I have been at this length in explaining the building of the cathedrals, because it would be impossible for you, without some such suggestion of their origin, to realise the meaning of the carvings which cover the great north and south porches of the transept at Rouen. I choose them first out of the mass of detail and construction in this enormous and heterogeneous building, because they are most typical of the feeling which gave it birth, and of the craftsmen who worked upon it. It is well-nigh impossible to attempt any explanation of the many styles, from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, which are commingled, superimposed even, without any feeling in the mind of the architect, for the time being, except that of the imperious need for self-expression, regardless of the fashions of his predecessor. In the great western façade this mingling of the styles is most observable. The angle towers are absolutely unlike, the arches are broken, the pinnacles are smashed short off, niches are mutilated, and arabesques are worn away, yet in the healing rays of moonlight, the whole composes into a mysterious beauty of its own that will not bear the strict analysis of glaring day.
But the Portail aux Libraires which Jean Davi, the architect of the Chapelle de la Vierge, built for Archbishop Guillaume de Flavacourt in 1278, will bear microscopic examination in every part, and the reverently careful restorations carried out some time ago by MM. Desmarest and Barthélemy have only brought to light the exquisite perfection of the original work. This gate to the northern transept got its name from the special trade which gradually was connected with that portion of the Cathedral bounds. I have already noticed how the Parvis was filled with various shops and booths, and this space before the northern gate was similarly appropriated by booksellers until at least some time after the sixteenth century was over. What I have to say now is connected with the actual portal itself. The forecourt once filled with bookstalls, that leads up to it, was only decorated in 1480 by Guillaume Pontifz, who also erected the fine screen that opens into it from the Rue St. Romain. On the east side of this court you may see St. Geneviève standing with a Bible in her left hand, and a candle in her right. Upon one shoulder a tiny angel tries to kindle the light, while on the other a wicked little devil with a pair of bellows is perched ready to blow it out again. The panel decoration upon the buttresses of this north door has been selected by Mr Ruskin as the high-water mark of Gothic tracery before its decline began. It takes the form of blind windows carved upon the solid stone, and is certainly an exquisite example of varied, yet severe proportion and arrangement. Its plan expresses the true qualities of the material with a right regard for mass in decoration, rather than for line, the fatal change which wrought so much damage after the earlier ruling principle had been given up.
PORTAIL DES LIBRAIRES
(DOOR OF NORTH TRANSEPT OF ROUEN CATHEDRAL)
This same acute observer, blessed with more leisure time than I have ever had in Rouen or elsewhere, was able to make certain remarks on the detailed carvings of the door itself, which must be at least suggested in any other description. My own count of the separate carvings does not agree with that made by Mr Ruskin, and in a mere matter of mathematics I may be bold enough to differ publicly, where agreement is so inevitable with the main thesis of his argument. Some idea may be obtained of the work expended on this one portion of the Cathedral alone, when I say that in the centre of the door is a square pedestal, on each of whose four sides are five medallions vertically arranged. Within the great encompassing arch, on each side, is a cluster of three more square pedestals similarly decorated. The arch itself has seventeen medallions upon each pillar, the top five on each side being cut in half by a moulding. Beyond the arch to right and left are two other pedestals with the same five ornaments on their two faces. Thus, if you count the smaller pillars only, there are twenty-four rows of five, or 120 medallions, and adding those on the arch, you get a total of 154. Even this is not all; for on each medallion or panel its separate bas-relief is contained within a quatrefoil. None of their arcs are semi-circles, and none of their basic figures are squares, for each panel is slightly varied in size from its neighbours. The result is that intervals of various shapes are left at each of the four angles of every quatrefoil, and into each interval is fitted a different animal, which gives the astonishing result of 596 minor carvings in this one doorway, all of them representing living things, and all of them subsidiary to the larger subjects which they frame. If you measure these tiny sculptures you will find the base of the curved triangle they adorn to average about four inches long, its height being just half that distance. When you look closer at those which are least worn away you will find them clearly enough carved to represent unmistakably in one instance the peculiar reverted eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and ready to run away with it; in another, the wrinkled skin that is pressed over a cheekbone by an angry fist; in a third, the growth of wing and scale upon a lizard.
Think of the life and energy that were pulsing through the brain of the craftsman who could so fill the surface of the stone. Think of the time that he was ready to give up to patient chiselling at this one task till it was perfect to his mind. And then consider more closely the quatrefoils, small in themselves, which are yet far larger than the details which surround them. The best known is one that has suffered terribly in the wear and tear of nearly six centuries. It is the famous bas-relief of the hooded pig playing on a violin, a motive which recurs at Winchester and in York Minster. Its fingers are placed so accurately upon the bow that the method of playing has formed a type of late twelfth-century style in all collections of musical antiquities. The Minstrel's Gallery in Exeter Cathedral may profitably be compared with it. This accuracy of execution in an essential detail shows the patient copying from life which accompanied—and indeed was necessary to—the vivid imagination that could create so many non-existent monsters. For among all these grotesque chimeras and fantastic mixtures of the animal and human element you will notice the creative faculty in its strongest development. These strange beasts, half man and half a goat, part woman and part fish, have each of them a reality of individual life, a possibility of visualised construction, that is marvellous in its appeal to the spectator. Another violin player appears upon this same door, this time with a human head set on the body of a beast, and beside it some small animal dances to the tune.
The mediæval carver was no mystic symbolist. But he felt so much and so vividly that when two strongly opposed ideas came into his head at once he had to express himself by throwing them together into one newly-forged creation of a woman-ape, or a dog-man. He had besides his own thoughts all that strange gallery to draw from, of sirens, harpies, centaurs, which a dying mythology bequeathed. You may trace most of the Metamorphoses of Ovid on the walls of the cathedrals. Then there were the queer bestiaries of his own doctors, the early Mandevilles, the Presterjohns of the twelfth century, the Munchausens of all time. From these he inherited the Sciopod upon the door of Sens, the cynoscephalae, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." He lived, too, in an age far more pictorial, far more given to the living allegory, than any centuries to which the cold print of a book alone appealed. Architecture, as he knew it, ceased when printing became cheap. But in his days the Bible of the people, the encyclopaedia of the poor, the general guide to heavenly or terrestrial knowledge of the mass of worshippers, was what they saw in the Mystery Plays, or what was carved for them (often inspired from the same dramatic source) upon the walls of their cathedrals. When he had tried all these, there remained the thousand simple incidents of daily life, such as the mother welcoming her child which is on this Portail des Libraires and was copied from it (as is the case in six other instances) in the misericordes of the choir in 1467, or the man who steals clothes from the line as Falstaff's ragged regiment did (a ruffian who is no doubt commemorated also in the name of Rue Tirelinceuil at Rouen), or the burglar walking off with a chest upon the southern transept, while the owner soundly kicks him and tries to take it back.
This southern door is called the Portail de la Calende from the confrèrie of that name, but the derivation is rather uncertain, and some authorities consider it refers to certain ecclesiastical assemblies, distinct from the synod, which were held four times a year in this part of the Cathedral. The plan of the quatrefoils is much the same as that of the "Libraires." Within the tall embracing arch it is indeed identical, but upon the arch itself fourteen panels are set on each side, and outside it are no less than three double clusters both to right and left, which increases the total of panels to 227. In this enormous number, I have already mentioned one; but perhaps the best known is that which illustrates a very popular mediæval legend, the "Lai d'Aristote," which also recurs in the misereres of the choir. It suggests the eternal supremacy of woman over man, even the wisest, by representing the typical philosopher of the middle ages saddled and bridled by a gay lady of Alexander's court, who sits upon his back and whips him heartily. This is rather difficult to see, as it is high up on a buttress beneath a statue at the side of the Rue des Bonnetiers. From mythology you will find here countless sirens, some playing instruments before their victims, others, like the mermaid of the fable, admiring themselves in mirrors and waving a seductive comb. There is also yet another violin player, with his back towards you, playing to a dancer who is posturing head downwards on his hands, like the daughter of Herodias upon the west façade.
I have already given the name of one of the master-masons who were associated with this great pile of buildings, where the sound of chisel and mallet can have scarcely ever ceased from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. But Jean Davi's work was necessarily one of the last finishing touches upon a building that others had reared in the mass for him to decorate in detail. The various churches that had been consecrated on the same spot have been recorded in their turn, from the first primitive shrine of St. Mellon, in the fourth century, to that greater fane seen by the Conqueror, which was almost entirely burnt in 1200. The lower part of the Tour St. Romain is certainly a part of the cathedral St. Maurilius consecrated. To say exactly when the work of reconstruction was begun which St. Louis saw completed has puzzled antiquarians far more diligent and learned than I am. But M. Viollet le Duc has pointed to unmistakable signs of work earlier than the rest in the two circular chapels of the apse, in the chapels of the transept, and in the two side-doors of the western façade, which open to the aisles. M. de Beaurepaire has also demonstrated, from a close study of the Chapterhouse accounts, that when Richard de Malpalu was dean in 1200, one Jean d'Andeli is spoken of as "Cementario, tunc magistro fabrice ecclesiae rothomagensis." He was also a relation of one of the canons. The Chronique du Bec gives the credit of initiating the design to Ingelramus, or Enguerrand, from 1200 to 1214; but this does not contradict the possibility of partners in the work, and that the choir at any rate was done before the Norman influence was much affected by the Ile de France, may be seen at once in the fourteen tall and strong round pillars with their simple capitals and massive round arches, which produce a very fine effect of pure solidity amongst the lighter pointed work surrounding them. After Enguerrand came "Durand le Machon," who dwelt in the same house that Jean d'Andeli had held on lease, and after him, again, the name of Gautier de St. Hilaire occurs before that of Jean Davi towards the end of the thirteenth century.
