[162] About thirty miles to the north of Lyons lies Bourg-en-Bresse, in whose suburbs is the church of Brou. The eighteen windows of the school of Lyons were installed when the church was finished in 1536. Marguerite of Austria built it in fulfillment of a vow of her mother-in-law, a Bourbon princess, Marguerite herself being daughter of Mary of Burgundy, a line, like the Bourbous, that gloried in sumptuous mausoleums. She intrusted the work to the Lyons master, Jean Perréal, who called on his aged friend, Michel Colombe, for the imagery of the tombs. Colombe designed Duke Philibert’s gisant and the six winged genii, executed later, with liberties, by Conrad Meyt, and his brother (artists trained at Lyons), and some Italians. Disagreements rose, and Perréal was superseded by Loys van Boghem, who erected a bastard Gothic church of the same heavy Flemish type popular then at Toledo and Burgos. The three rich overcharged tombs are in the choir. Marguerite almost became the wife of Charles VIII, late-Gothic builder, and for a short time was married to the only son of Isabelle and Ferdinand, whose tomb is a boast of Avila. When the early death of the Duke of Savoy left her a widow she governed the Netherlands for her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. Her father’s tomb at Innsbruck is one of the noted ones of the world, and the heraldic tombs of her mother and her grandfather (Charles le Téméraire of Burgundy) are in Bruges.
If the traveler hopes to find flat, suburban Brou as described by Matthew Arnold, “mid the Savoy mountain valleys, far from town or haunt of man,” he will be disappointed. Moreover, no reflections fall from ancient glass, owing to the patina or coating added by time to its exterior surface. Poetic license is allowed, and “The Church of Brou” adds to this heavy votive monument the charm it needs:
“... So sleep, forever sleep, O marble Pair!
Or, if ye wake, let it be then, when fair
On the carved western front a flood of light
Streams from the setting sun, and colors bright,
Prophets, transfigured saints, and martyrs brave,
In the vast western windows of the nave;
And on the pavement round the Tomb there glints
A checkerwork of glowing sapphire tints,
And amethyst, and ruby—then unclose
Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose,
... And looking down on the warm rosy tints
Which checker, at your feet, the illumined flints,
Say: ‘What is this? We are in bliss—forgiven.
Behold the pavement of the courts of Heaven.’”
V. Nodet, L’église de Brou (Collection, Petites Monographics), (Paris, H. Laurens); C.J. Dufay, L’église de Brou et ses tombeaux (Lyon, 1879); Paul Vitry, Michel Colombe et la sculpteur française de son temps (Paris, 1901), p. 365; Dupasquier et Didron, Monographie de Notre Dame de Brou (Paris, 1842), in 4º et atlas in fol.
[163] In the XV century the dukes of Bourbon filled their capital of Moulins with art treasures, and Souvigny’s abbatial, close by, was their necropolis. The present choir of Moulins Cathedral, originally the chapel of their palace, was begun by Agnes of Burgundy, daughter of Jean sans Peur, and finished by her sons, Jean II de Bourbon and Pierre II sire de Beaujeu, who in 1475 wedded the daughter of Louis XI and governed France with his wife during the minority of Charles VIII. Jeanne of France and her husband are portrayed on the folding doors of the splendid triptych (1488-1503), by some unknown French primitif now in the sacristy of Moulins Cathedral, and again in one of the three windows—warm in color and with fine, clear portrait work—in the square east wall of the chevet, glass that belongs to the transition from Gothic to Renaissance as the XV century merged in the XVI. Fifteenth-century windows are comparatively rare, so the twelve possessed by Moulins’ chief church are precious. Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, who beautified Lyons Cathedral, also appears in the Bourbon dukes’ window with his two brothers. The nave of Moulins Cathedral, in black-and-white Volvic stone, is a modern rendering by Lassus and Millet of the Primary Gothic of the region.
Souvigny was a Cluniac priory, in which died the two great Cluny abbots, St. Majolus (d. 994), who brought to France the noted William of Volpiano, the organizer of the Romanesque renaissance of architecture, and St. Odilo (d. 1049). In 1095 Urban II stayed in Souvigny, and so did Paschal II in 1106. The XII-century church was largely reconstructed in the late-Gothic day when the prior Dom Geoffrey Chollet wished to house fittingly the splendid new Bourbon tombs. That of Louis II (comrade in arms of Dugueselin) has been attributed without proof to Jean de Cambrai, who made the Berry tomb at Bourges. M. Guigue has ably assigned to Jacques Morel the tomb of Charles I and Agnes of Burgundy. The Bourbon line, direct in descent from St. Louis, mounted the French throne with Henry IV.
Congrès Archéologique, 1913, p. 1, Chanoine Joseph Clémat; p. 182, Doshoulières; J. Locquin, Nevers et Moulins (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, II. Laurens); H. Aucouturier, Moulins (1914); R. de Quirielle, Guide archéologique dans Moulins (1893); Abbé Requin, “Jacques Morel et son neveu Antoine le Moiturier,” in Revue des Soc. des Beaux-Arts des Départements (Paris, 1890); L. Courajod, “Jacques Morel, sculpteur bourguignon,” in Gazelle archéol, 1885, p. 236; A. J. de H. Bushnell, Storied Windows (New York, 1914); L. du Broe de Segange, Hist. et description de la cathédrale de Moulins (Paris, 1885), vol. 2, Inventaire des richesses d’art de la France; L. Desrosiers, La cathédrale de Moulins, ancienne collégiale (Moulins, 1871); H. Faure, Histoire de Moulins (Moulins, 1900), 2 vols.; G. Depeyre, Les ducs de Bourbon (Toulouse, Privat, 1897).
[164] Congrès Archéologique, 1860, 1863, 1871, 1878, and 1910, p. 267, on the cathedral; p. 280, on Le Mans’ two Benedictine churches; Abbé A. Ledru et G. Fleury, La cathédrale St. Julien du Mans (Mamers, Fleury et Dangin, 1900), folio; Gabriel Fleury, La cathédrale du Mans (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, Étude historique et archéol. sur la nef de la cathédrale du Mans (1889); Abbé A. Ledru, Histoire des églises du Mans (Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1905-07); R. Triger, Le Mans à travers les âges (Le Mans, 1898); E. Hucher, Vitraux peints de la cathédrale du Mans (Paris, Didron, 1865), folio and supplement claques; A. Echivard, Les vitraux de la cathédrale du Mans (Mamers, 1913): Bulletin Monumental, studies on Le Mans, in vol. 7, p. 359; vol. 14, p. 348 (Hueher); vol. 26, on the Geoffrey Plantagenet enamel; also vol. 31, p. 789; vol. 37, p. 704; vol. 39, p. 483 (Dion); vol. 44, p. 373; vol. 45, p. 63 (Esnault); and vol. 72, 1908, p. 155 (Pascal V. Lefèvre-Pontalis); De Wismes, Le Maine et l’Anjou, historique, archéologique et pittoresque (Paris, A. Bry), 2 vols., folio; Guénet, Le Maine illustré (Le Mans, 1902); Abbé R. Charles, Guide illustré du Mans et dans la Sarthe (Le Mans, 1886); Kate Norgate, England Under the Angevin Kings (London, 1887), 2 vols.; Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry II (London, 1888); see also Davis (London, 1905); Robert Latouche, Histoire du comté du Maine pendant le Xe et XIe siècle (Paris, H. Champion, 1910); H. Prentout, Le Maine (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf); Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 11, p. 250, “Hildebert de Lavardin”; p. 177, “Geoffrey, abbé de Vendôme” (Paris, 1759); on Hildebert, see A. Dieudonne (1898) and P. Déservellers.
[165] The abbey church of the Trinité has in its transept walls parts of the edifice dedicated in 1040. At the beginning of the XIII century that transept was vaulted in the eight-rib Plantagenet way, the keystones being well carved. The ambulatory and radiating chapels are early-Gothic; the choir is late XIII century; the easternmost bays of the nave are of the XIV, and its westernmost bays of the XV century. The façade is a gem of Flamboyant Gothic. There are also windows of the XIII and XV centuries, and some well-known carved choir stalls. The Merveille of Vendôme, its tower of 1140, prototype for the Primary Gothic ones at Chartres and Rouen, stands free of the church. From the earlier abbatial was saved a famous XII-century window of the St. Denis school, a Byzantinesque Madonna.
Congrès Archéologique, 1872; Abbé Plat, Notes pour servir à l’histoire monumental de la Trinité (Vendôme, 1907); La Martellière, Guide dans le Vendômois (Vendôme, 1883).