What were Rheims and Soissons before their martyrdom but the transfiguring of stone and metal and wood; dead matter delved from the ground or hewn out of the forest, through the labor of man exalted into forms of absolute beauty, and, because of this loving labor, transformed ... into a mysterious creation that, in the words of Suger of St. Denis, was neither wholly of earth nor wholly of Heaven, but a mysterious blending of both.
—Ralph Adams Cram.[56]
Sens was a chief Celtic city at the intersecting of the Roman roads from Lyons to Paris, from Orléans to Troyes. Long did it dispute the title of primate of Gaul with Lyons and Rheims; even down to the XVI century Paris was within its jurisdiction. To-day as the express trains rush by from Paris to Marseilles, many a traveler looks out on a cathedral that seems to over-tower and overpower a flat, sleepy little town whose name he scarcely knows. When the cathedral was building in the XII century Sens was a center of the nation’s life, and under a succession of noteworthy archbishops reached its zenith.
Here at the Council of Sens, in 1140, was scheduled to take place a final contest between St. Bernard and Abélard, and in that hour of enthusiasm over abstract controversy, the king with his court and people of every degree flocked to Sens for the schoolmen’s debate on the Trinity. At the last moment Abélard, the inexhaustible arguer who had himself called for the test, quitted the combat. Some twenty years later Pope Alexander III spent a year and a half in Sens, and hither came Thomas Becket to seek papal indorsement for his opposition to Henry II’s interference in church affairs. Between these two events, 1140 to 1164, lies the building of Sens Cathedral. At the time of Abélard’s and St. Bernard’s visit the present edifice had been started. During the residence here of Alexander III and the archbishop of Canterbury it was nearing completion. The pope is recorded as dedicating an altar.
For a time Sens usurped the claim to be the oldest of the Gothic cathedrals. Its choir was started as Romanesque, but the walls rose slowly, and before a stone roof crowned the ambulatory the new system of building had conquered public opinion. The choir-aisle walls, intended to carry a groin vault, were rearranged to bear one with diagonals. On the outer wall the diagonals were caught on corbels placed above the capitals, and though such an arrangement shows maladroitness, the ribs themselves were made by no novice hand. Sens was a pioneer in the use of the broken rib to avoid the curving of diagonals: from each keystone, set precisely in the center of each section, branched the four ribs.
The walls of the procession path and an apsidal chapel opening on the transept’s north arm, are the oldest parts of Sens Cathedral. It is true that they antedate the dedication of St. Denis, but not by a few Romanesque vestiges can Sens substantiate its claim to be the first built of Gothic cathedrals. In its main parts it belongs to the third quarter of the XII century. It was a distinct advance on Noyon and Senlis, because it eliminated the deep tribunes over the side aisles. One of the striking characteristics of Sens is the way that light floods it from the aisle windows, which are on a noble scale. Because the church was built during a tentative hour its deficiency lies in the height of the central nave. For right proportion, when flanked by such lofty aisles, the nave should have been made considerably higher.
Sens Cathedral was begun by Archbishop Henri-le-Sanglier (1122-43) to replace a church dedicated at the end of the X century. Such strides has mediæval archaeology taken in France during the last generations, it is hard to believe that serious students, during the Congrès Archéologique held at Sens in 1840, could have considered the present edifice to be the one dedicated before 1000.
Henri-le-Sanglier had been appointed by Louis VI to the see of Sens before he had received holy orders, and in the lax spiritual standards of the day, he saw no harm in living like the feudal lord he was by birth. He had not Thomas of Canterbury’s unbending consistency. When his worldliness was censured by St. Bernard he changed his way of life, and ultimately proved himself a loyal and humane pastor.
Of the six archbishops who were to follow him as builders of Sens’ metropolitan church, all of them were national figures. Under the long rule of Hugues de Toucy (1143-68) the church was mainly erected. He was the friend of Abbot Suger the pioneer, the friend, too, of Bernard the regenerator, who came as his guest to Sens, after preaching the Second Crusade at Vézelay. The same hospitable bishop welcomed on two occasions the exiled archbishop of Canterbury. The second visit of St. Thomas Becket was when he had been forced to quit the abbey of Pontigny, situated close by over the Burgundian border, because Henry Plantagenet swore to close every Cistercian house in his English and French domains if further refuge were offered the prelate. Moved by the welcome given him in his distress by the archbishop of Sens, the famous Englishman cried out—so his secretary, Herbert of Bosham, records: “Ah, we have proved the truth of the old saying—‘douce France! ô douce encore, ô très douce France! Oui, elle est douce, vraiment douce, la France!’”