The Hospice de Beaune is for all considerations a remarkable edifice; its functions have been many and various and its glories have been great. Formerly the Hospice stood for hospitality; to-day it is either a hospital, or a matter-of-fact business proposition; you may think of it as you like, according to your mood, and how it strikes you.
The Benedictine Abbey de Fécamp, like Dauphiny’s Grande Chartreuse, is but a business enterprise whose stocks and bonds in their inflated values take rank with Calumet and Hecla, Monte Carlo’s Casino, or other speculative projects. The same is true of the wine exploitation of the monks of Citeaux at Clos Vougeot, and of the famous wine cellars of the Hospice de Beaune. We may like to think of the old romantic glamour that hangs over these shrines, but in truth it is but a pale reflected light. This is true from a certain point of view at any rate.
Beaune’s Hospice, with its queer mélange of churchly and heraldic symbols ranged along with its Hispano-Gothic details, is “more a chateau-de-luxe than a poor-house,” said a sixteenth century vagabond traveller who was entertained therein. And, taking our clue from this, we will so consider it. “It is worth being poor all one’s life to finally come to such a refuge as this in which to end one’s days,” said Louis XI.
The foundation of the Hospice dates from 1443, as the date on its carven portal shows. It was started on its philanthropic and useful career by Nicholas Rollin and his wife Guignonne de Salins. It was then accounted, as it is to-day, “a superb foundation endowed with great wealth.”
The desire of the founders was that the occupants should be surrounded with as much of comfort and luxury as a thousand of livres of income for each (a considerable sum for that far-away epoch) should allow.
This fifteenth century Hospice de Beaune is one of the most celebrated examples of the wood-workers’ manner of building of its time. The role that it plays among similar contemporary structures wherever found is supreme. It is only in Flanders that any considerable number of similar architectural details of construction are found.
The general view of the edifice from without hardly does justice to the many architectural excellencies which it possesses. The heurtoir, or door-knocker, in forged iron, still hanging before the portal, is the same that was first hung there in the fifteenth century, and which has responded to countless appeals of wayfarers. The iron work of the interior court is of the same period.
With the inner courtyard the aspect changes. On one side is the Flemish-Gothic, or Hispano-Gothic, structure of old, one of the most ornate and satisfying combinations of wooden gables and pignons and covered galleries one can find above ground to-day. Frankly it is an importation from alien soil, a transplantation from the Low Countries, where the style was first developed during the Spanish occupation in Flanders.
Save for certain modifications in 1646, 1734 and 1784 this portion of the edifice remains much as it was left by the passing of the good old times when knights, and monks as well, were bold. The Grande Salle, where the Chancelier Rollin first instituted the annual wine sale which still holds forth to-day, and the entrance portal were again restored in 1879, but otherwise the aspect is of the time of the birth of the structure.
The Hospice de Beaune is properly enough to be classed among the palaces and chateaux of Burgundy, for its civic functions were many, besides which it was the princely residence of the chancellor of the Burgundian Parliament.