beginning of the Preface.--As a Vignette, at the end of the
Preface, is introduced a View of the Church of Querqueville, near
Cherbourg, a building of unquestionable antiquity, and here
figured, as the only instance in Normandy, or possibly in
existence, of a church whose transepts, as well as the chancel,
terminate in a semi-circular form. In these parts, the walls are
formed of herring-bone masonry, which is not the case with the
tower or nave, which are more modern. The tower is, however,
probably of the Norman æra; and the peculiar masonry which
distinguishes the chancel, is still observable for a few feet
above its junction with the nave. Its ornaments may be compared
with those of St. Peter's church, at Barton-upon-Humber, and
Earl's-Barton church, Northamptonshire, both of them figured in
the _fifth_ volume of _Britton's Architectural Antiquities_, and
both evidently Norman. The church of Querqueville has no
buttresses. Its length, from east to west, is forty-eight feet and
six inches; from north to south, forty-three feet and four inches;
the width of the nave is nine feet and nine inches.
PLATES LV. AND LVI.
CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AT CAEN.
[Illustration: Plate 55. CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AT CAEN.
_West end._]
The Abbé De la Rue, in his _Historical Essays upon Caen_, contents
himself with remarking, with regard to the church of St. Nicholas, that
it is the only specimen of real Norman architecture now left entire in
the town; for that the abbatial church of the Holy Trinity, a building
of the same period and style, has been so disguised by the alterations
made with the view of adapting it to its present purpose, that,
considered as a whole, it is no longer to be recognized as a type of the
religious edifices of the Normans. Such being the case, it is the more
to be lamented that the church here figured, should not only have been
degraded from its original application, but should have been
appropriated to an object eminently liable to expose it to injury. It is
now used as a stable for cavalry; but, fortunately, it has still been
suffered to remain entire; and hopes are entertained, that it may yet be
one day again employed as a place of worship.
The exterior of the building has not altogether escaped uninjured or
unaltered. In the western front, (see _plate fifty-five_,) both the
lateral towers have lost their original terminations, and have been
reduced to a level with the roof of the nave. One of them still remains
in a state of dilapidation: to the other has been added a square tower,
of rather elegant proportions, surmounted by a small crocketed pinnacle,
the workmanship probably of the fourteenth century. The rest of this
part of the church is as it was first built, except that the great
arches of entrance are entirely blocked up. The whole is of extreme
simplicity, and vies in that respect with the same portion of the
adjoining church of the abbey of St. Stephen; the different members of
the two being nearly the same, though disposed in a dissimilar manner.
The central tower of the church of St. Nicholas is square and small, and
so low as to admit only a single tier of semi-circular-headed windows,
four on each side. It terminates in a ridged roof, and apparently, never
was higher; though, as far as may be judged from analogy, a greater
elevation was probably designed by the architect. Along the sides of the
church, immediately beneath the roof, runs a bold projecting cornice, of
antique pattern, formed of numerous horizontal mouldings; and, under
this, the corbel-table presents only a row of plain knobs, instead of
the monsters commonly found in Norman buildings. The clerestory,
throughout both the nave and choir, is filled with narrow arches,
alternately pierced for windows, and left blank. All these arches, as
well as the windows of the transepts and of the projecting aisles below,
are without the accompaniment of pillars or ornaments of any
description, excepting a broad flat moulding of the simplest kind, which
wholly encircles them. The disposition of the windows in the lower part
of the nave, differs from that of those above, in their being separated
from each other by shallow buttresses, which hold the place of the blank
arches. A plain string-course also is continued the whole length of the
church beneath the windows, as in the west front. On the south side is a
door, the only one now in use in the church, which is entered by a very
noble Norman arch, composed of a great number of cylindrical mouldings,
arranged in three broad bands, but without pillars or capitals, and with
no other variation than that of size, and of the addition of the
billet-moulding to the outer row. The transome-stone of this arch is
unquestionably coeval with the arch itself, the sculpture of the masonry
being interwoven with it. Attached to the eastern side of both the
transepts, is a circular chapel, as in the churches of St. Georges, of
St. Taurin at Evreux, of Fécamp, of Cerisy, and in several other ancient
religious buildings in Normandy. Nor is England altogether without
specimens of the same kind: a similar chapel, now in a ruinous state,
and called by Blomefield, "the sexterie or ancient vestry," is joined to
the north transept of Norwich cathedral; and near the eastern extremity
of the same church, are four others. But the principal characteristic of
those at St. Nicholas', is the extremely high pitch of the stone roof, a
peculiarity equally observable in the roof of the choir; and hence the
following remarks on the part of Mr. Turner[113]:--"Here we have the
exact counterpart of the Irish stone-roofed chapels, the most celebrated
of which, that of Cormac in Cashel cathedral, appears, from all the
drawings and descriptions I have seen of it, to be altogether a Norman
building. Ledwich asserts that 'this chapel is truly Saxon, and was
erected prior to the introduction of the Norman and Gothic styles.'[114]
If we agree with him, we only obtain a proof, that there is no essential
difference between Norman and Saxon architecture; and this proposition I
believe, will soon be universally admitted. We now know what is really
Norman; and a little attention to the buildings in the north of Germany,
may terminate the long-debated questions relative to Saxon architecture,
and the stone-roofed chapels in the sister isle."
[Illustration: Plate 56. CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AT CAEN.
_East end._]
In the east end of the church of St. Nicholas, (see _plate fifty-six_,)
may be remarked a sensible approximation in point of style, to the same
part in the church of the Trinity. The circular apsis is divided into
compartments by slender cylindrical pillars; and each intercolumniation
is filled by a couple of windows of comparatively large size, placed one
above the other, while a row of narrow blank arches occupies the lower
part. The head of each of these smaller arches is hewn out of a single
stone. The height of the roof, in this part of the church, is so much
greater than in the choir, as almost to justify the suspicion that it
was no part of the original plan, but was an addition of a subsequent,
though certainly not of a remote, æra. Were the line of it continued to
the central tower, it would wholly block up and conceal the windows
there. The discrepancy observable in the style of its architecture, may
also possibly be regarded as enforcing the same opinion. But, indeed, as
has already been more than once observed in this work, no inferences
drawn from style must be admitted without the utmost hesitation. A very
sensible discussion upon this point, as illustrated by the church of St.
Nicholas itself, and the two adjoining churches of the Trinity and of
St. Stephen, has lately appeared in one of the most popular English
periodical publications, from the pen of a writer possessed of the
deepest knowledge of the subject, and gifted with the most comprehensive
and clearest views[115]. It were an injustice to the readers of this
work, not to extract it upon the present occasion. It will supersede the
necessity of any labored description of the interior of the building.--
"When a distinct gradation of style is observable, it is natural to
conclude, that these architectural varieties, emanating from one
prototype, each clearly to be discriminated, yet dying into another by
imperceptible shades, were successively developed at certain intervals
of time. This reasoning, though it advances upon legitimate premises,
may be fallacious, as is proved at Caen, where three coeval churches,
probably erected by the same architect, are distinguished by such
remarkable modifications of the Norman Romanesque style, that were we
not acquainted with the facts, we might well suppose that they marked
the progress of architecture during three half centuries.--St. Nicholas,
the first of these edifices, was built by the monks of St. Stephen's
Abbey some time between the years 1066 and 1083. The original lines are
characterized by simplicity and regularity. All the capitals of the
columns, embedded in the side walls, are of one order; and the capitals
of the pier-columns, which nearly resemble the others, are equally
uniform. The east end terminates by an apsis, of which the elevation
resembles the exterior of the cathedral of Pisa. Three circular arches,
supported by Corinthianizing pilasters, form the western portal. The
original cross-vaulting of the side-aisles still remains: it is without
groins, and of Roman construction, and the whole interior shews that the
architect was endeavoring to recollect the models of the great city.--If
we pass from hence to the adjacent abbey church of St. Stephen, erected
at the same period, we shall observe that the conception of the
architect is more Norman than in the church which we have quitted. The
nave is divided into bays by piers, alternating with circular pillars of
smaller diameter. The pier consists of a pilaster fronted by a
cylindrical column, continuing to about four-fifths of the height of the
roof. Two cylindrical columns then rise from it; so that from this point
upwards, the pier becomes a clustered column: angular brackets
sculptured into knots, grotesque heads, and foliage, are affixed to the
bases of the derivative pillars. A bold double-billeted moulding is
continued below the clerestory, whose windows adapt themselves to the
binary arrangement of the bays of the nave; that is to say, a taller
arch is flanked by a smaller one, on its right side, or on its left
side, as the situation requires; these are supported by short massy
pillars; and an embattled moulding runs round the windows. These
features are Norman; but in other portions of the church, the architect
Romanises again, as in St. Nicholas. The piers of the aisle-arches are
of considerable width: the pillars at each angle are connected by an
architrave, distinctly enounced, running along the front of the pier,
and interposed between the capitals and the springing of the well-turned
semi-circular arch. The triforium is composed of a tier of semi-circular
arches, nearly of equal span with those below. The perspective of the
building is grand and palatial. In the evening, when it is illuminated
only by a few faintly-burning tapers, the effect of the gleams of light,
reflected from the returns of the arches and pillars, is particularly
fine. Beyond the central arch which supports the tower, all is lost in
gloom, except that at the extremity of the choir, the star-light just
breaks through the topmost windows above the altar.--In the church of
St. Stephen, the leading ideas of the architect were still influenced by
the Roman basilica; a third and more fanciful modification is to be
observed in the coeval church of the Holy Trinity. Here the piers are
narrower; the columns supporting the aisle-arches are consequently
brought closer together, and the architrave is less prominent than at
St. Stephen's: there the embattled moulding is confined to the
clerestory; in the present church, it runs round the principal arches;
and, instead of the lofty triforium which there surmounts the
side-aisles, the walls which we now describe are threaded by a gallery
supported by misproportioned pillars, whose capitals exhibit every
possible variety of grotesque invention. The bold archivolts beneath the
central tower are chased with the Norman lozenge: they are circular; but
the eastern arch, which runs higher than the others, is obtusely
pointed, though it is evidently of the same date with its companions."
The parish of St. Nicholas is placed without the walls of Caen, in that
portion of the suburbs known by the name of _Le Bourg-l'Abbé_, as having
been, before the revolution, under the jurisdiction of the abbot of St.
Stephen. In the same quarter was also included the parish of St. Ouen,
as was a portion of those of St. Stephen and St. Martin. The two
last-mentioned churches were ceded, in the earliest period of the
history of Caen, by the Chapter of the Cathedral of Bayeux, to Queen
Matilda, in exchange for some other preferment, and were by her bestowed
upon the nuns of her new convent of the Trinity. But the increasing
power of the rival monastery, built by her husband, naturally caused its
occupants to turn a wistful eye towards churches so immediately in their
vicinity. Disputes succeeded; and the monks of St. Stephen erected the
church of St. Nicholas, that their suburb might no longer be without a
religious building which depended wholly upon themselves. Peace was at
length restored by means of a charter from the Duke, dated in the year
1083, whereby St. Nicholas was recognized as parochial, an equivalent
was given to the abbess by the extension of her power in her own quarter
of St. Giles, and the respective parishes of St. Stephen and St. Martin
were allowed to retain all they possessed in the Bourg-l'Abbé, except
five families expressly designated in the charter. These five were
transferred to St. Nicholas; and, to secure to the saint a certain
increase of votaries hereafter, a proviso was added, enacting that every
house which might be built in future, in that suburb, should belong to
his parish. Hence, the two other saints retained nothing more than the
ground covered by the tenements then standing, sixty-seven in number;
and the necessary consequence was, that from that period till the year
1790, when the whole was remodelled, the limits of the several parishes
were confused and irregular in the extreme. Not only did adjoining
dwellings belong to different parishes, but the line frequently ran
between the various apartments of the same house, or even separated the
apartment themselves.
The church of St. Nicholas, as indebted for its existence to the monks
of the abbey of St. Stephen, continued for some time to receive its
pastors from among the brethren of that convent. At a subsequent period,
the monks, after they had transferred to substitutes the performance of
their religious duties, still endeavored to preserve their supremacy;
but they were finally obliged to relinquish it; and the ministers of St.
Nicholas enjoyed the same rights as the other clergy of Caen, though the
ecclesiastical privileges of the abbot remained inviolate.
To the church of St. Nicholas was attached a guild, in the early lists
of whose members were included names of the greatest distinction in the
town and neighborhood. St. Nicholas was in remote times an object of
especial devotion; and the company incorporated under his patronage,
naturally partook of his celebrity. The Abbé De la Rue also states, that
it was from within this church, that what were termed the _Apostolic
decrees_, were delivered in the twelfth century. They derived their name
from being pronounced by commissioners delegated by the Pope, to decide
in matters touching the canon law; and the numerous appeals to the court
of Rome, at that period, rendered the necessity for such decisions of
frequent occurrence.
NOTES:
[113] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 176.
[114] _Antiquities of Ireland_, p. 151.
[115] _Quarterly Review for June_, 1821, p. 120.
PLATE LVII.
CHURCH OF CHEUX.
[Illustration: Plate 57. CHURCH OF CHEUX NEAR CAEN.
_From the North East._]
The earliest mention which occurs of Cheux, a small country town, about
nine miles to the west of Caen, is to be found in the charter, granted
about the year 1077, by the Conqueror, for the foundation of his abbey
of St. Stephen. The king, in this instrument, after a pious proem,
reciting that he has been led to the holy task by the expectation of
obtaining remission for his sins and a hundred-fold reward in heaven,
places, as the very first of the gifts destined for the endowment of the
rising monastery, the town of Cheux. He also expressly designates Cheux,
and the four places immediately following, as _villas juris mei_,
thereby meaning, as M. de Gerville justly remarks, to draw a distinction
between those donations which came immediately from himself, and those
which originated with any of his subjects, and stood in need of nothing
more than a ratification on his part. Another remark may, perhaps, not
impertinently be made upon this part of the charter, as curiously
illustrative of the manners of the times as to the nature of feudal
tenures, and the mode of recruiting the army. In the very next
paragraph, a distinction is drawn between the rights of two different
classes of men, the _coloni_ and _conditionarii_, the latter being
explained by the words of the charter itself, to mean _free men_
("_liberos homines_.") The Duke assigns to the abbey, the towns
themselves, together with their inhabitants, mills, waters, meadows,
pastures, and woods; and also with all the revenues and customs
derivable from them, as they have been enjoyed by himself, or any of his
predecessors. He likewise expressly stipulates, that such of the people
of Cheux and Rotz, as do not hold _frank-tenements_, ("_qui francam
terram non tenent_,") should be exclusively devoted to the service of
the church and the monks, so as not to be subject to any call arising
from military expeditions, or other cause, unless the Prince himself
should personally, or by letter, direct the abbot to send them. Even in
the latter case, he binds himself to summon each by name, and never to
call them out, except the province should be invaded by a foreign foe;
nor on any account to require their services beyond the limits of the
duchy.
At the same time that the Conqueror's children confirmed all the
donations made by their father to the abbey of St. Stephen, Robert, his
successor upon the ducal throne, added the privilege of an annual fair
at Cheux, and a weekly market: the latter was held upon a Sunday, during
the twelfth century, but was afterwards, by an order from King John,
changed to a Tuesday. Upon the accession of Henry II. to the dukedom,
another charter of great length was granted in favor of the royal abbey;
and in this, Cheux is again mentioned. The King not only follows the
example of his predecessors, in renouncing all right to it, but he gives
his royal assent, in the following terms, to two purchases which had
been made in it:--"Concedo emptionem, quam fecit Willelmus Abbas,
Joanni, filii Conani, Canonico Bajocensi, scilicet, totam terram suam de
Ceusio, quæ est de feudo S. Stephani; 23 libr. annual; et emptionem quam
fecit Willelmus Abbas, a Radulpho, fratre Vitalis, scilicet, sex acras
terræ, quam tenebat in feodu de prædicto sancto in Ceusio, pro quibus
faciebat serraturas portarum Ceusii, pro C. solid. census."
From that time to the revolution, Cheux continued to be one of the
principal domains of the abbot of St. Stephen. According to the
territorial division of ancient France, it formed a part of what was
termed the _Election_ of Caen, and was included in the archdeaconry of
Bayeux, and the deanery of Fontenay. The revolution, introducing a new
arrangement, together with a new set of terms, has placed it in the
_arrondissement_ of Caen, and in the _canton_ of Tilly.
The church is a fine specimen of Norman architecture; remarkable as to
its plan, in having the choir of considerably greater width than the
nave. The portion east of the tower is composed of three distinct parts,
unequal in size, the central being the narrowest, as is strikingly the
case in the church at Great Yarmouth; but all of the same height, and
each of the lateral ones exactly equalling in its width the length of
the transept to which it is attached; and thus, also, the choir and
transepts, taken collectively, form nearly a square, except that, to the
end of the middle compartment, is attached a circular apsis, of an
unusually small size; and, seen from the inside of the church, this
disproportion becomes even more conspicuous: the great thickness of the
wall necessarily subtracting much from the space. It even strikes the
eye as being less than it really is, from being subdivided into a number
of small arches; which, with the vaulted roof, lighted by the extremely
narrow windows below, and the larger ones above, give this end of the
church a very peculiar appearance.
PLATE LVIII. AND LIX.
CHURCH OF BIEVILLE.
[Illustration: Plate 58. CHURCH OF BIEVILLE NEAR CAEN.
_From the North West._]
It is only when considered as a curious relic of ancient ecclesiastical
architecture, that the church of Bieville can lay claim to any attention
whatever. History, even in its lowest department, topography, is
altogether silent with regard both, to the building and the parish,
except so far as to record that the church was among the dependencies of
the royal abbey of St. Stephen, at Caen; though even in this character,
it does not appear till the middle of the fourteenth century, when it is
mentioned in one of the registers of the diocese of Bayeux. Its
situation is about four miles north of Caen.
Taken as a whole, the church of Bieville has probably no parallel in
Normandy or in England. The upper story of the tower alone is of a
subsequent æra, and _that_, the earliest style of pointed architecture:
all the rest of the structure is purely Norman, and of extreme
simplicity. The church of St. Peter, at Northampton, said to have been
erected by Simon de St. Liz, during the reign of William the Conqueror,
is encircled at the height of the clerestory by a row of small arches,
similar in their proportions and decorations to those at Bieville; but
they are there continued in an uninterrupted line round the building,
while at Bieville they occupy only a comparatively small portion of it.
In the nave of this latter church, they are disposed regularly in
triplets, the central one only pierced for a window, and each three
separated by a flat Norman buttress.
The western front, represented in _plate fifty-eight_, is divided by
plain string-courses into three stories of irregular height: the
basement contains only the door, which is entered by a richly-ornamented
arch, (see _plate fifty-nine, fig. B_.) surmounted by a broad
drip-stone, decorated with quatrefoils, and terminating at each end in a
human head of classical character. The lowest moulding of this arch is
considerably more flattened than the upper, a peculiarity that is
likewise observable in the interior arch to the great door-way at
Castle-Acre Priory, in Norfolk.[116] In the second story are six arches,
supported by eight pillars, with capitals and bases of ordinary
character: even these, contiguous as they stand, are divided into two
equal sets, by the intervention of a flat space in the centre, so
narrow, as to wear the appearance of a pilaster. Here, too, as in the
nave, the central arch of each compartment is alone pierced for a
window.--The upper story has only a single window, precisely resembling
those below, but flanked on each side by a circular one, similar to that
in the front of the neighboring chapel of the _Délivrande_:[117] or, if
a comparison be sought among Norman edifices in England, to those in the
tower of Norwich cathedral;[118] in the same part of the church of St.
James, at Bury St. Edmunds;[119] and in the east end of the church of
the Hospital of St. Cross.[120] In point of general character, the
western front of the church of Bieville may not unaptly be compared with
that of the chapel of the _Délivrande_, or of the hospital of St.
Leonard, at Stamford, as figured by Carter.[121] The tower of the church
at Bieville is well calculated to serve as a specimen of the towers of
the village churches, comprized in a circuit of twenty miles round Caen.
Among others, those of Soumont, Ifs, Soulangy, Potigny, and the Lower
Allemagne, to the south, and of Lyons, Oyestraham, and several more, to
the north, greatly resemble it.
[Illustration: Plate 59. CHURCH OF BIEVILLE NEAR CAEN.
_Elevation and Details._]
_Plate fifty-nine_, as being altogether architectural, will best be
understood by a set of regular references to the different subjects it
embraces.