CHARTRES
HARTRES,” says Mr. Henry James, “gives us an impression of extreme antiquity, but it is an antiquity that has gone down in the world.” It may be this very decadence that has kept Chartres within itself and prevented it from growing out into a large pretentious city. Many other places which rival it in age and association have either swept away all traces of their antiquity, or else preserved it in dignified contrast to the modern mushroom town. Chartres has done neither. It is scarcely more at the present day than a quaint country town with a very old-fashioned air, a place of steep, twisting streets and quiet little market-squares, the cathedral rising like a giant from the very midst of the houses. Round the town runs a boulevard, known as the Tour-de-Ville, and interesting for the fact that it follows the line of the mediæval defences—ramparts that kept many enemies at bay when Chartres was a power in the kingdom of France. Here and there parts of these defences are still standing, and one fragment in particular forms the foundations of an old convent. Another remnant of the old fighting days is the Porte Guillaume, one of the city gates, built when the march of the English forced every French town to keep itself under bolt and bar. Two round towers, embattled and machicolated, flank a low archway, and to complete the mediæval effect, the ancient fosse still remains before the gate, not grass-grown or choked with rubbish, but filled with a clear stream, just as it might have been in old days.
Autricum of the Carnutes held an important position in Gaul, ranking very near the great capital of the Senones. In pre-Christian times it was a famous Druidic centre; but with the advance of Christianity, Savinian and Potentian, the patron saints of Sens, extended their mission to Chartres, converted the inhabitants, and built their first church, according to tradition, upon a Druid grotto. Later on, the town passed into the possession of a line of counts, who were a very powerful factor in mediæval France. The first Theobald or Thibaut is said to have purchased his domain from the sea-king Hasting, who had penetrated beyond the coast and colonised the lands around the river Eure. His son and successor, Thibaut le Tricheur, lived in a state of constant war with Normandy, and seems to have been regarded as a kind of evil influence by the old Norman chroniclers, whose hero in Thibaut’s day was naturally their own Richard the Fearless. Another of the line was the famous Odo, whose ambition went beyond his own states of Chartres and Blois, and aimed at kingship in Burgundy and even in Italy. Through the greater part of his reign he carried on also the struggle with Normandy which had raged so fiercely in Thibaut’s time, besides the standing war with the Angevin line, represented by Fulk the Black. It was, as Freeman says, the fact of this common enemy in the house of Chartres which first brought Anjou and Normandy into direct contact and perhaps laid the foundations of Anjou’s subsequent connection with England. Chartres, like Nevers, was made a duchy under François Ier; later it passed into the Orléans family, whose nominal appanage it has remained ever since, the eldest son bearing to this day the title of “Duc de Chartres.” It is also interesting to notice that Henri de Navarre broke the long succession of coronations at Rheims by being crowned King of France in Chartres Cathedral, three years after the town had opened its gates to his army in 1591. Some three hundred years later another enemy appeared outside the walls, and once again Chartres found itself in the hands of a foreign power. Mr. Cecil Headlam, in his very interesting “Story of Chartres,” gives a description of the Prussian occupation, part of which may be quoted here as showing the foresight of the Mayor, who in this terrible time, when the whole French nation seemed utterly demoralised, thought rather of the safeguard of the city and its one great monument, than of the doubtful and dearly-won glory of a protracted defence.
“It was on Friday, September 30, 1870, that the Prussian soldiers appeared for the first time near Chartres. Three weeks later Châteaudun fell, after a desperate and heroic defence, for which that picturesque and ancient town paid the dear price of failure. Two days later the enemy marched in force upon Chartres. The tirailleurs and mobiles and troops of the National Guard, who endeavoured to defend the town, after vain marching and counter-marching, with the same generous ardour and utter ineffectiveness as had distinguished the movements of the other armies before the disasters of Wissembourg, Wörth and Sedan, returned exhausted. Without firing a shot they had been rendered incapable of fighting. Fighting in any case would have been useless. It was wisely decided to capitulate, and on the 21st the Mayor and Prefect of the Department drove out to Morancez to save the city and Cathedral, by surrendering them to General von Wittich, from the inevitable destruction of which Châteaudun had given them a terrible example. What they saw on their way of the French defence and the Prussian advance convinced civilians and military men alike that it was impossible to hope to defend Chartres.”
At the head of the Rue St. Jean, where it leads into the Place du Châtelet, one obtains the first and best view of the two beautiful spires at the west end of the Cathedral. The southern tower, dating back to the twelfth century and conceived in a style which harmonises with the broad and massive design of the whole building, is an example of what was contemplated as a finish to the other towers of the Cathedral. The northern tower, built in 1507 by Jean le Texier, well deserves its reputation as the most beautiful Gothic spire ever designed. “The one, fashioned by the Byzantine chisel, sprang into complete being in the heroic ages of faith in the days of war ... the other rose, after a long peace, under the hands of the still Christian architects of the Renaissance, when all dangers and difficulties had been surmounted.”
On contemplating the plan on which Chartres Cathedral was built one is struck with the enormous space which has been allotted to the choir. Here the new religious cult finds its earliest expression, greater provisions are made for its ceremonials, larger spaces are given both in choir and transepts for its gorgeous ritual than we find in Paris, Soissons or Lâon. Bishops, priests, deacons, choristers and serving-men needed a wider platform for the ministration of the sacred rites of the Church, and especially to this end was the Cathedral planned out. It is said that its construction was carried out with incredible rapidity in the desire to meet the pressing requirements of the people, who demanded that the Cathedral should be not only the house of prayer for the bishop and his canons, but essentially the mother church of the humblest of her worshippers.