way of the _halles_, the Place Haute-Vieille-Tour and its sister of the
Basse-Vieille-Tour. The first square is a large open place, fenced round
with solid stone buildings, and having on its south side the Chapelle de
la Fierte Saint-Romain. With this monument, on which a flight of steps
leads up to a Renaissance chapel of six stages, is connected a curious
_privilège_ and legend, both of which have of course been recorded
before, but which are interesting enough to bear repetition. The charter
for this privilege was accorded to the chapter of Rouen Cathedral by
King Dagobert--he who founded the Abbey of Saint Denis. Each year, on
Ascension Day, the archbishop was empowered to release a man condemned
to death; and therefore every Ascension Day the good folk of Rouen
flocked into the streets to watch the procession of the Fierte
Saint-Romain. First came the solemn visit of the arm of the Church to
the arm of the Law, with the annual formal proclamation of the
privilege. Then every prison in the city must be searched, and every
prisoner put on oath and examined as to the cause of his imprisonment.
Finally the election of the favoured prisoner was put to the vote by
the chapter, his name sent to the Palais de Justice, and the paper duly
signed and sealed, after which the “messe du prisonnier” was celebrated
in the Salle des Pas-Perdus; and finally, the prisoner himself was
called before his lords, secular and spiritual, and formally examined;
he then confessed to the chaplain of Saint-Romain, his fetters were
removed, and he followed the archbishop to the Place Haute-Vieille-Tour,
where, in the Chapelle de la Fierte, a solemn service made him once more
a free man. A solemn and magnificent procession then bore him, crowned
with flowers, to the great thanksgiving Mass, after which he was free to
go whither he would. No less curious is the legend connected with the
ceremony. It is said that while Romain was bishop of Rouen a terrible
dragon laid waste all the land and devoured the inhabitants.
No one dared to approach this monster, who was known as the Gargoyle,
until Saint Romain, armed only with his sanctity, set out to subdue it,
accompanied by a condemned criminal--the prototype of those who were
released on Holy Thursday--when the Gargoyle at once submitted and, with
the episcopal stole round its neck, was led by the prisoner to the
water’s edge. The sequel does not reflect much credit upon the
bishop--at least, it seems rather of the nature of meanness to conjure
the beast into good nature and then to push it, all unawares, into the
river to drown. At the head of the Portail de la Calende, the north
porch of the Cathedral, stands the figure of Saint Romain, and under his
feet, with the stole round its neck, is the Gargoyle, craning its head
round to look into the face of the bishop with the expression of a very
hideous but very faithful dog--a most disarming expression if it be
meant to represent that worn by the Gargoyle before it was sent to its
death! In memory of this occurrence, the standard of the dragon was
borne in the processions at the _privilège_--banners similar to those of
the dragons at Bayeux and Salisbury. The legend, however, appears to be
of later date than the festival, which is mentioned certainly as early
as the twelfth century, and continued to delight the Rouennais as late
as 1790.
The Abbey Church of St. Ouen is placed at the head of the collegiate
churches of France so far as its beauty and perfection of architecture
is concerned. In its proportion of nave, transepts and choir it is
considered to outshine Cologne, its great rival and contemporary. The
vast area of clerestory and glazed triforium recalls the interior
arrangement of Amiens. The triforium passage is worked between the lower
mullions of the windows, which are duplicated; but, as is pointed out
by Mr. Bond, care was taken that the inner and the outer tracery of the
windows should be different in pattern. Freeman says: “St. Ouen goes
further to unite the two forms of excellence”--external outline and
internal height--“than any other church, French or English,” and states
that “St. Ouen is the loftiest church in the world that has a real
central tower.”
This central lantern is, according to Ferguson, a very noble feature and
appropriate to its position; unhappily it does not enjoy the admiration
of all writers: Ruskin condemns the false buttresses of the tower, which
he describes as merely a hollow crown, and declares that it needs no
more buttressing than does a basket.
The third church of Rouen is that of St. Maclou. Its most noticeable
feature is the west end, which terminates in a very beautiful porch of
pentagonal form, and might be taken as another example of the rich
Flamboyant ornament seen in the western façade of the Cathedral. The
church itself is a complete specimen of its period, and dates from the
latter half of the fifteenth century.
On the north side of the church, in the Rue Martainville, is the Aître
de St. Maclou, an old parish cemetery of the fifteenth century. There is
a small quadrangle, an old disused stone well with an iron crucifix in
the centre, and round all runs a cloister with two low stories, timbered
in black and white, with the famous “Danse Macabre” carved on the lower
beams. It is now used as a school for the poor children of Rouen, and on
working days is full of life--the life of a growing generation going on
side by side with the relics of a dead and half-forgotten past, for the
quaint seriousness of an old fifteenth-century builder has traced upon
the lintel a constant reminder of death and the grave--skulls, bones,
spades, and here and there a grim skeleton Death bearing away a human
figure in his arms. Many of the most beautiful figures are headless, not
from the ravages of a symbolic Death, but from those of a very real and
equally unsparing hand--the hand of the Revolution.
During the Franco-Prussian War Rouen had unhappily to record its own
chapter of reverses, when the French determined to dislodge Manteuffel.
Faidherbe’s army, together with the army of the Havre and General Roy’s
army of the South, had planned out an admirable scheme, which, however,
was lacking in one essential, actual execution. Manteuffel was to be
routed and driven out of Rouen. The Prussians were equally confident of
success, and it is said that Manteuffel ordered his train to take him to
Amiens to be ready next day at twelve o’clock, by which time he felt
sure that he would have disposed of the enemy.
[Illustration: RUE ST. ROMAIN, ROUEN]
“The battle began before daylight, the pursuit lasted until after dark
and was resumed on the following morning; but the victory was virtually
gained when the first blow was struck, or, rather, the first shot fired.
Here and there, on the road along which they were driven, or on the
wooded heights by which the road is in many places commanded, they made
a desperate resistance, but it was throughout a question, in regard to
the French, of the rate of retreat, never a question of retreat and
advance.”
Chapter Five
EVREUX AND LISIEUX
We left Rouen by a “quick” train, that is, one which occupied itself in
stopping at every wayside station that caught its fancy. However, this
mattered little, as the road to Evreux runs through the most enchanting
country, and we had plenty of time to admire it. Wonderful woods stretch
over the slope of the hills and widen out into valleys scattered with
old timbered farm-houses, and here and there a château, seen amongst the
trees of its _propriété_; little poplar-shaded rivers run through the
fields, decked in holiday garlands of loosestrife and meadowsweet and
unmolested by any eager _pêcheur_, whether boy with string and bent pin,
or more “compleat angler” with rod and line. The Seine, divested of
barge and steam tug, greets one by glimpses now and then; and after
leaving the tunnel before Elbœuf, it bursts suddenly into view--a
wide sweep of river, with the busy little town by its side. Then the
valley closes in all at once, and we run under the shadow of chalk
cliffs with steep scarped faces and deep caverns, into whose blackness
we may almost peer from the carriage window. Lastly comes a run up on to
high ground again; and there below, shut in by hills, with three towers
rising from its low roofs, is Evreux. The railway takes a great curve
from one side of the town to the other before running into the station,
so that the place passes in review before one; and it is an impressive
review, seen as we first saw it, in the light of a summer sundown, a
purple haze, “mystic, wonderful,” hanging like a veil over the little
town.
Besides the Cathedral and the bishop’s palace, Evreux possesses little
that strikes one as being either very old or very new; a cheerful, clean
mediocrity prevails all through the town, which, nevertheless, dates
back to very early times. Remains of a Roman settlement have been
discovered some little distance away, at Vieil Evreux, then known as
Mediolanum Aulercolum, and afterwards as Eburovices, whence is derived
the modern name of Evreux. A bishopric was founded at Evreux by St.
Taurin, during the great movement towards Christianity in the fourth
century; later, Clovis destroyed the Roman encampment and founded a town
of his own, which in its turn was burnt and pillaged by the Northmen in
the ninth century. After this it probably shared the bounty of its
former scourge, Duke Rolf, and became part of the Norman duchy and a
Naboth’s vineyard to Count Thibaut of Chartres, who did actually take
possession of it in 962, though Richard the Fearless must have reclaimed
the town, as he presented the “Comté d’Evreux,” which was to pass later
into the family of Montfort l’Amaury, to one of his younger sons. Henry
I. set fire to Evreux for some mysterious reason, but with the full
consent of the bishop, who must have had peculiar ideas on the subject
of his pastoral duties; and in the reign of Cœur-de-Lion John
Lackland gave it up to the French Crown, and afterwards, filled with
remorse, or more probably with alarm, at the news that his brother was
returning from Palestine and might demand what had become of Evreux,
ordered a general massacre of the French garrison quartered there and
ran away himself, leaving his wretched English subjects to bear the
brunt of the French king’s wrath when the story should come to his
knowledge.
[Illustration: EVREUX]
After several vicissitudes of this kind, Evreux was in 1404 finally
joined to the Crown of France, though it still seems to have been tossed
about in the most confusing way, and we hear of it as belonging now to
France, now to Navarre, then sold to the Darnley Stuarts and back again
to France; and so on until Napoleon, having divorced Josephine,
presented her out of his imperial bounty with a part of the Comté
d’Evreux as a compensation for her trials. The modern town, however, has
not at all the air of having been the plaything of kings and states. The
only noticeable traces of its ancient warfare are the machicolated walls
of the bishop’s palace, and the moat below, running between the palace
and the Boulevard Chambaudin. The moat is now filled up by a
kitchen-garden--a striking example of how peace has succeeded war in
Evreux--but it is easy to imagine how it must have looked in the old
days; the dark, still water, the steep walls rising up to their turrets,
the treacherous machicolations, apparently ornamental but in reality
only too useful, and above it all the grey towers of Notre Dame.
The interior of the Cathedral extends in date from the Romanesque to the
Renaissance period. The nave bays offer examples of what is known as
“skeleton construction”; they consist of a Romanesque pier arch (said to
be the remaining work of Lanfranc) surmounted by a large clerestory and
small glazed triforium; the clerestory wall, as Mr. Bond points out, is
so shallow that it “ceases to exist _quâ_ wall.” It is in some way
analogous to the choir of Gloucester in its “attenuated construction.”
The lights are filled in with glass, apparently of the late fifteenth
century. As Whewell says, the transepts and part of the choir are most
remarkable and most ancient examples of the Flamboyant style. The choir,
burnt down in 1346, was restored in the second half of the fourteenth
and early fifteenth centuries; the transept was finished about 1450. The
English took possession of the town in 1418, but this did not in any way
hinder the work from being carried on. In 1422 Tchan le Boy was made
_maître de l’œuvre_, and to him is attributed the Lantern Tower,
springing from a beautiful vaulted base. The _vitrail_ of the Saintes
Maries and its mouldings, probably designed by Le Boy, follows the
English type.
Evreux is, according to Whewell, “a mixture of Flamboyant and
Renaissance. The Flamboyant dies down gradually into Italian, especially
in the series of wooden screens to the chapels round the choir, where
every sort of mixture is noticeable.” In some of the glass and on the
outside panels of the west doors the artists have attempted to show
their knowledge of the newly-discovered science of perspective, but they
pay little regard to the vanishing point. On the north side, the windows
of the aisle, with high pediments cutting the balustrades, are very
beautiful examples of the prevailing style. The western towers “are to
be considered as Gothic conceptions expressed in classical phrases.”
In the far west of the town, at the end of the Rue Josephine, lies
Saint Taurin, the second church of Evreux, in its quiet little square,
screened by magnificent elm-trees, a square and solid-looking building,
with a good deal of work that is very interesting and undoubtedly
ancient. Originally the church formed part of a Benedictine Abbey
founded in 1026; an ancient crypt remains, built, as purports to be the
case with so many churches, round the tomb of the patron, Saint Taurin,
who in the fourth century brought Christianity into the town, and whose
story may be read in the fifteenth-century glass of the choir. His
relics are preserved in a wonderful carved casket of the thirteenth
century, which may be seen by the curious in the church treasury. In
three bays of the south nave the vaulting ends in some curious stone
carving in the form of grotesque heads, which belong to the sixteenth
century.
“Once a cathedral, always a cathedral” was the theory which led us to
Lisieux _en route_ for Bayeux. It seemed almost as absurd that the great
church of St. Pierre should not be counted a cathedral as that St.
Etienne and the other churches of Caen should be churches and nothing
more. In this respect, indeed, Lisieux takes precedence of Caen, for
until the days of the Empire she had a bishopstool of her own, while
Caen never actually possessed the dignity of an episcopal see.
Lisieux is one stage further on the high road between French Normandy
and Norman Normandy, and is some way over the Norman border; at Rouen,
at Evreux even, we were in France, but here all around us, as at Bayeux,
are signs and tokens of a land more closely akin to our own, and we feel
that we have at last reached Normandy proper. Lisieux, both for its
Cathedral and for itself, is full of interest. The general impression is
that of a bright little place with a great deal of life--the life of
shop and market--to be seen on all sides, but none of the modern
commercial spirit, such as dominates a place like Rouen. There is a very
mediæval air about Lisieux, and the old houses, of which there are
plenty, are to be found not in out-of-the-way alleys, but in the chief
streets. The Grande Rue has one magnificent specimen, now a boot-maker’s
shop, opposite the Rue du Paradis; down at the bottom of the hill, in
the Rue de Caen, is a house where Charlotte Corday spent the night on
the way to Paris to fulfil her terrible mission, and the Rue aux Fèvres,
where one seems to have walked straight into the Middle Ages, contains
the “Manoir de François Ier,” a beautiful sixteenth-century house,
from whose name one would at least suppose that François once spent a
night there, whereas he probably never went near the place, and its
chief claim to the title lies in the abundance of carved salamanders
on the splendid house-front, and even these are mixed up with apes and
other grotesque creatures.
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF EVREUX]
The Church of St. Jacques stands almost at the top of the hill, between
the Rue St. Jacques and the Marché au Beurre, where most of the
straggling streets converge. It was built in the last years of the
fifteenth century, and is a fairly complete specimen of the French style
of that period, standing upon a long, wide flight of steps, with a
balustrade running completely round the building. The floor inside
follows the slope of the hill, and slants upwards from west to east.
The church contains some half-effaced frescoes on the nave pillars, and
a very curious old painting on wood, representing the miraculous
translation of St. Ursin’s relics to Lisieux in 1055. This picture hangs
in a chapel in the south aisle, dedicated to St. Antony of Padua, not in
St. Ursin’s own chapel, which is on the other side of the nave.
Lisieux looks like a town with a history, and, like most French towns,
goes back to Roman times, when it was known as Noviomagus or as Lexovii,
from the Gallic tribe which had settled there. Rolf obtained it as part
of his Norman duchy; Geoffrey Plantagenet and Stephen of Blois fought
over it and between them reduced the town to a terrible state of
famine, for which Henry II. of England tried to make amends by causing
his own marriage with Eleanor of Poitou to take place in the Cathedral.
Thomas à Becket took refuge at Lisieux on one occasion and left behind
him some vestments, which are proudly displayed in the chapel of the
_Hospice_.
During the Hundred Years’ War and the religious quarrels two centuries
later, Lisieux shared the fate of other towns as regards sieges and
conflagrations; but after this we hear little of its history, and may
assume that it emerged from its trials much as we see it now--busy and
peaceful once more, with leisure to turn again to the old-world town
routine which makes the Lisieux of to-day.
The interior of St. Pierre, according to Whewell, “bears a great
resemblance to Early English work, although the French square abacus is
still to be found here. The round abacus is noticeable in the arcades
under the windows of the choir, giving quite an English look to this
portion of the church.” There is at the west end a large interior porch,
which is referred to by most writers on architecture. The two towers
vary in their openings, one having lancet lights and the other small
round-headed windows. The nave is large, consisting of eight bays, and
built, it is said, about 1160. The tympana of the choir triforium arches
are filled with plate tracery, quatrefoil and cusped. The most
beautiful interior elevation, however, is that of the north wall of the
transept. Here the three large upper lights remind one of the well-known
“Five Sisters” at York. The lower double-light window is deeply
recessed, with elegant clusters of engaged shafts supporting the
graceful mouldings round the opening. The transept also possesses an
eastern aisle, which is said to be a rarity in France.
[Illustration: ST. JACQUES LISIEUX]
The church itself is unfortunately situated in a corner of the _Place_,
and a large building which abuts on its north-west tower detracts
considerably from its beauty and importance. The south transept door
opens into the Rue du Paradis--a name which one is glad to see preserved
in the neighbourhood of French cathedrals. It may refer to a garden or
close which has been absorbed by surrounding buildings, or to a
closed-in porch, the upper stories of which have been used either as
libraries, or as lodgings for chantry-priests.
Chapter Six
BAYEUX
We read of Bayeux--before going there--as a place where many went but
few stayed, because of the towns behind and before; memories of Caen and
Lisieux, expectations of Coutances and Saint-Lô, which dimmed the modest
light of little Bayeux. It is curious, however, that this should be the
case, when we remember how important was the position it held in the
history of mediæval Normandy. It was the chief town of the country known
as the Bessin, a district lying immediately to the west of Rolf’s duchy
at Rouen, and the conquest of which was the next stage on his westward
road. One interesting point here is that the inhabitants of the Bessin,
even as far back as the later days of the Roman Empire, were not Celts
but Saxons--men of the same race as Rolf, who took possession of Bayeux
in 924, and established there a Danish settlement, which, as Freeman
says, was always a thorn in the side of the Celts, and provoked many
attacks from its Breton neighbours. Saxon and Dane made common cause
against the enemies both to the east and to the west; and thus at Bayeux
there grew up a strong Teutonic colony, without the Frankish element
which, as we have seen, worked such changes at Rouen. The old Norse
religion obtained here long after eastern Normandy had become Christian;
and the Bayeux colony bore much more affinity to the Danish settlements
in England than to that at Rouen, the nucleus of Normandy, which was
hardly Norman at all, whereas, as Freeman remarks, “the acquisition of
Bayeux gave Normandy all that created and preserved the genuine Norman
character.” For this reason William Longsword chose that his son,
Richard the Fearless, should be brought up at Bayeux rather than at
Rouen--so that, living amongst his own people, he might in time come to
be not only Duke of Normandy, but also Duke of the Normans.
The Bessin still preserves this ancient distinction, and both country
and inhabitants bear a great resemblance to those of England. Bayeux
itself is a quiet country town, built up one low hill and down
another--a town of long streets and grey-shuttered houses, possessing
three principal interests--the Cathedral, the Seminary Chapel and the
Tapestry. It is also the birthplace of Alain Chartier, minstrel and
court-poet to Charles VII., and author of that curious document, the
“Curiale,” whose best praise lies in the fact that it was one of the
earliest books selected for publication by Caxton. It is a brilliant and
vivid picture of the court life of the time; and the story says of
Maître Alain that he intended it as an answer to a letter from his
brother Jean, enquiring whether he, too, could not find fame at court.
Certainly it looks as if the favoured brother wished to keep to himself
the good things of life, for although he paints in brilliant colours,
Alain does not spare the follies and vices of court life, and one cannot
help feeling that his object was to put the more obscure Jean “off the
scent.”
Little is known of the circumstances either of Chartier’s birth or his
death, though of his actual life several records exist. He is known to
have been one of the most brilliant men of letters of his time, probably
rivalled only by Charles d’Orléans, and--since a court minstrel is
always a picturesque figure--he has come down to our times surrounded by
a certain halo of romance. His many writings, both in prose and verse,
are very little known to modern readers, though he had many disciples
among the men of his own time, and his “Bréviaire des Nobles” was
considered such a standard for courtly manners that it was apportioned
out, so Jean de Masles tells us, into daily passages for the youth of
the court--that court of which Chartier knew every turn, every corner,
every glittering folly and every dark intrigue--to learn by heart. A
modern statue in his native town at the end of the Rue Général de Daïs
shows him in furred cap and flowing robe, a pen in one hand, and in the
other a sheaf of papers from which he is apparently declaiming some gay
rondel or pathetic ballad.