Plate 40. Collegiate Church of St. Hildebert at Gournay.
Capitals.
Plate 41. Collegiate Church of St. Hildebert at Gournay.
Capitals.
Plates [forty] and [forty-one][71] are devoted to the capitals, the most characteristic feature of the building. A more remarkable or a more interesting set, is not to be seen in any church throughout Normandy. Their character is by no means altogether the same as that of those at St. Georges, or in the abbatial church of the Trinity at Caen. There are indeed monsters among them, but they are of unfrequent occurrence; and, if the expression may be allowed, they are not equally monstrous. Nor are they of a description to appear to bear any reference to mythology, or to history. On the contrary, the sculpture on them is for the most part of great beauty; and the patterns display a fertile, and an elegant, if not a classical, taste on the part of the architects. The greatest peculiarity among them, and one that is believed to be wholly confined to this church, is, that seven or eight of the pillars have, by way of capitals, a narrow projecting rim, carved with undulating lines. So frequent a repetition of the same ornament, and of an ornament so very singular, removes the idea of accident. It has therefore been supposed, that the intention of the sculptor was to exhibit a kind of hieroglyphical representation of water. “Perhaps,” as has been observed elsewhere,[72] “it is the chamber of Sagittarius; or, perhaps, it is a fess-wavy, to which the same signification has been assigned by heralds.—If this interpretation be correct, the symbol is allusive to the ancient situation of the town, built in a marsh, intersected by two streams.”
The aisles of the church are in all parts ancient: their vaulting resembles that of Norwich cathedral, an arch springing from each capital.—Large windows of the decorated English style, and consequently comparatively modern, have been inserted, at the east end of the church, and at the extremity of the south transept; but, in both these parts, sufficient is left to shew the original design of the architect. In the latter, it is evident that there once were, as there still remain in the opposite transept, four semi-circular-headed windows, disposed, to speak in heraldic language, 1, 2, and 1; while, in the former, were seven, placed 1, 2, and 4. Of the four lowest of these, the two outermost gave light to the aisles. Each window was separated from the rest by a shallow undivided Norman buttress, built of squared freestone, and interrupting the herring-bone masonry, which occupies the rest of the east end, to the height of about five feet from the ground.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] St. Hildebert is a name of rare occurrence in hagiology. He was bishop of Meaux in the seventh century, but was not honored with a place in the calendar, till about three hundred years after his decease; at which time his reliques were carried to different parts of France, and finally interred at Gournay. The church, on this occasion, changed its patron, an event which commonly happened in those ages, and placed itself under the protection of the new saint, instead of the proto-martyr, to whom it had been originally dedicated.—Peter de Natalibus, in his Catalogus Sanctorum, says, that St. Hildebert ended his life as Archbishop of Tours; and that he died in that city, and was there buried, “ibique jacens in miraculis vivit.” He speaks of him likewise as an elegant scholar, and the author of a work, de contemptu hujus vitæ, written partly in verse, and partly in prose.