The ancient Saint-Émilion—the town to which most of these buildings carry us back—is in reality an old English fortress, growing from the oppidum of the Gauls to the fortified stronghold which passed to Edward I. and continued, with a few interruptions, to enjoy the privileges of a royal borough of England until the fifteenth century.
SENS, AUXERRE, AND TROYES
HE Senones, who settled on the banks of the river Yonne and founded the city of Agenticum, which we know to-day as Sens, were one of the most influential people in Gaul—even the Parisii were considered of less account—and did not submit to the Roman yoke until the final defeat of Vercingetorix. The change of dominion, however, in no way detracted from the importance of their capital city, but rather enhanced it, since the conquerors made the town metropolis of the fourth Lugdunensis, and were at some pains to rebuild it in a fashion befitting its position. Six great highways met within its walls; arches, aqueducts and amphitheatres sprang up all over the city, and Agenticum henceforth became a prosperous and powerful stronghold, well able to withstand the incursions of later days, of which there were many, on the part of the Franks and the Saracens and, finally, of the Normans.
Christianity was introduced by the martyr-saints Savinian and Potentian, who, as at Chartres, built the first church in the city, thus laying, so tradition has it, the foundations of the Cathedral which was to come in after times. The town then became an archbishopric, and later, like most towns of any standing, a hereditary countship, the proximity of the two overlords, spiritual and temporal, leading not infrequently to disastrous results, especially when in the twelfth century a communal power sprang up and contributed a third factor to the contest.
In 1234 Louis IX. married Marguerite de Provence in the Cathedral of Saint Etienne, and on his return from the Holy Land, five years later, with the precious relics purchased from the Emperor of Constantinople, the reliquary and its contents were paraded through the streets in a palanquin, borne by the king and his brother, Robert d’Artois, who walked bare-headed and bare-footed at the head of the procession, casting aside all their royal state—which, indeed, poor Louis would have gladly left for ever—to set an example of reverent homage to the people of Sens. Thomas à Becket lived for some months in the Abbey of Sainte-Colombe by the river-side, founded by one of the Chlothars in the seventh century in memory of the young virgin saint who suffered martyrdom under the rule of Aurelian.
Sens, on its quiet, graceful little river, “bending ... link after link through a never-ending rustle of poplar-trees,” is a picturesque place, like most towns which have left their importance behind them in the Middle Ages, and have come down to modern days unmodernised. Standing on the far bank of the Yonne, looking across the river reaches, one gets a very delightful picture of the town, almost like that of some of our English Cathedral cities—the shining river, the green water-meadows, and above them the deeper green of the grand old trees, clustering round the great church, whose high grey tower rises from their midst, watching the town, meadows and river by day and by night, when men wake and when they take their rest, as it has watched ever since William the architect built up its stones and brought their pattern across the water that the church of Britain’s first Christian city might share the glories of her sister in France.
Sens is not very well known to travellers, although there is no cathedral in the whole breadth of France which ought to be dearer in the eyes of every Englishman, on account of its being in all probability the parent of the choir of Canterbury. Hither Becket is said to have fled, and to have sought sanctuary at the altar of St. Thomas against the persecution of Henry II. Viollet-le-Duc describes St. Etienne as a cathedral unique both in plan and style of architecture—a mixture of arches both round and pointed, such as we find in the choir of Canterbury, showing how much it is under the influence of the Burgundy school. This is proved by the great similarity of plan between the other Burgundy cathedrals, and it is surmised that after the eleventh century Autun, Langres, Auxerre and Sens possessed certain dispositions of plan peculiar to themselves, which were adopted in the Eastern portions of Canterbury. There appears to be no precise information as to the early foundation of the Cathedral of Sens, and the architect who designed it is unknown. The west front exhibits a number of fine sculptures relating to the lives of St. Stephen, St. John, and other saints; in the central portion, which dates from the end of the twelfth century, religion has given place to the arts and sciences, which are represented by twelve sculptured figures, now in a mutilated condition—Grammar, Medicine (a figure holding plants), Rhetoric (giving a discourse), Painting (represented drawing on a tablet placed on the knee), Astronomy, Music, Philosophy, &c. Under each figure is sculptured an animal or monster; in one case a lion is devouring a child, an elephant carrying a tower.... The “encyclopædic spirit” was dominant in the twelfth century, and in the object lesson of these stones an ignorant and unlettered crowd could find its elementary instruction.