Amboise shall be
Archbishop!"
At once the great bells rang out to the town that the election had
been made, while within the Cathedral every wall re-echoed with the
shouts of "Noël, Noël!" as the people heard that Georges d'Amboise had
been elected. A few days afterwards a still larger throng assembled in
the Parvis to watch the great ecclesiastic of their choice advance on
bare feet from the Church of St. Herbland and receive the episcopal
ring from the Abbess of St. Amand, with the words, "Messire, je le
donne à vous vivant, vous me le rendrez mort." As he came nearer to
the western gates, Masselin, the "Grand Doyen," formally presented to
him the Cathedral, and received his promise of loyalty and honest
government, sworn on the books of the evangelists, and not till then
did Georges d'Amboise mount his episcopal chair and give his first
blessing to the people of Rouen as their Archbishop.
How well he fulfilled his vow, there are many things in Rouen to this
day to tell, and the blessing that he gave his congregation was not
limited to things spiritual and unseen. His splendid public
benefactions in regulating the water-supply of the town have been
already noticed, and may be better realised in Lelieur's careful
drawings. His Cathedral remembers him by her western façade, by the
rich balustrades around the choir, now vanished, by numerous costly
shrines and jewels in the Trésor, by that Tour de Beurre[59] which
held "Georges d'Amboise" the greatest bell outside of Russia, that
every outlying parish could hear, by the magnificent building which
future archbishops justly called their palace. And the Province of
which he became governor when Louis d'Orléans rose to be Louis XII.,
"avec le titre effrayant de réformateur-général," owed him the
blessings of peace from brigandage and prosperity in commerce; owed
him, better than all, the firm and permanent establishment of the
Courts of Justice. By all these, and more, he worthily has won the
right to be considered by far the strongest and ablest Archbishop
Rouen ever had. After his election, his nephew, the second Georges
d'Amboise, was the only other primate the Chapterhouse was ever
permitted to elect. The tomb of both is in the Chapelle de la Vierge
of the Cathedral.
[Footnote 59: The name is said to have arisen from the fact that it
was chiefly built by the fines paid by those of the faithful who ate
butter during Lent.]
I have but too short space or time wherein to tell you more of the
interior of that great edifice, whose building I described when Philip
Augustus made Normandy a part of France. But out of the multitude of
interests that will stay your every step beneath its arches, there are
a few things I must point out now, and leave the most famous of its
tombs till later.
[Illustration: WESTERN PORCH OF ST. VINCENT]
As you enter by the western door, turn southwards into the Chapelle
St. Étienne beneath the Tour de Beurre. The second monumental stone
on the right is in memory of Nicole Gibouin, and it is one of the most
exquisitely drawn faces that you will see in all Rouen. This face and
both hands are incised in white marble, the rest of the body and dress
is indicated by red lines cut lightly in the stone. At his feet lies a
dog holding a bone. After this, there is scarcely a monument worth
looking at that can elude your notice; but as my business is to omit
the obvious and point out the beauties which might escape unwarned
attention, I shall direct you straightway to the choir, and more
particularly to the carved oak stalls. The seats, as is usually the
case, turn up to form an additional rest for priests who had to stand
through long and numerous services, and upon these under surfaces
(called misericordes) is an extraordinary series of carvings which you
must look at, every one.
They were made between the years of 1457 and 1469, and are in part
owing to the munificence of Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville. The
stalls as a whole are much deteriorated from their originally perfect
beauty. The work at Amiens will suggest how much of the stalls of
Rouen has been lost or wantonly mutilated. Without the Archbishop's
throne, which has been replaced by a heavy modern structure, the whole
eighty-eight, of which two have disappeared, cost 6961 livres to make,
and the greater part of the figures were done by Pol Mosselmen (whose
Flemish name was a terrible puzzle to mediæval scribes) and François
Trubert. Two other Flemish carvers, Laurens Hisbre and Gillet
Duchastel, occur in the complete list of eleven sculptors who were
paid by the piece as recorded in the Chapterhouse accounts. The
designs were made by Philippot Viart, "maistre huchier" de Rouen, who
received 5 sous 10 deniers a day for his work, and employed workmen so
nearly his equals in skill that they got from 4s. 6d. to 5s. for their
time. The names of the sixteen "carpenters" he had with him are all
preserved with the weekly account of their payments; and though most
of the work of the Flemish "sculptors" on the larger statues has
entirely disappeared, the more modest position of the little carvings
beneath the seats has probably saved them; and these are the work, as
I believe to be most probable, of the Rouen "carpenters" whom
Philippot Viart collected.
Their names are very ordinary ones; such as Eustache, Baudichon,
Lefevre, Fontaine, Lemarié, and the like; and their work is nearly all
dedicated to perpetuating either those arts and crafts of Rouen with
which they would be most familiar, or subjects similar to the
medallions on the north and south portals which I have already shown
to be the stock-in-trade of the mediæval workman. Many of the
misericordes indeed are no doubt taken from the stone-work outside. As
you turn one seat after another to the light, the life and habits and
costume of four hundred years ago stand clear before you. There are
the musicians with their cymbals, drums, and stringed instruments; the
wool-combers with their teasels; the sheep-shearers and cloth-makers;
the cobblers and leather-sellers and patten-makers; the barbers and
surgeons; the schoolmaster with his pupils; the carver at work upon a
stall; the mason chiselling a Gothic arch or modelling a statue; the
blacksmith, the carpenter, the shepherd, the fisherman, the gardener
in his vineyard, the midwife, the chemist at work among his test-tubes
and alembics, the chambermaid cleaning up her rooms.
Besides these records of the different trades, in one of the
confrèries of which every workman on these stalls must have been a
member,[60] there are many subjects more fanciful or grotesque which
urged the sculptor's chisel to its work. Harpies and sirens and lions
with human faces; Melusina's gracious body ending in a serpent's tail;
all the characters of the famous "Fête des Fous" to the very "Abbé des
Cornards" himself; all the strange beasts of travellers' tales, and
many a dream from vanishing mythologies. Ever since pagan times, the
custom of disguising the dancing worshipper in a more or less hideous
mask, had steadily persisted in certain of the more licentious
festivals, and the riotous horseplay of the Middle Ages was the direct
descendant of the Saturnalia of Rome. Too often, as I have pointed out
before, the churches themselves were the scene of these abuses, which
took the form not merely of bestial travesties, but of diabolical
disguises in which Satan and his imps were represented with all the
vigour of an intensely imaginative age. These were some of the sources
of the grotesque carvings. For they were not symbolical. When they did
not represent a concrete fact seen by the sculptor, they essayed to
represent a composite thought by clapping together two forms
suggesting opposite qualities, and leaving the gap in their union to
be supplied by the spectator. That gap in continuity is very
noticeable in every real "grotesque."
[Footnote 60: For the beginning of these confrèries, see chapter v. p.
85.]
The "Lai d'Aristote," which occurred in the exterior carvings, is
repeated here on the misericorde which is the ninth of the top row on
the southern side. The gay young lady seated upon Aristotle's back
wears the high two-horned headdress of the fifteenth century, and a
long closely-fitting gown, with the open bodice that was the mark of
the oldest profession in the world. She is controlling the philosopher
with a bridle and a most murderous-looking bit between his teeth. I
have already explained that Socrates and Xantippe are by no means
intended here, and that the tale is represented of the downfall of
Aristotle in his attempts to prove to Alexander the Great how easily
the charms of woman might be resisted. The subject seems to have
tickled the Middle Ages immensely, and was especially likely to be
popular in Normandy, where Henry d'Andelys, the author of the poem
called "Lai d'Aristote," was born. A very similar tale of the gallant
adventures of the poet Virgil occupied one of the lost stalls of this
Cathedral, and in St. Pierre de Caen both were represented among the
carvings of the church.
There is one more tomb that you must see--among the things that may
most easily be omitted--before you end a visit to the Cathedral, that
is meant to remind you of what is usually forgotten. It is the small
monument in the Chapelle de la Vierge, opposite the great tomb of the
d'Amboises, and next to the magnificent sepulchre on which Diane de
Poitiers mourns for her lost husband. It is generally passed over
because its neighbour's grandeur overshadows it, and it has very
little left to show its value except the beautifully sculptured canopy
and the exquisite carvings and initials on the columns at the side.
This is the tomb of Pierre de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy, who
married Jeanne de Bec Crespin, with a dowry of 90,000 crowns; and it
is he who entered Rouen with the King of France in November 1449, when
the English occupation ceased. He was a brave soldier and a bold
adventurer, both then and afterwards. In 1457, filibustering on the
English coast, he captured Sandwich and took a heavy ransom for the
port. Six years afterwards Louis XI. sent him across the channel again
to fight on the side of Margaret of Anjou. In the war of the League of
Public Weal, he stayed loyal to his master, and was killed by the
rebels at Montlhéry in 1465. "Pierre de Brézé tomba au premier rang,"
writes Commines, "de la mort des braves. Le premier homme qui y mourut
ce fut luy." The friend of Dunois and Xaintrailles could have had no
better end. But it is more with the official than the man that I have
here to do.
The Seneschal of Normandy is an official who is found already at the
Court of the Norman dukes when the province was independent. In the
matter of justice and finance, he held supreme power next to his
sovereign, and is called "La Justice de Normandie" by Wace. He also
presided at meetings of the Échiquier de Normandie in both his
capacities, and it is known that such men as Odo of Bayeux and William
Fitzosbern held this honourable office. With the arrival of Philip
Augustus in Normandy, the office falls into abeyance until the
English appeared in the fifteenth century with the Burgundian motto of
freedom for the people, and restoration of the ancient liberties of
government. The English officials were determined to carry out their
projects thoroughly, and when once they were fixed firmly in Rouen
they began to look through the old charters of Normandy to see what
ancient liberties they could restore. The Grand Seneschal of the
Norman dukes (who had also been English kings) was soon discovered,
and his office was promptly revived, and given in turn to Richard
Wideville, William Oldhall, and Thomas, Lord Scales. The title these
men had held as soldiers, with no idea of using it in its legal or
financial sense, Charles VII. continued, on his return to power, as a
suitable recompense for the services such favourites as de Brézé had
rendered him in his campaigns, and the sounding name of Grand
Seneschal of Normandy henceforth entirely eclipsed the humbler title
of Captain of the Garrison of Rouen.
In 1457 de Brézé was exercising the original functions of the office
in the Échiquier. Six years before, as the commissary of the King in
place of Dunois, he had brought before the Assembly of the Province
the vital questions of the confirmation of the Charte aux Normands, of
the installation of a special financial machinery for the Province,
and other measures necessary at the resumption of authority by the
French. Though he fell temporarily into disfavour with Louis XI., and
was obliged to consent to the marriage of his son Jacques with
Charlotte, daughter of Charles VII. and Agnes Sorel, he resumed his
post of Grand Seneschal on returning from his wars in England, and
died in office.
His son Jacques de Brézé, Comte de Maulévrier, inherited the same
distinction; but having killed his wife, whose birth had shown its
unfortunate effects too soon in flagrant infidelity, he was in turn
disgraced and fined, but in turn was also reinstated. His son Louis de
Brézé was given the apparently imperishable family heirloom of the
office of Grand Seneschal in August 1490, and the great seal of the
Sénéchaussée of Normandy was henceforth his coat of arms. More of a
soldier and a courtier than a man of law or of finance, this de Brézé
left the duties of his office to a numerous staff, whose names have
been preserved in the registers of Rouen. He married first Catherine
de Dreux, "dame d'Esneval," and left his brother-in-law in charge of
the duties of his office, when he left it. During this period it was
that Cardinal d'Amboise organised the Supreme Court of the Échiquier
de Normandie (of which Antoine Bohier, Abbé of St. Ouen, was a member),
in the last years of Charles VIII., which, when the Duc d'Orléans
became Louis XII., was to blossom into the Perpetual Échiquier in the
new "Palais de Justice."
The organisation of this court did away with any practical necessity
for a Grand Seneschal, but Louis de Brézé was still allowed to keep
the honour of the title, and even to take a seat in the court, which
was soon to be called the "Parlement de Normandie" by François
Premier. Louis de Brézé's second wife was the famous Diane de
Poitiers, who called herself "La Grande Sénéschale" until she died,
and who put up the magnificent tomb in alabaster and black marble
which has preserved her husband's memory ever since his death in 1531,
long after the "Palais de Justice" had been built to carry on for ever
those legal functions which had once been a portion of the duties of
his office.