The Story of Rouen

by Theodore Andrea Cook

From the earliest hour at the breaking of the dawn of Ascension Day, the whole of Rouen was thinking and talking of nothing else except the prisoner, and in every quarter of the city the interest in him took a different form. All the countryside of Vexin and of Caux had trooped into the town with women and children in their Sunday best. From the attic windows of the Rue de l'Épicerie girls in flapping white head-dresses leant across the road and screamed their good fortune to the neighbours opposite; for these were some of the best places to see the ceremony, and in 1504 the crowd who scrambled for them was so great that the roofs fell in. The open square itself was gradually filling up; the gay Cauchoises who were chambermaids at the Auberge de la Herche were doing a roaring trade; soldiers of the Cinquantaine in green velvet doublets were taking their morning draught at the Trois Coulombs, before each man shouldered his arquebus and went off to keep his guard; even the Crieurs des Trépassés had come out into the light, their strange black cloaks all sewn with silver skulls. At last eight o'clock struck, and there was a general movement towards the Parvis, for the luckiest in the front rows of the crowd could look through the Chapterhouse door and actually see the preliminary meeting of the canons about the choice of their prisoner. But the door was soon shut, and at last the crowd could only hear the solemn notes of the "Veni Creator" sounding from within, as the good ecclesiastics prayed for divine direction in their solemn office. At last a name was written down, sealed up and given to the Chaplain de la Confrèrie de St. Romain, who passed solemnly out with the fatal missive in his hand, and the canons at once proceeded to fill up the interval of waiting with a huge dinner.

Followed by a number of the citizens the chaplain took his way towards the Palais de Justice. There, too, ever since eight o'clock everyone had been extremely busy. Two by two the members of the High Court of Parliament in their scarlet robes had marched out of the Council Chamber, with their four state officials in violet preceding them, and a guard of the Cinquantaine before. In this chapel they all heard the "Messe du Prisonnier," and then sat down to the enormous repast called the "Festin du cochon," with which (on a smaller scale), every public body and every household in Rouen fortified themselves for the doings of that splendid day. By the end of dinner the chaplain and his cartel had arrived, and the whole courtyard of the Palais was ringed with crowds of people. Accompanied by his Prévôt and four other members of the Confrèrie St. Romain, the chaplain was escorted into the great hall, the name was solemnly read out, and the officials of the Parliament went to the particular gaol in which the prisoner happened to be kept. Bareheaded, with his irons still upon one leg, the man was brought quickly to the Conciergerie, that his name might be enregistered as a formal prisoner of the Palais; for all the legal bodies were particularly touchy about their own prerogatives. When a man could not walk he was carried, as was Antoine de Lespine in 1602, who had been wounded in a duel two days before, and could only be got to the Conciergerie in a clothes-basket.

After certain solemn preliminaries the prisoner was brought into the great hall, and while all the councillors stood up he knelt before the president to receive admonition for his past sins and pardon for the future. Still bareheaded, he was then led out by the "huissiers" of the court through the great open space in front, and as his foot touched the pavement of the street beyond, a signal set the great bell Georges d'Amboise ringing from the Cathedral tower. At the sound, every steeple in Rouen rocked with answering salutations. "Rura jam late venerantur omen." From every parish church for miles round the ringers, waiting for the "bourdon's" note, sent out a joyful peal in chorus, and every villager drank bumpers to the prisoner's health. Himself, a little dazed we may imagine with this sudden tumult in the streets and in his heart too at deliverance from death, he marched along with the arquebusiers beside him, through a cheering crowd towards the old Halles. There the authority of the law let go its grip, and he was handed over to the chaplain and the deputies of the Confrèrie St. Romain, who took him to an inner room. There he was given refreshment, his chains were struck off and wound round one arm, and he was dressed in fresh clothes.

Meanwhile, after the Cathedral choir had sung a solemn Te Deum, the great procession of the church had moved out of the Portail des Libraires, chanting in mighty unison "Christe quem sedes revocant paternæ," down the Rue St. Romain to the western gate of St. Maclou, where choir-boys met them bearing lighted candles and swinging incense. And the chaplain brought the prisoner out into the Place de la Haute Vieille Tour, and leading him up the right-hand steps of the Chapelle de la Fierte, presented him to the mass of people in front just before the procession arrived from the Cathedral. So he knelt bareheaded and kissed the holy shrine which two priests had borne up to its place; the Archbishop addressed him in the hearing of his fellow citizens, and before them all he made confession, receiving his absolution as he raised the shrine of St. Romain thrice by its bars upon his shoulders, while all the people cried "Noël! Noël!" Then a confrère de St. Romain put a garland of white flowers upon the prisoner's head, and holding one end of the shrine himself he gave the prisoner the other, and all men put themselves in order for the march back up the Rue de l'Épicerie to the Place de la Calende and so to the Parvis and the western gate of the Cathedral.

As the first notes of the "Felix Dies Mortalibus" were chanted by the priests, a hundred and twenty poor orphans moved forward, each carrying in one hand a wooden cross all wreathed with flowers and in the other a great loaf of bread. Behind them came the shrines of all the saints whose churches guarded Rouen, each with the Confrèrie over whose interests they watched; St. Blaise with his wool-merchants, St. Jean with the orange-sellers, St. Sebastien with the hatters, and many more; each marching confrère wreathed in flowers, and every shrine attended with its special banner and its priests and candles. These were followed by the archers of the Cinquantaine, and the banner of their great Dragon, who appeared again upon a lofty pole, swallowing a fish; by a band of sweet music and of singers chanting melodiously their "cantiques and motets"; by all the burgesses of Rouen walking decorously two by two; by the choir-boys of the Cathedral and two hundred of the clergy, the canons in violet, and the greater dignitaries in soutanes of red silk; by the officiating canon, and lastly by the Archbishop himself, blessing the people as he went along.

As the chanting died away, after a short interval came the beadle all in violet livery bearing the great "Gargouille" of the town, and followed by a rabble of laughing, screaming lads in motley, swinging bladders, and throwing flowers and cakes about the street—that note of ribaldry without which no such procession was complete—and then came suddenly a silence, for the most holy shrine of St. Romain passed by, borne by the prisoner and a priest. The last seven prisoners followed him, bareheaded and with torches. And then the laughter and the cheering broke out again as more burgesses tramped along with bouquets in their hands, and young girls all in white with garlands of flowers about their bosoms scattered blossoms on the bystanders, and more guards and soldiers closed up the procession and kept the crowd from breaking through its ranks.

By this time the first line had reached the Parvis, and as the voices of two priests singing on the summit of the Tour St. Romain floated down upon the people, all men passed in through the Portail de St. Romain of the Western Front, under the great shrine held crosswise, so that all who went beneath received the blessed influence. When everyone had entered, and the shrine was once more on the High Altar, the Grand Mass was sung, and the prisoner was once more publicly exhorted by the Archbishop, before he was taken away again by the Confrèrie St. Romain to a great feast in the Master's House which was the real celebration of his return to freedom.

The life of a sixteenth-century French town has often been described before, but I am particularly fortunate in being able to sketch you something of what went on in Rouen, not merely with the background of Lelieur's drawing, but even with the sound of the music which was heard in her streets; and, if I mistake not, the one is as unknown to English readers as the other. It has been said that Guillaume le Franc, a musician of Rouen, actually composed the tune known as the "Old Hundredth," originally set to the 134th Psalm in the Geneva Psalter, and used by English Protestants for the 100th about 1562. It was Händel's opinion that Luther composed it, and to Claude Goudimel, who was assassinated in the St. Bartholomew of Lyons, the honour has also been attributed; but local patriotism insists upon le Franc, and after reading the specimen of local musical talent I shall give you, I believe you will be readier to allow that Guillaume le Franc may have done what his fellow-citizens believe.