SAUMUR[192]
L’ancienne Grand’ Rue de Saumur ... la rue montueuse qui mène au château, obscure en quelques endroits, remarquable par la sonorité de son petit pavé caillouteux, toujours propre et sec ... la paix de ses maisons impénétrables, noirs, et silencieuses—l’histoire de France est là, tout entière.—Balzac, Eugénie Grandet (whose scene is Saumur).
Close by Angers lies Saumur on the Loire, “well-loved, well-set city.” It comprises, with its environs, another center for the study of Plantagenet Gothic. The town is topped by its castle, now in main part of the XIV century. In its former great hall, built by Henry Plantagenet, took place, in 1241, that celebrated fête called the Non-Pareille which Joinville has described. His memory of it was so fresh, after sixty years, that he could tell the color of Louis IX’s robe and surcoat; perhaps it was the first time that Joinville saw the saint-king who was to become his closest friend. He was not yet twenty when he accompanied his suzerain of Champagne, Thibaut IV, the maker of songs, to the feast held in Saumur château for the knighting of Alphonse of Poitiers, the king’s brother.
The bodyguard of St. Louis were a Bourbon, a Coucy, and a Beaujeu, behind whom stood ranged a host of barons and knights in silk and cloth of gold. The future king of Portugal and a prince from Thuringia, the son of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, waited on the table of the queen-mother, Blanche of Castile, who, when she heard the name of the princeling from beyond the Rhine, called him to her side and placed a kiss upon his brow, since there, she said, his saintly mother must often have blessed him. Jealous passions, too, burned behind the glitter and show. Isabelle of Angoulême, the widow of John Lackland, married now to a Lusignan who had to render homage to his new suzerain, cried out, imperiously, “Am I a waiting woman that I should stand while they sit at ease?” and she proceeded to stir up war.
Below the castle of Saumur lies the XII-century unaisled church of St. Pierre, whose masonry roof belongs to different phases of Angevin Gothic. Over the transept-crossing is a ribbed cupola without distinct pedestal, inspired evidently by the small unribbed cupola of Fontevrault’s crossing. The stones are laid in horizontal concentric courses like a true dome. Though archaic in structure, St. Pierre’s croisée is of skilled execution. It belongs to the last third of the XII century.
Over the choir and transept are the heavy diagonals of the First Period of the Plantagenet development, and the nave’s vault sections are carried on the eight branches of the Second Period. Powerful transverse arches separate the wide, square bays, and against the inclosure walls are other strong arches beneath the windows. The walls of St. Pierre’s choir are not parallel, but draw closer together at the eastern end, for undoubtedly there was much intentional asymmetry in mediæval monuments. The Flamboyant day gave to St. Pierre its well-carved choir stalls and some exquisitely toned Flemish tapestries executed by local weavers.
Other superb tapestries adorn Notre Dame-de-Nantilly, a church patronized by Louis XI, who added to it the south aisle and a Flamboyant oratory. The body of the edifice belongs to the first half of the XII century; its barrel vault is braced by slightly pointed transverse arches. At the transept-crossing is a ribbed cupola, without distinct pedestal, like that of St. Pierre. Against the fourth pier, to the south, is the epitaph which good King René himself composed and set up because of his affection for his old nurse, Dame Tiphaine, for whose soul he begs a paternoster of all who pass by. Against the fifth pier is the Limousin enamel crozier of the archbishop of Tyr, keeper of the seal for St. Louis, who was buried here in his native city in 1266.
Behind the Gothic Town Hall is the now unused chapel of St. Jean, a small example of the Third Period of Angevin architecture, when ribs branched considerably; in the square chevet they ramify to the number of twenty.
A mile down the river lies what is left of St. Florent-les-Saumur[193] re-established by Fulk Nerra when he conquered Saumur in 1026. Its narthex, now the chapel of a nuns’ community, shows one of the earliest uses of the Plantagenet vault of eight branches (1170-1200). At St. Florent was living the daughter of the exiled poet-duke of Orléans, with her young husband, the Duke of Alençon, when one day in 1429 word came that at Chinon, near by, where Charles VII was staying, had arrived an inspired maid, and young d’Alençon, soon to be Jeanne d’Arc’s lieutenant—her gentil duc—galloped along the banks of the Loire to see the wonder. So delighted was he with Jeanne’s management of spear and horse that he presented her with a palfrey, and she came to St. Florent-les-Saumur for a four days’ visit to his duchess, promising[194] that anxious young wife that she would bring back her husband safe and sound.