PLATES IN THE SECOND VOLUME.
| PLATE. | ||
| [55.] | Church of St. Nicholas, at Caen, West End | to face page [59] |
| [56.] | ————East End | 60 |
| [57.] | Church at Cheux, near Caen, from the North-East | [62] |
| [58.] | Church at Bieville, from the North-West | [63] |
| [59.] | ——Elevations and Details | 64 |
| [60.] | Church at Fontaine-le-Henri, near Caen, North Side of Chancel | [65] |
| [61.] | ——————Elevations | 66 |
| [62.] | Château at Fontaine-le-Henri, near Caen | [67] |
| [63.] | ——————Elevation of central Compartment | 68 |
| [64.] | House in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen | 69 |
| [65.] | House in the Rue St. Jean, at Caen | 70 |
| [66.] | Tower of the Church at Tréport, near Caen | [71] |
| [67.] | Church of Anisy, near Caen | [73] |
| [68.] | Church of Perriers, near Caen | [74] |
| [69.] | Castle of Lillebonne | [75] |
| [70.] | Castle of Briquebec | [77] |
| [71.] | Church of St. Stephen's, at Fécamp | [79] |
| [72.] | Screen in the Church of St. Lawrence, at Eu | [81] |
| [73.] | }Church of St. Peter, at Lisieux, West Front | [83] |
| [74.] | ||
| [75.] | —————South Transept | 86 |
| [76.] | Abbey Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen | [87] |
| [77.] | Fountain of the Stone Cross, at Rouen | [90] |
| [78.] | Palace of Justice, at Rouen | [91] |
| [79.] | Church of Louviers, South Porch | [93] |
| [80.] | Château Gaillard, North-East View | [95] |
| [81.] | ——South-West View | 96 |
| [82.] | Abbey Church of Montivilliers, West End | [97] |
| [83.] | Church of St. Sanson sur Rille | [99] |
| [84.] | Church of Foullebec, West Door-way | [100] |
| [85.] | Castle at Tancarville | [101] |
| [86.] | Entrance to the Castle at Tancarville | 103 |
| [87.] | Church of the Holy Cross, at St. Lo, West Door-way | [104] |
| [88.] | —————Sculpture | 106 |
| [89.] | Castle of Falaise, North-West View | [107] |
| [90.] | ——North View | 109 |
| [91.] | Interior of the Church of Creully | [110] |
| [92.] | }Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Coutances, West Front | [111] |
| [93.] | ||
| [94.] | ———————Elevation of the Nave | 115 |
| [95.] | Mount St. Michael, on the Approach from Pontorson | [116] |
| [96.] | ——Interior of the Knights' Hall | 120 |
| [97.] | Abbey Church of Cerisy, Interior of the Choir | [121] |
| [98.] | Church at Oyestraham, West Front | [122] |
| [99.] | Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Séez, West Front | [123] |
| [100.] | ——————Elevation of the Nave | 125 |
The Figure referred to in the Note, [p. 117], is inserted at the 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.
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.”
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[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.
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.
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.
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.
A. Door-way on the north side of the nave, remarkable for its lintel or transom-stone in the figure of a pediment, from which the arch rises, encircled with a single, wide, plain, flat moulding. There is a similar instance in the church of Martinvast, near Cherbourg; but the pediment there assumes a form more decidedly conical.[122] Transom-stones occur frequently in Normandy, and are variously sculptured; from the rude cross, either alone or encompassed with the cable-moulding, to the elaborate representations of the crucified Saviour, or other subjects from holy writ. Profane subjects, which are of so frequent occurrence on transom-stones in England, are very seldom found in the duchy: the writer of the present article never recollects to have met with any; and Mr. Cotman's more extensive researches have brought him acquainted only with a single instance, a centaur, in the act of discharging his arrow at a stag, in the church of Urville, near Valognes.
B. Great western entrance, (already described.)
C. First compartment of the nave from the west, showing the structure and disposition of the arches, and the very flat buttresses with a double projection, the first only equalling that of the corbels. The square-headed door is modern. Several of the sculptures on the corbels are close imitations of those upon the church of the Holy Trinity, at Caen.
D. and E. Portions of other compartments of the nave, to obtain a complete idea of which, it is only necessary to produce the dotted lines below, to the same length as that at C; the parts and their disposition being precisely the same, with the exception of the door.
F. Elevation of the choir, which is divided into two equal portions by a flat buttress, flanked on each side by a slender cylindrical column. Of these parts, one is quite plain, except only the corbel-table and ornamented frieze below. The other has two arches, recently blocked up, similar to those of the nave, but with a richer exterior moulding. The door below these has the same peculiarity, in the drip-stone rising from sculptured heads, as in the western entrance. The frieze beneath the corbels very much resembles that in the same situation in the church of the Holy Trinity, (see plate [thirty-one],) and is likewise continued over the buttresses, as well as along the receding part between.
FOOTNOTES:
[116] Figured in Britton's Architectural Antiquities, III. pl. 2.
[117] Figured in Turner's Tour in Normandy, II. p. 295.
[118] Britton's Norwich Cathedral, p. 33, pl. 6.
[119] Britton's Architectural Antiquities, III. p. 80.
[120] Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet, V.
[121] Ancient Architecture, pl. 24.—In the description of this building, page 33, Mr. Carter speaks of it as being of Saxon origin; and, in the chronological table attached to his work, he classes it in the third of the four æras into which he divides his specimens of Saxon architecture.
[122] A still more remarkable example occurs in Essington church, Gloucestershire, figured by Carter, in his Ancient Architecture, pl. XV. fig. X. The transom-stone is there formed of part of an octagon, rising from an horizontal torus moulding, which finishes in a spiral direction round two heads. A lion and a griffin fill the space within.
PLATE LX. AND LXI.
CHURCH OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI, NEAR CAEN.
Plate 60. Church of Fontaine-le-Henri near Caen.
North side of the Chancel.
The parish of Fontaine-le-Henri lies about eight miles north of Caen, immediately adjoining Than, whose church has already been figured in this work. The register of the livings appertaining to the diocese of Bayeux, made about the year 1350, and commonly known by the name of the livre pelut, (liber pelutus, or the parchment book,) contains only the following brief notice of it:—“Ecclesia de Fontibus Henrici lx Libras.—Dnus dicte ville.—Archidiaconatus de Cadomo.—Decanatus de Dovra.” In the Gallia Christiana, and other similar works, no mention whatever is made of this parish.
According to the modern division of France, Fontaine-le-Henri is included in the canton of Creüilly: the name of the village, to whose deanery it formerly appertained, cannot fail to strike the ear of an Englishman, as being the same with that of the celebrated harbor in his own island, the common landing-place from Calais. But the English Dover, from having been originally a Roman station, is generally supposed to have derived its appellation from the Romans; and Darell, in his History of the castle, published by Grose,[123] gives it as his opinion that, among the ancient Britons, it was called Rupecester, but, on the Roman invasion, got the new name of Dofris, Dobris, or Doris, “in consequence of the filling or damming up of the harbor;” “Doafer,” as he observes a few pages before, “signifying, in the language of those times, a harbor shut up, or of difficult access.” A still higher authority, the learned Bishop Huet,[124] classes the word, Douvres, among those whose origin is to be sought in the ancient language of Gaul, and proposes two derivations: one from Dufyrrha, a rising ground; the other from Dvvr, the term for water. Thus, without giving any opinion of his own, he leaves the matter to his reader, with a “utrum horum mavis elige.”
The Norman village of Douvres is celebrated upon more than one account: it was the birth-place of Thomas of Dover, almoner to the Conqueror, and by him created archbishop of York in 1070; of Sampson of Dover, his brother, made bishop of Worcester in 1097; and of a second Thomas of Dover, nephew to the first of the name, who, in 1109, had the singular honor of being elected at once to the episcopal throne of London, and the archiepiscopal throne of York; the latter of which he accepted. His brother, Richard, wore at the same time the mitre of Bayeux.—Douvres was the principal place of one of the seven baronies, which formed the episcopal manse of the bishops of Bayeux. During the thirteenth, and the two following centuries, it was also selected for their country-seat. Within its limits stands the chapel of the Délivrande,[125] said to have been founded by St. Regnobert, the second bishop of the diocese, and still held in the highest repute for its sanctity.
Of the church of Fontaine-le-Henri, the architecture is decidedly Norman, and is distinguished by a bold and noble style, resembling in its general character, as well as in its individual features, the abbatial churches of St. George, and of the Trinity. Hence, though no record is left of the actual founder, there is little room for doubt as to the æra of the foundation. It may be observed on this occasion, that in Normandy, as in England, it very seldom happens that information is to be obtained on these particulars, when the same individual united in his person the characters of lord of the village and patron of the living. It was only where benefices were in the hands of religious houses, that events so generally unimportant as the building and repairing of village churches, were considered deserving of being recorded.
With regard to the various proprietors of Fontaine-le-Henri, much information is to be gleaned from Laroque's History of the House of Harcourt. The laborious author, after having completed his general account of the Norman nobility, in a single folio volume, devoted four others to the genealogy and fortunes of this one illustrious family. From him it appears that, during the period when Normandy was under the sway of its own Dukes, the parish of Fontaine-le-Henri was in the hands of the family of Tilly, one of whom is to be found among the companions of the Conqueror, in his descent upon England. Early in the thirteenth century, during the reign of King John, they held the lordship of Fontaine-le-Henri conjointly with the castellany of Tilly. Mention of them occurs repeatedly in the Ecclesiastical History of Ordericus Vitalis, as well as in the annals of the abbeys of St. Stephen and of Ardennes, near Caen; and it was from the baptismal name of Henry, commonly borne by that branch of them, who were possessors of Fontaine, that the parish took its present distinctive appellation; a distinction not a little needed, considering that there are fifteen other places in Normandy, called by the general name of Fontaine. John de Tilly, the last of the male line of the family, who were lords of Fontaine-le-Henri, died about the year 1380: he was succeeded in the inheritance by his sister, Jane, who, in 1382, married Philip D'Harcourt, and thus added the property to the immense domains of the Harcourts.
The [first] of the plates appropriated to this building, embraces only a portion of the western compartment of the south side of the chancel, drawn in rapid perspective, the view being taken from immediately beneath the corbel-table, for the sake of embracing the soffit of the arches, and the projecting mouldings. Here, as at Bieville, the lintel or transom-stone of the arch of entrance[126] assumes the form of a pediment, but rests upon the jambs of the door-way, on a level with the capitals. To the instances of a similar formation, adduced under the preceding article, should be added the very remarkable one at Pen church, in Somersetshire, figured in the Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet. On the lintel is sculptured the Lamb bearing the Cross, enclosed within a circle, flanked on either side by a nondescript animal; the whole supported by two crowned heads placed in niches in the jambs.
Plate 61. Church of Fontaine-le-Henri near Caen.
Elevations of the East end of the South side of the Chancel.
The following is a description of the different parts of plate [sixty-one]:[127]—
A. East end of the chancel.—The central buttress, flanked, like the two lateral ones, with cylindrical pillars, divides this portion of the church into two equal portions. The general appearance of these buttresses, and the circumstance of their being supported upon a fillet and plinth, would almost warrant the calling of them pilasters; and those upon the northern side of the chancel,
Figure B, assume that character even more decidedly, having no projection beyond the cornice, which they support as an entablature.—It will be remarked, that the whole building is raised upon a plinth of a bold character; and Mr. Cotman justly observes, that the chancel may be regarded as a model for beautiful proportions and exquisite finishing. As respecting Norman buttresses, he is of opinion, that the edifices of highest antiquity will be found to be altogether without any; and that they were first added merely by way of ornament, to break the monotonous appearance of a long uninterrupted space of level wall. Indeed, the Norman walls, commonly from six to ten feet in thickness, could scarcely require any additional strength from extrinsic objects; and least of all, could they receive it from a projection of not more than the same number of inches. Even where buttress has been added to buttress, as in the north side of the chapel of the hospital of St. Julien, near Rouen,[128] and in some other instances, it may almost be questioned, if support was the only circumstance contemplated by the architect. The double buttresses at St. Julien's, could scarcely fail to be coeval with the building, as appears from the string-course being continued in an unbroken line over them, a fact that was omitted to be noticed in the description of the chapel.
FOOTNOTES:
[123] History of Dover Castle, p. 8.
[124] Origines de Caen, p. 315.
[125] See Turner's Tour in Normandy, II. p. 295; where this chapel is described and figured.
[126] Mr. Cotman observes, that much might be said in connection with this door-way, upon the subject of the decorations of the semi-circular-headed arches in Normandy and in England. But, confining himself to heads of the peculiar grotesque character, sculptured upon the arch at Fontaine-le-Henri, he remarks, that such, though far from being very uncommon in Britain, are of extremely rare occurrence in the duchy; insomuch, that he can recal no other specimens of them, than those upon a large arch which separates the nave from the chancel, in the church of Berigny, near St. Lo, and upon another on the south side of the church of Bracheville près le Grand. The heads, in this last instance, are precisely like those at Iffley church, in Oxfordshire, (see Britton's Chronological and Historical Illustrations of Ancient Architectures;) but they are confined to the archivolt alone, while, at Iffley, they are disposed in a double row, and form broad bands, that encircle the pillars as well as the top of the arch. In England are the following instances, most of them figured in the works of Britton and Carter:—
- South door-way of St. Peter's church, Oxford.
- ——St. Peter's church, at Rasen, in Lincolnshire.
- ——Earls-Barton church, Northamptonshire.
- North door-way of Lullington church, Somersetshire.
- Architrave on the east side of the cemetery-gate, Canterbury cathedral.
- West door-way of Kenilworth church.
- South door-way of Moorvinstowe church, Cornwall.
- Arches in the nave of ditto.
- ———Wymondham church, Norfolk.
- West door-way of the church of Barton St. Mary, ditto.
[127] In the title of this plate, it is unfortunately stated to represent the East end of the south side of the chancel, instead of the East end and the north side of the chancel.
PLATES LXII.-LXV.
CHÂTEAU OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI.
CENTRAL COMPARTMENT OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI.
HOUSE IN THE PLACE DE LA PUCELLE, AT ROUEN.
HOUSE IN THE RUE ST. JEAN, AT CAEN.
Plate 62. Château at Fontaine-le-Henri, near Caen.
It neither falls within the scope of this work to attempt any thing in the form of a dissertation upon the ancient domestic architecture of Normandy, nor, supposing such an object to be desirable, would the present state of the duchy afford materials for the purpose. The lover of researches into architectural antiquity no sooner directs his attention to that branch of his subject, which, as tending to elucidate the habits of his forefathers, would be peculiarly interesting, than he finds an insuperable obstacle opposed to his progress. The zeal of churchmen and the pride of barons, have preserved us many noble relics of ecclesiastical and castellated buildings; but the private residence of the more humble individual has, in no portion of the globe, been able to secure to itself any thing approaching to a durable existence. What was raised for comfort alone, was not in itself designed for perpetuity; and the varying tastes of successive occupants, the changes of fashions, or, what operate even more powerfully than all, the changes of fortune, have conspired to subject this portion of human labor, in an eminent degree, to that mutability which is the general lot of human undertakings. In early times, also, the state of society operated powerfully towards the production of the same destructive effect. When even the monarch could no otherwise provide for the safety of his palace, than by encircling it with the fortifications of the castle, a life of continual alarm afforded his subjects no encouragement for the cultivation of the arts of peace. Society knew no other classes than the lord and his vassals: the former, enthroned in military state; the latter, too poor to raise his aim beyond the necessaries of life; or, where riches existed, too depressed by servitude to dare to let them appear. Hence, during the prevalence of the feudal system, very little, if any thing, more is known of domestic architecture, than is to be collected from the rude illuminations of missals, or the unsatisfactory descriptions of chroniclers. The monuments themselves have disappeared from the face of the earth; or, if any instances can be adduced, tending to disprove so comprehensive an assertion, they are few in number, and worthless in quality. The utmost to be hoped for are such mutilated remains, as Winwal-House, in Norfolk, lately figured by Mr. Britton, in his Chronological and Historical Illustrations of the Ancient Architecture of Great-Britain; remains that are calculated to excite no other emotions than regret, and to awaken, without being by any means able to satisfy, curiosity.—Nor indeed have Mr. Cotman's extensive researches enabled him to meet with any of this description, all poor as they are, within the limits of Normandy.
At the same time it has appeared right, conformably with the plan that has been adopted in this work, as to ecclesiastical edifices, to lay before the reader some specimens of the domestic architecture of the duchy, which, though far removed from Norman times, are almost equally so from our own days. Even these are rapidly disappearing; it is more than possible, that the three subjects here selected for publication may, in the course of a few years, be recorded only in these plates. One of them is already levelled with the ground;[129] while the more interesting house in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen, though it has been suffered to continue in existence, has been so much injured in its exterior, and is degraded to so mean a purpose, that its demolition would at no time be matter for surprise.—Specimens, like these, are curious in the history of the arts: they shew the progress which architecture had made in Normandy, at one of the most interesting epochs in French history; they also shew its relative state, as respectively applied to civil and religious purposes. And, if they be all three productions of nearly the same æra, they are sufficiently characterised each from the other, by marks of distinction.
“A history of the civil and domestic architecture of the middle ages, is yet a desideratum; and unless this task is soon accomplished in England, the opportunity will be lost for ever.” The very sensible author, from whom this sentence is quoted, goes on to say, “The halls of Elizabeth's days are almost worn out. The mansions of the time of Charles I. are falling apace, and in every quarter of a century a class must disappear, by the conjoined operations of repair and decay. The towns of England perhaps afford the worst and poorest specimens of the dwelling houses: the best and richest are found in the Netherlands. We can hardly qualify this assertion by recollecting the magnificent range of palaces which bordered the Strand, in the reign of Henry VIII. Our own dwelling-houses are usually composed of timber frames filled in with plaster. Troyes, in Champagne, is built entirely in this fashion, every street is the perfect ‘counterfeit’ of old Cheapside. Beauvais is built in the same manner, but the houses are profusely varied with carving, and a good artist might employ himself there for a twelvemonth. Many of the ancient houses at Caen are of chesnut timber. The Abbé De la Rue supposes that they were built by the English, after the place was taken by Henry V. in 1417. His ‘bombards’ destroyed a great part of the town during the siege; and after he had regained possession, he granted the sites of the demolished tenements to his English subjects. In choosing this material, they may have been guided partly by choice, as being a domestic fashion, and partly by necessity; for the use of stone was restricted by Henry, to the building and repairing of ‘eglises, chasteaulx, et forteresses.’ The king, by letters-patent, declared that the ‘quarries of white stone’ were to remain to him and his heirs for ever: this monopoly proves the value in which the Caen stone was held.”
Plate 63. Château of Fontaine-le-Henri, near Caen.
Elevation of Central Compartment.
Some account has already been given, under the preceding article, of the changes of proprietors which the domain of Fontaine-le-Henri underwent, during the reigns of the Norman Dukes, and down to the conclusion of the fourteenth century. The estate then passed into the possession of the Harcourts, in whose hands it continued a considerable length of time: it has since been subject to various owners, and has now finally become the property of the Viscount de Canisy. The Château (see plates [sixty-two] and [sixty-three]) is a noble building, and a very characteristic specimen of the residences of the French noblesse, during the latter part of the fifteenth century, at which period there is no doubt of its having been erected, although no records whatever are left upon the subject. Fontaine-le-Henri was then still in the possession of the family of Harcourt, whose fortune and consequence might naturally be expected to give rise to a similar building.—As compared with the mansions of the English nobility, the château at Fontaine-le-Henri may be advantageously viewed in conjunction with Longleat, in Wiltshire,[130] the noble seat of the Marquess of Bath. The erection of the latter was not commenced till the year 1567, thus leaving an interval of at least half a century between them; a period, probably, much the same as may be presumed from other documents to have intervened between the introduction of the Italian style of architecture in France and in England. Longleat was built by John of Padua, who is stated by Mr. Britton, “to have been an architect of some note at the time; as is evinced by his being termed Devizor of his Majesty's buildings, and by the grant made him by Henry VIII. and renewed in the third year of Edward VI.” Fontaine-le-Henri was also the production of trans-alpine architects. Both of them bear decided marks of the nation to which they owe their origin; but in the English mansion, the Italian features are most decidedly enounced; while, in the French, they are strikingly modified by the peculiarities of their adopted country.
The central compartment (plate [sixty-three]) has been selected by Mr. Cotman for publication, as being the portion of the structure which is in the purest taste. This also most resembles Longleat. But it is on the other hand by far the least ornamented. The rest of the front of the building is covered with the richest profusion of medallions, scrolls, friezes, canopies, statues, and arabesques, in bas-relief, worked with extraordinary care, and of great beauty. Their style is that of the Loggie of Raphael; or, to compare them with another Norman subject of the same æra, of the sculptures upon the mausoleum raised to the Cardinal d'Amboise, in Rouen cathedral: indeed, for delicacy of workmanship, they may almost compete with the ornaments upon this far-famed monument.[131]
Plate 64. House in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen.
For the drawing of the second of the houses here figured, that in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen, (see plate [sixty-four],) Mr. Cotman has to acknowledge himself indebted to the pencil of Miss Mary Turner. Rouen abounds in buildings, whose fronts are ornamented in a somewhat similar manner, but none among them will bear a comparison with this for the sumptuousness of its decorations.[132] In another and more important point of view, the house in question stands still more decidedly unrivalled; for a wing of it, which is not shewn in the present plate, exhibits a series of representations, illustrative of different events connected with the chivalrous meeting in the field of cloth of gold. These figures have been already engraved: they were first published by Montfaucon; then copied by Ducarel; and, very recently, two of them have again appeared in the publications of Mr. Dibdin[133] and Mr. Turner.[134] The latter of these gentlemen has been copious in his description of this building; and the following account of it is borrowed nearly verbatim from his pages:—
“In the square which has acquired an ill-omened celebrity by the barbarous execution of the Maid of Arc, stands a house within a court, now occupied as a school for girls, of the same æra as the Palais de Justice, and in the same Burgundian style, but far richer in its sculptures. The entire front is divided into compartments by slender and lengthened buttresses and pilasters. The intervening spaces are filled with basso relievos, evidently executed at one period, though by different masters. A banquet beneath a window in the first floor, is in a good cinque-cento style. Others of the basso-relievos represent the labors of the field and the vineyard; rich and fanciful in their costume, but rather wooden in their design: the salamander, the emblem of Francis I. appears several times amongst the ornaments, and very conspicuously. I believe there is not a single square foot of this extraordinary building, which has not been sculptured.—On the north side extends a spacious gallery. Here the architecture is rather in Holbein's manner: foliaged and swelling pilasters, like antique candelabra, bound the arched windows. Beneath, is the well-known series of bas-reliefs, executed on marble tablets, representing the interview between Francis I. of France, and Henry VIII. of England, in the Champ du Drap d'or, between Guisnes and Ardres. They were first discovered by the venerable father Montfaucon, who engraved them in his Monumens de la Monarchie Française; but to the greater part of our antiquaries at home, they are, perhaps, more commonly known by the miserable copies inserted in Ducarel's work, who has borrowed most of his plates from the Benedictine.—These sculptures are much mutilated, and so obscured by smoke and dirt, that the details cannot be understood without great difficulty. The corresponding tablets above the windows are even in a worse condition; and they appear to have been almost unintelligible in the time of Montfaucon, who conjectures that they were allegorical, and probably intended to represent the triumph of religion. Each tablet contains a triumphal car, drawn by different animals—one by elephants, another by lions, and so on, and crowded with mythological figures and attributes.—A friend of mine, who examined them this summer, tells me, that he thinks the subjects are either taken from the triumphs of Petrarch, or imitated from the triumphs introduced in the Polifilo. Graphic representations of allegories are susceptible of so many variations, that an artist, embodying the ideas of the poet, might produce a representation bearing a close resemblance to the mythological processions of the ‘mystic dream.’—The interior of the house has been modernized: so that a beam covered with small carvings is the only remaining object of curiosity. On the top, a bunch of leaden thistles has been a sad puzzle to antiquaries, who would fain find some connection between the building and Scotland; but neither record nor tradition throw any light upon their researches. Montfaucon, copying from a manuscript written by the Abbé Noel, says, ‘I have more than once been told, that Francis I. on his way through Rouen, lodged at this house; and it is most probable, that the bas-reliefs in question were made upon some of these occasions, to gratify the king by the representation of a festival, in which he particularly delighted.’ The gallery-sculptures are very fine, and the upper tier is much in the style of Jean Goujon. It is not generally known that Goujon re-drew the embellishments of Beroald de Verville's translation of the Polifilo; and that these, beautiful as they are in the Aldine edition, acquired new graces from the French artist—I have remarked, that the allegorical tablets appear to coincide with the designs of the Polifilo: a more accurate examination might, perhaps, prove the fact; and then little doubt would remain. The building is much dilapidated; and, unless speedily repaired, these basso-relievos, which would adorn any museum, will utterly perish. In spite of neglect and degradations, the aspect of the mansion is still such that, as my friend observed, one would expect to see a fair and stately matron standing in the porch, attired in velvet, waiting to receive her lord.”
Plate 65. House in the rue St. Jean, at Caen.
To the house at Caen[135] (figured in plate [sixty-five]) are attached no historical mementos; nor is any record preserved as to its founder or possessor. It is not even honored by the slightest mention in the Abbé De la Rue's recent publication, or in those of De Bourgueville or Huet. In all probability it owes its existence to some wealthy citizen, during the reigns of Charles VIII. or Louis XII. as “it was principally at that period, that the practice prevailed in France, of ornamenting the fronts of the houses with medallions. The custom died away under Francis I.”[136]—According to this theory, the houses at Caen and at Fontaine-le-Henri may be placed in exactly the same æra, and about forty years anterior to that at Rouen.
Caen can show another remarkable instance of domestic architecture, a castellated building, which, it has been remarked, might easily mislead the studious antiquary. This building, commonly known by the name of the Château de la Gendarmerie, but more properly called the Château de Calix, is generally believed by the inhabitants of the town to have been erected for the purpose of commanding the river, while it flowed in its ancient, but now deserted, bed. According, however, to the Abbé De la Rue, no fortification of any description ever existed in the same place; but the structure, however martial in its appearance, was in its character altogether pacific, and was built during some of the latest years of the fifteenth, or earliest of the sixteenth, century, by Girard de Nollent, then owner of the property.[137] Two statues, apparently intended to represent heathen divinities, but now absurdly called Gendarmes, frown over its battlements, which, like those of the adjacent wall, and like the face of the principal tower, are still charged with medallions, though the ebullition of revolutionary enthusiasm has destroyed the arms of the Nollents.
Previously to dismissing this subject, it may be worth while to remark, that the ogee canopy, surmounting the window placed between the two medallions in the house in the Rue St. Jean, at Caen, is nearly a fac-simile of that which is still seen over the door that led to what was once the great hall in the Conqueror's palace, adjoining the abbey of St. Stephen. The resemblance between them is so great, that it would be difficult to believe that they are of very different dates. But the palace was unquestionably the production of more than one æra; and in the scarcity of materials for the forming of a correct opinion upon the subject, it is impossible to say, whether the door in question may not have been inserted some time after its erection, or even whether the ornamental part may not have been added to it at a period subsequent to its formation.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] The house at Caen, is that which is here alluded to.—It has already been mentioned, that the Great House at Andelys has suffered the same fate. Since the account of that circumstance was written, the author of the present article has been favored with the following extract from a letter from Lord Compton, dated in August last:—“The noble grande maison d'Andelys, is now, alas, no more! We made a détour by a horrible road, for the purpose of visiting it; but great was our mortification to find only a small piece of unornamented wall, the sole vestige which the barbarians had left standing; and that is now probably destroyed—and ‘green grass grows where Troy-town stood.’ I need hardly say, that I derived a great deal of pleasure from a three-days' stay at Rouen; after which we made an excursion to St. Georges de Bocherville and Jumieges, and were highly interested and pleased by both.—Oh! that the Vandals would leave the abbey of Jumieges, even in its present state of dilapidation! In a few years, with the mellowing tints of time, and the ornament of a little ivy and vegetation, it would be one of the most picturesque and beautiful ruins in Europe; but, alas! it is in vain to hope it. Cotman's representations of Jumieges and Andelys will now be doubly valuable.”
[130] Figured and described in Britton's Architectural Antiquities, II. p. 105.
[131] See Turner's Tour in Normandy, I. p. 157.
[132] One of the most curious buildings of this description, the ancient abbey of St. Amand, was not only rich to the greatest degree of profusion in its decorations, but derived a peculiar interest from their being almost wholly carved in wood. This building is now nearly destroyed; but, fortunately, some of its principal features are recorded in four of the plates of M. de Jolimont's Monumens de la Normandie.
[133] Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour through France, &c. I. p. 101.
[134] Tour in Normandy, I. p. 200.
[135] On the front of the new house, which has lately been erected upon the spot that was occupied by this, have been fastened the two medallions here represented: these alone were saved from the general destruction.
[136] Turner's Tour in Normandy, II. p. 170.
[137] Essais Historiques sur la Ville de Caen, I. p. 310.
PLATE LXVI.
CHURCH OF TRÉPORT.
Plate 66. Tower of the Church of Tréport, near Caen.
Tréport is an insignificant fishing-town, situated at the mouth of the small river, the Bresle, near the western extremity of Normandy. But, however unimportant its present state, most writers agree in regarding it as venerable for antiquity, assigning to it an existence coeval with the days of Julius Cæsar. That illustrious general speaks of a harbor, opening into the British Channel, under the denomination of Ulterior Portus; and by this name he is supposed to have intended to designate Tréport. The modern Latin historians of France apply the title without scruple: it is even so used in the charter for the foundation of the abbey, dated in the middle of the eleventh century. The very sensible author of the Description of Upper Normandy, is, however, of opinion, that such application is not warranted; and, after discussing the subject at some length, he inclines to think it more probable that Tréport may have been termed by the Romans, Citerior Portus; though he candidly admits that he finds no mention of a place so called among their writers.[138] The modern name of the town he derives from the Celtic word, Treiz; or, as it is sometimes spelt, Traiz, Trais, or Treaz; a word still in use in Lower Brittany, to signify “the passage of an arm of the sea, or of a river towards its mouth.”
According to the same author, there is no reason to believe that Tréport was a place of note, either during the period of the dominion of the Gauls, or of the Romans. From the beginning of the twelfth century, however, it has excited, at different times, a greater or less degree of interest. Various attempts have been made to raise it into commercial importance; and, sunk as it is at present, “it once could boast rows of handsome, well-built streets, a considerable number of inhabitants, and as many as a hundred vessels, fishing-boats included, belonging to the port.”—Henry I. one of the earliest Counts of Eu, turned in 1101, the course of the Bresle, so as to bring it more immediately under the walls of Tréport: it was he also who dug the first harbor. Another of the same line of Counts, Charles of Artois, repaired this harbor in 1475, and undertook the greater work of cutting a navigable canal as far as Eu. The task, however, was suspended long before its completion; but the vestiges still remain, and even to the present day pass under the name of the Canal d'Artois. In 1154, a fresh attempt was made, and by a far greater man, to raise the prosperity of Tréport. Henry, Duke of Guise, caused a basin to be formed here, capable of containing ships of three hundred tons burthen; and added to it a jetty, defended by strong palisades. The whole was shortly after swept away; nor did better success attend the labors of the celebrated Vauban, who, admiring the situation of the town, undertook, after a lapse of one hundred and thirty-four years, to repair the works of the Duke of Guise.
But the sea is not the only enemy with which Tréport has had to contend: its misfortunes have also been in great measure attributable to its defenceless state, situated as it is, in the immediate vicinity of England. The British fleet effected a landing in 1330, and destroyed the town with fire and the sword. In the course of the succeeding year, they returned with the same design; and again in 1413; on which last occasion, not content with burning Tréport itself, they likewise set fire to many neighboring villages. The religious wars during the following century were the source of almost equal calamities; but neither the sea nor warfare have inflicted such fatal wounds upon Tréport, as causes emanating immediately from the prosperity of France. Its proximity to the flourishing harbor of Dieppe, has naturally diverted its trade to that quarter: the restoration of Calais to the French monarchy, caused it a yet more irreparable injury; for, previously to that time, Tréport was the principal place in the channel, for the baking of biscuit, and for the landing and curing of the herrings caught by the fishermen of France in the German Ocean.
Tréport was one of the first French towns that afforded a residence for the Knights Templars. A colony of them established themselves here in 1141. In the middle of the preceding century, its abbey of Benedictines, dedicated to the Archangel Michael, had been founded by Robert, Earl of Eu. The foundation-charter is preserved, both in the Neustria Pia and Gallia Christiana; and a very curious document it is, as illustrative of the manners of the times. Robert appears in it in the light of a most liberal, and a most wealthy, benefactor. Not the least extraordinary of his donations, is the permission which he bestows upon the monks, of “getting whatever they can in the towns of Eu and of Tréport:” immediately after this, succeed particular grants relative to sturgeons and grampuses, fish that are now of extremely rare occurrence in the channel, but which would scarcely have there been noticed, had not the case in those times been far different; and had they not also been held in high estimation.[139]
Just one hundred years subsequently to the foundation of the monastery, John, Count of Eu, confirmed to it whatever donations it had previously received; in doing which, he makes use of this singular expression, “that he places them all with his own hands upon the altar.” His piety, however, appears to have been but short-lived. A few years only elapsed before the same nobleman was guilty of flagrant sacrilege in the very abbey that he had sworn to protect. His crime and his penitence are together recorded in an instrument printed in the Neustria Pia.[140]
What is further known relative to the convent, is little and unimportant. The most remarkable circumstance, is the extreme poverty to which the monks were reduced in 1384; when, on being called upon to pay the sum of forty-six shillings and eight-pence, they pleaded their utter inability, and presented to the king the following piteous remonstrance:—“Cette Abbaïe, étant frontiere de l'Anglois, n'aïant ni château ni défense, a été arse et mise en un si chetif point, qu'il y a peu de lieux où nous puissions habiter, si ce n'est ès demeurans des anciens edifices, et ès vieilles masures.......... Notre grande Eglise est arse depuis trente ans, et une autre petite Eglise qu'avions depuis refaite, à grand meschief est ruinée et chue jusqu'en terre, avec la closture et tout le dortoir ars, ensemble nos biens et nos lits.... De plus sommes endettez en Cour de Rome pour les finances dez Abbez qu'avons eus en brief temps; et devons encore à plusieurs persones de grosses sommes de deniers que n'avons pu, et ne pouvons encore acquitter; dont c'est pitié.... finalement pour païer 10 livres sur les 56 livres demandées par le Receveur, avons engagé nos Calices sans les pouvoir retirer.”
FOOTNOTES:
[138] Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 13.
[139] The whole of the passage is curious.—“Item in Ulteriori Portu et in Auco oppido; decimam denariorum de Vice-comitatibus, et in utrâque villâ quicquid abbas et monachi acquirere poterunt. Quod si homines Abbatis piscem, qui vocatur Turium, capiunt, totus erit S. Michaelis: crassus piscis si captus fuerit, ala una et medietas caudæ erit monachis.”—From this passage, it is plain what importance was attached to the crassus piscis, under which denomination were probably included the porpesse, the dolphin, and all kinds of cetaceous animals, as well as the grampus. Ducange, with his usual ability and learning, has brought together a considerable quantity of curious matter upon the subject, under the word, Craspiscis. From him it appears that, in the year 1271, the question was argued before the Norman parliament, to whom such fish belonged, in the event of its being thrown upon the shore; and the decision was in the following words.—“Quod consuetudo generalis est in Normanniâ, quod, quando talis piscis invenitur in littore maris, nec Baro, nec Miles, nec alius, qui a Rege teneat, talem piscem habet, si valeat ultra 50 libras, nisi per cartam eum habeat.”—See also Turner's Tour in Normandy, II. p. 21, respecting the existence of a whale-fishery near Jumieges, upon the authority of the writer of the Gesta Sancti Philiberti.
[140] P. 589.—“Notum sit universis Ecclesiæ Dei filiis, quod ego Joannes, Comes Auci, pro stipendio militum et servientium, quos tenui per guerram Regis, invadiavi maximam partem et optimam Thesauri Ecclesiæ S. Michaëlis de Ulterior-Portu, duos videlicet Textus prætiosos, et duo Thuribula prætiosa, unum calicem argenteum, et optimè deauratum; cappas caras viginti quatuor: casulam peratam et bonam: Præterea, tot et tantis gravaminibus præfatam Ecclesiam tam sæpè gravavi, quàm vices gravaminum numerare non possem: quare pro multis pauca, pro magnis parua, rependens, concedo, et in perpetuum do prædictæ Ecclesiæ, avenam et frumentum de Verleio, quæ pertinet ad Forestagium. Diligenter autem hæredes exoro, ne Ecclesias terræ suæ gravent, sed honorent et protegant. Et si quid eis pro salute animæ meæ et parentum meorum dedi, vel pro ablatis reddidi, in pace stabiliter tenere faciant: recordantes, quod ipsi morituri sunt: Sicut prædecessores nostri mortui sunt.”
PLATE LXVII.
CHURCH OF ANISY.
Plate 67. Church of Anisy, near Caen.
The present plate has been introduced into this work, with the view of exhibiting a Norman village church of unquestionable antiquity, having its walls, on either side, built of a coarse dark stone, fashioned like Roman bricks, and disposed in a zig-zag, or, as it is more commonly termed, a herring-bone direction. A similar disposition of the masonry is observable in a portion of the church of Perriers, the subject of the following plate: it is still more conspicuous at the neighboring church of St. Matthieu, already mentioned in this work.[141] The old church of St. Croix, at St. Lo, and the lower part of the east end of the church of St. Hildebert, at Gournai, exhibit the same peculiarity, which, according to Mr. Turner, likewise exists in portions of the outer walls of the castle at Arques, as well as in the keep of the castle at Falaise.[142] These various instances, all of them taken from structures which are beyond a doubt of Norman origin, will remove any hesitation as to the Normans having practised this mode of building. Still farther confirmation will be found in the English castles of Tamworth and Colchester, both of the same early æra:[143] the stones, in the latter, are disposed precisely as here figured: in the former, horizontal strata regularly alternate with the inclined, as if in imitation of various Roman remains.[144] And, indeed, that they were really constructed with such an intention, appears highly probable; as, according to Sir Henry Englefield, whose authority is unquestionable, the same style of masonry is seen at Silchester, which is most certainly a pure Roman relic: it is even stated, that the old walls of the city of Rome were so built.[145]
Abstracted from the peculiarity just noticed, there is little in the church of Anisy to excite interest. A flat moulding, not less wide than a buttress, and surmounted by a narrow string-course of the plainest character, is continued round the whole nave, and divides it into two stories of equal height; while four Norman buttresses, on either side, separate it into three compartments. In the original state of the church, the windows were confined to the upper portion alone, and alternated with the buttresses: they rose from the string-course, narrow, circular-headed, surrounded with squared freestone, and having no other ornament than a slender cylindrical moulding above. In succeeding times, either the want of a sufficient quantity of light, or a desire for improvement, led to the introduction of larger cinquefoil-headed windows, occupying equal portions of the upper and lower stories. Throughout the whole of this part of the church, the apertures made by the scaffolding are left; and, what is remarkable, are edged with freestone.
The corbels are grotesque; and the subjects of some indecent.—In the west front there is nothing remarkable: the door-way and window above are of the most common character of Norman architecture: neither in this part of the church, nor in the chancel, is the herring-bone masonry continued; nor does the horizontal moulding extend over either of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Tour in Normandy, I. p. 37.
[143] It is hoped, that this assertion is not too bold.—The accounts of Tamworth castle, as a building, are indeed particularly unsatisfactory: neither Leland, in his Itinerary, nor Shaw, in his History of Staffordshire, throw any light upon the æra of its construction. Yet, even from the wretched plate given in the latter work, the castle, all altered as it is, appears to preserve somewhat of the character of its Norman origin; while the fact of its having belonged to the powerful family of Marmion, immediately after the conquest, adds historical probability to the opinion. With regard to Colchester, no one who has seen it will feel hesitation on the subject, although the quantity of Roman bricks visible in every part, very naturally lead to the conclusion, that it was raised upon the ruins of a far earlier edifice.
[144] Carter's Ancient Architecture, p. 36, pl. 42, fig. E.
[145] Strutt's Manners and Customs of the Anglo-Saxons, &c. I. p. 28.
PLATE LXVIII.
CHURCH OF PERRIERS.
Plate 68. Church of Perriers, near Caen.
The upper half of this plate exhibits a north-west view of the church of Perriers: the lower represents it in the opposite direction. From both it will be observed, that the different parts of the building are the productions of two different æras, the nave having been erected during the prevalence of the semi-circular architecture, while the chancel exhibits a specimen of probably the very earliest period of the pointed style. In reference to the preceding plate, it is not uninteresting to remark, that the herring-bone masonry is, in this instance, altogether confined to the more early portion of the structure, the whole of which is composed of it, with the exception of the buttresses.
The great western door-way to the church of Perriers is very peculiar. Mr. Cotman regards it as the only instance, in the duchy, of a real Norman building having its principal entrance square-headed. Its massive lintel, shaped, as at Bieville, into a pediment, and surmounted by an arch, which is rather the segment of an ellipsis than of a circle, is likewise remarkable. But the very large arch on the northern side of the nave, adjoining the west end, is by far the most striking architectural feature of the building. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to assign any satisfactory reason for its existence. Its situation precludes the idea of its having been placed there by way of support to the tower: its size forbids the supposition, that it ever served as an entrance. Had there been an aisle or chapel beyond, it certainly might have been the medium of their communication with the main building; but the buttress contiguous to it, proves that the wall in which it is inserted, was the outer wall of the church. As it is, it appears a perfect anomaly, and must remain as a crux for the ingenuity of future antiquaries.
The similar arch, now blocked up, at the western extremity of the chancel, places it almost beyond a doubt that the church had a central tower. The windows of the chancel far exceed, in point of length and narrowness, any others that have yet appeared in this work. They are wholly destitute of mouldings or decoration of any description; but, like those at Anisy, are edged with freestone, as are the apertures left by the scaffolding, which in this building are disposed with unusual regularity, as if with the intention of their being ornamental. This introduction of white smooth stone, assorts ill with the dull reddish-brown mass all around it, and produces a glaring and disagreeable effect. The indented cornice is similar to that observed by Mr. Turner upon the gate-tower, leading to the monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Caen.[146]
FOOTNOTES:
[146] Tour in Normandy, II. p. 183.
PLATE LXIX.
CASTLE OF LILLEBONNE.
Plate 69. Castle of Lillebonne.
Julius Cæsar, the principal source of information respecting ancient Gaul, at the same time that he mentions the Caletes, the inhabitants of the modern Pays de Caux, is altogether silent with regard to the principal city of their territory. From Ptolemy, however, and the Itinerary of Antoninus, it appears, that such city was called Juliobona;[147] and, notwithstanding the attempts of Cluvier and Adrien de Valois to establish Dieppe as the site of this Caletian metropolis,[148] the learned of the present day seem unanimously agreed to fix it at Lillebonne; and there are but few who are not also of opinion, that the present French name is a corruption of the ancient Roman one. Some Latin writers of the twelfth century make mention of Insula Bona; and the word, Lillebonne, spelt, as it not uncommonly is, L'Ilebonne, might be regarded as originating from that appellation, of which, indeed, it is a literal translation. But the point is not worth arguing: it is equally possible, that Insula Bona may be no other than Lillebonne latinized.
Leaving all discussions of this kind, and equally passing by the attempts which have been made to derive the name of Lillebonne from Celtic roots,[149] it is at least certain, that the place was a Roman settlement; and the undoubted fact of no fewer than five Roman roads branching from it, to different parts of the country,[150] justifies the inference, that it was likewise a settlement of some importance. The subterraneous passages and foundations of ancient buildings, scattered over a wide extent of ground, attest a place of no small size. The remains of a theatre,[151] added to abundance of vases, cinerary urns, sepulchral lamps, and coins and medals, both of the upper and lower empire, which have been from time to time dug up here, prove it to have been occupied by the Romans during a considerable period. But no records remain, either of its greatness or overthrow. It fell, in all probability, in consequence of the irruptions of the northern hordes, and was swept away, like other neighboring towns,
“Unknown their arts, and lost their chroniclers.”
In the midst of the general destruction, it is possible that some remains of the city may have been left, that attracted the notice of the new lords of the country: or, possibly, their choice was fixed by the lovely situation of Lillebonne, in a valley upon the eastern bank of the Seine, not far from the mouth of that majestic stream. While Normandy was ruled by its own princes, Lillebonne was the seat of a ducal palace; and tradition, whose accuracy in this instance there is no reason to impugn, teaches that the actual remains of such palace are to be seen in the building here figured. It even goes farther, and maintains that this hall is the very spot in which William assembled his barons, for the purpose of hearing their counsel, and marshalling their forces, preparatory to his descent upon England.[152] His actual residence at Lillebonne at various times is clear, from a number of charters which bear date from this place. In one of these, granted in the year 1074, for the sake of establishing[153] harmony between the Abbot of St. Wandrille and the Count of Evreux, the sovereign styles himself gloriosus rex Anglorum and he dates it a Castro Julio-Bona. At another time, in consequence of a dispute respecting the succession to the abbacy of St. Evroul, Ordericus Vitalis relates, that one of the rival competitors repaired to the Duke, “who was then holding his court at Lillebonne” and who, incensed at the interference of the Pope on the occasion, exhibited a strong trait of his natural character, by swearing, that if any monk belonging to his territory, should dare to calumniate him abroad, he would hang him by his cowl upon the highest tree in the neighboring wood.[154] This happened in the year 1063: in 1080, there was held here, by order of the same prince, a provincial synod, which passes in the annals of the Norman churches, under the name of the Concilium Julio-Bonense. Its canons are preserved, and are reported at length by Bessin, “with the intention,” as he remarks, “of enabling posterity to judge of the character of the laws in Normandy, during the reign of Duke William.”[155]
Lillebonne is at present a poor small country town, whose inhabitants carry on an inconsiderable trade in tanning, and in the manufacturing of cotton. The ruins of the castle, however, are far from unimportant. Not only is the whole plan of the structure still distinctly to be traced; but there remain, in addition to the great hall, [here] figured, extensive portions of other buildings, some of which are altered into a modern farm-house. A noble circular tower, surrounded by a deep moat, and approached by a draw-bridge, appears at first view to be the great character of the ruin; but it is obviously an addition of a subsequent period, and, indeed, of a time considerably posterior to the hall. The pointed arches of its windows, and the elegant bosses of its ceiling, denote an æra when the arts had arrived at a high state of perfection.—Of the date, or cause of the decay of the castle, nothing is recorded.
The hall has the appearance of having been erected by Italian architects. Its features are distinctly Roman; and it may be regarded as holding, in this respect, the same place among the castellated buildings of Normandy, as the church of St. Stephen, at Caen, occupies among the ecclesiastical. The broken cornice at the top of the walls, is a decided imitation of that upon the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, the arch of Constantine, and the colosseum at Rome; and the windows may be likened to those of Mæcenas' villa at Tivoli, in which there is the same arrangement of arch within arch. But the Norman architect has introduced a peculiarity, scarcely to be paralleled, in the transom, which, placed upon a line with the capitals, divides each window into two unequal parts, and at once supports, and is supported by, the central pillar, that subdivides the lower moiety.
The Church at Lillebonne is also an object deserving of observation, especially in the principal entrance: the great arch is flanked by two square massy projections, in the form of buttresses, each of them faced by a row of small cylindrical pillars in high relief, broken towards the centre, to give place for canopied saints, and ending at the top in ornaments, apparently intended to convey the idea of a series of antique candelabra.
FOOTNOTES:
[147] Ordericus Vitalis, on the other hand, says, but he is borne out by no classical authority, that Lillebonne occupies the site of an old Belgic town, called Caletus which was destroyed by Julius Cæsar; who built on its foundation a new one, and named it Julio-bona, after himself. The passage, which is curious, is as follows:—“Antiqua urbs fuit, quæ Caletus ab incolis dicta est. Hanc (ut in antiquis Romanorum legitur gestis) Caius Julius Cæsar obsedit, et pro nimia bellatorum obstinatione intus acerrimè repugnantium subvertit. Deinde postquam hostes ibidem ad libitum compressit, considerata opportunitate loci, præsidium Romanorum providè constituit, et a nomine suo Juliam-bonam (quam barbari nunc corrupto nomine Ille-bonam nuncupant) appellavit.”—Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni, p. 554.
[148] These authors were led to this opinion by the difficulty of reconciling the distances, as stated by Antoninus, between Julio-bona and the adjacent towns, with the actual distance of the same places from the modern Lillebonne.
[149] See Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 6, where it is suggested, that the word, L'Ilebonne, may be derived from the two Celtic words, Ile, signifying a current of water, and Bonne, which denotes the termination of any thing. The towns of Bonne, upon the Rhine, and of Libourne, are supposed to have taken their names from these words.
[150] Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure, II. p. 126.
[151] Figured in the Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques dans l'Ancienne France, par Nodier, Taylor, et De Cailleux.—In the section of this publication, comprising Normandy, the authors have devoted nine plates to the illustration of Lillebonne.
[152] In the Gallia Christiana, XI. p. 31, it is said on this subject, in speaking of Maurilius, archbishop of Rouen, that “adfuit Juliobonensibus Comitiis pro expeditione Anglicana, in 1066.”
[153] See Neustria Pia, p. 168.
[154] Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni, p. 488.
[155] Concilia Normannica, I. p. 67.
PLATE LXX.
CASTLE OF BRIQUEBEC.[156]
Plate 70. Castle of Briquebec, near Valognes.
Briquebec is an extensive parish, situated about seven miles to the south of Valognes, with a population of four thousand five hundred inhabitants, a weekly market on Mondays, and several considerable fairs. Its castle claims an antiquity, nearly, if not altogether, coeval with the days of Rollo. When that Duke, on gaining peaceable possession of Normandy, parcelled out the land among his companions in arms, the portion that included Briquebec was one of the most considerable. The lord of Briquebec held in the Norman exchequer the third place among the barons of the Cotentin, the present department of La Manche.[157] His services and his rank, to which may probably also be added, his relationship to Rollo, entitled him to this proud distinction.
After the assassination of William Longue Epée, second Duke of Normandy, in 942, Amlech, or, as he is sometimes called, Lancelot, of Briquebec, was appointed one of the council of regency, during the minority of the young prince, Richard, the son to the deceased, and heir to the throne. In this capacity he was also one of those deputed to receive Louis d'Outremer, King of France, at Rouen.—Amlech had a son, named Turstin of Bastenburg, and he left two sons, one of whom, William, was lord of Briquebec.—The other, Hugh, commonly called the bearded, was the head of the family of Montfort, which produced the famous Count, Pierre, slain at the battle of Evesham, while commanding the barons in revolt against Henry III.—The line of the lords of Briquebec was continued in the posterity of William, whose son, of the same name, attended the Conqueror into England. Seven of his descendants successively bore the name of Robert Bertrand, and successively possessed the barony of Briquebec. The last died in the middle of the fourteenth century, leaving his extensive domains, including this castle, to his eldest daughter, Jane, with whom it passed in marriage to William Paisnel, baron of Hambye.[158]
The name of Paisnel will be found, as well as that of Bertrand, in the roll of chieftains engaged in the conquest of England. Duke William recompensed the services of Ralph Paisnel, his companion in arms, with various domains in different counties of his newly-acquired kingdom, and particularly in Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Somersetshire. His descendants, who were numerous in Great Britain, possessed, among other distinguished lordships, those of Huntley and of Dudley.—In the Cotentin, their family was equally extensive and powerful. William, son of Jane Bertrand and of William Paisnel, succeeded his parents as lord of Briquebec and of Hambye.—He, in his turn, was followed by another William, who, by a marriage with his cousin, daughter of Oliver Paisnel, lord of Moyon, united that great barony to a property, which was previously immense. Upon the death of William, without children, Fulk Paisnel, his brother, became his heir; and, as he likewise died childless, the fortune devolved upon a younger brother, Nicholas. This Nicholas, who was previously lord of Chanteleu, married Jane de la Champagne, baroness of Gaie, and left an only daughter, by whose marriage with Louis d'Estouteville, in 1413, the baronies of Gaie, Moyon, Hambye, and Briquebec, passed at once from the family of Paisnel.
Briquebec, at the same time that it thus again changed masters, was still possessed by a descendant of one of those powerful barons, who had shared in the glory of the conquest of England.—Robert de Huteville, one of the Conqueror's companions in arms, had received from that sovereign a princely recompense, particularly in the county of York. But after the death of William Rufus, he espoused the party of the eldest brother, against Henry I. and was taken prisoner at the battle of Tinchbray, when his property was confiscated, and given to Néel d'Aubigny.—The name of his son, Robert, is to be found among the Yorkshire barons, who defeated the Scotch army at North Allerton; and it again occurs in the twentieth year of the reign of Henry II. at the battle of Alnwick, where he made the King of Scotland prisoner.
To return to the possessor of Briquebec, who was destined to afford a striking example of the mutability of fortune—scarcely had he become by his marriage the most powerful lord in the Cotentin, or possibly in Normandy, when Henry V. of England, invaded the duchy, gained the battle of Agincourt, and shortly afterwards made himself master of the whole province, except Mount St. Michael. In this trying emergency, Louis d'Estouteville remained faithful to his sovereign, and was, consequently, deprived of his possessions.
Henry immediately bestowed Hambye and Briquebec upon one of his favorite generals, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk,[159] who, in 1427, still continued lord of Briquebec, in which capacity he confirmed to the abbey of Cherbourg, a rent of fifty sols, that had been given by his predecessor, Robert Bertrand, in 1329. The act of confirmation yet exists: it is dated in the year just mentioned; two years after which, the Earl of Suffolk, who had always previously been victorious, experienced a reverse of fortune, and was made prisoner at Gageau, together with his brothers, Alexander and John de la Pole. The consequence was, that he was compelled to sell his lands in the Cotentin to pay his ransom.
They were purchased by Sir Bertyn Entwyssle, a knight of the county of Lancaster, who, in the archives of the castle of Briquebec, dated about the year 1440, is styled Admiral of England; as his brother, Henry Entwyssle, in the same documents, bears the title of the King of England's Lieutenant-General in Normandy. In the hands of this nobleman, Briquebec continued, till the battle of Formigny compelled the British to evacuate Normandy. Sir Bertyn afterwards took part with Henry VI. against the Duke of York, and was slain at the battle of St. Albans, in 1455.
Upon the restoration of the province to the crown of France, the family of D'Estouteville were replaced in the lordship of Briquebec. They had deserved eminently well of the French King, for whom Louis D'Estouteville had continued to hold possession of Mount St. Michael, the only fortress that offered an availing resistance to the English.
In succeeding times, Briquebec and Hambye passed, by different marriages, into the families of Bourbon St. Pol, and of Orleans Longueville; but at the close of the sixteenth century, Mary of Orleans, Duchess of Nemours, sold this property to Jaques Gougon de Matignon, Marshal of France.—The descendants of the marshal continued lords of Briquebec till the revolution. It had shortly before that event fallen into the hands of a female, the only survivor of that family, and she had married the eldest son of the Duke de Montmorency. But the revolution swept away the whole of their fortune. A few detached fragments of the property, which had not been alienated, have recently been restored to them: the rest has long since been sold, including the castle, the only habitable part of which now serves for an ale-house. All the remainder is hastening fast to decay.
The walls of the castle inclose a considerable space of ground; and, at the time when they were perfect, they comprised eight towers, of different sizes and forms, including the multangular keep, the principal feature of the [plate]. This tower, which is a hundred French feet in height, is still nearly perfect. The sides towards the west and south-west, from which Mr. Cotman has made his drawing, are entirely so.—In an architectural point of view, Briquebec offers specimens of the workmanship of many different epochs.—The case is widely different between fortresses and churches: the latter, whatever the date of their construction, commonly exhibit a certain degree of unity in their plan: in castles, on the other hand, the means provided for defence have usually had reference to those employed in attack. Both the one and the other are found to vary ad infinitum, according to time and localities. Briquebec shews some traces of the architecture of the eleventh century, but many more of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. The chapel, the magazines, the stables, and the present dwelling-house, were the parts last built. Of these, the two first have been for some years destroyed: the others are in a state of extreme neglect; and, neither in the dwelling-house, nor in the apartments over the great gate, does there now remain any thing curious.
FOOTNOTES:
[156] For the whole of this article, the author has to express his acknowledgments to his friend, M. de Gerville, from whose manuscript it is almost verbatim translated.
[157] Masseville, Histoire de Normandie, III. p. 46.
[158] While one branch of the Bertrand family continued in possession of the barony of Briquebec, another branch established itself in Northumberland, where it received from the Conqueror many manors. Under the reign of Henry I. William Bertrand, or, as he is called by Tanner, Bertram, founded the priory of Brinkburn. Roger, one of his descendants, was conspicuous among the barons who revolted against King John; at the death of which prince, he espoused the party of Henry III.; but his son, Roger, took arms against this latter monarch, and was made prisoner at Northampton. A third Roger succeeded him, and was the last baron of Brinkburn.—Richard Bertram, who lived under Henry II. had a son called Robert, baron of Bothal, whose son Richard joined the confederate barons against King John. A descendant of his, of the name of Robert, lived under Edward III. and enjoyed the title of Lord Bothal, and was sheriff of Northumberland, and governor of Newcastle. He was present at the battle of Durham, where he made William Douglas prisoner. His only daughter, the heiress to his property, married Sir Robert Ogle; and thus the family of Bertram became extinct both in France and England nearly at the same time.
[159] The instrument, which is curious, is still in existence, and is as follows:—“Henricus dei gracia rex Francie et Anglie et dnus hybernie oibus ad quos psentes littere puenerint salutem. Sciatis qd de gracia nostra speciali et ob grata et laudabilia obsequia nobis per carissimum consanguineum nostrum Guillelmum, Comitem de Suffolk, huc usque mirabiliter impensa dedimus et concessimus eidem comiti castra et dominia de Hambye et de Briquebec cum ptinenciis suis una cum oibus feodis, aliis hereditatibus et possessionibus quibuscumque quas tenuit fouques Paisnel chevalier defunctus intra ducatum meum Normannie habendis et tenendis prefato comiti et heredibus suis masculis de corpore suo nascentibus ad valorem 3500 scutorum per annum, cum omnibus dignitatibus, libertatibus, franchesiis, juribus, donationibus, reversionibus, forisfacturis, etallis, proficiis, commoditatibus et emolumentis quibuscumq. ad pdicta castra et dominia vel altera eorum seu ad feoda hereditates et possessiones predictas aliqualiter ptinentibus seu spectantibus intra ducatum nostrum Normannie adeo plene perfecte et integre et eodem modo sicut pdictus fouques vel aliquis alius tenebat et possidebat per homagium nobis et heredibus nostris faciendum et reddendo unum scutum de Armis Sci Georgii ad festum suum apud castrum nostrum de Cherbourg, singulis annis in perpetuum reservata tamen nobis et heredib. nostris alta et summa justicia et omni alio jure quod ad nos poterit pertinere proviso semper qd idem comes et heredes sui predicti sex homines ad arma et 12 sagittarios ad equitandum nobiscum seu heredibus nostris vel locum tenente nostro durante presenti guerra qui ad sumptus suos servire tenebuntur funtaque presenti guerra hujus modi et servicia in parte debita faciet et supportabit, et ulterius de uberiori gracia dedimus et concessimus...... in cujus rei testimonium has litteras nostras fieri fecimus patentes.—Teste meipso apd civitatem nram de Bayeux, XIII. die Martii, anno regni nri quinto.
L. S. Per ipsum regem STORGEON.”
PLATE LXXI.
CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN, AT FÉCAMP.
Plate 71. Church of St. Stephen, at Fécamp.
Southern entrance.
Fécamp, like many other towns in Normandy, has fallen from its original greatness to a state of extreme poverty. The sun of its prosperity has set, to rise no more. Neglect immediately followed upon the removal of the ducal throne to England: the annexation of Normandy to the crown of France, completed the ruin of the town; and the great change in the habits of mankind, from warlike to commercial, leaves no hopes for the restoration of the importance of a place, whose situation holds out no advantages for trade. Hence, Fécamp at present appears desolate and decayed; and, though the official account of the population of France still allows the number of its inhabitants to amount to seven thousand, the great quantity of deserted houses, calculated to amount to more than a third of all those in the town, impress the beholder with a strong feeling of depopulation and ruin.[160]
But, in the earliest periods of French history, long before the foundation of the Norman throne, Fécamp was honored as a regal residence. The palace is said to have been rebuilt by William Longue-Epée, with extraordinary magnificence. That prince took great pleasure in the chace; and he and his immediate successors frequently lived here. He also selected the castle as a place of retirement for his duchess, during her pregnancy with Richard. His choice, in this respect, was probably not altogether guided by his partiality for the place; but, threatened at that time with a dangerous war, he was desirous of fixing his wife and infant heir in a situation, whence they might, in case of necessity, be with ease removed to the friendly shores of England.—Richard, born at Fécamp, preserved through life an attachment to the town, and omitted no opportunity of benefiting it. He rebuilt, endowed, and enriched the abbatial church at vast expense; and he finally ordered it to be the resting-place for his bones, which, however, he would not permit to be interred in any spot whatever within the structure, but, with his dying breath, expressly enjoined his son to deposit them on the outside, immediately beneath the eaves, in order that, to use the words put by the monastic historians into his mouth upon the occasion, “stillantium guttarum sacro tecto diffluens infusio abluat jacentis ossa, quæ omnium peccatorum tabe fœdavit et maculavit negligens et neglecta vita mea.”—A curious question might be raised, whether the monarch, in this injunction, was solely impressed with the feeling of his own unworthiness, or whether he had also in view, the mystic doctrine of the efficacy of water towards the ablution of sins.
Richard II. and the succeeding dukes, appear to have regarded Fécamp with an equally friendly eye; till, in process of time, the increasing splendor of its monastery altogether eclipsed the waning honors of the town; and Henry II. of England, finally sealed its downfall, by making a regular donation of the town to the abbey, from which period till the revolution, the latter was every thing, the former nothing.
“Fécamp,” as it is remarked by Nodier, “was to the Dukes of Normandy, what the pyramids were to the Egyptian monarchs,—a city of tombs: Richard II. rested there by the side of Richard I. and, near him, his brother Robert, his wife Judith, and his son William.”[161]—The list might be lengthened by the addition of many other scarcely less noble names.
“The abbey of Fécamp is said to have been founded in the year 664 or 666, for a community of nuns, by Waning, the count or governor of the Pays de Caux, a nobleman who had already contributed to the endowment of the monastery of St. Wandrille. St. Ouen, Bishop of Rouen, dedicated the church in the presence of King Clotaire; and so rapidly did the fame of the sanctity of the abbey extend, that the number of its inmates amounted, in a very short period, to more than three hundred. The arrival, however, of the Normans, under Hastings, in 841, caused the dispersion of the nuns; and the same story is related of the few who remained at Fécamp, as of many others under similar circumstances, that they voluntarily cut off their noses and their lips, rather than be an object of attraction to their conquerors. The abbey, in return for their heroism, was levelled with the ground; and it did not rise from its ashes till the year 988, when the piety of Duke Richard I. built the church anew, under the auspices of his son, Robert, archbishop of Rouen. Departing, however, from the original foundation, he established therein a chapter of regular canons, who soon proved so irregular in their conduct, that within ten years they were doomed to give way to a body of Benedictine monks, headed by an abbot, named William, from a convent at Dijon. From his time the monastery continued to increase in splendor. Three suffragan abbeys, that of Notre Dame at Bernay, of St. Taurin at Evreux, and of Ste. Berthe de Blangi, in the diocese of Boullogne, owned the superior power of the abbot of Fécamp, and supplied the three mitres, which he proudly bore on his abbatial shield. Kings and princes, in former ages, frequently paid the abbey the homage of their worship and their gifts; and, in a more recent period, Casimir of Poland, after his voluntary abdication of the throne, selected it as the spot in which he sought for repose, when wearied with the cares of royalty. The English possessions of Fécamp do not appear to have been large; but, according to the author of the History of Alien Priories, the abbot presented to one hundred and thirty benefices, some in the diocese of Rouen, others in those of Bayeux, Lisieux, Coutances, Chartres, and Beauvais; and it enjoyed so many estates, that its income was said to be forty thousand crowns per annum.”[162]
The work, from which this account of the abbey of Fécamp has been extracted, also contains some details relative to a few of the principal miracles connected with the convent, and relative to the precious blood, to the possession of which Fécamp was indebted for no small portion of its celebrity. But the reader must be referred for all these to the Neustria Pia, where he will find them recorded at great length. The author of that most curious volume, appears to have treated no subject more entirely con amore than Fécamp; and if the more enlightened progeny of the present day incline, in the plentitude of their wisdom, to “think their fathers fools” for listening to such tales, let it at least be recollected, that even these tales, with all their absurdity, are most interesting documents of the progress of the human mind; and, above all, let it never be forgotten, that books of this description contain a mass of materials for the elucidation of the manners and customs of the age, which would in vain be sought for in any other quarter.
The abbatial church of Fécamp is still standing uninjured, and is a work of various ages. Some circular chapels attached to the sides of the choir, are probably remains of the building erected by Duke Richard: the rest is all of the pointed style of architecture; and the earliest part is scarcely anterior to the end of the twelfth century.—The church of St. Stephen, selected [here] for publication, is undeserving of notice, except for its southern portal, which is an elegant specimen of what is called by Mr. Rickman, the decorated English architecture.
FOOTNOTES:
[160] Turner's Tour in Normandy, I. p. 60.
[161] Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques dans l'Ancienne France, I. p. 110.—Seven plates in this work are devoted to the illustration of the religious buildings at Fécamp.
[162] Turner's Tour in Normandy, I. p. 62.
PLATE LXXII.
SCREEN IN THE CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE, AT EU.
Plate 72. Screen in the Church of St. Lawrence, at Eu.
The town of Eu has, by some writers, been supposed to have been the capital of the Gallic tribe mentioned in Cæsar's Commentaries, under the name of the Essui; but a conjecture of this description, founded altogether upon the similarity of the name, and unsupported by any collateral testimony, must be allowed to be at best only problematical; and ancient geography presents so wide a field for the display of ingenuity and learning, that it is in no department of science more necessary to be upon the guard against plausible theories.—There are others who contend for the Teutonic origin of the town, and refer to etymology with equal zeal, and with greater plausibility. The word Eu, otherwise spelt Ou or Au signifies a meadow, in Saxon; and the same name was likewise originally applied to the river Bresle,[163] which washes the walls of Eu, within a distance of two miles from its confluence with the ocean at Tréport.[164]
The first mention that occurs of Eu in history, is in the pages of Flodoard, according to whom, the town was in existence in the year 925; but, whether the Roman or the Saxon derivation of its name be preferred, in either case etymology would fairly allow the inference, that its foundation was considerably more ancient. During the reign of Louis XI. Eu obtained a melancholy celebrity: a report was circulated in the summer of 1475, that it was the intention of the English to make a descent upon the coast of France, and to establish themselves there for the winter. At the same time, this town was confidently mentioned as the place where they proposed to fix their quarters. To deprive them of such an advantage, the French monarch had recourse to a measure which could only be justified by the most urgent necessity: he ordered the Maréchal de Gamaches to enter the place with four hundred soldiers, on the eighteenth of July, and to set fire to the houses of the citizens, together with the castle. His commands were executed; and the whole was reduced to a heap of ashes, with the exception of the churches. The neighboring towns of Dieppe, St. Valeri, and Abbeville, profited from the misfortunes of Eu, which has never recovered its prosperity, notwithstanding the various privileges subsequently granted to it.—The present population consists of about three thousand four hundred inhabitants, whose only trade is a trifling manufactory of lace.
From as early a period as the year 1102, the title of Count was bestowed by Richard I. Duke of Normandy, upon the lords of Eu, who, in 1458, received the additional dignity of Comtes et Pairs; probably as some recompense for the misery inflicted upon the place three years before. In the number of these counts, was the celebrated Duc de Guise, commonly known by the name of Le Balafré. His monument of black and white marble, in the church of the Jesuits at Eu, was executed by Genoese artists; as was that of his wife, the Duchess of Cleves. Both of them have long been subjects of admiration.[165] The last of the line of counts of Eu, was the Duc de Penthièvre, a nobleman of the most estimable character: the title was his at the breaking out of the revolution; and it is not a little to his honor, that a writer of the most decidedly republican principles could be found, in the midst of that stormy period, to bear the following testimony in his favor:—“Né au milieu d'une cour, oú la corruption et les vices avoient pris le nom de la sagesse et des vertus, il dédaigna leurs délices funestes; il repoussa l'air empesté de Versailles; supérieur à leurs prestiges, il oublia sa naissance; il prouva enfin, par de longues années consacrées à faire le bien, qu'il étoit digne d'être né simple citoyen.[166]”—The castle, the residence of the counts, is now converted into a military hospital.
The abbey of Eu is said to have been founded in 1002,[167] by William, first count of the place, natural son of Richard Sans-peur, Duke of Normandy. It was at its origin dedicated to the Virgin; but, after a lapse of somewhat more than two hundred years, was placed under the invocation of St. Lawrence, archbishop of Dublin. That prelate had, in the year 1181, crossed into Normandy, with the view of restoring a friendly understanding between the King of Ireland, his brother, and the King of England; and, at the moment of his approaching Eu, and beholding the lofty towers of the abbey, he is said to have exclaimed in strains of pious fervor, “Hæc requies mea in seculum seculi: hic habitabo, quoniam elegi eam.” Having accomplished the object of his mission, he died shortly after at the convent, and was there interred; and the fame of his sanctity attracting crowds of devotees to his tomb, he was canonized by a papal bull, dated the 11th of December, 1218, since which time the monastery has borne his name.
The church of St. Lawrence, though no longer abbatial, has been suffered to exist; even before the revolution, it served at once as the church to the convent and to the first parish of Eu. The screen here figured, a beautiful specimen of the decorated English architecture, is placed at the entrance of one of the chapels. Another chapel contains a Holy Sepulchre, said to be superior, in point of the execution of the figures, to any other in France. In the south transept is a spirally-banded column of extraordinary elegance. The church stands upon the foundations of an earlier building, erected at the close of the twelfth century, and destroyed by lightning in 1426. According to the records of the monastery, it was either wholly, or in great measure, rebuilt by John de Vallier, the twenty-fourth abbot, in 1464.[168]—The following description of the building is borrowed from the journal of a very able friend of the writer of this article, who visited Eu in September, 1819:—“The abbey church of Eu is plain and massy on the outside of the nave and transepts. The east end of the choir is highly enriched with flying buttresses, &c. The windows of the nave are lancet-headed, and very tall: on the outside is a circular arch, which may be a restoration. The west window has been in three lancet divisions, which have been filled up with more modern tracery. The nave is singularly elegant: the triforium, or rather the upper tier of arches, is new in design, and most extraordinary. In the choir, the triforium is composed of tracery. The north transept is something like Winchester, only the arches are pointed: there are two arches. This arrangement is probably general; as I saw it at Troyes and other places. In a side-chapel is an entombment: the figures as large as life, or nearly so, and richly painted; quite perfect. Inscriptions on the hems of the garments. The culs de lampe are of the most elegant reticulated work. In the north transept is a circular window filled with late tracery. No towers at the west end. East end, a polygon, as usual.—This church, which is well worthy of an attentive study, is quite distinct in character from the churches in the east of France: it has no marigold window; no row of niches over the portal; no massed door-way; so that the general outline of the front agrees wholly with the earliest pointed style. But the exterior is more chaste than any thing we have in England; and its architectural unity is better preserved. On the other hand, its parts are less elaborate.”
FOOTNOTES:
[163] Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 45.
[164] “Le païs d'Auge a tiré son nom de ses prairies. Au, Avv, Avve, et Ou, en Allemand, signifient un Pré.... Aventin est mon témoin dans son explication des noms Allemans. La ville d'Eu, située dans des prairies, a tiré son nom de la même origine. Elle est nommée dans les vieux Ecrivains, Auga, Augam, et Aucum; et dans les auteurs Anglois Ou, d'où est formé le nom d'Eu. De cette même origine vient le nom d'Au, qu'on a depuis écrit et prononcé O, et que portent plusieurs Seigneuries de Normandie et d'ailleurs, et qui est le même que celui d'Ou. Ou est une Comté qui a appartenue à ce Robert, que Robert du Mont qualifie Comte d'Ou. Ces mots d'Eu, d'Au, et d'Ou, se trouvent encore dans la composition de plusieurs noms de terres et de Seigneuries. Eu, dans le nom d'Eucourt, d'Eumesnil, et d'Eulande, terre dans le païs d'Auge, entre le Mare-Aupoix et Angerville, et ce nom est le même, sans aucune différence, que celui d'Oelande, isle de la mer Baltique, du domaine de la couronne de Suede. Les Suedois et les Danois prononcent Oelande ce que nous prononçons Eulande. Au dans Aubeuf, Aubose, Aumesnil, Aumont, Auvillers. Ou dans Ouville. Pour Auge on a dit Alge en quelques lieux; et c'est de là que vient le nom d'une terre au païs de Bray, qui ne consiste presque qu'en prairies. Le même nom d'Auge, que portent quelques familles, montre assez qu'il a été appellatif. Mais la chartre de confirmation de la fondation de l'Abbaye de St. Etienne, donnée par Henry II. Roy d'Angleterre, le montre incontestablement par ces paroles, “cum sylvâ et algiâ et cum terris”.”—Huet, Origines de Caen, p. 294.
[165] The church of St. Lawrence likewise contained the monuments of several distinguished personages, as appears by the following extract from the Description de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 72.—“Là sont inhumez Jean d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, fils de Robert d'Artois, Comte de Beaumont le Roger, et de Jean de Valois, mort le 6 Avril, 1386: Isabelle de Melun, son epouse: Isabelle d'Artois, leur fille, dans la chapelle de Saint Denys, sous une belle table de marbre noir, qui sert de table d'autel: Charles d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, sous l'autel de la chapelle de Saint Laurent: Jeanne de Saveuse, sa premiere femme: Helène de Melun, sa seconde femme, dans la chapelle de Saint Antoine, dite aujourd'hui de Saint Crepin: le Cœur de Catherine de Cleves, Comtesse d'Eu, au bas du Sanctuaire, sous une magnifique colonne de marbre noir: N.... de Bourbon, dit le Duc d'Aumale, fils de Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, legitimé de France, Duc de Maine, mort le 8 Septembre, 1708: enfin Philippe d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, et Connétable de France, mort selon son epitaphe à Micalice en Turquie, c'est-à-dire Nicopoli, le 16 Juin, 1397. Le Mausolée de celui-ci, qui est de marbre, est enfermé dans une espece de Cage de fer, dont les barreaux n'empêchent point qu'on ne puisse en approcher et y porter la main. Le Prince y est representé armé, mais sans casque et sans gantelets, pour marquer, dit-on, qu'il est mort à la guerre, mais non dans le combat: il a deux petits chiens à ses pieds, pour signifier, ajoute-t-on, qu'il est mort dans son lit: enfin la grille qui l'environne represente, dit-on encore, qu'il est mort en prison. Le monument, selon l'Ecrivain de qui j'emprunte ces conjectures, n'a coûté que 100 livres.”
[166] Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure, I. p. 84.
[167] Neustria Pia, p. 694.
[168] Neustria Pia, p. 700.
PLATE LXXIII.-LXXV.
CHURCH OF ST. PETER, AT LISIEUX.
Plates 73-74. Church of St. Peter at Lisieux.
The effects produced by the French revolution upon the religious state of the country, were scarcely less important than upon the political. In both cases, the nation hurried, with the blindest fury, from extreme to extreme; in both, they followed phantoms of ideal perfection through an unexampled series of excesses and sufferings; in both, they rested at length from exhaustion much more than from conviction; and, happily for mankind and for themselves, they finally attained in both nearly the same end, reverting indeed to their original constitutions, but tempering them with a most seasonable mixture of civil and ecclesiastical liberty. The concordat effected for the church, what the charter did for the state. The former of these was one of the master-pieces of Napoléon's policy, and was likewise one of the earliest acts of his power. It was established in the year 1801, while France yet retained the name of a republic, and the ambition of its ruler had not ventured to grasp, at more than the consular dignity. By this instrument, the whole ecclesiastical constitution was changed; and not only was all the power placed in the hands of the chief of the state, but the provinces and dioceses were entirely remodelled; and, instead of twenty-three archbishoprics and one hundred and thirty-four bishoprics, the number of the former, notwithstanding the vast extension of the French territory, was reduced to ten, and that of the latter to fifty.
The archbishop of Rouen was one of those who suffered least upon the occasion. His dignity was curtailed only by the suppression of two of his suffragans, the bishops of Avranches and of Lisieux.[169] The church, here figured, then resigned the mitre, which it had conferred from the middle of the sixth century, upon an illustrious, though not an uninterrupted, line of prelates. It is admitted, in the annals of the cathedral, that either the see must have been vacant for the space of four hundred years, or at least that the names of those who filled it during that period, are lost. Ordericus Vitalis, who resided fifty-six years in the diocese, and has collected, in the sixth book of his Ecclesiastical History, whatever was to be found in his time, relative to its early state, acknowledges the chasm, and accounts for it by the following general remarks.—“Piratæ de Daniâ egressi sunt, in Neustriam venerunt, et christianæ fidei divinique cultûs penitùs ignari, super fidelem populum immanitèr debacchati sunt. Antiquorum scripta cum basilicis et ædibus incendio deperierunt, quæ fervida juniorum studia, quamvis insatiabilitèr sitiant, recuperare nequiverunt. Nonnulla verò, quæ per diligentiam priscorum manibus barbarorum solertèr erepta sunt, damnabili subsequentium negligentiâ interierunt.”
The city of Lisieux represents the capital of the Gallic tribe, mentioned by Cæsar, and other almost contemporary writers, under the name of Lexovii; and it is supposed by modern geographers, that the territory occupied by these latter, was nearly co-extensive with the late bishopric of Lisieux. On this subject it has been observed, that “it is to be remarked, that the bounds of the ancient bishoprics of France were usually conterminal with the Roman provinces and prefectures.”[170] Neomagus or Noviomagus Lexoviorum, the capital of the Lexovii, had always been supposed to have occupied the site of the present town, till some excavations made in the year 1770, for the purpose of forming a chaussée between Lisieux and Caen, proved the ancient and the modern city to have been placed at the distance of about three quarters of a mile from each other. Extensive ruins of buildings, situated in a field, called Les Tourettes, were then brought to light; and among them were dug up various specimens of ancient art. The researches of more modern times, principally conducted by M. Louis Dubois, a very able antiquary of Lisieux, have materially added to the number as well as the value of these discoveries; and the quantity of Roman coins and medals that have rewarded his researches, would have left little doubt as to the real site of Neomagus, even if the circumstance had not within a very few years been established almost beyond a question, by the detection of a Roman amphitheatre in a state of great perfection.
Tradition, which there is in this instance no reason to impugn, relates that the Gallo-Roman capital disappeared during the incursions of the Saxons, about the middle of the fourth century. In farther confirmation of such opinion, it is to be observed, that none of the medals dug up within the ruins, or in their vicinity, bear a later date than the reign of Constantine; and that, though the city is recorded in the Itinerary of Antoninus, no mention of it is to be found in the curious chart, known by the name of the Tabula Peutingeriana, formed under the reign of Theodosius the Great; so that it then appears to have been completely swept away and forgotten.
Modern Lisieux is supposed to have risen at no distant period of time after the destruction of Neomagus. In the writings of the monkish historians, it is indifferently called Lexovium, Lexobium, Luxovium, Lixovium, and Lizovium, names obviously borrowed from the classical appellation of the tribe, as the French word Lisieux is clearly derived from them. In the early portion of Norman history, Lisieux is mentioned as having felt the vengeance of these invaders, during one of their predatory excursions from the Bessin, about the year 877. It was shortly afterwards sacked by Rollo himself, when that conqueror, elated with the capture of Bayeux, was on his march to take possession of the capital of Neustria. But the territory of Lisieux was still the last part of the duchy which owned Rollo as its lord: it was not ceded to him by Charles the Simple, till 923, at which time he had for eleven years been the undisputed sovereign of the rest of Normandy.
Neither under the Norman dukes, nor at a subsequent period, does Lisieux appear to have taken any prominent part in political transactions. Its central situation, by securing it against the attacks of the French in former times, and more recently of the English, also prevented it from obtaining that historical celebrity, which, from its size and opulence, it could scarcely have failed to have otherwise gained. The principal events connected with it, upon record, are the following:—It was the focus of the civil war in 1101, when Ralph Flambart, bishop of Durham, escaping from the prison to which he had been committed by his sovereign, fled hither, and raised the standard of rebellion against Henry, in favor of his brother.—In 1136, Lisieux was attacked by the forces of Anjou, under the command of Geoffrey Plantagenet, husband of the Empress Maude, joined by those of William, Duke of Poitiers; and the garrison, composed of Bretons, seeing no hope of resistance or of rescue, burned the town.—Thirty-three years subsequently, the city was honored by being selected by Thomas-à-Becket, as the place of his retirement during his temporary disgrace. Arnulf, then bishop of Lisieux, had labored diligently, though ineffectually, to restore amity between the sovereign and the prelate, espousing, indeed, decidedly the cause of the latter, but at the same time never forfeiting the friendship of the former, for whom, after the murder of Becket, he wrote a letter of excuse to the supreme pontiff, in the joint names of all the bishops of England.—Lisieux, in 1213, passed from under the dominion of the Norman dukes, to the sway of the French monarch. It opened its gates to Philip-Augustus, immediately after the fall of Caen and Bayeux; and its surrender was accompanied with that of Coutances and Séez, all of them without a blow, as the king's poetical chronicler, Brito, relates in the following lines:—
“Cumque diocesibus tribus illi tres sine bello
Sese sponte suâ præclari nominis urbes
Subjiciunt, Sagium, Constantia, Lexoviumque.”
In subsequent times, Lisieux suffered severely, when taken by the English army under Henry V. in 1417. Its recapture by Charles VII. thirty-two years afterwards, was unstained by bloodshed.
A great part of the preceding account of Lisieux has been borrowed from Mr. Turner's Tour in Normandy: what follows, relative to the church here figured, will be entirely so:—“The cathedral, now the parish church of St. Peter, derived one advantage from the revolution. Another church, dedicated to St. Germain, which had previously stood immediately before it, so as almost to block up the approach, was taken down, and the west front of the cathedral was made to open upon a spacious square.—Solid, simple grandeur are the characters of this front, which, notwithstanding some slight anomalies, is, upon the whole, a noble specimen of early pointed architecture.—It consists of three equal compartments, the lateral ones rising into short square towers of similar height. The southern tower is surmounted by a lofty stone spire, probably of a date posterior to the part below. The spire of the opposite tower fell in 1553, at which time much injury was done to the building, and particularly to the central door-way, which, even to the present day, has never been repaired.—Contrary to the usual elevation of French cathedrals, the great window over the principal entrance is not circular, but pointed: it is divided into three compartments by broad mullions, enriched with many mouldings. The compartments end in acute pointed arches. In the north tower, the whole of the space from the basement story is occupied by only two tiers of windows. Each tier contains two windows, extremely narrow, considering their height; and yet, narrow as they are, each of them is parted by a circular mullion or central pillar. You will better understand how high they must be, when told that, in the southern tower, the space of the upper row is divided into three distinct tiers; and still the windows do not appear disproportionately short. They also are double, and the interior arches are pointed; but the arches, within which they are placed, are circular. In this circumstance lies the principal anomaly in the front of the cathedral; but there is no appearance of any disparity in point of dates; for the circular arches are supported on the same slender mullions, with rude foliaged capitals, of great projection, which are the most distinguishing characteristics of this style of architecture.
“The date of the building establishes the fact of the pointed arch being in use, not only as an occasional variation, but in the entire construction of churches upon a grand scale, as early as the eleventh century.—Sammarthanus tells us that Bishop Herbert, who died in 1049, began to build this church, but did not live to see it completed; and Ordericus Vitalis expressly adds, that Hugh, the successor to Herbert, upon his death-bed, in 1077, while retracing his past life, made use of these words:—‘Ecclesiam Sancti Petri, principis apostolorum, quam venerabilis Herbertus, prædecessor meus, cœpit, perfeci, studiosè adornavi, honorificè dedicavi, et cultoribus necessariisque divino servitio vasis aliisque apparatibus copiosè ditavi.’—Language of this kind appears too explicit to leave room for ambiguity, but an opinion has still prevailed, founded probably upon the style of the architecture, that the cathedral was not finished till near the expiration of the thirteenth century. Admitting, however, such to be the fact, I do not see how it will materially help those who favor the opinion; for the building is far from being, as commonly happens in great churches, a medley of incongruous parts; but it is upon one fixed plan; and, as it was begun, so it was ended.—The exterior of the extremity of the south transept (see plate [seventy-five],) is a still more complete example of the early pointed style than the west front; this style, which was the most chaste, and, if I may be allowed to use the expression, the most severe of all, scarcely any where displays itself to greater advantage. The central window is composed of five lancet divisions, supported upon slender pillars: massy buttresses of several splays bound it on either side.
Plate 75. Church of St. Peter at Lisieux.
South Transept.
“The same character of uniformity extends over the interior of the building. On each side of the nave is a side-aisle; and, beyond the aisles, chapels. The pillars of the nave are cylindrical, solid, and plain. Their bases end with foliage at each corner, and foliage is also sculptured upon the capitals. The arches which they support are acute.—The triforium is similar in plan to the part below; but the capitals of the columns are considerably more enriched, with an obvious imitation of the antique model, and every arch encircles two smaller ones. In the clerestory the windows are modern.—The transepts appear the oldest parts of the cathedral, as is not unfrequently the case; whether they were really built before the rest, or that, from being less used in the services of the church, they were less commonly the objects of subsequent alterations. They are large; and each of them has an aisle on the eastern side. The architecture of the choir resembles that of the nave, except that the five pillars, which form the apsis, are slender, and the intervening arches more narrow and more acute.—The Lady-Chapel, which is long and narrow, was built towards the middle of the fifteenth century, by Peter Cauchon, thirty-sixth bishop of Lisieux, who, for his steady attachment to the Anglo-Norman cause, was translated to this see, in 1429, when Beauvais, of which he had previously been bishop, fell into the hands of the French. He was selected, in 1431, for the invidious office of presiding at the trial of the Maid of Orleans. Repentance followed; and, as an atonement for his unrighteous conduct, according to Ducarel, he erected this chapel, and therein founded a high mass to the Holy Virgin, which was duly sung by the choristers; in order, as is expressed in his endowment-charter, to expiate the false judgment which he pronounced.[171]—The two windows by the side of the altar in this chapel have been painted of a crimson color, to add to the effect produced upon entering the church; and, seen as they are, through the long perspective of the nave and the distant arches of the choir, the glowing tint is by no means unpleasing.—The central tower is open within the church to a considerable height: it is supported by four arches of unusual boldness, above which runs a row of small arches, of the same character as the rest of the building; and still higher, on each side, are two lancet-windows.—The vaulting of the roof is very plain, with bosses slightly pendant and carved.
“At the extremity of the north transept is an ancient stone sarcophagus, so built into the wall, that it appears to have been incorporated with the edifice, at the period when it was raised. The character of the heads, the crowns, and the disposition of the foliage, may be considered as indicating that it is a production, at least of the Carlovingian period, if it be not indeed of earlier date. I believe it is traditionally supposed to have been the tomb of a saint, perhaps St. Candidus; but I am not quite certain whether I am accurate in the recollection of the name.—Above are two armed statues, probably of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. These have been engraved by Willemin, in his useful work, Les Monumens Français, under the title of Two Armed Warriors, in the Nave of the Cathedral, at Lisieux; and both are there figured as if in all respects perfect, and with a great many details which do not exist, and never could have existed; though at the same time the draftsman has omitted the animals at the feet of the statues, one of which is yet nearly entire.—This may be reckoned among the innumerable proofs of the total disregard of accuracy which pervades the work of French antiquaries. A French designer never scruples to sacrifice correctness to what he considers effect.—Willemin describes the monuments as being in the nave of the church. I suspect that he has availed himself of the unpublished collection of Gaignat, in this and many other instances. It is evident that, originally, the statues were recumbent; but I cannot ascertain when their position was changed.—No other tombs now exist in the cathedral: the brazen monument raised to Hannuier, an Englishman, the marble that commemorated the bishop, William d'Estouteville; founder of the Collège de Lisieux at Paris, that of Peter Cauchon in the Lady-Chapel, and all the rest, were destroyed during the revolution.”
FOOTNOTES:
[169] The following account of the bishopric of Lisieux, is extracted from the Gallia Christiana, XI. p. 762, to enable the reader to form an opinion of its extent and importance.—“Ecclesia hæc cæteris Neustriæ episcopatibus facultatibus haud impar, patronum agnoscit S. Petrum Apostolorum principem. Episcopus, qui et episcopus est capituli, comes est et civitatis. Hunc comitatum septem componunt baroniæ, de Nonanto in Bajocassino, de Thibervilla, de Glos et Courthona, de Gaceio, de Touqua, de Canapvilla et de Bonnavilla la Louvet, omnes in diœcesi. Episcopus præterea conservator est privilegiorum academiæ Cadomensis. Dignitates omnes et præbendas ecclesiæ Lexoviensis confert, excepto decano qui eligitur a capitulo, nec a quoquam confirmatur. Præter decanum, capitulum octo constat dignitatibus, cantore, qui residere tenetur, thesaurario, capicerio, magistro scholarum et quatuor archidiaconis; 1. de Lievino cui subsunt quatuor decanatus rurales, Moyaux, Cormeilles, Bernai, et Orbec, in quibus 139 parochiæ, rectoriæ vero seu curæ 148; 2. de Algia, cui subsunt tres decanatus, Mesnil-Mauger, Beuvron et Beaumont, in quibus 128 parochiæ, rectoriæ vero 137; 3. de Ponte Audomaro, cui subsunt tres decanatus, Touques, Honfleur, et Pontaudemer, in quibus 89 parochiæ, rectoriæ 93; 4. denique de Gaceio, cui subsunt quatuor decanatus, Gacey, Livarot, Montreul, et Vimontier, in quibus 111 parochiæ, et 117 rectoriæ. Post dignitates sunt 31 præbendæ integræ cum duabus semipræbendis, e quibus undecim antiquæ fundationis, quas qui tenent barones vocantur. Sunt et aliæ sex præbendæ Volantes dictæ, quæ quotidianis non gaudent distributionibus. Sunt adhuc in eadem ecclesia 4 vicarii, quorum tres revocabiles, et 30 capellani, quorum septem episcopus, et 23 instituit capitulum. Præter parochias supra memoratas, sunt et aliæ undecim in urbe et baleuca Lexoviensi, rectoriæ duodecim: quatuor in exemtione de Nonanto prope Bajocas, quarum sex rectores, et quinque in exemtione S. Candidi senioris in urbe et diœcesi Rotomagensi, quarum unam, scilicet S. Candidi senioris collegiatam simul et parochialem administrant quatuor canonici, qui alternis vicibus parochialia obeunt munia; decanatus enim annexus est episcopo Lexoviensi qui jurisdictionem exercet in quinque illas ecclesias. Tota denique diœcesis Lexoviensis 487 parochias continet, rectorias 520.”
[170] Turner's Tour in Normandy, II. p. 139.
[171] Anglo-Norman Antiquities, p. 47.
PLATE LXXVI.
ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. OUEN, AT ROUEN.
Plate 76. Abbey Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen.
North East View.
The beauty of the church of St. Ouen has been a frequent theme of admiration among the lovers of ancient ecclesiastical architecture. The excellencies of the building have been denied by none, while some have gone so far as to consider it as the very perfection of that style, which has generally, however improperly, obtained the name of Gothic. A recent English traveller, whose attention was expressly directed to the different departments of the arts, bears the following testimony in its favor: “Beyond all comparison, the finest specimen of Gothic architecture which we have met with in France, is Saint Ouen, the secondary church at Rouen. Contrasted with Salisbury cathedral, it is small; but it does not, I think, yield to that or any other structure I have ever seen, in elegance, lightness, or graceful uniformity.”[172]
Previously to the suppression of monasteries in France, the church of St. Ouen made part of the abbey of the same name, one of the most celebrated and most ancient in Normandy. It is now a parochial church, and is happily in nearly a perfect state, having suffered comparatively but little from the mad folly of the Calvinists of the sixteenth century, or the democrats of the eighteenth; though every studied insult was offered to it by the former, and in the fury of the revolution it was despoiled and desecrated—degraded at one time to a manufactory for the forging of arms, and at another to a magazine for forage.—Different accounts are given of the foundation of the convent: some writers contend for its having taken place as early as the last year of the fourth century, and having been the work of the piety of Saint Victrice, then bishop of Rouen; others, and these the greater number, are content with tracing it from the reign of Clothair. Those who adopt the latter opinion are again divided, as to whether that prince himself was the actual founder, or only ratified by his royal sanction what was really the establishment of Archbishop Flavius. In either case, however, they agree in dating the origin of the abbey from the year 535.
An historian, who lived as early as the middle of the tenth century, speaks of the original church of St. Ouen, as an edifice deserving of admiration:—“.....miro opere, quadris lapidibus, manu Gothicâ,.... olim nobilitèr constructa.”[173]—The abbey was at first placed under the invocation of the Holy Apostles generally: it was afterwards dedicated to St. Peter alone; but, from the year 692, it has owned no other patron than St. Ouen,[174] whose body was three years before interred in the church, which he had protected with his especial favor while living, and which derived still greater benefits from him after his death, owing to the concourse of pilgrims attracted by the miracles that were wrought at his tomb.
Upon the irruption of the Normans in the ninth century, this abbey shared the common fate of the Neustrian convents; and, like the rest, it rose from its ashes with greater magnificence, after the conversion of these barbarians to Christianity. Nicholas, the fourth abbot of the convent, son of Duke Richard II. and of Judith of Brittany, is said by Ordericus Vitalis to have commenced “a new church of wonderful size and elegance.” But though he presided over the fraternity nearly sixty years, he did not live to see the building finished: the bringing of the task to perfection was reserved for William Balot, the next but one to him in the succession; and even he died in the very year of the dedication, which did not take place till 1126.
This church, which it had cost eighty years to build, was suffered to exist but a short time after its completion: only ten years had elapsed from its dedication, when it fell a prey to a conflagration, which was at the same time destructive to the greater part of the city: another church, built shortly after, and chiefly by the munificence of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, shared the same fate in 1248. But even these repeated disasters in no wise abated the spirit of the monks: they had retired with the wreck of their property to one of their estates near Rouen, and there, by economy on their own part, and liberality on that of others, they soon found themselves in a state to undertake the erection of a fourth convent, of greater extent than any of the former, and to inclose it with high walls.
The honor of laying the first stone of the new church, the same that is now standing, is attributed to one of the most celebrated of the abbots, John Roussel, more commonly known by the name of Marcdargent.[175] He had been elected to the prelacy in 1303; and, fifteen years afterwards, he commenced the structure. He presided over the monastery thirty-seven years, and was buried in the Lady-Chapel of the church, which he had completed as far westward as the transepts. The pomp with which his funeral was conducted, is recorded at length in the Neustria Pia; and the same work has also preserved the following inscription, engraved upon his coffin, which describes, with great precision, the progress made by him in the building:—
“HIC JACET FRATER JOANNES MARCDARGENT
ALIAS ROUSSEL, QUONDAM ABBAS ISTIUS MONASTERII,
QUI CŒPIT ÆDIFICARE ISTAM ECCLESIAM
DE NOVO; ET FECIT CHORUM ET CAPELLAS,
ET PILLIARIA TURRIS, ET MAGNAM PARTEM
TURRIS S. AUDOENI, MONASTERII DICTI.”
The remaining parts of the church were not finished till the beginning of the sixteenth century, when it was brought to its present state by the thirty-fourth abbot, Anthony Bohier, who, in the annals of the convent, bears the character of having been “a magnificent restorer and repairer of ancient monasteries.” Admirable as is the structure, the original design of the architect was never completed. The western front remains imperfect; and this is the more to be regretted, as that part is naturally the first that meets the eye of the stranger, who thus receives an unfavorable impression, which it is afterwards difficult wholly to banish. The intention was, that the portal should have been flanked by magnificent towers, ending in a combination of open arches and tracery, corresponding with the outline and fashion of the central tower. An engraving, though a wretched one, of this intended front, is given in Pommeraye's History of the Abbey, from a sketch preserved among the records of the convent.
The view of this church, etched by Mr. Cotman, is copied from a drawing made by Miss Elizabeth Turner. It represents the building, as seen from a seat in the gardens formerly belonging to the monastery, but now open to the public; and it is well calculated to convey a general idea of the character of the exterior of the building, including the central tower, which is wholly composed of open arches and tracery, and terminates, like the south tower of the cathedral, with an octangular crown of fleurs-de-lys. The plate also exhibits a portion of a circular chapel, now commonly known by the name of la Chambre des Clercs, the only remaining part of the church built by William Balot, in the beginning of the twelfth century. This chapel, the south porch, the central tower, and a specimen of ancient sculpture in the church, have been engraved by Mr. Turner, in his Tour in Normandy. The two first, of the same subjects, together with the western front, a general view of the church from the south, the curious bas-relief over the southern entrance, and a representation of the interior, have since been lithographized in M. Jolimont's Monumens de la Normandie. Considerable pains have been devoted in both these works, to the description and the history of the building; and to them the reader must be referred, who is unwilling to engage with the ponderous folio of Pommeraye.
FOOTNOTES:
[172] Milton's Letters on the Fine Arts, written from Paris in the year 1815. p. 183.
[173] Jolimont, from whom this quotation is borrowed, states, that it is to be found in the chronicle of an author of the name of Fridegode; and he proceeds with the following observations:—“The expression appears remarkable, as warranting the inference, that the style of architecture, which Fridegode calls Gothic, was in use in France as early as the commencement of the sixth century, the time assigned by him for the building of the first church of St. Ouen. But it is equally to be inferred, from the manner in which he notices it, that this style was not then common; and his subjoining, that it was made of square stones, (in opposition, most probably, to rubble) serves to point out that such an edifice was an extraordinary building for Rouen at that period. This idea receives confirmation, from the reflection, that the materials for forming the city were originally supplied out of the forests that inclosed it; so that, not only the houses of individuals, but the public edifices, were merely of wood. St. Gregory of Tours, speaking, in his fifth book, of a church at Rouen, dedicated to St. Martin, uses the following expression:—‘Quæ super muros civitatis ligneis tabulis fabricata est.’—Indeed, the few stone-buildings then at Rouen, were almost exclusively devoted to the purposes of fortification, and were of flint or sand-stone, rather than of free-stone. Every thing too tends to prove that architecture was then in its infancy in the capital of Neustria; or, if it ever had been more advanced there, which could have been only under the Roman sway, that it had retrograded into a barbarous state.—Moreover, the Gothic style, mentioned by Fridegode, was no other than a degeneration of the Roman, or, more properly, of the Lombardic architecture, distinguished by the circular arch, by insulated columns, by a paucity of ornaments, and by a general massiveness. It is by no means to be confounded with the style which has since passed under the same name, a style introduced about the beginning of the twelfth century, immediately after the crusades, with its ogee forms, slender clustered columns, and every portion of the building characterized by extreme lightness, yet still loaded with a profusion of crowded ornaments. If, however, this Lombardic style was practised as early as the fifth or sixth century, in a town so backward in the science of architecture as Rouen, what date is to be assigned for its introduction into other parts of France, where the knowledge of the fine arts disappeared for a much shorter period?—It must be left to the decision of antiquaries, whom this passage in Fridegode seems to have escaped, to determine how far the foregoing observations are just, and may serve to throw light upon the history of the style of architecture called Gothic, the origin of which in France has always been attended with great obscurity.”
[174] St. Ouen was born a.d. 600, at the village of Sanci, near Soissons. He was of a noble family, and was educated in the abbey of St. Médar, at Soissons, whence he was removed, at an early age, to the court of Clothair II. At the court, he contracted an intimate friendship with St. Eloi; and, under Dagobert, became the favorite of the monarch, as well as his chancellor and minister of state. During the whole of his life, his strong turn to religion rendered him a warm patron of monastic establishments; and, among others, he founded the celebrated abbey of Rebais en Brie. He was still young when he renounced the world, embraced the ecclesiastical state, and devoted himself to the preaching of the gospel; shortly after which, at the request of the inhabitants of Rouen, he was appointed to succeed St. Romain, as their pastor. His consecration took place in 646, and was performed in the church of the monastery of St. Peter, since-called St. Ouen. It was also at his own particular desire, that he was there interred. His name occurs among those of the prelates who were present at the council of Châlons, in 650; he was likewise entrusted by the king with various important negociations; and, after an earthly career, passed, according to his historians, in the practice of every civil and apostolic virtue, he died at Clichy, near Paris, in the year 689.
[175] The following extract from the Neustria Pia, p. 35, bears witness at once to the merits of the abbot, and the light in which the building was regarded throughout France.—“Hic Abbatiam reperit bonis omnibus sufficienter munitam, pecunia et commeatu haud indigentem: quam et ipse sapienter ac religiosè gubernavit, locupletavit, et vehementer adauxit; tum possessionibus et redditibus, tum ædificiis ac reparationibus: Basilicam iliam admirabili structura compositam, totiusque Galliæ speciosissimam, construere cœpit, anno 1318, die festo S. Urbani; quam continuavit ad ann. usque 1339, in festo Apostolorum SS. Petri et Pauli: quo in opere expendit 63036 libras argenti, et quinque solidos Turonensis: (quæ nunc haud posset compleri ædificio pro 663036 libris, etiam aureis) quorum omnium tesserem vetera hujusce domus inclytæ monimenta nunc usque accuratè continent. De hujusmodi celeberrima æde, sic quidam neotericus verè locutus est. Nunc est S. Audoeni: cujus mirabilis structura, hodieque dubium relinquit, si alia per Galliam splendidior et elegantior: Monasterium est tota quidem Europa, celeberrimum, sed Patroni sui sanctitate magis æstimandum. cui alii adstipulantur. Et hoc, consilio et auxilio D. Caroli, Comitis Valesii: cui operi Carolus Valesius VI. Rex ann. 1380, dono dedit tria millia librarum ad instantiam Burgundiæ Ducis, sui patruelis.”
PLATE LXXVII.
FOUNTAIN OF THE STONE CROSS, AT ROUEN.[176]
Plate 77. Fountain of the Stone Cross at Rouen.
Rouen has long boasted a pre-eminence over the greater part of the cities of France, with respect to its public fountains. The chalk hills, with which it is surrounded, furnish an abundant supply of excellent springs; and the waters of these, led into different parts of the town, contribute in no less a degree to the embellishment of the city, than to the comfort of the inhabitants. The form of some, and the ornaments of others, are well deserving of attention, notwithstanding the injuries that have inevitably occurred from time, or the more cruel ones that have been caused by wanton mutilation. It is upon historical record, that there were several fountains at Rouen, as early as the twelfth century, but their number, which now exceeds thirty, received its principal increase towards the beginning of the sixteenth century; and it was then also that the idea seems first to have been conceived of making, what was originally designed only for convenience, subservient to beauty. For this new supply of ornamental fountains, Rouen is indebted to its great benefactor, the Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, who, uniting the Norman archiepiscopal mitre to the office of prime minister, under Louis XII. was no less able than he was willing, to render the most essential services to the seat of his spiritual jurisdiction. It was under the auspices of this archbishop, that the fountain here figured, one of the earliest of that period, was erected. He caused it to be built in the year 1500. The spot which it occupies, is the cross-way formed by the union of the streets, called St. Vivien, St. Hilaire, and Coqueraumont, a spot which, previously to the reign of St. Louis, was not included within the walls of the town, and which, even at the distance of one hundred years after that time, had not begun to be inhabited.
So ancient is the practice of placing stone crosses at the junction of roads in the vicinity of cities, that it would be difficult to assign any probable time for the erection of that which was replaced by the fountain that still bears its name. The waters of this fountain have their origin in a spring, which flows at the foot of a hill near the village of St. Léger, at some distance from Rouen. The execution of the structure unites a happy mixture of boldness in outline, and delicacy in details: its pyramidal form is graceful. It consists of three stories, gradually diminishing in height and diameter as they rise, and terminating in a cross, whose clumsy shape only renders the destruction of that which it replaces the more to be regretted. The form is octagon throughout; and upon every compartment in each of the stories, is carved, at a short distance from its base, a narrow cinquefoil-headed arch, surmounted by a triangular crocketed canopy. But the crockets and finials have been in most instances destroyed. The water issues from four pipes in the basement. Each of the arches of the lower tier serves as a tabernacle for a wooden statue of a Madonna, or saint, of wretched execution, a poor substitute for those that occupied the same niches previously to the troubles of 1792, at which time the religious character of the fountain marked it out as an object of popular vengeance. It was suffered to continue in its mutilated and degraded state, from that period till the year 1816, when the inhabitants of this part of the town undertook to restore it at their own expense. Their labors have hitherto proceeded no farther than filling the niches afresh with images, and doing such repairs as were absolutely necessary to keep the whole structure from falling into ruin. Even by this, however, they have secured themselves the good will of the archbishop, who consecrated the fountain with great pomp anew, on the 24th of August, 1816.
The resemblance between the Fountain of the Stone Cross, at Rouen, and the monumental crosses erected in England by King Edward I. to perpetuate the memory of his consort, Eleanor of Castillo, will not fail to strike the British antiquary. It is more than probable, that the idea of the former was borrowed from the latter, to which, however, it is very inferior in point of richness of ornaments, or beauty of execution.
FOOTNOTES:
[176] It is right to observe, that the accounts here given of this and the following article, are little more than a translation, in the second instance materially abridged, of what is published upon the same subjects, in Jolimont, Monumens de la Normandie.
PLATE LXXVIII.
PALACE OF JUSTICE, AT ROUEN.
Plate 78. Palace of Justice, at Rouen.
The building here figured was, from its foundation, devoted to the purpose of the administration of justice; and, notwithstanding the many mutilations to which it has at different times been exposed, it still remains an interesting, and, in the city of Rouen, almost a unique specimen of the sumptuous architectural taste of the age in which it was erected.
Down to as late a period as the year 1499, there existed in Normandy no stationary court of judicature; but the execution of the laws was confided to an ambulatory tribunal, established, according to the chroniclers, by Rollo himself, and known by the name of the Exchequer. The sittings of this Norman exchequer were commonly held twice a year, in spring and autumn, after the manner of the ancient parliaments of the French kings; the places of session depending upon the pleasure of the sovereign, or being determined in general, like the English Aula Regia, by his presence. The inconveniences attendant upon such a mode of administering justice, became of course the more heavily felt, in proportion as the country increased in population and civilization. Accordingly, the states-general of the province, assembled in the last year of the fifteenth century, under the presidency of the Cardinal d'Amboise, petitioned Louis XII. who was then upon the throne, to appoint in the metropolis of the duchy a permanent judicature, in the same manner as had been previously done in others of the principal cities of the realm. The king was graciously pleased to accede to their request; and, by the words of the royal edict, not only was the exchequer rendered permanent in the good city of Rouen, but permission was also granted to the members to hold their sittings in the great hall of the castle, till such time as a suitable place should be prepared for their reception.
It was on this occasion that the Palace of Justice was built; a piece of ground was selected for the purpose, that had been known by the name of the Jews' Close, from the time when Philip-Augustus expelled the children of Israel from France; and the foundations of the new structure were laid within a few months after the obtaining of the royal sanction. The progress, however, of the work, was not commensurate, in point of rapidity, with the haste with which it was undertaken; even in 1506 the labors were not brought to a conclusion, though, in that year, the exchequer was installed by the king in person, with great pomp, in the new palace. The sitting will long be memorable in the Norman annals, not only as being the first, but as having been selected by the sovereign, as an opportunity for bestowing various important favors upon the city and duchy.
The palace, in its present state, is composed of three distinct buildings, erected at different times, and forming collectively three sides of a parallelogram, whose fourth side is merely a wall. The court thus enclosed is spacious. One of these buildings, the front in the plate, goes by the name of the Salle des Procureurs. Its erection was six years anterior to that of the right-hand building, more properly called the Palace of Justice; and the object in raising it was, according to the edict of the bailiff upon the occasion, to serve as an exchange to the merchants, and put a stop to the impious practice of assembling, even upon feast-days, in the cathedral, for purposes of business. At a subsequent time, this hall was added to the Palace of Justice, and there was then built to it a chapel, now destroyed, in which mass was regularly celebrated twice a year,—upon the anniversary of the feast of St. Martin, the day of the meeting of parliament, and upon Ascension-Day. The service on the first of these days, went by the name of la messe rouge, because the members always attended in their scarlet robes: on the second, and more important occasion, it was called la messe de la fierte, being performed in commemoration of the deliverance of the prisoner, by virtue of the privilege of St. Romain.[177]—The exterior of the Salle des Procureurs is comparatively simple: the most highly decorated part of it is the gable, which is flanked by two octangular turrets, ornamented with crocketed pinnacles and flying buttresses. Within, it consists of a noble hall, one hundred and sixty French feet in length, and fifty in width, with a coved roof of timber, plain and bold, and destitute either of the open tie-beams and arches, or the knot-work and cross-timber that usually adorn the old English roofs. Below the hall is a prison.
The southern building, erected exclusively for the sittings of the exchequer, is far more sumptuous in its decorations, both without and within. The lucarne windows may even vie with those in the house in the Place de la Pucelle.[178] Those below them find almost exact counterparts in the château at Fontaine-le-Henri, also figured in this work.[179] To use the language of the French critics, this front, which is more than two hundred feet in width, “est decorée de tout ce que l'architecture de ce temps-là présente de plus délicat et de plus riche.” The oriel or tower of enriched workmanship, which, by projecting into the court, breaks the uniformity of the elevation, is perhaps the part that more than any other merits such encomium. But it is only half the front that has been allowed to continue in its original state: the other half has been degraded by alterations, or stripped of its ornaments.—The room in which the parliament formerly met, and which is now employed for the trial of criminal causes, still remains comparatively uninjured. Its ceiling of oak, nearly as black as ebony, divided into numerous compartments, and covered with a profusion of carving and of gilt ornaments, not only affords a gorgeous example of the taste of the time, but immediately strikes the stranger as well suited to the dignity of the purpose to which the apartment was appropriated. But the open-work bosses of this ceiling are gone, as are the doors enriched with sculpture, and the ancient chimney, and the escutcheons charged with sacred devices, and the great painting, by which, before the revolution, witnesses were made to swear.[180]
The building that fronts the Salle des Procureurs, and forms the third side of the court, was not erected till after the year 1700. Its front is an imitation of the Ionic order, a style which harmonizes so ill with the rest of the quadrangle, as to produce an unfavorable effect An accident which happened to the wood-work of the upper part of this front, on the 1st of April, 1812, unfortunately involved the destruction of a painting held in the highest estimation; the representation of Jupiter hurling his thunderbolts at Vice, executed by Jouvenet, upon the ceiling of an apartment called la seconde Chambre des Enquêtes. Jouvenet, who commonly passes under the name of the Michelagnolo of France, was born at Rouen, in 1664; and, in conjunction with Fontenelle and the great Corneille, forms the triumvirate, of which the city has most reason to feel proud. The painting in the Palace of Justice was regarded as one of the happiest efforts of his pencil, and was not the less remarkable for having been executed with his left hand, after a paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use of the other.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] See [plate 64].
[180] Upon this subject Mr. Turner is in error: it appears, from his Tour in Normandy, I. p. 193, that he was informed that the painting, now actually over the judges' bench, is the same by which it was originally customary to take the oath; but M. Jolimont, who is, unquestionably, better authority, states the contrary in the following note:—“Le tableau, sur lequel on faisait jurer les témoins, et qui avait près de douze pieds d'élévation, consistait en trois portions ou bandes horizontales réunies dans un grand cadre sculpté à la manière du temps. La première, et la plus élevée, présentait quatre écussons aux armes de France, parsemés de fleurs de lis d'or; celle du milieu offrait, sous cinq arcades en ogives avec fleurons, un Christ entre la Vierge et saint Jean, et les quatre Evangelistes; au-dessous, un Moyse, et les tables de la loi: il existait encore au moment de la révolution; on l'a remplacé, au mois de janvier 1816, par un autre, d'environ quatre pieds de hauteur, donné (dit l'inscription moderne mise au bas) par Louis XII à l'Echiquier, lorsqu'il l'établit au palais. Ce second tableau, recueilli pendant la révolution par les soins de M. Gouel, graveur, et dont il a bien voulu faire hommage à la Cour royale (voir, à ce sujet, le Journal de Rouen, du 30 janvier 1816), est composé de deux parties: l'une renferme un Christ entre saint Jean et la Vierge; l'autre, en forme de couronnement, présente deux figures à mi-corps, avec des légendes; mais ces deux parties hétérogènes ne sont que deux fragmens ajustés ensemble. Le premier, qui représente le Christ, est évidemment la portion qui remplissait une des cinq arcades du grand tableau dont nous venons de parler, et l'autre est une partie seulement du tableau donné par Louis XII, et qui orna, pendant plus de deux siècles, le manteau de la belle cheminée de la chambre du Conseil que nous citons ci-après. Les deux figures, aujourd'hui mutilées, étaient en pied, et représentaient le Roi Louis XII et le Cardinal d'Amboise, avec ces mots écrits sur des bandelettes, que les deux personnages semblent s'adresser: Pontifices, agite: Magistrats, agissez;—et vos Reges, dicite justa: et vous Rois, soyez justes. Ces fragmens de deux tableaux différens, réunis, avec assez d'art, et qui paraissent être seuls échappés à la destruction, sont encore fort curieux, et l'on doit savoir gré à M. Gouel de leur conservation, et de la générosité avec laquelle il les a rendus à leur destination primitive.”
PLATE LXXIX.
SOUTH PORCH OF THE CHURCH, AT LOUVIERS.
Plate 79. Church of Louviers.
South Porch.
Louviers is one of the most considerable of the numerous manufacturing towns which surround Rouen in every direction, depending altogether for their prosperity upon the state of commerce in the provincial capital. Its population consists of about seven thousand inhabitants. Its position is beautiful, in a small island formed by the Eure, which divides, in the immediate vicinity of the town, into two streams, flowing through a valley of the most luxuriant fertility, enclosed by hills covered for the greater part with extensive forests.
The name of Louviers, in Latin Locoveris, occurs upon more than one occasion, in the early Norman chronicles; and the town, though never fortified, has obtained a considerable degree of historical celebrity. When Richard Cœur-de-Lion, escaped from his captivity in the east, hastened to punish the perfidy with which he had been on all sides assailed during his absence, and Normandy became the theatre of a most bloody warfare, Louviers had the honor of being selected as the place in which these differences were composed. The treaty signed upon this occasion, in 1195, prescribed new bounds to the duchy; and the old historians, who always delight in consecrating the recital of any memorable event by a mixture of the marvellous, tell how, at the moment when the kings were engaged in the conference which led to this treaty, a serpent of enormous size darted from the foot of the tree beneath which they were standing, and approached them with marks of great fury, hissing violently at both, as if in the act to attack them. The monarchs, who were alone, instantly laid their hands upon their swords; and the armies, who stood at a short distance on either side arranged in battle array, alarmed at such hostile demonstrations, had well nigh joined in a fresh combat.—Only the following year, Louviers was one of the towns ceded by Richard to Walter, archbishop of Rouen, by way of compensation for the infringement of the rights of the see, of which he had been guilty in the erection of Château Gaillard. The possession of Louviers was peculiarly acceptable to the prelate, as being in the immediate vicinity of the village of Pinterville, where the archbishops of Rouen then had their country seat: they continued to occupy the same till the reign of St. Louis, when that monarch conferred upon them the castle of Gaillon, which they held till the revolution.
Louviers was taken in 1345, by the English army under King Edward III. then on his march for Paris, after the battle of Caen; and Froissart, in relating the circumstance, takes occasion to mention the importance of the place, stating that the town was then a great one, and “the chief town of all Normandy for drapery and riches, and full of merchandize. But, not being closed, the hostile army soon entered it.” He goes on to add, not much to the credit of the invading host, that “they overran, and spoiled and robbed without mercy; and that they won there great riches.”—In 1360, Louviers was once more chosen as the spot where peace was signed: the treaty that had been concluded at Bretigny, was confirmed at Paris by the Regent, and was finally ratified by the Black Prince in this town.—During the subsequent wars, under Henry V. and VI. Louviers is repeatedly mentioned; but principally for opposing a resistance of twenty-six days to the English in 1418.—In the time of the league, it distinguished itself most unfortunately by its devoted attachment to the Catholic cause; in consequence of which, it was pillaged by the royalists shortly after the battle of Ivry.[181]
The church of Louviers is an imposing structure: though materially injured, and reduced to no more than a nave with its four aisles, it is still a spacious and handsome building. The great western door is closed, and the front defaced: the eastern end is likewise altogether modern. The central tower is handsome, though square and short. Two windows, very similar to those of the tower of St. Romain, in Rouen cathedral, light it on either side; and saints, placed under canopies, ornament the angles behind the buttresses. A second tower, to the west, is surmounted with a truncated cone. The south porch,[182] here figured, is the great feature of the exterior; and, for beauty and elegance in the formation or disposition of its parts, it may safely be put in competition with any similar portion of an ecclesiastical building, either in Normandy or in England. Yet, even here, the saints have been torn from their pedestals by the wanton violence of Calvinists or of democrats.
Internally, the church is a fine specimen of the pointed architecture of the thirteenth century;[183] but, to use the words of Mr. Turner, from whose Tour[184] a great part of the preceding description has been borrowed, “the whole is so concealed and degraded by ornaments in the worst of taste, and by painted saints in the most tawdry dresses, that the effect is disgusting.” In the windows of the church there still remains a considerable quantity of painted glass; and a bas-relief on the right of the choir is well deserving of attention. It is placed under a niche, which in all probability was originally filled with a statue of St. Hubert; as the sculpture pourtrays a well-known legend, recorded in his history—the miraculous stag with a cross between his antlers, seen by the hunter-knight.—The foliage at the base of the niche is executed with particular elegance and skill.
In the town of Louviers is an old house, said to have belonged to the Knights Templars. Its gable, pierced with numerous windows, generally in the form of flatly pointed arches, each of them containing a couple of arches with trefoil-heads, has given currency to the tale of its original destination. It was figured some time since by M. Langlois, in a work commenced to illustrate the Antiquities of Normandy, but of which the first number only appeared; and it has recently been lithographized by M. Nodier. But, from the style of its architecture, it does not appear to have been erected anterior to the fourteenth century, however confidently it is referred by M. Langlois to the twelfth or thirteenth.
FOOTNOTES:
[181] Sully, in his Memoirs, I. p. 254, (English translation) gives the following account of its capture:—“The King succeeded better at Louviers: this town kept a priest in its pay; who, from the top of a belfry, which he never left, played the part of a spy with great exactness. If he saw but a single person in the field, he rung a certain bell, and hung out at the same side a great flag. We did not despair of being able to corrupt his fidelity, which two hundred crowns, and a promise of a benefice worth three thousand livres a year, effected. There remained only to gain some of the garrison; the Sieur du Rollet took this upon himself, and succeeded. He addressed himself to a corporal and two soldiers, who easily prevailed upon the rest of the garrison to trust the guard of one of the gates to them only. Every thing being thus arranged, the King presented himself before Louviers, at twelve o'clock in the night. No one rung the bell, nor was there the least motion in the garrison. Du Rollet entered, and opened the gate, through which the King passed, without the smallest resistance, into the centre of the town. Fontaine Martel made some ineffectual efforts to draw the garrison together: as for the citizens, they were employed in concealing their wives and daughters. The town, whose chief riches consisted in its magazines of linen and leather, was wholly pillaged: I had a gentleman with me, called Beaugrard, a native of Louviers, who was of great use to us in discovering where these sort of goods were concealed, and a prodigious quantity of them was amassed together. The produce of my share amounted to three thousand livres. The King consigned to Du Rollet the government of Louviers.”
[182] Mr. Cotman very much regrets that it was not in his power to do this porch the justice it deserved, in consequence of the continual interruptions to which he was exposed from the lower class of the inhabitants.
[183] M. Nodier, in his Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques, has figured the interior of this church, the erection of which he refers (p. 18) to the time of the first crusades; but a comparison of the building with others of that æra, would scarcely warrant such a conclusion.
[184] Vol. II. p. 287.
PLATE LXXX. AND LXXXI.
CHÂTEAU GAILLARD.
Plate 80. Château Gaillard.
North East View.
On the building of Château Gaillard, the following account is given by Masseville, in his History of Normandy:[185]—“In the year 1196, a few months after the treaty of Louviers had been concluded between Philip-Augustus and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, the Norman Duke, considering how frequently inroads had been made into his territories, by the way of Andelys, resolved to strengthen himself by means of a formidable barrier in that quarter. With this view, he built a fortress upon an island in the Seine, opposite the village of Lesser Andelys; and, at the same time, erected upon the brow of the rock that overhung the river, a castle of the greatest possible strength, without, however, reflecting how far these works were likely to affect the rights, or to diminish the revenues, of the see of Rouen, to whom the ground belonged. But Walter, who then wore the archiepiscopal mitre, was by no means of a character patiently to submit to an invasion of his privileges. He complained loudly during the progress of the works, menaced the artificers, and even the prince himself, with the vengeance of the church; and, finally, finding his threats and his remonstrances equally disregarded, had recourse to the bold measure of laying the whole of Normandy under a spiritual interdict. The king, alarmed at so decisive a step, appealed to the papal see, and sent the bishops of Durham and of Lisieux, as his ambassadors to Rome. The archbishop also repaired thither to plead his own cause; and the affair was finally compromised by an exchange, in virtue of which, the castles were allowed to stand, and the secular seigniory of Andelys was ceded to the duke, who, in return for this acquisition, and to obtain his reconciliation to the church, gave up to the primate the towns and lordships of Dieppe and Louviers, the land and forest of Alihermont, the land and lordship of Bouteilles, and the mills of Rouen.”—The contract was considered of so much importance, that the archbishop of Canterbury, together with several other English prelates, as well as almost all those of Normandy, and many of the principal abbots and noblemen of the province, were summoned to sanction the execution of it by their presence. Such were the benefits it was supposed to bestow upon the church, that it has passed in ecclesiastical history, under the significant appellation of the celebris permutatio.
But the king also congratulated himself, and not without reason, upon having opposed an impregnable barrier to the inroads of his more powerful, and scarcely less active, neighbor. He delighted in Château Gaillard, the very name of which is said to have had its origin in proud mockery and defiance; and he himself, in his public acts, designated it his “beautiful castle of the rock.” Many of his charters bear date from this fortress; so that, though only begun three years before the death of the monarch, it is plain that it was already habitable in his life-time. It may likewise safely be inferred, that it was then quite finished; for his dastardly successor, engaged either in distant wars, or in intrigues at home, from the moment of his mounting the throne, had bestowed no thought upon the strengthening of his hereditary continental dominions, till he found himself, in the year 1202, attacked by Philip-Augustus at the head of an overwhelming army, while his own subjects were but little disposed to assist a prince, whose hands were reeking with his nephew's blood.
It was at this time that Château Gaillard supported the siege which will render its name for ever memorable in history. Long, and curious, and interesting details of the occurrences connected with the capture of the castle, are given by Father Daniel: Du Moulin also briefly enumerates a few of the many stratagems to which the French king was obliged to have recourse. But those who delight in narratives of this kind, or who desire to obtain full information relative to the attacks and defence, combined with a lively picture of the strength of the fortress, must be referred to Brito, the poetical chronicler of the exploits of Philip-Augustus. The whole of the seventh book of the Philippiad of that author, containing no fewer than eight hundred and forty-one lines, are devoted to this single subject; so eventful was the history of the siege, and so great the importance attached to the capture of the place. The fall of Château Gaillard was almost immediately followed by the total subversion of the power of the Norman Dukes; but, as to the fortress itself, though its situation was no longer such as to give it importance, Brito expressly states, that Philip bestowed great pains upon the restoring of its damaged works, and upon augmenting its strength by the addition of new ones:—
“Rex ita Gaillardo per prælia multa potitus,
Cuncta reædificat vel ab ipso diruta, vel quæ
Improbus appositis destruxerat ignibus hostis,
In triplo meliùs et fortiùs intùs et extrà,
Antea quàm fuerint muros et cætera firmans.”
Fortunately for France, the subsequent state of the kingdom rendered precautions of this description unnecessary; Château Gaillard appears no more in history as a formidable fortress, except upon the occasion of the occupation of the Gallic throne by Henry V. and of the expulsion of his successor. In the former case, the castle did not surrender to the English army, till after a vigorous resistance of sixteen months;[186] and even then its garrison, though composed of only one hundred and twenty men, would not have yielded, had not the ropes of their water-buckets been worn out and destroyed: in the latter instance, it was one of the last of the strong holds of Normandy that held out for the successors of its ancient dukes; and the siege of six weeks, sustained by a dispirited army, was scarcely less honorable to its defenders, than the far longer resistance opposed on former occasions.
Even after the final re-union of the duchy, Château Gaillard was neither purposely destroyed, nor suffered to fall through neglect into decay, like the greater number of the Norman fortresses. During the religious wars, it still continued to be a military post, as well as a royal palace; and it was honored with the residence of Henry IV. whose father, Anthony of Bourbon, died here in 1562. Its importance ceased in the following reign. The inhabitants of the adjacent country petitioned the King to give orders that the castle should be dismantled. They dreaded, lest its towers should serve as an asylum to some of the numerous bands of marauders, by whom France was then infested. It was consequently undermined, and reduced to its present state of ruin.
If the name of this castle is to be found at other times, in “the historian's ample page,” it is only in the comparatively unimportant character of a place of safe confinement for state prisoners, or, on one occasion, as a temporary residence for a fugitive monarch. In the latter capacity, it opened its gates to David Bruce, in 1331, when the Scottish prince, received by Philip de Valois, with all the honours due to an exiled sovereign, had this palace assigned him as a regal residence, and was permitted to maintain here, for a while, the pageantry of a court. As a prison, Château Gaillard was frequently employed: it was in particular distinguished with an unenviable preference in one of the most disgraceful æras of the history of France. Margaret of Burgundy, the Queen of Louis X. and Blanche, the consort of his brother, Charles le Bel, were both of them confined here, after having been tried and convicted of adultery; together with Jane, another princess of the house of Burgundy, the wife to Philip, brother to Louis and Charles. Margaret was shortly after murdered in this castle; when Louis, intent upon a fresh marriage with the princess Clementia of Hungary, found an obstacle to his wishes in the protracted existence of his former queen.
Plate 81. Château Gaillard.
South West View.
Of the extent, the magnificence, the commanding situation, or the imposing appearance of Château Gaillard, it is almost equally difficult to convey an adequate idea by the pencil or by the pen. “The faithful eye” can alone give satisfaction upon such subjects. Mr. Turner's account of the present state of the ruin, has the merit of being the most copious that has yet appeared; and the following extract from it shall therefore conclude this article:—“Our expectations respecting Château Gaillard were more than answered. Considered as to its dimensions and its situation, it is by far the finest castellated ruin I ever saw. Conway, indeed, has more beauty; but Château Gaillard is infinitely superior in dignity. Its ruins crown the summit of a lofty rock, abruptly rising from the very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle are broken into hills of romantic form, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on the opposite side.
“The circular keep is of extraordinary strength, and in its construction differs wholly from any of our English dungeon-towers. It may be described as a cylinder, placed upon a truncated cone. The massy perpendicular buttresses, which are ranged round the upper wall, whence they project considerably, lose themselves at their bases in the cone from which they arise. The building, therefore, appears to be divided into two stories. The wall of the second story is upwards of twelve feet in thickness. The base of the conical portion is perhaps twice as thick. It seldom happens that the military buildings of the middle ages have such a talus or slope, on the exterior face, agreeing with the principles of modern fortification; and it is difficult to guess why the architect of Château Gaillard thought fit to vary from the established model of his age. The masonry is regular and good. The pointed windows are evidently insertions of a period long subsequent to the original erection.
“The inner ballium is surrounded by a high circular wall, which consists of an uninterrupted line of bastions, some semi-circular and others square. The whole of this part of the castle remains nearly perfect. There are also traces of extensive foundations in various directions, and of great out-works. Château Gaillard was, in fact, a citadel, supported by numerous smaller fortresses, all of them communicating with the strong central hold, and disposed so as to secure every defensible post in the neighborhood. The wall of the outer ballium, which was built of a compact white and grey stone, is in most places standing, though in ruins. The original facing only remains in those parts which are too elevated to admit of its being removed with ease.—Beneath the castle, the cliff is excavated into a series of subterraneous caverns, not intended for mere passages or vaults, as at Arques and in most other places, but forming spacious crypts supported by pillars roughly hewn out of the living rock, and still retaining every mark of the workman's chisel.
“The keep cannot be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned with dark forests.”
FOOTNOTES:
[185] Vol. II. p. 113.
[186] So says Monstrelet; and he has generally been followed; but, according to Masseville, (Histoire de Normandie, IV. p. 84) the Norman Chronicle limits the duration of the siege to only seven months.
PLATE LXXXII.
CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS.
Plate 82. Abbey Church of Montivilliers.
West End.
Montivilliers is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, situated in a beautiful valley upon a small stream, called the Lezarde, near the western extremity of the Pays de Caux, within the distance of six leagues from Fécamp, and two from Havre de Grace. Its fortifications, now in ruins, were erected near the close of the fourteenth century, till which time it was altogether defenceless; but the state of France, just recovered from one English invasion and threatened with another, turned the thoughts of the government towards the securing of all vulnerable points on the northern frontier; and the trade of the place, though at present trifling, was at that period far otherwise. The cloths of Montivilliers were then considered to rival those of Flanders; and the preservation of the manufacture was regarded of so much consequence, that sundry regulations respecting it are to be found in the royal ordinances. The two circular towers of one of the gates now standing, afford a good specimen of the military architecture of the time.
Montivilliers is called in Latin, Monasterium villare; and in old French, Monstier Vieil: the present name of the town is obviously a corruption of these; and the same fact also denotes that the place derived its importance, if not its existence, from the monastery. Among the Norman historians, the foundation of Montivilliers is referred to the seventh century; during the latter half of which, St. Philibert, abbot of Jumieges, built a convent here for a community of nuns. The monastery was richly endowed; but no records are left of its history previously to the incursions of the Normans, under whose hands it at first suffered the same destruction as the other religious houses in Neustria, and afterwards rose, like them, from its ashes, with increased splendor and opulence. The immediate successors of Rollo rebuilt the abbey, but without restoring it to its original destination. Richard II. conferred it, with all its dependencies, upon the more favored monks of Fécamp; and, in the donation, he makes use of the strong expression, “ut ex eo facerent quicquid vellent, tamquam ex proprio alodo.” The union of the two establishments was, however, but short lived: either under the same prince, or, as some authors say, under his son Robert, Montivilliers once more resumed a state of independence, and became once more the retreat of holy virgins. The duke was moved to this step by the solicitation of his aunt Beatrice, who retired hither, and took the veil, and presided over the sisterhood; and the monastery of St. Taurin at Evreux was, on this occasion, ceded to Fécamp, in exchange for Montivilliers. A portion of the charter is preserved in the Neustria Pia; and, according to this work, the instrument was subsequently ratified by the signatures of William the Conqueror, and of Philip le Bel. At different times, various papal bulls were issued, for the purpose of placing the abbey of Montivilliers under the especial protection of the holy see, and of granting it sundry privileges and immunities. These are also recorded in the same publication. One of them, originating in a dispute between the archbishop of Rouen and the abbess of Montivilliers, is but little to the credit of either party. It represents the lady-abbess as by no means free from irregularities in the performance of her office; it charges one of her nuns with dissolute life; and it arraigns the primate himself of being the cause, if not the immediate instrument, of scandal:—“Siquidem, ex parte abbatissæ fuit propositum et probatum, quòd quidam, qui cum eodem archiepiscopo et suis prædecessoribus venerant ad monasterium memoratum, turpia quædam et illicita commiserunt contra honestatem observantiæ regularis, in scandalum plurimorum: volumus et mandamus, ut, cùm archiepiscopus Rothomagensis ad monasterium ipsum, causâ visitationis, accesserit, ab ingressu claustri aliarumque domorum, in quibus habitant moniales, familiam suam talitèr studeat coercere, quòd de cætero similia non contingant. Ipse quoque archiepiscopus, ejusdem monasterii claustrum vel capitulum intraturus, non nisi cum moderatâ societate accedat, quæ vitâ et moribus sit honesta; ut per officium visitationis ejusdem, non dissolutionis vel scandali, sed ædificationis potiùs materia ministretur.”—The instrument, which is of considerable length, goes on to accuse the prelate of affording protection to some refractory nuns, and enjoins him never to suffer his clergy to frequent the abbey upon any pretext, or upon any occasion.
The church of Montivilliers, represented in the present [plate], is the same as before the revolution belonged to the abbey. The portion to the north is the chapter-house, and is the work of the fourteenth century. The greater part of the rest of the building, though altered in some places, may safely be referred to the eleventh; at which time it is upon record, that Elizabeth, who succeeded Beatrice as abbess, nearly, if not altogether, rebuilt the whole. At subsequent periods, the church underwent many considerable repairs and alterations. A sum of seven hundred florins was expended upon it in 1370, the proceeds of a fine imposed upon the town, for some injuries done to the nuns; and Toussaints Varrin, archbishop of Thessalonica, dedicated the edifice, in 1513, under the invocation of the Holy Virgin. Five years subsequently, the abbess, Jane Mustel, repaired the ceiling and painted windows, and made the stalls in the choir.[187]—The exterior of the Lady-Chapel affords a fine example of early pointed architecture; its lofty narrow windows are separated by slender cylindrical pillars, as in the church of the Holy Trinity, at Caen. The embattled ornament round the southern door of the western front, is far from commonly seen in such situations. In the interior of the nave, the same massive semi-circular architecture prevails as in the towers; but it is mixed with some peculiarities that will scarcely be found elsewhere, particularly a flat band in the form of a pilaster, enriched with losenges, which is attached to the front of one of the columns, and is continued over the roof, and again down the pillar on the opposite side. Mr. Turner noticed a small gallery, or pulpit, of elegant filigree stone-work, at the west end, near the roof;[188] and, upon the authority of the well-known antiquary, John Carter, he supposed it most probably intended to receive a band of singers on high festivals. But some corresponding erections in England would make it seem more likely that this gallery communicated with the apartments of the superior, and was placed here for the purpose of affording her the means of paying her devotions in private, when, either from the weather, or any other cause, she might not wish to occupy her throne in the choir.
Mr. Turner has also remarked upon the capitals of the columns at Montivilliers, which are very peculiar. Some of them are obvious imitations of the antique pattern, and of great beauty. Others are as rude and wild as any of those already figured in this work, from the churches of St. Georges or Gournay. The mysteries of Christianity, and the fables and allegories of heathenism, the latter, as well in its most refined as its most barbarous forms, occur in endless variety in almost every part of the edifice. One of the capitals contains a representation of the fabulous Sphynx, with her tail ending in a fleur-de-lys: upon another, is sculptured a figure of Christ in the act of destroying the Dragon, by thrusting the end of a crosier into its mouth. Two others, figured in the Tour in Normandy, exhibit a group of Centaurs, and the allegorical psychostasia: the remarks of the author of that publication, upon the latter of these, shall close the present article:—“In this you observe an angel weighing the good works of the deceased against his evil deeds; and, as the former are far exceeding the avoirdupois upon which Satan is to found his claim, he is endeavoring most unfairly to depress the scale with his two-pronged fork.—This allegory is of frequent occurrence in the monkish legends.—The saint, who was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin; and still the saint was distressed beyond compare, by observing that the scale of the wicked thing (wise men call him the correcting principle,) always seemed the heaviest. Almost did he despair of his client's salvation, when he luckily saw eight little jetty black claws just hooking and clenching over the rim of the golden basin. The claws at once betrayed the craft of the cloven foot. Old Nick had put a little cunning young devil under the balance, who, following the dictates of his senior, kept clinging to the scale, and swaying it down with all his might and main. The saint sent the imp to his proper place in a moment; and instantly the burthen of transgression was seen to kick the beam.—Painters and sculptors also often introduced this ancient allegory of the balance of good and evil, in their representations of the last judgment: it was even employed by Lucas Kranach.”
FOOTNOTES:
[187] Description de la Haute Normandie, II. p. 108.
[188] Tour in Normandy, I. p. 69.
PLATE LXXXIII.
CHURCH OF ST. SANSON SUR RILLE.
Plate 83. Church of St. Sanson sur Rille.
Remains of & capitals.
Normandy, throughout the whole of its extent, can scarcely boast a lovelier stream than the Rille. Originating in the southern part of the duchy, this little river advances in a northerly direction, rolling its sparkling waters in rapid course, through a valley of the most brilliant verdure, till they mingle with the British Channel, at a very short distance from the west of the mouth of the Seine. The Rille, in every part of its current, is varied by an infinity of islands, formed by the division of its waters. Hence its principal beauty, and hence also considerable benefit for the purpose of manufacture; but the same circumstance is fatal to the more important objects of commerce; for it is in a great measure owing to this multiplicity of channels, that the river is navigable to only a very short way above Pont Audemer; a distance scarcely exceeding ten miles from its confluence with the ocean.
The small village of St. Sanson is situated upon the right bank of the Rille, within a league of its mouth. Its church, the same most probably as is figured in this plate, is enumerated among the possessions confirmed to the Benedictine monastery of St. Martin, at Troarn, by a bull of Pope Innocent III. dated in the year 1210. In after-times, the presentation to the living was in the hands of the bishops of Dol, in Brittany, who likewise continued till the revolution to be both temporal and spiritual lords of the parish, in right, as they alledged, of the ancient barony of St. Sanson, which was annexed to their see.[189] Other writers asserted, that the bishops held their authority here, as successors to the superiors of an abbey, founded upon this spot in the middle of the sixth century, by Childebert I. in favor of St. Sanson, then bishop of Dol. But the monastery fell during the earliest incursions of the Normans, and never rose again. Old traditions state it to have been called in French, Pentale; and in Latin, Monasterium Pentaliense: a corruption, as it is supposed, of Pœnitentiale. A neighboring chapel, under the invocation of Notre Dame de Pentale, gives color to the report.
Of the church of St. Sanson, nothing more is now left than is exhibited in the plate: the remains consist only of the chancel, and the arch which separated it from the nave. But even these, inconsiderable as they appear, have been judged deserving of a place among the more remarkable of the architectural antiquities of Normandy: the peculiar character of the capitals, and the small size of the whole, have entitled them to this distinction. Upon regarding the arch, it is scarcely possible but to be struck with the impression, that, though in its present state its height is barely sufficient to allow of a man walking upright through it, there must originally have been an inner member, which has now disappeared. The capitals differ materially from any others ever seen by Mr. Cotman in Normandy; but Mr. Joseph Woods, whose authority is unquestionable, says that similar ones are to be found in the Temple of Bacchus, at Teos. There are also several, which in shape resemble these at St. Sanson, in the very remarkable church of St. Vitalis, at Ravenna,[190] and in the cloisters of the monastery of St. Scolastica,[191] at Subiaco: the latter also exhibit a certain degree of similarity in the sculpture.
FOOTNOTES:
[189] Description de la Haute Normandie, II. p. 777.
[190] Seroux d'Agincourt, Histoire de la Décadence de l'Art. Architecture, t. 23. f. 7, 8; and t. 69. f. 14.
[191] Ibid. t. 29. f. 3, 4.
PLATE LXXXIV.
WESTERN DOOR-WAY OF THE CHURCH OF FOULLEBEC.
Plate 84. Church of Foullebec.
West Door-way.
The church of Foullebec, a small village situated upon the Rille, nearly opposite to St. Sanson, is a building of Norman times; but the only portion of it particularly calculated to recommend it to attention, is the arch figured in this plate. This arch exhibits two peculiarities, which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to parallel in Normandy; the ornamented shafts of the pillars, and the extraordinary width of the southern capital, which is more than double that of the column below. The same was also, in all probability, the case with the capital, now destroyed, on the opposite side of the door-way; and as it is plain that there never was a second pillar, either on the one side or the other, the only satisfactory mode of accounting for this singularity, is upon the supposition, that it was the original intention of the architect to have placed such, but that circumstances occurred which induced him to leave his design unfinished.—Ornamented shafts of columns, however unfrequently found in Normandy, are far from being of very uncommon occurrence in the specimens that are left of genuine Norman art in Great-Britain. Mr. Carter, in his elaborate work upon ancient English architecture, has collected a variety of similar enrichments in his thirty-third plate; and some of them extremely beautiful. Several others are to be found in the more splendid volumes of Mr. Britton.—The sculpture upon the archivolt is also deserving of observation: upon one of the central stones, is represented the bannered lamb; upon the other, a figure, probably intended for a representation of our Savior entering Jerusalem upon an ass. The heads on either side are of an unusual character.
The church at Foullebec, as well in its nave as chancel, is externally divided by plain Norman buttresses into a series of regular compartments, each containing a single circular-headed window. In the nave are four; in the chancel only two. The tower is square and low: it is placed at the west end, which is only pierced for the door-way, and is otherwise quite plain, except a buttress at each corner. Internally, the only object to be noticed is an ancient cylindrical font; its sides sculptured with semi-circular arches, and a narrow moulding round the rim.
PLATE LXXXV. AND LXXXVI.
CASTLE AT TANCARVILLE.
Plate 85. Castle at Tancarville.
M. Nodier, who, in his Voyages Pittoresques, has devoted six plates to the illustration of the noble ruins of the castle at Tancarville, remarks with great justice, that, magnificent as the building must have been, “it is one that recals but few historical recollections.” At the same time he gives the following quotation from the old Norman Chronicle:—“During the reign of King Philip le Bel, after the knight of the green lion had conquered the King of Arragon, a great dissention arose between two powerful barons in Normandy, the Lord of Harecourt and the Chamberlain of Tancarville. The cause of their strife was a mill, of which the Dwarf of Harecourt, assisted by forty of his people in arms, had taken forcible possession, mistreating the vassals of the Chamberlain. The latter, incensed at the outrage, summoned his friends and attendants; and, having collected them to the number of two hundred, marched upon Lillebonne, where the Lord of Harecourt and the Dwarf, his brother, were at that time residing. Many and bitter were the reproaches uttered on either side; and severe was the contest that followed; for the Lord of Harecourt issued from the barriers with all his forces, and they defended themselves valiantly; and several lives were lost. The king, on receiving the tidings, was greatly discomforted, and bade the Sieur Enguerrand de Marigni summon the offending parties to appear before him. It chanced most untowardly, that they met as they were travelling towards the court; and the Lord of Harecourt attacked the Chamberlain, and with his gauntlet put out his left eye, and then returned to his own people. No sooner was he of Tancarville healed, than he repaired to the royal presence, and defied the Lord of Harecourt to single combat. The pledge was accepted by M. Charles de Valois, brother of the king, on behalf of his friend. On the other hand, M. Enguerrand de Marigny, privy counsellor of the monarch, maintained that Harecourt had been guilty of treason. This was denied by M. Charles, to whom Enguerrand in consequence gave the lie; and the former took the affront so cruelly to heart, that Enguerrand, brave man as he was, was afterwards hanged in consequence of it. When the conditions of battle were arranged, the Lord of Harecourt came into the field with his armor emblazoned with fleurs-de-lys; and the combatants fought with the utmost valor, till the Kings of England and of Navarre, who were present, besought the monarch of France to stay the fight; for that it would be great pity that two so valiant chiefs should fall by each other's hand. Upon this, the king cried ‘Ho!’ and both parties were satisfied; and peace was made between them by the foreign sovereigns, in the year 1300.”
The same circumstance is related, though with some trifling variations in the details, by Masseville, in his History of Normandy, a work of which almost every volume bears frequent testimony to the greatness of the house of Tancarville. This family enjoyed the hereditary dignity of chamberlain to the Norman dukes; but at what period it was conferred upon them, is lost in the obscurity of early history. Ralph de Tancarville, who founded the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville, about the year 1050,[192] is styled in the Neustria Pia, under the account of that monastry, as “Tancardi-Villæ Toparcha, præfectus hæreditarius cubiculo Guillelmi secundi.” In 1066, the name of the Count of Tancarville[193] is enumerated among those who attended the Conqueror into England. The chamberlain of Tancarville is recorded both by Ordericus Vitalis and Masseville, in the list of Norman knights that distinguished themselves in the wars of Philip-Augustus. William of Tancarville, the same chieftain, probably, or his immediate predecessor, had previously suffered himself to be seduced by the arts of Eleanor, queen of Henry II. to join in the conspiracy of the sons of that monarch, against their father: he subsequently signalized his valor, when the banners of the lion-hearted Richard were unfurled upon the plains of Palestine. In 1197, Ralph of Tancarville was one of the witnesses to the treaty of exchange, already more than once mentioned in this work, made between the sovereign and the archbishop of Rouen, in consequence of the building of Château Gaillard; and when, eight years afterwards, Philip, having become undisputed master of Normandy, conciliated the favor of the clergy by important concessions, the signature and seal of the chamberlain of Tancarville were attached to the instrument.—The task were easy, by multiplying quotations from Masseville and the early chroniclers, to extend to a great length the instances in which the noblemen of the house of Tancarville acted a prominent part in Norman history. It will be sufficient, upon the present occasion, to adduce two circumstances, as indisputable proofs of their importance. The name of Tancarville is found among the seventy-two members of the nobility, who, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, were summoned to the Norman exchequer; and, in the same century, in the year 1320, after Philip VI. upon his accession to the throne of France, had received at Amiens the homage of Edward III. for the dukedom of Aquitaine and earldom of Ponthieu, the Count of Tancarville was selected for the important office of ambassador to England, in conjunction with the Duke of Bourbon and the Earl of Harcourt, to obtain from the monarch some explanations that were considered indispensable for the dignity of the crown of France. As late as the year 1451, the Lord of Tancarville appears as one of the generals of the French forces, which, under the command of the Count of Longueville, finally succeeded in expelling the English from Normandy. From that time forward, Masseville makes no mention of the family. Respecting the castle, he is altogether silent, except upon the occasion of its capture by the French in 1435, and its surrender to them again in 1449.
It may have been observed in the preceding brief enumeration of a few principal facts connected with the family of Tancarville, that the Lords of that house have, on more than one occasion, been designated as Counts: the author of the Description de la Haute Normandie, however, expressly states that this property was not raised into an earldom till the reign of King John of France, who ennobled it with that dignity in 1351; at which time it was composed of all the fiefs, castellanies, baronies, and other lands of every description, in the duchy of Normandy, occupied by John de Melun, and Jane Crepin his wife. From the house of Melun, this same earldom passed into that of Harcourt, by the union of Jane of Melun with William of Harcourt—their daughter, who inherited the property, afterwards carried it in dower to John, Count of Dunois and of Longueville. In the year 1505, when Louis XII. added to the earls of Longueville the higher honor of the dukedom, Tancarville was comprised among the dependencies of the new dignity; and when, shortly afterwards, the duchy of Longueville escheated to the crown, the earldom of Tancarville, remaining united to Longueville, shared the same fate. Mary of Orleans, duchess of Nemours and Estouteville, having become possessed of Tancarville, sold it in September, 1706, to Anthony Crozat, the king's secretary; and, at the same time, the monarch conferred all the rights and privileges attached to the domain, upon Louis de la Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Evreux. Twelve years subsequently, the king, by his letters patent, separated Tancarville from Longueville, and ordered that the Lords of Tancarville should thenceforth be summoned to the parliament at Rouen.
The title of Earl of Tankerville is at the present day to be found in the English peerage. It is borne by a descendant of Charles Bennet, second Lord of Ossulston, upon whom it was conferred by George I. in 1714, after he had married the daughter and heiress of Ford, Lord Grey of Wark, Earl of Tankerville. One of the family of this Lord Grey, Sir John Grey, Knight, Captain of Maunt, in Normandy, had originally been rewarded with the title by King Henry V. for his eminent services in the French wars. But his grandson, Richard, Earl of Tankerville, was attainted in the thirty-eighth year of the succeeding reign; and the title remained dormant till re-granted by King William III. to Ford, Lord Grey, just mentioned, who was lineally descended from the brother of the first earl.
Plate 86. Entrance to the Castle at Tancarville.
Different opinions have prevailed with respect to the origin of the name of Tancarville. Ordericus Vitalis calls it Tanchardi Villa: M. de Valois, in his Notitia Galliæ, is disposed to claim for it the more imposing appellation of Tancredi Villa. The point will in all probability never be settled: it is more to be regretted, that no account is to be found of the building of the castle, whose lofty towers still frown in the pride of old baronial grandeur, from the summit of a steep cliff upon the right bank of the Seine, which here, so near its mouth, rather assumes the character of an estuary than a river. The wide extent of the ruins sufficiently bespeaks the importance of its former possessors: at present, nothing can be more forlorn and desolate. Mr. Dibdin, who visited the remains in 1819, has traced the following animated sketch of their present appearance with his lively pencil; and Mr. Lewis, who accompanied him, has enriched his splendid Tour with a lovely view of the buildings and surrounding scenery:—
“We ascended to the castle: the day grew soft, and bright, and exhilarating.... but, alas; for the changes and chances of this transitory world. Where was the warder? He had ceased to blow his horn for many a long year. Where was the harp of the minstrel? It had perished two centuries ago, with the hand that had struck its chords. Where was the attendant guard?—or pursuivants?—or men at arms? They have been swept from human existence, like the leaves of the old limes and beech trees, by which the lower part of the building was surrounded. The moat was dry; the rampart was a ruin:—the rank grass grew within the area.... nor can I tell you how many vast relics of halls, banqueting rooms, and bed rooms, with all the magnificent appurtenances of old castellated architecture, struck the eager eye with mixed melancholy and surprise! The singular half-circular, and half-square, corner towers, hanging over the ever-restless wave, interested us exceedingly. The guide shewed us where the prisoners used to be kept—in a dungeon, apparently impervious to every glimmer of day-light, and every breath of air. I cannot pretend to say at what period even the oldest part of the castle of Montmorenci[194] was built: but I saw nothing that seemed to be more ancient than the latter end of the fifteenth century. Perhaps the greater portion may be of the beginning of the sixteenth; but, amidst unroofed rooms, I could not help admiring the painted borders, chiefly of a red color, which run along the upper part of the walls, or wainscots—giving indication not only of a good, but of a splendid, taste. Did I tell you that this sort of ornament was to be seen in some part of the eastern end of the abbey of Jumieges? Here, indeed, they afforded evidence—an evidence mingled with melancholy sensations on conviction—of the probable state of magnificence which once reigned throughout the castle. Between the corner towers, upon that part which runs immediately parallel with the Seine, there is a noble terrace, now converted into garden ground, which commands an immediate and extensive view of the embouchure of the river. It is the property of a speculator residing at Havre. Parallel with this terrace, runs the more modernised part of the castle, which the last residing owner inhabited. It may have been built about fifty years ago, and is—or rather the remains of it are—quite in the modern style of domestic architecture. The rooms are large, lofty, and commodious;—yet nothing but the shells of them remain. The revolutionary patriots completely gutted them of every useful and every valuable piece of furniture; and even the bare walls are beginning to grow damp, and threaten immediate decay. I made several memoranda upon the spot, which have been unluckily, and I fear irretrievably, misplaced; so that, of this once vast, and yet commanding and interesting edifice, I regret that I am compelled to send you so short and so meagre an account. Farewell—a long and perhaps perpetual farewell—to the Castle of Montmorenci!”
FOOTNOTES:
[192] According to Masseville, (Histoire de Normandie, II. p. 192,) this abbey was not founded till the year 1114; but such a statement is irreconcileable with the fact of the dead body of the Conqueror having been carried there in 1087; and, moreover, both the Gallia Christiana and Neustria Pia expressly state that it was in 1114 that William, fifth son of the founder, and himself also hereditary chamberlain of Normandy, removed from St. Georges the canons established there by his father, and replaced them with monks from St. Evroul.
[193] So called by Masseville, I. p. 205.
[194] Mr. Dibdin uniformly calls this castle, the Castle of Montmorenci; but on no occasion does he state his authority for so doing; the author of these remarks never heard it so styled in Normandy, nor can he find it mentioned under that name by Nodier, or any other author. If, as appears probable, the people of the neighborhood are in the habit of so designating it, the probability is, that the modern part (see plate [eighty-five]) was erected at a period when Tancarville belonged to some member of the noble family of Montmorenci.
PLATE LXXXVII. AND LXXXVIII.
CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS, AT ST. LO.
(WESTERN DOOR-WAY, AND VARIOUS SPECIMENS OF SCULPTURE.)
Plate 87. Church of the Holy Cross at St. Lo.
Western Entrance.
The town of St. Lo is said to owe its origin to the Emperor Charlemagne, and to have been founded by him in the fifth year of the ninth century. It is situated in the western part of Normandy, upon the small river, Vire, about five leagues to the east of Coutances; and at this time it contains nearly seven thousand inhabitants. Old chroniclers relate that the name originally given to the place was Ste Croix; but that, soon after its foundation, it exchanged that appellation for the present, upon being selected as the spot to be honored with the reception of the relics of St. Lo, or, as he is called in Latin, St. Laudus, who was the fifth bishop of Coutances, and presided over that see the greater part of the sixth century. Of the merits of the saint, the miracles he performed both living and dead, and the various places that have, at different times, received his mortal remains, a copious account is given by M. Rouault, in his History of the Bishops of Coutances. It is sufficient, in the present instance, to state, that, upon the translation of the body of St. Lo to the spot now dignified with his name, a magnificent church was built under his invocation; and the town was encompassed with fortifications of great strength, to defend it against the inroads of the Normans. These heathen plunderers had at this time just begun their ravages in Neustria, when, notwithstanding its new walls, St. Lo was soon obliged, in common with the rest of the province, to submit to their sway; and they emptied upon the Christian city the full phials of pagan wrath, by burning it to the ground.
In subsequent, and probably not distant, times, St. Lo was again converted into a place of defence; and mention of it as such repeatedly occurs in the various unquiet periods of French history. Even at the present day, when fortifications in that part of the kingdom have long been neglected, there remain sufficient vestiges of them at St. Lo, to convey the most imposing idea of their original strength, aided as they must have been, by their situation upon the summit of a lofty and inaccessible rock.—St. Lo was one of the last towns in Lower Normandy that opened their gates to the victorious arms of the Empress Maude: it remained unshaken in its allegiance till 1142, only two years before the death of the English monarch.—In the third year of the following century, it surrendered without bloodshed to Philip-Augustus, then on his march towards the capture of Mount St. Michael; nor does it appear to have offered more than a trifling resistance to Edward III. by whom it was taken in 1346. Froissart, upon that occasion, gives the following details relative to the English army, as well as to the state of the town and its capture:—“The King of England and Prince of Wales had, in their battalion, about three thousand men at arms, six thousand archers, and ten thousand infantry, without counting those that were under the marshals; and they marched in the manner I have before mentioned, burning and destroying the country, but without breaking their line of battle. They did not turn towards Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in Coutantin, which, in those days, was a very rich and commercial town, and worth three such towns as Coutances. In the town of St. Lo was much drapery, and many wealthy inhabitants; among them you might count eight or nine score that were engaged in commerce. When the King of England was come near the town, he encamped: he would not lodge in it for fear of fire. He sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who soon conquered it at a trifling loss, and completely plundered it. No one can imagine the quantity of riches they found in it, nor the number of bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers, they might have bought them at a cheap rate.”
In 1379, when the English arms, during the minority of the second Richard, obtained in France an ephemeral superiority, St. Lo was the only town in the Côtentin, except Carentan, which the French monarch considered of sufficient strength to justify him in entrusting it with a garrison.—It was taken by the English, under Henry V. in 1418; and was again restored to the French, by capitulation, thirty-one years subsequently.—In the beginning of the following tumultuous reign, St. Lo and Valognes were appointed as the places of residence for Clarence and Warwick, and the other leaders of the Lancastrian party; after their short-lived success, in favor of the deposed Henry, had been followed by their own utter defeat, and the final discomfiture of their hopes.
During the religious wars of the sixteenth century, St. Lo was once more so unfortunate as to act a prominent part. Early in the troubles, it distinguished itself by a decided devotion to the cause of Protestantism; and, though often obliged, by the current of affairs, to yield a reluctant submission to the opposite party, it continued throughout the whole of the struggle, unshaken in its attachment to the Huguenots. Hence, when finally summoned to surrender to the Catholics, in 1574, it rather chose to expose itself to all the miseries of a siege, as well as to the still greater one of being taken by assault; and the severity of its sufferings is recorded by the historians of the conquering party, who themselves admit, that “it was sacked with a horrible carnage.”[195] Its Protestant places of worship were not, however, finally rased, till 1685, the period of the revocation of the edict of Nantes.
St. Lo was the seat of an abbey of Augustine friars, said to have been founded in the middle of the twelfth century, and to have been of such celebrity, that, according to Quercetanus, the bishops of Coutances were contented for a time to be styled bishops of St. Lo.[196]The principal church in the place, that of Notre Dame, greatly resembles the cathedral of Coutances, of which it is even said to be a copy. It was not begun to be built till the period of English rule in Normandy, during the fifteenth century. The older, or clock-tower, was erected in 1430: the opposite tower and western entrance, in 1464. Other parts of it were not completed till the following century; and the northern spire is a work of as late a period as 1685.
The very ancient church of Ste Croix, (the subject of these plates,) was connected with the abbey, of which little now remains. There is a tradition in the town, that it was once a temple of Ceres; and such traditions, however uncritical or even absurd, deserve to be noticed, as generally originating in a confused knowledge of the remote date of the building to which they are attached. In the opinion of M. de Gerville, a portion, at least, of the church, belongs to the edifice raised by Charlemagne, in 805. The actual erection of such an edifice, and its dedication to the holy cross, are facts distinctly stated in the Neustria Pia: its identity with the present church does not appear to be doubted, either by Du Monstier, or the Abbé de Billy, the historian of St. Lo. At the same time, neither the one nor the other of these writers was ignorant of the positive assertion in the Gesta Normannorum, that, under those successful invaders—“Sancti Laudi castrum, interfectis habitatoribus, terræ æquatum est.” But, in opposition to this, M. de Gerville contends that, either this strong assertion is to be received with a certain degree of latitude, or that, by the word castrum, is to be understood only the citadel; so that, while that was destroyed, the domestic and religious edifices were suffered to escape. He even thinks that the parts of the building ascribable to the period of the Carlovingian dynasty, may be distinguished by a practised eye, from the reparations of the eleventh century. He traces them especially in the western front, in its door-way, (plate [eighty-seven]) and in some herring-bone masonry, observable over a narrow circular-headed window towards the south. But he founds his opinion still more upon the bas-relief, representing the Deity attended by angels, (plate [eighty-eight], fig. B.) now built into the wall at the end of the nave, on the south side. The character of the sculpture and the form of the letters appear to him to be almost decisive. With regard to the latter, he observes;—“it is well known that the Roman characters were restored by Charlemagne, especially after he had been proclaimed emperor. This fact is sufficiently attested by the various monuments still left us of his time, as well as by the coins which were struck in the latter part of his reign, and during that of Louis le Débonnaire. Elegance and simplicity in the shape of the letters, characterized the writing of this epoch; and the latter, at least, of these qualities, is eminently to be found in the inscription at St. Lo. On the other hand, correct orthography was not equally one of the excellencies of the age.”
Plate 88. Church of the Holy Cross at St. Lo.
Sculpture.
Pursuing the subject yet farther, M. de Gerville gives it as his opinion, that the different epochs in the architecture, commonly designated as Norman, may be determined with some degree of precision; and he thinks he can trace, in several churches of the vicinity, an evident imitation of this at St. Lo; while he regards the superior antiquity of the latter decisively established by the sculpture over the western entrance; by the medallion of the Deity, already noticed; and by several of the capitals of the interior; particularly those that have reference to the legends of St. Eloy, (plate [eighty-eight], fig. F.) and St. Hubert, (fig. D.), both at that period quite recent; and two of the others, (fig C. and E.) in the latter of which, the devil is roasting unfortunate sinners, while the former, exhibiting the psychostasia, affords a graphic illustration of two lines of the well-known hymn of the Roman Catholic church:—
“Statera facta corporis,
Prædamque tulit Tartari.”
In the western front of the church of Ste Croix have been inserted, above the door-way, three windows of the earliest pointed style. The whole of the sculpture over the architraves of the arch, is, both in its design and execution, curious. The knotted serpents, terminating at either end in heads of devils; the two men tugging at rings, attached to a chain twisted round the neck of a decapitated demon, whom, two dogs are baying; and the structure of the chain itself, are all peculiar; and scarcely less so is the medallion below.[197]—The church ends at the east with a large circular arch, which is now closed, and has always been so since the memory of man; but probably, at some former time, it led into a chancel or sanctuary. There is a south transept, which terminates in a similar arch: the arches of the nave, which are likewise circular, are each of them surrounded with a double architrave of the zig-zag moulding: the capitals to the pillars supporting these arches, Mr. Cotman considers as being for the greater part of the best class of Norman sculpture. He has selected for engraving those that are most rude: the others commonly exhibit broad interlaced bands, foliage, and fruits. The abaci, too, though they are in general plain, are in some instances enriched with similar sculpture, as in the churches of Grâville, of Cerisy, and of the Holy Trinity at Caen. In the clerestory, over every arch below, were originally two smaller semi-circular-headed arches; but these are now closed, and their place is occupied by a single, narrow, pointed window, that opens into a large recess. The corbels without, (plate [eighty-eight], fig. A.) may bear a comparison, in point of singularity, with those of any other Norman church. The sacred emblem of the Christian faith, the wimpled nun, the whiskered Saxon, and the wolf, the scourge of Neustria, are found among them, side by side with the Atlas and Cyclops of heathen mythology; and, as if the legends of Rome and Greece could not furnish sufficient subjects for the sculptor's chisel, he appears to have extended his researches into the more remote regions, bordering upon the Nile, and thence to have imported a rude imitation of the Egyptian head, and one still more rude, of the mystic Scarabæus.
FOOTNOTES:
[195] St. Lo was then commanded by M. Colombieres, who was so resolute in the cause, that, rather than surrender, he placed himself in the middle of the breach, with his two young sons, on either side of him, each holding a javelin in his hand, and then awaited the attack, exhorting his children to perish bravely, rather than be left to infidels and apostates. The Catholic army was headed by M. de Matignon, who had, on a former occasion, distinguished himself by his lenity towards the inhabitants of the place. The lordship of St. Lo, with the title of a barony, continued in his family as late as the year 1722, when Masseville published his History of Normandy.
[196] For the following details, and indeed the greater part of the remainder of this article, the author has to express his obligations to M. de Gerville, whose kind assistance, throughout the whole of the work, cannot be too often, or too distinctly, acknowledged.
[197] The bas-relief upon this medallion represents the most impressive of the miracles connected with the history of St. Lo, and one that was performed at the very moment when he was about to enter upon the duties of his episcopacy, to which, by a manifest interposition of the Deity, he had been elected at the early age of twelve years. Rouault, in his Abrégé de la Vie des Evêques de Coutances, p. 81, gives the following details respecting it; and his account, which is curious, is here inserted, as adding probability to the opinion of M. de Gerville, that this medallion at least belonged to the original structure, whatever may be thought of the rest of the church.—“Comme l'élection et la consécration de S. Lo avoient été miraculeuses, Dieu fit voir par des signes qui n'étoient pas moins surprenants que tout s'étoit fait selon sa volonté: car à la première entrée que le jeune Prélat fit dans son Eglise, la divine Puissance voulut prouver à St. Gildard, aux autres Prélats qui étoient encore presents, et à toute l'Eglise de Coûtances, que tout ce qu'ils avoient fait lui étoit très-agréable. Ce qui fut confirmé par un Miracle des plus éclatans dans la personne d'une Femme aveugle née, qui s'étant faite conduire à la porte de la Cathédrale, y attendoit le nouvel Evêque, dans l'esperance de recevoir la vüe par son intercession. En effet, lorsqu'elle apprit qu'il approchoit, elle le conjura à haute voix de lui faire voir la lumiere. Le Saint frappé d'une telle demande en rougit, et crut que c'étoit tenter Dieu que d'attendre de lui des Miracles. Mais cette pauvre femme ne cessant de crier comme l'Aveugle de l'Evangile, le Saint poussa un profond soupir, et ayant plus d'égard à la foi de la suppliante qu'à son propre mérite, il invoqua le secours du saint Esprit, fit avec confiance le signe de la croix sur les yeux de l'Aveugle, et au même instant la vüe lui fut renduë à la grande admiration de tous les assistans, qui bénirent et remerciérent Dieu de leur avoir donné un Pasteur qui prouvoit sa vocation par un si grand Miracle, en reconnoissance duquel on éleva au même lieu deux Statuës, l'une de Saint Lo, et l'autre de la femme guérie, telles qu'on les voit encore aujourd'hui au Portail de l'Eglise, où on a aussi conservé fort soigneusement la Pierre sur laquelle étoit Saint Lo lorsqu'il opera ce Miracle. C'est encore sur elle que les Seigneurs Evêques de Coûtances s'arrêtent à leur premiere entrée, pour faire les sermens et promesses accoutumées en pareille Céremonie, et qu'ils y reçoivent les complimens et applaudissemens de la Ville, pour conserver la mémoire d'un si grand Miracle.”
PLATE LXXXIX. AND XC.
CASTLE OF FALAISE.
Plate 89. Castle of Falaise.
North West View.
Whoever can take pleasure in the wildest extravagancies of absurd fiction, displayed in theories destitute of even the slender basis of tradition, yet raised with plausibility, connected with ingenuity, and supported by learning, may find abundant gratification in the early history of Falaise. The town, as stated in a manuscript gazetteer of Normandy, written in the seventeenth century, was not only among the most ancient in Gaul, but was founded by one of the grandsons of Noah. According to another yet more grave authority, its antiquity soars still higher, and mounts to the period of the deluge itself. It so far exceeds that of the Roman empire, that, long before the building of the immortal city, colonies were sent from Falaise into Italy, where they were known by the Aborigines, under the names of Falisci, or Falerii. A third writer, M. Langevin, author of the Recherches Historiques sur Falaise, assures his readers that Falaise was, from time immemorial, a station consecrated to religion; and, in a dissertation full of the most recondite information relative to the worship of Belenus and Abrasax, Isis and Felé, he so connects and intermingles the rites of those deities with the place and its vicinity, that he can scarcely be said to do it less honor than his predecessors.
To turn from historians of this sanguine complexion to those of a more sober temperament, there will appear no reason for believing that the town of Falaise had existence prior to the incursions of the Saxons, or the establishment of the Normans, in Neustria. No mention of it whatever is to be found previous to the latter of these times; and its very name, obviously derived from the German word for a rock, fels, whence the French subsequently borrowed their appellation for cliffs, falaise, seems decisive as to the foundation of the town by some people of Teutonic origin. It is at the same time altogether characteristic of its situation.
That Falaise was built by the Saxons, may probably, with justice, be inferred from the fact of its being casually mentioned during the reign of Rollo, as one of the places through which he passed in the year 912, while visiting the different parts of his duchy. The town cannot but have been of importance in the time of his son, William Longue-Epée; as that prince is stated to have received great assistance from the inhabitants of Falaise, and the district of the Hiémois, when engaged in a war with the people of Brittany. It is more than possible that the fortifications were added, and the castle erected, by one or the other of these sovereigns.[198] Their immediate successor, Richard Sans-Peur, is stated to have made considerable additions to the works of the place, which, in the early part of the following century, under Richard III. the fifth of the Norman dukes, was unquestionably one of the strongest holds of the province. Not long afterwards, Falaise rose into new importance, as the residence of Robert, father to the Conqueror, and the birth-place of that sovereign himself, to whom it rendered acceptable service during his youth, upon the occasion of the formidable conspiracy of the Norman barons, headed by Guy de Bourgogne, in 1046. The prince, then at Valognes, escaped with difficulty from the poniards of the assassins to Falaise, where he was received with open arms. Falaise was at that time the capital of the Hiémois. In the reign of Henry II. of England, the castle was used as a state prison, and was selected as the place of confinement of Robert, Earl of Leicester, when taken prisoner in 1173, commanding the French forces in England. At a subsequent, but not far distant period, Brito, the poetical chronicler of the deeds of Philip-Augustus, in speaking of the final subjection of Normandy to that king, mentions the town of Falaise and its capture, in the following verses:—
“Vicus erat scabrâ circumdatus undique rupe,
Ipsius asperitate loci Falæsa vocatus,
Normannæ in medio regionis, cujus in altâ
Turres rupe sedent et mœnia, sic ut ad illam
Jactus nemo putet aliquos contingere posse.
Hunc rex innumeris circumdedit undique signis,
Perque dies septem varia instrumenta parabat,
Mœnibus ut fractis villâ potiatur et arcâ:
Verùm burgenses et præcipue Lupicarus,
Cui patriæ curam dederat rex Anglicus omnem,
Elegere magis illæsum reddere castrum,
Omni re salvâ cum libertatis honore,
Quàm belli tentare vices et denique vinci.”
The foregoing was the fourth of the nine sieges that have rendered the name of Falaise memorable in Norman history. The first of them had taken place in 1027, when Falaise presumed to shelter Robert, the father of the Conqueror, during his rebellion against his brother, Duke Richard III. In point of importance, none of the sieges were equal to those of 1417 and 1589. Upon the former of those occasions, Henry V. flushed by the success that had unremittingly attended his arms, since his glorious victory at Agincourt, led his troops in person against the town, which he expected would fall an easy prey. But it resisted an incessant bombardment for three months, and did not finally surrender, till the fortifications had sustained such essential injuries, that the repairing of them by the besieged, at their own charge, was made one of the leading articles of the capitulation. It was upon this occasion, that the lofty circular tower, one of the principal objects in both these plates, was added to the castle. Tradition ascribes its erection to the celebrated English general, Talbot, then governor of the town; and, even to the present day, it bears his name.[199]
The last siege of Falaise, that of December, 1589, was occasioned by the devoted adherence of the inhabitants to the League, and their consequent refusal to recognize Henry IV. as their sovereign, on account of his attachment to the Protestant faith. In defence of their creed, they had already sustained one siege in the month of July of the same year; and, headed by the Count de Brissac, governor of the castle, had repulsed the royal troops under the command of the Duke de Montpensier. But the new sovereign was not a man to be trifled with; and when Brissac, upon being summoned to surrender, replied, according to the words of De Thou, “religione se prohiberi; sumpto quippe Dominici corporis sacramento, fidem suis obligâsse de deditione se prorsùs non acturum;” the king is reported, by the same noble historian, to have returned in answer, “se menses ad totidem dies contracturum, intra quos illum, sed magno suo cum damno, religione soluturus esset.” The garrison, notwithstanding these threats, did not relax in their opposition, and the town was finally taken by assault, the frost enabling the assailants to cross the moat. On this, the Count de Brissac retired to the castle, which he surrendered about a month afterwards.
Falaise appears in the religious annals of Normandy, as the seat of an abbey, founded in 1127, and first occupied by regular canons of the order of St. Augustine, and placed under the invocation of St. Michael, the Archangel; but shortly afterwards transferred to the Præmonstratensian friars, and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The monastery is said to have taken its rise from an hospital, established by a wealthy inhabitant, in consequence of a beggar having died of cold and hunger in his barn. A bull from Pope Sextus IV. dated in 1475, conferred upon the abbots the privilege of wearing the mitre, ring, and pontifical insignia, together with various other honorary distinctions. The revolution deprived Falaise of its abbey and eight churches. It now retains only four; two within the walls, and two in the suburbs. Its population is estimated at about ten thousand inhabitants.
Plate 90. Castle of Falaise.
North View.
The castle of Falaise is with justice regarded by Mr. Turner, as one of the proudest relics of Norman antiquity. The following description of it, as more copious than any other that has yet appeared, is transcribed verbatim from the Tour[200] of that author:—“It is situated on a very bold and lofty rock, broken into singular and fantastic masses, and covered with luxurious vegetation. The keep which towers above it is of excellent masonry: the stones are accurately squared, and put together with great neatness, and the joints are small; and the arches are turned clearly and distinctly, with the key-stone or wedge accurately placed in all of them. Some parts of the wall, towards the interior ballium, are not built of squared freestone; but of the dark stone of the country, disposed in a zig-zag, or, as it is more commonly called, in a herring-bone direction, with a great deal of mortar in the interstices: the buttresses, or rather piers, are of small projection, but great width. The upper story, destroyed about forty years since, was of a different style of architecture. According to an old print,[201] it terminated with a large battlement, and bartizan towers at the angles. This dungeon was formerly divided into several apartments, in one of the lower of which was found, about half a century ago, a very ancient tomb, of good workmanship, ornamented with a sphynx at each end, but bearing no inscription whatever. Common report ascribed the coffin to Talbot, who was for many years governor of the castle; and at length an individual engraved upon it an epitaph to his honor: but the fraud was discovered, and the sarcophagus put aside, as of no account. The second, or principal, story of the keep, now forms a single square room, about fifty feet wide, lighted by circular-headed windows, each divided into two by a short and massy central pillar, whose capital is altogether Norman. On one of the capitals is sculptured a child leading a lamb,[202] a representation, as it is foolishly said, of the Conqueror, whom tradition alledges to have been born in the apartment to which this window belonged: another pillar has an elegant capital, composed of interlaced bands.—Connected with the dungeon by a stone staircase is a small apartment, very much dilapidated, but still retaining a portion of its original facing of Caen stone. It was from the window of this apartment, as the story commonly goes, that Duke Robert first saw the beautiful Arlette, drawing water from the streamlet below, and was enamoured of her charms, and took her to his bed.—According to another version of the tale, the earliest interview between the prince and his fair mistress, took place as Robert was returning from the chace, with his mind full of anger against the inhabitants of Falaise, for having presumed to kill the deer which he had commanded should be preserved for his royal pastime. In this offence the curriers of the town had borne the principal share, and they were therefore principally marked out for punishment. But, fortunately for them, Arlette, the daughter of one Verpray, the most culpable of the number, met the offended Duke while riding through the street, and with her beauty so fascinated him, that she not only obtained the pardon of her father and his associates, but became his mistress, and continued so as long as he lived. From her, if we may give credence to the old chroniclers, is derived our English word, harlot. The fruit of their union was William the Conqueror, whose illegitimate birth, and the low extraction of his mother, served on more than one occasion as a pretext for conspiracies against his throne, and were frequently the subject of personal mortification to himself.—The walls in this part of the castle are from eight to nine feet thick. A portion of them has been hollowed out, so as to form a couple of small rooms. The old door-way of the keep is at the angle; the returns are reeded, ending in a square impost; the arch above is destroyed.—Talbot's tower, thus called from having been built by that general, in 1430 and the two subsequent years, is connected with the keep by means of a long passage with lancet windows, that widen greatly inwards. It is more than one hundred feet high, and is a beautiful piece of masonry, as perfect, apparently, as on the day when it was erected, and as firm as the rock on which it stands. This tower is ascended by a staircase concealed within the substance of the walls, whose thickness is full fifteen feet towards the base, and does not decrease more than three feet near the summit. Another aperture in them serves for a well, which thus communicates with every apartment in the tower. Most of the arches in this tower have circular heads: the windows are square.—The walls and towers which encircle the keep are of much later date; the principal gate-way is pointed. Immediately on entering, is seen the very ancient chapel, dedicated to St. Priscus, or, as he is called in French, St. Prix. The east end with three circular-headed windows, retains its original lines: the masonry is firm and good. Fantastic corbels surround the summit of the lateral walls. Within, a semi-circular arch resting upon short pillars with sculptured capitals, divides the choir from the nave. In other respects the building has been much altered. Henry V. repaired it in 1418, and it has been since dilapidated and restored. A pile of buildings beyond, wholly modern in the exterior, is now inhabited as a seminary, or college. There are some circular arches within, which shew that these buildings belonged to the original structure.—Altogether the castle is a noble ruin. Though the keep is destitute of the enrichments of Norwich or Castle-Rising, it possesses an impressive character of strength, which is much increased by the extraordinary freshness of the masonry. The fosses of the castle are planted with lofty trees, which shade and intermingle with the towers and ramparts; and on every side they groupe themselves with picturesque beauty. It is said that the municipality intend to restore Talbot's tower and the keep, by replacing the demolished battlements; but I should hope that no other repairs may take place, except such as may be necessary for the preservation of the edifice; and I do not think it needs any, except the insertion of clamps in the central columns of two of the windows, which are much shattered.”
FOOTNOTES:
[198] At the same time that no record whatever has been preserved relative to the date of the building of the castle at Falaise, the Norman chroniclers have carefully recorded the æras of the erection of the other castles in the neighborhood. That of Domfront, according to them, was built a.d. 1011 and 1014, by the Counts of Alençon; that of Caen, by William the Conqueror, but much increased by his son, Henry I.; that of Vignats, a league and a half from Falaise, about the year 1096, during the dukedom of Robert, by Robert of Montgomery, Count of Alençon, and Viscount of Hiêmes and of Falaise; and that of Argentan, by Henry I. King of England, by way of protection against his son-in-law, Geoffrey Plantagenet.—Recherches Historiques sur Falaise, p. 22.
[199] According to Langevin, p. 30, Talbot likewise added to the castle, some noble apartments, ornamented with paintings, which also passed under his name, and of which some portions were still standing a few years ago.
[200] Vol. II. p. 266.
[201] This print has lately been copied into Mr. Dibdin's Tour, vol. II. p. 11.
[202] Mr. Turner appears to be in error with regard to this capital: Mr. Cotman, who examined it more attentively, found the child to be holding two animals in a leash; and he supposes them to be greyhounds, comparing them with a very similar piece of sculpture upon one of the capitals in the bishop's palace, in the castle at Durham, erected by the Conqueror.—See Carter's Ancient Architecture, I. pl. 17, fig. P.
PLATE XCI.
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF CREULLY.
Plate 91. Interior of the Church of Creully.
Creully, whose church has been here selected for publication, as a favorable specimen of genuine Norman architecture, is a small market-town of the diocese of Bayeux, situated about six miles to the east of the city of that name, and fifteen miles north-west of Caen. It is an ancient barony, having been honored with that distinction by Henry I. in favor of his natural son, the Earl of Glocester, many of whose descendants, according to Masseville, were still living in Normandy in the eighteenth century, and bore the name of Creully. The same author makes mention of the Lords of Creully, on more than one occasion, in the course of his Norman history.—They are to be found in the list of the barons that accompanied Duke Robert to the Holy Land, in 1099; and when the Genoese, in 1390, called upon the King of France for succours against the infidels of the coast of Barbary, and the pious monarch sent an army to their relief, under the command of the Duke of Bourbon, the name of the Seigneur de Creully stands prominent among those who embarked upon that unfortunate expedition. Again, in 1302, the Baron of Creully held the fifth place among the nine lords from the bailiwick of Caen, who were summoned to sit in the Norman exchequer.
From the days of the Earl of Glocester to the breaking out of the French revolution, the barony of Creully continued to be held by different noble families. In the early part of the eighteenth century, when Masseville published his work, it was in the hands of the heirs of M. de Seigneley-Colbert, who likewise possessed other considerable domains in Normandy. The last that had the title was a member of the family of Montmorenci.—His emigration caused the estate to be confiscated, and sold as national property; but the baronial castle is now standing, and displays, in two of its towers, and in a chimney of unusual form, a portion of its ancient character. The rest of the building is modernized into a spruce, comfortable residence, which, in 1818, was occupied by an English general of the name of Hodgson.[203]
The writer of this article has met with no records connected with the church of Creully.—Externally, it is wholly modernized; but within, the nave, side-aisles, and choir, are all purely Norman, except at the extremities. The piers are very massy; the arches wide and low; the capitals covered with rude, but remarkable sculpture, which is varied on every pillar; and the walls are of extraordinary thickness.
FOOTNOTES:
[203] Turner's Tour in Normandy, II. p. 264.
PLATES XCII.—XCIV.
CATHEDRAL AT COUTANCES.
Plates 92-93. Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Coutances.
West Front.
The diocese of Coutances, embracing the north-western portion of Celtic Gaul, appears to have been the last part of the country that was visited by the light of Christianity; but its historians boast that the tardy approach of the rays of gospel-truth has been more than compensated by their subsequent brilliancy; for that in no other of the Norman dioceses has the sun of revelation blazed with equal splendor, or given birth to fruits of equal excellence. Thus, according to Rouault,[204] as early as the fifth century, and during the whole of the two following, and a portion of the eighth, the Côtentin was so celebrated, by reason of the great number of saints, who were either natives of the country, or had retired thither as to a place of safe retreat, that it was regarded as being honored with the divine favor, beyond any other district in France. No fewer than fifteen holy men, enshrined in the Roman calendar, are said to have resided there at or near the same period; and, while their lustre irradiated the episcopal mitre, its beams extended to the remote fastnesses of the desert of Scycy, near Granville, then celebrated for the sanctity of its hermits. At a time not long subsequent, St. Algeronde and Theodoric, both of them bishops of Coutances, and the martyrs, Leo, Philip, and Gervais, three natives of Carentan, became principal instruments towards the conversion of the heathen Normans. History also records, that it was in the house of St. Clair, one of the protectors of this diocese, that the treaty was finally concluded, in conformity with which, the chief of the infidels was, with his followers, admitted within the pale of the church.
The foundation of the see of Coutances is commonly supposed to have taken place about the middle of the fifth century, during the latter years of the papacy of Celestine I. and of the reign of Pharamond, in France. The see lays claim to the proud distinction of having enriched the beatified calendar with the names of at least fifteen of its bishops; of having added one to the list of the successors of St. Peter; of having supplied six cardinals to the holy college; and of having produced an equal number of martyrs. And if to this catalogue, already great, be joined the many anchorites of Scycy and of Nanteuil, who have been promoted to the episcopal dignity, a whole legend, to use the words of a pious author, may be filled with the lives and the miracles of the holy men of Coutances.
In turning from the ecclesiastical to the secular annals of the diocese, the barons of the Côtentin scarcely occupy a less distinguished place. The histories of the Crusades, in particular, abound with their exploits. Hauteville, near Coutances, boasts to have given birth and title to Tancred, of immortal memory; who, either himself, or by his descendants, founded the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and reigned over almost the whole of Italy; while, with their victorious forces, they exterminated the Saracens, protected the holy see, supported the Cretans in the east, and carried their conquering arms to the utmost confines of the Greek empire. To them, also, the chivalrous institution of the Golden Fleece owes its origin; and so extraordinary were their exploits, that they might pass for fabulous, had they occurred in a more remote age, and did not the concurring testimony of historians unite to stamp them with the seal of truth.
According to the ecclesiastical division of France before the revolution, the diocese of Coutances was bounded to the south by that of Avranches, and to the east by that of Bayeux, while, in the two remaining divisions, its limits were circumscribed by the ocean.[205] At present, it includes the whole department of La Manche; the suppression of the bishopric of Avranches having added considerably to its extent.—In Roman Gaul, Coutances was included in the province called the Lugdunensis secunda: but, on the subject of the foundation or early history of the city, authors are, as commonly happens, much at variance, ascribing to it, according to their fancies or their prejudices, very different degrees of antiquity. Those who are most disposed to do it honor in this respect, contend that it was the capital of the tribe mentioned by Cæsar, in his Commentaries, under the name of Unelli; and called by Pliny, Venelli; and by Ptolemy, Veneli. They are guided in this opinion exclusively by locality. Others, with a greater appearance of probability, at least as far as any reliance may be placed upon etymology, maintain that Coutances had no existence before the days of the Emperor, Constantius Chlorus, father to Constantine the Great. There have also not been wanting writers who have referred its origin to Constantine himself, or who have maintained that it was indebted for its name to its constant and vigorous opposition to the Roman power. The second of these opinions appears to have obtained general credence in the time of Ordericus Vitalis, who, in speaking of Constantius, expressly says, “Hic in Neustriâ civitatem condidit, quam a nomine suo Constantiam nominavit.” Ammianus Marcellinus adds strength to the same belief, when he calls Coutances, Constantia castra. It is probable that the city was in reality the seat of the Emperor's camp, at the time when he was about to lead his forces into Britain.
Of the future progress of the town, and the steps by which it rose to its present eminence, no account whatever is left. History, so profuse in details respecting many other places in Normandy, far inferior in size and in distinction, has done little more with regard to the capital of the Côtentin, than record the bare facts,—that it was pillaged by the Normans in 888; was sold by Duke Robert to his brother, Henry I. in 1087; was taken by the Count of Anjou, in the twelfth year of the following century; was, thirty years subsequently, surrendered to the Empress Maude; was wrested from John, by Philip-Augustus, in 1202; in 1418, opened its gates to the victorious arms of Henry V.; and, after remaining for thirty-one years in the hands of the English, was finally re-united to the crown of France. In 1465, Coutances lost its military character: its walls were then destroyed, and the fortifications rased, by order of Louis XI. as a punishment upon the inhabitants for their conduct, in aiding the treasonable attempt of Charles, the brother of the monarch, to obtain forcible possession of the dukedom of Normandy.[206] Not long subsequently, Francis I. gladdened the city with the royal presence, on his return from his pilgrimage to Mont St. Michel, in 1487; and his grandson, Henry III. bestowed upon it the distinction of being the capital of the bailiwick; soon after which, it suffered severely during the religious wars, especially when it fell into the power of the Calvinists, in 1562. Those merciless religionists pillaged it with an unsparing hand, even consigning a portion of it to the flames: they sacked the churches, and carried off the prelate, whom they forced to accompany them upon an ass, with his face turned to its tail.
Of the bishops of Coutances, it will be sufficient here to mention three—Richard de Longueuil, who was nominated in 1455, one of the four commissioners to revise the process of the Maid of Arc, and declared her innocent; Nicholas de Briroy, who, at the end of the following century, obtained from the Pope, Paul V. in return for his extensive charities, the enviable title of Father of the Poor; and Geoffrey de Montbray, a prelate honored with the especial favor of the Conqueror, to whom he frequently rendered the most essential service, as well in arms as in peace. He it was, who performed mass in the Norman camp, preparatory to the battle of Hastings, and who preached at the coronation of the monarch, from whom he is said, by Ordericus Vitalis, to have received no fewer than two hundred and eighty manors in England.
The present population of Coutances amounts to between eight and nine thousand inhabitants. The remains of the noble aqueduct in the neighborhood, though commonly ascribed to the times of Roman power, are said to be with more justice referable to a nobleman of the family of Haye-Paisnel, and to have been erected in the thirteenth century. The principal feature and great ornament of the city is its noble cathedral, which, regarded as a whole, may, in the opinion of M. de Gerville, challenge a comparison with any other in France. Its architecture, according to the same able antiquary, affords a satisfactory proof that the pointed arch was really used in France, full half a century before the epoch generally assigned to its introduction. Upon this latter subject, there has already been an opportunity of speaking in the present work, while treating of the Church of Lisieux; and the opinion there stated by Mr. Turner, must be allowed to derive the strongest confirmation from the cathedral of Coutances. The point is one that has frequently exercised the ingenuity of architects, and of the learned: the concluding portion, therefore, of this article, will be principally devoted to that subject.[207]
It was, in the twelfth century, according to Mr. Whittington, that “the pointed arch began to shew itself in the edifices of France and the neighboring countries;” and, having originated in the east, naturally followed this direction in its course towards England. On the other hand, the sentiments of another, at least equally learned, author, the reverend Dr. Milner, have been given on more than one occasion, that the architecture, commonly denominated Gothic, really commenced in England, but did not appear till after the year 1130; the pointed arches in the church of St. Cross, erected by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, and brother of King Stephen, being probably the earliest specimen of the kind that is any where to be found. M. de Gerville combats this latter opinion, by adducing the churches of Mortain and of Coutances; the first of them, like St. Cross, an example of the mixed style, its upper arches being semi-circular, its lower pointed; the other, wholly of the latter description. The church of Mortain was founded in 1082, and must have been sufficiently finished for the performance of divine worship, within nine years after that period; as it is expressly recorded that Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, who died in 1093, was present at the ceremony of the consecration. With regard to the cathedral of Coutances, there is fortunately in existence a highly-curious document, written by an eye-witness to the building of the church, and printed in the Gallia Christiana[208] from the black book or chartulary of the diocese, which was compiled by order of John d'Essey, who wore the mitre in the middle of the thirteenth century. The memoir commences by reciting a portion of the hardships undergone by the see of Coutances, in common with other parts of the north of France, from the Norman invasion; and then tells how Herbert II. who succeeded to the episcopal throne in 1020, expelled, as useless and illiterate, the canons in possession of the church of Coutances, and took the whole of the ecclesiastical revenues into his own hands, because “sibi minùs urbani minùsque faceti videbantur!” It goes on to state, that his successor, Robert, far from restoring what had been seized under so extraordinary a plea, alienated the property by parcelling it out among his kindred; but that, notwithstanding this, a beginning was made in his time towards the erection of the church, which was founded by the Countess Gonora, widow of Duke Richard II. with the aid of contributions from various quarters.[209]
To Robert, in the year of our Lord, 1048, succeeded the celebrated Geoffrey de Montbray, who finally completed the great work commenced by his predecessor. The first stone of the cathedral had been laid in 1030; the dedication took place in 1056, and was performed in the presence of the Duke himself, the archbishop, his suffragans, and a large proportion of the Norman nobility. Some English barons likewise crossed the sea to attend upon the occasion. The vigor of Geoffrey's character was never more strikingly exemplified, than in connection with this fabric.[210] In the earliest years of his prelacy, he undertook a voyage to Apulia, for the express purpose of obtaining from Robert Guischard, and his companions in arms, pecuniary assistance towards the building; and, during the whole course of a long life, he appears to have been unremitting in his endeavors to add whatever might contribute to its dignity, its splendour, and its utility.[211] The following lines, traced by his dying hand, well mark the man himself, and the temper of the age, and the prevalence of the ruling passion:—“Gaufridus, misericordia Dei, Constantiensis episcopus, omnibus sub christiana regeneratione degentibus, tam clericis quam laïcis, salutem, prosperitatem et pacem. Constantiensem ecclesiam quam hucusque licet indigne tenueram, tamen miserante Deo, populo meæ pravitatis augmentum et honorare studui, et extrema...... eam amplius factis adjuvare nequeo verbis quantum tutari et defensare cupio. Quicumque igitur qui sub christiana professione vocatus, præfatam ecclesiam honorare, consolari et defensare voluerit, auctoritate Domini nostri Jesu Christi ejusque sanctissimæ genetricis, in apostolica nostraque confirmatione benedictus, ab eodem Domino nostro Jesu Christo omnium bonorum retributore mercedem recipiat in futuro, et anima ejus inter choros angelorum et archangelorum, apostolorum et martyrum, confessorum et virginum requiem possideat in paradiso. Quod si aliquis irreverens et contumeliosus, avaritiæ vel cupiditatis stimulis agitatus, eam de terris suis, sive legibus et consuetudinibus, sive ornamentis absque justa et necessaria eidem ecclesiæ ratione et clericorum assensione, minorari et decurtare præsumpserit, ab his omnibus suprascriptis ordinibus maledictus, et perpetuæ damnationis anathemate circumseptus, priusquam vita decedat terribilissimi divini examinis judicio prosequente, omnibus in commune tanti sacrilegii violator appareat, et in perpetuum cum Juda traditore, et Herode, Pilato et Caipha, cunctisque sanctæ ecclesiæ adversariis ignem æternum possideat, semperque cum diabolo et angelis ejus crucietur, nec ullam in secula seculorum misericordiæ scintillam mereatur, nisi priusquam anima illa tenebrosa de corpore exierit resipuerit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. Fiat, amen.”
And the clergy were not wanting in their endeavors to do honor to the memory of so noble a benefactor. As the Roman historians and the Mantuan bard concur in attesting the various prodigies that foretold the approaching end of Julius Cæsar, so the monkish chroniclers relate that earth and sky united in presaging the death of Geoffrey; and, though they could not succeed in obtaining for his name admission into the calendar, they would allow of no doubt as to his reception into heaven; the details of which were communicated in a vision to one of the monks of Cerisy.—“There appeared to me,” said the monk, “a palace of transcendent magnificence, in which a queen was seated, of more than earthly beauty, surrounded by a numerous court; and, while each in his turn was making his obeisance, suddenly a messenger arrived, exclaiming aloud, ‘Madam, Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, is here, and is at this moment mounting the steps of the palace.’ No sooner were the tidings heard, than she descended from her seat to meet the prelate; and, having welcomed him with a most gracious salutation, caused her attendants to disrobe him of his cope and boots, and then, taking the veil from her own head, wiped the wounds upon his body, and, leading him by the hand, conducted him to her room of state, and placed him near to herself upon the throne.” The decease of the prelate, which took place on the following day, left no doubt as to the interpretation or the inspiration of the vision.
Of the identity of the church built by Geoffrey with that now standing, it is impossible to entertain a reasonable doubt. The details, and they are many, contained in the document above quoted, all correspond with the present building. A still more decisive proof is afforded by the silence of succeeding historians, who could never have passed unnoticed so important a fact as the rebuilding of a cathedral, the repairs of which they have recorded on various occasions. The principal of these took place during the prelacy of Sylvester de la Corvelle, and were occasioned by the wars of Edward III. in the course of which, the edifice incurred the most imminent danger, and would probably have been destroyed in 1356, had not the timely arrival of the French troops caused the invading army to raise the siege of the city. A battering ram, used upon that occasion, was still shewed in Coutances, in the beginning of the last century. The king of France bestowed upon the chapter, in 1372, a sum of six hundred livres, in gold, for the express purpose of repairing the church, “bellis attritâ et imminutâ.” At that time the Lady-Chapel was added; the great windows were inserted in the aisles; the exterior part of the choir towards the palace was built; and a portion of the work of the western front, between the towers, was repaired, and probably altered. This last has in particular tended to mislead the antiquary;—but to sum up the account, in the words of M. de Gerville,—“En y regardant plus attentivement, un antiquaire exercé facilement démêlera l'ancienne partie de l'édifice, qui est encore de beaucoup la plus considérable. Cette ancienne partie offre un modèle bien caractérisé de fenêtres en lancettes. C'est surtout aux deux tours occidentales qu'on en voit des plus étroites. Celles de la tour, ou lanterne, sont géminées. Ces lancettes, que les antiquaires Anglois rapportent au regne de Henry II. se montrent ici dans un édifice antérieur à ce prince de prés d'un siècle; et, ce qui est encore plus surprénant, elles y sont sans aucun mélange d'architecture Romane ou Saxonne.”[212]
Plate 94. Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Coutances.
Elevation of the Nave.
In the interior of the building, (plate [ninety-four]) the same uniformity of style prevails as in the exterior; and if, in conjunction with the cathedral of Coutances, be considered that of Lisieux, a contemporary building, and so much alike in character, that it may reasonably be doubted if they were not the production of the same architect, it will scarcely be assuming too much, to say that the date of the introduction of the pointed architecture in France, may safely be placed as early as the middle of the eleventh century.
FOOTNOTES:
[204] Abrégé de l'Histoire des Evêques de Coutances, p. 48.
[205] At that time, its length was twenty-five leagues, and its width ten, without comprising the islands of Guernsey and Jersey, over which it still held a titular sway. In it were included the district of the Côtentin; the city of Coutances; the towns of St. Lo, Granville, Carentan, Vallognes, and Cherbourg; twenty-four smaller market towns; four archdeaconries; twenty-two rural deaneries; ten abbeys; twenty-four other convents; and five hundred and fifty parishes. The chapter consisted of twenty-six canons and eight dignitaries.
[206] The following are the words of Robertus Cenalis upon this subject:—“Carolo, Ludovici XI. germano, quorundam procerum principumque suggestione ducatum Normanniæ non precario, sed vi impense ambiente, cum via sibi per posticum episcopalis domus aperta esset, rex idcirco indignatus incolis qui a fide defecerant, cavit decreto suo in pœnam criminis, quod funditus a solo everterentur civitatis mœnia, quæ nulla vel pretii, vel precum sollicitatione restitui potuerunt.”—Cenalis then proceeds to say,—“Habet in templi sui meditullio merito suspiciendum spectaculum miræ architecturæ contextum, e cujus abside si quis lapillum dejecerit, nunquam a puncto designato ultra citrave dimovebitur instar laternæ vitreæ in sublime erectum: vitream arcem merito dixeris, opus sane venustum et elegans. Urbem præterea insigniter ornat aquæductus ad milliaris semissem, ingenti impensa et opera arcuatim suppositis fornicibus longo ductu protensus, cujus artificii ope civitas alluitur et rigatur. Denique si mœnibus conclusa foret, quis vetet civitatem illam Constantinopolim Neustriæ maritimæ appellari!”—Gallia Christiana, p. 863.
[207] In the following part of the description of the church of Coutances, considerable use has been made of a manuscript dissertation, kindly communicated by M. de Gerville to the author, who only laments that the limits of this publication would not allow him to insert it entire.
[208] Among the Instrumenta Ecclesiæ Constantiensis, p. 218.
[209] “Hujus tamen temporibus incœpta et ex parte constructa est Constantiensis ecclesia, fundante et coadjuvante Gonorra comitissa, auxiliantibus etiam canonicis, reditibus medietatis altaris ad tempus operi concessis, cooperantibus quoque baronibus et parochianis fidelibus, quod usque hodie contestantur aliquot ipsorum nomina insculpta lapidibus in ecclesiæ arcubus.”—Gallia Christiana, Inst. p. 218.
[210] “Anno igitur Dominicæ Incarnationis, MXLVIII. duodecim tantum diebus ipsius anni restantibus, id est IV idus Aprilis, indictione II, venerandus Gaufridus post Robertum Constantiensis episcopus Rotomagi consecratur, nobilium baronum prosapia ortus, statura procerus, vultu decorus, prudentia consilioque providus, quanquam sæpissime curialibus negotiis regiisque obsecundationibus irretitus, tamen ad ædificationem et incrementum ecclesiæ suæ omni nisu et voluntate per noctem erat et per diem, qui ut eandem ecclesiam celebrem gloriosamque restitueret, in Apuliam et Calabriam adire Robertum cognomine Guischardum parochianum suum, aliosque barones consanguineos suos, et alumnos, et notos peregre profectus, multum in auro, et argento, et gemmis, et palliis variisque divitiarum donariis acquisivit, tresque asportavit phialas plenas puro opobalsamo, aliaque pretiosissima quibus postea præfatam ecclesiam intus et extus locupletavit, majoremque crucifixum largis sumtibus et tempore longo construxit. Cum autem non haberet in civitate, sive in suburbio tantum possessionis ecclesia, ubi maneret episcopus, vel proprius equus ejus posset stabulari, sed neque propriam domum, nisi quoddam appendicium humile, quod pendebat de parietibus ecclesiæ, ipse prudentia sua et probitate valentiorem medietatem civitatis, suburbii, et telonei, et vectigalis, cum molendinis et multa Grimoldi viaca a Guillelmo invictissimo duce Normannorum, postea quoque glorioso rege Anglorum trecentis libris comparavit et acquietavit. Postea vero episcopalem aulam et reliquas officinas construxit, virgultum et vineam non modicam plantavit, capitium navis ecclesiæ cum area, et hinc inde duo majora capitia nobiliora et ampliora construxit. Duas turres posteriores a fundamentis, tertiamque supra chorum opere spectabili sublimavit, in quibus classicum consonans et pretiosum imposuit, et hæc omnia plumbo cooperuit.”—Gallia Christiana, Inst. p. 218.
[211] The instrument, above quoted, abounds in examples of this spirit. Among the rest, after detailing at length various estates which he had purchased or obtained as presents for the enriching of his church, it proceeds to say,—“Cæterum ornamenta ecclesiastica et ustencilia, calices, cruces, capsas, phylacteria, candelabra, thuribula, bacinos, siculam et ampullas aurea contulit et argentea, casulas quoque, dalmaticas, tunicas, planetas, albas, cappas mirifici operis, necnon dorsalia serica et lanea, cortinas et tapeta, sed et bibliothecas, passionales, omeliares, missales aureis litteris duos sufficientesque et competentes libros subrogavit: super hæc omnia pretiosum famosumque clerum, quo nihil pretiosius in ecclesia et utilius in officium et servitium divini cultus delegavit, septemque canonicos quos episcopus Hugo Rotomagi in ecclesia S. Laudi irregulariter constituerat, apostolica auctoritate ecclesiæ matri revocavit, itemque duos alios adjecit. Cantorem quoque, et succentorem, et rectorem scholarum, et custodes ecclesiæ, clericos quoque præbendarios, aurifabros, fabrumque ferrarium, carpentarios et magistrum cœmentarium in opus ecclesiæ constituit. O virum prudentem et domui suæ bene præsidentem, qui de vivis et electis lapidibus domum suam composuit, et mirabilibus columnis eam sustentavit!”—Gallia Christiana, Inst. p. 219.
[212] The following remarks upon the architecture of the cathedral of Coutances, transcribed from the journal of a most able friend of the author's, cannot fail to be acceptable to the reader:—“The cathedral is most singular in its aspect. It is pointed throughout, except the circular arches in the vaulting over the side-chapels, and one or two segments of circles which form the door-ways, within the porches on the north and south sides. It is really a difficult task to come at any conclusion respecting the æra of the building, from an inspection of it. If it is of the Norman age, then the pointed style arose at once from a transfusion of Arabian or Tartarian architecture. The whole is of a piece, complete in conception and execution; and there are no intersecting arches from which a pointed arch may have arisen. The circles in the spandrils are in the same oriental style as at Bayeux. The peculiarities of the cathedral are—the side-porches close behind the towers; the screens of mullioned tracery, which divide the side-chapels; and the excessive height of the choir, which, having no triforium, has only a balustrade just before the clerestory windows. The centre tower is wonderfully fine in the exterior: it is apparently an expansion of the plain Norman lantern, as at Caen; but most airy and graceful. There is a double aisle round the ambit and altars are placed in the bays, as if they were distinct chapels, for which purpose they were originally intended; but the line continues unbroken. The perspective of these aisles, and also of the choir, seen from the Lady-Chapel, is very fine. The round pillars of the choir are double, as at Canterbury and Senlis. The apsis is half a duodecagon. The pointed windows above are in two lancet divisions, surmounted by a trefoil; but the dividing masonry is not a mullion: it is the unperforated part of the wall. This perhaps is arabesque. There is a second arch within, which is really divided by a mullion or small pillar. A curious leaf projects above. Some of the painted glass is in the oldest style: dispersed patterns in a black outline, on a grey ground. In a side-chapel are painted tiles, brown and yellow as usual, displaying knots and armorial bearings. In the same chapel are fresco paintings: many more are on the east side of the wall that divides the last choir-aisle from the south transept. They represent St. Michael and the Devil, the Deity between angels, &c. In all of them, the outline is formed by a thick black line.”
PLATE XCV. AND XCVI.
MOUNT ST. MICHAEL.
Plate 95. Mount St. Michael.
On the approach from Pontorson.
Religion, history, poetry, and painting, have all united in giving celebrity to St. Michael's Mount. The extraordinary sanctity of its monastery, the striking peculiarities of its form and situation, and the importance acquired by the many sieges it supported, or the almost endless pilgrimages it received, have so endeared it to the man of taste and the philosopher, that scarcely a spot is to be found in Europe, more generally known, or more universally interesting.
The legendary mist with which St. Michael's Mount is now densely involved, has continued, from a period of remote antiquity, to float around its summit. Tradition delights in relating how, in times prior to the Christian æra, it was devoted to the worship of the great luminary of heaven, under his Gallic name of Belenus,[213] a title probably derived from the Hebrew Baal, and the Assyrian Belus. The same tradition recounts how, at a more recent epoch, it reared its majestic head, embosomed in a spacious tract of woods and thickets, while the hermits who had fixed themselves upon its summits, received their daily bread from the charity of the priest of the neighboring parish of Beauvoir; an ass spontaneously undertaking the office of conveying it to them, till on the road he fell a prey to a wolf, who was then constrained by Providence to devote himself to the same pious labor.
At length, about the year 709, it was decreed that the rock should at once change its designation and its patron. To the clouds of Paganism, succeeded the sun of Christianity; and the original heathen appellation, Tumba, was replaced by one of the most elevated names of holy writ. St. Michael, “the chief of the angels and of the host of heaven, the protector of the Hebrew synagogue of yore, as now of the Catholic church, the conqueror of the old serpent, and the leader of souls to heaven,” condescended to be worshipped here upon the western coast, as on Mount Garganus in the east, and with this view appeared to St. Aubert, then bishop of Avranches, commanding him to erect a church to his honor upon the mount. Another legend relates, how there had previously existed upon the same spot, a religious edifice, which had passed under the name of the Monasterium ad duas Tumbas, being equally appropriated to the adjoining rock of Tombeleine. However this may have been, it is admitted on all sides that a church was built, and that the hill knew thenceforth no other name than that of St. Michael's Mount; though Aubert, tardy in his belief, had refused to obey the injunction, till it had been repeated three several times, upon the last of which, the archangel touched the head of the saint, and left imprinted in his skull the marks of his fingers, which the author, here quoted, relates that he himself saw, to his great delight, in the years 1612 and 1641.
To the miraculous vision, succeeded other occurrences of similar import. A tethered bull pointed out the spot where the holy edifice should be erected, and at the same time circumscribed its limits; a rock, that opposed the progress of the workmen, and was immoveable by human art, spontaneously withdrew at the touch of an infant's foot; and the earth opening, on being struck with St. Aubert's staff, gave birth to a spring of water, at once of the utmost use to the inhabitants, and gifted with the most sanative powers. At about the same period also, the sea ingulphed the neighboring forests,[214] insulating the rock; so that three messengers, who had been dispatched to Mount Garganus, thence to bring a portion of red cloth, the gift of St. Michael, together with a fragment of the stone on which he himself had sate, found on their return the aspect of things so changed, that “they thought they must have entered into a new world.”
History, from this period, assumes a character of comparative authenticity. The Norman conquest threatened for awhile the extinction of Christianity: the baptism of Rollo, rekindling its dying embers, made them blaze forth with a light and warmth unknown before. The duke himself, on the fourth day after he had presented himself at the holy font, endowed the monastery of St. Michael, then styled “ecclesiam in periculo maris supra montem positam.”—No further mention occurs of the convent, during the reign of this monarch, or of his son, William Longue-Epée; but their immediate successor, Richard I. amply atoned for any neglect on their part. He built, according to Dudo of St. Quentin, a church of wondrous size, together with spacious buildings, for a body of monks of the Benedictine order, whom he established there in 988, displacing the regular canons, whose irregular lives had been the subject of much scandal. This munificence on the part of Richard, has even caused him to be regarded by some writers as the founder of the convent.—His son and successor, of the same name, selected St. Michael's Mount, as the favored spot, where, in the beginning of his reign, he received the hand of the fair Judith, sister to Geoffrey, one of the principal counts of Brittany. An opportunity was almost immediately afterwards afforded him of testifying at once his liberality and his devotion, as well as his love; for, on the first year of the eleventh century, the church, which had then been completed only five years, was burned to the ground. The prince, however, appears to have been somewhat tardy on the occasion; no attempt was made towards replacing the loss, till Hildebert II. succeeded as abbot. During his prelacy, in 1022, the foundations of a new church were laid, upon a still more extensive scale.—Twenty-six years more were suffered to elapse, and the abbatial mitre had adorned the brows of four successive abbots, when Ralph de Beaumont witnessed the completion of the work.
The church then built is expressly stated by the authors of the Gallia Christiana, to be the same as was in existence at the time of the publication of that work;[215] and M. de Gerville confirms their remark by his own personal observation, at least as far as relates to the nave. This indeed has been shortened of late; but he is persuaded, that whatever still remains is really of the architecture of the days of Duke Richard.—Robert, the following duke, repaired to St. Michael's Mount, to superintend his forces, upon the occasion of the revolt of Alain, Count of Dol; and it was hither, also, that the archbishop of Rouen brought the humbled count, to make his peace with his offended sovereign.—At the period of the conquest, the monks of St. Michael furnished six transports towards that eventful expedition; and when, after the death of William, the dominion over the mount passed by purchase from Robert to Henry, they distinguished themselves by their attachment to their new sovereign, who here supported a siege on the part of his two elder brothers, and was finally driven to surrender only by famine. The elder of these brothers, at an advanced period of his life, re-visited the church in a far different guise; and, to discharge his vows to the archangel for his safe return from the crusade, prostrated himself before the shrine which he had erst assaulted with the fury of his arms.—The year 1158 was, almost above every other, memorable in the history of St. Michael's Mount. Henry Plantagenet, who, two years before, had there received the homage of his subjects of Brittany, then returned in pilgrim weeds, accompanied by Louis VII. whose repudiated wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, he had married; and the two monarchs, attended by a numerous throng of secular nobility, as well as by several cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, kneeled in amity at the holy altar.
During the reign of the ill-starred John, St. Michael's Mount passed, in common with the rest of Normandy, under the sceptre of France, and suffered severely upon the occasion. Guy of Thouars, then in alliance with Philip-Augustus, advanced against it at the head of an army of Britons; and, experiencing on the part of the inhabitants but a feeble resistance, set fire to the palisades, the principal defence of the place. The flames communicated to the houses; and the church also fell a prey to them. To use the words of Brito,
“vis ignea sursùm
Scandit, et ecclesiæ decus omne, locumque sacratum,
Resque monasterii cremat insatiabilis omnes.”
Philip lamented the injury, and did all in his power to repair it; but, considering that one great source of the misfortunes of the holy place had sprung from the impiety of the Anglo-Norman monarchs, in placing their trust in ramparts made by human hands, rather than in the protection of the archangel, he levelled with the ground the few works of defence that remained.[216] His pious successor, the sainted Louis, was far from entertaining a similar feeling. On the other hand, when his devotion led him to the shrine of St. Michael, after returning from his unfortunate expedition to Damietta, the chronicles expressly state, that he placed, with his own hand, a considerable sum of money upon the altar, for the purpose of repairing the fortifications. And it appears probable that, at a period not very distant, the money thus expended stood the crown of France in good stead; for, during the war at the beginning of the fifteenth century, St. Michael's Mount was the only place that successfully resisted the English arms. The siege it supported upon that occasion, is one of the few brilliant events that give lustre to a period of French history, generally dark and gloomy. Two cannon, of prodigious size, constructed for the discharge of stone balls, above a foot in diameter, testify to the present moment the heroic defence of the garrison, and the defeat of the assailants.
At a subsequent period of French history, during the times when party, under the mask of pious zeal, deluged the kingdom with blood, and virtuous men of every creed joined in the lamentation, that “tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum,” the Huguenots made many and most brave and memorable, though vain, attempts to render themselves masters of St. Michael's Mount. From that time forward, the rock has been suffered to continue in tranquillity, though still retaining its character as a fortification. Its designation of late has been a departmental prison: during the reign of terror, it was applied to the disgraceful purpose of serving as a receptacle for three hundred ecclesiastics, whose age or infirmities would not allow of their being transported; and who, with cruel mockery, were incarcerated within the walls, long gladdened with the comforts, dignified with the pomp, and sanctified with the holiness of religion. Prisoners of importance, especially those charged with crimes against the state, were chiefly confined here before the revolution, when the iron cage, and the vaults, known by the ominous names of the Oubliettes, or the In Pace, gave the mount a melancholy notoriety.
In this short outline of the history of St. Michael's Mount, mention has been repeatedly made of French sovereigns who have proceeded thither in pilgrimage. The task were long to enumerate all those princes and monarchs who distinguished it with this mark of their veneration. But there is one other instance too important in its consequences to be passed over in silence. Louis XI. after having expelled the rebellious Britons from Normandy in 1463, not content with paying his devotions to the archangel at his shrine, and bestowing upon the monks a donation of six hundred crowns of gold, sent them the image of St. Michael, together with the golden chain that he had himself worn upon his neck; and directed that the three escalop shells, formerly borne upon the abbatial shield, should be enriched by the addition of four others, and three lilies. Nor satisfied with this, he, six years afterwards, still further testified his devotion, by various privileges granted to the community, and by the institution of the noble military order of St. Michael,[217] whose collar was composed of silver escalop shells, while the medal bore a representation of the archangel trampling upon the dragon, with the legend, “Immensi tremor oceani.”—Even in this enlightened age, the concourse of pilgrims to the mount is by no means at an end: they are still to be seen repairing to the church; and, if the female Druids have ceased for many a century to sell to the sailors their enchanted arrows, of power to still the angry ocean, when hurled into its waves by a maiden hand, the Pythonesses of the present day find a no less plentiful source of emolument in their chaplets, and rosaries, and crosses, and medals, of St. Michael. The annals of the world abound in details of the changes of form and feature which superstition has assumed in different ages; but it is humiliating to human nature to reflect, that the conquests obtained by philosophy over her great adversary, are in reality very small. Superstition, like the fabled Proteus, appears under an endless variety of forms; but she is also, like the god, still one and the same.
The list of abbots of St. Michael's Mount, contains names of the highest consequence in France: the Cardinal d'Estouteville, and the still more illustrious Cardinal de Joyeuse, Henry of Lorraine, son of the Duke de Guise, and Charles Maurice, of the noble family of Broglio, have, in times comparatively modern, presided over the community. The privileges and honorary distinctions attached to the office, were also considerable. The names of the superiors of the monastery stand recorded on various occasions, as men selected for important trusts; and they were formally empowered, by a bull of Pope Clement VII. dated from Avignon, to bestow the benediction, even in the church of Avranches, and in the presence of the bishop or the metropolitan himself, and to wear the mitre, and all other episcopal insignia. The powers and immunities of the convent were likewise extensive and important. Its annual income was estimated by the author of the Alien Priories, in the middle of the last century, at forty thousand livres; but it is at the same time stated in that work, that, at an earlier period, it was far more considerable. Among the transmarine possessions of the abbey, was its namesake in Cornwall, which was annexed to it by Robert, Earl of Moreton and Cornwall, before the year 1085, and was also renowned for its sanctity at a very remote epoch. The coincidence in form and situation between the two is most remarkable.
St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy, is situated near the extremity of the province, towards Brittany; to the south of Granville, the south-west of Avranches, and the north of Pontorson and Dol. It is a conical mass of granite, which, from a base of about one-fourth of a league in circumference, towers to the height of above four hundred feet, including the buildings that crown its summit. It stands insulated and alone, except the neighboring rock of Tombeleine, in the midst of a dreary level of white sand, that presents a surface of more than twelve square leagues, extending on all sides, almost as far as the eye can reach, and unvaried, unless where it is intersected with branches of different rivers. The whole of this space is at high water entirely covered with the sea, while the receding tide leaves it bare; yet still so, that it is difficult and dangerous to traverse it without a guide. The base of the mount is surrounded with high thick walls, flanked with semi-circular towers all machicolated, and bastions. Towards the west and north, its sides present only steep, black, bare, pointed rocks: the portions that lie in an opposite direction, incline in a comparatively easy slope, and are covered with houses that follow in successive lines, leaving but a scanty space for some small gardens, in which the vine, the fig-tree, and the almond, flourish in great luxuriance. The walls of the castellated abbey impend, and jut out in bold decided masses; and the whole is crowned by the florid choir of the abbey church. The architects of the latter time seemed to have wished to adapt this glorious building to its site. All its divisions of parts, windows, and pinnacles, are narrower and more lofty than usual; and the projections are bolder, so as to be distinctly visible from below. The stranger is admitted to the mount by a gate, of the time of Louis XII. or Francis I. He proceeds along the walls, which continue leading upwards; and, traversing desolate towers, and staircases above staircases, hanging on the sides of the rock, all forlorn, grassy, and mouldering, he is conducted to the gate of the abbey. The outside of the first gate-way has round towers: the second has a pointed arch. One pile of buildings has a row of small arches round the top. The present population of the town amounts to about two hundred and fifty inhabitants, who derive their chief support from the fishery.
Of the church itself, a view is given in the Bayeux tapestry; rude indeed, but curious, as coeval.—The following is a short chronological summary of the principal events connected with the building:—
In 1103, the roof fell in, and involved in its ruins a portion of the dormitory.
Ten years afterwards, on the twenty-third of April, 1113, the lightning set fire to the abbey, which was wholly consumed, except the crypt and the great columns of the nave, and some other parts of the church. Roger, then abbot, repaired the injury, rebuilding the refectory and the dormitory, and the splendid apartment, called the Knights' Hall.
Plate 96. Mount St. Michael.
Interior of the Knights' Hall.
Bernard, who was abbot from 1135 to 1140, rebuilt the north part of the church, and erected the tower between the nave and the choir.
Of the works done at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in consequence of the injuries received by the church during the wars of Philip-Augustus, no particulars are preserved. It is only said in general terms, that they were considerable.
Richard Turstin, abbot in 1275, began buildings upon an extensive scale, between the extremity of the cloisters and the barracks.
On the thirteenth of July, 1300, the lightning again struck the church, and great part of it was burned, and the bells melted, and many houses in the town reduced to ashes.
The chapel of St. John the Evangelist was added by John De la Porte, the twenty-seventh abbot, who died in 1334.
In 1350, a fresh injury was sustained from a tempest; but so great was the zeal employed in repairing it, that the monastery is said to have been, a very short time subsequently, in a better state than it had almost ever been before: it raised its head, however, above these misfortunes, only to experience new ones, and from the same source, in 1370. The damage was then greater, but was soon repaired; and the chapel of St. Catherine was erected. This happened during the prelacy of Geoffrey de Servin. Peter le Roy, the following abbot, is ranked among the greatest benefactors to the convent: no one contributed more to the diffusion of its fame, or the increase of learning within its precincts; but he does not appear to have done any thing to its buildings. His successor, Robert Jolivet, surrounded the mount with the walls and towers that now remain, with the view of defending it against the English, whom he afterwards joined.
In 1421, the whole roof of the choir fell in. The foundations of the new choir, the remains of which are now standing, were laid by the Cardinal d'Estouteville, in 1452; and he continued the work till his death, which happened thirty years afterwards. During his prelacy, the chapels of the choir were completed, and roofed with lead; and the choir and the columns that surround the high altar, were raised to the height of the chapels.
In 1509, another accident arose from lightning: the steeple, and the bells, and the wood-work of the nave, were destroyed; but the damage was soon repaired by William de Lamps, then abbot, who also built the abbatial palace and alms-house, and raised the part of the church that was unfinished, as high as the second tier of windows.—The choir was completed under the prelacy of his brother, John de Lamps, who was next but one to him in the succession, and wore the mitre from 1513 to 1523.
From that time forward, till the period of the revolution, the abbacy of St. Michael's Mount was held in commendam; and the abbots, regardless of a charge in which they did not feel themselves personally concerned, ceased to bestow care or expense upon the buildings. Some of them even refused to do the necessary repairs; and more than one instance is on record, where they resisted the decrees of the Norman parliament to that effect.
From the preceding details, it will easily be imagined, that the church upon St. Michael's Mount can scarcely fail to present a medley of different kinds of architecture. Two, however, predominate: in the choir, which was finished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, all is pointed and lofty: the naves and transepts are Norman. Beneath are crypts, which extend under every part of the church, supported upon short columns with capitals of foliage, &c. the arches mostly ribbed, and circular.
The shortening of the nave has destroyed the western front. The cloister, according to the observations of a friend of the author, is strangely moresque in its appearance. The position of the pillars in it he regards as quite unique.
The Knights' Hall, (see plate [ninety-six],) is an arched chamber, ninety-eight feet in length, by sixty-eight in width, noble and church-like in its aspect. Its groined stone roof rests upon eighteen cylindrical columns, with bases and capitals; the latter, in very high relief, of beautiful design and delicate execution.
FOOTNOTES:
[213] It may be allowed, that this idea receives a certain degree of confirmation from the present name of the neighboring rock, Tombeleine, the natural derivation of which appears to be Tumba Beleni.
[214] The tradition of the mount speaks of the monster that haunted the drowned forest; and when the author's friend, Mr. Cohen, visited St. Michael's Mount in 1819, his guide, Jacques Du Pont, referred to the subject, and called the beast “a monster of a Turk that ate the Christians.” The [figure] represented on the wrapper of this work, was pointed out as a figure of the identical monster. It was formerly on the outside of the wall in a niche; it is now just within the gate. “There,” said Jacques, “look at his teeth and his claws; how savage he is.”—The tradition is certain; but the image is nothing more than a griffin grasping a shield charged with an armorial bearing; its date 15..
[215] a.d. 1759.
[216] Of old, says Brito, the place
...... “satis angelicis gaudebat tutus haberi
Præsidiis, nullo dispendia tempore passus;
At simul ædificans muros ibi cura Johannis
Prætulit humanas vires cœlestibus armis,
Quemque tuebatur cœlesti milite Christus,
Munivit sacrum humano munimine montem,
Ex tunc causa loco pereundi inventa sacrato.”
The author goes on to add, that the king
...... “ne fiat eis deinceps injuria talis,
Præcipit ut pereat munitio toto Johannis;
Et sua militiæ cœlesti castra resignans,
Humanis bonus excubiis locra sacra resignat,
Largifluâque manu monachos juvat in renovando
Sarta tecta, libros, et cætera quæ furor ignis
Solverat in cinerem, quæ nobiliore paratu
Quàm priùs extiterant jam restaurata videmus.”
Phillip. lib. 8, l. 114.
[217] In the preamble of the statutes of this order, the monarch expresses himself in the following terms—“Nous, à la gloire de Dieu, notre créateur Tout-puissant, et revérence de glorieuse Vierge Marie, et en l'honneur de Monseigneur St.-Michel Archange, premier Chevalier, qui pour la querelle de Dieu, d'estoc et de taille, se battit contre l'ennemi dangereux de l'humain lignage, et du Ciel le trébucha, et qui en son lieu et oratoire appellé Mont-St. Michel a toujours particulièrement gardé, préservé et défendu, sans être pris, subjugué, ni mis ès mains des anciens ennemis de notre royaume, et afin que tous bons et nobles courages soient excités et plus particulièrement émus à toutes vertueuses œuvres; le 1er. jour d'Août de l'an 1469 avons créé, institué et ordonné, et par ces présentes créons, constituons et ordonnons un Ordre de fraternité ou amiable compagnie de certain nombre de Chevaliers, jusqu'à trente six, lequel nous voulons être nommé l'Ordre de Saint-Michel.”
PLATE XCVII.
ABBEY CHURCH OF CERISY.
Plate 97. Abbey Church of Cerisy.
Interior of the Choir.
Cerisy, a small market-town, upon the road leading from Bayeux to St. Lo, and equally distant about four leagues from each of those places, is wholly indebted to its abbey for the celebrity it has enjoyed. In the secular history of the duchy, its name occurs upon only two occasions. The lord of Cerisy is enumerated among the companions in arms of Robert, son of the Conqueror, in his expedition to the Holy Land, in 1009; and the abbot of Cerisy was one of the twenty-one ecclesiastics from the bailiwick of Caen, cited by Philip le Bel to the Norman exchequer, in the beginning of the fourteenth century.
The convent, which was at all times of the Benedictine order, is said to have been founded as early as the year 560. It was under the invocation of St. Vigor, ninth bishop of Bayeux; and, according to some authors, was established by that saint himself. Du Monstier, in the Neustria Pia, recites the history of its origin at great length: how the prelate, moved by the entreaties of a rich man, of the name of Volusian, destroyed, by virtue of the sign of the cross, a monstrous serpent that ravaged the country; and how Volusian, in gratitude, ceded to him the domain of Cerisy, upon which he immediately erected a monastery, and endowed it with the revenues of the property. The annals of the convent being lost, what is recorded of its history is very short. After the general destruction of religious establishments by the Saxons and Normans, that of Cerisy appears to have been left in its ruins far longer than most others. No hand is said to have been lifted towards its restoration, till the reign of Robert, father of the Conqueror. By him the monastic writers all agree that a beginning was made towards the rebuilding of this monastery; and one of them, William of Jumieges, adds, that his care of it suffered no diminution from time or distance; for that, during his wars in the Holy Land, when the patriarch of Jerusalem rewarded his pious zeal with a present of some precious relics, he immediately directed them to be here deposited. His more illustrious successor, in one of the first years of his reign, completed and richly endowed the convent begun by his father, whose remains he commanded should be brought from Palestine, for the express purpose of their being interred at Cerisy. But they were allowed to proceed no further than Apulia. In the Neustria Pia is preserved a charter of King Charles VI. dated 1398, in which the various donations conferred upon the abbey of Cerisy, by the Norman Dukes, Robert, William, and Henry, are enumerated and confirmed. Its annual income, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was estimated by De Masseville at twenty thousand livres. The only property it appears ever to have possessed in England, was a priory of Benedictine monks at West Shirburne, in Hampshire.
Architecturally considered, the church of Cerisy is an interesting relic of Norman workmanship. The certainty of its date, not far removed from the year 1032, and the comparatively few alterations it has undergone, render it one of those landmarks, by the aid of which the observer of the present day can alone attain to any certainty in his inquiries into ancient art. And yet, in the portion here selected for engraving, the upper row of windows is of an æra posterior to the rest; and the great arch in front has evidently changed its semi-circular form for a pointed one. Its height is unusual and impressive. Both taken collectively and in its parts, the church bears a strong resemblance to that nearly coeval at St. Georges; like which, it is now appropriated to parochial purposes, and is still of great size,[218] though the whole of the portion originally parochial, and which extended one hundred and twenty-four feet beyond what remains of the nave, has been recently pulled down. The principal front of the building, which faced the north, its position being north and south, has been consequently destroyed. The style of the edifice is characterized by a noble and severe simplicity: the capitals of the columns are, indeed, enriched with sculptured foliage or animals, or occasionally with small heads placed in the middle of a surface otherwise plain; but elsewhere the decorations are very sparingly distributed. They are confined to the chevron and billet mouldings; the latter the most ancient and most rare among the Norman ornaments. Both the transepts are parted off, as at St. Georges, by screens near the extremities: these screens at Cerisy are surmounted by an elegant parapet of semi-circular arches, a singular and very beautiful addition.
FOOTNOTES:
[218] The following are the dimensions of the church, according to Mr. Cotman.
| FEET. | |
| Length of the nave | 98 |
| Ditto of choir | 64 |
| Ditto of transepts and intervening part of the nave | 118 |
| Width of nave | 73 |
| Ditto of transepts | 31 |
| Ditto of choir, without the side-chapels | 28 |
| Height of nave | 70 |
Before the demolition of the western extremity, the nave was two hundred and twenty-six feet long, and the total length of the building two hundred and ninety feet.
PLATE XCVIII.
CHURCH AT OYESTRAHAM.
Plate 98. Church of Oyestraham.
West Front.
Oyestraham, or, as it is more commonly written, Estreham, is a village situated upon the left bank of the Orne, near its confluence with the channel. Its name, derived from the Saxon,[219] seems to point it out as a settlement made by those daring invaders: its church, one of the first objects that presents itself to the English traveller, on his entering France in the direction of Caen, is well calculated to impress him with a forcible idea of the magnificence of the Norman lords of the duchy. That it was built in the time of their sway, is a fact which cannot be doubted; but, in an architectural point of view, it is so full of anomalies, that opinions would be likely to vary considerably with regard to the actual date of its erection. And here, unfortunately, no records remain to guide the judgment. In the western front, indeed! (the subject of the [plate]) the whole is of the semi-circular style, and uniform. The upper tier of arches will find a parallel in the towers of the abbey of Jumieges, built during the reign of the Conqueror; and most of the other members and decorations are of frequent occurrence in erections of the same æra. A peculiarity is alone observable in the smaller arches of the second row, in which the artist has indulged himself in what may be termed an architectural conceit, lengthening, to a very disproportionate degree, and almost in the moorish fashion, the part above the capital, in order that the whole might range in a line with the larger arch in the centre. The truncated appearance of the wall on either side, leads to the obvious inference, that either this front had originally towers, like the church of St. Nicholas, at Caen, or that it was intended there should have been such. A central tower now alone remains, of square form, with massive buttresses of unusual size, projecting towards the south. This tower, as well as the portion of the church to the east of it, exhibits the Norman and Gothic architecture mixed in a very uncommon manner. Of three rows of arches, the lowest and highest belong to the latter style; the central one only to the former. In the nave, all is Norman, excepting only two lancet windows of the upper tier, placed near the west end, on the south side, and excepting also the flying buttresses that extend from between the windows of the clerestory to the projecting aisles below. Within the choir, the trefoil-headed arch takes, in some instances, the place of the pointed in the lower row, which is wholly blank; and the capitals of the pillars, according to Mr. Cotman, shew an extraordinary playfulness of design. The arches above them are pierced for windows. Both the semi-circular ones of the second tier, and the pointed ones above, are extremely narrow, seen from without, but widen greatly within; the wall being of more than ordinary thickness. The piers of the nave are six feet five inches in diameter, while the intervening spaces scarcely exceed ten feet.
FOOTNOTES:
[219] On this subject, see Huet, Origines de Caen, p. 299.—“Estreham est le nom d'un bourg situé à l'embouchure de l'Orne, et d'un autre dans le Bessin. Mr. Bochart le faisoit, venir d'Easter, Déesse des anciens Saxons. Et comme il avoit entrepris de rapporter les anciennes origines à la langue et à la doctrine des Phéniciens il prétendoit que cette Easter étoit la même qu'Astarté. Ses sacrifices se faisoient au commencement du printems; et de la vient que les Saxons appellerent Easter le mois auquel se célebre la Pâque. Skinnerus ne s'éloigne pas beaucoup de ce sentiment dans son Etymologique de la langue Angloise. Mr. Valois tire le nom d'Estreham du Latin Strata, et de l'Allemand Hamum, pour marquer une Demeure bâtie sur un chemin public, ou au bout d'un chemin public, comme si le bourg d'Estreham étoit sur un grand chemin, ou au bout d'un chemin public: et qu'il ne fût pas sur une extrêmité de terre qui ne mene à rien, ayant la mer d'un côté, et l'embouchure de la riviere d'Orne de l'autre: ou comme si tous les villages du monde ne pouvoient pas être censez terminer des grand chemins. Mais ces opinions sont détruites par l'ancienne orthographe du nom d'Estreham, qui est constamment écrit dans les vieux Titres, et par Mr. de Bras, Oistreham, pour Westerham, c'est-à-dire, Village Occidental: car il se trouve placé à l'West de l'embouchure de l'Orne.”
PLATE XCIX. AND C.
CATHEDRAL CHURCH AT SÉEZ.
Plate 99. Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Séez.
West Front.
The city of Séez, though dignified by being the seat of a bishopric, is in itself small and unimportant, its population not exceeding five thousand five hundred inhabitants. Of the early history of either the town or the diocese, little is known with certainty; and authors have scarcely felt it worth their while to exercise their ingenuity, or to display their learning, upon a subject ill calculated to add dignity to their researches. Those who have entered upon the inquiry, have given it as their opinion, that the Civitas Sagiorum, mentioned in the earliest Notitia Galliæ, as the fifth in rank among the cities of the province, Lugdunensis Secunda, was no other than the modern Séez; and, carrying their conjecture one step farther, they have inferred from locality, that the Sagii, otherwise called Saii, must have been the Sesuvii of Cæsar's Commentaries. Hence, in more modern Latinity, Séez has generally acquired the name of Sagium; though Ordericus Vitalis occasionally calls it Salarium, and Magno, Saius. In some maps it is likewise styled Saxia, whence an idea has arisen that it owed its origin to the Saxons; and that the words, Saii and Sagii, were in reality nothing more than a corruption of Saxones or Sassones.
The favorers of this opinion have brought Séez within the limits of the Otlingua Saxonia, a district in Normandy, whose situation and extent has been the subject of much literary controversy. The learned Huet, alluding to this very point,[220] observes, with great justice, that “it is more easy to tell what is not, than what is; and that, though the limits of bishoprics serve in general to mark the divisions of the ancient Gallic tribes, yet length of time has introduced many alterations. Able men,” he adds, “have been of opinion, that Hiesmes was originally an episcopal see, and that its diocese was afterwards dismembered into three archdeaconries; one of them fixed at Séez, a second at Lisieux, and a third at Bayeux.” Such, however, he says, is not his own belief; but he thinks that Hiesmes was originally the seat of the bishopric of Séez. A report to the same effect will be found in the Concilia Normannica; and it is adopted by Rouault,[221] who argues in its favor; first, that Séez was too insignificant, at the time of the preaching of the gospel in Neustria, to be dignified with the presence of a bishop; the apostles and earliest popes having directed that bishops should only be appointed to considerable towns: and, secondly, that Hiesmes was really then a place of importance, and probably continued so till the nineteenth year of the reign of King Henry I. of England, when that prince destroyed it, as a punishment upon the inhabitants for their revolt.
Ecclesiastical history refers the establishment of the bishopric of Séez to the fourth or fifth century. The earliest, however, of the prelates, of whom any certain mention is to be found, is Litaredus, whose name appears, under the title of Oximensis Episcopus, subscribed to the council of Orleans in 511. Azo, who succeeded to the mitre in one of the last years of the tenth century, erected the first cathedral that is upon record at Séez. William of Jumieges relates of him, that he destroyed the walls of the city, and with their stones built a church in honor of St. Gervais, the martyr, “ubi sedes episcopalis longo post tempore fuerat.” The same author tells that, in consequence of this church having been turned into a place of refuge by some rebels, about fifty years afterwards, Ivo, the third from Azo upon the episcopal throne, set fire to the adjoining houses for the purpose of dislodging them, and the church fell a victim to the flames. The act, though unintentional, brought upon the prelate a severe reprimand from the pope; and Ivo, to repair his fault, undertook a journey to his relatives and friends in Apulia and Constantinople, whence he returned, loaded with rich presents, by the aid of which he undertook the erection of a new church upon so large a scale, that “his successors, Robert, Gerard, and Serlo, were unable to complete it in fifty years.” The cathedral then raised is said to be the same as is now standing; and, according to what has already been recorded of the cathedrals of Lisieux and Coutances, there is nothing in its architecture to discredit such an opinion. The first stone was laid about the year 1053: the dedication took place in 1126. Godfrey, archbishop of Rouen, performed the ceremony in the presence of Henry, then duke, who, at the same time, endowed the church with an annual income of ten pounds.
The diocese of Séez is surrounded by those of Lisieux, Evreux, Mans, and Bayeux. According to De Masseville,[222] it extended, before the revolution, twenty-five leagues in length, and from eight to ten in width, comprising the districts of le Houme, les Marches, and a part of le Perche. The towns of Séez, Alençon, Argentan, Falaise, Hiesmes, Mortagne, and Bellême, together with several smaller towns, and five hundred villages, were also included in its limits; as were five archdeaconries, six rural deaneries, and many abbeys and other religious houses. The episcopal revenue was estimated at only ten thousand livres. The late concordat, by reducing the number of the Norman dioceses, has of course added to the extent of those that remained.
Seven of the early bishops of Séez are inscribed among the saints of the Roman calendar: in later times, no names appear of greater eminence than those of Frogerius and John de Bertaut. The first of these prelates was much in the confidence of Henry II. to whom he rendered acceptable service in his unfortunate disputes with Thomas-à-Becket. He was not only one of the very few bishops who then preserved their fidelity to their sovereign inviolate, but he undertook a mission to the French king, for the purpose of remonstrating upon the favorable reception given to the primate, on which occasion he received the following memorable answer:—“Tell your master, that if he cannot submit to the abolition of the ordinances, which he designates as the customs of his ancestors, because he thinks it would compromise the dignity of his crown, although, as it is reported, they are but little conformable to the will of God, still less can I consent to sacrifice a right that has always been enjoyed by the kings of France. I mean the right of giving shelter to all persons in affliction, but principally to those who are exiled for justice sake, and of affording them, during their persecution, all manner of protection and assistance.”—John de Bertaut lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century: he was principal almoner to Mary de Medicis, and was afterwards in high favor with Henry IV. to whose conversion he is said to have mainly contributed. He likewise distinguished himself as a poet.—A third bishop of Séez, Serlo, already mentioned, was a man of such commanding eloquence, that, when he had the honor of preaching before Henry I. and his court, at Carentan, in 1106, he declaimed with so much effect against the effeminate custom of wearing long beards and long hair, that the sovereign declared himself a convert, and the bishop, “extractis e manticâ forcipibus, primo regem tum cæteros optimates attondit.”[223]
Plate 100. Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Séez.
Elevation of the Nave.
The church of Séez may be compared in its architecture with those of Coutances and of Lisieux: they are unlike, indeed, but by no means different. The points of resemblance exceed those of a contrary description.
“facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum.”
Severe simplicity characterizes Lisieux: Coutances is distinguished by elegance, abounding in decoration: Séez, at the same time that it unites the excellencies of both, can rival neither in those which are peculiarly its own. On the first view of the church, its mean and insignificant western tower strikes the spectator with an unfavorable impression, which, on a nearer approach, the mutilated and encumbered state of the western front is by no means calculated to remove. And yet this western front, all degraded as it is, cannot fail to derive importance from the great depth of the central door-way, which is no less than forty-seven feet,[224] a projection exceeding that of the galilee of Peterborough cathedral. It is in the interior that the beauty of the church of Séez is conspicuous. The noble lofty arches below; the moresque ornament, like those at Bayeux and at Coutances, in the spandrils; the double lancet arches of the triforium placed in triplets; and the larger pointed arches above, arranged two or three together, and encircled with arches of the Norman form, though not of the Norman style;—all these beauties, added to the enrichments of the sculptured walls and windows of the aisles, render the cathedral, if not the first of Norman religious buildings, at least in the number of those of the first class,
“Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores.”
FOOTNOTES:
[220] Origines de Caen, p. 5.
[221] Abrégé de la Vie des Evêques de Coutances, p. 40.
[222] Etat Géographique de Normandie, p. 304.
[223] Gallia Christiana, XI. p. 684.
[224] The following are the dimensions of the other parts of the building.
| FEET. | |
| Length of nave (including a space of sixty-four feet under the towers) | 218 |
| Ditto of choir | 57 |
| Ditto of aisle behind the choir | 14 |
| Ditto of Lady-Chapel | 25 |
| Ditto of each transept | 39 |
| Width of nave and choir, including aisles | 72 |
| Ditto of Lady-Chapel | 20 |
| Ditto of transepts | 30 |
| Height of nave and choir | 80 |
| Ditto of north-west spire | 232 |
| Ditto of south-west ditto | 210 |
THE END.
LEICESTER:
PRINTED BY THOMAS COMBE, JUNIOR.
INDEX OF PLATES.
- NO. OF PLATE.
- Andelys, Great House [15]
- Anisy, Church [67]
- Arques, Castle [1]
- Bieville, Church [58], [59]
- Bocherville, St. Georges de, Church [5]-[11]
- Briquebec, Castle [70]
- Caen, Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity [24]-[33]
- —— Abbey Church of St. Stephen [21]-[23]
- —— Chapel in the Castle [48]
- —— Church of St. Nicholas [55], [56]
- —— Church of St. Michel de Vaucelles [18], [19]
- —— House in the Rue St. Jean [65]
- Cerisy, Abbey Church [97]
- Château Gaillard [80], [81]
- Cheux, Church [57]
- Colomby, Church [47]
- Coutances, Cathedral [92]-[94]
- Creully, Church [91]
- Dieppe, Castle [34]
- —— Church of St. Jacques [35], [36]
- Eu, Screen in the Church of St. Lawrence [72]
- Falaise, Castle [89], [90]
- Fécamp, Church of St. Stephen [71]
- Fontaine-le-Henri, Château [62], [63]
- —————— Church [60], [61]
- Foullebec, Western door-way of Church [84]
- Gournay, Church of St. Hildebert [38]-[41]
- Grâville, Church [12]
- Haute Allemagne, Tower of Church [37]
- Jumieges, Abbey Church [2]-[4]
- Léry, Church [44]-[46]
- Lillebonne, Castle [69]
- Lisieux, Church of St. Peter [73]-[75]
- Louviers, South porch of Church [79]
- Matilda, Queen, Tombstone of [33*]
- Montivilliers, Abbey Church [82]
- Mount St. Michael [95], [96]
- Oyestraham, Church [98]
- Perriers, Church [68]
- Rouen, Cathedral [49]-[52]
- —— Chapel in the Hospital of St. Julien [42], [43]
- —— Church of St. Ouen [76]
- —— Church of St. Paul [54]
- —— Crypt in the Church of St. Gervais [53]
- —— Fountain of the Stone Cross [77]
- —— House in the Place de la Pucelle [64]
- —— Palace of Justice [78]
- St. Lo, Church of the Holy Cross [87], [88]
- St. Sanson sur Rille, Ruins of the Church [83]
- St. Sauveur le Vicomte, Abbey Church [14]
- ———————— Castle[13]
- Séez, Cathedral [99], [100]
- Tamerville, Church [17]
- Tancarville, Castle [85], [86]
- Than, Church [16]
- Tréport, Church [66]
- William the Conqueror, Statue of [20]