THE CHURCH OF HAUTVILLERS, WITH THE REMAINS OF THE ABBEY.
In the year 1670, among the sunny vineyard slopes rising from the poplar-fringed Marne, there stood in all its pride the famous royal Abbey of St. Peter at Hautvillers. Its foundation, of remote antiquity, was hallowed by saintly legend. Tradition said that about the middle of the seventh century St. Nivard, Bishop of Reims, and his godson, St. Berchier, were seeking a suitable spot for the erection of a monastery on the banks of the river. The way was long, the day was warm, and the saints but mortal. Weary and faint, they sat down to rest at a spot identified by tradition with a vineyard at Dizy, to-day belonging to Messrs. Bollinger, but at that time forming part of the forest of the Marne. St. Nivard fell asleep, with his head in St. Berchier’s lap, when the one in a dream, and the other with waking eyes, saw a snow-white dove—the same, firm believers in miracles suggested, which had brought down the holy oil for the anointment of Clovis at his coronation at Reims—flutter through the wood, and finally alight afar off on the stump of a tree. Such an omen could no more be neglected by a seventh-century saint than a slate full of scribble by a nineteenth-century spiritualist, and accordingly the site thus miraculously indicated was forthwith decided upon. Plans for the edifice were duly drawn out and approved of, and the abbey rose in stately majesty, the high altar at which St. Berchier was solemnly invested with the symbols of abbatial dignity being erected upon the precise spot occupied by the tree on which the snow-white dove had alighted.[92] As time rolled on and pious donations poured in, the abbey waxed in importance, although it was sacked by the Normans when they ravaged the Champagne, and was twice destroyed by fire—once in 1098, and again in 1440—when each time it rose phœnix-like from its ashes.
In 1670 the abbey was, as we have said, in all its glory. True, it had been somewhat damaged a century previously by the Huguenots, who had fired the church, driven out the monks, sacked the wine-cellars, burnt the archives, and committed sundry other depredations inherent to civil and religious warfare; but the liberal contributions of the faithful, including Queen Marie de Medicis, had helped to efface all traces of their visit. The abbey boasted many precious relics rescued from the Reformers’ fury, the most important being the body of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, which had been in its possession since 844, and attracted numerous pilgrims. The hierarchical status of the abbey was high; for no less than nine archbishops had passed forth through its stately portal to the see of Reims, and twenty-two abbots, including the venerable Peter of Cluny, to various distinguished monasteries. Its territorial possessions were extensive; for its abbot was lord of Hautvillers, Cumières, Cormoyeux, Bomery, and Dizy la Rivière, and had all manner of rights of fourmage, and huchage, vinage, and pressoir banal, and the like,[93] to the benefit of the monks and the misfortune of their numerous dependents. Its revenues were ample, and no small portion was derived from the tithes of fair and fertile vinelands extending for miles around, and from the vineyards which the monks themselves cultivated in the immediate neighbourhood of the abbey.
