Cathedral Cities of France

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

West of the Cathedral is the Basse Œuvre, a building which Fergusson describes as an example of the Latin style, and a stepping-stone from the Roman basilica to the Gothic church. This intermediate style is noticeable in the Romanesque church of S. Vicenzo alle Fontane in Rome, where the bay is divided simply into pier arch and clerestory, showing in very simple terms an arrangement nearly approaching to Gothic.

Of the history of Beauvais there is but little to be said, for it possesses none worthy of the name, or rather—since every town must have a story of some kind—none which associates itself to any great degree with outside events. It was established in the Roman era as the capital of the Bellovaci, under the name of Cæsaromagus; it was Christianised by Saint Lucian, who for his good works suffered martyrdom within the town; and later on it became the head of a countship. This dignity, however, Beauvais did not long retain, for in the tenth century the temporal power of the count was vested in the spiritual power of the bishop, and any celebrity which the town may have attained was henceforth of purely ecclesiastical order.

It did, however, play a prominent part in the peasant revolt known as the “Jacquerie” in the fourteenth century. A body of peasants, “without any leader,” says Froissart, rose up with the intent to exterminate the upper classes—a forerunner of the Revolution—and perpetrated the most horrible atrocities upon every knight and noble they could lay hands on in Beauvais. “They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition every one assented as a truth, and added, shame befall him who should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed.”

When the revolt grew, instead of being crushed, the “gentlemen of Beauvoisie” were forced to send for help out of France, since matters were come to such a pass that “in the bishoprics of Noyon, Lâon and Soissons, there were upwards of one hundred castles and good houses of knights and squires destroyed.” Aid soon came, notably from Flanders, Hainault and Navarre, the king of Navarre especially signalising himself by putting three thousand rebels to death in one day. “When they were asked,” says the chronicler, “for what reason they acted so wickedly, they replied they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do it; and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the nobles and gentlemen in the world.”

Edward III. besieged Beauvais in 1346, but without success, and it only fell into English hands in 1420 through the treachery of Bishop Pierre Cauchon, whose name also appears as one of the witnesses against Joan of Arc at Rouen eleven years later. The memory of this latter offence so preyed upon his mind that when he became bishop of Lisieux—having presumably been ejected from the see of Beauvais—Couchon sought to expiate his sin by dedicating a chapel to the Virgin in the Cathedral of Saint Pierre.

Hearing of the siege of Compiègne by the Burgundian forces, Joan had left Charles’s army, which was still dawdling by the Loire in a state of inaction, and marched off to Compiègne to relieve his party there. Arrived without the town, she soon headed a sortie against the Burgundians; they were driven back, and it is probable that the expedition would have been attended by the success which, to do her justice, had up to this moment crowned the efforts of the Maid, had not a body of Englishmen come up unexpectedly between her and the town and driven her into a corner. She was of course speedily captured. As soon as the news reached Paris both the University and the Vicar of the Inquisition demanded her person. Cauchon, however, stood firm. The Maid, he contended, had been captured within the diocese of Beauvais, and he, as the foremost prelate of the English party, claimed the right of putting her on trial; and after having paid to Burgundy 10,000 livres for this right, sent the Maid to Rouen, there to stand on her trial for sorcery, before a court of which Cauchon was president; and this fact alone might reasonably destroy all hope for poor Joan.

Another fourteenth-century bishop of Beauvais brought his diocese before the world in no small degree. Jean de Dormans was not only bishop; he became Chancellor of France, and obtained from Rome the rank of a cardinal, under the title of the Four Crowned Saints. In Paris Dormans endowed a foundation which still bears the name of Collège de Beauvais, though what remains of the building serves as barracks, and the light of learning has left its precincts for ever. The old college is now united to its neighbour, the Collège de Presle; but the fourteenth-century chapel dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist still stands almost intact, though it, too, has been desecrated, and now serves the use of the military occupiers. Formerly there stood within this chapel six life-size figures, representing three men and three women of the Dormans family, and it is believed that when mediæval fragments were pieced together to form the chapel of Abélard and Héloise, which is now part of the burial-ground of Père-la-Chaise, the figure of one of these ladies of the fourteenth century was used to represent that of Héloise.

One name there is on the page of their history which the inhabitants of this town remember with a veneration almost equal to that which the Orléannais regard Joan of Arc, and whose memory even now receives an annual tribute. It is that of another Jeanne, poor and obscure, who rose to heroism in the moment of her city’s danger, and who, though she did not lead a mighty host to victory nor bring a monarch back to his own, yet saved her city from the encroachments of Burgundy, and gave the women of Beauvais a right to their country’s esteem. The besieging army of Charles the Bold probably never received such a surprise as on that day in the year of grace 1472, when Jeanne Hachette led her concitoyennes through the streets of Beauvais, menaced the foe from the ramparts, and actually bore away with her own hands one of the Burgundian standards. The banner is still kept in the Hôtel-de-Ville; and every year, on the feast of Ste. Angadrème, a grand procession marches through the streets, in which the women are given the right of precedence over the men, in memory of the brave deeds of Jeanne and her sisters.