Cathedral Cities of France

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

In the wars of Edward III. and Henry V. Coutances had its share. Standing in the western corner of Normandy, the town came at the end of a long line of strongholds which one after the other had surrendered to the English assault. Valognes fell, then the Ponts d’Ouve, then Carentan and Saint-Lô. Next Edward turned off towards Caen and followed on to Crécy; so that it seemed at first as though Coutances would escape altogether. However, the treachery of one of the neighbouring lords was to attempt what the enemy had left undone. In 1358 there lived in the château of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte a certain Geoffrey d’Harcourt, surnamed Le Boiteux, whose nephew had been treacherously murdered at Rouen. D’Harcourt resolved to revenge the crime upon the city of Coutances. He got together an army with the help of the King of Navarre, and drew up his troops outside the town, with heavy machines for battery; and he had succeeded in forcing a breach, when the royal army, arriving at an opportune moment, upset his schemes and sent him back to his château of Saint-Sauveur. In the latter part of the war, however, this good fortune left the city. After his victory at Agincourt the English king marched westward to subdue the towns in the far corner of Normandy, and Coutances fell into his hands in 1418, remaining under the same rule until the Constable de Richemont drove out the English in 1449; and it is said that to all those of the inhabitants who had remained faithful to his cause Charles VII. made reparation for all the spoliation they had suffered at the hands of the English. This may, of course, have emanated from that prince’s indolent good nature, which did not object to granting a favour where it was not too much trouble; but considering the utter laziness of Charles it seems unlikely that he should have troubled himself to this extent in the cause of a little city in the west, far away from Paris, when he was occupied with the new experience of being king in fact as well as name.

The League Wars were the next to touch Coutances. Bricqueville-Colombières, who, as we saw, was to meet a soldier’s death upon the walls of Saint Lô some years later, took possession of the town in the name of the Protestants in 1561, and as the standards of both armies were followed by crowds of half-savage, ignorant peasants, thirsty for plunder of any sort, Coutances found itself overrun as it had been by a tribe of wild beasts. Men, women and children were massacred without quarter, churches and houses were rifled and, worse than all, the beautiful Cathedral of de Montbray suffered a like fate and was despoiled of sculpture, carving, statues and sainted relics, the bishop and clergy being struck down before they could attempt to quell these barbarian inroads. This scene was repeated two years later, when Colombières burnt part of the town, and again in 1566. After such treatment, it is hardly to be wondered at that the inhabitants of Coutances declared for the League, in spite of the fact that this disobedience caused the temporary removal of both their civil and seigneurial rights, the one passing to Saint-Lô and the other to Granville.

In the reign of Louis XIII. Richelieu imposed upon the inhabitants of Normandy the hateful tax known as the Gabelle, and by this means stirred up the revolt of the “Nu-pieds.” Coutances shared in several of the subsequent disorders. One Poupinel, charged with a commission from the Parliament of Rouen, was murdered in the streets of Avranches; and the tax-gatherer at Coutances, fearing a like fate, armed all his followers in the event of a possible disturbance. The worthy man’s extra precaution, however, proved to do more harm than good; his servants in their excess of zeal saw an enemy in every harmless farmer come to do his marketing in the town, and a deadly weapon in every ashen stick, and the pitch of excitement grew so high that when the bell of Saint Pierre began to ring for a christening, they took it for the warning peal of the tocsin, and rushed out into the streets with loud cries, brandishing their weapons and assaulting in their excitement every innocent burgher whom they met.

As was but natural, this unprovoked attack roused the dormant spirit of revolt among the people; Nicolle, the unfortunate tax-gatherer, found out his mistake too late; the “Nu-pieds,” under their chief, Le Sauvage, burnt down his house and murdered his brother; and for a few days, until the popular fury had quieted down, Coutances was thrown into a state of revolution. The terrible disturbances of the next century, however, did not work much havoc here. Only twenty-three persons in all were sent to the guillotine from Coutances during the Terror, and most of these, we are told, were burghers and not aristocrats, and the victims of private vengeance rather than of public fury.

Coutances had a good many notable bishops. There was Eureptiolus, mentioned above; there were Laudus, the founder of Saint-Lô; and Robert of Lisieux, who built his church on the foundations of the old basilica; and Geoffroy de Montbray, whose best life-work was given to finishing what Robert had begun; Hugues de Morville, who restored the Cathedral in the thirteenth century; and energetic, tenacious Geoffroy Herbert, who was possessed with a perfect mania for building, in and out of Coutances, and to whom the town owes the church of St. Pierre.

The Cathedral at Coutances was founded by the widow of Richard the Fearless in 1030, and completed towards the end of the century by Geoffroy de Montbray, William the Conqueror’s fighting bishop. After the union of Normandy to France it was rebuilt, and the work of restoration extended into the fifteenth century. Entering by the north porch one is struck by the beauty of the doorway, whose overhanging mouldings and shafts are designed with great elegance and freedom. The English type of capital, with round abacus and vigorous foliation, reminds one of the cathedrals of Salisbury and Lincoln; and the tympanum with its sadly-mutilated figures is carried on a corbel table of great beauty. The interior elevation of the bays is composed of three features—pier arches, a fine triforium with quatrefoil balustrade, and a rather small clerestory with a passage-way crossing its base. There is a great deal of exquisite glass in the cathedral, especially in the transepts. In the choir the love of high clerestories, admitting as much light as possible to the chancel, to the almost complete extinction of the triforium, shows itself here as in many other churches already noticed. The upper windows are in two planes, with a light shaft supporting the interior arches.

In the ambulatory there is what looks like a blind stone bay, corbelled out and resting on the capitals of the columns. Probably this is a staircase leading to the upper passages of the triforium and clerestory. The lantern, which is octagon in plan, has three tiers of arches, the over-hanging sides being supported by a simple pendentive with very slight mouldings.

Beyond the Place du Parvis, where the Cathedral stands, is the Musée, once the house of Quesnel Morinière, who at his death left to the town both house and garden. The latter is now converted into a Jardin Public, which every French town, however small, seems to possess; and sitting or walking amidst its shady alleys and green lawns, with catalpas and orange trees in full bloom overhead, one feels very kindly disposed towards the good citizen who planted them and left this possession for the enjoyment of his fellows.