Cathedral Cities of France

by R. W. S. Herbert Marshall; Hester Marshall

The Norman dukes only deteriorated as rulers when they joined to their domain the crown of England, won by the hardiest and strongest of them all. We remember the passionate, self-willed Robert, son of the Conqueror, and John, called Lackland, that disgrace to the English throne, the worst and likewise the last Norman duke, for the French king, Philippe Auguste, confiscated Normandy, together with other English possessions, and joined it to the crown of France, taking possession of Rouen after a siege in 1204. From this point the history of Rouen becomes the history of a French and not of a Norman town. As a reward for its submission, Philippe Auguste presented the town with a castle, of which one tower (the Tour Jeanne d’Arc) alone remains standing. Two centuries later, Rouen was in danger from the English. Henry V., during his brilliant campaign in northern France, was not likely to leave to itself such an important place. In 1419 he set up his cannon outside the walls, and proceeded to blockade the town, which opened its gates to him after a six months’ siege. Here he also built a castle, which, in the hopefulness born of youth and victory, he intended to use as a royal residence when all France should be at rest under his firm rule. But before the conquest was completed, before he had time to think about any residence other than his camp, came that last fatal sickness at Vincennes, and the castle, which seemed, like all his victories, so sure and so lasting, has been swept off the face of the earth. The years after Henry’s death, however, were significant ones for Rouen, now in English hands, and in 1431 we come to the great point in its history, the trial and burning of Joan of Arc in the market-place.

Captured near Compiègne, Joan had been sent to Rouen by the bishop of Beauvais. This was in March. The girl was examined fifteen or sixteen times, a wearying repetition of question and answer, often going round and round in a circle and never advancing any further. Joan’s replies were simple but firm. She persisted in her divine mission, and when asked whether she was in a state of grace or of sin replied, “If I am not in a state of grace, I hope God will make me so. How can I be in much sin while the saints will visit me?” In May matters were delayed by her illness, which was so serious that it seemed for a time as though her enemies were to be defeated by death; but on her recovery learned doctors were sent to her in prison to persuade her of her wrong attitude of mind. Later came a warning from Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, to the effect that he was about to have her brought forth and made the object of a public sermon, after which, if she would recant, her safety would be assured. Worn out with her trials, the poor girl declared her submission and signed a recantation, for she saw that the end could not but come soon. A penance of perpetual imprisonment was then imposed upon her, and she submitted passively to the injunctions laid upon her; but at her final abjuration she seemed to be overcome by a sudden access of penitence towards the saints, and resumed her old attitude of determination, declaring that all she had said in submission was said in fear of being burned at the stake, of which she had a very natural horror. After this her fate was sealed. Cauchon handed her over to the secular arm, and a few hours later she was led to the stake in the old market-place. It is needless to dwell upon this last scene, because it is one of the stock dramatic occurrences in our history books, which nearly always represent Joan of Arc as suffering trial, torment and death, for the sake of her country with almost unnatural fortitude; but, on the other hand, the more one reads about her, the more clear it becomes that the heroism of the Maid of Orléans, though none the less heroic, was a heroism of the simplest order, born of a pure heart, a steady, straightforward faith in her mission, and only wavering at the last from a very human and girlish horror of so infamous and dreadful a death. And as for her judges, needlessly cruel though they were, yet, as one writer points out, they were almost bound to condemn their prisoner. To try her for sorcery and to burn her as a witch seems of course to our modern eyes not merely horrible, but absurd. Cauchon and his followers, however, did not live in an enlightened age; in their day the “Black Art” was a thing to be dreaded above all others, and death seemed a light thing in comparison with the putting down the power of the Evil One. Others besides Joan of Arc, for generations before and generations after, had died at the stake for reputed practice of magic; and in the case of the Maid, “to acquit her would have been to accept her celestial mission and place her, with some modern French historians, by the side, nay, in the place, of the Messiah.” The trial and burning of Joan cannot be looked upon by the light of a modern world; they are of their time, and that time was, above all things, a superstitious one. And only after her death did France realise what the Domrémy peasant girl had done for her country. The French monarchy, as Louis XI. established it, is perhaps the best monument to her memory. After, and as some say because of, Joan’s death English prestige in Rouen began steadily to decline. Two years afterwards, in 1433, came the death of John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V., perhaps the only man left with anything of Henry’s strength and singleness of purpose. Rouen held out against two attempts at recapture on the part of Charles VII., but in 1449 Somerset was forced to capitulate to a strong expedition, and the English left the town for ever.

By the middle of the next century we find Rouen in the thick of religious troubles. In 1562 it was for six months in Huguenot hands, six months of warfare, oppression and persecution of all Romanists within the walls, with worse to follow; for when the Royalists recaptured the town they repaid the Huguenots in their own coin, and revenged the Catholic massacres with a terrible revenge. After this the Army of the League held Rouen until, in 1596, Henry IV. of France effected an entrance into the town.

Nowadays the first view of Rouen is a smoky, dreary little station, surrounded by cochers and porters in linen blouses; but Arthur Young, an agriculturist of the eighteenth century, visited the old city during his travels, before the days of the “iron way,” and he was more fortunate in what he saw from his diligence: “The first view of Rouen is sudden and striking; but the road doubling, in order to turn more gently down the hill, presents from an elbow the finest view of a town I have ever seen; the whole city, with all its churches and convents, and its cathedral proudly rising in the midst, fills the vale. The river presents one reach crossed by the bridge, and then, dividing into two fine channels, forms a large island covered with wood; the rest of the vale, full of verdure and cultivation, of gardens and habitations, finish the scene, in perfect unison with the great city that forms the capital feature.” To get this view to-day one must climb the long, dusty hill to the convent of Bon Secours, or rather, half-way only, since the city, river and meadows, show their beauties just as well from a lower point, and the modern convent and church upon the hilltop are not worth a further climb.

From the main street of the town the Cathedral is reached by the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, which leads underneath the archway of the belfry. The Tour St. Romain rises at the end of the street like a tall white guide, and here, suddenly, we find ourselves face to face with the west façade of Notre Dame. The remark made by an American traveller, that he found Rome very much out of repair, is appropriate to many of the French cathedrals. Scheduled as historic monuments, they receive annually a dole from the Government towards maintenance and restoration, but so miserable is this contribution, and so inadequate to the possibility of early completion of the work, that a generation may pass away before the scaffolding is finally removed. The west portal of Rouen is half covered by a forest of timbering. Rheims suffers even more, and the same may be said for Notre Dame at Evreux, St. Urbain at Troyes, and many other cathedrals. Such glimpses, however, as we get of the west front of Rouen show us its glory. Ruskin writing of it says: “It is the most exquisite piece of pure Flamboyant work existing. There is not one cusp, one finial, that is useless, not a stroke of the chisel is in vain; the grace and luxuriance of it all are visible—sensible, rather, even to the uninquiring eye; and all its minuteness does not diminish the majesty, while it increases the mystery of the noble and unbroken vault.”

Of the origin of this Flamboyant style a distinguished French writer, M. Enlart, in a paper lately read before the Archæological Institute of Great Britain, has asserted that it is to be found not in France, but in England; and specialising the west front of Rouen, he further states that, in the arrangement of its large bay enclosing the rose window and flanked by tiers of statues, it recalls absolutely the façades, earlier in date, of the cathedrals of Wells, Salisbury and Lichfield.

With one or two exceptions, viz., St. Urbain at Troyes and a chapel in Amiens Cathedral, the Flamboyant style did not appear in France until the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and when it had once taken root, it maintained its integrity until the Renaissance, having the same characteristics from one end of the country to the other. It was not the evolution of any previous French style, but it derived its origin, as above stated, from a style which existed in England a century before. Roughly speaking, the features which distinguish the Flamboyant are, first, the ogee arch which is typical of the style, then special systems of vaulting, and flowing tracery of windows, forms of arches, “anse de panier,” &c., arch mouldings dying into piers without impost or capital, and generally a love of vegetal and undulating decoration. This “decorative caprice” reigned in France in the fifteenth century at a time when the Perpendicular style became universal in England and had completely driven out the ogee arch.

The occupation of the greater part of France by the English in the Hundred Years’ War would naturally result in an English influence being noticeable in its buildings, the contact of nations producing an exchange of art as of commerce. The Flamboyant may therefore be said to be the by-product of the Hundred Years’ War.

There is documentary evidence that both at Rouen and at Evreux the foreign occupation did not interfere with the work going on at the cathedrals; indeed, at Rouen, two canons of York were received with the greatest courtesy by the chapter, and contributions were made by the English towards the completion of the Cathedral. The domination of the English was no hindrance to the progress of art in France, and as soon as the latter had freed itself and realised its national unity, its architects applied themselves heart and soul to the development of this style which was “borrowed from the enemy.”