the effect that he was born there with his two brothers, Jean and
Guillaume; but it has now become a very small and dingy shop, and one
goes away with a feeling that a link with the past has been broken. But
although Chartier’s house would scarcely be singled out as an ancient
landmark, one or two there are in the quiet grey line of the Bayeux
streets that seem to belong to a better time, a time when watchmen
walked the streets by night and armed men clattered down them by day:
and among these stands out the really beautiful gabled specimen at the
corner of the Rue St. Martin. Here cross-timbers, black and white, tall
gables and lattice windows call for our admiration on our road to the
Cathedral; and nearer the great church itself is the sixteenth-century
Maison du Gouverneur, and another “Maison d’Adam.” It is curious how
often street and house names in France reverted in this way to our
common origin. In countless places do we find Maisons d’Adam (Eve
sometimes has a share in the patronage of the house), with their figures
of Adam, Eve and the Serpent; sometimes, as at Rouen, a whole street
bears the name of the Père Adam. It would be interesting to know if this
is a cropping up of the Revolutionary _êgalité_--a wooden form of
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
If so, the idea is certainly before its time, since many of these houses
and streets were built, and presumably named, when the Revolution was as
yet in its cradle.
The Lanterne des Morts, a quaint structure with a quaint title, raises a
perforated cone on the south-west of the Cathedral. This mediæval
lamp-post had it name from the fact that it was lighted whenever a
funeral procession passed through the town; and it must certainly have
added to the impressiveness of the scene, especially when, as was often
the case in old days, the burial took place in the dead of night, and
this red glowing beacon towered above the low roofs like a great funeral
torch as the chanting of the monks broke the stillness, and the sombre
figures with their burden moved into the church.
Returning to the three principal attractions of Bayeux noticed above,
the Cathedral--the only church of importance--falls naturally into the
first place. Entering by one of the five beautiful gabled doorways, one
stands on a platform above the level of the nave floor. The standpoint
being thus raised, the length of the church is apparently enhanced.
There is a church in Rome and another at Modena where this _coup
d’œil_ is effected by the street level being some twenty or thirty
steps above the nave.
The bays of the nave, especially in their lower compartments, are very
remarkable. Above the twelfth-century round-headed pier arches, and
reaching to the very small triforium balustrade, the whole wall face is
decorated with beautiful diaper carving. This surface decoration is to
be found in Westminster Abbey, but not in the same varied richness as on
the walls and spandrils at Bayeux. On one of the bays the old corbels
which carried the organ in the thirteenth century still remain. The
clerestory windows are beautiful in proportion and constructed in
double planes. The spandrils and tracery of the choir arches show
examples of early plate tracery.
In the treasury one of the most interesting pieces of furniture is a
large _armoire_ containing church vestments, and another example of
early joinery is to be found in the fine door in the south aisle. Here
huge planks, some eighteen feet in length, are fastened together by iron
bands and hinges, without framework of any kind. The two western towers,
together with the crypt, are said to be the only parts remaining of the
old church of Odo, brother of the Conqueror.
We made two unsuccessful attempts to obtain entrance to the Seminary
Chapel; but as it is said to be a very beautiful specimen of early
Gothic, the short description given by Whewell may perhaps act as an
incentive to other visitors, and spur them on to greater importunity
than we used. He considers it to be “the most elegant and complete
example of the Early English style. The details resemble those of the
Temple Church in London, in the shafts, capitals, vaulting, &c. The
arrangement of the east end is remarkable, uniting as it does in a
considerable degree the effect of the polygonal apse and of the east
windows, having diverging vaulting but with eastern lights.”
[Illustration: A STREET CORNER, BAYEUX]
At the present day it is upon the Tapestry that Bayeux bases its
chief claim to notoriety, and the first feeling is one of surprise if
not of disappointment on finding that it can hardly be reckoned as
tapestry at all. This impression, however, soon disappears when we come
to consider the interest and importance of the work, not merely as a
local but also as an historic monument. Many and fierce have been the
controversies as to its origin--all the more so from the fact that it
was not brought to light until (speaking relatively) within recent
times, so that little can be gained from history or tradition, or,
indeed, from anything beyond the internal evidence. The form of the
Tapestry is well known to all visitors of Bayeux (and without going so
far afield, a very accurate copy may be seen at the South Kensington
Museum)--a long, narrow piece of linen, embroidered in crewel work of
five different colours, setting forth the conquest of England by Duke
William. In 1724 M. Lancelot found a copy of some of the scenes among
the papers of the Intendant of Normandy, and concluding after a close
investigation that everything pointed to the work being contemporary
with the events depicted, communicated his discovery to the Académie
Française. Montfaucon carried on the investigation, and finally
discovered the original of Lancelot’s copy in a length of tapestry which
was hung round the Cathedral at Bayeux on great festivals. The early
authorities seem to have entertained no doubt of its being contemporary,
but later accounts set forth theories so widely different from one
another, and in some cases so flatly contradictory, that it is
impossible to enter into them within a very limited space. Following the
authority of Freeman, who treats the subject in a very complete manner
in his “History of the Norman Conquest” (vol. iii. Appendix, note A), we
may assume that the “Toilette du Duc Guillaume,” as it is called in an
ecclesiastical inventory at Bayeux of the fifteenth century, is
contemporary with the history of the Conqueror, but is more likely to
have been connected with Odo than with Queen Matilda. This theory is
supported by the prominence given in the various scenes to “Turold,
Vital, and Wadard, ” who are mentioned in Domesday Book as vassals of the
bishop, but are in themselves quite unimportant, which would suggest
that the original interest of the Tapestry was intended to be a purely
local one, for the Bishop of Bayeux alone. Freeman thinks it possible
that the work may have been done in England. When Napoleon became First
Consul he sent for the tapestry from Bayeux, and displayed it in the
Louvre as an incentive to Frenchmen to conquer England as Duke William
had conquered it some seven centuries before. After this it returned to
Bayeux, and was formerly shown to the curious visitor rolled on a
windlass; but later days have treated it more reverently, and it is now
preserved under glass in a condition of colour and texture which,
considering its age and its adventures, it little short of marvellous.
Side by side with that of the Conqueror, the other memory which Bayeux
calls up is undoubtedly that of the greatest bishop the little city ever
knew, who governed it during half a century of Normandy’s most stirring
history. Odo’s life-story stands out among those of the men of his time,
indeed, much as does the life-story of his half-brother, Duke William.
In an age when bishops wielded sword as well as mace, he outstripped his
contemporaries not only in ecclesiastical power, but in the highest of
temporal ambitions. Like Wolsey, he aimed at being Pope above all his
other goals. In the meantime Odo despised no stepping-stones to power.
He became Bishop of Bayeux in 1048; fought with William at Senlac, “in
full armour by the side of his brother and sovereign, as eager and ready
as William himself to plunge in wherever in the fight danger should
press most nearly,” and in the following year, when fear of foreign
invasions called the new king back to Normandy, he was left in joint
command of England with Fitz-Osbern, and given the title of Earl of
Kent. Thus we see that Odo had two distinct provinces--a secular one in
England, a spiritual one in Normandy--and his rule seems to have
differed according to the province in which he found himself. As Earl of
Kent, the native chroniclers declare he was harsh, oppressive and
tyrannical; his followers were lawless, and were dreaded through his
territory. The chroniclers of Bayeux, however, show him up as a
munificent prelate, generous in giving, a patron of “learning and good
conversation, ” and, above all, a benefactor to his see in that he
rebuilt the church where his flock worshipped, and where the crypt and
part of the western towers still bear witness of his work. William of
Poitiers, the chronicler of all that William did, extends his panegyrics
to Odo, and declares that he was appreciated and beloved both in
Normandy and England. But this probably results, Freeman points out,
from the immense admiration of William the chronicler for William the
duke, which would probably--so partial were historians in those
days--lead him to believe that not only was the Conqueror impeccable,
but his lieutenants also.
Caen follows as a natural corollary to Bayeux, and once one has embarked
upon a journey in the Bessin and Calvados districts, it seems almost
invidious to stay in one town without paying a visit to the others, both
being so intimately bound up with the story of the Conqueror.
The churches of Caen have never had any pretence to episcopal dignity,
and it is curious that this city, richer in great churches than any town
in Normandy, should never have been raised to a bishopric, more
especially considering the number of cathedral towns which beside such a
city as this rank as hardly more than large villages, and yet which,
because they possess one church of importance, must take precedence of
Caen and other bishopless cities. Apart from its ecclesiastical dignity,
however, Caen should be visited because it is a town both ancient and
beautiful, and in memory of the great duke, who, English sovereign
though he was, yet seems to come before us much more vividly in Normandy
than in England. It was the Conqueror who made Caen--perhaps not as it
is to-day, but at any rate as it was in the Middle Ages. Caen, or
Cadomum as the Normans found it, was a tiny parish lying on the
outskirts of the Bessin district, burnt probably by the first Norman
invaders, and likewise included in Rolf’s conquests, but of too little
importance either to be harmed by the one or benefited by the other.
Then arose the discussion about William’s marriage with Matilda, the
dispensation granted by the Pope for their breach of canonical law and
the conditions under which William might keep his wife--that the duke
and the duchess should each build an abbey church and foundation within
the town of Caen, that of William to serve for men, that of Matilda for
women; and forthwith the little town became a centre of attraction,
alive with workmen, visited no doubt from time to time by the duke and
duchess themselves in order that they might see how the work was going
forward. The Abbaye aux Dames was the first to be consecrated. Matilda
wished to hurry on the work, probably, as one writer says, from feminine
impatience to complete her task. The church finished under her auspices,
however, was too quickly erected to be more than a fragment, “simply so
much as was necessary for the devotions of the sisterhood, ” and its real
completion belongs to a day later than the time of Matilda, though her
original plan was in all probability carried out to the end. William,
however, took his time over the building of his church, and watched it
to the finish. It was consecrated, with the exception of the two western
towers, by Lanfranc in 1077, and stands to-day, in its strength,
simplicity and majesty, a fitting and lasting memorial of the man who
ruled England and Normandy and kept them with hand of iron.
“The church of William, vast in scale, bold and simple in its design,
disdaining ornament, but never sinking into rudeness, is indeed a church
worthy of its founder. The minster of Matilda, far richer even in its
earliest parts, smaller in size, more delicate in workmanship, has
nothing of the simplicity and grandeur and sense of proportion which
marks the work of her husband. The one is the expression in stone of the
imperial will of the conquering duke; the other breathes the true spirit
of his loving and faithful duchess.”
The foundation of the two great abbeys soon led to a growing population
outside their walls. Houses were built around the Trinité on the hilltop
and around Saint Etienne in the plain; various trades sprang up, we may
suppose, within the town; and a castle--always a patent of nobility to
any town--was built on the hill, where William might lodge during his
visits to Caen. These visits became more and more frequent until Caen
was elevated almost to the rank of a royal residence; and even when Duke
William became King of England, he found nothing in his new kingdom so
pleasant as the little city under the hill. He built walls all round the
town; he conceded to the inhabitants commercial privileges such as were
enjoyed by Rouen and other large cities, together with the right of
holding fairs, though the fairs of Caen never attained such celebrity as
did those at Troyes; and finally, it was through the streets of Caen
that his funeral train passed, bearing the Conqueror to his long rest
in the church which he had built in the city which he had loved.
“The death of a king in those days came near to a break-up of all civil
society. Till a new king was chosen and crowned, there was no longer a
power in the land to protect or to chastise. All bonds were loosed; all
public authority was in abeyance; each man had to look to his own as
best he might.” Thus is described the state of feudal England and feudal
Normandy after the death of the Conqueror at Rouen. A state of the
utmost confusion prevailed; and apparently quite as an afterthought,
masses were offered for the soul of him who so lately had kept all in so
strict an order. This confusion was not the outcome of any personal
disrespect to the dead king; it was simply a reaction consequent on the
removal of the one great headstone, the one great reliance of the realms
on both sides of the Channel. In the meantime the body of William was
borne to Caen to await burial. A Norman knight of the name of Herlwin
took upon himself the task of ordering funeral rites proper to the
degree of such a man, since neither kinsfolk nor servants seemed willing
to stir a finger. Once at Caen, however, the Conqueror’s faithful
followers received their dead master with all the honour and respect
which they had shown to him while living. The procession started in full
pomp towards Saint Stephen’s and was met by the Abbot Gilbert, his
clergy, and a number of laymen. The monks fell into file, the solemn
chant arose; but suddenly the orderly progress was arrested by an event
as startling as any in the lifetime of the great man they were burying.
As the crowds filled the streets, a fire broke out in one of the houses;
and as in the Middle Ages fires were easier to kindle and harder to
quench than in later days, the flames spread along from house to house,
till it seemed as though a sheet of fire were pursuing the Conqueror to
his grave. Soon only the monks remained of the great company that had
set out from the monastery, and they went on apparently as though
nothing had happened, whilst the clergy, the lay helpers and the rest of
the crowd dispersed to save their belongings from destruction, the dead
man forgotten in the very real and living present need. “$1
$2 ”
At Saint Stephen’s were waiting a goodly company of bishops, Lanfranc of
Canterbury, Odo of Bayeux, William’s brother; Gilbert of Evreux, the
preacher; and Gilbert of Lisieux, learned in medicine; with Geoffroy de
Montbray, bishop of Coutances; and the saintly pupil of Lanfranc, Anselm
of Bec. The scene which followed is an interesting one. The funeral mass
was sung, the body being borne along the nave and chancel up to the
altar; then Gilbert of Lisieux spoke the funeral oration, setting forth,
as was the custom, the tale of William’s battles and conquests, of his
glory in war and his firm rule in peace, of his defence of the Church
and his zeal against her enemies. “Pray, O people, that his sins may be
forgiven before God, and if he had sinned against you in anything,
forgive him that also yourselves.” At the close of the oration all heads
turned towards Ascelin, the son of Arthur, as he stood forth, and
forbade the body to be buried in land which the Conqueror had wrested
from his father. “I ... claim the land; I challenge it as mine before
all men, and in the name of God I forbid that the body of the robber be
covered with my mould, or that he be buried within the bounds of mine
inheritance.” Certainly here seemed some just impediment. An inquiry,
necessarily brief because of the time and place, was held, and Ascelin’s
witness proved true; and then and there a sum was paid down to the
claimant. Thus the great abbey which he had built was not lawfully his
own until the day of his burial.
[Illustration: BAYEUX FROM THE MEADOWS]
Another memory of the Conqueror in Caen remains in the Truce of God
which he imposed upon the Seigneurs of Normandy. Comparing this “Trenga
Dei” with the Crusades, Freeman says: “The call to the Crusade fell in
with every temper of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God
fell in with only one, and that its least powerful side. Good and bad
men alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War.
The men who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found
themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.” The Truce was
preached first in Aquitaine in 1054, and Normandy was almost the last
country to receive it. When it reached the north of France it was in a
somewhat different form to that in which it had started. The early
preachers began by denouncing all private warfare; but even in an age
quickly fired by enthusiasm for a new movement, and more especially for
a religious movement, obedience to this decree was found to be
impossible. Men had hated one another too long to leap suddenly into a
state of perpetual love; and the decree was modified, imposing
abstention from private quarrels from Wednesday evening to Monday
morning in each week. Even this seemed at first too much for the Norman
spirit--“the luxury of destruction was dear to the Norman mind”--but the
preaching of Bishops Richard and Hagano at length took effect, and at
Caen, in 1042, was convoked the famous Council which was formally to
receive the Truce, and command its observance all through the land.
Since then more than eight centuries have gone by; and yet to-day no
place seems to breathe forth the spirit of the great duke as does Caen.
In the castle on the cliffs at Falaise he was born, at Rouen was his
seat and capital, at Bayeux his victories are preserved in a lasting
memorial; but at Caen he lived and lies buried, at Caen he built houses
and churches and city walls, and at Caen we may still think of him, not
as the usurper of Harold’s throne, not as the oppressor of Hereward the
Saxon and the stern, uncompromising lord of the English, but as the hero
of the Normans, a figure more commanding even than the pioneer Rolf, and
one whose best praise lies in those memories of “le Conquérant” that
still haunt the Normandy of to-day.
After William’s death the history of Caen is practically the history of
every town in Northern France. He had provided it with a commerce of its
own, so that it might be strengthened from within, and he had fortified
it against assault from without; it fell into English hands, like its
neighbour cities, both under Edward III. and Henry V.; it was ravaged by
the terrible “Black Death” in the fourteenth century, and harassed by
the League wars and stirred up by the revolt of the “Nu-pieds” under
Louis XIII.
Finally, we find the Girondist party flying from the “Convention” at
Paris and setting up an insurrection in the provinces, making Caen their
headquarters; and one more page from the awful book of the Revolution
shows us Charlotte Corday setting out from Caen, grim, ungirlish, filled
only with her dreadful purpose, down the long, white road to
Paris--which to her meant Marat.
Chapter Seven
SAINT-LÔ AND COUTANCES
In very early days there was in Northern Gaul a little city on a
hill-top, with a river running below, and this city was called Briovira,
after the name of the river Vire. But in Christian times a certain
bishop of Coutances, a native of Briovira, extended his pastoral
protection to his birthplace, and called it by his own name, Laudus, or
Lô, by which it is known to this day, although the bishopstool has no
longer a place there. Saint-Lô does not strike one, either at first
sight or afterwards, as being a cathedral city. The first view, from the
railway, is a very rural one, and from an artist’s point of view the
place is more or less ideal, possessing as it does two important
qualifications of a “paintable” town--it has a river, and it stands on a
hill. Only the outskirts of Saint-Lô lie about the waterside; the real
town is higher up on the steep frowning cliff, and the Rue Torteron
straggles across the bridge and up the hill, and finally, by means of a
steep little alley, leads out into the Place Ferrier, where stands the
Cathedral. Here, too, the Saturday market is held, and then the
hill-top, usually quiet and deserted, blossoms into life, and the Rue
Torteron is all a-clatter with farmers’ carts and the scurry of
_sabots_. The western half of the market-place is known as the “Place
des Beaux-Regards,” and from it, as its name testifies, stretches a wide
view of the river, fields, and wooded hills beyond; here, also, is the
fountain, crowned by Leduc’s graceful bronze peasant-girl, with
water-vessel poised easily over her shoulder.
Saint-Lô was a Huguenot stronghold during the wars of the League, and
the cliff-face still retains a fragment of the old defences, the Tour
Beauregard, an ivy-covered ruin clinging to the rock, which probably
served as a watch-tower in times when the meadows of the Vire were not
so peaceful as they are to-day.
The year 1575 saw the siege which the little town counts among the great
events of its history, when Colombières, the Huguenot, held out so
bravely against the Catholic army. Colombières had marched into Saint-Lô
some months before in order to place a garrison there in case of
assault, and the townspeople welcomed him almost as a protecting angel.
In the next year the enemy’s forces marched up to the Vire under
Matignon, and demanded the surrender of the garrison. Colombières sent
back a defiant message in answer, and the enemy’s guns were soon
thundering about the rocks above the river. Saint-Lô happens to be
guarded by water on three sides--on two by tributary streams, on the
third by the Vire itself, and this western side is further strengthened
by the steep precipice, falling sheer down to what is now the Basse
Ville. Matignon determined to take a bold line and attack the Tour
Beauregard as well as the Tour de la Rose, which stood in a more
approachable part. All day the artillery played upon the cliff-face, and
all day Colombières cheered on his men to the defence, when a breach at
the Tour Beauregard had considerably detracted from their strongest
position. At last the gallant leader, springing upon the ramparts,
braved the enemy’s fire, and fell dead before their eyes rather than
suffer the indignity of surrender. When his inspiring presence was gone
from their midst the Huguenots seemed to lose heart; their defence
wavered, their fire became less fierce, and at the end the Catholics
stormed the rock and poured into the market-place.
[Illustration: ST. LÔ]
It is interesting to note that during the siege, as at an earlier one at
Beauvais, the women of the town signalised themselves by the good
service they rendered, though it was certainly service of a
blood-thirsty order, since it consisted in pouring down the terrible
streams of boiling pitch and lead upon the heads of the besiegers; a
mode of defence, however, very often resorted to by those who did not
use firearms.