The second Romanesque cathedral was begun in 1126. To it belonged the pier arcade of the present nave and the entire westernmost bay, as well as portions of the façade towers. At one time it was thought that the arches adjacent to the transept were part of the earlier church blessed by Lanfranc, inasmuch as they differ from the profiles of the other pier arches. Further study has demonstrated, however, that the entire arcade belongs to the XII century, since it was not the usage, before 1120, to flank a pier’s four faces by columns, as was done here throughout.
The second Romanesque cathedral of Évreux was also destined to be of short duration. In 1194, Philippe-Auguste laid the city in ashes as chastisement for John Lackland’s black deed. John had allowed a French garrison into Évreux during his intrigues with the French king, while Richard the Lion-hearted was on his crusade. When word came that his brother was returning to his possessions, John, hoping to placate him for his own treachery, invited the French garrison of three hundred to a feast and, it is said, foully murdered them all. The bishop of Évreux had accompanied Richard Cœur-de-Lion to the East and in Cyprus had crowned his bride, Berengaria of Navarre. In the course of time the counts of Évreux became kings of Navarre, through the marriage of Berengaria’s sister to the Count of Champagne.[360] The niece of Richard and John, Blanche of Castile, brought in her dowry Évreux to the French Crown, when she married (1200) the son of that wily augmenter, Philippe-Auguste.
The renewal of the cathedral as Gothic proceeded slowly. By 1230 the nave had merely reached the triforium level. A horizontal sculptured band, such as surmounts it, was not used after that date. The clearstory of the nave is contemporary with the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and when Louis IX came to his mother’s dower city, in 1259, for the consecration of its bishop, who was his personal friend, he and the group of building-prelates with him, from Rheims, Rouen, Coutances, and Séez, must have discussed the new works at Évreux with interest. The choir of the cathedral was not undertaken till the close of the century. From 1298 to 1310 it was built in a Rayonnant style fully as advanced as the later abbatial of St. Ouen, at Rouen, with glazed triforium, capitals that are slight bands of foliage, and precocious prismatic profiles. The only distinctly Norman trait is the balustrade of the triforium. As the choir was made fifteen feet wider than the nave, its westernmost bay was canted to join the transept, but the effect is not displeasing.
The Hundred Years’ War caused a cessation of works at Évreux. Dire years were they for the city ruled by Charles le Mauvais, a “demon of France,” “perfidy in person.” He plotted ceaselessly against the national party, not because he leaned to the English side, but that he was obsessed by his own superior claims to the French crown, being by both father and mother directly of St. Louis’ line. His high abilities—and he was learned, eloquent, and handsome—were wasted in mischief making. In 1365 he gave up his city of Évreux to the flames. Charles the Wicked is pictured in the cathedral’s clearstory windows, in the fourth on the north side of the choir, and across the sanctuary from him, in another light, is his wife, a Valois, sister of the French king, Charles V, and his art-loving brothers at Dijon, Angers, and Bourges. She possessed Mantes by her dower right, and added to its collegiate church the Rayonnant chapel of Navarre, in which are portrait statuettes representing her daughters. Her four brothers, says M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, were the paramount influences in the formation of French Flamboyant Gothic, from 1365 to 1415.
The best array of XIV-century glass[361] in France is that of the choir of Évreux. The windows are not forceful, like XIII-century medallion-mosaics, any more than the Rayonnant stonework framing them resembles hardy Apogee Gothic. The hues, while limpid and pleasing, show none of the lovely half-tones which the Flamboyant-Renaissance day was to achieve. Large plates of glass were employed in order that fewer leads might darken the window. White was overused, as well as the recently discovered yellow, called silver-stain, obtained by fusing the surface of white glass with a solution of silver. Pot-metal glass—that colored in the mass—had hitherto been used exclusively. Effective backgrounds were obtained by damasked patterns. In each panel was a single figure in an architectural setting of grisaille and silver-stain, which frames grew so elaborate, by the middle of the century, that perspective was represented.
The earliest example of a canopy type of window is in Évreux’ upper choir—the third light on the north side. It was the gift of the grand queux, or cook, of France, Guillaume d’Harcourt, who died in 1327. The two windows presented by the bishop of Évreux, Bernard Cariti (1376-83), show progress in architectural backgrounds, and the donor is drawn from life. In the canted bay of the choir (north) is a XV-century window of the Saintes Maries, whose alleged relics were given to the bishop here by good King René of Anjou. The window commemorates Normandy’s newly acquired freedom, hence its portraits of Charles VII, his son, the future Louis XI, and the seneschal of Normandy, Pierre de Brézé. It is also a memorial of the Great Schism of the West, ended by the Council of Constance, at which the bishop of Évreux was present. Foliate designs cover the grisaille lights of the triforium. The quarries (white, parallel pieces of glass framed together in a lead pattern) are enlivened by strips of colored glass and heraldic ornament.
Louis XI built the Lady chapel of Évreux, in whose windows he depicted his coronation. In the lily-petals formed by the Flamboyant tracery of the mullions are pictured the barons who attended the king’s investing. Instead of the single figures in each panel, hitherto popular, small groups were now set under the vitrine canopies, and subjects heretofore unknown in western iconography appeared, such as the Transfiguration, the Woman of Samaria, the Marriage at Cana. They were pictured just as the mystery plays of the day presented them on the stage. In the Tree of Jesse, at the end of the chapel, the new process of abrasion was employed, by which the color of flashed glass was ground away in places, and on the white surfaces thus exposed were enameled new colors, so that one piece of glass could exhibit a variety of hues. These windows of Évreux’ Lady chapel belong to the transition hour between the earlier tradition that treated a window as an adjunct of the architecture, and the later tradition that composed a window as an independent painted picture.[362]
When, in 1441, Évreux opened its gates joyously to the national troops, new works were begun in the cathedral. The actual Flamboyant transept was substituted for a decrepit Romanesque structure, whose ground plan it followed, hence it is too narrow for its height; seen from the interior of the church, the octagonal lantern appears cramped. The lacework stone spire of the crossing was one of the first in the region. For sixty years during the XVI century two prelates of the prominent Tillières family held the see; to Ambrose le Veneur is due the superlatively ornate Flamboyant north front of the transept, an unanswerable proof that if Gothic art was soon to end it was not of inanition it expired. To put the northern flank of his church in accord with the façade’s festival of lace stone he re-dressed the chapels along nave and choir. His nephew, Bishop Gabriel le Veneur, undertook to remake the west frontispiece in a style so neo-classic that M. Léon Palustre, the historian of the Renaissance, exclaimed, “Pour cette fois le moyen âge est bien fini!” And yet only thirty years separated the façades of uncle and nephew. The southwest tower has been left uncrowned; that to the northwest is an imposing heavy mass in which is the sonorous bell of Évreux, called Gros-Pierre.
THE CATHEDRAL OF SÉEZ[363]
Il y a plus d’une sorte de chevalerie, et les grands coups de lance ne sont pas de rigueur. À défaut d’épée, nous avons la plume; à défaut de plume, la parole; à défaut de parole, l’honneur de notre vie.—Léon Gautier, La Chevalerie.