Bourbon, to curtail the indulgences of the sisterhood, by keeping them
more closely confined, increasing the number of fast-days, and generally
introducing a system of greater rigor. But the nuns remonstrated against
the innovation, and had recourse to the Bishop of Bayeux, alledging the
injustice of their being called upon to submit themselves to
regulations, to which they had not originally subscribed. The prelate,
who felt the point to be a delicate one, refused to decide; and the
matter ended in an appeal to the Pope, who, finally, allowed the nuns to
retire into other convents, where they might enjoy the freedom they
claimed.
When, after the capture of Caen by Edward, in 1346, the inhabitants
resolved upon fortifying the town anew, the abbeys of St. Stephen and of
the Trinity, both of which lay in the suburbs, were excluded from the
line of circumvallation; and the consequence was their exposure to
insults and pillage. The monks and nuns were therefore obliged to look
to their own defence; and, upon King John's coming to Caen, eight years
afterwards, they obtained from him letters patent, authorizing them to
encircle their convents with walls, towers, and fosses of their own.
Hence originated the strange anomaly of a fortress and nunnery within
the same precincts. The sisterhood, alarmed at their situation, sold
their plate, and even the shrines of their relics, to provide for their
safety; and permission was afterwards granted them to levy contributions
upon their vassals, for the purpose of expediting and completing the
task.--In the reign of Henry VI. during the wane of the British power in
France, orders were issued by the monarch for the dismantling of the
fort of the Trinity, lest it should be seized by the inhabitants of the
neighborhood, who were endeavoring to get possession of Caen. But the
abbess resisted the royal edict; and, under an apprehension, lest the
attempt to carry it into effect should induce her to open the gates to
the insurgents, her resistance was allowed to be effectual.--King
Charles repeatedly took up his quarters in this monastery, while his
army was laying siege to Caen, in 1450, and mention continues to be made
of the fortress till the commencement of the following century; but
after that time, it appears to have been suffered to go to ruin.
M. De la Rue rejects, as unfounded, the statement of the Bishop of
Avranches, which has obtained general credence, that the spires of the
western towers of the abbey were destroyed in 1360, by Charles the Bad,
on account of their use for the detecting of the approach of an enemy.
His principal argument against the fact is, that the King of Navarre was
at that very time at peace with France; and therefore, supposing it to
be certain that they were taken down by that prince, he is of opinion,
that their demolition must have been ordered to prevent them from
serving as landmarks to the English. At the same time, he is evidently
inclined to think that the towers were never surmounted by spires at
all; and he observes, with much apparent justice, that, if there really
were any, and if they were really destroyed at the period alledged, the
towers must have been left for a long time in a ruined state, as their
present termination is known to be the work of the eighteenth century.
The original charters and title-deeds of the abbey of the Trinity were
lost during the revolution. They perished in consequence of the extreme
care of the last abbess, who, full of anxiety for their preservation,
secured them in trunks, and hid them in the ceiling of the church. But,
in those disastrous times, the lead that covered the churches was among
the earliest objects of plunder; and the consequence was, that the roof
was stripped; the boxes exposed to the rain; the wood and paper wholly
destroyed; and the tin cases that held the charters so eaten by rust,
that their contents were rendered illegible. It was in this state that
they were found by the Abbé De la Rue, who was in possession of the
secret, and who, on his return to France, after the cessation of the
troubles and the death of the abbess, obtained permission from the
prefect for the search to be made.
The church of the abbey of the Trinity had its own peculiar rites; and,
till the period of the revolution, the community were in the habit of
printing their liturgy annually in latin. A very beautiful quarto
volume, containing the ritual, was published at Caen, in 1622, by the
order of Laurence de Budos, then abbess. It was probably from pride at a
privilege of this nature, and from a confidence in their strength, that
the nuns persisted in celebrating the ridiculous, or, it might almost be
called, blasphemous _Fête des Fous_, for a hundred years after the
Council of Basle had decreed the suppression of it throughout
Christendom. In imitation too of the Boy-Bishops of Bayeux, Salisbury,
and other churches, the nuns of the Holy Trinity had their
Girl-Abbesses. The ancient rolls of the monastery make mention, under
the head of expenses in 1423, of six sols given, by way of offering, on
Innocents'-Day, "_aux petites Abbesses_." This was the day on which the
Girl-Abbess was elected: the superior of the convent resigned to her the
abbatial stall and crozier at vespers, as soon as they came to the verse
of the _Magnificat_, beginning "_Deposuit potentes de sede_;" and the
farce was kept up till the same hour the succeeding evening. The Abbé De
la Rue, who mentions this fact, observes with justice, that another
circumstance, which appears from these accounts, is still more
extraordinary;--that, even as late as 1546, the abbess was in the habit
of making an annual payment of five sols to the cathedral of Bayeux, for
its Boy-Bishop. The entry is in the following terms: "_Au petit évêque
de Bayeux, pour sa pension, ainsi qu'il est accoutumé, V. sous._" During
the early part of the preceding century, the abbot of St. Stephen was
also accustomed to pay twenty sols per annum, on the same account; but
his payment was probably discontinued immediately after the edict of the
Council of Basle, though the ceremony of the Boy-Bishop was not
suppressed at Bayeux till 1482. Indeed, only six years before that time,
the inventory of the sacristy of the cathedral enumerated, among its
other valuables,
"Two mitres for the Boy-Bishop,
The crozier belonging to the Boy-Bishop,
The Boy-Bishop's mittens,
And four small copes of scarlet satin, for the use
of the singing-boys on Innocents'-Day."
The abbess of Caen, through the medium of her official, exercised
spiritual jurisdiction over the parishes of St. Giles, Carpiquet,
Oistreham, and St. Aubin-d'Arquenay, by virtue of a privilege granted by
the bishops of Bayeux, as well for herself and her nuns, as for the
vassals of the several parishes. This privilege, however, extended no
farther than to an exemption from certain pecuniary fines, which the
diocesans, in the middle ages, exacted from their flocks; and even in
this confined acceptation, it was more than once the subject of
litigation between the convent and the see. In like manner, the civil
and criminal jurisdiction claimed by the abbess over the same parishes,
brought her occasionally into disputes with the bailiff and viscount of
Caen: her rights were repeatedly called in question, and she was obliged
to have recourse to legal tribunals to establish them. The following
very extraordinary suit is at once illustrative of the fact, and of the
character of the times:--In the year 1480, an infant was eaten up in its
cradle, by a _bestia porcina_, within the precincts of the parish of St.
Giles. The abbess' officers seized the delinquent, and instituted a
process for its condemnation before the seneschal of the convent. During
the time, however, that the question was pending, the king's
attorney-general interfered. He summoned the abbess before the
high-bailiff, and, maintaining that the crime had been committed within
the cognizance of the bailiwick, he claimed the beast, and demanded that
its trial should take place before one of the royal tribunals. Debates
immediately arose as to the limits of their respective jurisdictions:
inquiries were set on foot; memorials and counter-memorials were
presented; and the abbess finally succeeded in carrying her point, only
by dint of proving that she had, some years previously, burned a young
woman in the _Place aux Campions_, for having murdered a man in the
self-same house where the hog devoured the child.
Among the obligations originally imposed upon this convent, was that of
giving a dinner annually, on Trinity Sunday, to such of the inhabitants
of the parish of Vaux-sur-Saulles and their domestics, as had resided
there a year and a day. The repast was served up within the abbey walls,
and in the following manner:--After the guests had washed their hands in
a tub of water, they seated themselves on the ground, and a cloth was
spread before them. A loaf, of the weight of twenty-one ounces, was
then given to each individual, and with it a slice of boiled bacon, six
inches square. To this was added a rasher of bacon, fried; and the feast
concluded with a basin of bread and milk for every person, all of them
having likewise as much beer and cider as they could drink. The dinner,
as may naturally be supposed, lasted from three to four hours; and it
will also not be difficult to imagine, that the entertaining of such a
motley throng on such a day, could not fail to be attended with great
annoyance to the nuns, and with various inconveniences. The convent had
therefore, from a very early date, endeavored to free themselves from
the obligation, by the payment of a sum of money; and, in times of war,
the town of Caen had occasionally interposed, and forced the people to
accept the composition, from an apprehension, lest the enemy should gain
possession of the fort of the Trinity, by introducing themselves into it
among the authorized guests. It appears that, in 1429, the abbess
purchased an exemption at the price of thirty livres, a sum equivalent
to thirty-seven and a half quarters of corn, at a time when wheat sold
for two sols the bushel; and twenty-two years subsequently, Charles VII.
then King of France, granted his letters patent, abolishing the dinner
altogether, upon condition of a like sum being annually paid to the
parochial chest.
To the abbey church of the Trinity were attached several chapels, as
well without as within its walls: the most remarkable of these was that
of St. Thomas, generally known by the name of _St. Thomas l'Abattu_, in
the suburb of St. Giles. It was, in its original state, an hospital, and
was called the Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr in the fields, whence
De la Rue infers that it was built in commemoration of Thomas-à-Becket,
and was probably erected immediately after his canonization in 1173.
Huet, on the contrary, tells us, that it had existed "from time
immemorial;" and Ducarel, who has described and figured it,[53] appears
to have also regarded it as of very high antiquity. The gradual
disappearance of leprosy had caused it to be long since diverted from
its original purpose. In 1569, it was pillaged by the Huguenots; and, as
no pains were taken to repair the injuries then done, it continued in a
state of dilapidation, imperceptibly wasting away, till the period of
the revolution, when it was sold, together with the other national
property; and even its ruins have now disappeared.
Happily, the abbatial church of the Trinity was at that time more
fortunate: it was suffered to continue unappropriated, till, upon the
institution of the Legion of Honor, Napoléon applied it to some purposes
connected with that body, by whom it was a few years ago ceded for its
present object, that of a workhouse for the department. The choir alone
is now used as a church: the nave serves for work-rooms; and, to render
it the better applicable to this purpose, a floor has been thrown
across, which divides it into two stories.
It has been observed in a recent publication,[54] that "a finer specimen
of the solid grandeur of Norman architecture, is scarcely to be found
any where than in the west front of this church," (the subject of the
_twenty-fourth plate_.) "The corresponding part of the rival abbey of
St. Stephen, is poor when compared to it; and Jumieges and St. Georges
equally fail in the comparison. In all these, there is some
architectural anomaly: in the Trinity none, excepting indeed the
balustrade at the top of the towers; and this is so obviously an
addition of modern times, that no one can be misled by it.[55] This
balustrade was erected towards the beginning of the seventeenth century,
when the oval apertures and scrolls, seen in Ducarel's print,[56] were
introduced."--It may be well to take the present opportunity of making a
general observation, that though, in speaking of this and of other
churches, the term, _west front_, may commonly be applied to the part
containing the principal entrance; yet that this term must be received
with a certain degree of latitude. The Norman religious edifices are far
from being equally regular in their position as the English. With a
general inclination to the west, they vary to every point of the
compass.[57] The church of the abbey of the Trinity fronts the
north-west--The architrave of the central door-way is composed of many
surfaces of great depth: two-thirds of them are flat and plain, and
recede so little, as to afford but small opportunity for light and
shade. Its decorations are few and simple, consisting almost wholly of
the billet and chevron moulding, the former occupying the exterior, the
latter the interior, circles. In the outermost band, the billets form a
single row, and take the curve of the arch; the succeeding circle
exhibits them with an unusual arrangement, placed compound, and all
pointing to the centre of the door. These, with the addition of
quatrefoils, and of some grotesque heads, which serve as key-stones to
the mouldings over the windows of the triforium, are the only ornaments
which this front can boast. The capitals throughout it are of the
simplest forms, being in general little more than inverted cones,
slightly truncated, for the purpose of making them correspond with the
columns below. Some few of them have the addition of small projecting
knobs immediately below the angles of the impost; while those in the
square towers are formed by a short cylinder, whose diameter exceeds
that of the shaft, surmounted by a square block, by way of abacus. The
towers and buttresses decrease in size upwards.--An architectural
peculiarity deserving of notice in this front, lies in the triangular
mouldings, observable in the spandrils of the arches of the clerestory.
The same are occasionally, though rarely, found in other buildings of
unquestionably Norman origin, as in the church at Falaise, and in
Norwich Cathedral[58] in our own country. They are here more
particularly noticed, as serving to illustrate what has been considered
an anomaly in the architecture of some of the round-towered churches in
Norfolk and Suffolk,[59] where the windows are formed with heads of this
shape. Antiquaries, unwilling to admit that the _flat-sided arch_, as it
has been called by a perversion of terms, was introduced into England
prior to the fourteenth century, have labored to prove that such windows
were alterations of that period, contrary to the evidence of every part
of the building.
[Illustration: Plate 25. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY, CAEN.
_East End._]
The east-end of the choir (_plate twenty-five_) presents a bold
termination, pierced with ten spacious windows, that give light to the
choir, each of them encircled with a broad band, composed of the same
ornaments as are found in the rest of the exterior of the edifice. This
part of the church is divided in its elevation into three compartments,
the lower containing a row of small blank arches, while in each of the
upper two is a window of an unusual size for a Norman building, but
still without mullions or tracery. The windows ore separated by thick
cylindrical pillars, which rise from immediately above a row of windows
that give light to the crypt. The heads of these windows are level with
the surface of the ground; and the wall, in this subterranean part of
the building, is considerably thicker than it is above. The balustrade
of quatrefoils above appears coeval with the rest, and may be regarded
as tending to establish the originality of that in the nave of the abbey
church of St. Stephen.[60]
[Illustration: Plate 26. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.
_East end, interior._]
[Illustration: Plate 27. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.
_North side of the Choir, upper compartment._]
The _twenty-sixth_ and _twenty-seventh plates_ shew the interior of the
choir, as the _thirty-third_ does the most remarkable of its capitals.
This part of the church, in its general arrangement, very much resembles
the same portion in St. Georges and in Norwich Cathedral. The second,
however, of these buildings, retains the original groinings of the roof,
which in our English church have been sacrificed, to make room for large
pointed windows; while in the church of the Trinity they have given
place to a spacious dome, painted with a representation of the
Assumption. In the foreground of this picture, is seen the royal
foundress of the abbey; and, according to common tradition, the portrait
of a female dressed in the habit of a nun, on the north side of the high
altar, is also intended for her. But traditions of this nature are too
vague for much reliance to be placed upon them. The altar-piece itself
is an _Adoration of the Shepherds_, not devoid of merit.--The plain
arches, with their truncated columns, seen in the upper part of _plate
26_, near the front on either side, and repeated in the following plate,
are those which terminate the flat part of the choir. The wide unvaried
extent of blank surface beneath them is attributable to modern masons,
who have filled up and covered arches without mercy or discretion, and
have pierced the walls anew with plain mean door-ways. The windows are
lofty, and of fine proportions. Their glazing is probably of the time of
Louis XIV. when the gorgeous splendor of painted glass gave way
to the less beautiful and less appropriate ornaments, supplied by the
fancy of the plumbers.[61] The narrow passage formed in the thickness of
the wall, with its small arches variously decorated, surrounds the whole
building; choir, nave, and transepts. In the architectural arrangement
of this portion of the edifice, where every large arch of the windows is
flanked by two lesser ones of the triforium, the church of the Trinity
agrees with the cathedral at Oxford, as figured in Mr. Carter's work on
ancient architecture[62] and there treated as a genuine Saxon building,
erected by King Ethelred, after the destruction of the monastery by the
Danes in 1004. But the capitals of the columns in the two churches bear
only a slight resemblance to each other. Those at Oxford[63] are among
the most beautiful left us by early architects, consisting chiefly of
foliage; and, in one instance, of a very elegant imitation of a coronet.
In the abbatial church at Caen, they display the same mixture of Grecian
and barbarous taste, the same beauties, the same monstrosities, and the
same apparent aim at fabulous or emblematic history, as has been
previously remarked at St. Georges. On the angles of one, which contains
four storks, arranged in pairs, will be found an obvious representation
of the heraldic fleur-de-lys. In that, figured below it on the plate, is
a head placed over two lions, commonly believed to be intended for a
portrait of the Conqueror.
[Illustration: Plate 28. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.
_Arches under the central Tower looking from the South Transept._]
[Illustration: Plate 29. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.
_East side of the South Transept._]
The _twenty-eighth_ and _twenty-ninth plates_ are devoted to the
transepts: the first of them exhibits two of the arches which support
the central tower. Finer specimens of the kind are scarcely to be seen
in Normandy; and the decoration of them is very peculiar, consisting
altogether of numerous bands of quatrefoils in bas-relief. The sculpture
of the capitals is likewise remarkable: that of one of them represents
entire rams; while the opposite one has only the heads of the same
animal at its angles, accompanied with an ornament, which the writer of
this article does not remember to have met with elsewhere. The arch that
separates the tower from the nave,[64] rises higher than any of the
rest, and is obtusely pointed; but its decorations correspond with those
of the others, and it appears to be of the same date.[65] For the
purpose of more effectually marking the connection of the _twenty-eighth
plate_ with the preceding, it may be well to observe, that the
string-course, seen in the former through the first arch and adjoining
the base of the truncated column, is the same which, in _plate
twenty-seven_, forms the base-line of the windows. The same
string-course in the choir runs immediately below the gallery; but in
the transepts, this gallery is upon a different line, being elevated by
the interposition of a very beautiful range of small blank arches,
between the larger arches below and the windows of the clerestory; and
these latter, in conjunction with the small arches, only occupy the same
space as the windows of the choir. The southern transept has been here
selected for publication, as being the most perfect. Had the opposite
one been equally so, it would have been preferable, from the
curious character of its capitals, many of which are taken from
scripture-history. But these are, unfortunately, much mutilated.
[Illustration: Plate 30. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.
_Interior of the Nave looking west._]
In the _thirtieth plate_ is given a general view of the upper half of
the interior of the nave, shewing the western extremity, with the three
compartments nearest to it on either side; and here, as in the two
preceding plates, it is impossible not to regret the existence of the
floor, which, by dividing the church into different stories, greatly
injures the effect of the whole. Neither in this nor in any other part
of the building, are there side-chapels or aisles. The architecture of
the nave, in its general arrangement, resembles that of the transepts;
except as to the arches of the second row, which are peculiar. Upon an
attentive examination too, it will be found that, notwithstanding the
apparent uniformity, no two compartments are precisely alike, while the
capitals are infinitely varied. This playfulness of ornament is
remarkable in a building, whose architect appears, at first view, to
have contemplated only grandeur and solidity. At the farther end of the
nave, are seen the five windows of the principal front, together with a
portion of the great arch of entrance. The remaining part of this arch,
as well as of the others of the lower tier, with the pillars that
support them, are concealed by the floor. The gallery, it will be
remarked, sinks at the western end, as in the choir, and is connected
with the sides by a staircase. The roof is only of lath and plaster,
painted in imitation of masonry.
[Illustration: Plate 31. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.
_South side of the Nave, exterior._]
The _thirty-first plate_ exhibits three of the eight compartments of the
clerestory, on the south side of the nave, as seen externally. The
cloisters and conventual buildings hide the whole of the opposite side
of the church; and, perfect as is the part here represented, there is
nothing to be seen below; for a range of work-shops and of sheds has
obstructed the view of the exterior, as effectually as the floor has of
the corresponding portion within. The corbel-table, with its monsters of
all descriptions, affords a curious specimen of the sculpture of the
age. The string-course above it is rich and beautiful. The same is also
the case with the decorations of the windows, as well as of the blank
arches with which they are flanked, while the intervening flat
buttresses, edged by slender cylindrical pilasters, likewise indicate a
degree of care and of taste which is very pleasing, and which is the
more remarkable, when considered in union with the architecture of the
exterior of the contemporary abbey of St. Stephen.