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Title: The Story of Chartres
Author: Headlam, Cecil
Language: English
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_The Story of Chartres_
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: The Rue du Bourg]
_The Story of_ CHARTRES
_by Cecil Headlam_
_Illustrated by Herbert Railton_
[Illustration]
_London: J. M. Dent & Co._
_Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street_
_Covent Garden, W.C._ 1902
‘Quae qui non vidit jam similia non videbit, non solum ibi, sed in
totá Francia.’
‘La vile esteit mult bone, de grande antiquité,
Iglise i aveit bele, de grant anctorité;
De la sainte Virge Marie mère de Dé
I esteit la kemise tenue en grant chierté.’
ROBERT WACE (_Roman du Rou_).
‘The most wonderful thing in France.’
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
‘Notre-dame de Chartres! A world to explore, as
if one explored the entire Middle Ages.’
WALTER PATER.
TO
MY FRIEND
GEORGE MONTAGU
IN MEMORY OF DAYS
IN THE
OLD WORLD AND THE NEW
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
_Druids and Romans: The Crypt_ 1
CHAPTER II
_Saints and Barbarians_ 31
CHAPTER III
_Theobald-the-Trickster and Fulbert the Bishop_ 51
CHAPTER IV
_S. Ives and the Crusades_ 80
CHAPTER V
_The Cathedral and Its Builders_ 109
CHAPTER VI
_Mediæval Glass and Mediæval Guilds_ 150
CHAPTER VII
_The Cathedral_ 182
CHAPTER VIII
_The Birth of the Bourgeoisie and the English
Occupation_ 231
CHAPTER IX
_The Siege and the Breach_, 1568 263
CHAPTER X
_Mathurin Régnier and the Renaissance at
Chartres_ 285
CHAPTER XI
_The Coronation of Henri Quatre_ 302
CHAPTER XII
_The Revolution--S. Père_ 322
CHAPTER XIII
_The Prussians at Chartres_ 345
CHAPTER XIV
_Itinerary and Expeditions_ 352
_Index_ 355
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_The Cathedral from the Rue du Bourg (photogravure)_ _Frontispiece_
_The House of the Salmon (vignette)_ 1
_Tetre de S. Nicholas_ 9
_S. Modesta, South Porch (from a photograph
by C. Blin, Chartres)_ 18
_Gargoyle on South Porch_ 32
_Cathedral: South Transept_ 55
_Fulbert and His Church_ 67
_L’Étape-au-Vin_ 81
_Street Entrance to Old Hôtel de Ville_ 104
_The Spires of Chartres_ 111
_L’Âne qui vielle_ 125
_The Angel Dial_ 126
_Tympanum of the Royal Porch (from a photograph
by C. Blin, Chartres)_ 133
_Pilaster of the Royal Porch_ 136
_Pilaster of the Royal Porch_ 138
_Washing-place on the River Eure_ _facing_ 168
_Flying Buttresses of the Nave (from a photograph
by C. Blin, Chartres)_ 189
_Ambulatory, Chartres Cathedral_ _facing_ 203
_Interior North Porch_ _facing_ 221
_S. George from the South Porch (from a photograph
by C. Blin, Chartres)_ 226
_Thirteenth Century Gable of Old Hôtel de Ville_ 232
_Courtyard in the Old Hôtel de Ville_ 239
_Porte Guillaume_ 245
_Chartres in_ 1500 (_from an old engraving)_ 259
_Arms of the Town_ 262
_Queen Bertha’s Tower_ 266
_Old Dormer Window from Maison du Saumon_ 268
_Chartres Besieged by M. le Prince de Condé,
March 1568_ 275
_Tower of S. André_ 283
_Courtyard, Maison du Médecin_ 287
_Renaissance Oriel, Rue de la Corroierie_ 297
_Place de l’Hôtel de Ville_ 319
_Rue des Béguines_ 331
_Old Houses in the Rue S. Même_ 347
_Plan of Chartres_ _facing_ 354
CHARTRES is actually
86 kilometres from Paris.
71 “ from Orléans.
35 “ from Dreux.
An excellent train, leaving the Gare S. Lazare at mid-day, runs through
from Paris in one hour and a half. A good _déjeuner_ is served in the
train on starting. Returning from Chartres, most of the trains run into
the Montparnasse Station, south of the river and twenty minutes’ drive
from the Place de l’Opéra.
The road is straight and level and a favourite one with automobilists.
Chartres may also, of course, be approached from Normandy _viâ_ Rouen,
Évreux, Dreux, and, if you include Amiens to the North-west, and Caen
(whence you will visit Bayeux, Lisieux, and Falaise) to the North-east,
Chartres will be found to provide the perfect finish to a delightful and
instructive, and also economical, tour.
An itinerary for those who have but a short time to spare at Chartres is
suggested on page 352.
Hotels--Grand Monarque (Automobile Club de France); Duc de Chartres;
France.
[Illustration]
The Story of CHARTRES
CHAPTER I
_Druids and Romans: The Crypt_
Built half on the slope and half on the strath in a depression of
calcareous soil, Chartres lies along the banks of the gliding Eure,
breaking the long levels of La Beauce.
La Beauce, indeed, is still the waterless, shadeless, woodless plain
that the Bishop of Poitiers described in the sixth century, but it is
now also one immense field of corn in which man has planted a few
scattered farms and pleasure houses.[1] It is the granary of France.
_Le blé c’est la Beauce et la Beauce c’est Chartres._[2]
And on every side of it, spread out in the summer time like a
many-coloured carpet under the great dome of the sky, stretch the
cornfields, cut by the black lines of the railway, or by the straight,
disheartening lengths of roads which run beyond the distant horizon of
monotonous level, to Dreux, to Orléans, to Paris. The twin spires of
Chartres are the only landmark. The sole beauty in this country must be
found in its fecundity; in the fields of standing corn, which the
passing breezes curve into travelling waves, and in the endless
perspective of sameness which inspires the same emotions of mingled
pleasure and sadness as the sight of the vast and melancholy ocean. And,
like a ship for ever a-sail in the distance, everywhere the great Church
of Chartres is visible, with the passing light or shadow upon its grey,
weather-beaten surfaces, or, as it seemed to Lowell:--
‘Silent and grey as forest-leaguered cliff
Left inland by the ocean’s slow retreat.’
Chartres is no place for an Atheist.[3] The exclamation of Napoleon on
first entering the Cathedral of Notre-Dame is the keynote and summary of
the town. For from the earliest dawn of its history down to the present
day Chartres has preserved, almost unbroken, the tradition of a
religious centre. Other notes have indeed been struck here and died away
in the distance of ages. There have been discords in the score of her
worldly history. The armies of Cæsar and of Hastings have come and gone;
the armies of England, of France, of Germany, have marched through the
narrow, tortuous streets of this ancient city and left scarce a trace
behind. Mediævalism with all its charm and all its vileness has
disappeared before the excesses of that Revolution which sowed the seed
of modern French civilisation. The thick forests which were once the
glory of the Druids have vanished and given place to innumerable acres
of tillage, whilst the sound of the woodman’s axe has been replaced by
the swish of the scythe and the hum of the threshing machine. But
through all these changes Chartres has remained true to her heritage.
She has been always the first town of Our Lady, the chosen citadel of
the Virgin. The friars of the Middle Ages, who obtained the right of
coining money, stamped on their coins the legend _Prima Sedes Francie_,
and Charles-le-Chauve, when he presented to the town the Veil of the
Blessed Mary, chose the Church of Chartres as the earliest and most
august sanctuary of the cult of the Virgin. And even before the
Christian era it was so. For, by a strange coincidence, in which there
has been found something more than a coincidence, or nothing more than a
reflection of Isis worship, or, again, merely a monkish invention, but
by a strange coincidence, at any rate, the grotto, above which, in after
years, the mediæval masons were to rear the superb superstructure of
their Cathedral, was dedicated by the ancient Druids: ‘To the Virgin
who shall bear a son’--_Virgini Parituræ_.--There, upon the very spot in
the dim vast crypt which is to-day the most famous and the most
frequented shrine in the world, they worshipped an image which was the
forerunner of the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.
Were they moved by some echo of those most ancient Eastern rites which
include the cult of a virgin mother and child, or had they heard, these
wise and inscrutable priests, some echo of Isaiah’s prophecy: _A virgin
shall conceive and bear a son?_ Possibly. At any rate, we know that a
hundred years before the coming of Christ the Messianic idea had grown
familiar to the Gentile world. The works of Greek and Roman writers are
eloquent of this fact. Plato, in a passage which seems to echo the very
words of Scripture, had long ago foretold what would be the fate of the
perfectly just man upon earth; and Vergil, voicing the prevailing belief
that the world’s great age was soon to begin anew, and referring to an
oracle of the Sybil, prayed for the speedy coming of the promised
Saviour in language strikingly like that in which the prophets of the
Old Testament speak of the Messiah. The Magi, the wise men and watchful
astrologers of the East, waited impatiently for the coming of God upon
earth, till they beheld a new star which rose over Bethlehem and
announced His Nativity. And these ancient Druids also gave expression to
the yearning of all Creation. _Virgini Parituræ_--To the Virgin who
shall bear a son, they dedicated a wooden statue in the mysterious
sanctuary hidden in the depths of their sacred forest, beneath the shade
of which was the meeting-place of the Carnutes.
Thus it comes about that with the dawn of history we see, through the
mist of the ages as it were, a solemn procession winding amongst the
trees of the primeval forest.
At the head are two white bulls and the sacrificial priests, and in
their train follow bards and novices chanting anthems, and a herald clad
in white. The Druids follow. One of them is carrying bread, another a
vase full of water, the third an ivory hand, the emblem of Justice. The
high priest closes the procession, and about him cluster the other
priests of the Oak and the chiefs of the local tribes. For the oak,
Pliny tells us in his _Natural History_, is the Druid’s sacred tree, and
the mistletoe that grows thereon they regard as sent from Heaven and as
the sign of a tree chosen by God. This golden bough of mistletoe, which
they call All-Heal, the high priest is now about to cull from the chosen
oak with his golden hook. As it falls, the sacred plant is caught
beneath in a white mantle; the victims are slain, and the mistletoe is
distributed whilst God is besought to prosper His gift to them unto whom
He has vouchsafed it.
Such rites, so it may appear to the least imaginative of us as we behold
to-day the pilgrims crowding to the shrine of Our Lady, or the long
processions of priests and choristers winding their way from the
sculptured portals of the Cathedral to visit the Abbey of S. Père, or
the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, or through the crypt to the
shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre,[4] are curiously prophetic of the
history of the place. So thinking, we shall look at the western towers
and note, like Gaston Latour, the bigness of the actual stones of the
masonry, contrary to the usual Gothic manner, as if in reminiscence of
those old Druidic piles amid which the Virgin of Chartres had been
adored, long before the birth of Christ, by a mystic race, possessed of
some prophetic sense of the grace in store for them.
Who then were these Druids and who the Carnutes? From the Carnutes the
modern name of this their town is derived, and philologists assure us
that the root of the name is to be found in the word for oak, which, in
Celtic, bears some resemblance to the Latin _quercus_. Similarly Évreux
is derived from the word _ebvre_ = forest. All Central Gaul in those
days was covered with oak forests as with a garment. Hence, it is
suggested, the name of Carnutes was applied as a generic term to the
dwellers in those forests, and was specialised as the title of the
Chartrains _par excellence_ on account of the choice of this spot by the
Druids for their deliberations and their sacrifices. It may be so.
Philology is one of the most amusing diversions. It is quite as
intellectual as most other parlour games, and often much more
entertaining. Human as heraldry and more profitable than pedigree
hunting it certainly is, but somehow it is less convincing. Therefore if
anyone prefer to derive this word Carnutes from _cairn_--the stone which
formed the Druidical altar and equally with oaks seems to have played an
important part in their ceremonies, he may be as much right as anybody
else.
The condition of the Gauls at the time of the Roman conquest has been
described by their conqueror. Cæsar in his _Commentaries_ states that
the Gauls were divided into three classes--priests, nobles and nobodies.
The priests, who enjoyed complete immunity from military service,
insisted on oral tradition in the teaching of their tenets. Their object
in so doing, as Cæsar conjectured, was to prevent the memory from being
weakened and their doctrines from being vulgarised; but the result has
been that, apart from the few facts I shall mention and a vast
superstructure of theory and legend which has been built upon them, they
have faded from the ken of mankind. Chief among their tenets Cæsar
mentions the belief in the immortality and the transmigration of the
soul. The Druids were properly the highest of three orders of
priests--Bards, Soothsayers and Druids, the latter being philosophers
who, to the natural science studied by the soothsayers, added the study
of ethics. There would seem to have been much of the Pythagorean and
something also of the Brahman in these philosophers, whose teaching was
once expounded by the Arch-Druid Divitiacus, in Rome, to the sympathetic
ears of Marcus Tullius Cicero and his brother Quintus.
That teaching, alas! has not been enshrined in Cicero’s sonorous page,
but Lucan in his _Pharsalia_ corroborates Cæsar:--
‘The Druids now, while arms are heard no more,
Old mysteries and barbarous rites restore:
A tribe who singular religion love,
And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove.
If dying mortals’ doom they sing aright
No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night,
No parting souls to grisly Pluto go,
Nor seek the dreary silent shades below:
But forth they fly immortal in their kind
And other bodies in new worlds they find.
Thus life forever runs its endless race,
And like a line death but divides the space.
A stop which can but for a moment last,
A point between the future and the past.
Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies
Who that worst fear, the fear of death, despise!’
In another passage the same poet describes in dark colours the gloomy
rites of the barbarous priests; their rude, misshapen images, and the
scene of their ritual in the sacred wood, smeared with human blood.
But of their ritual we really know nothing, apart from the fact of
human sacrifices, which, in extreme cases, they justified by the dogma
that ‘unless for the life of a man man’s life be rendered the wrath of
the immortal gods cannot be appeased,’ and excepting their veneration
for the mistletoe.[5]
The power of this priesthood was not confined to things spiritual. The
Druids acted as a court of public arbitration, and the most important
private suits, especially cases of murder and homicide, were submitted
to their judgment. Now Britain was the headquarters of Druidism, but
once a year, it is recorded by Cæsar, a general assembly of the order
was held within the territories of the Carnutes, and there the sacred
rites were celebrated, the young priests, after a prolonged course of
training, initiated, and the Arch-Druid annually elected. It is probable
that these ceremonies took place at Chartres--although it is possible
that the claim of Dreux, of Senantes, of Alluyes, or of other
neighbouring places which can boast Druidical remains, may be as well
grounded.
But, at least, it is evident that the _Pays Chartrain_ was a stronghold
of priests rather than of fighters, and, perhaps, it was for this reason
that in the early years of the Gallic War, the Carnutes, who among the
Celtic Gauls were subject to the Remi (Reims), took but little part in
the active resistance to Cæsar’s arms. They had, in fact, welcomed
rather than resisted the Proconsul, regarding him as their champion and
liberator from the invasion of the Helvetii and the threatened dominion
of the Germans. But when he began to meddle with their institutions they
grew restive, and determined to throw off the Roman yoke. For, before
[Illustration]
Cæsar’s time, there had been, apparently, a general movement against
monarchical government throughout Gaul, with the result that most of the
tribes were free, but with a constitution decidedly aristocratical or
theocratic. Thus at Chartres--_Autricum_ was its Latin name--fifty years
before the coming of the Romans, Priscus had been reigning.
A pious legend recounts that, during the lifetime of this King the son
of one of the great chieftains was drawn lifeless from a deep well into
which he had fallen. The father took in his arms the body of his child,
already cold in death, mounted his charger, and, riding at a gallop for
twenty leagues, approached the altar of the Virgin, whom the Druids
worshipped, and laid the boy at her feet. Then life came back to the
lad, he opened his eyes and smiled at the sacred statue. King Priscus,
the legend adds, on hearing of this miracle, summoned a great assembly
of priests and nobles, and appointed the Lady of Miracles his heiress
and the Queen of his realms.
Thus legend. In fact we know that after the days of Priscus monarchy no
longer obtained among the Carnutes.
But there was a certain Tasgetius, a descendant of the old royal house
of the Carnutes. As a reward for his services to the Romans Cæsar
restored him to his hereditary throne. The theocracy felt itself
attacked; the Druids roused the republican spirit of the people. The
doubtful success of Cæsar’s second expedition to Britain seemed to offer
a good opportunity for successful revolt. The people rose and
assassinated their King, who was also the Roman nominee. Cæsar
immediately ordered a legion under Lucius Plancus to advance upon
Chartres, punish the conspirators, and take up its winter quarters
there.
When the railway was being constructed in 1846, it was necessary to
remove a vast mound which lay to the west of the town between the Portes
des Épars and Porte Chastelet. Many Roman, Gallic and Carlovingian
coins[6] were found in it, and it is supposed that this mound
represented in part the material dug out when the foundations of the
crypt and of the Cathedral were sunk, and in part the remains of the
camp of Plancus.
The threatening aspect of affairs in Gaul called for prompt action on
the part of Cæsar. Before the end of the winter (53 B.C.) he made a dash
into the country of the Nervii, and then in the early spring held his
usual Council of Gaul, probably at Amiens. The Carnutes, Senones and
Treveri, omitted to send their representatives. Cæsar took this as a
declaration of war. He immediately broke up the Council and ordered it
to meet again at Paris, which was a convenient point for operating
against the Senones at Sens, and thereafter against their neighbours the
Carnutes at Chartres. The brilliant rapidity of his movements terrified
these tribes. Acco, the leader of the conspiracy, summoned his
supporters to the towns. But whilst they were endeavouring to obey the
summons, news came that the Romans were already in their midst. Through
the Ædui and Remi, who acted as mediators, the Carnutes and Senones sent
to make submission and beg for pardon. Cæsar granted it for the time,
and then devoted his energies to the destruction of Ambiorix, and the
chastisement of the Treveri and the tribes on the Rhine.
But it was only a short respite, not pardon, that they were granted.
Returning at the end of the year from his hunt for Ambiorix and taking
his revenge upon the Eburones, Cæsar brought his army back to Reims and
then convened the Council of Gaul. An inquiry was held into the
conspiracy among the Senones and Carnutes. Acco was condemned to suffer
death after the cruel old fashion of the Romans. He was stripped, his
neck was thrust into a fork, and he was then flogged to death. But the
flames of rebellion thus rudely repressed were not destroyed. They broke
out again the same winter with redoubled fury when the absence of Cæsar
in Italy afforded an opportunity. The murder of Clodius and the reported
anarchy at Rome fanned into a flame the slumbering embers of discontent.
The death of Acco was discussed by the Gallic chieftains when they held
their councils in their secret woodland retreats, perhaps, indeed, at
Chartres itself, and the bitterness of the Roman yoke began to seem
intolerable. To regain their lost liberty all were eager for a general
revolt. It was decided to begin at once in order to cut Cæsar off from
his army in Gaul. When the question rose as to who should incur the
danger of leading the way, the Carnutes undertook this duty. They first
exacted a solemn pledge of support from their countrymen by the Gallic
custom of mingling their standards, then, on the appointed day, under
the leadership of Gutruatus and Conconnetodumnus, they gave the signal
for the great revolt by murdering every Roman citizen they could find in
their chief trading town on the Loire, Orléans. With the terrible
struggle that ensued between the brilliant energy of Cæsar and the noble
patriotism of Vercingetorix we are not here concerned. Suffice it to say
that among his first acts of revenge Cæsar sacked and burned Orléans,
the town of the Carnutes. Nothing daunted, the Carnutes furnished 12,000
men to the army raised to deliver Vercingetorix, who was holding Alise
with desperate valour. On the fall of that town the Carnutes, in
obedience to the advice of their leader, Gutruatus, entered into yet
another league for their common deliverance from the yoke of their
oppressor. They joined the Bituriges and other peoples of Gaul, but when
Cæsar himself marched against them with his sixth and seventh legion
they fled with their cattle into the woods. Yet, even in the secret
retreats of their mighty forests, they were not safe from the hand of
the Roman general. They were compelled to submit and to pass under the
yoke, and their chief, Gutruatus, was beaten with rods until he died.
Thus the country of the Chartrains was absorbed into the Roman Empire,
and it remained under the domination of Rome, reaping the fruits of that
strong administration in the form of roads and good order and the
minimum of oppression, until the coming, at the end of the fifth
century, of Clovis, the Frankish hero.
Meanwhile, when Augustus gave laws to the conquests of Cæsar, he
introduced a division of Gaul equally adapted to the progress of the
legions, to the course of the rivers and to the principal national
distinctions, which had comprehended above a hundred independent states.
The Province in which Chartres (Autricum) now found itself embraced the
country between the Loire and the Seine, and was styled Celtic Gaul, or,
as it soon came to be known, Gallia Lugdunensis, borrowing its name from
the celebrated colony of Lugdunum or Lyons. The principal towns of this
Province were still Chartres, Dreux, and, above all, Orléans, to which
the Emperor Aurelian was later on to give his name when he separated it
from the territory of the Carnutes, and raised it to the rank of a city.
For the rest, there were a great number of villages and strongholds even
in Cæsar’s day scattered about in the clearings of the forest. These
would increase in size and importance as the great Roman roads running
from Dieppe to Dreux, from Rouen to Paris, and from Paris to Autun, were
built, and as the country grew more settled. For Druidism, which had
long shown itself a disturbing influence and an irreconcilable factor,
was at length proscribed by Tiberius and Claudius, and thereafter, Dion
Cassius assures us, the Loire could be navigated in as much security as
the Po or Rhone. ‘The blue waters of the fair-haired Carnutan’ grew
familiar, not only to the Roman merchant and official, but also to the
Roman poet and traveller.[7]
But if the legend of the Druidical Virgin be indeed true, it would
appear that the Druids, equally with the Romans, had done something to
prepare the soil for the seed of Christianity. As to the first sowers of
that seed there is some dispute, and also as to the first sowing, which
some date from the first century, others from the third.
Whether Celtic Gaul was evangelised in the days of the Apostles or not,
it is at least historically certain that as early as the middle of the
second century the country was sufficiently provided with churches to
form the principle theatre of the great persecution under Marcus
Aurelius. And as Gaul was notoriously evangelised only piecemeal and
slowly, and not by a sudden outburst of religious fervour, it is quite
possible that the foundation of the Church of Chartres dates back from
the first century. If this is so, it accords well with local traditions
drawn from various sources, but agreeing in substance. For it is said[8]
that S. Peter sent forth S. Savinian, S. Potentian and S. Albin to
preach the Gospel to the Gallic nation. In the course of their mission
they came to Sens and converted many virtuous heathen, amongst whom
were Sérotin and Eodald. To these two, together with Potentian and
Altin, Savinian, warned by a mysterious vision, gave this charge:--‘Take
unto you,’ he said, ‘the shield of an unconquerable faith; go through
the other towns of Gaul and banish all false superstition by preaching
everywhere the truth of the Gospel.’ Leaving him, therefore, to organise
the church at Sens, they set forth to Orléans, and thence, coming down
that Roman road which is still known as the _Chemin de César_, they
arrived at Chartres. There, perhaps, they found the altar of the Druids
and the statue to the Virgin who should bear the Unknown God. Him
declared they unto the people. As the word of the missionaries was
supported by the miracles they wrought, and the saintly lives they led,
a great part of the inhabitants believed on Christ. ‘When they saw this,
the holy men of God consecrated a church dedicated to the glory of Mary,
Mother of God, and _built just within the walls of the town_.’
The northern walls of Chartres, under the Romans, ran along the street
_du Cheval Blanc_, where now the houses of the cloister stand. The site
of the Church of S. Potentian may therefore be identified, as on other
grounds we naturally should identify it, with that of the Chapel of
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre in the crypt of the Cathedral. To that
impressive underchurch we will pay a visit at the end of this chapter,
and endeavour to describe the various stages through which it has
passed. But first we will trace the tragic history of these Christian
pioneers.
The rapid advance of Christianity soon brought it into conflict with the
Roman administration. Domitian decided to check it when it was observed
to be spreading among the subject races in opposition to the State
religion. It became the duty of governors in the Provinces to treat the
refusal to worship the Emperor’s image as an act of sacrilege. There was
a governor, Quirinus by name, who proceeded to execute his duty with
truly Roman thoroughness and impartiality. He summoned the missionaries
of what Tacitus called ‘that pernicious religion’ to his presence and
demanded why they had brought hither the ignominy of their absurd
doctrine. They answered him boldly, and bade him cease from the worship
of idols and embrace the true faith. But Quirinus hardened his heart. He
scourged and threw into prison three men ‘hated for their abominations,
and known to the vulgar as Christians’; notorious, according to the
great Roman historian, ‘for their hatred of the human race.’ Such cases
of persecution as this, it should be remembered, were but occasional
exceptions to the general tolerance of Roman administration. The
Christians were punished, according to the Roman view, for their
inflexible obstinacy, their unsocial habits and indiscreet enthusiasm,
rather than for the mere holding of their peculiar religious notions.
In the present instance crowds of believers collected about the doors of
the prison into which the martyrs had been thrown, and by their
continual prayers for the deliverance of their teachers roused Quirinus
to savage action. He surrounded them with his soldiers when they were
met together to pray and sing hymns to the Lord, and falling upon them
suddenly put them to the sword. Amongst those who had been foremost in
the faith was a young girl by name Modesta, whom popular tradition
asserts to have been the daughter of Quirinus himself. She, it is said,
was seized upon this occasion and brought before her father. His fury
was increased to madness when he learned that she, his only daughter,
had joined the sect and had been baptized. She must abjure, he declared,
or she must die.
‘Strike,’ she exclaimed, ‘I am a Christian!’[9] She was brutally
tortured, and her body was then thrown along with the bodies of the
other martyrs into a deep well, ‘which was situated within the Church of
the Mother of God.’
‘The sober discretion of the present age,’ wrote Gibbon, ‘will more
readily censure than admire, but can more easily admire than imitate the
fervour of the first Christians who, according to the lively expression
of Sulpicius Severus, desired martyrdom with more eagerness than his own
contemporaries solicited a bishopric.’
[Illustration: S. MODESTA (SOUTH PORCH)]
The blood of martyrs became here, as elsewhere, the seed of the Church.
Quirinus was struck down by sudden death in the midst of his
persecutions. His persecutions had only increased the number of the
faithful. S. Aventin became the first Bishop of Chartres, and, profiting
by the calm which followed Quirinus’s death, rebuilt above the ancient
altar of the Druids the church which Potentian had consecrated and the
Roman governor destroyed. This building may well have lasted down to the
final persecution of the Christians under Diocletian. For in the
meantime the indifference of some princes and the indulgence of others
permitted the Christians to enjoy though not perhaps a legal yet an
actual and public toleration of their religion.
The courage and constancy of these first Christians were not forgotten.
The well down which their corpses were thrown came to be known as the
_Lieu-Fort_,[10] and later as the _Puits des Saints Forts_, in memory of
them.
LE PUITS DES SAINTS FORTS.
It is in connection with this well that one of the most beautiful of the
legends of Chartres is told.
‘A ceremony is still observed in the Cathedral’ (wrote Sébastien
Rouillard) ‘which surprises many people. The reason of it deserves to be
known. When the bishop officiating chants the _Pax Vobis_ or a priest
the _Dominus Vobiscum_, whether at Mass, Vespers or Matins, the choir
does not respond in full, but only the nearest priest in a low voice.
Some say that this is a perpetual memorial of the first Christian
martyrs, in accordance with the saying of the venerable Fulbert in his
third epistle, that the divine service which in times of liberty is
celebrated with joy and gladness becometh mute during the days of
tyranny and oppression. Others say that the custom arose when the crowds
of pilgrims and worshippers in the Cathedral were so large and the
resulting noise so great that those who were in the choir and at the
altar could not easily hear each other so as to sing the responses.’
But there is another explanation. When Godfrey, founder of the Abbey of
Josaphat, was Bishop of Chartres (1116), the usual devout and solemn
procession to the grottoes and holy places was being made on the eve of
All Saints.
Now among the choristers who bore candles in their hands, chanting in
this procession, was one beautiful lad, blue-eyed and golden-haired, the
only son of his mother, and she was a widow. It was the one joy of her
life to listen to the flute-like notes of his glorious treble, and in
spirit to join in those praises of the Most High to which her son gave
heartfelt, wonderful utterance. And on this occasion she, as ever, was
among the crowd of worshippers, hearing only--a mother’s ear is so fond
and so fine--amidst the whole chorus of those soaring voices the voice
of her beloved son. Suddenly, though the chant had not ceased, there
was, for her, silence. She listened and listened in vain for the voice
of her boy. Mad with anxiety, she pushed her way through the crowd, only
to find a group of grieving priests standing round the Well of the
Constant Saints. The boy, all unheeding in the ecstasy of his song, had
stepped over the dim unguarded edge and fallen into the fathomless
depths.
For days distraught the mother haunted the holy grottoes, ever praying
and waiting for her son to be given back to her. At last, on the octave
of the feast, the solemn procession wound its way once more through the
crypt. The mother listened, dazed with grief, to the chant as it came.
But for her there was no music in the sweet harmonies that were sung.
Then suddenly there struck upon her astonished ear the silver notes of
that well-known voice, how musical! She raised her eyes, half in hope
and half in fear, and beheld, walking in his accustomed place and
carrying in his hand a golden candlestick, her lost darling. And his
face as he sang was as it had been the face of an angel.
They asked the boy what had happened to him at the bottom of the well,
and he told them that he had heard the angels rejoicing and singing in
response to the prayers that were being offered in the Church of
Chartres. And since that day the choir does not make response aloud to
the _Pax Vobis_. For so men hope that they may hear the angels singing.
That this holy well of the martyrs was near the spot where is now the
altar of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre we are assured by the repeated
testimony of old writers. Numerous efforts were made during the
nineteenth century to locate it, and made in vain. But in the year 1901
it was at last discovered behind the wall of that altar. Let us take the
present opportunity in our history then to visit the crypt,[11] to
behold the first beginnings of the Cathedral, the statue of
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre and the new-found ancient well of the martyrs.
‘The crypt,’ says Raoul Boutrais, in his Latin poem in praise of
Chartres (1624), ‘lies darkling in a hollow of the earth, resting on
many an arch, as long and as wide as is the whole church above it. A dim
religious light struggles through the deep-set windows. Enter and behold
a sacred altar. Your being is filled with a mysterious awe as you
descend. Then by the light of a thousand torches the sacred place
becomes visible. The smoke of fragrant incense rises from the altar.
Priests move to and fro performing their sacred office before the image
of the Virgin. Many offerings of gold and silver, in token of granted
prayers, hang at the shrines.
‘We pass into recesses dug deep within the earth, and are conscious of a
strange emotion. Here was the first origin of the church, when the early
Christians sang their hymns in these dark places to escape the cruel
punishments of the Prefect Quirinus, and yet undaunted by the cross, the
sword, the fire of his mad rage. He snatched this heroic band from their
Christ, and flung their mangled bodies into the deeps of a well. Still
may be seen the well, fenced about that none may fall therein; for, ’tis
said, that some have fallen. And it was not only to sing their hymns
that the Christians assembled here, but here they passed their lives for
fear of persecution. Therefore in their hiding they dug a well that they
might have to drink.’
It is evident from this and other passages that the famous well was in
existence in the first half of the seventeenth century; but shortly
afterwards ‘it was covered up by reason of the vapours with which it
filled these subterranean places.’[12] It was covered up, and the site
of it deliberately falsified when the sanctuary of the Virgin was
decorated and the transverse wall between the real site of the well and
the altar was built. After the alterations which were then made were
completed (1671), the public was informed that the well was now under
the step of the new altar, so that those who knelt there, and had a
particular devotion to the Martyrs’ Well, appeared to be rendering
homage to the Virgin. The statements of the historians to the effect
that the well was behind the altar were explained away by the very canon
who had superintended the filling up of the well, for he made the
misleading assertion that the altar itself had been moved back in the
course of the alterations. He was believed. When in the nineteenth
century efforts were made again and again to find this well, they were
always made on the assumption that the altar had been so moved. The
cynical precept which warns us to be on our guard against the occasional
untrustworthiness of those who never lie was forgotten. It was not till
M. René Merlet’s pamphlet, _L’Ancienne Chapelle de
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre_, appeared in 1900 that investigations, based
on historical research and archæological acumen, began to be prosecuted,
and were before long crowned with success. Boutrais’s words are now once
more true, and ‘the well may still be seen’ behind the altar of the
Virgin.
CRYPT: NOTRE-DAME-DE-SOUS-TERRE.
The oldest portions of the crypt, and therefore of the Cathedral, that
remain to us are to be found in the Martyrium or Chapel of S. Lubin. The
crypt, it must be understood, was not in origin a crypt or a martyrium
or a meeting-house of prayer dug beneath the level of the soil, but a
tiny church set on the crest of the hill, and raised above the surface
of the earth. It only became a crypt properly so-called when it had been
covered up and the surrounding soil raised by the _débris_ and deposits
of succeeding years; so that when the new church was built it was
erected naturally upon the top of the old. The spade of the archæologist
has proved that the soil of a mediæval European town was raised by the
accumulation of dust and rubble as much as one or two feet per century.
And at Chartres excavations have revealed Gallo-Roman sub-structures at
a depth of some eighteen feet. When we reach the Martyrium or Chapel of
S. Lubin we shall find there a piece of the Gallo-Roman walls of the
fourth century. This probably is part of the apsidal wall of the church
of that date. As the church, with the vicissitudes of the town which we
have yet to recount, was alternately built and burnt, destroyed and
rebuilt, the crypt was developed until it is now the largest in France,
and next to that of S. Peter’s at Rome, and that of Canterbury, the
largest in the world. It consists of two lateral galleries which run
from the western towers under the aisles of the upper church, and form a
horse-shoe curve beneath the choir and sanctuary 366 feet long, and
seventeen to eighteen feet broad; of two transepts, seven apsidal
chapels, and the _martyrium_ which is under the choir of the upper
church.
The successive developments of the crypt may be summarised as follows:--
Against the fourth century apsidal wall, of which traces are found in
the martyrium, were built in 858 two large columns to support the new
choir above. At the same time the circular wall of the apse was pierced
with windows. In order to support the apse of the upper church other two
large isolated piers were built in 962, whilst the windows in the
circular apse were blocked by a second strengthening wall. The same year
saw the addition of a double transept at the commencement of the apse.
Fulbert, in 1020, developed these transepts by carrying them out
westwards almost to their present extent, and by so doing he left the
altar dedicated to the Virgin, though unmoved, no longer before a thick
wall, but stranded as it were in a corridor--a situation which aided,
and still aids, the progress of the pilgrims past the shrine. The great
bishop also extended the crypt by piercing the wall which closed the
transepts towards the east, and making the ambulatory out of which
opened the three large chapels with deep, round-headed windows (S.
Joseph, S. John the Baptist, and S. Anne). To support the vaulting of
this ambulatory a new wall was built round the martyrium.
In the twelfth century, when the two western towers were constructed,
Fulbert’s long galleries were extended and connected with them. The
windows were raised and enlarged with the exception of those which were
blinded by the porches of the upper church. Four smaller chapels, with
pointed windows, were inserted between the large apsidal chapels of
Fulbert, and these still exhibit traces of early thirteenth-century
painting. At the same period, the transepts being now prolonged, it was
found necessary to make two new flights of steps by which they might be
entered.
The beautiful doorway of the south staircase dates from this time.
Lastly, when the porches of the Cathedral were completed, the transepts
were connected therewith by means of vaulted passages, of which the one
on the north side is near the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, and
the other southern one was turned into the Chapel of S. Nicholas in
1681.
Entering the crypt by the south-eastern door, after noticing the windows
of its apsidal chapels, you descend a stone staircase, and by the dim
candlelight perceive on your left the long south gallery begun by
Fulbert in 1020, and extended in the following century right up to the
western tower.
You are now in the original south transept of the crypt, and much of the
masonry dates obviously from the tenth century. Turning to the left, the
first chapel on the left is now dedicated to S. Martin. It was not
originally a chapel, but in the twelfth century was used as an entrance
to the crypt. Altered in the seventeenth century, as the windows and
vaulting show, it was converted into a chapel in the nineteenth. It
contains a few fragments of the original choir screen of the Cathedral
destroyed by seventeenth-century vandals.
These fragments, which represent some scenes from the Birth of Our Lord,
are very beautiful. Above them, fixed to the wall, are some admirable
keystones of the vaulting, and two bas-reliefs with signs of the Zodiac,
which still retain some of their original thirteenth-century colouring.
Opposite the wooden nineteenth-century _grille_ is a stone from the
Church of S. Martin-le-Viandier, which was destroyed during the
Revolution. Upon this stone are represented S. Eustace hunting, and on
his knees before Christ, who appears to him between the horns of a stag;
S. Martin giving his cloak to a poor man; the Virgin and Child between
S. Louis and S. John.
Below is a fine early stoup from the Cathedral and, in the corner, the
sarcophagus of S. Calétric (_see_ p. 36). The date inscribed upon it has
been changed to suit the date of the translation and festival of this
saint, who was Bishop of Chartres, and died 557.
The next chapel on the left is that of S. Nicholas (recently restored by
M. Durand). We have already spoken of it. Opposite it is the Chapel of
S. Clement, where are some mural decorations of the twelfth century. The
figures, beginning from the right, are recognisable as those of S.
Nicholas, S. James, S. Giles, and of a King kneeling.
The wooden screen which here crosses the crypt was put up in 1687:
behind it on the left is a thirteenth-century piscina, above which is a
partly-obliterated twelfth-century fresco of the Nativity. Several
windows are blocked by the Cathedral porch; and the lowest and narrowest
of these is one of Fulbert’s original windows, which was not enlarged
like the rest in the twelfth century, because it was blocked at that
time by a porch erected in the eleventh century. At the end of the
gallery is a large monolithic font, intended for complete baptismal
immersion. It belongs to the eleventh century. The capitals of the four
columns which flank it are curious and noteworthy.
The plinths and abaci of the last bay of this gallery betray the fact
that it was added in the twelfth century, when the old south-western
tower (Clocher Vieux), with which a flight of steps connects it, was
built. The walls of this gallery, like that of the northern one, are
decorated with modern mural paintings illustrative of events in the
history of Chartres, or of the saints who have been connected with the
diocese. They are already in a bad state, and even at their best they
must always have displayed more science than art.
Turning now and retracing our steps we pass the staircase by which we
descended and make our way round the horse-shoe curve of the apse. On
our right we perceive the seven apsidal chapels, of which the first,
third, fifth and seventh are the Chapels of S. Mary Magdalene, S. Ives
(_see_ pp. 91 _ff._), S. Fulbert (_see_ pp. 69 _ff._), and the Sacristy.
They were added in 1194; whilst the second, fourth and sixth are the
Chapels of S. Anne, S. John the Baptist, and S. Joseph, and they date
from 1020. The window of the Chapel of S. Anne should be noted. S. Anne
is represented carrying the Blessed Mary. When we examine the upper
church we shall be struck by the importance of the position allotted to
S. Anne in glass and statuary--as, for instance, in the great window of
the north transept. The explanation is that Louis, Count of Chartres,
who died on the fourth Crusade, sent to the Chapter from Constantinople
the head of that saint.
Opposite the Sacristy is the entrance to the _Martyrium_ or Chapel of S.
Lubin (_see_ p. 36), which is immediately under the sanctuary. Of this
chapel enough has been or will be said.[13] At this point it will
suffice to call attention to the architectural features which serve to
illustrate its history. First, the fact that you descend into it by a
modern entrance, which has replaced the old staircase and doorway; and
secondly, the depth of the base of the round column on the right,
indicating the original level of the primitive church floor; thirdly,
the hiding place for the treasure; next, the fourth-century wall, with
its layers of thin horizontal Roman bricks; and lastly, the circular
wall and the ninth and tenth-century piers. The Gallo-Roman wall on the
west is probably a portion of the old _enceinte_ of the town.
Going westwards on leaving the martyrium, we pass a staircase on our
right and the Puits des Saints Forts on the left, behind the wall of the
altar of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre. When this wall was built and the well
concealed in the seventeenth century, the circular passage by which the
chapel could be approached had also to be made, and the masonry was so
treated as to suggest the natural rocks of the old Druidical ‘grotto.’
The chapel is at the end of the northern gallery (eleventh and twelfth
century), which runs from the base of the _Clocher Neuf_. It is lit by
two long rows of pendant lamps. Here, then, is that mysterious shrine
which Boutrais has so well described. Here is that famous statue which
for a thousand years has drawn countless myriads of pilgrims from all
parts of the earth.[14] Kings and commons, rich and poor, scholars and
Crusaders, sinners and saints unnumbered have knelt at this shrine
since the day when Fulbert, having completed his crypt, left, it is
said, the ‘Statue of the Druids’ in the same place as that in which the
Gallic priests had held their assemblies _in finibus Carnutum_, on
Carnutan territory. That statue was held in honour till the year 1793,
when it was burnt by the Revolutionists before the _Porche Royal_. The
present Madonna was made on the model of the old, and erected in 1857,
after the crypt, which for sixty years had been used as a cooper’s
warehouse, was restored to its sacred uses. On the north wall may be
seen the traces of three twelfth-century windows, which were blocked
when the north porch was built; on the south wall traces of
twelfth-century frescoes. Other frescoes in the chapel are recent
symbolic work by M. Paul Durand. The vaulting was painted in the
seventeenth century.
Whether the statue which was destroyed in 1793 was older than the
eleventh century is a doubtful point. Some suppose that the previous
Druidical statue ‘_Virgini Parituræ_’ was burnt in the fire of 1020, and
that Fulbert had a new one carved and set up then. Others, arguing from
the colour of the wood, believe that it dated from the days of the
Druids. For the face of the Madonna was ‘black, but comely,’[15] like
that of the Vierge Noire, Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, in the Cathedral proper.
But whether this blackness arose from the action of time upon the wood,
or whether it was another instance of that tendency to represent Eastern
types and colouring and design, which seems to me very noticeable in the
glass and statuary of the Cathedral, cannot be definitely decided.
One other curious point remains to be noted. We are told that the eyes
of the Child were open, but those of the Mother who held Him on her
knees were shut. The Druids, it is said, intended by this device to
signify that faith was still in darkness, and that she whom they
worshipped was not yet born. But the eyes of the Child, whom she in the
fulness of time should supernaturally conceive and bear, were open; for
He was without beginning and without end, the Spectator of all time and
all existence.
CHAPTER II
_Saints and Barbarians_
The early Christians of Chartres were scattered and their churches
destroyed during the final persecution under Diocletian. When,
therefore, the disciples of S. Denis, S. Chéron and S. Martin came
preaching the Gospel through the valley of the Loire, they found but few
faithful among the descendants of those who had been converted by the
first missionaries. The evangelisation of the Province by S. Martin, the
great Bishop of Tours, was commemorated in the title of the church, ‘S.
Martin rendant la vie,’ in reference to one of his miracles, and in that
of the Monastery S. Martin-au-Val, as also in the window in the
clerestory of the nave of the Cathedral (north) and of the choir.
Soldier, hermit, bishop and saint, he established the monasteries of
Gaul. Two thousand of his disciples followed him to the grave, and his
eloquent historian, Sulpicius Severus, challenges the desert of Thebais
to produce, in a more favourable climate, a champion of equal virtue. S.
Chéron, after completing his work at Chartres, turned his steps towards
Paris, but was assassinated on his way at a place since named S.
Chéron-du-Chemin. His martyrdom is represented in a bas-relief of the
south porch of the Cathedral.
Then Castor, Bishop of Chartres, profiting by the protection of
Constantine, built a second basilica, larger than the first, erecting
upon the old site a chapel to the ‘Virgin who shall bear a son,’ and,
above it, the main church and the principal altar.
Meanwhile the Roman Empire in Gaul was tottering to its fall. That
confederacy known as the Franks, which had been formed of the
unconquered tribes that dwelt about the Lower Rhine and the Weser, had
overrun Spain and Mauritania, and had been flung back from Gaul by the
brilliant efforts of the Emperor Probus. Again reduced by Julian, they
remained for some time loyal allies of the Empire. But under Clodion,
the first of the long-haired kings of the Merovingian dynasty whose name
and actions are mentioned in authentic history, they advanced as far as
the Somme, and established a Gallic kingdom between that river and the
Rhine. On the death of Clodion, his two sons quarrelled over their
inheritance; one of them obtained the protection of Rome, the other
allied himself with Attila. For the King of the Huns eagerly embraced an
alliance which facilitated the passage of the Rhine and justified the
invasion of Gaul.
[Illustration: Gargoyle on South Arch]
Chartres seems to have escaped as by a miracle the murderous attack of
the Huns and Franks. She owed perhaps to the obscurity of her position
the immunity which Paris owed to the prayers of S. Geneviève. But
Orléans was besieged and defended successfully by Anianus, a bishop of
primitive sanctity and consummate prudence, until the arrival of the
Roman and Gothic armies compelled Attila to withdraw his innumerable
host of marauders, and at length to give battle and suffer defeat in the
plains of Châlons. (451 A.D.)
CHURCH OF S. AIGNAN.
Was this Anianus that S. Aignan who founded the church which now bears
his name; the S. Aignan who, with his three sisters, Donda, Monda,
Ermenonda, endowed it, and was buried in the ancient crypt of that
church?[16] On his tomb there was formerly to be read this couplet:--
‘Corpus in his cryptis Aniani præsulis olim
Carnutum recubat, spiritus astra colit.’
(The body of Aignan, once Bishop of the Chartrains, lies in this crypt:
his soul is in Heaven.) The crypt (restored sixteenth century) and the
windows of this church are well worth seeing. The lower windows have
nine of them sixteenth-century[17] glass, and nine of them nineteenth
century, chiefly by Lorin of Chartres, whose _atelier_ is in the
picturesque Rue de la Tannerie. The upper windows are chiefly
seventeenth-century heraldic. The church was often burnt down in the
Middle Ages, and for the last time in the sixteenth century.
The architecture is therefore in the style of the Renaissance, though
the main entrance belongs to the fourteenth century. The small entrance
on the left of the façade is pleasing. The church was sacked during the
Revolution and all its artistic treasures stolen. The building itself
was used as a magazine, a prison and a military hospital till 1822, when
it was restored to religious use by private generosity. The painfully
unsuccessful polychrome decorations perpetrated by M. Boeswilwald make
it impossible to remember the interior with any pleasure. Perched, as it
seems, in the air, the exterior, beheld from the boulevards and bridges
south-west of the town, forms, with S. Père and the Cathedral, one of
the most prominent features of the most unforgettable view of Chartres.
But the tower is destitute of grace, and the building, as a whole,
devoid of any beauty of form.
If the nave were worthy of the apse and crypt, it would be another
matter, and S. Aignan would be worthy of its place between S. Père and
Notre-Dame. Approach it from the Rue Saint-Pierre by the steps of
Saint-François, and the east end of the church with the enormous
buttresses which support it, and the massive buttressed walls of the
street which hold up the old parish cemetery, now the garden of the
_Presbytère_, give you the impression of a mighty fortress frowning
above you. But seen from a distance this effect is lost.
There is a legend in connection with this church worth recounting.
A poor tailor of Chartres, the story runs, made a contract to deliver
himself body and soul to the Devil at the end of the year if his
daughter should recover her health and make the fine marriage on which
she had set her heart. At the date fixed when the tailor must fulfil his
part of the bargain Satan appeared. It was evening. The man’s wife
threw herself on her knees, and by her prayers and entreaties obtained
the concession that the infernal treaty should not be enforced so long
as the candle burning in the cottage should last. Then the cunning wife
rose from her knees, blew out the candle and ran full speed with it to
the Church of S. Aignan, where she hid it near the present stoup, in the
first pier on the left at which the masons were then working. Wonderful
to relate, the pier was immediately completed, and the candle hidden
within it safe from the clutches of the Evil One.
* * * * *
Fifty years after the Battle of Châlons, the Franks, under Clovis,
established the French monarchy in Gaul. It was not established by the
force of arms alone.
The Merovingian King had always allowed his Gallic subjects free
exercise of religious worship. Now, at the instance of his wife,
Clotilda, niece of the King of Burgundy, he listened to the Bishop of
Reims. He and his followers, who were equally ready to follow him to the
battlefield or the baptismal font, were received into the Catholic
Church at Reims.
This meant that Clovis had on his side the hundred prelates who, under
the Roman Empire, had gradually acquired a sovereign power throughout
Gaul in matters temporal as well as spiritual. He paid the price in rich
gifts to their churches. ‘S. Martin,’ he remarked on a famous occasion,
‘is an expensive friend.’ It was to this alliance with the Church that
the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul was largely due. The
valour, policy and seasonable conversion of Clovis soon added the
Northern Provinces of Gaul to his kingdom, whilst the great prelates
were left free to strengthen their own hold over the people with whose
instructions they were entrusted. And with the Franks the social system
of nobles and serfs, which was the basis of mediæval life, was
introduced.
The Dark Ages creep on. The Frankish conquest of Gaul was followed, says
Gibbon, by ten centuries of anarchy and ignorance.
So far as Chartres is concerned, the conversion of Clovis is connected
with the name of her first authentic bishop, Solemnis,[18] whom he
caused to accompany and catechise him on his campaigns. It is even
stated, though without sufficient reason, that Clovis founded the Abbey
of S. Père (St. Pierre), of which the extremely interesting
fourteenth-sixteenth century church is now all that remains. The rest is
cavalry barracks.
Of the secular history of Chartres under the succeeding Merovingian
Kings there is nothing worth relating. Whatever there was of sweetness
and light in this barbarous epoch survived in the cloister, not the
court. One turns with relief from the records of the quarrels and crimes
of Clother and his sons to the story of some saintly life like that of
S. Lubin, shepherd, monk, hermit, Abbé of Brou, and lastly, Bishop of
Chartres in succession to S. Ethère. S. Lubin was a typical and charming
saint, whose name and fame still live in the hearts of the people.
His charity to the poor, his compassion for the sick and infirm was
without limit. Thus, when Malledegonde, sister of the young Calétric,
who lay at death’s door, asked the holy Bishop of Chartres for some
drops of oil blessed by his hands, he did at once that which she had not
dared to ask. He came in person to the bedside of her dear invalid,
bathed his forehead, and prayed that he might be restored to health.
Then the young man opened his eyes, and seizing the aged bishop’s hand
declared that he was healed. A bas-relief on the south porch of the
Cathedral portrays this incident in stone. In glass, a bishop and
enthroned, you may see the saint in the second window of the northern
clerestory of the nave. From that moment S. Lubin continued to take a
paternal interest in the lad, and on his death Calétric succeeded him as
Bishop of Chartres. S. Calétric,[19] according to his panegyrist,
combined every virtue with every accomplishment, and was, in fact, the
personification of that Roman urbanity which the rude manners of the
French had almost banished from the Gallic world. His tomb, as we have
already seen, is now in the Cathedral crypt, whither it was removed from
the Chapel of S. Nicholas, when that building, which was formerly
adjacent to the apse of the Cathedral, was destroyed in 1702 to make
room for the present bishop’s palace.[20] S. Lubin, like most of the
bishops of the sixth and seventh centuries, was still less fortunate in
the place of his burial. He was interred in the crypt of
S. MARTIN-AU-VAL,
which probably marks the site of the chief extra-mural cemetery of the
Chartres of those days. This asylum of the dead was more than once
profaned by the ravages of the Northmen and the excesses committed
during the civil and religious wars. The nave and aisles were seriously
damaged in the fourteenth century by the bands of English soldiers and
marauders who overran the country at that time. The Huguenots, also,
under Condé (1568) utterly devastated the church crypt, violating the
tombs of the bishops and wantonly burning the building. The tomb of S.
Lubin, indeed, was flung out of the church and was long used for
domestic purposes, until at last it was cracked by the frost. Even then
it was not safe from the utilitarian spirit of the day. It was turned to
account when the foundations of the cemetery wall were being
constructed.
The Church of S. Martin-au-Val was restored in 1659. It now serves as a
chapel for the Hospice S. Brice, where between three and four hundred
inmates are provided for.
It is not without reason that I have spoken of this chapel here, for it
is the most important illustration of the Merovingian period at
Chartres. Leave the Place Michel and go down the Rue S. Brice till you
come to the Rue Vangeon, which is the first street to your left. The
simple front of the church with its three little turrets is now before
you.[21] Go to the chief entrance of the _Hospital_ and say that you
wish to see the crypt. It lies beneath the raised pavement of the choir,
and it is evident that the greater part of it, like the nave, choir and
choir aisles, is tenth-century work. You will have noted in this
connection the bold abaci of the piers of the nave and the peculiar
elongated, round-headed arches of the choir arcade. But here in the
crypt, besides the interesting capitals of the detached piers which
support the vaulting, are two capitals of extraordinary interest. They
are of grey marble in the western hall, on either side of the tablet to
Bishop Lescot. Sixth century; Merovingian; crude and barbaric as the age
which begot them, there is yet a vigour and directness about these
carvings which make them not merely curious or grotesque. Nor are they
meaningless. They represent, in the symbolic fashion of old days, the
principle of life and death, of good and evil. They were intended, even
then, as a warning to the faithful who approached the sanctuary, as a
reminder of the fact that ‘the stones shall cry out.’ On the one
capital, then, we have a scene of peace and love: two doves supporting
the crown of peace, two others kissing. The other capital presents us
with a scene of terror. An enormous, savage beast is seen emerging from
a forest and seizing a man whose arm it has already half devoured. His
friend, meanwhile, has gone to summon aid and is now returning, bringing
to succour him a man with a lance....
There is one other matter to mention with regard to this church. That S.
Aignan, of whom we have already spoken, and who, some think, was Bishop
of Chartres in the third century, was found here, it is said, at the
moment of his nomination, lost in prayer. The brethren had to drag him
hence by force and carry him on their shoulders to be consecrated in the
Church of Notre-Dame. Ever since then the Bishops-elect of Chartres pass
the night preceding the day of their solemn entry into the town in pious
retreat at S. Martin-au-Val.
Under Clotaire II. the French monarchy was re-established and united.
The Chartrain territory was joined to Neustria and thus passed under the
government of Pépin d’Heristal, Charles Martel and Pépin-le-Bref[22]
successively. And Charles, before becoming King and Emperor under the
name of Charlemagne, also ruled Neustria. Pépin, his father, who with
the aid of the Pope Zachary, had added to the authority of Charles
Martel the crown of Clovis, proved by many gifts to the Church that the
gratitude of the Carlovingians could be adequate to its obligations.
Among his gifts it is recorded that he assigned to Notre-Dame de
Chartres part of the forest of Yveline. Ten years before Pépin was
established on the Merovingian throne Chartres had suffered from one
among many bitter experiences of the violence of the times.
The annals of Metz record that Hunald, son of Eudes, Count of Aquitane,
revolting against Pépin and Carloman, threw himself upon Chartres in
745, sacked and burnt it, and ‘did not spare the church consecrated to
the Mother of God.’ This incident was but a fore-taste of the long and
ruinous struggle which the Chartrains were destined to maintain against
the invasions of those men of the North, whose appearance on the shores
of the Baltic had drawn prophetic tears, it was said, from the eyes of
the invincible and enlightened Charlemagne.
The church damaged by Hunald was doubtless the one which had been built
in the fourth century. The wooden roof and supports were probably
consumed by the flames on this occasion, but the thick Roman walls of
the ancient basilica--such as you see in the martyrium--would survive
many a burning. The church therefore was easily and quickly restored by
Bishop Godessald, and was ere long the scene of a memorable event.
Charles, son of Pépin, King of Aquitaine, had been made prisoner in the
kingdom of his uncle, Charles-le-Chauve. He was taken before the
meeting of the Estates held at Chartres (849), and there he made a
declaration aloud from the ambo of the church to the effect that if he
turned ecclesiastic it was of his own free will and for the love of God.
He was blessed by the bishops and shorn, clad in the garb of a monk and
sent to the Monastery of Corbie. Such was one of the ways in which one
got rid of a dangerous rival in those days.
It was during the reign of this grandson of his, Charles-le-Fauve, that
the storm foreseen by Charlemagne broke over France in a series of
thunderbursts, destroying the fruits of his firm administration and wise
encouragement of learning.
Warned by the troublous experiences of the times, the Chartrains were
not ill-prepared for defence. But their fortifications were of no avail.
We will tell the story as it is told by the monk Paul in his Latin
_Cartulaire de Saint Père de Chartres_, which was written between 1066
and 1088:--
‘Chartres at that time’ (858) ‘had a large population and was the
richest of the cities of Neustria. It was very famous by reason of the
magnitude of its walls, the beauty of its buildings and its cultivation
of the fine arts.[23] But there burst upon Neustria a Pagan race from
across the seas, who came in their huge beaked boats, and baring the
sword of their iniquity cruelly laid waste almost the whole country.
They destroyed many seats of the holy and gave them over to the
devouring flames: towns, when they took them, they razed to the ground,
and the Christians they either slew or led into captivity and sold into
everlasting bondage. So furious was the rage of the heathen that they
rowed up the Seine ravaging the land on every side, and at length
coming to the city of Chartres strove to take it, whilst they laid waste
the surrounding territory and rendered it uninhabitable. The city thus
cut off from support, and reduced by the loss of many citizens and the
enfeeblement of others, was surprised by a night attack and taken. All
the Christians were slaughtered like sheep. And the city, which had
formerly endured unshaken a ten years’ siege by Julius Cæsar and had
repelled the Roman and Argolic armies, for it was built of huge squared
stones and strengthened by lofty towers, and was indeed on that account
named The City of Stones, and it rejoiced in an abundance of aqueducts
and subterranean ways by which it could be supplied with all provisions,
was now permitted by Heaven to be burnt and utterly razed to the ground
by a nation that knew not God. But the patience of God, which thus
corrects the worldliness of His people in order that they may not perish
hereafter, did not permit the cruelty of those barbarians to pass
unavenged. For the Franks gathered from all sides and hastened to the
spot where the enemy had left their boats upon the River _Diva_. There,
meeting them as they returned laden with spoil, they fell upon them with
so violent an onslaught that the Northmen went down before them as in
autumn the leaves of the forest fall before the blasts of the north
wind.’
So the good monk, with an indignant energy that is almost eloquent. The
discerning reader will be able to separate in this story the wheat from
the chaff. But the fact is certain that Hastings it was who took
Chartres upon this occasion. He burnt the town and put to the sword the
good Bishop Frotbold, with many of his followers who had sought refuge
in Notre-Dame. The church itself, and the Abbeys of S. Père and S.
Chéron, he gave to the flames.
THE VEIL OF THE VIRGIN--THE CATHEDRAL TREASURY.
Three years later Charles-le-Chauve, paying one of his frequent
pilgrimages to the shrine which he afterwards described as the first
seat of the Virgin in France, beheld the ravages of Hastings. Partly
perhaps as a consolation to the inhabitants for their losses, he now
made their church the depository of one of the most precious relics of
the Virgin known to Christendom--her veil or inner vestment,
presented[24] by the Empress Irene to the Emperor Charlemagne at
Constantinople. It is and was known as the Sancta Camisia, or, in
popular parlance, the Sainte Tunique or Chemisette. Hence the form by
which it is represented in the arms of the chapter and in the
innumerable emblems which from the thirteenth century onwards have been
prepared in metal or ware as tokens for the pious pilgrim. The immediate
result of the possession of this sacred veil and the miracles it wrought
was an influx of pilgrims to Chartres, who brought wealth enough to
enable the Bishop Gislebert to restore the ruined church. He would seem
to have still followed the lines of Castor’s church, but he extended it
eastwards, over and beyond the Gallo-Roman wall, raising the new
sanctuary of the choir so that the floor was two or three yards higher
than that of the nave, as in the case of the Church of S. Martin-au-Val,
and constructing out of the martyrium a crypt where the veil might be
kept safe in the time of danger.
It was not long, if we may believe the chroniclers, before the love and
reverence with which all the inhabitants regarded this relic was to be
justified and the reputation of the veil as the palladium of the town
established.
It was in the year 911 that the Northmen, who had now come to regard
Neustria as their own, burst for the last time on the land of France.
The people of La Beauce fled to the forests and the churches for refuge;
but the forests were soon in flames and the churches were destroyed by
the ruthless invaders. The refugees fled with their flocks to seek
protection within the walls of Chartres. With them they brought the
relics of S. Piat,[25] as some years before they had brought the body of
S. Wandegisile to aid them in their defence. For the Normans were
coming, those ‘barbarians from across the seas,’ and at their head was
Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, Rollo, ancestor of the Conqueror,
plundering and pillaging churches and abbeys in a fit of religious
madness, so the monkish chroniclers aver, against the priests who had
converted to Christianity the children of Odin. He had made a vain
attempt upon Paris, and now had come down the Seine, rowing as far as he
could, then, leaving his ships, marched upon Chartres and invested it.
But he was obliged to raise the siege. The dry fact of history probably
is that the approach of Robert, Duke of France, with the aid of the Duke
of Burgundy and the Count of Poitiers, compelled Rollo’s men, who were
anxious lest their return should be cut off and were disheartened
already by their failure to take Paris, to retire when they failed to
take Chartres at the first assault. But the traditional account is
certainly more picturesque. At the crisis of the siege it was to the
Bishop Gasselin, ‘a holy man, glorious and just and true,’ that all men
looked for comfort and courage. So Bénoit, the Anglo-Norman trouvère,
tells us in his poetical history of the Dukes of Normandy. And Robert
Wace,[26] Jehan le Marchand[27] and the monk Paul[28] agree with him in
his description of the wondrous episode which ensued. For a bishop,
Gasselin was indeed a bishop, potent in prayer and skilled in that art
of destroying the human species which is war. He put his trust in
Heaven, but did not disdain human succour. He summoned the Dukes of
Burgundy and France to his aid. Then, on the day when he learnt that
they were at hand, he left the walls on which he had kept watch and ward
in prayer, and, ‘_tout esploré et larmoyant_,’ called the people to the
Cathedral. There he first celebrated Mass and offered supplications;
next, leaving the altar, he gave absolution to the multitude.
Thereafter, having put on his pontifical robes, he, preceded by a
cross, led the citizens in armed procession back to the walls. Suddenly,
above the gate which is called New, he unfurled as a banner the sacred
veil, flung open the portals, and bade the people fight boldly.
‘Vers la bataille vait le pas
Tote la ville sune à glas.’
The sortie was well timed, for just at that moment the helmets and
bucklers of the advancing Burgundians and Franks were seen glittering in
the distance. The besieged fell with resistless enthusiasm upon the
astonished enemy. The enemy, dazed by the glory of the precious relics,
caught between the sallying citizens and the relieving force, retreated
to the Hill of Lèves and there entrenched themselves. So terrible had
been the slaughter that the bodies of the slain (says Paul the monk)
heaped in the Eure for a while completely choked the stream. And they
tell us that the Place des Épars,[29] in which to-day the principal
hotels of the town are found, owes its name to the flight of the Normans
who were scattered on this occasion (_s’éparpillèrent_). Others,
however, more prosaically explain the name as meaning the ‘hub’ whence
the various roads of the province diverge.
It was at this juncture, when Rollo had rallied his men at Lèves, that
the Count of Poitiers arrived on the scene, and bitterly he reproached
his brothers of Burgundy and France for having given battle before he
arrived. In high dudgeon he set off in pursuit of the enemy. But the
Northmen outwitted him. Rollo despatched three soldiers into the plain
to sound trumpets and thus draw off the enemy to engage an imaginary
foe, whilst he and his followers effected their escape.
This signal victory long left its mark on the land. The plain near the
gate where the Normans were defeated was known thereafter as the Field
of the Repulse or of the Men Repulsed.[30] And the first bas-relief on
the south side of the choir screen, which represents the bishop
displaying the holy veil to the besiegers, also commemorates this event.
The veil was brought back in triumphant procession to the Cathedral, and
shortly afterwards a skilful goldsmith of the town, Teudon by name,
constructed a very rich and beautiful casket of gold and cedar wood to
contain it. Many miracles were wrought in favour of the devout who
sought the aid of the Virgin, like Edward III. of England and Henry IV.
of France, by passing under this coffer. Numerous knights who carried
the token of the veil were rescued from the greatest dangers, and women,
especially queens, who wore taffeta imitations of it, were protected in
the pains and perils of their travail. Countless rings and priceless
jewels were inlaid in the sides of the casket and hung upon it by the
grateful or the expectant, so that it soon became the most valuable
treasure of Chartres, in a treasury, that is, of mediæval jewellery such
as we have to make a very systematic effort even to imagine.[31] ‘The
still extant register of the furniture and sacred apparel leaves the
soul of the ecclesiologist athirst.’ The register to which Pater refers
in the sentence I have just quoted was composed in 1682, and an
annotated edition of it has been published by M. Merlet (_Catalogues des
Reliques et Joyaux de Notre-Dame de Chartres_). The curious reader will
peruse with astonishment and scan with regret the long list of precious
offerings which the exactions of kings, the exigencies of warfare and
the rapacity of the revolutionists have caused in great part to
disappear.
The veil, together with the casket in which it had lain for nearly 800
years, was seized during the Revolution. The casket and jewels were
sold. The veil, though rent in twain, was recovered, but not in its
entirety (3¼ yards by 6 feet). It is kept now in two coffers of cedar
wood, covered with silver gilt. Beneath the veil is another known as the
Veil of the Empress Irene, which is made of embroidered Byzantine stuff
of the eighth century. The visitor to Chartres should on no account omit
to see these curious relics, and the extremely rich enamelled triptich
of the School of Limoges (thirteenth century, but in part eighteenth
century restoration). For the rest, though the Casket of Teudon, which
was valued in 1562 at £8980, without counting the diamonds and rubies,
enamels and pearls which adorned it, has disappeared; though the head
and the slipper of S. Anne are gone and the relics of many another
saint; though the golden eagles of S. Eloi, the sapphires of King
Robert, and the gems of Henry III. of England; though cameos and
crucifixes of emerald or agate, crystal or ivory, have, like the
tapestries of Queen Bertha and the golden girdle of Anne of Brittany,
with its fifteen rubies, ten sapphires and sixty-four pearls, and the
flagon which contained the blood of Thomas-à-Becket, all been seized and
sold by sacrilegious hands, yet there remain to be seen the delicate
incense-boat, given by Miles d’Illiers, Bishop of Luçon, in 1540, the
graceful chalice of Henry III. (1582), and the green marble altar of the
English, dedicated by them in 1420, when Chartres was in their hands.
You will also notice a medal, which was struck to commemorate the
outbreak of cholera in 1832 and the part played by the _Sainte Chemise_
at that time. For not once only, or only in the mediæval days, has the
veil of the Virgin played a part in the history of Chartres. It was
taken at the height of the plague, in obedience to the clamour of the
people, in solemn procession through the streets, and from that moment,
it is said, the plague was stayed, and all who were ill, save two, who
had mocked at this act of piety, recovered.
Nor should it be forgotten that it was the possession of this veil
which, when Fulbert’s Cathedral had been burnt down in 1194, stimulated
the desire and provided the means to build a still larger and more
beautiful cathedral, worthy to contain it, and to be, in the words of
the chroniclers, ‘the very couch and chamber of Our Lady.’[32]
A few months after his defeat before Chartres, Rollo the Ganger married
the daughter of Charles-le-Simple and embraced the Christian faith.
Neustria was ceded to the Normans. Their depredations ceased for a
while, but, under the young Duke Richard of Normandy, fifteen years
later, there was a heathen reaction in Pirates’ land. Their fleets once
more swarmed up the Seine, and Chartres was the central point of their
attack. United in its defence, loud and frequent rang the cry of the
House of France, ‘Montjoie!’ mingled with that of the Counts of Chartres
and Vendôme, ‘Chartres et Passavant!’
‘Frachois crie Mont-joye et Normans Dez-aie,
Flamans crie Afras et Angevin ralie,
Et li cuens Thiebaut Chartre et Passavant crie.’
WACE--_Roman de Rou._
But soon these visitations ceased. Gradually heathen Norman pirates
became French Christians, their descendants feudal nobles, and Pirates’
land the most loyal of the fiefs of France. Christianity was embraced by
all, from duke to peasant. By the people it was welcomed with an almost
passionate fanaticism. Every road was crowded with pilgrims. Monasteries
rose in every forest glade, cathedrals in every town. The Abbeys of S.
Père, S. Chéron and S. Martin, and the Churches of S. Lubin and S.
Laumer in the neighbouring vineyards, were re-established and restored.
The Church of Bishop Wulphard was built, and this restoration of
religious centres meant, in a brutal age, the assertion of the rights of
humanity, in an age of ignorance the encouragement of learning, of
science and art, in an age of devastation the promotion, by means of
pilgrimages, of industry and commerce. The growing number of windmills,
wine-presses and tanneries on the monastic properties is the index of
the civilising influence of the monks. The fragments of their castles
remain as the sign of the more picturesque but less admirable occupation
of the knights of chivalry.
CHAPTER III
_Theobald-the-Trickster and Fulbert the Bishop_
‘Thiebaut li quenz de Chartres fu fel é engignous
Mult out chastels é viles, é mult fu averous;
Chevalier fu mult prous é mult chevalerous
Mez mult part fu cruel é mult envious.’
ROBERT WACE--_Roman de Rou._
Rollo, on his conversion, gave his domain of Malmaison, near Épernon, to
Notre-Dame de Chartres. The deed of gift was long preserved, and ran in
these terms:--
‘I, Rollo, Duke of Normandy, give to the Brethren of the Church
Notre-Dame de Chartres my Castle of Malmaison, which I have won with my
sword, and with my sword I will guarantee it to them, as let this knife
be witness.’
A knife in the Middle Ages was a symbol of putting in possession. It was
a fitting symbol for the _siècle de fer_, that century of moral and
material disorder and disaster in which the country was now involved.
For France was now falling into the iron grip of feudalism. It is the
age of castles. As the power of the central authority weakens, the power
of the great vassals, dukes, counts, bishops and abbots becomes
established as absolute in their fiefs. But during the period of
disorder, from which the feudal _régime_ emerged triumphant, the serf
had waged with his master the same struggle that the vassal was waging
with his lords and the lord with the King. The result was similar in all
cases. Usurpation of servile tenures accompanied that of liberal
tenures, and, territorial appropriation having taken place in every rank
of society, it was as difficult to dispossess a serf of his manse as a
seigneur of his benefice. The serf, therefore, emerged from the
condition of almost absolute slavery in which he was at the time of the
fall of the Western Empire, and from the condition of servitude that had
been his up to the end of the reign of Charles-le-Chauve. From this time
_servitude_ was transformed into serfage. The serf having withdrawn his
person and his field from his master’s hands, owes to him no longer his
body and goods, but only a portion of his labour and his income. He
ceases to be a slave and becomes a tributary.
With the advent of feudalism the map of the country underwent a change.
The Roman arrangement, by which Gaul had been divided into eighteen
provinces and 127 dioceses, had been little altered by the Francs, and
lasted on under the Carlovingians, but it gradually disappeared in the
course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was preserved only by the
Church, the dioceses of which, up to the time of the Revolution,
represented very nearly the ancient divisions of Gaul under the Romans.
Before the days of Cæsar it was into _pagi_ that Gaul had been divided.
The pagus or _pays_ persisted now; more numerous than the cities, they
continued to split up and multiply. But from 800 onwards most of these
pays having set up comtés of the same name and same extent began to be
known as such--as, for instance, the Comté of Chartres.
When in 987 Hugues Capet, Duke of France, decided to assume the title of
King, the political unity of the Chartrains had long been broken by the
territorial usurpations of the great officers of the Crown. The
government of the country under Charlemagne had been shared by seven
counts--Chartres, Dreux, Châteaudun, Blois, Vendôme, Poissy and Mantes.
But by Hugh Capet’s time these had been reduced to three--Chartres,
Blois and Dreux--and in the person of Thibault-le-Vieux or le Tricheur,
who was of Capetan stock, the counties of Blois and Chartres were
united. They remained in his family till the death of Thibaut VI., 1218.
They were then divided between the two collateral branches of the house,
but reunited again in 1269.
Philippe-le-Bel acquired the county of Chartres in 1289, and gave it to
his brother, Charles de Valois, whose son, Philippe de Valois, united it
to the Crown (1346).
It is convenient to explain this matter of the Comté here, for the
present period of the history of Chartres is connected with the dread
name of Thibault-le-Tricheur, Theobald the Trickster, Count of Chartres,
the _chevalier fel et engignous_, whom Robert Wace describes.
This first hereditary Count of Chartres was the Robert the Devil of the
_Pays Chartrain_. Through the whole country side, from Tours to Blois,
and from Blois to Chartres, the impression of his dreaded personality is
indelibly stamped. The legend still runs that Thibault, the old
_Chasseur_, nightly crosses the Loire from Montfrau to Bury with a crowd
of his reckless men of arms, bent, you may suppose, on some murderous
foray. This turbulent spirit threw himself eagerly into the quarrel
between Lothaire and Richard, Duke of Normandy, and took an active part
in the cruel war that ensued. He invaded the Duke’s territory, and,
availing himself of every device, and employing every ruse, for Thibault
was ‘_plein d’engin et plein fu de feintie_,’ he took Évreux and
advanced even to the walls of Rouen. His line of advance was marked by
devastation so terrible that, says the Norman chronicler, there was not
the bark of a single dog to be heard throughout the county.[33]
A peace was patched up, and Thibault married Richard’s daughter. But the
King and the Count shortly afterwards renewed their machinations against
the Duke. The latter was hard pressed, but, thanks to his spirit and the
valour of his followers, he proved victorious. He ravaged the country of
his enemy, and sacked and burnt the town and church of Chartres. It is
said that when Thibault, the hardened old _Chasseur_, came to the
town--_sa bonne ville de Chartres_--he began to count one by one the
heads of those whom the Northmen had slain. Suddenly he stopped in his
counting and began to utter the cries and laughter of a madman. For the
head of his own son lay there before him, and the shock of the sight
unhinged his mind forever.
The Rue des Changes lies opposite the south-west corner of the
Cathedral. Pursue this street and you will find yourself in the modern
vegetable market--the Place Billard. It is the site on which--coolly
appropriating some territory which belonged to the Monastery of S.
Père--Thibault built the castle and donjon of the Counts of Chartres. It
was outside the then walls of the town, between the Porte Évière and the
Porte Cendreuse. Not a vestige of it now remains, if we except a few
fragments of the old enclosing wall. For the donjon was destroyed in
[Illustration: South Transept]
1587, and the castle in the nineteenth century. The great tower known as
the King’s or Count’s Tower (Tour le Roi, Tour le Comte), was used for a
prison, and within the spacious halls of the ancient palace most of the
general assemblies of Chartres were held. It was here that for five
centuries justice was administered, and it was in the chapel of the
castle that the bishop, on his entry, was wont to swear that he would
not go contrary to the rights of the prince. And it was here that feudal
homage was done, _à cause de la grosse tour de Chartres_.
The castle, with its crenelated donjon, its huge façade on the crest of
the hill, its massive walls and buttresses; the Cathedral, with its
soaring spires, majestic nave and mystic sculptures, were typical in
their juxtaposition. The fortress of the Counts, rising behind armed
walls and portcullis; the stronghold of the bishops, secure within the
buildings of the cloister, to which there was access only through
guarded gates--such, for instance, as that facing the castle, of which
you may still see a trace on the corner house of the Rue des Changes and
the Rue du Lait--Castle and Cathedral so placed were stone symbols, you
might fancy, of the temporal and spiritual powers which ruled with
divided sway the old town of Chartres.[34]
For, throughout the Middle Ages, side by side with the persistent power
of the bishops and their train of clergy and of serfs, persisted also,
but waxing and waning with varying fortune, the power of the Counts. And
from the vassals and dependants of these two powers was destined to
spring the modern _Bourgeoisie_. The Counts of Blois, of Chartres, of
Meaux pass before us in the pages of history, forever raising levies,
waging wars and exacting tolls on merchandise. Sometimes they are in
accord with the clergy; sometimes in opposition; and at one moment make
large donations to the Church, at another rob it. To-day they fight for
their King abroad and on their Crusades, while Viscounts represent them
at home. To-morrow they are home again, fighting among themselves, or
trying to throw off their allegiance to their King. Counts of Chartres
or their relatives mount the throne of England and the throne of France.
But war and brigandage remain their business. They pillage the bishops,
and the bishops excommunicate the pillagers. They raise troops, and the
bishops call their parish to arms. They war with the sword, and the
bishops win with the aid of their trained ability, the cunning of their
counsel, and their pens.
For the great bishops--such as Fulbert, Ives and John of Salisbury--were
indeed remarkable men, and they held their own successfully, not only,
if need be, against the interference of their Archbishop of Sens, but
also with the Counts of Chartres and the Kings of France and England.
The eleventh century above all was an era of notable bishops.
There were, of course, good bishops and bad. Aganon, who succeeded
Gantelme, was in the former class, and he devoted himself to the
rebuilding and establishing of the ruined churches and monasteries;
among them that of S. Père de Chartres, which had been utterly
demolished by the Normans. His nephew, Ragenfroi, succeeded him, and
continued in the paths of his uncle. He was one of the greatest
benefactors of S. Père, to which he added many buildings, and whither he
brought twelve monks from the Monastery of Fleury-sur-Loire. Their
fervour and discipline, which was to give new life to the community at
Chartres, had been acquired under the rule of their abbot, Vulphard,
destined to be one of the great bishop-builders of Chartres.
It was under Ragenfroi that Hugues le Grand, father of Hugues Capet,
gave evidence of his lively devotion to the Notre-Dame de Chartres by
the donation of the domain of Ingré, ‘with all its lands cultivated or
not, vineyards, pasturage and _prairies_, with its forests and serfs of
either sex, and the church which is dedicated to Saint Leu.’ So runs the
charter, and the object is ‘that the brethren deriving therefrom the
necessaries of life may have the more liberty to perform Divine service
and spiritual exercises, and pour out the more abundant prayers for us,
our wife and our whole family.’
Hardouin, Bishop of Chartres, succeeded to his brother’s position, but
not his religion, says the chronicler; for he was filled with pride and
swollen with secular ambition. He waged war with the monks of S. Père,
and took from them every privilege and possession he could. And the
chronicler adds (writing always from the point of view of S. Père) that
several later bishops followed his example, and trod in the same path of
sacrilege, wasting their own property and coveting that of others,
plotting against the monks and harassing them, and even robbing them of
much that the charity of the faithful had bestowed upon them, and,
whereas they should have protected them, acting in the blindness of
their hearts like tyrants and plunderers. Count Eudes succeeded his
father Thibault (977), and the following narrative, which the monk Paul
gives us in connection with his name, is sufficiently eloquent of the
times.
There was a holy priest, by name Sigismund, whose goodness and sanctity
were clearer than the light of day to all people, lay and clerical.
Chaste and humble, prudent, prayerful, burning with the fire of faith,
yet jocund of speech withal, he shone as an example of all Christian
virtues. Now Fulcher, Abbot of S. Lubin,[35] had committed to his care
certain vineyards, from which, it appears, the Blessed Sigismund knew
how to make good wine. And one day when Count Eudes of Chartres was
about to dine, and his men were looking about for the best wine to be
obtained, they heard that there was wine to be got for nothing in the
cellar of the priest. Overjoyed at the news, they hastened there, and
boldly entering the cellar filled their skins and carried them off to
the hall. The good Sigismund returned from the house of God and found
the chief cup-bearer sitting in his cellar, who mocked him, asking,
‘Master, tell me, is that wine of yours very good or not?’ ‘My brother,’
returned the holy man, ‘you are no novice at wine, and do not need to be
told when you have only to taste for yourself.’ ‘Give me a goblet,
then,’ said he. ‘Nay; the wine will be better from the cup into which it
is drawn.’
The unhappy man placed the cup to his lips, but before he could drink he
was seized with a fit, and fell to the earth foaming at the mouth. He
was taken back to the palace, and when the Count heard of the affair he
summoned Sigismund to his presence and ordered the eyes of those who had
stolen the wine to be gouged out and the wine to be restored to its
owner. Sigismund, however, when he saw him so roused, would not leave
his presence till the Count had calmed his wrath, set the prisoners
free, and consented to drink the wine _gratis_. Then the holy man turned
to pray, and thanks to his intercession the cup-bearer was restored to
his former health.
Count Eudes--whose widow, Bertha, afterwards became for a while the
wife of King Robert--died in 995. He was succeeded by his son, Thibault
II., and with him the struggle between the spiritual and temporal powers
took the form of a claim to present to the Monastery of S. Père.
Fulbert, who was one day to be the great Bishop of Chartres, has left us
an account of the matter, preserved and completed by the monk Paul,
which is as curious as it is instructive.
‘The Abbot of S. Père,’ writes Fulbert, ‘was very ill, but still in full
possession of his faculties, when a monk named Magenard--up to that time
a dear friend of mine’ (more of a courtier than a priest, says
Paul!)--‘slipped secretly out of the monastery by night and hastened to
Count Thibault, who was all that time lying at Blois, with the view of
begging the post of abbot for himself. The Count sent him back to us
next day, accompanied by commissioners, who were to secure from the
brethren a magnificent reception of him as abbot. But to almost all of
us this conduct appeared as horrible as it was unprecedented. We
answered, therefore, that we could not consent to their requests, for
the appointment was not legal; and an ambitious schemer who had tried to
secure the post of abbot before the abbot himself was dead could not be
accepted. Magenard rode back in high dudgeon to the Count, and fanned
the flames of the young man’s wrath against us. Five days later
Gislebert, the abbot, died. The members of the monastery met, and the
question was put whether anyone supported the claim of Magenard. One by
one the brethren answered no. A deputation was therefore sent to the
Count (who was acting as bishop at the time) to inform him of
Gislebert’s death, and to ask for regular permission to choose his
successor. But this deputation was forestalled by the treacherous
conduct of two monks, who hastened to Blois and falsely informed the
Count that Magenard had been chosen abbot by the brethren. The Count was
delighted at the news, and publicly presented Magenard with the pastoral
staff. The brethren who had remained at home were incensed at this
fraudulent business, and promptly drew up and signed the following
protest:--
‘Know all the Church that we have not chosen Magenard to be our abbot:
we do not approve of him, we do not want him, we do not consent; but we
disapprove, refuse, and altogether reject him--we, that is, the
undersigned monks of Saint Père.’
Fulbert tells us that all the brethren either signed or witnessed their
signatures in his presence. On the next day, he continues, the Count
Thibault returned to Chartres and requested to be admitted with formal
processions into the monastery. The monks replied that they would
willingly so receive him provided that he did not bring the false abbot
with him. The Count was enraged, but held his hand for one day. On the
following day, however, with a noisy crowd of followers, he forced
Magenard upon the Monastery of S. Père. At this violence the holy
brethren, fearing to be contaminated by the presence of the intruder,
bade farewell, with tears in their eyes, to the sanctuary of the Lord,
and took refuge in the Cathedral. The Cathedral also lacked a bishop,
and within its walls the two flocks of monks, like sheep without a
shepherd, mingled their tears with mutual consolation.
The monks found a resting-place in the monastery of Lagni, and Magenard
was installed by a foreign bishop, in the absence of the clergy, amidst
the indignation of the people, and in spite of the open protest of the
Archbishop of Sens and a few of the remaining monks of S. Père.
Not the least dramatic part of this curious story is its end. Magenard
remained quietly in possession of the monastery, and ‘there was not one
bishop in all France whose heart was touched by feelings of piety or
love of sacred law to interfere on behalf of the monks who had been
expelled.’ But presently (1004), on his return from a pilgrimage to
Rome, Count Thibault died, and his body was brought back to be laid next
his brother Thierry in the Chapel of S. Père. His gravestone, restored
in the seventeenth century, at the time of the reconstruction of the
abbey, is now to be found in the Hôtel de Ville. Now, on the death of
the Count, Raoul, the Dean of Notre-Dame, who had welcomed the monks of
S. Père in their flight, was appointed bishop in his stead. The bitter
feeling against Magenard, which had long been smouldering, now burst
into flame. He was deprived of his pastoral staff and compelled to pass
some days in the bishop’s house. But when men saw how instant he was in
prayer, and how fervent in vigil, how wise in speech and accomplished in
letters, the flames of the quarrel died down. His staff was restored to
him, together with the conduct of the monastery, and, adds the
chronicler, as long as he breathed this vital air so long did he full
well and lovingly feed the flock which was confided to his charge.
Bishop Hardouin died eight days after the destruction of the town and
church in 962, and the pious and able Vulphard was appointed in his
stead. The people of Chartres set themselves with undaunted energy to
rebuild their town, and they seized the opportunity of making their
houses more substantial, and of enlarging their churches. Look at the
tenth-century remains of Notre-Dame and S. Père, and judge how massive
was the material they used. Their houses, of course, were still made
mostly of wood. Vulphard devoted himself to the business of constructing
a new cathedral, which should be more beautiful than any yet conceived.
The martyrium is the kernel of the crypt of Notre-Dame. The latter half
of the tenth century was the period of vast crypts, and Vulphard, not
content with merely renewing the martyrium of Gislebert, added a broad
ambulatory round it, enclosed with a strong circular wall, which was
broken by three advanced chapels. This was intended to make the
martyrium, as the depository of the treasure and the Veil, safe from all
accidents. We shall see presently how well it fulfilled its purpose. The
church itself was extended westwards as far as the line marked now by
the labyrinth in the pavement of the nave. Two great piers were inserted
in the martyrium to support the raised choir.
In order to understand the growth of the Cathedral, which is in itself,
to the eye that can see, an almost complete history of Christian
architecture, it is necessary to form some idea of the church which
Vulphard built. For in size and site it approached the modern building.
If we count the circular portion embracing the martyrium, and connected
by stairs with the main building, it must have been over 100 yards long,
and in breadth at least thirty, including the Chapel of
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre on the one side, and the sacristy on the south.
But the nave and the aisles--the floor of which was on a level with that
of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre--were together only as broad as the modern
nave by itself.
Like the tenth century Church of S. Martin-au-Val, the choir was raised
ten or twelve steps above the nave, and was surrounded by an ambulatory.
There was a double transept: and it may be that we can trace it in the
recesses which now form the Chapels of S. Savinian, S. Potentian and
the Saints Forts on the one side, and the Chapel of S. Clement on the
other.
As to the details and ornamentation of the church nothing remains, but
we can say from our knowledge of the times, and from a comparison with
what tenth century work there is in Chartres, what could and what could
not have been, if not what was. There may, for instance, have been a
belfry, and, seeing that the great square tower of the Abbey Church of
S. Père was at that time being built, there probably was. Perhaps two
such towers flanked the two extremities of the façade. They would have
had no spires, but a four-sided, pyramidal roof. Squat columns or square
pillars, one may suppose, carried the series of plain round arches of
brick and stone which connected the aisles with the central nave. But
the great ‘Triumphal Arch,’ as it was called, separating choir from
nave, was richly adorned with sculpture and painting.
The capitals of the pillars and their bases would be in most instances
romanesque, after the fashion of that which serves as a font in the
Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, whilst others would be decorated
like those of S. Martin-au-Val with foliage and forms of real or
fantastic animals, the mystic symbols of Mediæval Masonry, the language
in which the Masters of the Living Stone were now beginning to speak.
The walls may have been enriched with mosaics and paintings in
accordance with the precepts of Charlemagne. Above the aisles may have
run a triforium or gallery, set apart for the prayers of virgins and
widows. If you look at the entrance of Vulphard’s crypt you will see
that the doorways were simple, and they offer a striking contrast to the
porches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with their wealth of
sculpture, which records, as it were, in brief the history of
Christianity, and serves as a preface to the book of the Cathedral.
Without going into further detail, we may add, that as the complete art
of vaulting was not yet known, though the small roof of the martyrium
may have been vaulted, the large roof of the Cathedral can only have
been a flat wooden ceiling.
The building of this church was completed before Vulphard’s death. But
the decoration of it lagged under his successor. The skilled monks
engaged for that purpose disappeared. The artists had retired to their
cloister to await their last hour in prayer and fasting. For the end of
the world was expected. The ancient and popular doctrine of the
millennium possessed all minds. Every sign, it seemed, had been given.
Wars, famine and pestilence, and the ravages of the Normans and Saracens
had produced a depression of spirit, which, combined with an erroneous
interpretation of the Apocalypse, led men to think that the reign of
Antichrist and the end of the world must surely be at hand. The
beginning of the year 1000, it began to be believed, was the appointed
date of this dread climax.
‘A long and unceasing series of signs,’ writes one in 985, when
bequeathing his property to the Abbey of S. Père, ‘bears witness to the
approaching end of the world, and of the passing of all things therein.’
Private wars and the revolt of the Norman peasantry, who had dared to
utter the word ‘commune’ and had been ferociously crushed by the feudal
barons, the breaking up of the Roman Empire, and Charlemagne’s after it,
the plague of S. Anthony’s fire and the scourge of famine, these and a
thousand others not less awful were surely signs enough to fill the
world with terror and despair. And what should a man do but seek refuge
in the house of God and prepare himself
[Illustration: FULBERT AND HIS CHURCH.]
by frenzied supplication against the great day of the Lord?
But when the year was passed and the world was still unended, a wave of
religious feeling swept over Europe and men went with one accord to
render thanks at the holy shrines. Pilgrims crowded to the sanctuary of
Chartres to make their offerings to the Holy Veil and to acknowledge the
protection of the blessed Virgin. They came also to seek relief from the
terrible malady known as S. Anthony’s Fire or _Mal des Ardents_.
S. Fulbert[36] himself, the successor of Eudes, was afflicted with this
painful plague. William of Malmesbury records the miracle by which he
was healed.
‘He was sick unto death,’ he tells us, ‘of the sickness called the
Sacred Fire or _Mal des Ardents_ (erysipelas), which was devouring his
tongue with grievous pain. One night, when his agony was most extreme,
he beheld a beautiful lady approach with an air of majesty, attended by
a numerous suite. She bade him open his mouth, and the sick man obeyed.
Thereupon the mysterious lady did unto him as a mother does who suckles
her infant child; she pressed upon his burning tongue some drops of her
virginal milk, which refreshed his tongue and healed him instantly.
‘Even the cheeks of the saint were sprinkled with the precious liquid,
and he, having wiped off some drops thereof with costly linen, left them
to the Church of Chartres as relics, and as a token of the miracle which
had been wrought in his favour.’ ‘Qui se veoid encores parmi les
reliques,’ adds Souchet.
But Fulbert’s reputation does not rest on these passive acts of
sanctity. An event was to happen shortly which brought out all the
energy that lay beneath his mild excellence and his scholarly
instructions.
‘It was on the 7th September 1020,’ says Souchet, ‘that the burning of
the Church of Chartres happened, on the eve of the nativity of Our Lady.
It is not known how or by whose agency this disaster occurred; but there
was nothing in this holy temple that the fire did not consume.’
Rouillard (1608) piously supposes that lightning was sent from heaven to
destroy the church, as a punishment for the sins of the pilgrims, some
of whom, among the crowds of both sexes who kept vigil there, may by
some act of impurity have defiled the sanctity of the place.
However it may have been, the church was once more destroyed, and, as
was happening all over Italy and France at this period, it was destroyed
only to rise from its ashes more beautiful than ever. So Angers,
Poitiers, Beauvais, Cambrai, Rouen were rebuilt almost as soon as burnt,
in the enthusiastic rivalry of the Christian builders of the day.
‘Humanity,’ in the fine phrase of Raoul Glaber, ‘rose from its long
agony and set itself to build, and to shake off the rags of its old age
in order to put on the white robe of the churches.’
The great bishop with whose name the new Cathedral at Chartres was to be
indissolubly connected, the Fulbert of Fulbert’s Cathedral, had been the
favourite pupil of Gerbert of Reims and had practised medicine in the
Monastery of S. Père, where that art was long held in high honour. But
Fulbert was more than a mere doctor. He was a poet, a mathematician, a
theologian, grammarian and skilful musician as well. When, therefore, he
became the head of the School of Chartres (from which a few years later
John, called the Deaf, was to issue, doctor of Henry I. and chief of the
sect of Nominalists, whose pupil was Rosselin, whose pupil Abeilard)
scholars flocked from England, Germany, Denmark and all parts of France
to listen to the teachings of the French Socrates, and to receive from
his eloquent lips the precepts of wisdom and the counsel of friendship.
For his knowledge was immense and his learning encyclopædic, ranging
from the minutest details of the exact sciences to the most daring
speculations of metaphysics. Fulbert, we are told, like a modern Plato,
would often withdraw to a garden near the bishop’s palace, watered by
the clear stream (it _was_ clear in those days), and there, surrounded
by his chosen pupils, expound with mingled sweetness and force the
tenets of philosophy and the doctrines of faith. ‘The teacher of
philosophers, the marvel of his age, the sun whose rays gave life,’ his
pupil Adelmann called him. And among the philosophers he taught, and the
rare flowers of intellect which in this age of brute force expanded
beneath the quickening rays of his mind, Adelmann enumerates Lanfranc,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Walter of Burgundy, Lambert and Engelbert
of Paris and Orléans, Hildier, wise as Socrates and learned as
Pythagoras, and Sigo, the musician of the delicate ear. Fulbert’s
letters,[37] which place him among the most interesting historians of
this obscure period, reveal him as a theologian firm and decided, as a
statesman eager to enforce order and to secure the administration of
justice, as a man broad-minded, charming, enthusiastic, humane.
Inspired by a mysterious voice which bade him ‘build a sanctuary worthy
of his filial love and the divine majesty,’ Fulbert now set about
procuring funds to build first a veritable crypt, and then above it the
new Cathedral, adopting, however, the general plan of the church left by
his predecessor in order to make use of the enormous existing
foundations.[38] The subterranean aspect of the old church, built about
the grottoes and heaped round by the rapid deposit of rubbish which
continually raised the soil of mediæval towns, would naturally suggest
this scheme. But to carry it out funds beyond the ordinary were needed.
Fortunately Fulbert was no ordinary beggar. Not only did he know how to
use the usual means of encouraging gifts, in money and in kind, from the
clergy and people of the diocese by holding special assemblies on the
site of the proposed church, and by sermons which promised heavenly
rewards for those who took part in the building, but he used his
connections with the great world and his power of letter-writing to the
best advantage.
He wrote first of all to ‘his beloved Lord,’ the ‘good King Robert,’ in
whom the historian sees more of a monk than of a sovereign.
‘All our resources fail us for the rebuilding of our church, and a great
necessity is upon us. Come then to our aid, O holy father; strengthen
our weakness and succour our distress to the end that God may reward
your soul with all blessings.’
And doubtless the ‘father of religious architecture’ responded
generously to this eloquent appeal from his former teacher.
Meanwhile every belfry in the diocese attested by its silence the
disaster of the church and the sorrow of its bishop. ‘On account of the
disaster,’ he writes, ‘which has befallen my church, I wish to make
known my profound grief to all. In consequence I have commanded that all
the bells which are wont to ring with joy and gladness shall attest
henceforth by their silence my bitter sadness.’
Fulbert wrote next to his most beloved and pious Duke of Aquitaine, and
he received handsome annual subscriptions from him whilst the Cathedral
was a-building. ‘Your marvellous and inexhaustible charity,’ writes the
bishop, ‘is pleased to overwhelm me with many gifts which I do not
deserve. I should blush to receive your offerings were I not sure that
you will be magnificently rewarded hereafter.’
Eudes II., Count of Chartres and Blois, was, before he met his death in
the Battle of Bar-le-Duc, a generous contributor. That was to be
expected from so rich a seigneur for the restoration of the principal
church of his own county and town, but deeply was Fulbert touched by the
receipt of a contribution from Cnut, King of Denmark and England, who,
as William of Malmesbury records, ‘sent many sums to the churches across
the seas, and chiefly enriched that of Chartres, where flourished
Fulbert, renowned for his holiness and philosophy.’
In acknowledging the esterlings of the great Danish King, the bishop
speaks of him in terms which the verdict of history has confirmed.
‘To the very noble King of Denmark, Cnut, Fulbert, by the grace of God,
Bishop of Chartres, with his clerks and his monks, promises the
recommendation of his prayers.
‘When we saw the offering which you deigned to send us we admired at
once your astonishing wisdom and religious spirit--your wisdom in that
you, a prince divided from us by language and by sea, are zealously
concerned not only with the things around you, but also with the things
that touch us; at your religious spirit, in that you, of whom we had
heard speak as a Pagan King, show yourself a very Christian and generous
benefactor of the churches and servants of God. We render lively thanks
to the King of Kings, through whose mercy your gifts have descended upon
us, and we beseech Him to make your reign happy and prosperous, and to
deliver your soul from all sin.’
Such were the means by which the courtly bishop extracted donations from
the great, and such the spiritual consolation with which he rewarded the
generosity of his royal patrons.
Fulbert’s labours, supported by the enthusiastic devotion of the people,
were interrupted by the turbulent behaviour of Godfrey, Viscount of
Châteaudun. He, since Eudes had acquired the county of Champagne, and
took, therefore, little interest in the affairs of Chartres, had, like
the other great vassals of Eudes, followed the example of his suzerain.
He was endeavouring, by building himself first the Castle of Gallardon,
and now of Illiers, in the very centre of the bishop’s possessions, to
aggrandise himself at the expense of the King and the Church. Fulbert
could not prevail upon the monkish Robert to repress Godfrey by force.
The spiritual arms which he himself used only roused the Count to take
reprisals by plundering the episcopal farms. Eudes himself, who had
assumed the title of Count Palatine, was too much occupied with his own
ambitious schemes, and his opposition to King Robert and King Robert’s
successor, to have either the wish or the time to interfere. For,
although he had acquiesced in Fulbert’s advice, followed by Robert the
Good, that Henry, the third son, should be appointed to succeed to the
throne, yet, when King Robert died, Eudes espoused the cause of the
fourth. He was obliged to yield at last to the force of Henry’s arms,
and some years later this turbulent Count was killed at Bar-le-Duc when
striving to take vengeance on the Emperor Conrad by attacking his
vassal, Gothelon.
In spite of his many reverses, Eudes had greatly increased the power and
repute of the house of Chartres. So far as Chartres was concerned he had
made many rich presents to the Cathedral and to the Monastery of S.
Père. He endowed the small church and foundation which was afterwards to
become the Monastery of S. Jean-en-Vallée.[39]
But his chief act of interference was when, on the death of Fulbert, the
Chapter appealed to him to uphold their election of Albert the Dean to
the episcopal seat against the appointment of Theodoric, a creature of
Queen Constance. Eudes, seizing the opportunity of opposing the royal
will, declared that he would not admit the new bishop into his town
until he had been examined by a bench of bishops, for he was said to be
a man of little sense and no education. Theodoric’s appointment was,
however, in the end made good.
The vast possessions of Eudes were divided between his sons, who,
following the family tradition, refused to pay homage to the King. They
were surprised by the energy of their royal suzerain, overpowered and
held captive for six years. Étienne, the younger, died; but Thibault, at
the price of the county of Tours, was set free by Geoffrey of Anjou.
Thibault was now Count of Chartres, Blois, Brie and Champagne, but as to
the delimitations of their territories endless hostilities arose
between him and the Angevin prince. And when his hands were not full
with the attentions of this neighbour he waged disastrous war for his
King against William I., Duke of Normandy (1058).
But in spite of wars and famine and disease, in spite of the violence of
Counts and the weakness of Kings, Fulbert’s Cathedral was completed ere
his death. The fire had left but a few columns and fragments of wall
standing where once was the Cathedral of Vulphard. The winter of 1020
was devoted to clearing away the _débris_, and so active was the work,
that by September in the following year Fulbert could write ‘we have
finished our crypts, and’ (this is the reason why he cannot accept the
invitation of William of Aquitaine to be present at the solemn
dedication of the Cathedral of Poitiers) ‘we must devote all our
energies to covering them before the inclemency of the winter damages
them.’ But in the following year the work had made such progress that he
was able to undertake a journey at King Robert’s request to Rome,
leaving the building to his canons and architect. Who that architect was
may perhaps be indicated by the entry in the _Nécrologie de Notre-Dame_,
under date October 22:--_Bérenger_. ‘Berengarius hujus matris ecclesiæ,
Artifex Bonus.’
The martyrium had suffered less than the rest of the Cathedral, but it
was thought necessary to place a large round column on the Gallo-Roman
wall, in order to strengthen the vaulted roof. On this column you may
descry the word Fulbert, cut not in modern days, nor yet at any great
distance of time.
‘The circular part of our crypt,’ says l’Abbé Bulteau,[40] ‘with its
vaulting, is to-day just as it was left then.’ But the floor was
probably much lower if one may judge by the embrasures of the windows.
The convex wall of the martyrium was strengthened on the outside by a
double thickness, for it had to support not only the thrust of the new
vaulting, but also the weight of the upper church.
As to the rectilinear portions of the crypt, in spite of the alterations
of the twelfth century, we may easily recognise the seal of the
eleventh century in the piers and the _abaci_. To S. Fulbert we
may also attribute the construction of two sacristies for
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, that on the _south_ side now being the Chapel
of S. Martin, that on the north the _Cave au Bois_, known formerly as
the ‘Place of the Iron Chest.’
The upper church was built of the same dimensions as those of the former
one, but the ground level of the whole was raised considerably, almost
to the height of that of the choir.
The length of the church may be indicated by the excavations of 1849 at
the centre of the labyrinth known as _La Lieue_, where fragments were
discovered which are supposed to have been the _débris_ of the western
façade. There was a double ambulatory round the choir and chapels
corresponding to those of the crypt, and two sacristies may be reckoned
to have been built above those of the Sous Terre.
A transept and two side-doors existed in the same place, but of less
size than those of to-day.
The decoration of the Cathedral was left in great part to Fulbert’s
successors.
Henry I., who came to the throne when death had surprised his father,
Robert the Good, as he was copying a manuscript in the Church of Melun,
owed his succession in some degree, as we have seen, to Fulbert.
He cancelled his debt in part by paying for the wooden roof[41] of the
Cathedral--wooden, for the art of extensive vaulting in stone was not
yet understood--whilst Henry’s doctor, Jean le Sourd, the Chartrain
pupil of Fulbert and leader of the sect of Nominalists in the battle of
the schools, was responsible for the construction of the south gate and
many other details. Teudon, who had made the Sainte Chasse for the Veil,
undertook the principal façade. A big bell weighing 5000 livres was also
hung in one of Vulphard’s towers, which still stood.
Fulbert died in the year 1028, but so rapid had the work been that he
did not die before his Cathedral was complete. For William of Malmesbury
(_Gest._, Vol. II. chap. XXV.) records that ‘Bishop Fulbert, among other
proofs of his efficient labours, very magnificently completed the Church
of Our Lady S. Mary, of which he himself had laid the foundations, and
which, moreover,’ he adds, ‘doing everything he could for its honour, he
rendered celebrated by many musical modulations. The man who has heard
his chaunts, breathing only celestial vows, is best able to conceive the
love he manifested in honour of the Virgin.’
Under Fulbert, indeed, the school of Chartres became famous for its
music and for its plain-song renderings of the sacred offices. The
celebrated François de Cologne and many others are mentioned as having
belonged to this school. But Fulbert himself excelled them all in his
compositions.[42] For amongst other beautiful canticles he composed, in
collaboration, it is said, with King Robert, the famous responses of the
Nativity of the Virgin, a feast which he, in grateful remembrance of his
wondrous visitant, was the first to celebrate in France. I shall be
forgiven for quoting in the untranslatable Latin this noble hymn of
love, which is the most beautiful blossom of the poetic crown of Mary.
‘Solem justitiæ, regem paritura supremum
Stella Maria maris hodie processit ad ortum;
Cernere divinum lumen gaudete fideles!
Stirps Jesse virgam produxit, virgaque florem,
Et super hunc florem requiescit Spiritus almus,
Virgo dei genitrix virga est, flos filius ejus.
Ad nutum Domini nostrum ditantis honorem,
Sicut spina rosam genuit, Judæa Mariam,
Ut vitium virtus operiret, gratia culpam.’[43]
Fulbert himself left a great part of his wealth to complete the work
which he had begun. That work was carried on by his successor,
Theodoric. But it must have been interrupted for a while by the terrible
famine which came upon France at this period--a famine so terrible that
during its course human flesh, it is said, was exposed for sale, and the
bodies of the dead were dug up and eaten. The abundant harvest of 1034
put an end to this infliction, and men turned again to finish the
decoration of God’s house. It would seem, indeed, as if Theodoric turned
this task to the purpose of relief-works. For the monk Paul says of him
‘that his abounding wealth, poured out in a lavish stream, issuing ever
to provide for the hunger and thirst of the needy, completed the famous
work of the court of our gracious Lady, the Mother of God, and makes him
worthy of saintly renown.’
But it was not till the year 1037 that the solemn dedication of the
Cathedral by Theodoric took place in the presence of Henri I. and his
whole Court.
Theodoric was buried by the side of Fulbert, and on his tomb in S. Père
was written, ‘Holy Virgin, he wished to raise to thee a temple, the
design of which the author had taken from Heaven itself.’
CHAPTER IV
_S. Ives and the Crusades_
‘A pretty burgh and such as Fancy loves
For bygone grandeurs.’--LOWELL.
The town of Chartres is clearly divided into two sections--the upper
(_quartier du luxe_), modern, unimpressive and inelegant, and the lower,
picturesque, poor, mediæval. This lower part of the town is watered by
an arm of the Eure,
‘Dont l’eau distille
Autour de notre ville,
Et d’un murmurant flot
Maint beau verger enclot,’
as a local sixteenth-century poet has it. Like most old towns, Chartres
consisted originally of a small city enclosed by strong walls and of
suburbs stretching along the main roads which led to it. As these
suburbs increased in size and importance, the enceinte was enlarged so
as to include them. This took place at Chartres notably in the twelfth
century. But up to that time the area enclosed was remarkably small, for
after Hastings had sacked the town ‘the inhabitants had not the heart,’
says the monk Paul, ‘to rebuild all their city, but contented themselves
with fortifying the little corner of the ancient town which is still’
(1060) ‘surrounded with walls.’
The line of the enceinte enclosing this ‘little corner of the ancient
town’ cannot be exactly traced. But
[Illustration: Étape-au-Vin]
it certainly ran from the Place de l’Étape-au-Vin (the picturesque old
shop built out on wooden supports), and, passing behind the Church of S.
Aignan, the Castle of the Counts (Place Billard), crossed the
Petit-Boucherie to join the Tertre S. Eman,[44] where was the Porte
Evière (Porta Aquaria). Tertres, it should be remarked, are, in
Chartrain dialect, little streets of stone steps which facilitate
communication between the upper and lower towns. The rest of the town
was defended by ditches and ramparts. A few wooden forts guarded the
bridges.
Within the walls, the Cathedral and the castle frowned over the rest of
the town and other churches, representing the double power of bishop and
count, around which was growing up the crowd of dependants who were
destined, in the fulness of time, to become the bourgeoisie of Chartres.
And without the walls lay the Monastery of S. Père, waxing yearly in
lands and wealth, stirring the jealousy of bishops and tempting the
cupidity of counts. About the castle, the Cathedral and the monastery
there were gradually being established groups of artisans who, by
instinct and necessity, herded together in distinct quarters of the
town, and thus gradually formed the redoubtable corporations and guilds
of the Middle Ages--unions which, in the learned and unlearned
professions alike, still exercise so potent an influence in England and
on the Continent. Already there were the quarters of the money-changers,
the saddlers, the skinners, the goldsmiths in Chartres. Later, as we
shall see, almost every street will fly the banner of some particular
Craft.
The liberty of the peasant was also being gradually asserted throughout
this period. He was passing from the condition of a farmer under a
proprietor to that of a proprietor owing duties to a lord. From these
duties and obligations, again, the tendency now was for the peasant, by
purchase or refusal, to free himself.
Side by side with this very gradual exaltation of the humble and meek,
there begin to occur, as the era of the Crusades approaches, numerous
instances of the voluntary abasement of the great. Old seigneurs, in
strange paroxysms of religious enthusiasm, giving up their old way of
life, left lance and sword to younger hands and themselves put on the
armour of God. The example of these soldiers of the Lord, having become
_pauvre et peuple_ for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, living as mere
monks in the Monastery of S. Père, went some way towards inspiring pity
and consideration for the truly poor and the naturally low-born.
Generally, also, throughout this period there is a tendency to
substitute for arbitrary exactions and violence arrangements settled by
charter and definite duties and rights. But it is only a tendency. The
amelioration of life was only very gradual. Neither life nor property in
the eleventh and twelfth century were, as a rule, what we should call
secure. Take for an instance the behaviour of the sons of one Échambaud
when they had a difference over the possession of some land with the
Abbot of S. Père. They refused to submit their case either to the
jurisdiction of the Church courts or of Hélisende, the lady of the land.
For they preferred to have recourse to the intervention of a powerful
friend named John, living at Étampes, who was a total stranger to the
matter in dispute. Relying upon his protection, these sons of Échambaud
proceeded to plunder the property of the abbey and to burn the houses
of the tenants. They were only induced to cease from their ways and to
follow the peaceable paths of justice when the monks presented
themselves at Étampes and threatened to excommunicate the town.
Crimes were paid for in cash. There was indeed a regular tariff for
injuries done in the Middle Ages. The material damage once made good,
the moral damage was left out of account. We learn from the _Cartulaire_
the price of a monk of S. Père, for it is there recorded that Richard de
Réviers, having slain one of these, Giraud by name, bought the pardon
(pax) of the monks by making over to them four acres of land and an
annual tribute of _four quartants_ of corn. A century later (1239) we
find the monks releasing from prison a man, who had slain a clerk, on
receipt of a promise to pay _thirty sous tournois_ yearly, in addition
to certain other minor considerations.
Private wars arising from personal quarrels and ambitions, or damages of
the sort described, were very frequent. The intervention of the Crown
was rare. We have an instance of the exercise of the royal prerogative,
however, when Louis le Gros stepped in and destroyed, after three years’
war, the fortress of the Seigneurs du Puiset, who had long been a thorn
in the side of Chartres, continually committing brigandage on the Church
lands and caring nothing for ecclesiastical pains and penalties. The
King abolished the oppressive institutions of these lords, and
re-established in their ancient liberty the possessions of Notre-Dame
and the Monastery of S. Père.
In the thirteenth century the power of the King grew stronger, and
asserted itself over the monastic property. The monks of S. Père none
the less retained the right of jurisdiction in their own lands. Thus
when Geoffroi, Seigneur d’Illiers, had arrested a murderer in an inn on
their property and had hung the man (1229), he was afterwards
constrained to admit that he had exceeded his rights. All jurisdiction,
he acknowledged, appertained to the abbot and monks; he gave them
satisfaction, and paid them a fine.
Whilst they upheld their rights against the encroachments of Grands
Seigneurs in this fashion, the monks were no less frequently involved in
similar disputes with the _Communes_. Such disputes were often carried
for settlement to the court of the King. Occasionally we find the courts
ordering a point in dispute to be decided by judicial combat. These
combats seldom actually took place. The proposal of them seems to have
stimulated both parties to come to some arrangement, or to have
frightened one of them perhaps into withdrawal. The absurd and cruel
practice of trial by single combat had been borrowed from the warlike
tribes of Germany, who could not believe that a brave man deserved to
suffer or that a coward deserved to live. The old, the feeble and
infirm, therefore, in civil and criminal proceedings, were exposed to
mortal challenge from the antagonist who was destitute of legal proofs,
and thus condemned to renounce their fairest claims and possessions, to
sustain the danger of an unequal conflict, or to trust the doubtful aid
of a mercenary champion. Two instances of such challenges are recorded
by the monk Paul, and are full of human interest.
The Lord Payen de Rémalard brought an action (1090) against the Abbot of
S. Père with regard to some land in the possession of the monastery. The
two parties appeared in the Bishop’s Court. S. Ives was the Bishop of
Chartres, and he appeared among the witnesses for the monks. Geoffrey,
Count of Perche and many others were present on behalf of Rémalard. The
advocates on either side had begun to discuss and expound the case, when
suddenly a servant of S. Père, Laurent by name, burst into the middle of
the assembly and cried aloud that he had witnessed the gift of the
property in question by the Lady Ermengarde to the monks. Rémalard
himself, he further asserted, was present at the time and had made no
objection then. Rémalard denied the story; the servant affirmed it again
and again. Neither would give way. It was a question of word against
word, and who was to decide which was the better? At last, at the
suggestion of the monks, and with the assent of Rémalard, Laurent boldly
named _diem belli et locum_--the day and place of combat. But on the
day, and at the place named, Rémalard failed to put in an
appearance--_suam presentiam minime exhibuit_, and the land passed
peaceably into the undisputed possession of the monastery.
On another occasion, some twenty years later, the men of God proved
themselves too sturdy for their opponents. Again it was the question
about the donation of some property. Again one of the witnesses for the
monastery, Walter of Treleveisin, offered to make good in a duel his
testimony that he had been present on the occasion of the gift. This
time once more the offer was accepted, and the opposite party, thinking
to succeed by means of many subterfuges which they had prepared, at
first put on a bold face. But when there was no sign of wavering on the
part of the monks, the adversary’s heart failed him; we are told his
conscience smote him. He acknowledged the wrong he had done, and begged
pardon of the abbot, promising, in the presence of the whole Chapter,
that in future he would champion the cause of the monastery, both by
word and deed, in court and in battle.
Occasionally, when temporal power failed to secure them justice, Divine
aid helped the monks to maintain their rights. Wiard, son of Drogon de
Conflans, found this to his cost when he had wrongfully exacted a horse
from the Monastery of S. Père. Each time that he mounted the beast he
was attacked by a sudden malady. So much so that, after making four
unsuccessful attempts, he gave in and restored the horse to the monks,
as is recorded by the monk Paul in the year 1098.
The same writer relates an incident of the same year, which throws a
vivid light upon the social conditions of the days of chivalry. War was
the profession of your true chevalier and brigandage his pastime. The
excesses of a life spent in these occupations were to be repeated and at
the same time expiated by the Crusader. The preliminary expenses of
equipment for the Holy War were only to be met by selling some portion
of his property to the Church. Many transactions of this sort are
recorded in the telltale Chartularies of Notre-Dame and S. Père. The
incident to which I refer will serve as an example of this:--
Nivelon, son of Faucher, Lord of Fréteval, confesses that, as often as
he was carried away by chivalrous ardour (of a sort sufficiently
inconvenient to his neighbours), it was his custom to fall upon the
village of Emprainville with a troop of his followers and to
‘commandeer’ all the provisions to be found there belonging to the men
of the Abbey of S. Père. But when, in after years, he determined to go
on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he agreed, in order to obtain pardon for
his trespasses and money for his journey, in consideration, that is, of
thirteen silver pounds from the monks, to forego this vexatious habit of
his.
And he adds that if any of his descendants dispute the validity of this
concession, he hopes he may ‘be struck down by the thunderbolt that
awaiteth on perjurers, and that he may be condemned with Dathan and
Abiram to hell fire, and there to suffer everlasting torture.’ There is
a fine ecclesiastical ring about the legal documents of those days, it
will be noticed. Imprecations on breakers of contracts are indeed common
enough in mediæval diplomatics. The monk Paul supplies us with an
instance in which the guilty man is consigned ‘to the everlasting fires
of hell along with Nero, who caused the Apostle S. Peter to perish on
the cross, and S. Paul the Apostle to perish by the sword.’ In another
case the hope is expressed that the transgressor may incur, amongst
other inconveniences, the penalty of eternal damnation, the loss of his
eyesight, and the infliction of the _mal royal_.
Nor was it a marauding knight only or an aggressive seigneur who was
likely to interrupt the even tenor of a man’s way in those times. There
were not infrequently bishops in his path also--bishops of the feudal,
fighting, robbing sort, whose style of blessing was a blow with a sword.
Notable among these persecuting Bishops of Chartres is Robert of Tours,
Cardinal and Legate (1065), who excommunicated a whole parcel of monks
because they refused to accept the abbot he wished to force upon them.
Then, too, there was Arrald, deceitful and fair of speech, against whom
the chronicler is mightily wroth. But the bishop must at least have had
a sense of humour. For his dictum was that gold and silver and the
precious ornaments of the Church had no place in a monastery; they were
only provocative of pride and the occasion of wantonness in the monks.
Therefore he would take such things away, to save them from temptation.
He remarked, too, that it was a wicked thing for monks to eat fish or
the fat of beasts; they ought to eat simple herbs only, and he advised
them to strive to be xerophagi, or eaters of dry, plain food. And to
help them, no doubt, he confiscated their fish ponds, for he had a nice
taste in good fish himself, and a liking for foreign dishes, ‘always
indulging,’ adds our monk savagely, ‘his own natural tendency to
gormandise’ (ventri suo castrimargiam semper habens vernaculam)![45] But
it is the monks themselves who have left us an imperishable tradition of
gormandising; even on fast days they would put a fowl in the pot, and
salve their consciences with the argument that as birds and fishes had
been created on the same day, they might be of the same species; and, as
to drink, they were often under the patronage of S. Martin, in cloisters
or at the tavern, quite theologically drunk. As early as 847 the
councils of the Church were busy with the scandals of monks in inns. And
cleanliness of the body they considered to be a culpable vanity, a
pollution of the soul.
But, whether Arrald deserved the censure of the monk Paul or not, that
kind of bishop was not uncommon in this century. Geoffrey the First,
seven years later, was excommunicated for simony and other vices. His
simony he had defended with shameless cynicism.
When the King reproached him with having given to others the benefices
which he had asked of him, ‘I have not given them at all, sire,’ he
replied; ‘I have sold them very profitably.’
But his treason, his adulteries and his perjuries became at last
unbearable. Pope Gregory VII. determined to make an example of him. He
was compelled to resign his bishopric, and in his stead was appointed
one of the greatest of Chartrain Bishops--S. Ives.
The Feast of S. Ives is kept at Chartres on the 20th of May, when his
relics, which are kept in the Treasury of the Cathedral, are shown. His
name has been given to the passage in the cloister opposite the great
north porch, and it lives in the mouth of the peasants as S. Yvre,
protector of sheep; his stone image stands near that of Fulbert on the
_clôture_ of the choir, but his spirit lives most surely in those square
grey towers which he began to build, and which, so massive and yet so
spiritual, point with their spires heavenwards, like hands that have
been clasped and raised in prayer.
A man of high birth, he had joined one of the severest Augustine orders,
who eat neither fish nor meat; a man of great talents, he had improved
them by study under the famous Lanfranc, at the Monastery of Le Bec.
There he had been the friend and fellow-student of Anselm, who in later
years paid him a visit at Chartres, on his way from Canterbury to Rome.
The characters of the two men, as revealed by their lives and letters,
are much alike in their sweetness and their strength. S. Ives was a man
before his time; in every way superior to his century. A scholar, he was
also a man of action, a statesman of indomitable will, a theologian of
surpassing acumen and enthusiasm. He did not, like Fulbert, found a
school of philosophy, but he made of his monks practical philosophers.
As a canonist his famous ‘Décret’ caused him to be consulted by high and
low, learned and learners alike, on questions of theology, jurisprudence
or conduct. On questions of practical politics his advice was sought by
Popes and Kings, whether of France or England; by Counts and Seigneurs,
and men of low degree. It was always given with sympathy, science, and a
charming humility. His letters are indeed full of sweetness and light,
of dignity and logic, of firmness and vigour, tempered by Christian
charity and meekness. Take, for an example, his reply to the Bishop of
Orléans, who had consulted him on the question whether a free man,
married to a woman of whose servile condition he had been ignorant,
could divorce her and marry again. ‘If the laws of the world are to be
consulted,’ S. Ives writes, ‘the answer must be that, marriage between
equals alone being legitimate, the divorce ought to take place. But if
we consult the law of God, which makes us all equal, and is careless of
social conditions, we shall answer, No.’ And elsewhere he says, ‘Reject
these pretended trials by ordeal of fire and sword. It is tempting God,
and I have often seen the innocent punished and the guilty acquitted by
this means.’
Such was the pure and fearless spirit of the man who was now called to
govern Chartres, and who set himself to introduce order, discipline and
a right tone in a diocese which had suffered much from Geoffrey’s
lawless rule.
It was much against his will that he left his monastery at Beauvais to
take up what he called ‘the heavy burden of the episcopate’ (Letter
III.).
And since he was not willing to receive the insignia of his pastoral
charge from the throne, the Canons of Chartres dragged him by main force
before Philippe, and compelled him (as Anselm in England also was
forcibly compelled) to receive the pastoral staff from the King.[46]
Geoffrey, however, the deposed bishop, was not the man to retire without
a struggle. He enlisted the support of his uncle, Bishop of Paris, and
of the Archbishop of Sens. Gently but firmly S. Ives ignored their
protests, resting his claim on the supreme decision of the Pope. The
storm wore itself out against his unflinching calmness. But scarcely was
he settled peaceably in possession of his bishopric when, like the
conscientious man of action that he was, S. Ives felt bound to stir up
another storm, destined to make itself felt throughout Christendom.
The union of Philippe the First with Bertrade de Montfort was a flagrant
violation of the laws of the Church. Against this adulterous marriage S.
Ives arose and protested. In order to understand the part S. Ives took
in this matter it is necessary to realise that the sanctity of marriage
was a point, the observance of which, in his aim of securing not the
appearance only but the reality of virtue, S. Ives had set himself to
enforce in all classes. He deals with the subject in his letters with
broad judgment and sound sense.
In the case of princes--for the sake of example--he had continually
exerted himself to prevent or to annul marriages which transgressed the
laws of holy matrimony.
Now, therefore, with immense courage, he determined to stop the
adulterous and incestuous union of the quinquagenarian Philippe I. with
Bertrade, third wife of Fouques, Count of Anjou. For the King wished to
repudiate Queen Bertha and to make a wife of that fascinating and
ambitious woman.
To quiet all scruples and objections, he began by endeavouring to obtain
the consent of the bishops, and especially that of S. Ives (S. Ives,
Letter XIII.), whom he tried to trick into giving his assent. But S.
Ives would be no party to such a business. Though he could not dissuade
the King, he persisted in opposing and condemning his action. He warned
his brother bishops not to be mute dogs that know not how to bark. He
wrote to the King that he would rather have a millstone round his neck
and be cast into the sea than aid and abet by his presence this
unrighteous union with Bertrade.
It was a noble letter; but the purpose of the writer was not achieved.
The marriage took place. It remained to punish the honest bishop.
Perhaps Philippe might have forgiven him, but Bertrade was not the kind
of woman to forgive such opposition.
Hugues II. du Puiset, Viscount of Chartres, was her tool. Acting under
instructions from the Court, he pillaged the lands of Notre-Dame. Then,
profiting by the presence of the bishop in his country house near
Fresnay,[47] he seized him and held him prisoner.
When news was brought to Chartres of the seizure of their bishop, people
and clergy alike rose to arms to rescue him. But he wrote forbidding
them to use violence for his sake. ‘War,’ he said, ‘is for wolves, not
for shepherds. I did not obtain my bishopric by arms, and by arms I do
not care to recover it.’ In like manner he restrained the nobles who
were eager to fight against the King in his defence, and, for fear of
stirring up rebellion, he refused for a long time to publish the letters
which the Pope had despatched, denouncing the scandalous marriage of
Philippe. As a reward, his lands and property were ravaged and sacked,
so that, when in obedience to the Pope’s command he was at length set
free, he found himself reduced to absolute penury. But his firmness
gained him his point in the end. Morality was vindicated. Philippe,
excommunicated, made his submission to Pope Urban II., and although he
withdrew it under Pascal II., he finally, with Bertrade, made the
_amende honorable_ before the assembled bishops in Paris (1104).
S. Ives had taken his part in that famous Council of Clermont, in which,
after the Roman Pontiff had hurled from this tribunal in the heart of
France his anathemas against the French King, the Church confirmed the
Truce of God by which it was determined that (1095) ‘on all days monks,
clerks and women, and those with them shall abide in peace; but on three
days of the week any injury inflicted by anyone upon another shall not
be counted an infringement of the peace; but on the other four days
(Thursday-Sunday) anyone who injures another shall be held guilty of
breaking the holy peace, and shall be punished accordingly.’ Men who
lived by violence were to be violent only three days a week--men who
lived by the sword were to keep it sheathed more than half the year. The
check upon the unbridled power and wanton cruelty of the barons implied
by this moderate enactment constituted one of the greatest steps in the
direction of alleviating the distress of the poor, the weak and the
educated; of encouraging travelling and trade, and promoting
civilisation that was taken in the Middle Ages.
S. Ives proceeded with the utmost vigour to persuade the nobles of his
diocese to accept the peace which they were tempted to reject as
contrary to their privileges, and also to see that it was observed
thereafter by them and by others within the limits of his own
jurisdiction. And thus, by helping to deliver the weak from the power of
the strong, he contributed towards preparing the way for the movement
which was soon to give the people a voice in their own affairs and
procure for them their municipal franchise in the form of ‘Communes.’
Meanwhile this same Council of Clermont had provided an outlet for the
energies of the knights of Christendom, which were restricted by the
Truce of God. The Crusade had been promulgated.
The enthusiasm of the people had been carefully prepared. The fantastic
figure of Peter the Hermit, dressed in a woollen tunic and a cloak of
coarse cloth, his arms and feet alike bare, and his eyes flashing with
magnetic frenzy, had appeared among them and heated their imaginations.
At the sound of his eloquence every heart caught fire, and a nation of
soldiers was burning to exhibit at once its piety and its valour by the
conquest of the Holy Land. The merit and glory of that undertaking had
also been preached by the clergy in every diocese. When, therefore, the
Pope ascended a lofty scaffold in the market-place of Clermont his
eloquence was addressed to a vast concourse of well-prepared and
impatient enthusiasts. The answer to the summons to arms was unanimous.
The orator was interrupted by the shout of thousands, ‘Diex el volt!
Diex el volt!’ For so the popular tongue corrupted the cry of the
clergy, ‘God wills it!’ (Deus vult). ‘It is indeed the will of God,’
replied the Pope, and he gave them as a mark of their sacred and
irrevocable engagement the symbol of the red, the bloody cross to be
worn on their breast or shoulder.
Thus in a paroxysm of religious fervour began that Crusade which was to
end in the rapine of a mediæval raid, and in the disastrous _dénouement_
of Nicæa.
The effects of the Crusades were as varied as the motives of the
Crusaders. For though all were inspired, one need not doubt, by a
genuine religious desire to regain the Holy Sepulchre for Christendom,
by the belief of merit, the hope of the reward of plenary indulgence
promised by the Pope, and the assurance of divine aid, yet other motives
and instincts were present in the breasts of many. Collectively, the
Crusading Gaul exhibited a perversion of that instinct of expansion to
which French excursions into Britain and Russia, across the Pyrenees,
the Alps and the Rhine, to America, India, Madagascar and Algiers, have
continually borne witness, and which now survives the population’s power
to expand. Individually, the desire to rescue the Church, mingled with
the hope of military glory and the prospect of unlimited plunder, were
sufficient inducements for the barons to cease from petty wars in their
own land, and to gratify, as a penance and against the nations of the
East, those passions which, when indulged at home, had involved them in
the discipline of penance. And in the case of their followers, among
many other motives, the love of freedom prompted. For, under the sign of
the Cross, the peasant attached to the servitude of the glebe might
escape from a haughty lord and transplant himself and his family to a
land of liberty, just as the monk might release himself from the
discipline of his convent and the criminal elude the punishment of his
crime.
Of the effects of the Crusades I shall only mention those which are
directly illustrated by the story of Chartres. They rolled back the tide
of Mahometan conquest from Constantinople; they brought together East
and West, and led to the awakening of the human intellect which was to
put an end to the dark ages; they opened up new markets and stimulated
trade to a wonderful degree--these great results they had, but they only
affected Chartres indirectly. More directly we see the effect of them in
the relations between the powers that were. By weakening the resources
and influence of the barons they strengthened the authority of the Kings
acting in alliance with the citizens. And this alliance broke up the
feudal system, gradually abolished serfdom, and substituted the
authority of a common law for the unstable will of chiefs, whose
arbitrament was private war. Last and not least permanent of the effects
of the Crusades was the influence exercised by the East upon art. The
Porche Royal of the Cathedral, and the stained glass windows which are
the glory of Chartres, would not have been as they are had Peter the
Hermit never led his hundred thousand pilgrims to destruction, or if
Bohémond, Prince of Antioch, had not taken the Cross in the sanctuary of
Notre-Dame.
The foundation of the Abbey Josaphat-Lès-Chartres, which, like so many
other religious foundations rich in lands, in relics and in books, was
destroyed in 1789, affords another example of the indirect influence of
the Crusades upon the institutions of Chartres. This abbey[48] was
situated about two kilometres from Chartres, under the Hill of Lèves, on
a site which in its topographical relations resembled that Valley of
Jehosaphat to which its founder, Bishop Geoffrey, the successor of S.
Ives, had vowed to go, but came into the bishopric instead. Even so S.
Bernard recalled the town of Tyre to the memory of all Christians in the
name of Tyron, which he gave to the monastery which he founded in Le
Perche on lands given to him by S. Ives.
It was to the Abbey of Josaphat that, up to the days of the Revolution,
the musicians and choristers of Notre-Dame made yearly, in the vintage
season, a strange kind of equestrian promenade, known as the
_Chevauchée_. This probably represented the survival of some feudal
obligation. The chevaucheurs in a dignified Latin speech obtained leave
from the Chapter to perform their functions, and then, before leaving
the Cathedral, they used to sing the office of the day. But once _en
route_ the cavalcade became as noisy and riotous a scene of carnival as
the Feast of Fools. Riding on horses and donkeys, clad in outrageous
garments of all colours, armed with swords, wearing absurd hats, and
making a deplorable noise with all kinds of instruments, the cacophonous
cavalcade made its way through the laughing, boisterous throng, to
_déjeûner_ at the Abbey of Josaphat. The Feast of Fools, to which I have
referred, like this amazing excursion, was celebrated in the odour of
scandal down to the end of the eighteenth century. It was a feast widely
popular in France, but much more licentious than religious. It was held
at Chartres on the 1st of January. An admirable picture of the Feast of
Fools as observed at Notre-Dame-de-Paris five days later is drawn by
Victor Hugo in the first chapters of his novel of that name.
Clerks of the choir dressed up in grotesque costumes, elected a _Pape
des Fous_ and a college of ridiculous cardinals, and then performed an
indecent parody of the sacred offices. They danced in an abandoned
fashion in the sanctuary, and ran about the city committing a thousand
extravagances and bandying jests with the ribald crowd. There was
another Feast of Fools in carnival time, which was authorised in 1300 on
the condition that it was celebrated _dévotement_. That condition was
not observed, and the feast was abolished in the following year. But
that of January 1st continued till the ‘scandals, insolences, turpitudes
and abuses’ which attended it led to its being forbidden in 1479 by the
Church authorities. But the people preferred their Saturnalia to the
danger of ecclesiastical anathemas, and the feast maintained its
indecent existence for many years to come.
S. Ives had accompanied Urban preaching the Crusade through France. He
returned now to Chartres and preached it there. Numerous were the
Crusaders who went from the Chartrain country. It was fitting that, as
in Foucher (_historien un peu trop conteur_), Chartres was to boast one
of the chief chroniclers of the Crusades, so among her sons there should
be many, like Gautier-Sans-Avoir, Raoul de Beaugency, and Gérard de
Cherisy, to do knightly deeds worthy to be chronicled. The Battle of
Gorgoni was won by the valour of the Count of Chartres and his
followers, and Raimbaud Croton, a Chartrain, it was who first scaled the
ramparts of Jerusalem. But none among the Chartrain Crusaders exceeded
in bravery and brilliant daring Évrard, Viscomte of Chartres and
Seigneur du Puiset. It was he who at the passage of the _Orontes_ (El
far) stood at the head of the bridge and, like another Horatius Cocles,
held it against the enemy. It was he again who, when Jerusalem had just
fallen into the hands of the Crusaders, won the admiration of the whole
army by a bold feat of arms. A party of Christian soldiers were put to
flight by the desperate resistance of a troop of the enemy. Their flight
was barred by Évrard, whose anger found vent in a scathing volley of
reproaches.
‘Vile troop of cowards,’ he cried, ‘is it to fight you have come here,
or to figure in a ballet? Are you children playing at soldiers, or
little girls footing it in the chorus of a dance?... Away with fear,
take courage, and remember you are Francs and born of brave sires. My
ensign,’ he nobly added, ‘shall guide you--follow you me.’ Thus
speaking, he rushed into the fray, and, inspired by his example, the
Crusaders succeeded in overwhelming the infidels.
The part played by Count Étienne was at first less noble. He had married
Adèle, daughter of William the Conqueror, and, like his wife, he was
distinguished in this age of the sword by a love of art and letters. He
wrote poetry, and Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans, rashly compared him to
Vergil. ‘Gentiz homme, noble barun,’ so Robert Wace describes him.
Summoned from more congenial pursuits, he sailed with Robert, Duke of
Normandy, to join the army which was then encamped before Nicæa. In a
letter to his wife he described the hospitality with which the Emperor
Alexis received him at Constantinople. ‘He treated me with so much
distinction,’ he says, ‘that I could only tear myself away from him with
tears.’ He proceeded to amass booty both before and after the taking of
Nicæa, and his letters acquaint his wife with his increasing wealth and
his military preferment, but he grows anxious to return to France with
his enormous loot. His cowardly retreat from Antioch and the treacherous
representations by which he dissuaded the Emperor Alexis from relieving
the Crusaders, who were now pressed by the army of Kerbogha, gained him
a poor welcome in France when he returned. The subsequent taking of
Jerusalem exposed the deserting Crusaders to unlimited contumely, and
filled them with remorse. French irony expressed itself in biting
_sirvente_, short satirical poems by fighting troubadours like Bertram
de Born, the Provençal nobleman, who gave to Richard Coeur-de-Lion his
nickname of Yea-and-Nay. Those faint-hearted knights who had stolen back
to their baronial halls were denounced with cutting invective.
‘Marques, li monges de Clunhie
Veuilh que fasson de vos capadel
O siatz abbas de Cystilh,
Pus le cor avetz tan mendic
Que mais amatz dos buous et un araire
A Montferrat qu’alors estr’ emperuieur.’[49]
Stung by such taunts, Count Étienne seized an opportunity which was
given him of making a fresh expedition against the Turks. On this
occasion he amply redeemed his reputation, and after many deeds of
heroism he laid down his life for the cause whose sign he bore. Before
setting out he had secured the blessing of the bishop by two interesting
concessions.
It was a long-established custom of the town and a right by usage of the
Counts of Chartres that, on the death of a bishop, his palace should be
sacked. To S. Ives, when his new palace was finished, Count Étienne now
granted a charter renouncing this barbarous practice. But none the less
Thibault, his son, sacked the bishop’s palace upon the death of S. Ives.
The other concession made by the Count was with regard to the liberty of
the cloister, which, the canons maintained, was outside all secular
jurisdiction. The quarrel which sprang from this question of the rights
of the cloister was destined to last for three centuries. For the
present it was forgotten in the more absorbing interest of the Crusades.
From the time of Fulbert onwards, the canons, on one pretext or another,
whether by buying houses, claiming jurisdiction, or openly demanding the
right of enclosing their cloister by walls and gates, had begun to
encroach--so at least it was regarded by Counts and townsmen--upon the
domain of Chartres, and to set up by degrees a town within a town, the
cloister which stretched from the Rue de Cheval Blanc on the north to
the Rue au Lait on the south, and from the Percheronne on the west to
the Rue Montonnière, a continuation of the Rue Muret, on the east. The
rights claimed by the Chapter were at last acknowledged and established
by parliamentary decree, 1470; but only, as we have said, after
centuries of bickering with the Counts. They, feeling themselves
assailed both as to their pockets and their powers of jurisdiction by
the privileges extended by the Church to those who attached themselves
to the cloister, expressed their feelings by frequent armed raids into
the precincts, pillaging the shops[50] which had sprung up beneath the
shade of Notre-Dame and carrying off unfortunate clerks as prisoners to
be ransomed from the great Tower. The Church retaliated with its one
all-powerful weapon--excommunication.
The cloister[51] was finally enclosed by thick walls and by nine
gates--mostly destroyed in the eighteenth century; but of some of them
traces may still be seen--the _Porte Neuve_ and the _Porte de
l’Étroit-Degré_, giving on the Rue du Cheval Blanc; the _Porte des
Changes_ (Rue des Changes), and _Porte aux Herbes_ (Rue au Lait), _Porte
Évière_, entrance of Rue Saint-Eman; _Porte Percheronne_ (Rue du
Soleil-d’Or), _Porte des Carneaux_ (Rue Sainte-Même), _Porte des Lices_
(Marché-a-la-Filasse), _Porte de l’Évêque_ (Rue Muret).
One of the handsomest of the old houses of the canons that remains is
that at the corner of the Rue des Changes, facing the south porch of the
Cathedral. Utilitarian France has sadly restored this old
thirteenth-century house, and turned it to account as the Post Office,
just as she has planted some villainous cavalry barracks on the site of
the old monastic buildings of S. Père, and converted into a military
bakehouse the interesting old House of Loens.
Attached to the cloister was the Hospital or Hôtel-Dieu of Notre-Dame.
It was founded about the tenth century; restored and spoilt in the
eighteenth century. The hospital has recently been removed to a more
suitable spot, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, with its thirteenth-century
chapel, now serves for the École Mutuelle of the town. It stands in the
south-west corner of the space which has been cleared in front of the
Cathedral, between the Rue Fulbert and the Rue de la Cathédrale.
[Illustration: Street Entrance to Old Hôtel de Ville]
The departure and death of Etienne left Chartres and its bishop more
than ever exposed to the brigandage of the Viscount Hugues, who was
always in a state of excommunication, and whose bands of mercenary
robbers held the roads, so that S. Ives could not attend the great
Council at Sens or at Paris. With his violence, as with the greed and
slackness of his own clergy, S. Ives carried on unceasing war, and it
was not long before he found himself involved also in a bitter quarrel
with the Countess Adèle, widow of Etienne. The Chapter had bound
themselves by oath not to admit into their ranks any of those known as
_conditionarii_--men, that is, freed from serfdom but still held under
servile obligations to the Countess. The Countess exerted herself with
extraordinary energy and persistence to advance the claims of certain
clients of this description. S. Ives strove to calm her and to support
his Chapter. The Countess retorted by violent reprisals and seized the
wine of the precentor, Hilduin, in the street des Corroyeurs. S. Ives
threatened her with excommunication, and she interdicted the canons from
the use of the roads, and of bread and water throughout her domain. It
was time to give way, and S. Ives, by a judicious compromise, obtained
the Pope’s consent that the Lady Adèle’s men should be admitted to share
in the revenues of the Cathedral.
In support of his suzerain the Viscount Hugues had been devastating the
diocese. But a new Crusade saved S. Ives from his enemies. Bohémond of
Tarentum, Prince of Antioch, came to Chartres to marry Constance,
daughter of the King, and to receive the nuptial benediction from the
hands of S. Ives, to whose efforts the marriage was due. The Countess
Adèle displayed on this occasion a hospitality worthy in its
magnificence of the daughter of William the Conqueror and of the noble
House of Thibault the Trickster. The marriage ceremony was performed,
and thereafter, before a vast assembly standing on the steps of the
altar of the _Vierge-aux-Miracles_, the Prince of Antioch related his
wonderful adventures, and bore witness to the miraculous protection
afforded to him by God in the former Crusade. Men listened and wondered
and waxed enthusiastic. When Bohémond concluded his discourse by
inviting his listeners to follow the example of the first Crusaders, a
crowd of knights rushed forward and then and there took the sign of the
Cross. Foremost among them was the excommunicated brigand, Hugues,
Viscomte de Chartres.
S. Ives died at the end of the year 1115. But during his busy lifetime
there had been springing up the great monument which is his in Chartres,
the Western Towers and the Porche Royal of the Cathedral, with its
sculptured kings and queens, than which no sculpture in the world is
more beautiful. During his lifetime also it had been necessary to
rebuild in great part the Church of Fulbert. The rapidity with which it
had been built in troublous times of war and famine may account for this
necessity. S. Ives increased the length of the building by some
twenty-five yards and, whilst carrying the nave and aisles one bay
further west, he prolonged the crypt to the foot of his new towers,
adorning it with mural paintings, of which traces yet remain. The towers
were built at the end of each aisle, and the lower part of the west
front, though actually the same now as that then built, lay back at that
time on a line within the eastern sides of the towers. It was afterwards
brought forward so as to be where it now is, flush with their western
sides.
S. Ives also constructed the two new entrances to the crypt, with
staircases and passages, through the Cave du Bois on the north and S.
Martin’s Chapel on the south. The roof of the apse was also renewed, and
an angelot or guardian angel set thereon.[52] But one of the chief works
of S. Ives was the construction of the beautiful Jubé,[53] of which we
have seen the few remaining fragments in the crypt.[54] Meanwhile the
rest of the Cathedral, its chapels and altars, were being adorned by
the pious generosity of the people of all classes. The choir was paved
with marble and mosaic, and tapestries were hung round it where now runs
the sculptured _clôture_. The beautiful glass through which the light
still pours its coloured streams were being set up in the lower lights
of the western façade, and in the sacristy was accumulating that
collection of jewels and relics, of chalices, censers and crucifixes, of
liturgies bound in silver, gold and precious stones, and of
ecclesiastical ornaments, which was to render the treasury of Chartres
one of the richest in the world, till the Vandals of the eighteenth
century laid their sacrilegious hands upon it.
In order to obtain funds for the building of his towers and the
restoration of his church, S. Ives, like Fulbert before him, begged
freely of Kings.
It will be understood that his relations with Philippe were not of the
kind to encourage him to ask for aid in that quarter. But he sent two
monks to Henry I. of England with a letter, in which, after expressing
the pious hope that Henry would continue to walk in the footsteps of his
father, and recognise that, as the body ought to be subject to the mind,
so ought the civil government to be subject to the ecclesiastical, he
tells him that he is the servant of the servants of God, and not their
master; their protector, and not their lord; and then adds that the
bearers of the letter will explain to His Highness the needs of the
Church, which he is conjured to satisfy with the same generosity as his
parents showed.
It is scarcely surprising that a letter couched in such terms was not
productive of alms from the English King who had taken his spouse from a
nunnery; nor was an appeal to Matilda in the following year ‘to show
that love for the Queen of the Angels which the Queens of the Angles
have always so generously displayed’ any more successful. But a third
more likely letter knocked, to borrow S. Ives’s own phrase, at the door
of Henry’s generous heart with better result. Queen Matilda was charged
with the duty of replying to it, and she made many gifts to the Church,
among which were several bells, of which S. Ives writes in
acknowledgment that ‘they are doubly dear to us, both on account of your
piety and of their own sweet melody. Every time that they are put in
motion to indicate certain hours, our ears are soothed with such
delicious music that your memory is renewed within our hearts.’ He also
reminds her, amid many such graceful sayings, that the roof wants
mending; and at her death we find that his words bear fruit, for she
made many bequests to the Cathedral, and left money to defray the
expenses of a lead roof. But it was not only Kings and Queens who fell
under the charm of S. Ives and the love of his Church, and it was not
only the great who received his thanks. Such phrases as the following
occur again and again in the Necrology of Notre-Dame:--‘On Nov. 24th,
died Jean, son of Vital, the clever and faithful carpenter of this
Church, who always worked with love and zeal at the work of this
Church.’ That is but one name among the thousands, who now, with an
extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm, came from far and near to build
the superb monument of Chartres Cathedral.
CHAPTER V
_The Cathedral and Its Builders_
‘By suffrage universal it was built
As practised then, for all the country came
From far as Rouen, to give votes for God,
Each vote a block of stone securely laid
Obedient to the Master’s deep-mused plan.’
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
‘Like some tall palm the mystic fabric grew.’
REGINALD HEBER.
‘Elle est enfin, cette basilique, la plus magnifique expression de
l’art que le Moyen Age nous ait léguée.’--J. K. HUYSMANS.
The grey spire of the Clocher Vieux,[55]--
‘molten now in driving mist,
Now lulled with the incommunicable blue,’
was not completed till near the end of the twelfth century, for upon the
soffit of the topmost window facing the Clocher Neuf you may read in
great Roman letters the name of the master of the works, HARMAN, 1164.
N.D.D. Such, at least, is the inference drawn, though it may well be
only the weary vigil of a watchman who nightly gazed over the plains of
La Beauce on the look out for beacon signals of alarm, or for the first
evidence of a fire in the town, that is recorded in these deep-cut
letters. The foundations of the old tower at any rate were laid as early
as 1091, and both the square towers were finished by 1145. They carry
the spires that are the pride of Chartres, and which have given rise to
the popular saying that the perfect cathedral, if it could ever be
built, would be composed of the spire of Chartres, the nave of Amiens,
the choir of Beauvais, the porch of Reims.[56]
Of the two spires, the northern, Clocher Neuf, with its airy staircases
and pierced traceries, built by Jean le Texier, called Jean de Beauce,
in the sixteenth century, is the more popular, the Clocher Vieux the
more beautiful. The former is flamboyant, decked out with delicate
ornament, graceful, rich, and feminine; the latter sober, severe,
robust, clad, you might fancy, like a man in armour. These giant towers,
indeed, and their aerial pinnacles are not twin sisters, but rather, it
might seem, sister and elder brother, with their points of resemblance
and their points of difference; the one, weatherbeaten and grey, but
still preserving, in spite of the wrinkles of old age, a noble, male and
mellowed beauty; the other, the young sister, smiling through the lace
of a wedding veil, comely as a bride, fair as the spouse of Christ.
The one, fashioned by the Byzantine chisel, sprang into complete being
in the heroic ages of faith, in the days of war, and beheld at its feet
Thomas, exiled from Canterbury, and Bernard, when preaching the second
Crusade, hailed there by bishops and barons as generalissimo of that
great enterprise. 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. She arose in her smiling elegance,
rose till it seemed that she would touch the stars, and her mantle shone
with a thousand lights and sparkled with a thousand
[Illustration: The Spires of Chartres]
ornaments. Statues and buttresses, gargoyles, arabesques and crochets
pile themselves in successive stages, until the eye loses the sense of
everything but a sort of architectural lacework.
The Cathedral is truly a Bible in stone. And just as in the sculptured
porches the mediæval masons carved in a symbolic type, which the
illiterate could read, the story of the Pentateuch and the Gospels; just
as in their jewelled windows the monkish glaziers told again the same
Bible story for all to see and understand, so it would seem that here in
Chartres, the architects also, but by fortune rather than design, have
symbolised in stone the Old Testament and the New. In that amazing
window of the south transept the prophets of the former dispensation are
portrayed carrying on their shoulders the naïve evangelists. Similarly
the builders have made the Romanesque crypt to carry the Gothic upper
church, and the old tower, eloquent of Byzantine art, massive and
superb, confronts the joyous, soaring sister who has sprung up, from
like foundations, at his side, the last effort, or rather the last
amusement, of that Gothic art which is typical of aspirations that are
justified, of a faith that is fulfilled.
The Clocher Vieux combines to the highest degree grandeur with
harmonious unity of proportion. From the bottommost stone to the highest
there is never a break in the perfect line; and the plain massive base
of enormous quarried stones, some of which, they say, measure ten feet
by three, passes into the light octagonal spire, covered with its
curious coat of mail or fishes’ scales, by imperceptible and inevitable
gradations. It is a triumph of sheer beauty of proportion unaided by the
art of ornament. The transition from the square tower to the tapering
_flèche_ is, in spite of this simplicity, so exquisitely treated that it
cannot be distinguished. It is a perfect masterpiece of masonic skill.
Two terrible fires and more than 700 winters have left it with not one
stone displaced.[57]
The mere size of the enormous blocks of stone of which the base is built
will fill the most casual visitor with astonishment. It has been
suggested that they formed part of those city walls described by the
monk Paul which once ran close to the Cathedral, and which were at this
period being dismantled in order to admit of the enlargement of
_enceinte_ of the town. But we know, from independent contemporary
sources, how the labour required to quarry and fetch these huge masses
of material was supplied. It was supplied by popular enthusiasm,
inspired by religious fervour. For though the work of building, impeded
by plague and famine, and a terrible fire which destroyed the town in
1134, went on slowly at first, in 1144 a great outburst of devotion
occurred throughout the land. Whole populations arose and came to
Chartres to labour at the work of God’s house. A noble rivalry urged
every man to toil, and women even took their share in a burden which
their faith rendered light, in a task which their devotion made both
pleasant and honourable.
‘In this same year,’ writes Robert du Mont, Abbot of Mont S. Michel, to
quote one only among all the twelfth-century chroniclers who mention
this fact, ‘In this same year at Chartres men began to harness
themselves to carts laden with stones and wood, corn and other things,
and drag them to the site of the church, the towers of which were then
a-building. It was a spectacle the like of which he who hath not seen
will never see again, not only here, but scarcely in all France or
Normandy or elsewhere. Everywhere sorrow and humility prevailed, on all
sides penitence, forgiveness and remorse. On every side you could see
men and women dragging heavy loads through the marshy bogs, and
scourging themselves with whips. Miracles were being done on every side,
and songs and hymns of praise sung to the Lord. You might say that the
prophecy was being fulfilled which says, The Spirit of Life was in the
wheels of their chariots.’
A curious confirmation of this statement exists in the form of a
correspondence which passed at this time between the Bishop of Rouen and
the Bishop of Amiens.
‘Mighty are the works of the Lord,’ exclaims Hugh of Rouen. ‘At Chartres
men have begun in all humility to drag carts and vehicles of all sorts
to aid the building of the Cathedral, and their humility has been
rewarded with miracles. The fame of these events has been heard
everywhere, and at last roused this Normandy of ours. Our countrymen,
therefore, after receiving our blessing, have set out for that place and
there fulfilled their vows. They return filled with a resolution to
imitate the Chartrains. And a great number of the faithful of our
diocese and the dioceses of our province have begun to work at the
Cathedral, their mother.’ The north-west tower of the Cathedral of
Rouen, the Tour S. Romain, was built in this way. The visitor will
notice its resemblance to the Clocher Vieux of Chartres, and this letter
will explain why in workmanship and spirit it does so resemble it.
These poor Norman workmen departed on a new crusade, as it were, of
chisel and trowel to offer their labour for the adornment of Our Lady’s
Church. They travelled in small bands, forming part of a vast
association, and, so the bishop informs his reverend brother, admitted
no one to join their company unless he had first been confessed and done
penance, and laid aside all anger and malevolence, and been reconciled
with his enemies. One of their number was chosen to lead them, and under
his directions they drew their waggons in silence and humility, and
presented their offerings, not without penance and tears.
There is yet another letter which I shall readily be forgiven for
quoting, so graphic is the picture which it gives. It is the text to
which the beautiful window in the south aisle of the choir furnishes the
perfect illustration. The Abbot Haimon of S. Pierre-sur-Dive wrote to
his brethren of Tutbury, in Staffordshire, a small priory dependent on
S. Pierre, in the following strain:--
‘Who has ever seen or who heard in all the ages of the past that kings,
princes and lords, mighty in their generation, swollen with riches and
honours, that men and women, I say, of noble birth have bowed their
haughty necks to the yoke and harnessed themselves to carts like beasts
of burden, and drawn them, laden with wine, corn, oil, stone, wood and
other things needful for the maintenance of life or the construction of
the church, even to the doors of the asylum of Christ? But what is even
more astonishing is that, although sometimes a thousand or more of men
and women are attached to one cart--so vast is the mass, so heavy the
machine, so weighty the load--yet so deep a silence reigns that not a
voice, not a whisper even can be heard. And when there is a halt called
on the way there is no sound save that of the confession of sins and the
suppliant prayer to God for pardon. There, whilst the priests are
preaching peace, all hatred is lulled to sleep and quarrels are
banished, debts forgiven, and the union of hearts re-established. But if
anyone is so hardened that he cannot bring himself to forgive his
enemies or to beg the pious admonitions of the priests, then his
offering is withdrawn from the common stock as unclean, and he himself
is separated, with much shame and ignominy, from the society of the holy
people. Forward they press, unchecked by rivers, unhindered by
mountains. You might think that they were the children of Israel
crossing Jordan, and for them, as for the children of Israel, miracles
are wrought. But when they come to the church, they set their waggons in
a circle so as to form, as it were, a spiritual camp, and all the
following night the watch is kept by the whole army with hymns and songs
of praise. Candles and lamps are lit on each waggon; the sick and the
feeble are placed thereon; the relics of the saints are brought to them
in the hope that they may find relief. The clergy at the head of a
procession, and the people following, pass by and pray with renewed
fervour that the sick may be healed.’
Then occurred scenes such as may be beheld to-day before the grotto in
the mountain village of Lourdes. For Chartres was the Lourdes of the
Middle Ages. The maimed and the halt recovered their powers, leapt from
the waggons and flung away their crutches; the blind received their
sight, the sick were healed, and all joined, after returning thanks
before the altar, in the task of building the house of their Redeemer.
You see their work, you behold the material in which they wrought, as
you stand before the western façade[58] and gaze in wonder; for the
stones, it seems, have become intelligent, and matter is here
spiritualised. But you will almost cease to wonder when you remember the
spirit in which they wrought it. Such was the spirit, and such only
could be the spirit, which produced the master-art of Gothic, and led
the daring architects from step to step in the attainment of their
triumphs, as they left behind them the heavy piers and the thick dark
arches of the Pagan Romanesque and arrived at last at the perfect
expression of the Christian spirit in their soaring arches, their airy
buttresses, and their pointing pinnacles flaming upwards to the skies.
Seven miles distant from Chartres lie the quarries of
Berchères-l’Évêque, whence, in the spirit and manner that has been
described, they brought this ‘miraculous’ stone--miraculous, for it was
in a vision that the existence of the quarry was said to have been
revealed. Miraculous one may almost call it still, by reason of its
quality of hardness, its gift of wear, and the exquisite tones which it
has taken on with years. Of the two towers the old one is the better
built; many of the stones of the other were laid in too little mortar
and have consequently split. These blocks of stone are marked with
various masonic signs, a fact which confirms the supposition that the
two towers were built by the Frères Maçons or Logeurs du bon Dieu, as
they were called, those famous associations of the Middle Ages,
corporations of artist workmen, who were indeed ‘masters of the living
stone.’
The first time that the traveller beholds the porches of Chartres he is
filled with admiration for the exquisite effect of the whole, and
afterwards for the exquisite details of which that whole is composed. He
may, if he is of an imaginative temperament, fall into some reverie and
picture to himself a host of historic fantasies.
But later he will begin to realise that the sculpture which had pleased
his eye and inspired his dreams is not a mere ornament of the building.
Each part of the Cathedral, like the Cathedral as a whole, is the
superb product of the intimate alliance of nameless architects, nameless
sculptors, nameless painters of glass, working with the one object of
setting forth the glory of God and His Son and the Virgin to the
multitude, of illustrating for all unreading eyes the Word of the Lord.
The Cathedral is a Bible in stone, and the porches a gospel in relief, a
sculptured catechism, a preface and a _résumé_ of the book. Each stone,
thus understood, is seen to be a page of a great drama. This drama is
the history of humanity from the creation of the world to the day of the
Last Judgment. Within, the same story is repeated. The jewelled windows
are there not only for the sake of the holiness of their beauty, not
merely to provide the pilgrim with the dim religious light suitable to
his mood, or that the placid sunshine of La Beauce may be transformed
into imperious angry fire. The five thousand figures in those legendary
lights are the commentary and the repetition of the sculptured text
without.
Who conceived, the question arises again and again, this admirable plan,
this marvellous whole? Who were the artists of Notre-Dame? We are in
great ignorance of the matter, and the question cannot be definitely
answered.
The cloister we know was the only refuge of art; the monasteries the
sole asylums for those who would study science. And to those peaceable
retreats painters, sculptors, artists perforce retired to practise, to
invent, to teach the secrets of their trade; secrets, alas! of colour
among them, which have been irretrievably lost to this scientific
generation. We know, for instance, that in the Monastery of Tiron, which
S. Bernard founded on lands given to him for that purpose by S. Ives,
more than five hundred artists of one sort or another were to be found.
S. Bernard insisted on the observance of that point in the Benedictine
rule which recommends that ‘if there be artists in the monastery they
shall with all humility practise their arts.’ These monks, we also know,
established a branch at Chartres, ‘near the market-place.’ Perhaps,
therefore, S. Bernard paid his debt to S. Ives and the Chapter of
Notre-Dame by furnishing the hands which carved the statues and the
storied capitals of the three bays of the western façade.
In the S. Sylvester window, to the right of the entrance to the Chapel
of S. Piat, and in the S. Chéron window of the Chapel of the Sacred
Heart of Mary, the old glass painters have well represented the masons
of Notre-Dame. Here is a beardless dresser of stone, there a sculptor
with his rough, pointed cap. The iron hardness of the miraculous stone
yields to the untiring application of chisel and mallet, and beneath
their ceaseless blows its formless mass by degrees becomes shapely.
Above the workers appears the chapel in which the window now is. A mason
in a round hat is quietly laying a cornice stone, whilst his help-mate,
carrying a piece of sculpture, climbs up a little ladder. In the
background four other masons, shaven and clad like the common people,
are busy shaping the statues of kings--the very statues which now,
representing the ancestors of Christ, stand in the porch without. The
statue is as yet only blocked out: the artist is beginning to model it
with his chisel. His companion the while, warm with his past exertions,
is drinking. The royal statue begins to be distinguishable. The eyes and
the mouth are leaping into life: the crown is being adorned with pearls,
the sceptre decorated, the robe and mantle draped, the hands modelled.
The man who has blocked it out has finished his task and takes his rest;
his companion carves, polishes and puts the finishing touches to the
work he has begun.
What were their names? No one knows. The names of some of the donors
are preserved in the necrologies of the grateful canons, but of all the
clever artists of Notre-Dame hardly one has left his name behind him,
like the Robbir who carved his signature beneath the combat of David and
Goliath on the north porch.
This is in no way surprising, when we remember the spirit in which these
works were done. The Cathedrals were built and decorated for the glory
of God, not for the glorification of the artists. Men dedicated to the
Church their money and their labour for the remission of their sins, and
not with the object of acquiring fame. We have seen, and shall see
again, how whole populations rose up and came on a pilgrimage from afar
to build and to rebuild the house of God, when to the enthusiasm of the
Crusades succeeded the holy ardour of religious construction and men
took the Cross, not to depart to war in the East, but to labour humbly
at the work of God, Our Lady and the saints. Then from the distant
cloister came forth the architect, and artists and, at the voice of a
bishop calling for aid, the sacred work began. The peasants quarried
stone and brought material, the young men dressed it, and the masons
raised the lofty piers and fashioned the groined roof beneath the eye of
the ‘master of the work.’ The pilgrims would sojourn, perhaps, for a
year in the town, labouring with such ardour that when the light failed
they would often continue by the light of torches. Not far from the site
of the church, in some adjacent monastery, the glass-painters designed
and stained and fitted into the leads their coloured windows, and the
sculptors chiselled bas-reliefs and statues. A man’s labour was his
offering, his art very often his best and only alms. His name was one
name only among a thousand, his work might surpass in excellence but it
would be the same in spirit with that of a thousand other pilgrims like
unto himself. Why should his name therefore be recorded?
So it came about that the ‘master of the work’ received from the many
workers statuary of varying excellence, and gave it all its place in the
Cathedral. Among the thousands of sculptures at Chartres or Reims many
are of very inferior merit. Many a chef-d’œuvre, on the other hand,
on which the pious sculptor has lavished all his skill is hidden in
inaccessible nooks, or scarcely visible in the loftiest part of a
building, thus showing clearly the motive of devotion which inspired the
worker.
It was in this sense, then, that the Cathedral of Chartres was built ‘by
universal suffrage,’ as Lowell put it, just as the entire population
from the Coquet to the Tees, headed by the Earl of Northumberland, rose
up to build the Cathedral of Durham. The nearest modern analogy to such
enthusiasm is to be found in the history of Christianity in Uganda or in
the building of the church at Swindon by the united, unpaid efforts of
the working men of that town. It was the living faith of the people, not
the mere feudal requisition of their labour by the bishops (corvées)
which created the mediæval temples, faith strong and simple as that
which inspired Sabine of Steinbach or her who laid the last stone of the
Dom of Köln.
It would, however, be misleading to suggest that, because many pilgrims
worked for the love of God, all the workers were unpaid. We hear of
occasions when money failed and
‘Ne porent pas païer assez
Li mestre de l’œuvre aus ouvriers.’[59]
Such things as the Jubé, the porches and the rose windows, executed
after elaborate consultations and under the supervision of the ‘master
of work,’ were inspected again by a clever master from another country.
The chief workers were lodged in houses of the cloister belonging to the
Chapter, who granted them doles from time to time and furnished them
yearly with gloves and a mantle.
The _naïveté_ of the mediæval artists is one of their chief charms, but
there is often a spice of wickedness in their work. Read the _fabliaux_
and mysteries of the time, from the Bible of Guyot de Provins to the
play acted on the Piazza of Troyes in 1475, and you will find passages
enough that offend the taste and are worthy of the actors in the Feast
of Fools. The satire of the _Trouvères_, whether they are scourging
monks, barons or sovereign pontiffs, is often extremely gross.
Similarly, while the Count of Chartres was chanting in chivalrous
fashion the praises of his lady, the porches of the Cathedral were
receiving into their niches here and there the representations of
certain ugly vices and their punishment, such as Dante ere long was to
translate into the harmonious verses of his _Divina Commedia_. Fallen
nuns and erring queens are delivered over to grinning demons, and Satan
rubs his hands at the sight of his innumerable victims (south porch). S.
Augustin might protest against the apocryphal Scriptures, and Popes
denounce the legendary poetry of the early centuries, but painters
persisted in depicting with excessive freedom the histories of S. Thomas
and S. James, and sculptors still waxed wanton when they carved the sins
of the Prodigal Son. S. Bernard, the enigma of his age, was constrained
to cry out against the grotesque ornamentation of the churches.
But it is not the mere naughtiness of some satirical mason giving
expression to the humour of the people which accounts for all the
mediæval grotesques--for the Imp of Lincoln, the Noah of Bourges, the
Devils of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, the Ass of Chartres. Vices were portrayed
in order to illustrate their punishment. ‘Let faithful souls but see the
Passion of Our Lord represented,’ says an old writer, ‘and rarely will
they fail to be filled with compunction and to raise their eyes to
heaven.’ To the impressionable, childlike, illiterate men of the Middle
Ages, accordingly, the clergy taught the lessons of dogma and belief
through the personages of drama or the medium of art. The sculpted bays
of a porch or the storied windows of a nave were a lesson for the
ignorant, a sermon for the believer, appealing through the eyes to the
heart. The representation of the mysteries and miracle plays showed to
him in action and helped him to realise the persons whose figures were
already familiar to him as painted on glass, sculptured on capitals,
incrusted on the vaulting of the doors. Graphic and dramatic art
constituted the books of those who did not know how to read. With the
aid of these material objects, as the Abbot Suger, the great artist of
S. Denis, declared,[60] the feeble spirit can mount to the truth and the
soul which was plunged in darkness rise to the light which bursts upon
its terrestrial eyes. We need not wonder then if the paintings of the
Middle Ages have not always the severity of modern ecclesiastical art,
for vices were portrayed with a view to condemning them the more
thoroughly. The mediæval masons were strangers, it would seem, to the
legend of Spinello. Evil for them was always ugly, and the Devil a
monster, not Lucifer.
But at Chartres this side of life is not dealt with overmuch. The bases
of the pillars of the bays in the south and the western porches give
some examples of
[Illustration: L’Âne qui Vielle]
men and women in the thralls of vice. Apart from these instances, the
most famous and striking examples of the masons’ satiric warning are the
_Âne qui vielle_ and the _Truie qui file_. These curious imposts of the
closed doorway on the south side of the _clocher Vieux_ represent a
donkey playing a harp and a sow spinning.[61] They are epigrams in
stone, intended to remind us of the maxims, Asinus ad lyram, and Ne sus
Minervam doceat; warnings against the pretentious ambitions of the
awkward and incompetent, equivalent to the French dictum _Que Gros-Jean
n’en remontre pas à son curé_; a proverb of which we have some obvious
but homely versions. But of infernal beasts and Vices there is at
Chartres, so much is this the Church of Our Lady, a decided scarcity. Of
the Virtues there are many: most celebrated is the proud statue of
Liberty in the left bay of the north porch, in which some writers have
seen a reference to the Communal freedom granted to the people by the
Kings, but which is in reality only one of the series of fourteen
Heavenly Beatitudes as described by the mediæval theologians, which fill
some of the rows of the vaulting of this bay.
On the south angle of the Clocher Vieux there is an angel carrying a
sun-dial, of whom one would gladly know more. There is an angel-dial on
the corresponding part of the S. Laurence Church at Genoa, and one which
much resembles this, and may have been by the same hands, is at the
south corner of the cloister at Laon. Our angel stands with bare feet on
a bracket, and above his head is a ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’--a daïs showing
a city with turrets and windows. He is clad in a long tunic covered by a
mantle which fits close to his long, thin body. His hands are intended
to support a disc on which a sun-dial was traced. His arms are
outspread. Clearly the present dial traced on a heavy square stone, with
the date 1578, which covers his breast, was an addition of that year,
but does not mark the date of the angel. For though the smile which
lurks about his fair monastic countenance is scarce angelic, and may
suggest rather the disquieting, seraphic types of the Renaissance, yet
the whole figure, with its simple and successful treatment of the hair
and draperies, is redolent of the Byzantine style, which we shall trace
in the family of kings and queens grouped beneath the Porche Royal. To
that family he must belong.
[Illustration: The Angel Dial]
You will move gladly into the porch to study its beautiful
twelfth-century sculpture, for whilst you have been looking at this
angel you will have learnt that round the south-west corner of the
Cathedral, as about the Abbey in Old Palace Yard in Westminster, the
wind never ceases to blow, and often blows a hurricane. Before the
Hôtel-Dieu, which was quite close to the Clocher Vieux, was destroyed,
the gusts of wind were so violent that the passage called _L’Âne qui
vielle_ had the reputation of being impassable. One Canon Brillon, a
hundred years ago, wrote a poem in which he related that ‘On a time Wind
and Discord were travelling over the plains of La Beauce and suddenly
turned in the direction of the Cathedral. Arrived at the foot of the
towers, Discord left his companion, asking him to wait near _L’Âne qui
vielle_ whilst he went into the Chapter-house. Contentious business
detained him there so long that the Wind is still waiting, waiting for
him outside;
Le Vent dehors l’attend encore!’
As I struggle through Old Palace Yard I often wonder whether it is in
the House of Commons or in the Chapter-house of the Abbey that Discord
is so busily engaged, for the wind here, as in Chartres and at
Kill-Cannon Corner at Lincoln, is always waiting outside, a truly Gothic
draught![62]
The western porch is composed of three large bays, of which the middle
one was, as always in Christian churches, known as the Porte Royale.
This name was given it because in the tympanum Christ was always
represented triumphant, the King of Kings. Nor, as you gaze at the
wealth of statuary and ornamentation upon which, as upon the
architecture, the artists have lavished all their resources and all
their skill in their endeavour to illustrate the Story of the Triumph
of Our Lord, will you grudge this entrance its other names of Porta
Speciosa and Porta Triumphalis. The sculptured figures are of every
size. Once the whole porch was a blaze of colour. Of this colour and
gold you may still see a few traces left.
Begun about 1110, under S. Ives, this typical example of early Gothic
work was not completed till nearly 1150, and among those who wrought the
images which people it were, some think, the artists who had worked at
the Porch of S. Sermin at Toulouse, and knew that of S. Trophimus at
Arles.
They would thus connect it with the art of the South, and, through that,
with Roman art. It appears to me rather to be directly under the
influence and inspiration of Byzantine art. There is to one’s eye
something Eastern in this work as surely as there is something Eastern
also to one’s ear in the rhythms of a Gregorian chant. However that may
be, nowhere, at any rate, has the story of Christ’s Triumph been told so
fully and with such a wealth of detail in stone as at Chartres. We are
shown here not only His triumph but the events which led up to it. The
whole Gospel is revealed to the gaze of the Christian who is about to
enter the house of the Lord. The story is taken from the apocryphal as
well as the canonical Gospels. It begins with the scenes represented by
the thirty-eight miniature groups of the capitals, the figures of which,
in spite of their small size and occasional lack of proportion, are full
of life and interest. The first series starts northwards from the
central doorway, and here the chisel literally reproduces the legend of
S. Joachim and S. Anne and the Birth of the Virgin: then follows the
story of Joseph and Mary and the Nativity of Our Lord, up to the episode
of the Massacre of the Innocents. This brings us to the Clocher Neuf. We
must now return to the right hand portion of the central doorway, and
take up the story again, moving in the direction of the Clocher Vieux.
The events recorded, up to the last appearance of Jesus to His disciples
on the Mount of Olives, it is hardly necessary to enumerate.
Thus in this rich stone compendium of the Christian story even the
capitals of the pillars, which we are accustomed to see adorned only
with foliage, flowers, fantastic figures and mere patterns, have been
pressed into the service of the teller of the tale, and recount _in
petto_ scenes from the life of Christ upon earth. We have been shown Him
expected, prophesied, prefigured and again realising the prophecies and
fulfilling all the acts of His divine mission. If we look now above, in
the tympanums of the three doorways, we shall find the triumph, joys and
glory of the life to come portrayed, and the crowning of religion in the
person of its Chief. First of all, in the tympanum of the left bay, we
have His Last Coming.
The artists of the Middle Ages never omit the scene of the Last Judgment
from the western façade of their churches; but, curiously enough, the
Last Judgment before us is always interpreted as an Ascension or a
Descent into Hell, and writers have been exercised to explain the
omission of what after all has not been omitted.
Not only is a Last Judgment required here, but any other explanation of
the sculpture fails to suit the attitude of the figures represented. The
tympanum is divided into three sections. In the upper portion Christ is
standing upright on a ground of fire or cloud. His right hand is raised,
His left lowered. Two angels accompany Him, whose pose is not
symmetrical, as would be that of censing angels, for Christ is saying to
the angel on the right, ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father,’ and to the
angel on the left, ‘Depart from Me, ye who work iniquity.’ In the
central section are four angels emerging from the clouds. Their open
mouths, and the gestures of their arms, one beckoning, the other
pointing above, indicate that they are heavenly messengers, who have
come ‘to gather together the elect from the four winds.’ And below them,
gazing heavenward in holy calm and happiness, sit the Apostles, chosen
to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. They are clad in long robes and
mantles with borders of pearls after the Byzantine fashion. There is
room for only ten of them on the lintel (which is nearly 9 feet broad),
and several of them are mutilated. We may regret but we cannot wonder
that many of the seven hundred statues have suffered more or less from
the hand of Time or of men. There is more reason to be amazed that for
over seven hundred years they have so successfully escaped the perils of
war and of sacrilege that have threatened them.
In the vaulting of this doorway are the signs of the months and the
signs of the Zodiac which roughly correspond with them. But since there
was room for only ten of the latter, the remaining two were inserted in
the vaulting of the right bay, where they are really out of place. Here
they suggest the meaning that Christ is of all time, ‘the same
yesterday, and to-day and for ever.’
The Cathedral can boast five such almanacs, which it may be found
interesting to compare--three in the porches, one in a window of the
south aisle of the choir, and one (sixteenth century) on the clock of
the choir screen.
Mediæval masons followed the example of Pagan antiquity, and like the
architects of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India and Mexico, loved to
trace upon their holy buildings the allegories of Time, whether in the
form of the personification of the twelve months, of the four seasons,
or the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The months are symbolised with
extraordinary cleverness of detail, in a manner at once naïve and
effective, by the recreations and employments to which they lend
themselves.
The zodiacal signs are given in the verses of Ausonius:--
‘Sunt Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,
Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces.’
And as to the months, they, in the quatrain attributed to the venerable
Bede, describe themselves as follows:--
‘Poto--ligna cremo--de vite superflua demo;
Do gramen gratum--mihi flos servit--mihi pratum:
Fenum declino--messes meto--vina propino;
Semen humi jacto--pasco sues,--immolo porcos.’[63]
The studious visitor may compare the treatment of them in the windows
and porch at Chartres with that which they receive at Venice, Reims,
Verona, Sens, Amiens, Bruges and the English churches.
In the tympanum of the right-hand doorway the Virgin (1150) sits,
crowned and throned, a sceptre in her hand, sharing the triumph of her
Son. The Holy Child is in the act of blessing the world, and on either
side are two archangels, censing. Beneath are the chief scenes of the
life of Mary--the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, appearance of the
Angels to the Shepherds and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple;
and above, in the vaulting which forms the frame of this picture, are,
in one row, six archangels carrying incense in honour of Mary, and, in
the other, the seven Liberal Arts, each of them symbolised by two
statuettes, the one representing the inventor or paragon, the other the
allegory of the art. Here, then, as at Laon, Sens, Auxerre and many
other places, we have the carved expression of the opinion of Albertus
Magnus, that in Music (Pythagoras), Dialectic (Aristotle), Rhetoric
(Cicero), Geometry (Euclid), Arithmetic (Nichomachus), Astronomy
(Ptolemy), and Grammar (Priscian), in all the knowledge of the Middle
Ages, in fact, the Virgin Mary was well skilled.
The tympanums of the right and the left bays have both suffered much
from years: they are blurred and defaced with age, and it is perhaps
partly for this reason that, in spite of many fine points, they seem
inferior, crude even, by the side of the tympanum of the central bay.
This is one of the most beautiful masterpieces of mediæval statuary. In
the centre is the risen Christ, enthroned, triumphant, yet full of mercy
and tenderness. An aureole is about His head, His feet are set upon the
footstool of the earth. With an infinite pity, it would seem, He beholds
and blesses the thousands who for seven hundred years pass, and have
passed, beneath Him into the Cathedral. With one hand He blesses, with
the other He holds the book sealed with the seven seals. He is there,
clad in an antique mantle, which falls in a cascade of folds about His
naked feet, a bearded Christ, with long, straight hair, and an
expression of sweet gravity, and the artist has succeeded somehow in
convincing us that this is the Christ expected and foretold, fulfilling
the past as He will fulfil the future, and reigning for ever in time
upon earth, and hereafter for ever beyond time in heaven. Above Him two
angels hold a large crown, destined for the eternal King of the Ages.
He is surrounded by the four-winged symbols of the
[Illustration: TYMPANUM OF THE ROYAL PORCH.]
evangelists. On the lintel, as if on the first step of the throne, are
grouped beneath an arcade, and in pairs, as they were sent forth to
preach the Gospel, the twelve Apostles. And, to complete the scene from
the Apocalypse, in the rows of the vaulting above, are the twelve angels
and the heavenly choir of four-and twenty elders, having every one of
them a different and curious mediæval instrument of music. They are
clothed in white raiment, and on their heads are crowns of gold.[64]
They form, as it were, a living halo round the King of Ages, in a
picture of incomparable grandeur and simplicity, the conception of which
reveals not only the genius of art, but also, and, above all, the genius
of faith.
But we have not yet completed the tale of the western porch. It yet
remains to mention those strange colossal figures, which are by far the
most beautiful and remarkable among all these
‘Dedicated shapes of saints and kings,
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch.’
These curious figures, these seven kings and seven prophets and five
queens, these nineteen survivors of the twenty-four once here, with
their thin, elongated bodies, their small heads, their Eastern drapery,
their anatomical faults, and their haunting faces, may strike you at
first as unattractive, bizarre. But nothing is more certain than that,
if you study them, you will find in them an unutterable beauty and an
ineffable charm. For this is the most spiritual and fascinating
sculpture in the world, wrought with an infinite delicacy and an
inimitable cleverness of detail, by the hands of artists who were
consummate in their craft, and had learned, if not the perfection of
form of the old Greeks, yet the secret, as it has been said, of
spiritualising matter.
[Illustration: PILASTER OF THE ROYAL PORCH.]
The figures stand upright, with an air of inviolable repose, beneath
canopies like that of the Angel-sundial, heavenly Jerusalems, miniature
Zions. Their hands are glued to their sides, their drapery falls, in
most cases, in straight parallel folds; a halo is, or has been, behind
the head of each. They are clad in the long, rich robes of the East.
Over some of these a kind of dalmatic reaches to the knees. The girdles
and the broidered robes, the arrangement of the sleeves and veils, and
the jewellery of the crowns they wear, all demand the closest study. The
hard stone has been handled with such precision and such feeling that
you might almost fancy it, here, a delicate brocade, and there, a
necklace of veritable jewels. You could almost untie the knots of those
girdles, unplait almost the long braided tresses of those mystic queens.
And the heads of these silent watchers, who have waited here and
watched, with ever the same living smile about their thin, ironical
Gallic lips, are portraits startling in their lifelike reality.
The bare feet rest upon pedestals which are not the least exquisite
portions of these sculptured monoliths. For they are richly ornamented
with carved chequerwork, so delicately chiselled as to seem the work of
a goldsmith rather than a mason; mosaic patterns, which, like the
borders of the stained-glass windows, betray the influence of the East
through the medium of the Crusades. An exception, however, must be made
in the case of the three first statues of the left bay, next to the
Clocher Neuf. These have no halo, and the pedestals on which they rest
their feet are groups of enigmatic beings. The first, a king who has
been given by some modern restorer a thirteenth-century Virgin’s head,
treads underfoot a man, now scarce recognisable, enfolded by two
serpents; the second, a king also, rests upon a woman, who holds with
one hand the tail of a dragon, on which she is trampling, and with the
other she fingers a tress of her long, plaited hair; the third, a queen
of grosser type, but very richly clad, has beneath her feet a curious
group, composed of a large ape, two dragons, a toad, a dog and a
basilisk with a monkey’s face.
It has been supposed that this group represents the benefactors of the
Cathedral, William the Conqueror, Henry the First and Queen Matilda. But
this explanation, like that of the last-named group as representing the
Deadly Sins, is mere conjecture. Nor can we do more than name as kings,
prophets and queens the remaining sixteen statues which line the porch.
The fourth and fifth, counting from the Clocher Neuf, are prophets,
Isaiah and Daniel perhaps, according to the suggestions of M. l’Abbé
Bulteau: the eighth, ninth and tenth, Ezekiel, James-the-Less and
Thaddæus; the eleventh, thirteenth and fourteenth, kings with missals
and sceptres in their hands, may be Edward the Confessor, Charlemagne
and Cnut; the fifteenth, S. Paul; the sixteenth, a haloed, virgin king,
beardless, and full of the holy charm and freshness of youth, S. Henry
(1024); the seventeenth, S. Peter; the eighteenth, S. Constantine; the
last, a queen, much defaced, like several of the others, Pulcheria,
beloved of the Byzantines.
[Illustration: PILASTER OF THE ROYAL PORCH.]
There yet remains the sixth, seventh and twelfth of the statues, the
absorbing, seductive, inexpressible queens of the central bay. Her
sexless shape, the book in her hands, her expectant gaze, rapt as it
were in a vision of the ages, proclaim the first to be a nun rather than
a queen, albeit she is clad in royal raiment;--S. Radegonde, Queen of
France (582), Bulteau suggests.
The second is younger, and her beauty of a more earthly type. She wears
a halo, and is clad like the other, save that she has no mantle, and
her head is not shrouded in a veil. Her long hair falls in two plaits
over her shoulders, and the tight-drawn body of her garment reveals the
curves of her figure. Her expression is that of a rebellious, artful and
vindictive nature, and, if she is rightly supposed to be Queen Clotilde,
she is, as M. Huysmans[65] remarks, Clotilde before her repentance, the
Queen before the saint.
The last, the angelic mysterious queen with the sweet, ingenuous smile,
and the great deep eyes, is, according to local tradition, Bertha _aux
grands pieds_, mother of Charlemagne. Her right hand once lay open upon
her breast, and there it has left its impression. In the left hand she
carried a sceptre, terminating in an ornament that still remains. She is
clad in sumptuous raiment, most delicate in texture, and fringed with
lace. Her figure is elongated, so that she seems to be like some rare
lily swaying forward on its stalk. And thus, beneath her eyebrows
slightly raised, she smiles down upon the visitor in the childlike grace
of her chaste simplicity, _saintement gamine_.
Of the other statues that complete the company of Christ--martyrs,
prophets and patron saints of donors in the jambs of the doorways, or
between the other figures--I shall only call attention to the merchant
on the right pier of the _Porte Royale_, who is being robbed by the
earliest cut-purse in mediæval sculpture, and to the name Rogerus, cut
above the broken head of an adjacent butcher. Was this the architect
Roger who built the _Tour-Grise_ at Dreux, and who was then chosen by S.
Ives to build this western porch?
M. Bulteau suggests the question. But it cannot be answered.
Over the three doorways two pilasters with simple mouldings run up on
either side of the central window as far as the rose, terminating in
symbolic carvings--the northern one in the head of an ox, representative
of sacrifice, symbolising here, it is said, the abolition of Judaism,
with its sacrifices and cult; the southern one in that of a lion holding
a man’s head, which is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and here
symbolises Christ triumphant in the hearts of men.
The two towers, the old spire, and the western porch described, together
with the west front up to the rose-window, including, therefore, the
three enormous windows (34 feet by 13 feet, and 28 feet by 9 feet), and
their unrivalled treasure of twelfth-century glass, which, through
repeated dangers, has been preserved to us, are all that remain of the
Church of Fulbert, rebuilt by S. Ives.
For in 1194, when Regnault de Mouçon was bishop, and when they were
about to begin the spire of the Clocher Neuf, the Cathedral was
destroyed by fire. _Mirabili et miserabili incendio devastata_, says a
manuscript of the year 1210, now in the Vatican, and Jehan le Marchand
in his _Book of Miracles_ writes of this year:--
‘A Chartres prist en la cité
Un feu qui ne fu pas a geus,
Car trop fu grant et domageus ...
Moult fu grant douleur dou veoir
Telle iglise ardoir et cheoir.’
It is worth while to quote this and other accounts because the patriotic
desire to see in the present building the Cathedral of Fulbert has led
to some unpardonable garbling of evidence, with a view to concealing the
fact of this fire.
Guillaume-le-Breton, who died in 1226, records in his Latin poem, ‘The
Philippide,’ written in honour of King Philippe-Auguste, that the church
was burnt at this time. ‘It was so ordered,’ he infers, ‘in order that
the present church might be built and shine in its unequalled
splendour.[66] For the former one was not yet worthy to be called the
“mestre maison de Marie.” Completely rebuilt of hewn stone, and covered
throughout its whole length by a roof as it had been by the shell of a
tortoise, it now need have nothing to fear from fire till the day of
judgment. And from that fire springeth the salvation of the many by
whose efforts the Cathedral was rebuilt.’
The account of another contemporary, William of Newbridge, the
chronicler of the wars of Philippe-Auguste and of our Richard, whose
lion-heart lies in the tomb at the Cathedral of _Rouen_, gives another
explanation of the burning, and incidentally throws a vivid light upon
the state of the country at that time.
‘The troops of King Philippe,’ he says, ‘had retired precipitately from
Évreux on the approach of King Richard. Now the King of the French, to
wipe out the dishonour of this shameful retreat, threw himself with
implacable fury on Évreux, which he had already sacked a short time
before. He did not even spare the Church of S. Taurin, so famous in that
country. He gave orders, indeed, that it should be given to the flames,
and, as no one in his army would, for fear of God, execute so
sacrilegious a command, the King himself, it is said, with some
abandoned men called Ribauds, entered the sacred edifice and set fire to
it. It is said, further, that he transferred to Chartres the spoils of
the Church of S. Taurin; but these spoils were as fire to that famous
city. It fell, in consequence, a prey to the flames, and was almost
completely destroyed.’
All the inhabitants of the town, we learn from the author of the _Book
of Miracles_, clergy and laymen alike, lost all their houses and their
wealth in this disastrous conflagration. Yet their distress at their own
losses was as nothing compared with their grief at the destruction of
the church. But when the _Sainte Châsse_, containing the precious relic
which they called
‘la gemme
Et la gloire de leur cité’
could no more be seen, their sorrow passed all bounds. Bitter tears
filled their eyes, and they cried aloud that the glory of Chartres and
of the whole country side was departed. They despaired of their town,
and were ready to quit forever the homes which they no longer had the
heart to rebuild.
But the legate of the Pope, Mélior, Cardinal of Pisa, who happened to be
at Chartres, summoned the bishop and Chapter, and called upon them to
take courage and to begin rebuilding their Cathedral. He exhorted them
to fast and pray that their sins, which had brought upon them this
calamity, might be forgiven, and to set an example to the laity by
emptying their purses,
‘Por loer ovriers et maçons
Qui sache bien et tout ovrer.’
His eloquence met with such success that the bishop and his clergy
devoted the greater part of their incomes for three years to the work of
rebuilding and paying those ‘skilled labourers and masons.’
Next he called together all the people, and exhorted them also to devote
themselves to the task. And when he had finished speaking there emerged
from the depths of the crypt some devoted clerks, bringing with them the
holy casket and its priceless contents, ‘the true mirror and the
precious treasure,’ which all thought had been destroyed. The people
fell on their knees in a transport of delight, weeping tears of
gratitude and joy. For a miracle had been wrought. As Jonah was kept
from harm three days in the belly of the whale, as Noah was preserved
from the flood and Daniel from the lion’s jaws, so these devout servants
of the Lord had been saved alive in the deep recesses of the martyrium,
‘in the grotto near the altar which the men of old had prudently
constructed,’ whither they had retired with the Veil, and had lived
unharmed and unafraid, whilst the walls and roofs of the Cathedral fell
about their ears, and the molten bells and glass surged in a fiery flood
around them.
Their appearance gave point to the eloquence of the cardinal. All
classes, in gratitude, devoted themselves to rebuilding the Cathedral.
And, in order that resources might not be lacking, in order that
pilgrims might come from far and near, bringing money and labour to
supplement the contributions of the Chapter and people, a series of
miracles was wrought.[67]
It appears, says the chronicler Jehan de Marchand, with whose poetical
legends, let me advertise the reader, I shall fill the remainder of this
chapter, that the first miracle which roused the enthusiasm of the
people was the healing of a little child of Le Perche, young Guillot.
His tongue had been cruelly cut out by a knight whom he had surprised
in an intrigue. Poor and mutilated, the orphan lad fled to Chartres to
beg his bread. Kneeling there, on Shrove Tuesday, before the altar of
Our Lady, he burst suddenly into loud praise of God, albeit he was
tongueless. All the people when they heard him were filled with
amazement. They crowded to the scene of his healing to render thanks and
make their offerings before the altar, whilst the boy, that he might not
be stifled by the crowd, was placed upon a scaffolding near the Châsse
of S. Lubin. And the Virgin, ‘qui voloit la chose parfeire,’ obtained
for him that on the day of Pentecost he should receive a new tongue.
‘This child,’ says the author, ‘object of a double miracle, is still
living in our midst.’
At the news of these marvels multitudes began to come together from
every part, bringing waggons and carts laden with corn, wine, iron and
all things useful or necessary for the building of the church. Jewels
also and precious things they brought. The devotional enthusiasm of 1145
was repeated. The marvellous spectacles presented to-day by the Grotto
of Lourdes were seen then at Chartres.
‘Undique dona ferunt burgenses atque coloni,
Pontifices, clerus cum militibus dare pronis!’
So great was the crowd of pilgrims that they were obliged to pass the
night in their carts about the Cathedral, for they could not all find
shelter within the Cathedral, and the clerks coming to perform their
offices therein could not for the press make their way into the
cloister.[68]
These pilgrims were but one wave on the ocean of Catholic devotion:
pilgrims, whether kings like Charles, coming to replace an image
disfigured by profane Huguenots, or courtiers bringing with them the
very presence and perfume of the Paris of their day, or pious wanderers
from the remotest provinces of France and from strange lands beyond the
seas, scholars from the universities and weather-beaten travellers from
the New Continent, with outlandish offerings to Our Lady, they wash
forever against the hospitable shores of Chartres, and break peacefully
upon the gray cliffs of the Cathedral. A trace of their offerings,
stranded on the shores of time, is to be found in the coins dug up in
the Butte des Charbonniers in 1846, now in the Musée; coins which range
in date from the earliest days of the Roman occupation down to the
latter part of the sixteenth century, and which bear the superscription
of innumerable kings and dukes and princes of various climes.
Of the wave of pilgrims which now occupies our attention you may see a
record in the first window in the clerestory of the choir on the north
side. There, beneath a Virgin enthroned and the blazon of the bishop,
Regnault de Mouçon, are two groups which show what manner of men were
they who came to swell the tide of workers for Our Lady of Chartres, and
through whose aid, says the chronicler, the piers, the vaults and the
altars of the Cathedral rose as if by magic.
The Chapter was not content to sit idly and wait for miracles. They had
recourse to human means. To obtain contributions towards the expense of
this _mestre maison de la Reine des Cieux_, they sent priests afar to
collect in all the countries and cathedrals of Europe. Now a young
Englishman who had been studying in the schools of Paris and was
returning home passed by Soissons by chance and entered the church. A
Chartrain preacher was describing in eloquent and touching terms the
disasters that had befallen Notre-Dame of Chartres. The audience was so
moved by his eloquence that they all emptied their purses in response to
his appeal. But the young Englishman had nothing to give except a golden
necklace, which he intended for the girl he loved in London. Moved by
the words of the preacher, after a long struggle, he made the offering
of this necklace and, leaving Soissons, set out for the sea, passing the
night in the barn of a friendly innkeeper, for, as we have seen, he was
penniless. Overwhelmed with fatigue, he fell asleep upon the straw. But
in the dead of night the barn was filled with a celestial light, and,
waking, he beheld three women of rare beauty, one of whom revealed
herself to him as the Lady of Chartres. Then she restored to him his
necklace, and he vowed to consecrate himself to her service. He returned
to his own country,
‘A Londres dont il fu nais,’
and after taking leave of his parents, withdrew to a desert island,
where he lived the chaste life of a hermit and enjoyed the ineffable
bliss of communion with his fair visitant.
Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, when he heard of this miracle,
conceived a great veneration for the Church of Chartres, and, although
he was at that time at war with Philippe-Auguste, he welcomed,
encouraged and endowed with alms the emissaries of the Chapter, gave
them safe conduct through his lands, and himself did obeisance before
the sacred coffer and its relics. It was he who told the tale of this
miraculous vision to his sister, Countess of Blois, and he loved to
speak of it to the faithful on every occasion.
Thus the solemn voice of the Church, through the agency of these
emissaries, made itself heard throughout the land, promising
‘indulgences’ to those who responded generously to her appeals, and
threatening with anathemas those who dared to pillage the convoys of the
pilgrims. The inhabitants of Château-Landon, as our poet relates,
stirred, man and woman alike, by the discourse of their pastor, resolved
to load a waggon with wheat and take it to aid the workers at Chartres.
They yoked themselves to the waggon and began to pull with all their
strength, but the road was so heavy that they made but slow progress.
Ere they reached Chartres they ran short of provisions. The villagers
gave them bread out of their small store, and behold, the loaves of
bread were multiplied unto them, and they found, when they had eaten,
that the villagers had as many loaves as they had had at first.
The inhabitants of Bonneval, of Puiset, of Pithiviers and of Corbeville,
filled with a like spirit and parting on a like errand, experienced
similar miracles, thanks to ‘la dame, qui est salu de cors et d’ame.’
The Bretons, also, who were established at Chartres in the street called
La Bretonnerie, met together and decided to go out together to
Berchères-l’Évêque and bring back as their tribute a waggon-load of
stone, a task in which none but a Breton born should take a hand. They
set out, therefore, one evening, every man of them who could help with
collar or trace, but ere they could regain the town with their burden
the sun went down behind a thick bank of clouds; there was no moon nor
any light, but in marvellous wise an obscure and dreadful night was
upon them. The unhappy pilgrims soon lost their path, and wandered
astray over the vast plains of La Beauce. Blind terror seized their
hearts, but God sent three brands of flaming fire before them to lighten
their way. Rejoicing and amazed, they regained the road to Chartres,
whose _iglise et la tour_ (church and the tower) were rendered visible
by these heavenly torches. Then they deposited their offering and spread
abroad the news of the miracle which they had beheld.
Of another sort was the marvellous deliverance of a rich merchant of
Aquitaine, who, whilst he was bringing on his horse a barrel of oil for
the lamps of Notre-Dame, was made prisoner by the English soldiers of
Cœur-de-Lion. To him, in answer to his prayer, the Virgin appeared,
and she enabled him to pass out of the prison into which he had been
thrown, without the knowledge of his gaolers.
The fame of these and other wonders of the sort, narrated by the
pilgrims and repeated by the inhabitants of the town, soon filled the
countryside and spread to the more distant provinces. The renown of the
Church of Chartres filled the land and reached beyond the seas. In La
Beauce every hamlet was eager to contribute something to its glory.
Those who had no possessions to offer gave their services loading and
drawing vehicles: the roads were crowded with these humble servants of
the Lord. The blind, the dumb, the lame and the halt awaited in each
village the passing of the pilgrims and besought to be allowed to join
their company. Rich and poor, all came to Chartres with their offerings,
so that, in the words of the chronicler, money came to support the
workmen, rather from the hand of Providence than human purses.[69]
The deduction of the historian from the legends of our Trouvère is one
which we shall find illustrated by the Cathedral windows. It is, that
this Cathedral is a popular and national monument, built by the free
labour of the people gathered together freely from all parts of France,
joining and rejoicing in the new democratic movement of the Communes,
and recording, therefore, in stone and glass their new aspirations,
their new dignity.
CHAPTER VI
_Mediæval Glass and Mediæval Guilds_
‘I gaze round on the windows, pride of France!
Each the bright gift of some mechanic guild,
Who loved their city and thought gold well spent
To make her beautiful with piety.’
JAMES RUSSEL LOWELL.
‘Fine coloured windows of several works.’
FRANCIS BACON.
There are in the Cathedral one hundred and seventy-five stained-glass
lights, ‘storied windows richly dight,’ and of these almost all date
from the thirteenth century. Remembering the glass of the following
century in S. Père and the later windows of S. Aignan, we shall not care
to dispute the claim of Chartres to be the _locus classicus_ of mediæval
glass.
The three western windows of limpid blue belong, as we have said, to the
twelfth century. And we know that by the year 1220 all the great
legendary lights of the nave and all the windows of the choir, with the
exception of those given by S. Piedmont of Castile and Jeanne de
Dammartin, had been placed in the bays. Almost all the original glazing
remains. There is, of course, fine thirteenth-century glass in England,
at Canterbury for instance, and at Lincoln, whilst Salisbury and York
are scarcely to be surpassed for the pale beauty of their silvery
grisailles. But we have nothing in this country to compare in quantity,
and therefore in effect, with the gorgeous glass which illustrates the
great French churches. It is at Reims, Le Mans and Bourges, and most of
all at Chartres, that are to be found the largest and most complete and
therefore the most gorgeous galleries of the deep, rich mosaic glass of
that date. At Chartres, throughout the whole vast expanse of jewelled
lights, there is scarcely one that is not early, and there are very few
that are not of the thirteenth century.
Consider the list of them now as they have come down to us across the
ages, in spite of fires and sieges, artists and vandals, cleansing and
restoring, in spite of the winds that sweep across La Beauce and the
desire of the people to read: in spite even of the eighteenth-century
architects and their eagerness to throw daylight upon their abominable
deeds. This is the reckoning:--One hundred and twenty-four great
windows, three great roses, thirty-five lesser roses, and twelve small
ones! And in these are painted 3889 figures, including thirty-two
contemporary historical personages, a crowd of saints and prophets in
thirty-eight separate legends, and groups of tradesmen in the costumes
of their guilds. This is the national portrait gallery of mediæval
France! It is one of the most precious documents of mediæval archæology.
It is one of the most rich and poetical applications of symbolic art.
Amazing, unspeakable are the glories of this unrivalled treasure of
stained glass. ‘I gaze round on the windows, pride of France!’ Language
is futile in the presence of their rich, deep, gem-like colouring, and
the memory of them, faint though it must be, compared with the intense
impression conveyed by the immense reality, makes the tongue to falter,
the pen to fail.
‘I gaze round on the windows, pride of France!’
The building is Aladdin’s cave, and the glass a myriad jewels set in
lead lines and in tracery of stone! But metaphors are unavailing,
epithets are quite powerless to convey the beauty of the light which
pours through them. It is as marvellous, and it changes as unceasingly
as the ever-changing hues of a sunset on the western shores of Scotland,
or on the iridescent waters of the Venetian lagoons. And it is even more
brilliant than these. When the noonday sun is darting his angry rays
across the aisles, or soft rain-laden beams streak the spaces with
stripes of bloom; when the shades of evening have begun to fall, or when
the dawn is gathering strength, and is now lighting the dim distances of
the vast nave, you may sit and gaze round on those windows. You watch
the wine-red, the blood-red, the yellow and the brown of the Rose of
France and the lancet lights beneath, till the memory of all other
beauty upon earth fades in the intoxication of that stupendous
colouring. You turn at last, and, since no memory, however vivid, can
retain to the full the impression of the beauty of that glass, you are
startled into another ecstasy. For you have forgotten that there can be
other windows as beautiful. You cannot believe that there are other
colours as exquisite, until you see once more those blues and greens,
ultramarines and peacock blues and azures, and those fiery reds which
shine in upon the astonished sight from the windows of the south
transept and the aisles. And still there remain the lights of the choir
and the apse, and still the old glories, ever new, of the azure of the
western lancets, the sapphires and rubies of the western rose.
The reds, like those at Reims, are everywhere wonderful; the saffron
also and the citron yellows, the brown and the emerald green; but most
superbly beautiful of all are the blues, the lucid transparent azure of
the twelfth-century lancets, and the deep sapphire, the blue of
Poitiers, which fills the lower windows of the nave. The secret of its
manufacture is lost, but you can understand, when you behold it, how
easily that story was believed which said that in order to secure this
depth of blue the monkish glaziers used to grind sapphires to powder and
mix them with their glass. There is only one thing that can be compared
with the stained glass of the North, and that is the mosaics of the
South, of Ravenna, Palermo, San Sofia.
You ‘gaze round on those windows, the pride of France,’ and as you feast
your eyes upon the sparkling azure and the blood-red rays that stream
from the rose, you understand also how easily the lad who saw it for the
first time was led to say, when suddenly above him the organ burst forth
into music, that it seemed to him as if the window spoke!
The Cathedral offers to the student of glass a perfect model, not indeed
of detail, for upon the path which leads to the perfection of detail the
thirteenth-century glazier had still many steps to take, but of effects
in decorative colouring. In the rose you have a confused effect of
colour, in which there is not any too definite form to spoil the charm
of the broken bits of colour upon the senses. The meaning is there, too,
as we shall see, many meanings, simple and elaborate, direct and
mystical. But it is in the lancet windows of the nave that the row of
otherwise (let it be confessed) ungainly figures supplies us at once, by
means of the drapery, cloaks and borders, with that mixture of colour
and shade that makes colour beautiful, and with those broad masses of
stain combined with absolute simplicity and severity of design which
should be the ideal of the glazier. And they are not crowded with too
much story.
The lesson of the army of saints and martyrs which they represent is
printed in large type, so that it may be easily read and understood
from the distant level of the nave. Each light exhibits one enormous
figure of a saint, with features strongly marked, clad in bright robes
of blazing colour, set off by a border that is more sober in tone and
opaque. The fire dies out of these broad patches of limpid blue and
emerald green, of flaming red and saffron yellow, as they approach the
deep, cool borders of brown and black, violet and grey, mingled with
lower tones of red and green. You see, then, the object and the
successful result of these bold designs of huge saints. The mediæval
glaziers had considered the position which their glass was to occupy in
the Cathedral. They did not merely design it with a view to its being
effective in the studio. There is another point to be noted. Working, as
they did, with small fragments of the precious glass as it came out of
the melting-pot, and binding each fragment in lines of lead till the
whole formed a pattern or drawing in a leaden framework, they were able
to watch and test their work in its progress. Thus, watching and
testing, they were able also to arrange for the proper mingling of the
rays diffused on all sides by each piece of the mosaic. They did not aim
so much at painting a good preliminary design upon paper as at producing
a fine effect of colour in glass. When in succeeding centuries painters
invaded the realms of glass they would appear to have ignored the
obvious requirements of the new medium in which they were to work.
Experimentally and intuitively the mediæval glazier, on the other hand,
must have studied the whole question of radiation as it affected his
task. And the result is, that for the most superb effects of stained
glass we have to go, not to the pictures burnt on the large sheets of
glass by famous painters, but to the designs of the thirteenth-century
anonymous monkish craftsmen. In the matter of stained glass the latter
had this advantage also in their favour. They had to work with a
material which, being less scientifically compounded, was artistically
immensely superior. In the manufacture of the old pot-metal something
was left to Nature, much, that is to say, to accident. The colour, in
other words, was not so evenly and exactly spread as by more modern
processes. Being more unevenly distributed, it would frequently tone off
at the edges, and the rays diffused from it would mingle in a softer
harmony with those of the neighbouring coloured fragments. And greater
variety was obtained, because a chemically imperfect process never gives
two batches of glass from the pot quite alike. In early work, again, the
fact that large pieces of glass could not be made was also on the side
of the craftsmen. Perfect colour is the product of varied colours; the
multiplicity of small pieces of glass set in deep black lines of lead
yielded a result of rich, deep colouring, which is in the nature of
things not to be obtained from one large sheet, however fine.
But though the palette of the early glazier was so rich in quality with
those splendid reds and ineffable blues, the secret of which has long
been lost, and other primary colours, it was poor in extent. To this
poverty must be ascribed the curious colouring of many details. Beards
are often painted blue, and faces usually brown. Some shade of a rich
purplish brown was in fact the ordinary flesh tint of the early glazier.
In the window of the north transept, where S. Anne is portrayed, we have
a very striking example of this. The brown face of S. Anne is there so
large (it must be at least 2 feet in length), that the craftsman has
been able to glaze it in several pieces. The eyes are of white, and so
strongly leaded that they seem to stare out of the picture.
The sunburnt effect of their brown visages only accentuates the Oriental
aspect of many of these glass figures. As at Bourges, so here, the
influence of the East is plainly visible, not only in the hieratic type
of the personages and their sumptuous apparel, but also and still more
undoubtedly in the mosaic borders by which they and the medallions
beneath are framed. The tones are rich and soft as those of a Persian
rug; the patterns and devices are clearly related to those in Byzantine
ivories and enamels. Nor will the simile I have used seem inept when it
is remembered that at this very time imitations of the Persian rugs
brought home by the Crusaders were being deliberately manufactured in
Paris.
The enjoyment of colour is one of the finest of pleasures, but it was
not merely to give pleasure that this glass was stained, and these
figures drawn in lead. There is a reasoned aim, a definite symbolic
purpose in all mediæval art, and not least in the art of stained glass.
We have seen how the huge figures of the guardian saints in the nave are
made to stand out from their borders and tell, in spite of the height at
which they are placed, their story, plain for every eye to see. If you
now look at the windows of the lower row, of the aisles that is, you
will notice that the breadth and importance of the borders which form
the framework of the circular and quatrefoil medallions are striking.
They are not, however, intended to make the medallions stand out--if
they were, they would fail in their object--but to give the effect of an
immense blaze of subdued, indeterminate colour.
That effect is reasoned: the light in the nave is subdued for a mystic
purpose. It is not the chance result of light playing upon a fortuitous
collection of coloured fragments of glass. It is a result knowingly and
scientifically produced by the artist. The dim religious light which
fills the threshold of the temple grows less dim as it approaches the
centre of the Cross; it borrows still more transparent colours from the
painter’s palette as it circles round the choir, and in the sanctuary
gives place to the most lively and brilliant tones, which pour in from
above. ‘What poetry is there,’ exclaims M. Ferdinand de Lasteyrie,[70]
‘in this immense gamut of tones, so cleverly arrayed. It is an admirable
symbol of the light of Christianity escaping in great floods from the
summit of the Cross, but throwing a lesser brillance upon those who
stand afar off.’
To produce this striking effect the artist has availed himself of very
simple means. In the aisles the windows are cold in tone, and the
medallions,[71] as we have said, set in very broad borders. And these
borders themselves, filled with a variety of patterns and ornaments, are
composed of an infinite number of pieces of glass, mosaic work, the
leaden frames of which contribute to the desired gloom. It is a clever
application of the ‘legendary’ style, and the very choice of subjects
here is in keeping with the place they occupy. The same tones prevail in
the lofty windows of the nave, but there the figures are larger; huge
saints and tall apostles look down from their posts upon the Cross of
Christ and guard His church, S. Piat at their head; and the broad bands
of colour give more access to the light. Advancing to the centre of the
Cross, you perceive that the aisles are still plunged in a gloom, which
is rendered yet more obscure by the unlit spaces of the great transept
doors. But the roses set on high throw rainbow lights aslant the
transepts, which mingle at the entrance of the choir with the mysterious
tints of the nave, and the gallery of lights beneath these roses seem
intended to effect the needed transition between their transparent
loveliness and the opaque mass of stone beneath. In the apse, again,
with its unique double aisles and the series of chapels, which form, as
it were, the crown of thorns about the head of Christ upon the Cross,
symbolised by the Church, there reigns a luminous obscurity. Here we
have once more storied windows with medallion subjects and broad borders
of topaz, emerald and ruby, rich and deep, and warmer in tone than were
those of the nave. And in the centre of this sacred aureole of chapels
rises the sanctuary in a blaze of light, like Jesus in the midst of His
Apostles, and floods of warmly-coloured light pour down into the choir
through the huge figures which fill the windows. ‘It seems,’ says M.
Lasteyrie, ‘that the artist has borrowed a ray of light divine to
animate his work, a ray which is brilliant at first but dies away at the
entrance of the sanctuary, as if to indicate the spot in which the
Christian enters into communion with his God.’
The mediæval artist, however, was not content with a reasoned effect of
colour, however beautiful. His windows must be ‘storied’ as well as
‘richly dight.’ They must repeat in glass the lessons read to the people
by the statuary without. In those three superb twelfth-century azure
windows of the west the Tree of Jesse, the Childhood of the Saviour, and
the principal scenes of the Passion are represented. The rose above
them, with its rubies and sapphires in a deep setting of stone, tells
again the story of the Last Judgment. From the wounds of Jesus, who is
seated on a throne of clouds, flows the blood which saves or condemns
mankind. Angels, cherubim and apostles surround him. An aureole in
quatrefoil is about His head. Above shine the instruments of the
Passion, and four angels are blowing the last trump. The earth opens and
the sea gives up its dead. Emerging from their tombs, the dead look
towards the Supreme Judge. S. Michael (as on the south porch) is
weighing souls in the balance. Some are being led to Abraham’s bosom,
whilst others, dragged by demons, fall into the vivid flames of hell.
A panel under the centre circle was destroyed by a cannon ball in the
siege of 1591. It has been replaced by some fragments from another
window. The rose of the north transept is called the _Rose of France_,
because it was given to the Cathedral by S. Louis and Blanche of
Castile. The Fleurs-de-lys of France and the Castles of Castile recall
this fact when you see them repeated in their blue and gold in the
medallions and the spandrels of the window. The rose itself is not so
large as that of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, nor so delicately graceful as that
of Amiens, but, as in the case of the western rose, the boldness of the
masonry and the clear depths of the colouring lend to it a charm and
beauty all its own. It represents the _Glorification of Mary_, the
subject of the noble porch without.
In the centre, Mary seated on a throne, holds in her arms the Saviour of
the world, and receives the homage of the angels, the Kings of Judah and
the prophets, who are painted in these circles of twelve medallions. The
panels of the second circle are rectangular.
Beneath the rose are five tall pointed windows of unforgettable
splendour and extraordinary interest. King David with his harp of gold,
Solomon the monarch with the blue fleur-de-lys and Jeroboam worshipping
his calves of gold below, both stand forth from a background of purple,
prefiguring the Kingship of the Son; Aaron, the high priest, with the
rod that budded and the book of the law, wearing a curious red hat, and
beneath him Pharaoh engulfed in the Red Sea; Melchisedek, with chalice
and censer, and beneath him Nebuchadnezzar in front of the statue of
gold, silver, iron and clay, represent beforehand the Priesthood of
Christ. And all these rich Oriental figures support the enormous
brown-faced portrait of S. Anne, who sits in the central light and
carries the infant Mary.
The great white eyes of these figures seem to stare across at the rose
of the south transept opposite, which represents the fulfilment of all
that they had foreshadowed--the _Glorification of Christ_. The story is
repeated by the statuary of the south porch without. This window was
founded by Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux and Duke of Bretagne, who
figures therefore with his wife and family and arms in the lower
portions of the windows below the rose.
The arms of Dreux and Bretagne also appear with fine effect in the
twelve quatrefoils of the rose, which correspond to the rectangular
panels of the windows opposite. In the centre of the rose Christ
enthroned blesses the world and holds in His left hand a large chalice.
The surrounding medallions contain eight angels censing the four beasts
and twenty-four elders before the throne, referred to in the Book of
Revelations.
As in the north transept, five large pointed windows beneath complete
the subject. The central figure is that of Christ presented to the
faithful in the Virgin’s arms, whilst on either side are the four
evangelists carried on the shoulders of the four great prophets; S.
Matthew seated on Isaiah, S. Luke on Jeremiah, S. John (beardless, as
always in mediæval portraiture, to typify his virginity) on Ezekiel, and
S. Mark on David. The strange position of these naïve evangelists is
intended to symbolise the fact that the new dispensation rests upon the
old, even as the Christian Gothic of the upper church is built upon the
Pagan Romanesque of the old basilica, the crypt beneath.
To the east, in the apse, seven great windows repeat the motive of the
Glorification of Mary, and the artists, who, throughout this Cathedral
of Notre-Dame, are never weary of portraying its patroness in every
guise and every form, at every age, and almost as of every clime,
represent her as receiving homage from the personages of the Old
Testament, and even of S. Peter.
Not the least famous, not the least fascinating of these innumerable
Madonnas, though candles are no longer burnt to her as they were of
yore, is the window--the second in the south aisle of the choir after
leaving the transept--which is known as the Notre-Dame de la belle
Verrière. She is clad in bright vestments of azure, and, like the Virgin
who appeared to the peasant girl at Lourdes, she has about her head an
aureole of blue. Deep tones of red and brown form the background of the
window from which the figure of the Madonna stands out, so that you
might almost believe that she is about to step through into the dark
aisles of the Cathedral that is hers.
This window belongs to the thirteenth century, but it is probably
modelled on an earlier one of which there is mention. Like the three
twelfth-century windows of the west, and especially the southernmost of
these three, it is strikingly Byzantine in character. The Miracle at the
Marriage of Cana and the Temptations of Christ fill the lower part of
the light.
In the case of the remaining windows the evidence of design is less
obvious than in that of the groups with which we have dealt. Much was
evidently left to the caprice of the donors, who usually chose to
represent the lives, the struggles or the martyrdoms of their patron
saints. Thus the episodes of the life of a local priest, S. Laumer, are
recorded in a series of medallions, just as one of his miracles is
related in stone in the south porch. The storied window suggests at once
practically all that we know of him. Some time in the seventh century,
it is said, he kept his father’s sheep near Chartres, but afterwards,
having learned his letters, he was ordained priest and entered a
monastery. But he longed for a life of prayer and solitude, and fled to
the forest where he hoped none would follow him. It was vain; disciples,
hearing of his sanctity and the miracles he wrought, flocked to him.
Again he fled and settled in the woods near Dreux. But his cell of green
leaves and wattles soon became the centre of a colony of monks, so that
he was fain to recognise the call of God and to build a monastery there.
Of the miracles recorded as wrought by him there is one characteristic
of his gentle individuality. During the night some robbers stole a cow
belonging to the monks. The brethren were in despair. The robbers,
however, lost their way in the tangled forest. They wandered all night
and all next day, unable to discover the road. At last, as evening
settled in, they saw the darkness of the forest lighten, and, still
driving the cow, they came out upon the clearing of the monastery. S.
Laumer himself stood before them. They fell at his feet, asking his
pardon and imploring him to direct them aright. He raised them and said,
‘I thank you, kind friends, for finding and bringing back to me my
strayed cow. You must be very tired and hungry. Follow me.’ They
followed him into his hut and he set before them such food and drink as
he had, and they ate and drank and were refreshed. Then he set them on
their right road, and they departed--but without the cow.
Or take, as another example, the third window of the north aisle where
the lesson of the life of another saint, not local, is taught in another
series of medallions, because S. Eustace was the patron saint of the
founder. In the bottom panel, Placidius, a centurion of the guard in
Trajan’s day, appears hunting a stag. A miracle is wrought which brings
about the conversion of the Pagan hunter. For a cross of light shines
between the horns of the fugitive. Overwhelmed by the sight of this
prodigy, Placidius dismounts from his horse, kneels down and is
baptized. The change wrought within is described in the upper panels.
Great calamities befall him; his wife is taken from him; his children
are devoured by wild beasts. But Eustace, filled with a perfect trust in
God, bears all with Christian resignation. He retires to a distant land,
and there his virtue waxes daily until at last he is deemed worthy to
suffer martyrdom for his faith. Together with his wife he is roasted
alive in the belly of a brazen bull.
Thus in all simplicity the glaziers paint the legends which the people
have learned. They tell the story of a man’s life from his birth, and do
not even hesitate to represent his faults, because these windows were
intended to serve as an illustrated catechism for the poor and ignorant,
and the saintliness that has no touches of things human proves for
ordinary people discouraging. In the lower panels of the windows,
therefore, the early years of the saints are shown so that we may be
comforted and inspired by the knowledge that they too shared in the
weaknesses and the miseries of our nature. And above, when they have
risen superior to their trials, we see them in a halo of sanctity,
performing miracles by their faith. Frail man has shaken off this vile
earth and goes on from strength to strength, according to the simple
expression of a chronicler, until he arrives in the house of the Eternal
Father, whose glorious person dominates the whole window. As in the case
of the sculptured porches so here, when we study and admire the
conception and execution of these storied windows, the question arises,
Who was it who arranged, who was it who coloured this glorious glass?
And again the answer must be that we know not. The artists of the
twelfth century have not been careful in this matter: the object of
their fecund imagination and their exquisite workmanship has been this
only--the majestic expression of the burning faith within them.
One name only, that of Clement, the Chartrain glazier (_Clemens,
vitrearius Carnotensis_), found on a window in the Cathedral of Rouen,
has come down to us. And Clement, it is supposed, designed the window
which recounts the legend of S. Martin. That name alone survives out of
all the artists whose work has for over seven hundred years been the
admiration of all Europe!
The donors of the windows, on the other hand, shine there amid a blaze
of heraldic glory. You may still behold Louis de Poissy on his white
charger and at the head of his men, clad in full armour, setting forth
on the Crusade. Ferdinand III. of Castile also, S. Ferdinand, you may
see, wrapped in mail for the defence of the faith, and Blanche of
Castile, who so often brought her young son to Chartres and inspired him
with his so tender devotion to Notre-Dame. Pierre Mauclerc is here, that
turbulent spirit who expiated his offences against order by his immense
generosity to the Cathedral; Thibault VI., Count of Chartres, the very
valiant Crusader; Amaury de Montfort, Constable of France; Pierre de
Courtenay; Bouchard de Marly, of the noble house of Montmorency--these
and a whole gallery of other counts and barons and knights of chivalry
live on in the church which they endowed with their gold and for which
they fought with their swords.
But we have seen that this Cathedral was built not by the generosity of
the great alone. It was in every sense a popular, a national monument,
raised to the glory of God by the contributions and labour of all
classes. And if the humble donors have scarcely dared, like the great
lords, to represent themselves individually, they have fortunately not
shrunk from perpetuating, under the guise of the guilds through which
they subscribed, the record of their no less interesting personalities.
They all figure in the windows founded by their several trades; masons
and skinners, drapers and goldsmiths, bakers and armourers, butchers and
tanners, cobblers and water-carriers even, are all portrayed at work
with the simple realism of the Middle Ages.
A whole book, and a very interesting one, might be written as a
commentary on the thirty or forty trade corporations here depicted. It
would exhibit the commercial history of a mediæval shrine, the mart of
pilgrims and the _bazar_ of the devout.
All the trading corporations of the Middle Ages were close and exclusive
bodies. Admission to them was only possible by the long and narrow path
of apprenticeship. Economically, their general aim was to limit
competition by limiting the number of masters, by limiting the number of
embryo masters in the shape of apprentices whom each master in a guild
might receive. Their general result was to maintain a high standard in
the quality of the work produced, and by discouraging the modern ideal
of quantity to provide a certain and sufficient employment amongst all
those who were fortunate enough to be within the sacred circle of their
union.
An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of
age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of
a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France,[72] the master was
responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he
might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for
his moral training. By the rules of the craft he was required to cherish
the boy ‘beneath his roof, at his board and at his hearth.’
If he did his duty, in fact, the master treated the apprentice as his
own sons and thrashed him as heartily. The apprentice frequently
returned the compliment by making him his father-in-law. Shortly before
the expiration of his apprenticeship the young craftsman was examined by
a board of _jurés_, and was called upon to give a practical exhibition
of his skill. If he succeeded in satisfying them that he could fashion a
proper doublet or bake a good loaf of bread, he was allowed to call
himself a workman, to practise his trade, and to take his share in the
management and the benefits of his guild. Those benefits often included
comprehensive schemes of charity and mutual aid. The widows and indigent
members of a corporation were provided for by funds to which all had
contributed their quota. The standard of efficiency was maintained not
only by the vigilance of the jurés, who examined each finished article
before it was offered for sale, not only by the fear of a fine which
might be inflicted for defective work, but also by the pride and sense
of honour fostered in each individual craftsman. It was lowered on the
other hand by the excessive conservatism of the guilds, who forbade any
underselling or departure from customary models, insisted on a minute
and absurd division of labour, condemned all inventions, and nipped all
developments in the bud.
Such, briefly, was the constitution of the famous mediæval guilds, such
were their faults and excellences. The record of these Cathedral windows
helps us to realise their importance in the history of Chartres, and
also enables us to imagine the state and the character of the old town’s
trade. In spite of the exactions and taxes levied by bishop and count,
chapter, monastery and viscount, the merchants of Chartres flourished
mightily in the thirteenth century, and the fairs of the town held
during the four feasts of Our Lady rivalled in importance even those of
Brie and Champagne. Chartres was one of the seventeen towns in France
where the trades were separate and distinct, and each trade had its
statutes regulated and enforced by jurés in the manner I have sketched.
She owed her commercial activity to the gatherings of pilgrims at the
shrine of Notre-Dame, and when these gatherings ceased her trade drooped
and dwindled away till once more, as in the Merovingian days, it was
confined to traffic in wool and corn.
Take first, for instance, the window which gives us the story of S.
Eustace, the third in the north aisle of the nave, and the third in the
north clerestory of the nave, with its medallions of apostles and S.
Thomas of Canterbury, that favourite saint of the Middle Ages. They were
given by the furriers and drapers, the _Bourgeois_, as they were called,
of the River, members of the renowned corporation known as the _Métier
de la Rivière_. This _métier_ included the professions of the
woollen-drapers, combers and cleaners, felt-makers and dyers.
Six jurés were elected annually by the masters of the guild, whose duty
it was to examine, and pass or reject every piece of cloth or wool-work
made at Chartres or anywhere within a radius of three leagues. Latterly
every piece approved was stamped with a leaden trademark. The trade
flourished and brought great reputation to the town from the twelfth to
the sixteenth century. But the wars with England, and plague and famine
greatly affected its prosperity. These and other causes led to its
gradual decay and final disappearance.
The tanners and cobblers who gave the third and fourth windows in the
south aisle of the nave formed one corporation, and the curriers were
for a long time included under the heading of tanners. The latter were
attracted to Chartres by the excellence and quantity of the skins to be
obtained there, and by the peculiar quality of the water of the Eure,
which, together with the bark supplied by the trees of the neighbouring
forests, was specially adapted for curing them. The tanners flourished
exceedingly, and were accustomed to celebrate with great magnificence at
the riverside Church of S. André the feast of their patron, S. Louis.
The difficulty of procuring skins and other accessories had considerably
injured them by the time of the Revolution, and their industry, like
that of the shoemakers, has to-day no more than a quite local
importance. But the river is still to some extent the scene of their
labours. For though agriculture is now the chief industry of the
department, and though the great fairs of May and September are great no
longer in comparison with their splendid past, the commerce of Chartres
is not altogether dead. There is a considerable traffic not only in corn
and wool but also in sheep and horses, and a walk along the river banks
between the Pont Neuf and the Porte Guillaume will
[Illustration:]
show you that the chief _ateliers_ of the district are the wash-houses
of the tanners and the wool-workers. Along the base of the mouldering
wall which skirts the diverted arm of the Eure lie the backs of old
houses with their adjoining tanyards. Many of them, too, are garnished
with little wooden galleries, lavatories of the town’s soiled linen.
‘These galleries are filled with washerwomen, who crane over and dip
their many-coloured rags into the yellow stream. The old patched and
interrupted wall, the ditch with its weedy edges, the spots of colour,
the white-capped laundresses in their little wooden cages--one lingers
to look at it all.’[73]
Wine was another commodity for which Chartres was once famous. The
author of the _Book of Miracles_ tells us of a troubadour who left his
companion to pursue his pilgrimage alone whilst he himself paid a
prolonged visit to a _cabaret_.
‘Car la parole et le renon
Des bons vins avoit entendu
Qui a Chartres erent vendu
Clers seins nes et delicieux.’
The monks, it seems, had not planted their vines in vain. But, alas! the
modern vintage of La Beauce cannot claim any of the epithets assigned to
it above. The _grands clos de très bon vin_ of which Souchet speaks
(1640), which cardinals had found excellent in 1506, and which were sold
with pride and profit at the _Étape-au-vin_ or the various taverns, is
but a thin and dreary liquor to-day. Either the soil has been exhausted
and the grape lost its virtue, or the taste of the former connoisseurs
was faulty. No doubt their standard of taste in wine was lower than
ours. A cup of sack, I doubt, would not prove so pleasant to the modern
palate as it is to the modern ear. But even so the vintage of La Beauce
must have suffered a sore deterioration. The flourishing condition of
the old tavern-keepers and vintners is indicated by their generous
donation of the magnificent window which records the chief events of the
life of S. Lubin (second in the north aisle of the nave).
It remains to close this chapter with a bald list of the subjects of the
windows, taken in order, starting from the western front and moving
round the Cathedral from the Clocher Neuf along the north or left-hand
side.
1. Rose Window. Last Judgment. Described above.
2, 3, 4. Below it the three twelfth-century windows, of which the one on
the south side contains twelve circular panels representing the later
events from the life of Christ (Transfiguration to Supper with Disciples
at Emmaus). The arrangement of the windows should be compared with that
of the Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière, which, though made of
thirteenth-century glass, was copied in design from an earlier one of
which mention is made. The centre window of the three (32 feet 10
inches) contains the Virgin and Child in the head, and in twelve panels
the chief events of the Gospel story from the Annunciation to the Entry
into Jerusalem. The northern one is a Jesse window, on which the
genealogical tree of our Saviour is shown. Among the branches are the
first four Kings, then the Virgin, and Christ surrounded by the seven
gifts of the Holy Ghost. On either side of the tree are seven prophets.
_North Aisle of the Nave._
5. Story of Noah. Given by the Carpenters, Wheelwrights and Coopers.
6. Story of S. Lubin (_see_ p. 36). Given by the Tavern-keepers and
Vintners.
7. Story of S. Eustace (_see_ p. 163). Given by the Furriers and
Drapers.
8. Story of Joseph. Given by the Moneychangers and Minters.
9. Story of S. Nicholas. Given by the Grocers and Druggists.
10. _La Nouvelle Alliance._ Given by the Farriers and Blacksmiths.
(Seven panels were removed in 1816).
_Clerestory of the Nave_ (North).
11. Lancets (_a_) Temptations of Christ.
(_b_) Jonah, Daniel, Habbakkuk.
Rose (_c_) Bishop (S. Etherius?) with two suppliants at his feet.
12. Lancets (_a_) S. Laurence, as a deacon, with the
Evangelists, and below, on his gridiron.
(_b_) S. Stephen, and, below, his
Martyrdom. Also a group of Weavers.
Rose (_c_) S. Lubin, in pontifical robes on a
throne. Two Innkeepers offer him wine.
13. Lancets (_a_) Six medallions in which appear
two pairs of Apostles, and, below,
Furriers and Drapers.
(_b_) S. Nicholas, and below, Curriers and Leather-dressers.
Rose (_c_) S. Thomas of Canterbury and two
Knights invoking him.
14. Lancets (_a_) Six Apostles seated in quatrefoiled panels.
(_b_) An Apostle, and below, the Moneychangers.
Rose (_c_) The Virgin Mary holding in her
lap the seven gifts of the Holy
Ghost: Wisdom is represented
by Christ, the other gifts by
white doves with a simple
nimbus, bound to the aureole of
Christ by red rays.
15. Lancets (_a_) S. Giles in the act of blessing,
and below, celebrating Mass
before the King.
(_b_) S. George of Cappadocia in
thirteenth-century armour, and
below, nude on a wheel of swords.
Rose (_c_) S. George on horseback slaying a dragon.
16. Lancets (_a_) Christ, and below, Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac.
(_b_) The sacrifice of Isaac repeated,
and above, a bust of Christ with
the letters Alpha and Omega,
‘the beginning and the end.’
Rose (_c_) Scenes of tilling.
17. Lancets (_a_) A Martyr and S. Martin of Tours.
(_b_) S. Martin cutting his cloak and
beholding Christ in a vision.
Rose (_c_) The donors, with an inscription,
‘The men of Tours have given
these three windows.’
_North Transept_ (below the Clerestory).
18. A free version of the story of the Prodigal Son.
19. The story of S. Laurence was portrayed in this
window, but the central portion of it was removed in
1791, when the Chapel of the Transfiguration was made.
20. Removed 1791.
_North Transept, Clerestory_ (West Side).
21. Lancets (_a_) The Death, Assumption and Crowning of the Virgin.
(_b_) Angels announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds, and below,
the Presentation in the Temple. Below again, and in the
Rose (_c_) Philip of France, Count of Boulogne, uncle of S. Louis, on
his knees before an altar, and on horseback.
22. Lancets (_a_) The Annunciation and the Visitation. Below, Mahaut,
Countess of Boulogne.
(_b_) S. Joachim and S. Anne visited by Angels. Their meeting at the
Golden Gate of the Temple. Below, Countess Jeanne, the donor.
Rose (_c_) The Virgin Mary.
23. Thirteenth-century grisailles, with border of the Lilies of France,
and the Castles of Castile.
24. The Rose of France, and beneath,
25, 26, 27, 28, 29. The five pointed windows described above (p. 159).
_North Transept, Clerestory_ (East Side).
30. Lancets (_a_) S. Thomas and S. Barnabas.
(_b_) S. Thomas and S. Jude, and below,
the Canon who gave the window.
(_c_) Christ seated between the sun
and the moon, and holding a
globe blazoned with the arms of Castile.
31. The Lancets of this window contain four more
Apostles, like the last, and
The Rose, a portrait of the same munificent Canon.
32. Lancets (_a_) S. Eustace and the Stag, his
Baptism, before the Idols.
Below, an Armed Knight on horseback.
(_b_) The Annunciation, Birth of Christ,
and the Adoration of the Magi.
Below, the wife of the aforesaid knight.
Rose (_c_) Christ seated.
33. The seven large windows (46 feet high) of the
choir apse repeat the story of the north rose--the
Glorification of the Virgin. In the first (north) is
34. Aaron, and an Incense-bearing Angel, with the
donor (Gaufridus) and his family. Below,
35. Ezekiel, David, and a Seraph. Below, the
Butchers.
36. Events from the Life of S. Peter. Below,
the Moneychangers.
37. The Annunciation, Visitation, Motherhood of
the Virgin. Below, the Bakers bringing bread.
38. Moses, Isaiah and Incense-bearing Angel.
Below, the Bakers.
39. Daniel, Jeremiah, a Seraph. Below, the
Drapers.
40. Scenes from the Life of S. John the Baptist.
Below, the Moneychangers.
_The Clerestory of the Choir_ (North).
41. Lancets (_a_) The Virgin enthroned, and the
escutcheon of Regnault de
Mouçon, the bishop.
(_b_) Two groups of Pilgrims, and,
below, the donor, kneeling,
Robert de Bérou, sub-deacon
and chancellor of the Cathedral.
The plain glass border was inserted 1757.
Rose (_c_) Christ seated between two three-branched
candlesticks.
42. This window was founded by S. Ferdinand,
King of Castile, who appears on horseback in the
rose. The other two lights were removed in 1788 at
the request of Bridan, in order to set off his marble
Assumption below.
43. The same fate attended the next but one,
founded by S. Louis, whose figure was allowed to
remain in the rose.
44. Lancets (_a_) S. Martin working miracles.
(_b_) S. Martin giving away his cloak,
and beholding Christ in a vision.
Below, and in the
Rose (_c_) Jean de Châtillon, the founder, on
horseback, and kneeling.
_Clerestory of the Choir_ (South).
45. The lancets were destroyed in 1773. The
founder, Amaury, Count of Montfort, remains in the
rose. He appears again in the rose of the next
window.
46. Lancets (_a_) S. Vincent, with millstone about
his neck, on the land and on
the sea. Below, the donor,
Petrus Bai....
(_b_) S. Paul. Below, the Curriers.
47. Destroyed 1788.
48. Lancets (_a_) S. John, S. James the Great, the
Adoration of the Magi. Below,
the arms of Montmorency.
(_b_) The Birth of Jesus, the Flight
into Egypt, and below, the
donors, Colin and his wife,
before a chess-board.
Rose (_c_) Robert de Beaumont on horseback.
_South Transept_ (now being restored).
49. Destroyed 1791.
50. Destroyed 1792. A border alone remains.
51. S. Apollinaris of Ravenna and Hierarchy of
Angels (1328).
_South Transept, Clerestory_ (East Side).
52. Lancets (_a_) S. Christopher, S. Nicaise and
the donor, Geoffroi Chardonnel,
Canon of Chartres.
(_b_) S. Denis presenting the oriflamme
to Henry Clément.
Rose (_c_) S. John the Baptist.
53. Lancets (_a_) S. Protais and S. Gervais.
(_b_) S. Cosmas and S. Damien. The
same donor as above, kneeling.
Rose (_c_) The Virgin Mary.
54. Lancets (_a_) (_b_) Two Prophets, and donor,
Jean de Bretagne.
Rose (_c_) The Virgin Mary.
55. The rose of the south transept and the
56, 57, 58, 59, 60. Five large pointed windows, as
described above (p. 160).
_South Transept, Clerestory_ (West Side).
61. Lancets (_a_) (_b_) Malachi and Micah, and
below, the arms of Mauclerc.
Rose (_c_) Pierre Mauclerc, the donor, on
horseback, and in full armour.
62. Lancets (_a_) Destroyed 1786. Border remains.
(_b_) S. Paul, the first hermit, and S.
Antony. Below, a Deacon
serving at an altar.
Rose (_c_) S. Ambrosius, the Archbishop (?).
63. Lancets (_a_) (_b_) S. Paul and S. Peter.
Rose (_c_) The donor, a Canon of Chartres.
_South Aisle of the Nave_ (starting from South Transept).
64. This window formerly recorded the miracles of the Virgin, wrought in
the thirteenth century. But only one out of sixteen medallions remains
complete.
_Vendôme Chapel._
(Founded 1413 by Louis de Bourbon. Two chests
contain remains of S. Piat and S. Taurin.)
65. Below, six Angels bearing the arms of Bourbon-Vendôme, and a piece
of another window representing the Death of the Virgin. Above, on left,
Jacques de Bourbon kneeling; S. Louis of France, S. Louis of Toulouse,
Louis and Jacques de Bourbon; on right, S. James, in similar company.
Above, again, the Virgin and Child, next to a lady, crowned by two
angels; S. John blessing a chalice, S. John the Baptist, with the Lamb.
In the head of the window, the Crucifixion, and, on the right, the Holy
Women; on the left, the Jewish Priests and the Centurion. Above, Christ
judging the world, between Mary and John praying, and the angels
summoning the dead, who rise from their tombs.
66. The Death, Funeral, Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. Below,
the donors, Cobblers.
67. The Story of the Good Samaritan. Below, the Cobblers, _Sutores_.
68. The Life of S. Mary Magdalene. Below, the Water-carriers.
69. The Life of S. John the Evangelist. Below, the Armourers.
_The Nave, South Side, Clerestory._
70. Lancets (_a_) S. Symphorian and his Martyrdom.
(_b_) Mostly hidden by the organ.
Rose (_c_) S. Hilary.
71. Lancets (_a_) (_b_) Destroyed 1648.
Rose (_c_) S. Gregory the Great.
72. Lancets (_a_) S. Bartholomew and Moses.
(_b_) S. Caletric and the donors, the
Turners.
(_c_) S. Augustin.
This window also is partly hidden by the organ.
73. Lancets (_a_) S. Philip and Jeremiah.
(_b_) S. James the Less and the donor,
Gaufridus.
Rose (_c_) S. Jerome.
74. Lancets (_a_) S. Faith, and below, her Martyrdom.
(_b_) The Virgin, and below, the scene
of Christ saying, Noli me tangere
(Touch me not).
Rose (_c_) S. Solemnis, Bishop of Chartres.
75. Lancets (_a_) S. Peter, and below, the donors,
the Pastry Cooks.
(_b_) S. James.
Rose (_c_) Christ with the signs Alpha and Omega.
76. Lancets (_a_) S. Laumer, and below, his
death-bed scene.
(_b_) Meeting between S. Mary of
Egypt with Zozimus, and below,
her burial.
Rose (_c_) S. Laumer.
_The Chapels of the Ambulatory and Apse._
77. Subject unknown. Given by Geoffroi Chardonnel.
78. Life of S. Nicholas. Given by Etienne Chardonnel.
Rose, Jesus and the four beasts.
79, 80, 81, 82. Four interesting grisailles with coloured borders.
_Sacristy._
83. Grisaille, fourteenth century.
_Chapel of S. Joseph._
84. Story of S. Thomas.
85. S. Julian. Given by the Carpenters, Wheelwrights and Coopers.
86. Grisaille, picked out with colour.
_Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Mary._
87. Story of S. Savinian, S. Potentian, S. Modesta (_see_ p. 18). Given
by the Weavers.
88. Story of S. Chéron. Given by the Sculptors, Masons and
Stone-dressers.
89. Story of S. Stephen. Given by the Shoemakers.
90. Story of S. Quentin. Given by Nicolas Lescine, Canon of the
Cathedral.
91. Story of S. Theodore and S. Vincent of Saragossa. Given by the
Weavers.
_Windows between the Chapels._
92. The legend of S. Charlemagne and S. Roland, told in great detail and
with remarkable clearness, after the versions of Turpin and Vincent de
Beauvais.
93. S. James, the Apostle. Given by the Drapers and Furriers.
_Chapel of the Communion._
94. Grisaille, ornamented with arms of House of Castile.
95. Lives of S. Simon and S. Jude. Donor, Henri Noblet.
96, 97, 98. Scenes from the life of Christ, given by the Bakers. Nine of
the panels were removed in 1791, and like those of the two next windows,
which depict the incidents of the lives of S. Peter and S. Paul, they
have been very skilfully restored.
_Entrance to Chapel of S. Piat_ (_see_ p. 44).
99. Grisaille, fourteenth century. S. Piat in ecclesiastical robes.
_Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus._
100. Grisaille. S. Nicholas restoring three children to life (fifteenth
century).
101. Life of S. Rémy. The donor below kneeling.
102. S. Nicholas.
103. Story of S. Marguerite and S. Catherine of Alexandria. Donors,
Marguerite de Lèves, and her husband, Guérin de Friaise, with her
brother Hugues de Meslay.
104. Life of S. Thomas of Canterbury. Given about thirty years after his
murder by the Tanners and Curriers. John of Salisbury, Bishop of
Chartres, had been the secretary of Thomas à Becket, and an eye-witness
of his murder.
_Chapel of All Saints._
105. The story of S. Martin (by Clement, the glass painter of Chartres,
whose name is recorded in a similar thirteenth-century window in Rouen
Cathedral?). Given by the Shoemakers.
106, 107. White eighteenth-century glass.
108. Fourteenth-century grisailles. The Annunciation. Two coats of arms.
Rose, Christ blessing.
109. Signs of the Zodiac and Months of the year. The life of the Virgin.
Rose, Christ crucified. Given by Thibaut VI., Count of Chartres, for
Thomas, Count of Perche, killed in the Battle of Lincoln, 1217.
110. Notre-dame de la Belle Verrière (_see_ p. 161). Above, the Virgin
(whose mouth has been skilfully restored), enthroned and crowned, with
Christ between her knees, surrounded by angels bearing candlesticks and
censers. Below, the Marriage at Cana, and the Temptation of our Saviour
in the Wilderness, on the Temple and the Mountain.
111. Scenes from the lives of S. Antony and S. Paul, the first hermit.
Given by the Basketmakers.
Rose, Virgin and Child.
CHAPTER VII
_The Cathedral_
‘Monument unique, et qu’il faudrait comparer aux gigantesques
constructions de l’Egypte, aux monstrueuses pagodes de l’Inde pour
lui trouver des analogues.’--DIDRON.
‘Notre-Dame de Chartres! It is a world to explore, as if one
explored the entire Middle Ages.’--PATER.
The Cathedral of Chartres is gifted to a peculiar degree with the
quality of impressiveness. This quality it owes to the living unity, the
animated harmony of its members, and also to the sensation of space, not
emptiness, to the impression of massiveness which is yet not heavy,
suggested by the whole, whether viewed from near or afar, and equally by
the parts, such as the west front or the nave.
‘Dependent,’ says Pater, ‘on its structural completeness, or its wealth
of well-preserved ornament, or its unity in variety, perhaps on some
undefinable operation of genius, beyond, but concurrently with, all
these, the Church of Chartres has still the gift of a unique power of
impressing. In comparison, the other famous Churches of France, at
Amiens for instance, at Reims or Beauvais, may seem but formal, and to a
large extent reproducible, effects of mere architectural rule on a
gigantic scale.’
The main body of the Cathedral was completed by 1210, for it is written
in the Latin version (1210) of the _Poem of Miracles_ that one day there
came a shining light which dimmed the candles that were lit, and a
noise as of thunder that drowned the voices of the many faithful praying
in the church, and that a belief sprang up that the Virgin herself had
appeared to honour with her presence the Cathedral built to her
praise.[74]
The north and south porches, which were not part of the original plan,
as is evident from the manner in which they have been applied to the
walls and the buttresses cut away to admit them, would appear to have
been begun in this same year 1210.
But the dedication of the Cathedral was long deferred. It did not take
place till 1260, when S. Louis himself, the devoted benefactor of the
Cathedral, whose personality has filled the north transept, the Rose of
France and the north porch, attended with all his family, and with
multitudes of people from every side, princes and dukes and peasants,
and the bishop, surrounded by his seventy canons, joined in the solemn
dedication of the temple.
By the fire of 1194 the whole of the upper church had been destroyed.
The narthex, with the western porch and its three twelfth-century
windows, alone remained. Beyond the church stood the two towers still,
but their bells and woodwork were all gone, and the masonry was so
charred that traces of the fire may be seen to this day.
Briefly, the steps that were now taken to give us the Cathedral which we
have may be summarised as follows. Four apsidal chapels were added in
the crypt, completing thus the favourite Gothic number of seven; all the
soil of the crypt (except the martyrium) was levelled up to that of
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre; aisles were constructed over the corridors of
the crypt; a vast transept was added; an enormous choir, with double
aisles and apsidal chapels, was erected over new vaulting of the crypt;
the narthex was displaced and made room for two new bays in the nave;
whilst the west porch was moved skilfully westwards, with the same
object, and set in a line flush with the two towers. Traces of this
latter process will be found in the fact that the three doorways, having
existed before the present nave and aisles, do not now correspond with
them, and traces of what was once exterior masonry of the towers may
also be seen _inside_ the present church, between the Chapel of the
Seven Sorrows and that of the Calvary.
At the same time, above the triplet window, in a severe quadrangular
framework, was inserted the splendid Rose window, which is a masterpiece
of masonry, a superb creation, recalling at once to mind the magnificent
circular window of Lincoln, which, however, was a good score years
later, and also--for the thick radii of the circle still suggest the
spokes of a wheel quite as much as the petals of a rose--the rather
earlier Wheel of Barfreston (Kent, 1180). It is 46 feet in diameter, and
has been set, designedly, not in the exact centre of its flat stone
frame, in order to counterbalance the inequality noticeable in the
breadth of the two towers. There, with its double row of sculptured
spokes, which radiate from its centre, it looks, to borrow Mr. Henry
James’s fine phrase, on its lofty field of stone, as expansive and
symbolic as if it were the wheel of Time itself.
Above this window stretch a noble cornice and a simple balustrade which
serve for communication between the two towers, and above this again are
the sixteen niched figures which have earned for this gallery the title
of the Gallery of Kings. Higher still is the gable which terminates the
front, containing in a niche a colossal statue of the Virgin and Child,
and on the apex a statue of Christ in the act of blessing. (Both these
statues were re-made in 1855).
The kings stand upright in their niches; their pose is little varied;
their costumes uniform. M. Viollet-le-Duc suggested that they represent
the Kings of Judah, but there is no reason to doubt the tradition that,
like the royal statues at Wells and Notre-Dame de Paris and the
stained-glass figures at Strasbourg, they really represent the kings of
the country who were benefactors of the church.
The first seven, then, are the figures of Merovingian Kings, the eighth
Pepin-le-Bref, as you may tell by his small stature and the fact that he
is standing upon a lion, in allusion to his courageous feat when, after
challenging the French nobles who despised him for his smallness, he
slew a raging lion single-handed, and then demanded, ‘Do you think me
worthy to rule you now?’ The ninth statue was broken by a cannon-ball in
the siege of 1591. It was Charlemagne or Charles-le-Fauve. The others
are, according to M. Bulteau, Philippe I., Louis le Gros, Louis le
Jeune, Philippe Auguste, Louis le Lion, Louis IX., and Philippe le
Hardi, in whose reign the gallery was finished (1280).
As at Rouen and at Bayeux, it was originally intended that six new
towers, two at each corner of the north and south front, making eight in
all, should be grouped round the soaring spire of a central tower which
was to rest on the four huge piers at the point of intersection of the
transepts of the nave and choir. But they remain incomplete, even as, in
accordance it might be fancied with some inscrutable degree, almost
every Cathedral in the world is unfinished.
Thus at Chartres the Cathedral type, after which, with tentative,
uncertain hand, the twelfth-century architects of Poitiers and Soissons,
Laon and Paris had been striving, was struck out at last. It was to
serve as a model for Central Europe throughout the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, just as the sculpture of the western porch was to
be copied at Corbeil and Paris, Sentis, Laon and Sens.
The name of the genius who achieved this glorious success we do not
know, though the names of the builders of Reims, of Rouen and of Amiens
have come down to us. All we do know is, as has been said above, that
there was an active school of architects and sculptors, drawn chiefly
from the monks of the Monasteries of Tiron and S. Père, established at
this time in La Beauce, who worked with humble zeal, anonymous.
But, whatever his name, he succeeded at last, after the efforts and by
aid of the efforts of his so many predecessors, in striking out the
cathedral type, in shaping the mould in which, with various alterations,
modifications, improvements and excesses, all the cathedrals of France
were henceforth to be cast. In striking out the type he was himself
confined by local conditions, and limited by his lack of experience. By
bringing the western façade flush with the western extremities of the
towers he was enabled to increase the length of that nave, which he made
to leap heavenwards with almost the same joyous spring as that of
Amiens, and the length and breadth, and height and strength of that
nave, with its massive piers, its splendid vaulting, and its jewelled
windows casting their purple and crimson rays across its dark roomy
spaces, and the dim distances of the mysterious aisles, render Chartres
‘awful’ in a manner seldom or never elsewhere achieved by Gothic
architect. But the proportion of the nave to the choir, or, again, to
the vast transepts, is not perfect, for the builder was limited by the
existing towers. As a pioneer, too, he was limited by inexperience.
There is, indeed, no effect of heaviness in this nave, for the
massiveness of the work, which is almost equal to that which we call
Norman, is relieved by the stupendous height. And the solemnity, the
overwhelming impressiveness of Chartres are due, it might almost seem,
to that accident of ignorance. For if he had dared, if he had known that
it was possible and safe, can you doubt that the architect would have
added to the soaring spires of Chartres the soaring nave of Amiens? But
what we should have gained in sheer beauty we should have lost in
character. For Amiens is light and joyous; Chartres is mysterious and
sad. Amiens rises as naturally as the sparks fly upward, as ethereal as
the flute-like notes of a treble voice, as careless as a child’s light
laughter. But Chartres it would seem has more sympathy with the sadder,
deeper sides of human life; it is older, stronger, more masculine, and
more wise; combining the stern philosophy of the Pagan Stoic with the
comforting tidings of the Christian martyrs and saints; combining, that
is, as never before or since so harmoniously, the Romanesque and the
Gothic styles, the rounded and the pointed arch, taking the best of
each, and uniting them in a transition that is yet a triumph, in an
attempt that is an eternal monument of success.
The transition of style is to be observed on almost every side. Not,
indeed, so much in the plain round pillars with capitals in imitation of
the Roman composite, and with square abaci, as the eye accustomed only
to English work might assume, for these in France were retained much
later than in England, even throughout the period of Flamboyant. But in
almost every direction you can see the tentative mason at work, leaving
the old heavy style with its horizontal lines behind him, and making new
experiments, discarding or developing fresh ideas which tended to the
achievement of lightness and spring, but as yet hardly daring to believe
to the full in the capacity of stone. Here, for instance, in the nave,
the blind triforium has not broken yet into one continuous window, as it
was soon to do in the Church of S. Père, of S. Ouen at Rouen, and at
Amiens; nor have the heavy masses of stone been resolved into a network
of delicate tracery, leaving not a span uncovered by its gossamer
thread. The desire for lightness, again, which was in time to lead to
the adoption of bar tracery is, in the case of the windows, evident, but
not fully attained. Combined, however, with the rare opportunities
offered to the architect by the excellent quality of the stone of
Berchères, it has led him to invent a very simple and handsome type of
window, which consists of two lancet lights under one arch, with a
foliated circle in the head, the plate tracery of which is peculiarly
heavy, and is cut through the solid stone. Between these circular
openings, which fill a whole bay between the flying buttresses, and the
heads of the lower lights, there is, as at Soissons, Bourges, Reims and
so forth, a considerable interval of masonry. The foliated circles
themselves are surrounded by a number of small trefoil or quatrefoil
openings, not formed of bars, but likewise pierced through the solid
stone.
[Illustration: FLYING BUTTRESSES OF THE NAVE.]
The buttresses of the nave, again, are amazingly heavy and massive, as
if the workmen were still afraid to trust them to support the thrust of
the vaulting of the roof at so great a height. This is borne by flying
buttresses of enormous solidity, composed of an upper and a lower
section, which are strengthened in turn by an arcade. The arcading is
remarkable for its rugged grace, its masculine beauty. Its round-headed
arches, which are supported by short, thick shafts, that remind one of
the spokes of the wheel window, are composed of two large blocks of hewn
stone.
Compare these flying buttresses with the later and lighter but less
pleasing ones of the choir, or with the almost impudent development of
the use of them in the Abbey Church of S. Père, and, without any doubt,
you perceive in what direction lay the ambition of the transitional
architect.
These buttresses of the nave will be best seen from the galleries of the
roof, with their graceful balustrading, along which you pass, when,
under the guidance of a verger from the Maison-des-Clercs, you make your
ascent of the _clochers_, starting from a door near the north entrance
and the sacristy. Passing, then, along these galleries, you come to the
Clocher Neuf, with its Flamboyant spire, the work of Jehan de Beauce
(1507-1513); built after the spire of timber and lead, which replaced
the one destroyed in 1194, had been destroyed itself in 1506. It was
raised 4 feet by Claude Augé in 1690, so that the present height of the
Clocher Neuf is 378 feet, that of the Clocher Vieux being 350. Augé, in
the following year, added the enormous bronze vase on the top; the cross
above that was placed in position in 1854. There is a vane in the form
of a sun (Jesus, the Sun of Justice, the Light of the World) upon this
cross, corresponding to the moon on the old spire (Mary, ‘clothed with
the sun, with the moon under her feet.’--Rev. xii.)
The third storey of the Clocher Neuf into which the gallery brings us is
the beginning of the Flamboyant work of Jehan de Beauce. An elegant
balustrade connects the parts of the different date. On the south wall
of the _Chambre des Sonneurs_, as the third storey is called, is graven
in Gothic, but now scarce legible characters, an inscription in six
quatrains, in which the clocher tells us the history of the disaster of
1506, and the event of its rebuilding by Jehan de Beauce, the skilful
mason, just as the bronze vase above relates in Latin prose the further
history of the spire down to 1690, and the name of the bronze-founder,
Ignace Gabois.
‘Je fus jadis de plomb et boys construit,
Grant, hault et beau, de somptueux ouvraige,
Jusques ad ce que tonnerre et oraige
M’a consumé, dégâté et détruit.
Le jour sainte Anne vers six heures de nuyt
En l’année mil cinq cens et six.
Je fu brulé démoly et recuyt
Et avec moy de grosses cloches six.
Après Messieurs en plain Chappitre assis
Ont ordonné de pierre me reffaire
A grant voultes et pilliers bien massifs
Par Jehan de Beausse, maçon qui le sut faire.
L’An dessu dist après pour l’euvre faire
Assouar firent le vint quatrième jour
Du moys de mars pour le premier affaire
Première pierre et aultres sans ce jour.
Et en avril huitiesme jour exprès
René d’Illiers évesque de regnon
Pardist la vie au lieu duquel après
Feust Erard mis par postulacion.
En ce temps là que avoys nicessité
Avoit des gens qui pour moy lors vieilloient
Du bon du cœur feust yver ou esté,
Dieu le pardont et à ceulx qui s’y emploient.
1508.’
The fourth storey, lit by four large bays, contains two great bells cast
in 1840, Marie (C., 13,228 lbs.) and Joseph, the tenor, who sounds the
Angelus throughout the year.
The fifth storey, pierced on each of its eight sides by a large bay,
contains four large bells of 1845, Anne (D., 2040 kilos.), Elizabeth
(E., 1510 kilos.), Fulbert (F., 1510 kilos.), Piat (G., 870 kilos.). The
first-named bell is always known as Anne of Bretagne. For she, when
visiting the Cathedral in 1510, was so delighted with the voice of one
of the lads singing in the choir that she begged him of the canons, and
when they granted her request she thanked them in these words:
‘Messieurs, you have given me a little voice, and I in return wish to
give you a big one.’ This she did, giving them the bell which has ever
since been called by her name. It was known also by the name of the
_Cloche des biens_, for at one season of the year it was rung for an
hour every evening to secure an abundant harvest. ‘At the first stroke
of the bell,’ wrote Sablon, in 1697, ‘all the people make the sign of
the cross and recite an Ave Maria for the products of the soil.’
The fifth storey marks the beginning of the spire, and is itself
octagonal. The transition is ingeniously concealed by the
richly-ornamented pinnacles at the four corners, which tie the
balustrade to the tower and support, each of them, three colossal
statues (John the Baptist and the eleven Apostles). Light flying
buttresses, adorned with graceful mouldings and admirable grotesques,
connect the pinnacles with the tower. Over one of the lights is a Christ
in the act of benediction.
The sixth storey, surrounded by a gallery in Flamboyant style, panels of
rich tracery and gargoyles, and pinnacles at the corners of the octagon,
contains the room of the watchmen, whose duty it was every half-hour
during the night to walk round this gallery and give the alarm when they
saw a fire in the town. A Latin inscription records that by the peculiar
grace of God this pyramid was preserved from the effects of a fire
(1674) due to the watchman’s carelessness. This good man, Gendrin by
name, finding that the hours of the night watch hung heavy on his hands,
used to amuse himself by reading. One night the candle fell and set
light to his straw mattress, and thence the flames spread rapidly to the
timber of the room. The wooden belfry was saved from destruction by the
great bravery of a workman named Claude Gauthier. A quotation from
Psalms cxxvii., outside the western door, draws the moral, ‘Except the
Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’ It is signed F.
Foucault. But the significance of the name has died away.
At last, after having mounted 377 steps, we reach the seventh storey,
where hangs the ‘Tocsin’ bell, ‘in accordance with which,’ says an old
writer, ‘all the people of Chartres order and conduct themselves.’[75]
It weighs 5000 kilos., and was cast on the 23rd September, 1520, by
Pierre Sayvet, as the inscription tells us, ‘Petrus Sayvet me fecit.’
Another and longer inscription, in beautiful Gothic characters, runs
round the bell in two lines. The bell, speaking in Latin verses, tells
us that it has been raised ‘to the lofty summit of this mighty building
to announce the eclipses of the sun and the moon.’ And it fixes its date
as 1520, with a reference to the great event of that year, the meeting
of Henry VIII. and François I., near Calais, on the field of the Cloth
of Gold, ‘when the Frenchmen met the English and lay down together in
everlasting goodwill.’
‘Facta ad signandos solis luneque labores
Evehor ad tante culmina celsa domus
Annus erat Christi millesimus adde priori
Quingentos numero bis quoque junge decem
Illo quippe anno quo francus convenit anglum
Perpetuaque simul discubuere fide.’
The arms of the Chapter, the chemisette of Notre-Dame, and the
escutcheon of a dauphin will be noticed at the end of the last line.
You reach the old tower from the new by way of the Gallery of Kings or
by crossing, within, the vaulting of the nave, beneath the copper roof
which has taken the place of the old wooden roof destroyed in the fire
of 1836. The old roof was an immense and elaborate construction of
timber known to the people as The Forest, because, one old chronicler
explains, had the trees of which it was composed still been growing they
would constitute a large forest by themselves; because, says another,
the sight of it recalled to the people the sacred groves of the ancient
Druids, who once performed their rites upon this spot. The magnificent
woodwork of the belfry of the old tower was consumed in the same fire,
and the huge bells that were once its boast--Mary and Gabriel--were
melted down in 1793 to supply the men of reason with bullets.
The great bell of the old tower (Marie) had been re-made in 1723 and
carried the inscription--
‘Marie-Anne je m’appèle
Et trente mille je pèse,
Celui qui bien me pèsera
34,000 trouvera.’
At the foot of the Clocher Neuf is the extremely elegant little
Renaissance clock tower, which was built by Jehan de Beauce in 1520,
when he had completely abandoned the Gothic style and adopted the
classic manner lately introduced by the Italian artists who had followed
Louis XII. and François I. into France. Partisans of pure Gothic may
call it mythological, mannered, mundane, but the more catholic lover of
the beautiful will not dismiss it so contemptuously. From this pavillon
de l’horloge there used to run alongside the nave up to the transept
some fourteenth-century buildings, which were demolished in 1860. They
served as a lodging for the Sœurs-cryptes, who, when the epidemic
known as the Mal des Ardents was scourging France in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, had charge of the Hôpital des Saints-Lieux-Forts,
organised in the north gallery of the crypt to receive the crowds of
sufferers who flocked to the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre. The
patients were received and nursed in this hospital for nine days and
then dismissed, healed or not.[76] From the fourteenth century onwards
the plague gradually decreased in intensity, cases became less and less
rare, and the staff of Sisters was finally reduced to one, known as La
Dame des Grottes.
We will leave for the present the exterior of the Cathedral and return
later to the consideration of the north and south porches. For it is
time to enter, by the western portal which we know, the sanctuary of
Notre-Dame. Here, amid the dim shadows of old dreams, the mystic may
indulge his fancy, and here, if anywhere, wandering through this
veritable gallery of Madonnas, in escaping from the feverish passions of
the world, a man may cool his hands awhile in the gray twilight of
Gothic things. More souls, they say, have been healed at Chartres than
bodies at Lourdes. In solitude and silence it is best; but wonderful
also and impressive is the Cathedral when filled with long trains of
pilgrims, whose shuffling feet and murmured prayers echo through the
vast nave and resound from the innumerable chapels. These sounds, these
sights carry us back in a flash of memory to those mediæval days when
Sébastien Rouillard was astonished at the crowds of all nations who
congregated here ‘and slept all night in the church or in the grottoes
for lack of lodgings.’ On the very threshold the sloping floor of the
west end of the nave, so made that it might the more easily be cleansed,
suggests that scene.
Surely the vast nave with its gloomy spaces is filled with the ghosts of
forgotten worshippers, and it thrills with the unheard echoes of
unanswered prayers. It is melancholy with the records of perverted faith
and false enthusiasm, and it is magnificent with the chanted hopes of
the faithful and the undying promises of the Risen Lord. The blood of
martyrs and the blood of infidels cries aloud from those stones which
once resounded with the fiery exhortations of a crusading monk or of a
fanatic preaching the extermination of the Jews and the persecution of
the Huguenots.
Here knights have kept their vigil and watched by their armour on the
eve of a Crusade, and here many a young squire after his night watch by
the altar, clothed in vestments of white linen that symbolised his moral
purity, has been struck on the shoulder with the consecrated sword and
made ‘a knight in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.’
Hither, again, courtier pilgrims have brought with them the perfume of
Paris, and Norman peasants the odour of the fields. Here many a penitent
Magdalen has poured out her soul in contrite supplication. Here, too,
the hand of the sacrilegious destroyer has wrought its vile work, and
yet failed to leave more than a few blots and stains upon the mighty
fabric reared by mediæval faith.
You may close your eyes and imagine that you are present at a Mass of
old days--a Mass of the dead--a silent Mass, at which no sound escapes
from the lips of the praying, and no tinkle comes from the bell that is
vainly shaken. Kings do penance before the sacred altar, knights in
chain armour kneel and take the sign of the cross; noble lords, clad in
velvet and brocade, with plumes in their hats and swords at their sides,
carry in their hands tall canes, with golden knobs, and bow to great
dames with powdered hair, who hide behind their fans lovely faces
powdered, painted, patched. And in the aisles a crowd of youthful
artisans, in brown jerkins, dimity breeches, and hose of blue, stand
beside young women with rosy cheeks and downcast eyes. Elsewhere peasant
women, in their old skirts and laced bodices, sit tranquil, whilst
upright, behind them, their young lovers shift their legs and twist
their hats in their fingers, gazing open-eyed.
They seem to follow with their silent lips the noiseless priests as
they perform that ritual order of Notre-Dame de Chartres, which rejoiced
the Gothic soul of Gaston de Latour; a year-long dramatic action, in
which everyone had and knew his part--the drama or mystery of
redemption, to the necessities of which the great church had shaped
itself. For all those various ‘offices’ which, in pontifical, missal and
breviary, devout imagination had elaborated from age to age with such a
range of spiritual colour and light and shade, with so much poetic tact
in quotation, such a depth of insight into the Christian soul, had been
joined harmoniously together, one office ending only where another
began, in the perpetual worship of this mother of churches. And
Notre-Dame had also its own picturesque peculiarities of ‘use,’ and was
proud of its maternal privilege therein.[77]
You notice the rich tones of the masonry, made richer by the jewelled
lights of those rare windows; you notice in the centre of the nave the
mysterious maze traced upon the pavement, the scene in old times of much
devotional exercise,--la Lieue, it is vulgarly termed, for the miniature
pilgrimages, along the line of white stones, with prayers at stated
intervals, as once at Reims, Amiens, Arras, and Bayeux, earned many
indulgences, and took the place of a journey to Jerusalem. This, with
the exception of that at S. Quentin, is the only remaining instance of a
labyrinth in the French churches. Above you, around you, tower the piers
and vaulting of the nave--
‘Heavy as nightmare, airy light as fern,
Imagination’s very self in stone.
Solemn the lift of high-embowered roof;
Solemn the deepening vault.’
Something of the power of impressing which this Cathedral possesses is
due, one begins to reflect, to the fortunate scarcity of side-chapels,
and the complete absence of the tombs, which fill up the spaces, and
therefore detract from the effect of so many churches. The reason for
this happy freedom from monuments is given by the old writer, Rouillard.
‘This church has the special prerogative of being reputed the chamber or
couch of the Virgin. As a sign thereof the soil of this church has
always hitherto been preserved pure and undefiled, without ever having
been dug or opened for any sepulture.’ But there was one exception. One
military leader was interred there with all honours in 1568, within the
precinct of the high altar itself. Much against their will, the canons
had yielded to the pressure of the King and the Court, and consented at
last to inter in the Choir the body of the Baron of Bourdeilles, the
colonel of the Gascons, who had fallen in the defence of the breach
against the Huguenots (_see_ p. 277). To the sound of tabourins and
fifes the funeral _cortège_ wound its way through the town of mourning
citizens, and the remains of the valiant D’Ardelay were regretfully
lowered into a vault to the left of the high altar, which was not to
prove their last resting-place. Rouillard, who saw the tomb of the
gallant colonel in 1608, adds that many believed then that the body
would not long remain where it was. And, indeed, fifty years afterwards,
the reverend canons, resenting, on the part of their immaculate
Patroness, this intrusion, reported that the corpse itself, ill at ease,
had protested, lifting up its hands above the surface of the pavement,
as if to beg interment elsewhere. This it easily obtained in the
cemetery of S. Jerome.
The nave exceeds in width any in France or Germany. Its width, as also
its length, which is short in comparison with the other parts of the
Cathedral, was determined, as we have seen, by the position of the two
towers. In height it falls short of the naves of Bourges and Amiens, and
of Beauvais, which out-rivalled even its sisters, and fell in the moment
of its mad success. But it is an unprofitable business, this comparison
of cathedrals. One is not less beautiful because another is of larger
dimensions, nor less perfect because another is more uniform. This nave
has its own qualities, which I have feebly endeavoured to suggest,
qualities different from, but not less valuable than the pure beauty of
that of Amiens.
Architecturally speaking, Parker put the matter in a nutshell when he
wrote that the nave of Chartres was ‘nearly as massive as Norman work,
although the effect of heaviness is removed by the enormous height.’[78]
Detached piers and engaged pilasters support the vaulting, which is as
daring as it is strong.
‘The main ribs of the vault spring from, or are rather continuations of
the tall clustered pilasters, which are themselves continuations of the
main piers; and from the points where each of the main ribs rise two
other cross-ribs also spring. These at their points of intersection are
adorned with crown-shaped bosses, for the most part enriched with
carvings of foliage, coloured in part, which have been marred with
colour-wash. Lines, in imitation of ashlar-work, have been painted upon
the vault’ (Massé).[79]
The piers in the nave and transept are alternately cylindrical and
octagonal in section, and have supplementary cylindrical or octagonal
columns; but in the ambulatory of the choir there are several piers
circular in section, with octagonal bases and square plinths, but
without any supplementary columns. Such plain round piers, which in
England are called Norman, are rare in France. Examples of them are,
however, to be found at Laon, Soissons and Paris. The capitals are rich
and varied, and consist chiefly of foliage; those of the piers in the
Chapel of the Seven Sorrows (Clocher Neuf), and, again, those of the
Norman pillars, in the deambulatory of the choir opposite the shrine of
Notre-Dame du Pilier, are remarkably fine. But the most noteworthy of
the piers are the four ‘Toureaus,’ as they are called: the enormous
piers at the intersection of nave and transept, which were intended to
support the central tower and spire, and which rise sheer to the roof,
in an unbroken line, to the height of 120 feet. Their faces are covered
with a quantity of slender columns.
The arcading of the triforium varies in width and character in the nave,
the choir, and the transepts and the apse. The arches of the smaller
bays into which each main bay is divided are pointed. The soffit is
flat, with a round moulding at the inner and the outer edge. The
capitals are richly carved with foliage; the bases are plain and severe.
The clerestory is composed of pairs of tall lancet windows, with a rose
window above them, which fill the whole available space in each bay. Of
the glass we have spoken in the previous chapter.
The _Flamboyant_ period is represented in the Cathedral by the spire of
Jehan de Beauce and the _Chapelle Vendôme_, next to the south transept.
It was founded in 1413 by Louis de Bourbon, and dedicated to the
Annunciation. It has recently been restored. The style is incongruous
with this massive transitional nave, but serves perhaps to accentuate
the beauty of its masculine grandeur and reserve. The remains of S. Piat
and S. Taurin are preserved here; the one is invoked for fair weather,
the other for rain by the farmers of La Beauce.
The influence of the _Renaissance_ is to be traced in the clock tower
at the foot of the _Clocher Neuf_, in the later portions of the _Clôture
du Chœur_ and, in its most fatal form, in the alterations that were
made in the eighteenth century within the choir.[80] The Chapter, about
1750, was composed of men with much taste, all of it bad. A terrible
mania for ugliness had seized mankind. Men like Bossuet, Fénelon,
Montesquieu and Racine, enamoured of the classical style, declared the
Gothic barbarous. At that inopportune crisis of taste the Chapter began
to ‘decorate’ the choir. The result is simply nauseating.
The jubé, the beautiful screen which had come down from the century of
S. Louis, required repair. The excuse was welcomed, and it was
destroyed. A few fragments only remain in the Chapel of S. Martin in the
crypt. The pillar upon which the Vierge Noire (Notre-Dame du Pilier) was
then set is said to have been part of the _débris_ of this screen. The
present grille replaced in 1866 the pretentious iron-work of the
eighteenth century.
This achievement of the Chapter seems to have whetted rather than
satisfied their shameless appetite for the hideous. ‘Sans doute,’ wrote
Victor Hugo, ‘C’est encore aujourd’hui un majestueux et sublime édifice
que Notre-Dame de Chartres. Mais si belle qu’elle se soit conservée en
vieillissant, il est difficile de ne pas soupirer, de ne pas s’indigner
devant les dégradations, les mutilations sans nombre que simultanément
le temps et les hommes ont fait subir au vénérable monument.’
Italians were sent for from Milan to wash the grand old stone of
Berchères a sickly yellow; the noble simplicity of the piers, capitals
and soffits of the arches disappeared beneath a mess of stucco, gilding
and sham marble. The choir was treated like an eighteenth century
drawing-room. The old tapestry hangings, five of which are happily
preserved in the Museum, were removed, and in their place eight mediocre
bas-reliefs in glaring white marble were substituted by Bridan, two of
which have been removed to the Bishop’s Palace. The old paving of the
choir, on which S. Louis and a thousand other illustrious pilgrims had
knelt, was also removed, and an utterly unsuitable pavement of black and
white marble laid down in its stead. In order to throw light upon the
atrocious transformation that had been wrought, several of the priceless
thirteenth-century windows were taken out and plain glass substituted.
To such an extent was this done, indeed, that in 1786 we find a canon of
the Cathedral gravely complaining that there was too much light, and
asking for a curtain to be drawn across the window! But the Revolution
surprised these canons seated in their new stalls ere the curtains had
yet been made to hide the results of their pious Paganism. They were
sent to the scaffold, and their church was converted into a Temple of
Reason amid scenes of abominable profanity and vile orgy.
The group of the Assumption was preserved by the presence of mind of an
architect, by name Morin, who placed a red cap of liberty on the
Virgin’s head and a lance in her hand. It might have been more
reasonable to destroy it. For anything more detestably out of place than
this soulless mass of Carrara marble in the old Gothic sanctuary it is
impossible to discover without going to Westminster Abbey. It is the
work of Antoine Bridan, the King’s sculptor, and the Chapter were so
pleased with it that they settled a pension on him and his wife, and
cheerfully destroyed more windows in order to throw more light upon the
monument.
Vandals, alas, are of all time and of all countries. Even the beautiful
Clôture, the great horse-shoe wall
[Illustration: Ambulatory, Chartres Cathedral.
_Facing Page_ 203;
]
which, chiselled like a silver bowl, encloses the choir, has been and
continues to be horribly defaced and defiled by the ignorant vandalism
of impious idiots and pious pilgrims, whose zeal has eaten them up and
moves them to write or scratch their names upon the walls of this
exquisite though unequal work.
More beautiful than the fourteenth-century screen of Notre-Dame de
Paris, but inferior in unity and nobility of feeling to the _Pourtoir_
of Amiens, this Clôture, although executed at various periods, is one in
design. The plan of forty groups, representing the principal scenes in
the life of the Virgin and the Gospel story was drawn up by the
Chancellor of the Chapter, Mainterne, at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. The work was begun in 1514 under Jehan de Beauce. It was
continued in 1611 by Boudin. It was finished by various sculptors at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, and the style naturally varies from
late Gothic to Renaissance. The earliest work is the best.
It comprises the first twelve groups in the south ambulatory. These were
wrought by or under the supervision of Jehan Soulas, a Parisian
sculptor, engaged for that purpose by the Chapter (1518). For Jehan de
Beauce, being an architect and not a sculptor, was responsible only for
the framework, and not for the groups of figures. But that framework is
a masterpiece of delicate grace and prolific imagination. A wealth of
ornament, of foliage and arabesques, of mythical personages and
fantastic beasts, covers the base and the innumerable columns about it.
The stone openwork above and the canopies are exquisite in their
lightness and finish. Before he died in 1529 Jehan de Beauce had passed
completely under the influence of the Renaissance. The elegant and
ingenious clock tower, which breaks the series of niches on the south
side of the clôture, with its decorative Titus and Vespasian, and so
forth, gives evidence of this. The elaborate clockwork with which it was
originally provided, and which showed the days, hours, months, time of
sunrise and sunset, and signs of the Zodiac, was destroyed in 1793. The
initial F, with a crown, which appears on the vertical band, refers to
the then reigning François I.
Apart from the infinite variety of other ornamental details in which the
framework is so rich, there are thirty-five medallions on the base. The
first on the south side refers to the Siege of Chartres by Rollo in 911;
the next fifteen to the lives of David, Daniel, Moses, Samson, Abraham
and Jonas; the next twelve to mythological subjects--Labours of
Hercules--and the last seven are heads of Roman emperors.
The pillars of the screen carry statuettes of founders and bishops, of
whom we have already mentioned S. Fulbert and S. Ives at the eastern
extremity. The small doors in their beautiful frames give access to
rooms of which four were once chapels, and two others served for the
night-watchers.
The first group in the south ambulatory represents the angel appearing
to S. Joachim, who is watching his flocks with two shepherds and a dog,
and announcing the birth of the Virgin. This and the three following
groups are certainly the work of Jehan Soulas (1520).
The second group shows S. Anne receiving a similar message from an
invisible angel, to whom she listens with the most intent absorption.
The servant, whose attention has also been arrested, is portrayed with
equally vivid realism. The sculptor was evidently a master of exact
observation. There is something Flemish in his closeness to life. The
third group, where the aged couple meet and embrace before the Golden
Gate, shows a minute and vivid understanding of the gestures of old age,
and the attitude of the servant is admirably suggestive of her naïve,
sympathetic delight. There is something Flemish, again, in the homely
details with which (4) the Birth of the Virgin is portrayed. S. Anne
lies on a curtained couch in the background, attended by a servant,
whilst another prepares to wash the Infant.
The next eight groups owe much to Jehan Soulas, but they cannot be
ascribed with certainty to his chisel. They show (5) the Virgin Mary
ascending the steps of the Temple with S. Joachim and S. Anne, (6) the
Marriage of the Virgin, (7) the Annunciation, (8) the Visitation.
The ninth group, next to the Renaissance clock, is of extraordinary
excellence. It is conceived in a spirit of the most bold and vivid
realism, absolutely justified in the result. Mary is sewing and reading
a book; Joseph asleep (and not his eyes only but his whole body
proclaims profound slumber), learns in a dream the immaculate conception
of the Virgin. Then follow three excellent groups--the Adoration of the
Shepherds and Angels, the Circumcision and the Adoration of the Magi. In
the latter the figure of the Virgin is particularly noteworthy. On the
threshold of the Renaissance the sculptor has suddenly left the
uninspired style of his day and gone back to the mystic ideal charm of
the thirteenth century.
The next two scenes, the Presentation in the Temple (13), and the
Massacre of the Innocents (14), with the Flight into Egypt in the
background, were finished by François Marchand, of Orléans, in 1542,
and, in spite of mutilation and restoration, they reveal the beginnings
of the influence which the Italian Renaissance was to exercise upon
French art. The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan (15), which follows, is
by Nicholas Guybert, who lacked the draughtsmanship and anatomical study
of Marchand, but was inspired with a devotional feeling quite foreign
to the seventeenth-century work of Thomas Boudin, (16, 17, 18) the
Temptation, the Canaanitish woman, the Transfiguration (1612). The Woman
taken in Adultery (19) is the work of Jean de Dieu (1681), and (20) the
Man born Blind, that of Pierre Legros (1683).
The centre of the _Tour du Chœur_, as it is called, was formerly
filled by an altar, above which were relics of several saints in rich
caskets (SS. Piat, Lubin, Calétric, Tugdualus, etc.); but those have
disappeared, and a fifteenth-century group, representing S. Martin
sharing his cloak with a poor man, has taken its place.
Tuby the younger executed the next two groups in 1703. They represent
(21, 22) the Entry into Jerusalem, whilst the next six are as late as
1714, and are by Simon Arazières. They depict (23) the Agony in the
Garden, (24) the Betrayal, (25) the Trial before Pontius Pilate, (26)
the Scourging of Jesus, (27) the Crown of Thorns, (28) the Crucifixion,
(29) the Virgin gazing at the dead Christ.
Thomas Boudin, again, is responsible for the next four groups
(1611)--(30) the Resurrection, (31) the Holy Women bringing vases of
perfume to the Tomb, (32) Christ and the Disciples of Emmaus, (33)
Christ dispelling the doubts of S. Thomas.
The remaining eight groups are of the same date, and almost of the same
excellence as those by Jehan Soulas at the beginning of the clôture
opposite, and contrast favourably with the cold and Pagan feeling of the
foregoing. They are probably the work of a pupil of that sculptor, and
were made under the supervision, in part, perhaps, with the aid of Jehan
Texier, called De Beauce. An inscription of the plinth beneath explains
the subject of each scene.
(34.) _Comment Jésus-Christ ressuscité apparoist à la Vierge Marie._
Christ appearing to the Virgin and S. John.
(35.) _Comme Nostre-Seigneur monte ès-cieux._ The Virgin and the
Apostles grouped round the stone which bears the imprint of the
Saviour’s feet, look upwards to the sky, where the robe and feet of the
ascending Lord can be seen.
(36.) _Comme le S.-Esprit descent sur les apôtres._ The tongues of fire
descending on the day of Pentecost on the Virgin and the eight Apostles
round her.
(37.) _Comme Nostre-Dame adore la Croix._ The Adoration of the Cross by
the Virgin, accompanied by S. John, Mary Magdalen, Mary Salome.
(38.) _C’est le trépassement de Nostre-Dame._ The Death of the Virgin,
who lies upon a couch, holding a taper, whilst all the Apostles
attend--S. John weeping, S. James the Less taking off his spectacles,
and so forth.
(39.) _Le Portement de Nostre-Dame._ The Virgin is borne on the
shoulders of eight Apostles to the Tomb in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.
(40.) _Le Sépulcre de Nostre-Dame._ Four angels raise the body of the
Virgin from the Tomb, whilst Christ descending between two angels
blesses the body, which has half risen from the grave.
(41.) _Le couronnement Nostre-Dame._ The crowning of the Virgin by the
three Persons of the Trinity is a charming group, worthy to be compared
with the best of the first twelve in the south ambulatory.
In the dim aisle, opposite the groups of the Clôture which we have just
described, is the shrine which draws from every side the greater number
of the visitors to Chartres. Notre-Dame de la belle Verrière is, save
for the devotion of a few aged peasants, a deserted Madonna, and even
the cult of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre or of the Voile de Marie is at the
present time less popular than that of _Notre-Dame du Pilier_, the
_Vierge Noire_, black also and comely. The chapel in which this statue
is placed is next to the sacristy, which was built, like the three
gables of the façades, with their turrets, galleries, balustrades and
statues, about the year 1310, under the direction of Jean des Carrières,
‘mason and master of the work of Notre-Dame.’ The Chapel of Notre-Dame
du Pilier is not, properly speaking, a chapel, but part of the
ambulatory of the choir in which the statue of the _Vierge Noire du
Pilier_ or the _Vierge aux Miracle_s is set. A priest from the _Œuvre
des clercs_ is always in attendance; innumerable lamps and candles burn
before the shrine, and countless pilgrims kiss the pillar devoutly and
obtain the forty days’ indulgence granted for that act of faith. ‘The
column,’ said Rouillard (1608), ‘is worn hollow by the kisses of the
faithful.’ The statue dates from the latter part of the fifteenth
century, and was originally placed at the foot of the cross above the
choir screen. When that screen was destroyed in 1763 it was moved near a
pier in the choir, and afterwards, in 1791, banished to the crypt and
its place taken by the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre. It was
established in its present position in 1806, and set upon a column which
is a fragment of the old jubé. Notre-Dame du Pilier was solemnly
crowned, in the name of Pius IX., on May 31, 1855, after a month-long
festival, and amid a scene of extraordinary splendour and jubilation.
Ever since then, on the anniversary of that feast, the statue is borne
in triumphant procession round the church.
I do not think that there is any other detail in the Cathedral over
which it is necessary to linger. For the crypt and the Chapel of S. Piat
have already been described at length. Let us, then, seek the open air
and examine the copper-stained statuary of the northern porch, choosing,
if possible, the late afternoon for our visit, when the cold stone is
warmed by the rose-pink tint of the setting sun. The effect of this
gallery of seven hundred thirteenth century statues of all sizes is
splendid enough as it is, but it must have been greatly enhanced
originally, when, in accordance with the early regulation of the church,
every piece of carving was coloured or gilded. The same perfect harmony
of structure which distinguishes the western and southern porches is
visible in the northern, and the latter is even richer in detail. It was
given by the Royal Family, like the rose window above, and, like the
south porch, it was added after the plan of the Cathedral was more or
less completed. Traces of this fact are evident. Buttresses had to be
cut away to make room for it, and it was soon found necessary to insert
iron ties to hold it to the main building.
There is nothing outside France which can be compared with the splendour
of these porches. And among French churches those of S. Urbain at
Troyes, S. Maclou at Rouen, S. Germain at Paris, and the Cathedral of
Bourges and of Alby rival, but cannot claim to surpass, in harmonious
effect and delicate grace of detail, the open porches of Chartres. The
fact that these porches are opened and advanced, verandah-like, beyond
the line of the building, relieving thereby the severity of it, is
significant. It indicates the change from the primitive architecture of
the church. For the early buildings, the style of which was based on
that of the Roman basilicas, had closed porches beneath which persons of
importance were buried, catechumens were instructed and baptized, and
exorcisms of the devil performed. But in the thirteenth century it
became the practice, as here with regard to the western façade, to build
the entrance flush with the towers, and when later, in the reign of S.
Louis, the fashion of lateral porches was revived, they were no longer
used for sacred purposes as before, but merely as shelters for the
faithful coming into or going out of the church. It was not therefore
any longer necessary to build them entirely covered in.
The architect will study with pleasure the arrangement of the arcading
and the exquisite plinths of the piers which support it. To the artist
the study of the sculpture with which the bays and the piers of the
porch are filled will prove of profound interest. Comparing this
statuary with that of the western front, he will notice a distinct
difference in feeling, a marked advance in style. The overwhelming
influence of the East has disappeared. Classical and Byzantine art have
given place to the original genius of France. Throwing away the debased
classical traditions, the neo-Christian artist has given expression to
the new Christian ideal of character in a type of Germanic origin, with
wavy hair and prominent forehead, which he has observed from the men and
women of his own time and country. He has given expression, that is, to
the ideal of humility and graciousness which has been traced by the
teaching of chivalry, with all its appreciation of physical perfection
and its teaching of noble manners. ‘We have then,’ it has been well
observed, ‘in this new art, evidences of a sudden increase in the
feeling for pure sensuous charm, and at the same time for spiritual
grace.’ A perfect union between sense and spirit has arisen, imparting
to each a rare intensity. In the grace and movement of the drapery (for
the old straight folds have been discarded), and in the simple grandeur
of pose as well as in the qualities of truth and self-restraint, these
sculptors are nearer to the masterpieces of Greek sculpture than perhaps
any before or since. Yet they lack, do they not? something of the
intimate mystic charm of the kings and queens of the Porche Royal. In
the name of Philosophy and the Republic it was proposed (1793) to
destroy them. And this, save for the firm opposition of the deputy,
Sargent-Marceau, would have been done.
Some damage, however, they did succeed in doing. The left bay, for
instance, is sadly mutilated, and the large statue of Philippe-Auguste,
who had provided for the yearly expenses in connection with the work of
the porch, has disappeared from the column of the vestibule on which it
used to be. The statue of his son, Louis VIII., however survives
(central bay). Louis IX., S. Louis, followed the example of his mother,
Blanche of Castile, and, besides founding windows and chapels, he, ‘by
reason of his particular devotion to the Church of Notre-Dame, and for
the saving of his soul and the souls of his forefathers,’ to quote the
words of a charter of the year 1259, caused the north porch to be
completed. His statue is to be seen on the pier of the central bay.
The north porch, which was always in the Middle Ages dedicated to the
Virgin, is peopled by 705 statues, who are the characters of a vast poem
in stone. The subject of this poem is the ‘Glorification of Mary.’ ‘It
recounts,’ says M. Bulteau, ‘the carnal and spiritual genealogy of the
Virgin, her prerogatives, her acquaintances, her virtues, her
occupations, her life, death, assumption and crowning in heaven.’ Then
come the personages and the biblical scenes which have foreshadowed the
Messiah and His Mother; S. John the Baptist and S. Peter, who
inaugurated the Christian era; and to connect this vast whole with the
Church of Chartres, S. Potentian, S. Modesta and the donors of the
porch, S. Louis at their head. The Creation, the Earth, the Sea and the
Heavens, Time also, and its seasons, assist at this glorification of
the Mother of God, and appear to render her respectful homage.
We have had occasion to notice before (p. 27) the prominent position
which S. Anne is allotted in the iconography of this Cathedral, and we
have explained that the reason is that Chartres possessed a precious
relic of that saint. For, after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, the
Emperor Baldwin sent the head of S. Anne, the Virgin’s mother, to
Chartres, ‘in order that the head of the mother might rest in the house
of the daughter.’ Departing, therefore, from the almost invariable
custom by which the Virgin is represented on the pier between the two
sections of the central door, the sculptors have here given us a
colossal statue of S. Anne carrying the little Mary in her arms. Beneath
her feet are the remains of a group in which S. Joachim, feeding his
sheep, was depicted receiving from the angel Gabriel the announcement of
the future birth of Mary.
Ranged on either side of this central doorway are ten large statues,
beneath canopies and wearing haloes. They are the personages of the Old
Testament who have prefigured the birth of Jesus Christ, His passion,
His death, His resurrection and His eternal priesthood. They emphasise
once more the parallelism of the Old Testament and the New; the New
hidden in the Old; the Old made manifest in the New. The same thought is
symbolised by the figurative image of the Son which the five statues on
the left carry, and the effigy of our Lord which is borne by those on
the right. For thereby the prophecy and its accomplishment is
symbolised. The cathedrals of Paris, Amiens, Rouen, Sens, Bourges,
Senlis and Reims, and all the great cathedrals of the thirteenth
century, in fact, show the same persons surrounding the Virgin.
And at Reims several of the statues would seem to be from the same
chisel as those at Chartres. The characters represented are Melchizedek,
Abraham, Moses, Samuel and David on the left, and on the right, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Simeon, S. John the Baptist and S. Peter. S. John is
introduced as the link between the old and the new, the prophecy and its
fulfilment. He stands close to S. Peter, for he was the immediate
precursor of Christ and S. Peter, shown here in the garb of a thirteenth
century Pope, the immediate successor.
Melchizedek is the first and one of the best statues. He wears a
priestly garment bound at the waist by a knotted girdle, and on his head
a Papal tiara of the thirteenth century, the lower part suggestive of a
crown, for both as king and priest he prefigures Christ.
In one hand he holds a censer, in the other the bread which he offered
to Abraham. His grave features and absorbed mysterious gaze admirably
shadow forth that most enigmatic personage, Melchizedek, King of Salem,
the Priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning after the
slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave
tithes; Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness as his name implies, and
the King of Peace also, without father, without mother, without descent,
having neither beginning of days nor end of life, who was the forerunner
and prototype of Jesus ‘made an high priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek.’
Christ, as the Son offered by the Father and the sacrificial Ram, is
prefigured in the neighbouring statue of Abraham with his son Isaac,
whom he holds ready bound for the sacrifice. Beneath his feet is the ram
caught in the bush. His face, which, with its flowing beard and
prolonged nose, is distinctly of the Jewish type, is averted, for he is
looking up at the angel who bade him stay his hand. Moses, trampling on
the golden calf and carrying in his left hand the table of the law and
a column about which the brazen serpent entwines, stands next to
Abraham, and likewise symbolises Christ, the Deliverer and the
Law-Giver. His right hand points to the serpent and suggests the words
of our Lord himself, ‘Even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.’ Next comes
Samuel, clad in a garment which resembles the _taled_ of the Jews,
preparing to sacrifice and to anoint Saul, who is represented by the
small kneeling figure beneath. This statue illustrates 1 Samuel ix.
Lastly David, crowned in royal majesty, carries the lance and crown of
thorns, instruments of that passion which he had so minutely prophesied
in the Psalms. The lion at the base alludes to David’s answer to Saul
when he beheld Goliath, or else is the ramping and roaring lion of the
Messianic psalms. Equally with David, Isaiah foretold in detail the
events of the Gospels, and he, clad, like most of the other personages
that remain, in a long robe and mantle, occupies the niche of the right
bay facing David. The stem which was to come forth from Jesse rises at
his feet, and the prophet points to the flower which should grow from
that root.
Jeremiah is at his side, the sublime chanter of lamentations, bearing a
beautifully-wrought Greek cross and recalling to mind his own words, ‘Is
it nothing to you all ye who pass by? behold and see if there be any
sorrow like unto my sorrow.’
Next to him the aged Simeon caresses the young Christ whose sufferings
he had foreseen.
S. John the Baptist, the prince of monks, is the link between these
forerunners of Christ and His Apostles. His ascetic figure is revealed
beneath his rough raiment of skins, for, in accordance to the usual
practice of the Middle Ages, but not of former or more recent times, he
is represented in the Apostolic costume of tunic and mantle, and as with
the Apostles his feet are bare. He tramples under foot a dragon which
typifies Vice, not a locust as some suppose. The extraordinary
tenderness with which he clasps to his breast the lamb, which is Jesus,
the lively expression of his worn and wrinkled countenance and his
emaciated body, proclaim this to be one of the finest statues of the
Cathedral porches. Lastly comes S. Peter, as we have described him
above. He stands upon a rock in reference to the words of our Lord,
‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build My Church.’
All the details, the costumes and ornaments of these statues are wrought
with extraordinary skill and minuteness, so that, like that of the
western porch, the work might almost seem that of a jeweller, not a
mason.
To the right of Melchizedek and to the left of S. Peter are two large
figures which are related to the scheme of the central doorway. For they
are Elijah and Elisha, who were the types of the ascension and the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Elijah is shown mounting to heaven in his
chariot of fire; Elisha, promising to the Shunamite the son whom he
afterwards raised from the dead.
In the tympanum of the doorway we have the Death, the Resurrection and
the Crowning of the Blessed Mary, a subject which has received its most
perfect treatment at Reims. It will be noticed that the Virgin is
represented as quite young, for, as Michelangelo finely explained, when
he had painted his Lady of the Seven Sorrows, virtue confers an eternal
youth. Above are angels censing. The figures have been sadly mutilated.
In the splay of the vaulting the first row contains a multitude of
angels with halos, bearing censers, torches, books and palms, witnesses
of the triumph of the Virgin. The next four rows exhibit the ancestors
of Mary according to the flesh and according to the spirit--the
prophets, that is, who announced her. Together they form a tree of Jesse
growing from between the feet of Jesse below on the left. Compare it
with the tree in the twelfth-century Jesse window of the Porte Royale
and you will see that, though it follows the same order, the stone tree
is even more complete. It includes the greater and minor prophets, with
Judith, Esther and Deborah, and, beginning from the fourth row, the
twenty-eight ancestors of the Virgin, mostly as described in the first
chapter of the Gospel of S. Matthew. The last two rows translate into
stone the first chapter of Genesis, giving the story of the Creation of
the World and of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in a series of
admirable tableaux which explain themselves sufficiently. In the gable
is Christ surrounded by angels.
Large statues of benefactors of the Cathedral and of the prophets
Jephthah and Zachariah adorn the piers in front. The first two on the
left are Philippe Hurepel, Count of Boulogne, and his wife Mahaut. The
statue of the latter is particularly beautiful, the expression full of
life and grace, the costume of striking simplicity. Next to these two
there used to be, before the Revolution, statues of Philippe-Auguste,
King of France, and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, rivals in the field but
united here in their generous devotion to Notre-Dame de Chartres. The
decoration of the plinths of these two piers is different from that of
the others; it is Anglo-Norman in character, and the name RŌBIR cut
hereon is probably that of the Norman sculptor who made them under the
patronage of Richard in Normandy.
The brackets of these four statues are storied with incidents from the
life of David--(1) a group representing the young shepherd being
anointed by Saul, (2) David chasing away the melancholy of Saul, (3)
David armed before Saul, (4) David and Goliath, (5) David triumphing
over Goliath. The armour of Goliath is extremely curious.
On the right is a prophet in the Jewish Schimla, who may be Jephthah or
perhaps Ezekiel, and next to him Louis VIII. and Isabella, his daughter,
pious Sister of S. Louis. She is habited as a nun, for she founded the
Convent of Longchamps, and died there, its abbess.
Zachariah, father of S. John the Baptist, comes next, and on the
brackets beneath are six exquisite scenes from the life of Samuel. The
prophet is shown with Hannah and Elkanah taking a lamb to Eli, serving
in the Temple, beholding a vision. The remaining scenes are those of the
capture of the Ark by the Philistines, the fall of Dagon, and the return
of the Ark.
The second part of the north porch is the left bay, and it is
consecrated to the life and virtues of the Virgin. On the splays of the
porch wall are represented on either side the Annunciation and the
Visitation, whilst on the left is Isaiah, the prophet of the
Incarnation, on the right Daniel. The heads of Isaiah and Gabriel are
broken, and indeed most of this bay is in a deplorable state. Of the
surviving figures those of Mary, of Elizabeth and Daniel are rightly
considered masterpieces. They are beautiful in pose, and their draperies
are skilfully arranged, distinctly Greek in feeling. About them there
seems to blow the wind that comes before the dawn of the Renaissance.
The tympanum is filled with the familiar scenes of the first
Christmastide, the birth of Christ, the Announcement to the Shepherds,
the Adoration of the three Magi, traditionally named Gaspar, Melchior
and Balthasar, and their gifts of gold for the King, incense for the
God, and myrrh for the Man who should die for men. Lastly comes the
scene of their warning in a dream. These scenes are lit by a row of
torch-bearing angels. The second and part of the third row of the
vaulting contains the ten virgins of the parable, on the left the five
foolish, with elegant garments and worldly, licentious faces, and lamps
turned upside down; the five wise on the right, modest and veiled, hold
their flaming lamps upright. The rest of the third row represents the
battle of the Vices and the Virtues; Wisdom carrying an open book, and
at her feet Folly nude and eating a stone; Justice with her sword and a
balance, which the Injustice whom she tramples on vainly endeavours to
disturb; Christian Strength in full armour, with Cowardice, a
terror-stricken soldier, grovelling before her; Temperance caressing a
dove, and at her feet Luxury, the abandoned courtesan. On the right
hand, after these cardinal virtues, are the three theological virtues,
Faith, Hope and Charity, and also Humility, with their corresponding
vices. Faith catches in a chalice the blood of a lamb upon the altar,
whilst Infidelity, with bandaged eyes, cowers below; the hands of Hope
are clasped and she gazes heavenward, but Despair lies at her feet and
has plunged a sword into her breast; Charity gives her garment to clothe
the naked, but Avarice plays with pieces of gold and hides them about
her person; Humility holds in her hand a dove, which is her symbol, and
at her feet Pride has fallen. These Virtues and Vices are succeeded by a
row of twelve queenly figures, which symbolise the Fruits of the Spirit.
They are a translation of the passage in Galatians (v. 22) in which S.
Paul enumerates them.
More remarkable still and more charming are the statuettes which fill
the fifth row and which translate the doctrine of the mediæval
theologians with regard to the active life and the contemplative life.
These, according to S. Gregory, were typified by the two wives of
Jacob, Leah and Rachel,[81] and again by Martha and Mary. Here, on the
left, the active life is portrayed with extraordinary vividness and
delicacy in the character of the virtuous woman described in the last
chapter of the Book of Proverbs. ‘She seeketh wool and flax and worketh
willingly with her hands ... she layeth her hands to the spindle and her
hands hold the distaff.’ The six degrees of the contemplative life are
shown on the right-hand side in the form of a veiled woman praying
before reading, opening her book to read, reading in her book of hours,
closing it immediately, comprehending the lesson she has learnt, and
thereafter rapt in ecstasy.
At the ends of the moulding of the vaulting are two statuettes which
seem to be connected with the subject of the active and the
contemplative life; they are, a cobbler cutting leather and a monk
reading.
In the last and outermost row were sculptured, for the first and only
time, the fourteen Heavenly Beatitudes first described by S. Anselm, ‘In
heaven the bodies of the just shall enjoy the seven beatitudes, which
are Beauty, Swiftness, Strength, Liberty, Health, Pleasure, Longevity;
and likewise the souls of the just shall receive the seven beatitudes,
which are Wisdom, Friendship, Concord, Honour, Power, Security and Joy.’
Two statues personifying the Synagogue and the Church were in front of
this bay till 1793, and on the pedestals of these and the two other
statues which were on these piers, but of which one only, that of
Philippe III. le Hardi, remains, traces of a series of Virtues trampling
the Vices underfoot are still visible.
On the wall of the right-hand bay, which is devoted to the persons of
the Old Testament who prefigured and foretold the Messiah and His
Mother, are six splendid statues representing Balaam, the Queen of Sheba
and Solomon on the left, and, on the right, Jesus, son of Sirach, Judith
and Joseph. Each of these statues and the figures on which they rest
demand careful study, but especially the statue of Joseph, the precursor
of Christ in his persecution, his selling into captivity, and his
deliverance of the people. A beardless figure with curling hair and a
simple, open countenance, with Pharaoh’s ring upon his finger and the
sceptre of authority in his hand, and about him a robe of fine linen, he
treads underfoot the bronzed dragon who is pouring into the eager ear of
Potiphar’s wife his foul suggestions. With extraordinary delicacy and
reserve the artist has succeeded in making every line of this
portrait--for a portrait it must be--express all the innocence and
charm, all the passionate purity of youth.
In the tympanum, over the door, is, first, Job on his hearth, with a
demon, for the trials and patience of Job foreshadowed the agony and
triumph of Christ, and, second, the Judgment of Solomon, the prototype
of Him who is called the Sun of Justice. The vaulting above contains
twelve angels doing homage to Christ, then, on the left, the story of
Samson, the story of Esther, and, on the right, the story of Gideon and
that of Judith. The fourth row tells the story of Tobias, and on the
outer edge are the twelve months of the year with the corresponding
signs of the Zodiac and the allegorical representations of summer and
winter, which should be compared with those of the western porch (_see_
p. 130).
Four large statues on the arcade outside this bay represent Ferdinand,
King of Castile, a great benefactor of the Cathedral, who was canonised
1671, two hundred years after his death, and whose body is
[Illustration: Interior North Porch.
_Facing Page_ 221.
]
preserved at Seville. He is accompanied by a Judge of Israel, Barak, M.
Bulteau suggests. On the right pier Tobias accompanies S. Louis. The
beautiful and appropriate portrait of that devoted patron of Notre-Dame
was fashioned in all probability shortly after the pilgrimage which he
made to Chartres in 1260, walking, in spite of extreme fatigue, barefoot
all the way from Nogent-le-Roi. He is represented, it will be noticed,
with bare feet here, either in allusion to this pilgrimage, or to his
annual practice of visiting barefoot, and in penitential garb, all the
churches of any town in which he might be on Good Friday. But there is
another incident in his life to which reference may be intended. In 1239
he and his brother Robert carried barefoot into Paris the instruments of
the Passion which he had redeemed from Venice.
On the graceful supports of these four statues are allegorical
representations of the arts and sciences: Agriculture, personified by
Adam, Abel and Cain; Music, by Jubal, with his lyre; Metalwork, by
Tubal-Cain; Medicine, by Hippocrates; Geometry and Architecture, by
Archimedes; Painting, by Apelles; Philosophy, by Aristotle; Magic, by a
wizard and a dragon. These, it will be seen, unlike those of the western
porch, are not merely representations of the seven liberal arts taught
since the sixth century. The artist of S. Louis’s day is breaking away
from the old tradition. He invents new types; he is looking for a new
system. Lastly, on the western side of the porch, are two very beautiful
statues, the one of S. Potentian, the other of S. Modesta (_see_ p. 18).
Below the former is a scene in which he, together with SS. Altin and
Eodald are baptizing a neophyte, and another in which the Roman
Governor, Quirinus, in spite of the intercession of his daughter
Modesta, condemns him to be cast into chains. Below the graceful and
impressive figure of Modesta are several bas-reliefs of incidents in
her life. They are much worn and mutilated, but you can discern an angel
rising from the Well of the Martyrs, the martyrdom of Modesta, and a
pair of angels carrying her soul up to heaven.
We will now walk round to the south side of the Cathedral, turning, as
it were, the last leaf of the Bible of Chartres. And, indeed, the south
porch[82] may well be regarded as a postscript to the story of the
windows and the porches; not only because it is later in date--it was
begun under Philippe-Auguste, at the expense of Pierre Mauclerc, Count
of Dreux, and only finished in the reign of Philippe le Bel--but also
because the subject of it is a variant of that of the Porte Royale. It
is the Glorification of our Lord again, but here in His office as
Supreme Judge and in the presence of His saints and elect.
Like the northern one, the south porch is evidently an afterthought,
and, like it, it consists of three open porticoes, corresponding to the
doors of the transept, and supported in front by six piers, which are
treated with amazing originality and skill. Enormous lintels of
Berchères stone connect the vestibule with the doorway. These have had
to be strengthened, as on the other side, by iron ties. Though only a
couple of yards or so broader than the north porch, the south porch,
thanks to the open space in which it stands, and to its advantageous
position on top of seventeen steps, appears much larger and more
imposing. The bays and the vestibule are peopled by 783 figures, in
which the visitor will note the advance in art made by the sculptors
since they took in hand the statuary of the western and, again, of the
northern porch. The anatomy of these figures and the treatment of their
drapery are infinitely more correct; the pose is more probable, the
work more polished, the whole undoubtedly much more beautiful according
to all the canons of classical art. But quite as undoubtedly there has
been a loss of charm as well as a gain in the technique. The figures, if
they are less crude, are also less expressive. The superb Christ of the
central bay, classic in its calm and regularity, is not so convincing,
so unforgettable as the Christ surrounded by the winged beasts of the
western façade. Even the magnificent effigies of S. Theodore and S.
George have not the same haunting loveliness as the earlier nameless
kings and queens, which are ill-drawn, and unknown indeed, but alive for
ever in their human simplicity.
The majestic statue of Christ, trampling under foot a lion and dragon,
which I have mentioned, is on the face of the central bay, and holds the
place of honour as the Master in the midst of His Apostles. On His right
is the bay of the martyrs, whose strength He is, and He is the Light of
the confessors in the bay on His left. His divine kingship is suggested
by the representation of Him in the upper part of the central bay,
judging the living and the dead.
Beneath the central statue are the figures of Pierre Mauclerc, Count of
Dreux, and Alice, his wife, who spent some 10,000,000 francs upon this
porch and the rose window above. They are represented in two scenes,
praying and being married, but in both giving bread to the poor.
The Christ is surrounded by His Apostles. On His right, S. Peter, with a
cross and two keys, tramples under foot Simon the magician. Next to S.
Peter comes S. Andrew, his brother, clasping the cross of his martyrdom
to his breast, and, beneath his feet, the proconsul who condemned him to
death; S. Philip, with a sword, and, beneath, the King of Hierapolis,
who crucified him; S. Thomas, with the sword of his martyrdom, standing
upon the Indian King who gave him to the priests to be cut in twain; and
similarly with swords, and trampling on their persecutors, S. Matthew
and S. Simon. Opposite are S. Paul and the beardless John, the former
holding and pointing to the sword of his martyrdom, and trampling down
Nero, the latter with the (broken) palm of his martyrdom and the book of
his Gospel, and, beneath him, Aristodemus, priest of Diana, offering to
him a vase of poisonous snakes; S. James, the brother of John, comes
next, and, below him, is Herod Agrippa, who put him to the sword; then
S. James the Less, and the Jew who slew him with a club, S. Bartholomew
and S. Jude and their persecutors beneath. All these statues are of
great beauty and in the grand manner, varied in pose and movement, and
correct in design.
Above them, in the tympanum of the bay, is Christ enthroned as the
Judge, on the great and dreadful day of the Lord, the Virgin and S. John
on either side of Him intercede for sinners, and around Him six angels
bear the instruments of the Passion. Below are two scenes--S. Michael
weighing a soul, and the separation of the just from the unjust. On the
right of the archangel is the glorious army of the elect, clad in long
robes, and wearing an expression of serene happiness. They are being led
by guardian angels to the abodes of everlasting joy. On the continuation
of the lintel are several types of the elect being led to Abraham’s
bosom. On the left of S. Michael is a lively picture of the fate of the
wicked, the condemned of every class are being dragged by horrible
demons to the mouth of hell, a dragon with flaming jaws, and on the
continuation of the lintel also various types of sinners are meeting
with a like fate.
On either side of the central figure of Christ the second row represents
the Resurrection of the Dead, and, above this, are nine choirs of
angels, then twenty-eight pairs of statuettes, representing the prophets
of the Old Testament; and, lastly, fourteen admirable figures of
Christian virgins who have fought the good fight of chastity, and carry
in their hands, as symbols of their purity, fleurs-de-lis.
The Virgin Mother, holding the child Jesus on her knees, sits enthroned
in a niche of the gable, whilst two archangels cense. The square pillars
continue the main thesis, and carry on one side the twenty-four elders
of the Apocalypse and their instruments of music, and, on the other
side, the twelve Vices and twelve corresponding Virtues, in accordance
with which the Last Judgment is decided. Here, then, we have once more,
as on the north porch, Faith and her cross opposed to Idolatry and her
idol, Hope to Despair, Charity to Avarice; Chastity, with her curious
symbol, the Phœnix, confronts Luxury, Prudence, Folly, Humility,
Pride. These appear on the western and southern sides of the left
pillar; the series is continued on the one opposite. Docility, with an
ox, faces, on the south side, Intractability, Mildness, Anger, Strength,
Cowardice; and, on the east face, Perseverance, Inconstancy, Temperance
with a camel, Drunkenness, Concord, Discord.
The left or western bay is entirely concerned with the noble army of
martyrs, of whom the eight most honoured at Chartres, resting on storied
bases, and beneath rich canopies of the kind called heavenly Jerusalem,
adorn the walls. They are, on the left, S. Laurence, S. Clement, S.
Stephen, and S. Theodore. The latter is clad in a coat of mail, of the
time of S. Louis and the Crusaders. The statue is beautifully modelled
and splendidly wrought, and forms a noble counterpart to the
magnificent portrait of S. George opposite, who, likewise accoutred for
battle, is trampling on the wheel of his martyrdom. The other martyrs on
the right-hand wall are S. Vincent, S. Denis, and the S. Piat of whom we
have spoken above (p. 44), and the outside of whose chapel, with the
beautiful staircase connecting it with the main body of the Cathedral,
we can see beyond the apse on our right.
[Illustration: S. GEORGE
(_From the South Porch_)]
The story of S. Stephen is retold in the tympanum and the first row of
the vaulting; in the next five rows are twenty-eight statuettes,
representing the hierarchy of martyrs; in the sixth, the parable of the
wise and foolish virgins reappears, and in the gable is S. Anne seated,
holding a vase, in which is a lily, the symbol of purity.
The square pillar on the left hand, which helps to support the vaulting,
gives us twenty-four scenes from the Golden Legend of the deaths of
martyrs. On the east face, at the top, is S. Thomas of Canterbury, whose
secretary and friend, John of Salisbury, one of the most attractive
characters and typical minds of the Middle Ages, was Bishop of Chartres
the last three years of his life. Among the other martyrs are several
whose names occur in the story of Chartres--S. Blaise, S. Leger, S.
Vincent, S. Laurence, S. Chéron; on the south face, S. John the Baptist,
S. Denys of Athens, S. Saturnin, S. Piat, S. Procopius, S. Symphorian;
on the west face, S. Calixtus, S. Cyprian, S. Ignatius, S. Theodore, S.
Eustace, S. Gervais and S. Protais; on the north, S. Clement, S.
Potentian, S. Lambert, S. Vitus and S. Modesta, S. Bacchus and S.
Quentin.
The right-hand bay is devoted to the confessors, and corresponds in
arrangement to that of the one we have just left. Eight large statues
fill the walls; on the west, S. Nicholas, S. Ambrose, S. Léon and S.
Laumer (the latter a fourteenth-century insertion); and on the right or
east, S. Martin of Tours, S. Jerome, S. Gregory the Great, S. Avitus
(also fourteenth century). The tympanum gives the story of the lives of
S. Martin and S. Nicholas. In the vaulting above S. Léon the legend of
S. Giles is told, and in the outermost row of the vaulting are ten of
the Apostles, crowning five rows in which is represented the whole
hierarchy of confessors--warriors, monks, laymen, priests, abbots,
bishops, archbishops, kings, emperors and popes, all wearing the halo of
sanctity. In the gable the Blessed Mary is seated holding a book,
supported by Gabriel and another archangel.
The pier on the right gives various incidents from the lives of
confessors: on the west face, S. Léon praying at the tomb of S. Peter;
S. Martin blessing a man who has threatened to strike him; S. Lubin (p.
36) giving extreme unction to S. Calétric; S. Avit, Abbot of Micey,
reposing; S. Anthony reading the Scriptures and a devil appearing; S.
Benedict seated and reading. On the south face is S. Gregory the Great
writing his commentaries, inspired by the Holy Spirit in the form of a
dove, and his secretary Peter behind a thick curtain; S. Remi
consecrating and S. Solemnis blessing Chlovis; S. Laumer healing the
Abbess Ulfrade; S. Calais or Karilef digging (the cloak in which, whilst
he was working in his vineyard, a wren nested and laid an egg, is
suspended from a neighbouring tree); S. Hilarion visiting S. Anthony. On
the east face, S. Sylvester baptizing Constantin; S. Martin restoring a
child to life near Chartres; S. Calétric visiting S. Lubin; S. Benedict
blessing the poisoned cup (appearing thus for the second time on this
pier, first as a hermit in the Cave of Subiaco, and now as Abbot of
Vico-Varo, where the monks objecting to his strict rule vainly
endeavoured to poison him); S. Lié or Lœtus of Pithiviers seated, and
at his feet the owner of the forest to which the holy priest retired,
and which afterwards became the site of the village Saint-Lié, in the
department of Loiret. The gift of this forest to the saint as a
dwelling-place is symbolised by the faggot which the owner is
depositing; S. Armel exorcising a dragon; a Breton saint, born in Great
Britain 482, and founder of the monastery at Plouarzel.
On the north face of the pier, S. Ambrose converting S. Augustine; S.
Martin healing a deaf mute at Chartres; S. Marcel of Paris leading a
dragon in his stole; S. Giles casting out a devil from a man at Athens;
S. Jerome translating the Holy Scriptures; S. Martinien, the hermit of
Cæsarea, with the penitent courtesan Zoe.
Above the porch, in the Gallery of the Kings of Judah, are eighteen
life-size statues arrayed in the royal vestments of the time of S.
Louis. They are the ancestors of Christ, and that was the only merit of
some of them, as their history is given us in the Books of Chronicles
and Kings. Varied in age and pose but similar in costume, they are,
where they stand, sufficiently decorative, but they cannot compare with
the kings and queens of the western porch.
Regarded merely as works of art, a large proportion of the two thousand
odd statues in the porches of Chartres deserve almost as much praise as
they excite interest. But when we consider the intentions of the artists
who made them, and remember the conditions under which they were
wrought, as they have been suggested in the previous chapters, we shall
be able to appreciate them with a more perfect sympathy and to judge
them with a broader understanding. The sculptors of the thirteenth
century did not aim exclusively at sensuous beauty or at anatomical
perfection, and they did not attain it. They were concerned with
psychology as well as and even more than anatomy, and they strove to
give by their art not only pleasure but instruction also. The perfection
of the human body was not so obvious to them as the imperfection of the
human soul. For them the flesh was only desirable when it exhaled the
odour of virtue, when it was inspired by the sympathetic sadness which
springs from the consciousness of frailty and resignation to the burdens
of this life, combined with a burning desire for the eternal life to
come, or when it was rendered sweet by the holy joyousness of spirit
which springs from peace, pity and love. They added, then, to the
science of art, the science of ideas. And if, therefore, mediæval
sculpture never rose to the height of artistic perfection achieved by a
Phidias or Praxiteles, yet their work remains fulfilled with a quality
not possessed by any Apollo, the charm of a spiritual intelligence.
DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL.
ft. ins.
1. Total Length {Exterior, 506 4
{Interior, 426 5
This is less than that of the Cathedrals
of Le Mans, Reims, Amiens, Bordeaux
and Rouen.
2. Length of Nave, 240 4
3. Length of Choir, 121 5
4. Length of Transept (largest in France), 211 6
5. Width of West Front, 156 0
6. Width of Nave (largest in France), 53 6
7. Length of Crypt, 366 6
8. Width of Crypt, 18 0
9. Height of Vaulting of Nave, 122 3
10. Height of Vaulting in Aisles, 45 6
11. North Tower (Clocher Neuf), 377 4
12. South Tower (Clocher Vieux), 349 6
13. Diameter of the three large Rose Windows, 44 0
CHAPTER VIII
_The Birth of the Bourgeoisie and the English Occupation_
‘Servanti Civem querna corona datur.’
_Town Motto._[83]
Whilst the Cathedral was a-building, events had happened at Chartres
which serve to indicate the importance of the position attained by the
town in feudal France by virtue of the power of its Counts, the
greatness of its Bishops and the prosperity of its commerce. The legate,
Pierre Léon, who was afterwards to become the anti-pope Anaclete, held a
council here and, in 1130, the legitimate Pope sought refuge at
Chartres, where Henry the First of England came to prostrate himself
before him. As to the Counts, their greatness had been increased by the
inheritance of the County of Champagne. They were not chary of using
their strength to advance their own importance. Thibault the Great, son
of Adèle, Countess of Chartres and daughter of William the Conqueror,
allied himself with the King of England and waged continual warfare with
the King of France. When his foreign ally died, Thibault’s brother
Stephen ascended the English throne, and he himself became Duke of
Normandy.
[Illustration]
His eldest son, Henry, was one of those who took the Cross when S.
Bernard came to Chartres, preaching the Crusade of 1145. On that
memorable occasion the Abbot of Clairvaux was elected, by acclaim in the
Cathedral, Generalissimo of the Christian forces. But with the example
of the disastrous leadership of Peter the Hermit before his eyes, S.
Bernard wisely declined. ‘Who am I,’ he wrote to the Pope, ‘that I
should order the lines of battle, and go out before the faces of armed
men, or what is more remote from my profession?’ Count Henry gained
great renown in the Holy Land, and when at last, after fifty years of
opposition to his King, the old Count died, he left to his valorous
eldest son the County of Champagne, and Chartres and Blois passed to his
second son, Thibault, owing homage to Henry. This Thibault, surnamed Le
Bon, aided the King against Henry Plantagenet, and was rewarded by being
made Seneschal of France. The amicable relations which were now at last
established between the race of Thibault and the throne were still
further strengthened by the marriage of Louis-le-Jeune with Alice of
Champagne, the sister of Thibault, and mother, by this marriage, of
Philippe-Auguste. Thibault himself, through the good offices of the
Queen, obtained the hand of the King’s daughter by his first wife. The
alliance thus consolidated bore fruit for the King when he took the
offensive against the King of England in 1167. For the troops of
Chartres and of Champagne followed the royal standard on that occasion.
A few years before, a younger brother of Count Thibault, William of the
White Hands, had succeeded Robert-le-Breton as Bishop of Chartres, and
he soon became the adviser of the princes whose relative he was.
Philippe-Auguste used to speak of him as ‘the watchful eye of his
Council.’ Together with Count Henry and the King, he received the exiled
Thomas of Canterbury with open arms, and succeeded in effecting a
reconciliation between him and the English King, whose imperious will he
had thwarted. The reconciliation was hollow. Before long France was
filled with horror at the news of the murder of À Becket. Louis demanded
vengeance from the Pope: Count Thibault wrote to the Roman pontiff that
the ‘dogs of the Court had spilled the blood of the just’; the Bishop of
Chartres excommunicated all the Continental possessions of the King of
England.
But it was not till three years later that hostilities broke out between
France and England, when the three sons of Henry Plantagenet--Henry,
Geoffrey and Richard Cœur-de-Lion--united with Louis and the Princes
of Champagne against their father. That redoubtable coalition of
Frenchmen, Chartrains, Champenois and Angevins was, however, no match
for the English King. Beaten near Verneuil, Louis was obliged to make
terms with his enemy in the following year (1174).
The blood of the martyred À Becket had sprinkled his friend and
secretary, John of Salisbury. ‘By the grace of God and the merits of the
martyr, S. Thomas,’ as he himself expresses it, he was called to succeed
William _aux Blanches-Mains_ in the bishopric of Chartres. The life of
the great writer was nearly over when he came there, bringing with him,
as a gift to the treasure of the Cathedral, a phial containing some
drops of the blood of the master whom he had so faithfully served at
Canterbury and followed in exile, and the dagger with which that master
had been murdered. But, short as was his tenure of the See, he left his
mark upon the history of Chartres. He overthrew the exorbitant
pretensions of the secular lords who claimed as _choses_ of their domain
all serfs set free by the Church, and thus rendered illusory the
enfranchisement of ecclesiastical serfs, and he obtained for clerks
brought to justice that they should henceforth not be condemned to
undergo trial by ordeal, whether of duel, hot iron, or hot or cold
water.
Philosopher and man of affairs, secretary of Archbishop Theobald,
intimate friend of Nicholas Breakspear (the only Englishman who has ever
filled the chair of S. Peter), and the devoted adherent of Thomas à
Becket, John was born at Salisbury, but his enthusiasm for culture he
owed to his training as a youth under Abelard at Paris, and in the
school of Chartres. For that school still maintained the reputation
which it had acquired under Fulbert. In his book _Metalogicus_, John,
who has been termed the ‘central figure of English learning’ in his
time, has left us a lively account of the method of teaching practised
by Bernard Sylvester, ‘the old man of Chartres, the most fruitful source
of letters in all France,’ and by his successors. The breadth of view,
the sound common sense, and the lack of pedantry which characterise John
of Salisbury’s contributions to logic and to political thought are due,
we may believe, not only to his practical training in the Archbishop’s
household at Canterbury, but also to the ‘humane’ teaching of Bernard
and his school. John of Salisbury died in 1180, and was buried in the
Monastery of S. Marie-de-Josaphat, now destroyed (_see_ p. 98). His
books he left to the Cathedral library. He was succeeded by his friend
Pierre, Abbot of Celles, and afterwards of S. Remy, at Reims, with whom
he had passed a great part of his exile, when the exquisite _chevet_
there, one of the earliest bits of pointed architecture, was being
built. This excellent bishop spent the two years of his episcopate in
the execution of public works, the abolition of vexatious feudal
customs, and the distribution of alms. At his own charges he constructed
the town walls from the Porte des Épars to the Church of S. Foy, and
repaved the streets. He obtained from the Count a modification in the
exercise of the right of Banvin. For, according to usage, it was
forbidden to sell wine during a period of time called the ban, in order
to give the lord an opportunity of selling his wine without competition.
Thibault consented to abolish this custom, whilst exacting a small toll
from those who sold wine in inns during the ban. And the charity of
Pierre de Celles was so abounding that, at his funeral, the crowd flung
itself upon his coffin and embraced his corpse. His successor was Renaud
de Mouçon, under whom the Cathedral was built. He, like Thibault, had
taken the Cross in 1189, but, unlike the Count, returned home alive and
well.
The thirteenth century saw yet another Count of Chartres lay down his
life in battle with the Infidels. For Louis, who had been made King of
Bithynia by the Emperor Baldwin after the sack of Constantinople (1204),
was attacked by the Bulgarians before Andrinople and perished
heroically. Jean de Friaize, seeing that he had been twice severely
wounded, exhorted him to retire. ‘Nay,’ he cried. ‘Leave me to fight
and die. God grant that I may never be reproached with having fled the
battle!’ His son took part in the crusade against the Moors and also in
that other holy war, more popular because less distant, which Simon de
Montfort conducted. Following their Count and their Bishop, thousands
marched south to massacre the Albigenses, because they entertained the
heresy of the Manichæans, which admits the existence of two gods,
identified with the principles of good and evil.
Meantime, whilst bishops and counts were warring against Turks, Moors
and Albigenses, Chartres was left in the hands of the Countess
Catherine, in whose name a marshal of her palace and a provost of the
town administered justice. The jealousy between the Count’s men and the
_protégés_ of the Chapter which was always smouldering broke out in a
startling fashion about this time. The outbreak is worth mentioning, for
it throws light upon the growing power and self-assertion of the people.
Speaking generally, the tendency at this period was for the notable
citizens of the town to become, under the title of _Avoués_, vassals or
_protégés_ of the Chapter, but the trades and corporations, revolting
against the oppression of the _Avoués_, who tried to exact from them all
the taxes and impositions laid upon the town, strove to secure their
liberties and customs by rallying to the Count. On the pretext, then, of
some injury done to a serf of the Countess by the Dean William, the
people burst suddenly into the cloister and laid siege to the house of
the Dean.
The Chapter demanded the intervention of the marshal and the provost,
but those officers, instead of stopping the riot, incited the mob to
break down the doors and smash the windows of the house. The Dean from
the first had wisely taken refuge in the Cathedral, but his retainers,
barricading themselves, returned the assaults of the rioters with a
rain of tiles and faggots. Maddened by this resistance, the mob procured
a heavy waggon, and using it as a battering-ram burst open the main
entrance and sacked the house, hurling all the furniture out of windows.
Next day the outraged Chapter excommunicated the town and _banlieue_. No
services were held; the altar of Notre-Dame was stripped of its
ornaments; and even the curfew bell was not allowed to ring. Every day
from the top of the jubé a priest pronounced the terrible curse known as
‘the great excommunication, the anathema and fulmination.’ At this
solemn moment the candles were lit and the bells rung confusedly, and,
as the priest finished his malediction, all became silent again and the
candles were extinguished. But this demonstration, usually so effective,
was received with shouts of laughter and screams of abuse.
However, a fire which destroyed the lower streets on the banks of the
Eure filled the rioters with fear. The revolutionists, thinking that
they beheld the finger of God, were ready to submit, but the Dean and
Chapter had already summoned the King, who came incontinent to Chartres,
and after inquiry ordered the Count’s people to make _amende honorable_
and to pay for the damage they had done. But the bishop returning from
abroad was not satisfied, and at his request Phillippe-Auguste ordered
the offenders to pay a heavy fine and to make _amende honorable_ in full
church, on a feast day, _nuds en chemise_, and bringing rods with which
they were to be scourged before the altar of the Virgin. And this was
actually done. Thus, says the chronicler, the Church by the aid of
Heaven emerged from this tribulation.
But the quarrel between the two parties was not quenched. It broke out
five years later, and was settled again to the disadvantage of the
Counts. Later, in a collision between the _bourgeois_ and the men
attached to the Cathedral, two of the latter were killed. The murderers
were pursued by some canons and protected by others. One canon was
assassinated by his brethren. A new excommunication was pronounced upon
the town. The synod appointed to judge the matter, not thinking itself
safe in the presence of the growing power of the Third Estate, removed
to Mantes. The banishment of the murderers and the intervention of S.
Louis succeeded in producing an apparent calm. But the storm soon broke
out afresh, and the people plundered and the Chapter excommunicated as
vigorously as ever.
Troublesome as these perpetual conflicts between the rival authorities
were, it is to be observed that the liberty of the cloister and the
privileges of the clergy, which were in dispute, were institutions which
led to the emancipation of some Chartrain families formerly subject to
the Counts. The ecclesiastical corporations, in fact, set an example in
this matter of enfranchisement which the Counts were slow to follow. And
it was probably due to this antagonism that the feudal lords of Chartres
delayed for so long the grants of a communal charter to the town.
It was not till the King Philippe-le-Bel bought the County of Chartres
from Jeanne, the widow of S. Louis’s son, Pierre de France, and gave it
to his own brother, Charles de Valois (1293), that the dispute was
finally closed. Three years later the town received its charter and the
_Bourgeoisie_ began to come into its own. The granting of the charter
was a business transaction. The need of money was great in France. The
differences of the King with the Pope, with England and the Flemings,
rendered it imperative that he should prepare for war. Under the new
conditions, when the King’s domain included
[Illustration: Courtyard in the Old Hotel de Ville]
two-thirds of all France and the days of feudalism had passed away, it
was necessary both to maintain a fleet and to pay mercenaries. Philip,
whose short-sighted methods of raising money had already got him into
difficulties with Flanders and the Church, now sent his men through the
‘good towns of France’ to collect contributions. ‘But,’ says Souchet,
the old historian of Chartres, ‘the people of Paris, Rouen, Orleans and
other cities rose and slew the commissioners who prosecuted their charge
with more violence than was needful,’ and the contemporary _Chronique de
la Saint-Magloire_ records:--
‘En Normandie et en Chartrain
De ce suis je trestot certain
Que en France, que en Champaigne
Il n’y a nul qui ne s’en plaigne
Des coustumes qu’estoient levées
Sur blé, sur vin et sur denrées.’
In these circumstances, therefore, Count Charles of Valois, when he
wished to raise money in Chartres to aid his royal brother, found that
there was only one way of doing it and that was by granting to the
citizens, who, as we have seen, had long been restive because they were
subject to all kinds of feudal charges and services of which the
surrounding towns had been freed, a kind of Charter of _Commune_. For a
cash consideration of 12,000 _livres tournois_, he confirmed several
usages which were already by tacit consent practised, and he compounded
for the annual tribute paid to the Counts by the town. It would be
interesting to quote this document in full, but I must be content to
give a summary of it. Shortly, it provided that the citizens should in
future be exempt from paying the Count the annual tribute of £400, and
exempt also, unless in cases of pressing necessity, from _Taille_, _Ost_
and _Chevauchée_; their horses were not to be impressed for the use of
the Count, their personal liberty was to be respected and, for
criminals, before their trial, bail allowed after a certain period of
imprisonment. Lastly, the citizens were authorised to assemble and elect
_Procureurs_ or Governors for the needs and necessities of the town
after the form and manner of the citizens of Orléans. The Count also
undertook to make good the use and custom of the town by which
contracting parties in case of dispute were judged exclusively by local
courts.
Charters usually promised more than they gave. In spite of
remonstrances, the citizens did have to supply considerable sums in
tribute from time to time in the ensuing centuries. Whether under the
name of loans, or advances, or _octrois_, Kings like François I. and
Henry IV. bled the merchants freely, and, if they protested too loudly,
quickly brought them to their senses by the threat of force. But, in the
meantime, whilst Charles de Valois, with the aid of the Chartrain
contribution, was asserting the rights of his wife to the throne of
Constantinople, or earning, at Florence, a place in Dante’s _Inferno_,
the town of Chartres, profiting by his absence, was quietly organising
and ameliorating its administration.
The development of the municipality and the subsequent absorption of the
domain of Chartres by the Crown by no means diminished the loyalty of
its citizens. A worthy reception was given to Philippe-le-Bel when he
came with his son, the boy Prince Charles, after his victory over the
Flemish at Mons-en-Puelle, to render thanks and offer his armour at the
shrine of the Vierge-Noire. The King also founded in commemoration of
his victory a service in honour of Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire. Down to
the year 1793 the martial ex-voto of the royal father and son was shown
from the pulpit on each anniversary of the defeat of the Flemings. In
that year, however, the rich armour was stripped of the precious metals
with which it was adorned. The gold was sent to the mint in Paris. The
remaining fragments, pieced together, may be seen in the town museum
(_see_ p. 317). The example of Philippe-le-Bel was followed some years
later by Philippe de Valois after his similar victory at Cassel. Fully
armed, he rode into the Cathedral, knelt before the ancient statue, and
left a thousand pounds to redeem the armour and steel which he had
dedicated to the Virgin.
It was at this period that Chartres may be said to have reached the
zenith of its prosperity. From this time forward we have to trace the
process of its decay. For not only was Chartres, like all provincial
towns, destined to suffer from the centralising tendency of the new era
which succeeded that of feudalism, but it was also condemned by its
position at the gates of Paris not to escape any of the catastrophes
attendant upon the political and social developments of the day. Its
history, however, becomes on that account more rather than less
interesting. It was taken and retaken in the fifteenth century by the
Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the English and the French, twice
besieged in the sixteenth century by the Huguenots of the Prince de
Condé and of Henry IV., and torn asunder by the passions of the Fronde
in the seventeenth.
With the fourteenth century France entered upon a period of disaster and
defeat. To the terrible ravages of the Black Death were added the
horrors of famine, and the shame and devastation of the Hundred Years’
War. The odds in that war, brought on by the continual intervention of
the French King on behalf of Scotland and his obstinacy in the matter of
Guienne, must have seemed at the first enormously in favour of France.
But the vast superiority of the French in numbers and wealth was to
prove useless in the face of the English yeomen. Crécy and Poitiers
revealed the fact, bewildering to feudalism, that the superb bravery of
French knighthood was futile when confronted with the English unmounted
churl shooting his cloth-yard shaft. A cavalry charge in the face of
those archers had no more chance of being successful than the charge of
the Dervishes at Omdurman, or the later frontal attacks of our own
infantry upon positions defended with magazine rifles. King John, taken
prisoner at Poitiers, was carried captive to London, whilst in France,
his routed soldiery turned into free companies of bandits, pillaged the
country, and held the Chartrains prisoners for six months within their
walls. The captive lords procured the sums needed for their ransom by
extortion from the peasantry, who were driven by oppression and famine
into frantic insurrection, butchering their lords and firing their
castles. And Paris, impatient of the weakness and misrule of the
Regency, rose in arms against the Crown.
Chartres in these days was compelled to strain every nerve to defend
herself. A band of mercenaries was engaged to garrison the town. The
Church of S. Saturnin, which was then in front of the Porte des Épars,
and several convents, hospitals and mansions outside the walls, which
might have given a foothold to the enemy, were destroyed. And in 1358 an
order was issued that everyone should co-operate to fortify the town,
‘which is the safety and salvation of all the people within and
without.’ Money for this purpose was raised by an extra tax upon beasts
and skins. The ramparts of the town were now defended by a ditch and
moat, and the gates, which had formerly been square and without
ravelins, were modified and reconstructed in accordance with the more
modern ideas of fortification, which the introduction of
[Illustration: Porte Guillaume]
gunpowder and artillery had developed. Cannons were mounted on the
walls. The Porte Drouaise, Porte S. Michel and the Porte des Épars have
disappeared, but the Porte Guillaume remains to show us what they were
like. This gate, named after the Vîdame Guillaume de Ferrières (1182),
has been referred to the tenth century by local enthusiasts. But that
date is too ambitious, except perhaps for the foundations. The inside of
the gate, on the town side, and part of the vaulting belong to the year
1182, when the enlargement of the town _enceinte_ took place and the
perimeter of the walls and fortifications was extended, especially in
the quarter between the Gates Châtelet, des Épars and S. Michel. But the
outside of the Porte Guillaume, its façade very much as we have it now,
was constructed after Poitiers. With its well-preserved crenellated
parapet and machicoulis, and the openings for the play of the
drawbridge, it presents a fine specimen of the military architecture of
that period, and reminds one not a little of the contemporary towers of
the Bastille at Paris (1369), a plan of which is in the town museum. The
drawbridge used to connect the main towers of the gateway with an
advanced fortification surrounded by the waters of the moat. The reader
will gain a clear idea of the arrangement by referring to the old print
reproduced on page 275. The strength of the Porte Guillaume was so
great, that though dominated by the heights of S. Barthélémy and S.
Chéron, it withstood all the assaults and batteries of besiegers, and
the town was never taken from this side. Deservedly, therefore, it
remains almost intact, though nearly all the rest of the fortifications
of Chartres have been converted into boulevards and
‘Its once grim bulwarks tamed to lover’s walks
Look down unwatchful on the sliding Eure.’
Close under it, in old days, was a chapel dedicated to S. Fiacre,
whither pilgrims afflicted by the distressing complaint known as Mal de
S. Fiacre used to come in hopes of healing. But this has long since
disappeared.
The new defences of Chartres were soon shown to be needed.
Charles-le-Mauvais, a third competitor to the throne of France, plotted,
but in vain, to surprise the town. Nor were his English allies more
successful. For no sooner had the ‘Jacquerie’[84] or peasant rising been
crushed, than Edward again poured ravaging over the wasted lands of
France, for the Dauphin refused to sanction the humiliating terms upon
which the English King proposed to treat with the captive King John. The
sufferings of the country around Chartres under the repeated ravages of
the soldiery of all nations were now unspeakable. The enemy passed over
the vineyards, the cornfields and the gardens of La Beauce like a storm,
but they were only succeeded by the unpaid troops of the French.
Plunder, indeed, was forbidden them, but plunder was their only means of
living. ‘Damoiselle Picorée’ (Miss Plunder) ‘sold me this’ was the
private soldier’s proverbial explanation as he helped to accomplish the
ruin of those he was supposed to defend. And at the inn, when the bill
was being prepared, he would lay his sword with a clatter on the table
and exclaim with intention, ‘God send me no need of thee.’ Whether there
was need or no would depend usually upon the landlord’s physical courage
and capacity.
The bitter cry of France at this juncture is voiced by a document
embodying a resolution of the canons.
‘The persecution of the Church,’ it is written, ‘can only be compared to
that of Jerusalem; there are no friends left to us, and those entrusted
with our affairs do us more harm than our enemies. None dare quit the
city: our houses are sacked, our property in the country burnt, our
retainers killed or imprisoned. Our debtors do not pay their debts, and
the voice of the Church is of no avail. Justice is departed from the
land with the captive King. There is no more confidence in the royal
safe-conduct, and that of the English is abhorred by the nobles and the
people. We, therefore, the canons of Notre-Dame met in general assembly,
decree that the fruits and emoluments of the prebends shall be shared in
common among all the canons in order that each may have a morsel of
bread to break; that each resident canon shall provide himself with
arms, and maintain two knights and an armed page to resist the assaults
of the enemy.’
But an event was shortly to happen which relieved France, for a while at
least, from the presence of a foreign enemy. The misery of the land at
last bent Charles to submission, and Edward III., weary of constant
warfare in a famished country, at last concluded a peace. The incident
which induced him to sign the Treaty of Brétigny was regarded by all his
contemporaries as miraculous. The part which ‘our Lady of Charters’
played in this affair is recorded in the fascinating chronicles of Sir
John Froissart. ‘Edward,’ he tells us, ‘having put the realm of France
into great tribulation, intended to lay siege to Paris after August and
not to return again to England till he had France at his pleasure.
Leaving garrisons, therefore, to make war in France, Champagne, Poictou,
Ponthieu, Vexin, Normandy and all the realm of France, he came into
“the good country of Beauce” with the idea of staying in Brittany till
the vintage season. But he was led to change his mind.
‘All this season the Duke of Normandy was at Paris, and his two brethren
and the Duke of Orléans, their uncle, and their Counsels. They imagined
well the courage of the King of England, and how that he and his men
brought the realm of France into great poverty, and saw well how the
realm could not long endure in that case, for the rents of the lords and
of the churches were nigh lost in every part. As then there was a sage
and discreet person Chancellor of France, called Sir William of
Montague, Bishop of Terouenne, by whose counsel much of France was
ruled, and good cause why, for ever his counsel was good and true, and
with him there were two other clerks of great prudence, the Abbot of
Cluny and the master of the Friars Preachers, called Sir Simon of
Langres, a master in divinity; these two clerks, at the desire of the
Duke of Normandy and of the whole Council of France, departed from Paris
with certain articles of peace, and Sir Hugh of Geneve, Lord of Autun,
in their company, and they went to the King of England, who rode in
Beauce towards Galardon. These two clerks and two knights spake with the
King and began to fall in treaty for a peace, to be had of him and his
allies; to the which treaty the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Lancaster
and the Earl of March were called. This treaty was not as then
concluded, for it was long a-driving and always the King went forward.
These ambassadors would not so leave the King, but still sued and
followed on their purpose, for they saw how the French King was in so
poor estate that the realm was likely to be in a great jeopardy, if the
war continued a summer longer. And on the other side, the King of
England required so great things and so prejudicial to the realm of
France, that the lords would not agree thereto for their honours, so
that all their treaty (the which endured a seventeen days, still
following the King) they sent ever their process daily to the Duke of
Normandy, to the city of Paris, ever desiring to have again answer what
they should do farther, the which process was secretly and sufficiently
examined in the Regent’s chamber at Paris, and answer was sent again by
writing to them what they should do and what they should offer; and so
these ambassadors were oftentimes with the King, as he went forward
toward the city of Chartres, as in other places, and great offers they
made to come to a conclusion of the war and to have a peace. To the
which offers the King of England was hard hearted to agree unto, for his
intention was to be King of France and to die in that estate. For if the
Duke of Lancaster, his cousin, had not counselled him to have peace he
would not have agreed thereunto. But he said to the King, “Sir, this war
that ye make in the realm of France is right marvellous and right
favourable for you: your men win great riches and ye lose your time, all
things considered, or ye come to your intent, ye may hap to make war all
the days of your life. Sir, I would counsel you (sith ye may leave the
war to your honour and profit) accept the offers that ben made unto you,
for, sir, you might lose more in a day than we have won in twenty
years.” Such fair and subtle words that the Duke of Lancaster said in
good intention, and for weal of the King and all his subjects, converted
the King by the grace of the Holy Ghost, who was chief worker in that
case. For on a day, as the King was before Charters, there fell a case
that greatly humbled the King’s courage. For while these ambassadors
were treating for this peace and had none agreeable answer, there fell
suddenly such a tempest of thunder, lightning, rain and hail in the
King’s oost, that it seemed that the world should have ended: there fell
from heaven such great stones that it slew men and horses, so that the
most hardiest were abashed.
‘Then the King of England beheld the Church of our Lady of Charters, and
avowed devoutly to our Lady to agree to the peace, and, as it was said,
he was as then confessed, and lodged in a village near to Charters,
called Brétigny. And there were made certain compositions of peace, upon
certain articles after ordained; and, the more firmly to be concluded by
their ambassadors, and by the King of England and his Council, there was
ordained, by good deliberation and advice, a letter called the Charter
of Peace’ (1360).
By this treaty the English King waived his claims on the crown of France
and on the Duchy of Normandy; but, on the other hand, his Duchy of
Aquitaine was not only restored to him, but freed from its obligations
as a French fief, and granted in full sovereignty with Ponthieu, as well
as Guisnes, and the new conquest of Calais.
The captive King, Jean-le-Bon, was ransomed and released, and he, like
his captor Edward, and the Black Prince before him, made a pilgrimage to
Notre-Dame, and passed piously beneath the Holy Chest, which it was
deemed safe at last to bring forth from its hiding-place in the Chapel
of S. Lubin.
A period of comparative quiet ensued under the administration of Charles
the Wise, who summoned the States-General to meet at Chartres, and
entrusted the patriotism of this and other principal towns with the task
of raising forces to deal with the roving bands of freebooters which,
under the name of _grandes compagnies_, swarmed over the country. The
campaigns conducted by Duguesclin against the English in the south left
Chartres undisturbed. She devoted herself to the restoration of order,
the enforcement of law, and the strengthening of her wall. One little
incident will show the progress which, in spite of war, and impositions
of every sort, had been made since the high days of feudalism.
The house of one Guillaume Morhier, knight and seigneur of S. Piat, was
forcibly entered by some bailiffs, who were charged to distrain upon him
for the benefit of a horse-dealer. Morhier’s daughter, when the chief
official was preparing to read his warrant to her, snatched the paper
out of his hands, and for this offence was roughly seized and, in spite
of her protests, dragged on her knees across the town, as though she had
been a common thief or murderess, and committed to prison in the
Tour-le-Roi. She was thrown into the cells used for women of loose life.
It was with the utmost difficulty that the unfortunate girl regained her
liberty, after two friends had appeared to go bail for her. Intense
indignation was aroused by this high-handed behaviour on the part of the
officials. For the Morhier family was one of the most important in the
district. The bailiffs, after a formal investigation of the case,
lasting over two years, were condemned to make full apology, and pay a
heavy fine. But the mere fact that Morhier did not, without trial, hang
then and there the servant of the law who had presumed to raise his hand
against his high-born daughter is significant of the advance that had
been made in the last two hundred years.
The next thing of importance that happened at Chartres was the curious
episode of the _Paix Fourrée_. A terrible crime plunged France into all
the horrors of civil war. The Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless,
jealous of the popularity of the Duke of Orléans, caused him to be
assassinated (1407) at Paris. A year of struggle and recrimination
passed before Charles VI. could bring the murderer and the son of his
victim to make even a pretence of reconciliation. The Duke of Burgundy
demanded, without desiring, pardon, which the Duke of Orléans, without
forgiving, granted. Each swore aloud to live henceforth in peace with
his cousin, and swore beneath his breath to slay him. The ceremony took
place in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Armed men in battle array stood at
the porches of the church, and within, seated on a throne near the
crucifix, with the Queen and Dauphin, the Kings of Sicily and Navarre,
dukes, cardinals, and other nobles and officials near at hand, Charles
waited the arrival of John the Fearless, who had left Gallardon that
morning with six hundred men-at-arms.
Amidst profoundest silence the cruel conqueror of the Liégeois advanced
down the nave and made his submission to the imbecile King, who had so
feebly forgiven the murderer of his brother. Then again advancing
towards his ‘dear cousins,’ the children of the murdered duke, he
formally besought them to banish from their hearts all hatred and
feelings of revenge, and to live in amity with him. At these words, and
at the sight of their father’s murderer, the young princes burst into
tears. The Queen and Dauphin approached them, and begged them to
forgive, and, at the command of the King, the young duke and his brother
repeated the prescribed words of the treaty, and they and the Duke of
Burgundy, and all the princes of royal blood, swore upon the Cross and
the Gospels to obey the behest of the King in this matter. This done,
John the Fearless, without taking bite or sup in Chartres, mounted his
horse and rode away. Little wonder that John of Montagu, brother of the
former Bishop of Chartres, in registering this pact, wrote beneath it
these significant words, ‘Pax, Pax; et non est Pax’ (Peace, Peace; and
it is not peace). So also thought the excellent Fool of the Duke of
Burgundy, who, wrapping an ecclesiastical paten (_paix d’église_) in his
fur mantle (_fourrure_), remarked that it was but a patched-up peace
(Paix Fourrée).
The Fool’s verdict was soon justified. John the Fearless went to Paris,
and curried favour with the people of the market-place. His popularity
and democratic tendencies provoked the displeasure of the Orleanists,
who represented the old feudal party. In the civil war which ensued
between the Armagnacs, as the Orleanists were called, and the
Burgundians, Chartres, lying very much in the centre of the operations,
suffered almost equally from both sides.
The spirit of patriotism and the sense of unity were as yet scarce born
in France. The example and exigencies of civil war were not calculated
to promote their growth. Maddened by the assassination of the Duke of
Burgundy in the very presence of the Dauphin, with whom he had come to
confer, the Burgundians threw themselves into the hands of the English.
After the Battle of Agincourt, where, against still greater odds, the
English archers had inflicted a still more overwhelming defeat upon the
French knighthood than at Crécy and Poitiers, Henry V. had been steadily
reducing the province of Normandy. Now, by the aid of his new allies, he
concluded with the maniac Charles VI. the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which
handed over to England the crown of France and the whole kingdom.
Chartres had been taken in 1417[85] by John the Fearless, and converted
into his capital. Every citizen suspected of favouring the Armagnacs had
been expelled from the city. The capital of the Burgundians was
therefore not unnaturally one of the first towns to recognise Henry V.
in his new _rôle_ of heir to the French crown. The Dauphin, indeed,
marched from Blois to take vengeance upon the rebellious city, but he
promptly raised the siege when Henry, leaving Paris, advanced to relieve
it.
Henry took Dreux, and remained there a month. Then he returned to
Chartres as a pilgrim, with bare feet, and a candle in his hand. Rich
gifts were bestowed upon Notre-Dame by the English soldiery, amongst
which is mentioned a magnificent _ostensoir_ that disappeared during the
Revolution. The high bourgeoisie and clergy, captivated by the favours
of the English King, were now all addicted to _Anglescherie_
(Anglomania), a fault which they, with the rest of Europe, have since
managed to correct. Thus, whereas formerly a Bishop of Chartres had
equipped himself as a knight and gone to die at Agincourt in battle with
the enemy, the Bishop now could only maintain his See by devoting
himself to the English cause. This Jean de Frétigny did with success. As
a rival of Orléans and Châteaudun also, Chartres naturally favoured
Henry in days when centralisation and patriotism, that higher form of
selfishness, were almost unknown, as the tragic history of the Maid of
Orléans was shortly to show. Her brother, we may mention, was for a
while captain of Chartres.
One year after Joan of Arc, the patriot before her time, had been put to
death by a judicial murder at Rouen without one word of protest from her
countrymen or the Church, Chartres was retaken by the French. The
manner of its taking was on this wise.
Two merchants of the town, Guillaume Bouffineau and Jean Lesueur by
name, who traded in salt, wine and corn with the people of Blois and
Orléans, were won over by the governor of the latter city to the side of
the French King, Charles VII. At his instigation they prepared a plan
for surprising the town, which took effect on the 11th of April. On that
day Bouffineau and Lesueur, accompanied by some soldiers disguised as
waggoners, arrived early in the morning at the gate S. Michel with
several loads of what they said was salt. They demanded admittance; and
as they had the reputation of being the best possible of citizens, the
guards lowered the drawbridge. Two waggons passed safely in; the third
was purposely upset on the bridge. Profiting from the confusion caused
by this accident, the conspirators attacked the guards, slew them, and
rushed into the town shouting, ‘La Paix, Ville Gagnée!’ Two strong
French detachments, commanded by Longueville, Dunois, Boussicault and La
Hire,[86] who had been lying in ambush near at hand, now arrived,
reinforced the assailants, and occupied the principal thoroughfares. The
English party was taken completely unawares, and was slow to rally; for
not only were the cries of the assailants confusing, but the eloquence
of a confederate monk was enthralling. He had assembled the people at
the other end of the town to hear him preach, and their interest in his
sermon prevented them from realising their danger till too late.
The Anglicising Bishop Frétigny, however, when he heard of the affair,
rushed to arms and fell fighting at the head of his men. The town was
taken. The conspiring bourgeois were rewarded with money and office.
Charles VII. achieved the pacification of Chartres with letters of
pardon and confirmation. A strong force of French troops garrisoned it
against any attempt of the English to retake it, and used it as a
convenient spot from which to make marauding expeditions against the
neighbouring English territory. It was, indeed, for a while a frontier
fort, guarding the French marches. Night and day, from the towers of
Notre-Dame, men watched the plains of La Beauce, ready to give the alarm
when the English, moving from their quarters in Normandy, threatened
this district. In 1491 the Chartrain garrison moved out and laid siege
to Gallardon, which was still held by the English. Talbot, marching on
the Ile-de-France, relieved his fellow-countrymen. But next year
Gallardon fell into the hands of the Chartrains. Gradually the English
were driven out of France, and the people of Chartres began to make a
desperate effort to restore their ruined commerce by developing the
[Illustration: CHARTRES IN 1500 (_from an old engraving_)]
navigation of their river Eure. Thereby they involved themselves in
continual and expensive litigation with the owners of riparian rights
and the jealous merchants of neighbouring towns.
Relieved from the pressure of a foreign enemy, the quarrels between the
Bishop and the Chapter broke out with renewed vigour. The disgraceful
and ridiculous scenes of the last century were repeated. Then the esteem
in which the clergy were held had been damaged by the exhibition of the
Bishop and the Chapter quarrelling over the question of authority,
excommunicating each other and continuing to say Mass. Apart from deeds
of violence--and these were not few--it was a sufficiently deplorable
object-lesson for the people. Canons in the Cathedral made such a
clatter with their chairs that the proclamations of the Bishop could not
be heard. Now, the Chapter, who refused to recognise the right of
mandamus claimed by the Bishop, was involved in a similar quarrel with
Miles d’Illiers. When he endeavoured to enforce his episcopal
jurisdiction upon the canons of the cloister, they declared that he was
violating the rights of the Holy See, to which alone they were
responsible, and forthwith excommunicated him. Nothing daunted, he
appeared in the choir of Notre-Dame. The canons rose from their stalls
and made for the doors, as if to avoid all contact with a man who had
been excommunicated. The Bishop, treating the matter as a jest,
pronounced his blessing on the fugitives, ‘to absolve them from the
excommunication which they were afraid of sharing with him.’ Then he
ordered his chaplains to continue divine service without the canons. The
violent and imperious temper of Miles d’Illiers brought him into
conflict, not only with the Chapter of the Cathedral, but also with the
abbeys and the town. He was usually in the wrong. Louis XI., who
divided his time between Chartres, where his devotion held him, and
Paris, whither the administration of his kingdom summoned him,
invariably decided against him when the cases of his aggression were
submitted to him. These affairs, endless litigation with reference to
the navigation of the river, the plague, and benefactions from the King
to the Cathedral, made up the history of Chartres till the end of the
fifteenth century.
[Illustration: ARMS OF THE TOWN]
CHAPTER IX
_The Siege and the Breach_, 1568
‘Le canon battait nos murailles.
La Vierge, comme un bouclier,
Au choc terrible des batailles
Opposait son blanc tablier.
Le plomb, dans sa course rapide,
Devant la Vierge se courbait,
Et l’obus, au vol homicide,
Sans bruit, dans son giron tombait.’
L. JOLLIET.
Plague and famine weighed heavily upon Chartres throughout the sixteenth
century; not less heavily the wars of François I. and of Henry IV., and
the continual contributions in money which she was called upon to make
in order to enable them to be waged. Year by year, under the three
curses of that age--plague, soldiers, and impositions--the exhaustion of
the city increased. She was able, however, to receive with sufficient
magnificence the occasional visits of kings and princes. Particularly
splendid was the reception accorded to Mary Queen of Scots, when, at the
age of six, she was brought here in state by the Constable de
Montmorency and the Duc d’Aumale. And the period in which Jean de Beauce
wrought the Clocher and the Clôture of the Cathedral cannot have been
one of abject poverty.
Royal visits to the town were not altogether wasteful. Not only did
they, in the ordinary course of things, stimulate trade, but they also
served the cause of sanitation. For on such great occasions, and on such
occasions only, the streets were cleaned. Street police was still quite
in its infancy; hygiene an art scarce beginning to be practised. We find
mention of an order in 1526 forbidding swineherds to allow the animals
in their charge (_bêtes porchines de M. S. Antoine_) to wander about the
streets. But this was an unpopular measure, and stood rather as a pious
opinion of the more enlightened than as an effective piece of
legislation. Things were but little better than they had been when the
heir of Louis-le-Gros, riding in the Rue S. Jean in Paris, was thrown
from his horse by an abbot’s pig, and died of his injuries.
The vile odour that arose from the narrow, ill-paved, uncleansed
passages called streets, filled with the rotting garbage which so
tempted the pigs, is not pleasant even to imagine. Little wonder that
here, as at Paris, where the same reign of mud and dirt obtained, the
plague broke out again and again.
In one of these outbreaks Chartres lost no less than 8000 of its
inhabitants. As in Paris, and later in London, the houses tainted by the
plague were marked with a cross, and persons who were infected by it
were obliged to carry a white wand in the streets. But people have
always been curiously slow to learn the lessons of sanitation. The open
sewer, the filthy water, the system of burial, the state of the
dwelling-houses, the tradition of personal uncleanliness, these were all
powerful friends of the pest in every mediæval town.
‘You have,’ Voltaire wrote later of Paris, ‘slaughter-houses in back
streets with no issue, which give out in summer a cadaverous odour
capable of poisoning an entire quarter.’ On this point at any rate
Chartres was superior to Paris. For in the sixteenth century public
slaughter-houses (massacre--the name still marks a section of the
river) were erected in an appropriate place. But the butchers did not
take kindly to them. In spite of frequent pains and penalties, it was
long before the inveterate habit of slaughtering animals and throwing
their blood into the streets was abandoned.
As to the streets, the authorities contented themselves for the most
part with quite platonic aspirations that they should be watered and
cleaned. But on great occasions, as I have said, cleaned they were,
along with the roads, passages and bridges. Such an occasion was the
visit of the King and Queen in 1550, with the Dauphin and his young
_fiancée_, Mary Stuart.
The masters and companions of each trade and mystery, and the pages of
honour to accompany the King on horse and foot were carefully selected;
and costumes were as nicely chosen. The Lieutenant-General de Hérouad
indeed issued an order calling upon the citizens, on pain of forfeit and
arrest, to array themselves for the ceremony in velvet, satin, taffetas,
and other rich garments. Triumphal arches were raised before the gates.
At the cross roads scaffoldings were erected and decorated with
tapestries and gilt, whereon plays and mysteries were to be performed.
These elaborate arrangements, however, ended in a lamentable fiasco. As
the _cortège_ wound its way out of the Porte Drouaise to meet the King
and Queen a violent storm burst over them, and compelled them all,
Lieutenant-General included, to seek refuge in the Church of S. Maurice
and the neighbouring houses, in order to save their gala clothes from
ruin. At the same moment, unfortunately, the King and Queen left the
road of Josaphat, which they were following, and made a short cut for
the town, where they arrived without meeting a soul to welcome them.
As the key and granary of Paris, Chartres began to be the favourite
garrison town of the French army, and was obliged to contribute
accordingly to the expenses of huge masses of men quartered on her.
[Illustration: Queen Berthy Tower.]
Meantime, the County of Chartres was raised to a Duchy in favour of
Rénée, daughter of the late King Louis XII. and Anne de Bretaigne, on
the occasion of her marriage with Hercules d’Éste, son of the Duke of
Ferrara. A more profitable honour befell the town a few years later,
when a judicial tribunal was set up here, a step which tended in some
degree to lessen the excessive expenses and delays of the law. This was
done in 1552, and in 1566 Charles IX. authorised the merchants and
various trades, who were groaning under the exactions of the
_procureurs_ and the ruinous procedure of the _gens du baillage_, to
choose a merchant judge and four colleagues (consuls) in the town of
Chartres. This tribunal was intended to deal with business affairs. The
bailiffs and attorneys, seeing in the creation of a Tribunal of Commerce
a severe blow to their interests, did their utmost to frustrate it. But
the Tribunal got itself established none the less in the House and
Meeting-place of the Merchants, as they then called it; the Maison des
Vieux-Consuls, as it came to be known later, after the consuls had
transferred the scene of their labours elsewhere.
The ‘House of the Old Consuls’ in the Rue des Écuyers, facing the
entrance of the Rue de la Petite-Boucherie de Bourg, is not in itself
remarkable, save as the seat and cradle of municipal justice in
Chartres. For that purpose it was well placed, being in the centre of
the steep old streets of the lower town and near the river, round which,
as we have seen, clustered numerous industries. The site was originally
just within the old walls of the ninth century, and it is possible that
the house was part of the old Tour du Roy. But it was completely rebuilt
in the seventeenth century, and were it not for the fifteenth-century
entrance, and the extremely picturesque circular staircase with its
elegant and curious carving (early sixteenth century), it would be of no
account. This staircase is known as the _Escalier de la Reine
Berthe_--Queen Bertha’s Staircase. The name apparently is quite modern,
and there is no explanation of it which can claim to be certainly
correct.
The Queen Bertha indicated may be either the wife of Eudes I., Count of
Chartres, who afterwards married King Robert, and who, when he was
forced to repudiate her, came to live in the old castle at Chartres,
where she ended her days striving to forget her ephemeral greatness and
succouring the poor; or, and this seems more likely, it may be Bertha,
sister of Count Thibault III., widow of the Duke of Aquitaine, who spent
her widowhood at Chartres in this quarter of the town, a fact which has
survived in tradition and is confirmed by a document of 1069. For there
is mention of the house of the Countess between the Tour du and the
Porte Cendreuse (_camera comitissa inter Turrim et portam Cinerosam_).
[Illustration: Old Dormer Window from Maison du Saumon]
Of other old wooden houses in Chartres the most famous for its carving
and its picturesqueness is the Maison du Saumon in the Place de la
Poissonnerie, No. 10, so called from the huge salmon which is carved
upon one of the beams, and recalls the fact that Poissonnerie means
Fish-market. And No. 49 Rue des Changes is also distinguished by its
carving. The Étape-au-vin we have already mentioned.
* * * * *
The sixteenth century in France was an epoch of confusion and distress,
but from the chaos that then prevailed modern civilisation sprang. Two
great historic facts dominate that epoch: the Renaissance of art and
letters and the religious Reformation. They were naturally not wholly
disconnected. Gutenberg was the forerunner of Luther. The revival of
interest in the intellectual treasures of antiquity introduced into a
society formed by Catholicism and feudalism a new comparison. The
languages, politics, art, philosophy and religious beliefs of Rome and
Athens were contrasted for the first time in the light of history with
those of an organisation already exhausted by the length of its duration
and the poison of its own vices. To this extent the intellectual
awakening of the sixteenth century, with its new study of things old,
led up to and aided the Reformation. But the idea of reform was not new.
It had appeared and been repressed many times and in many countries from
the twelfth century onwards. The authority of the Councils and the
rigour of the punishments directed against it had succeeded in choking
the movement hitherto, for it is one of the most inaccurate of
commonplaces which asserts that persecution only succeeds in promoting
the cause it endeavours to check. The Reformation was for hundreds of
years quite successfully checked by persecution. But it came at last
when, in the fulness of time, the minds of men were enlightened by the
new spirit of discovery, inquiry and learning, and when the authority of
the Church was weakened by the schisms and depravity of its
representatives. The country which had invented the printing press, that
powerful engine for the dissemination of ideas, sent forth also Luther.
The shock of the revolt inaugurated by him struck France at a moment
when, in the person of François I., the prerogatives of the Crown were
almost without limit, and the regal splendour in which the King
delighted dazzled every eye. François did not at first perceive the
political tendencies of the Reformation, and he allowed the Protestant
doctrines to be cherished even at his own Court. Marguerite de Valois,
his sister, openly encouraged Protestantism, and Clément Marot, his
favourite poet, translated for the use of the Reformers the Psalms into
French. That charming poet and witty epigrammatist had started in life
with the intention of never giving offence or rousing inconvenient
opposition. Like Rabelais, he was ready to espouse a cause with an
enthusiasm that was warm indeed but stopped short of burning point
(jusqu’au feu exclusivement).
‘Tant de brouillis qu’en justice on tolère
Je l’écrirois, mais je crains la colère,
L’oisiveté des prêtres et cagots
Je la dirois, _mais gare les fagots_;
Et des abus dont l’Église est fourrée,
J’en parlerois, mais gare la bourrée.’
So he had written. But his zeal or his art soon outran his discretion.
He provoked the enmity which he deprecated. Pursued by the hatred of the
Lady of Annet, Diane de Poitiers, of the poet Sagon and the inquisitor
Jean Bouchard, the satirist was imprisoned more than once, and at last
banished in poverty.
Chartres was the last place in which Calvinism was likely to be popular.
Marot, there, was as unwelcome as his Psalms. He was seized and
imprisoned in the Tour de Roy. The courts recently established in the
town were active in the suppression of heresy, and burnt their first
victims at the stake in 1553, ‘_qui ne se voulurent jamais confesser ny
reconnoistre nostre bon Dieu et sauveur Jesus, ny la benoiste vierge
Marie_.’ As time went on the inquisitions grew more exacting. Their
increasing severity drew forth increasing resistance on the part of the
Protestants. More Huguenots were burnt and hundreds were banished from
the town. A bishop, suspected of favouring their cause, was quickly
denounced and cited to Rome. He departed amidst popular execration.
Chartres remained enthusiastically Catholic of the Catholics. The Church
festivals were celebrated with renewed pomp in the Cathedral, and the
Mystery of Abraham was performed with impressive solemnity.
From the commencement of the religious wars, Louis, Prince of Condé,
head of the Protestant League, ‘for the maintenance of the pure worship
of God and the due observance of the edicts,’ turned his attention to
the country of the Orléanais in order to facilitate his communications
with the South. Hoping to avenge the catastrophe of Rouen, he made a
bold movement from Orléans upon Paris. But after meeting with a severe
check at Corbeil, he was obliged to fall back upon Normandy, devastating
and burning La Beauce on his way. He had vainly called upon Chartres to
open her gates to him. ‘Never,’ was the bold reply he received from the
governor. ‘I hold the town for the King, and if your army attacks this
place it will prove their cemetery!’ Condé continued to retire
northwards. The Royal army engaged him under the walls of Dreux, and
there the first pitched battle of the war was fought. It resulted, after
an arduous struggle, in a hard-won victory for the Catholics. Eight
thousand corpses strewed the plain, and whilst Montmorency remained
prisoner in the hands of the Protestants, Condé himself was a captive to
the Royalists. The pacific arrangement which was made shortly afterwards
was not of long duration. The fierce persecution commenced by the Duke
of Alva against their brethren in the Netherlands roused, not without
reason, the apprehension as well as the indignation of the French
Reformers. The Huguenots rose and moved upon Paris. A drawn battle was
fought in the plain of S. Denis.
Chartres had but a moment’s respite. It was employed with feverish
activity in making preparations for defence. The inhabitants were
commanded to lay in provisions for two months. The watchmen installed
in the Clocher Neuf were instructed to make the following signals:--On
the first appearance of the enemy three strokes of the bell, three more
if the enemy advanced towards the town. If they were cavalry a tapering
banner was to be flown, if infantry a square one, and if the Huguenots
tried to rush upon the suburbs the tocsin was to be rung. A bell was
placed at each gate to correspond with that of the watch, and to summon
the quarter to arms. Urgent appeals were sent to the King for aid, who
replied by despatching some troops with Jean de Bourdeilles, Baron
d’Ardelay, to superintend, in conjunction with Antoine de Linières and
his garrison, the defence of the town. They busied themselves with
placing some artillery in position, and establishing a bullet
manufactory. The church bells were melted to supply the forge.
On the approach of the enemy the bridges over the Eure outside the town
were destroyed. On the last day of February, 1568, the Huguenot army,
commanded by the gallant Condé himself, encamped at Lèves and Josaphat,
and in the suburbs about the gates Drouaise, Guillaume, Morard and S.
Michel. Their numbers are given variously at 10,000 and 45,000 men.
Their artillery consisted of only five siege pieces and four small
culverins. The first four days of March were employed by the enemy in
fortifying their positions, and by the Catholic Chartrains in
skirmishing about the environs and setting fire to the suburbs of the
town. M. de Linières, their vigorous leader, who was afterwards to meet
his death on the battlefield of Jarnac, destroyed, as a necessary
measure of war, Mainvilliers, and the monasteries of the Franciscans
(with its splendid library) and of S. John. The Huguenots, on the other
hand, endeavoured to preserve some buildings which might afford them
cover, but they destroyed the Churches of S. Chéron and S. Barthélemy,
which could be of no use to them.
These preliminaries gave the inhabitants of Chartres time to complete an
entrenchment stretching from the Monastery of S. Père to the Porte
Morard, and to construct also a platform near the convent of the
Sœurs-de-S.-Paul, on which was mounted a cannon named _La
Huguenotte_, which had been taken from the enemy at the Battle of Dreux.
This piece did such good service during the siege that it soon earned
the name of ‘The Good Catholic!’
On the 5th of March the German soldiers, the Reiters and Lanskenets of
the enemy, took up a position at the entrance of S. Maurice and at the
Filles-Dieu, and opened two batteries, one opposite the Porte Drouaise,
masked by the walls of the house _Trois-Maures_, the other in the
enclosure of the Filles-Dieu, intending to take the same gate on the
flank. The bombardment began on the following day.
The householders had watched the forces of their enemy gathering from
this side and that, and knew that at last the dreaded circle was
complete. They knew that Condé was in command, and had sworn to ruin
their Cathedral, to scatter the relics stored there, and to feed his
horse at the high altar. They knew that his soldiers were eager to ‘ruin
and annihilate the most beautiful building in France that remained as
yet undefiled by them, namely, this devout and excellent temple of the
Church of Notre-Dame de Chartres, the terror and despair of the
heretics.’[87] But in spite of this knowledge and preparation the
opening cannonade took the people of Chartres, as two hundred years
later it took the people of Paris, by surprise.[88] It was early in the
day. A crowd of worshippers filled the Church of S. Foy (S. Faith, Rue
d’Harleville), which was built partly on the ramparts. At the conclusion
of the Mass the Sacrament was to be carried to a sick person. Touched by
unusual devotion at this perilous time, the whole assembly rose to
escort the procession on its way, passing out slowly, group after group,
as if by mechanical instinct, the more reluctant led on by the general
consent. At last the church was quite emptied, when, it is said, a
shower of massy stones from the culverins or great cannon of the
besiegers fell suddenly upon it, and the entire roof of the place sank
into the empty space beneath.
The rebuilding of the little chapel rendered necessary by this disaster
accounts for the Flamboyant style of architecture which it now
represents. Originally it had been dedicated in the time of S. Fulbert,
and was enlarged and raised to the dignity of a parish church in the
days of S. Ives. It was horribly profaned during the Revolution, being
converted into a _Salle de Spectacle_ by a decree of the Municipal
Council in 1794 on the motion of one Morin, an architect. It was
not till 1857, on the same day as the Druidical Virgin,
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, was restored to the traditional place in the
crypt, that the church passed again by purchase into clerical hands and
was carefully restored.
The changes and degradations which it has undergone have left little
worth studying in what was once the parish church of the most populous
quarter in the town.
Whatever damage it did elsewhere (and a few days later a neighbouring
church was crushed like S. Foy, but with all its good people inside),
the cannonade directed against the Porte Drouaise on two sides at once
failed in its object. For the ravelin proved a sufficient protection for
the besieged. It therefore
[Illustration: CHARTRES BESIEGED BY M. LE PRINCE DE CONDE, MARCH 1568.
[_See back_
]
[Illustration:
A. M. d’Andelot’s regiment of from ten to twelve companies
preparing to advance to the assault.
B. Four guns, belonging to M. Cassimir, leader of the Germans, on a
ridge, firing as a rule into the town.
C. Regiment of Germans preparing to advance to the assault.
D. Breach of about 30 yards.
E. M. du Bordet, at the head of twenty-five or thirty soldiers and
sappers who were to undermine the ravelin, was killed by a shot
from an arquebus.
F. M. des Champs’ regiment also making ready to advance to the
assault.
G. A sortie made by the besieged against M. de Pille’s troops.
H. The gate.
]
became necessary for the Huguenots to get possession of this advanced
work. One of them, Du Bordet[89] by name, slipped with some pioneers
into the ditch and began to sap, but being perceived by the defenders
above, was shot down by an arquebus, and his men were unable to resist a
sortie with which the arquebusiers followed up this success. On the same
day the enemy were foiled in their endeavour to establish themselves
near the suburb of S. Brice. But next morning the Huguenots, after a
prolonged cannonade, effected a breach, and endeavoured to take by
assault the ravelin from which they had been repulsed the night before.
They were for a moment successful, but M. de Linières bravely recovered
this important position. ‘Incontinent,’ wrote the contemporary
historian, Simon de Gives, in his _Bref Discours du Siège mis devant la
Ville de Chartres_,[90] ‘Incontinent, the said seigneur began to pledge
the captains who were near him, boldly resolute, with a heart not sad
but joyful rather, drooping his head a little, and began to throw down
planks to take the place of the bridge which the cannon had broken by
force. These captains, wishing to show their generous courage and doing
their duty marvellous well, entered the ravelin which the enemy had
seized and held. Their own men, to recover it, engaged the Huguenots in
a hand-to-hand fight, and being thus mixed together, the enemy were
right manfully repulsed, and left many of their number dead within the
ditch.’
At the same time the enemy had made an attack upon the ravelin of the
Porte S. Michel, and were repulsed there also. But not without loss to
the Chartrains. The brave D’Ardelay, colonel of the Gascons, received
then a wound in the eye, of which he died some days later. Of his burial
in the Cathedral and its sequel we have already spoken above.[91]
The failure of their efforts against the Porte Drouaise induced the
Huguenots to direct their attention to the stretch of wall running from
that gate to the Tower des Herses de Lethinière. And here it was that
they established the breach so famous in the annals of Chartres. The
whole of the 8th of March their batteries from the Clos-l’Évêque and the
Filles-Dieu played upon the wall, and by two o’clock on the following
afternoon a breach thirty feet wide had been made. The capable and
energetic governor of the town, M. de Linières, had taken every possible
measure of precaution to forestall the ill effects of the bombardment.
As the breach widened a strong entrenchment was disclosed constructed of
earth and bags of wool. A thousand workmen, soldiers and civilians,
worked unceasingly at the task of throwing it up and strengthening it.
Under pain of cord and gibbet, the inhabitants were impressed for the
work. Night and day they toiled, and their toil was crowned with
success. The Huguenots, seeing that there was no chance of delivering an
assault with success, contented themselves with firing some salvoes on
the 10th and 11th, and then shifted their artillery opposite the Porte
Morard. There they began to endeavour, by destroying a large dam, to
divert the course of the river, which ran through the lower town, and
supplied the forces of the water-mills. This move, in spite of the
wind-mills which M. de Linières had made at once, would very likely have
been attended with serious results, had not rumours of peace begun to
reach the ears of the belligerents. A truce, preliminary to the Peace of
Longjumeau, was proclaimed. The Huguenots made haste to quit the town
they had so unsuccessfully besieged. They removed their artillery on the
14th, and next day saw the last of their battalions disappear down the
roads of Bonneval and Illiers.
‘Thus, after fourteen days of struggle and vain assault,’ exclaims our
triumphant chronicler Rouillard, ‘the enemy were compelled to retire
with great loss and slaughter, and to give once more occasion for the
name _des Reculés_ (_see_ p. 47), to the quarter in the midst of which
they had proudly raised their accursed tents.’ Disappointed of the
plunder of the Cathedral treasure and of the pillage of the town upon
which they had counted--for Condé himself had sold beforehand the lead
of the Cathedral roof--they retired discomfited, to conclude the Peace
of Longjumeau--_La Paix boiteuse et mal assise_, as it was called,
because one of the negotiators was named Malassise, and the other was
lame.
In memory of this deliverance it was decreed at Chartres that a solemn
annual procession should take place on the 15th of March; that part of
the street S. André should take the name of Rue de la Brèche, and that a
commemorative inscription should be graven on the reconstructed wall.
In connection with the procession referred to we must mention the _Tour
de Ville_, as it is called, or _La Chandelle du Tour_, or _Le Tour de
cire_. This was a huge yellow wax candle, rolled on a wooden cylinder,
and weighing as much as 220 pounds. ‘From time immemorial,’ the archives
record, ‘the town of Chartres has been wont to maintain this candle
before the Black Virgin of the pillar in front of the jubé. It was
instituted originally by the community of the said town as an oblation
for the safety of the town, and was to burn before the said image.’
Every day a piece was cut off and burnt on the town candlestick. For
many years the _Tour de la Ville_ was presented at one or other of the
Church festivals indifferently, very often on the 17th of October, the
Feast of the Dedication of the Cathedral. But in the seventeenth century
it was decided that the presentation should take place on the 15th of
March, the anniversary of the deliverance of the town from the siege of
the Huguenots. The ceremony was very popular. All the officials of the
town attended. Before the procession started the Mayor (for he had come
into existence by that time), or, occasionally, some great man who
happened to be the guest of the town at the time, lit the first candle
before the shrine of the Black Virgin. Thereafter the _Tour de Ville_
was carried in the procession to the breach. This custom lasted on to
the days of the Revolution.
You can imagine the procession winding its way from the Cathedral down
the steep curves of the Rue Muret towards the Place Drouaise and the
Pont Neuf where once was the Porte Drouaise. Those who took part in it
would pause, perhaps, and read the inscription let into the ramparts and
engraved on two stones six feet long by three high which recorded the
events of the siege in the Latin tongue for the instruction and example
of posterity. One of the stones is, I gather, still preserved in the
garden belonging to Madame Tillionbois de Valeuil and may be seen from
the Pont Neuf. Pursuing their way up the Rue de la Brèche, the
procession would next arrive at the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche on
their left. Let the reader enter this tiny chapel, after noticing the
arms sculptured above the window, and he will find himself face to face
with a statue of the Virgin which rests on the keystone of the old
chapel erected in 1599 in memory of this event, and near the site of the
famous breach.
About the altar are numerous cannon-balls of stone which are relics of
the siege. Entering the large annex on the right the visitor will now
perceive a still more curious relic of the siege--the fourteenth or
fifteenth-century statue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, whose name was
graven on the keystone above mentioned. And if he inquire how that name
was earned he will be told that this is the very statue which was set
over the Porte Drouaise and, by a miraculous intervention, saved the
town. For the contemporary chronicler Duparc informs us that ‘For all
that the chiefs of the Huguenot army were esteemed the greatest soldiers
in Europe, yet were they miraculously blinded by a manifest miracle. And
the miracle was on this wise. There was on the Porte Drouaise an image
of Our Lady against which the enemy fired many shots from cannon and
arquebus alike, but without being able to hit it. And to show that many
shots were fired at the said gate on which was the said image, the
bridge of that gate was broken and cut in twain by the cannon-balls, and
all round the image up to a few inches of it the marks of many bullets
may still be seen. But it was hit by never a one, and it remained
therefore whole and intact; in spite of the efforts of the enemy to
destroy that image, it was never struck by a single shot. I know well,’
he adds, ‘that the heretics and some others laugh at this, but Herod
also mocked at Christ when he beheld Him.’
Another version of this miracle is given by Chaline (b. 1596) in his old
_Histoire de Chartres_. ‘The Huguenots,’ he says, ‘having drawn near on
the 9th of March to enter the town by the breach which they had made, it
happened that there appeared on the said breach opposite to them a tall
lady holding a child in her arms, against whom they fell to firing and
to hurling volleys of abuse, without being able to reach or strike her
in any way _terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata_. On the contrary,
the bullets which they fired fell harmless, without effect or force, at
the foot of the wall, and they, thinking to enter, found themselves
repulsed. The Chartrains perceiving this, and knowing that it was the
Holy Virgin who, with her Son, was thus visibly taking the defence of
the town into her own hands, the ecclesiastics and women turned to pray,
and the men of war and all capable of bearing arms made a sortie upon
the besiegers and vigorously repelled them.’
By a further development, the popular tradition of the country, so
prettily expressed in the verses of M. Jolliet which I have put at the
head of this chapter, now maintains that the Virgin caught the bullets
in the folds of her mantle.
The chapel founded in 1599 was destroyed during the Revolution and
rebuilt in 1843. Leaving this chapel and pursuing its way along the
street, the procession would next arrive at the Parish Church of S.
André and the adjoining Chapel of S. Nicholas, and then, after singing
an anthem there before the bas-relief which commemorated events of the
siege, would make its way up the steep ascents back to the Cathedral.
The Church of S. André, as seen in its ruins and desecration to-day,
presents one of the most offensive examples of callous profanation in
France. When you have mastered your disgust with the disastrous and
discreditable fact that this once magnificent building is used as a
municipal lumber-room, you begin to perceive that its remains are still
beautiful, and you regret the more keenly the fire which, when it was an
army forage store in 1865, completed the damage begun by the
Revolutionists. Take first the extremely beautiful and interesting west
front, which presents, as it were, an epitome of mediæval
architecture--the Norman or Romanesque arch, the Gothic beginning and
the Flamboyant decadence are all represented. For the lower portion is
composed of three round-headed arches, the soffits of which are
ornamented with round mouldings and zigzag work, and rest on columns
with curious capitals formed of acanthus leaves from which grotesque
heads peep out. Above these three round arches are three pointed
windows. The transition character of these is emphasised by the
mouldings in the soffits being continuations of those in the side piers.
The windows rest on a simple cornice, carried by corbels, also
grotesque. Above them was a Flamboyant rose, demolished after the fire
in 1865.
[Illustration: Tower of S^t André]
The church was founded in 1108 by the great Bishop of Chartres, S. Ives,
and was at once a collegiate and parochial institution in one of the
most populous parishes of Chartres. A massive square tower flanks the
south side of the transept; the spire which it once supported was
destroyed during the Revolution. At the east end there was a curious
feature. An arch was thrown out into the Eure in the thirteenth century,
and was made to carry the annexed choir and sanctuary. This portion of
the church was rebuilt in the Flamboyant style by Jehan de Beauce in
the sixteenth century; and in 1612 a second arch, in continuation of the
earlier one, completed the span of the river and connected the church
with the right bank. The apsidal chapel built thereon was dedicated to
the Holy Virgin. Vauban called the attention of Louis Quatorze to the
excellence of these arches, but some picturesque traces only of them can
be seen from the riverside to-day, for the arches collapsed and were
removed in 1805.
The interior is in the simple Romanesque manner, and, in spite of base
uses to which the place is now put, it remains impressive by virtue of
the sixteen massive piers which support the nave and aisles, which have
been simple always, and remain grand in their ruin.
Two early square crypts under the transepts are worth seeing. For the
rest, of what once was, I need only mention the wooden jubé, carved by
P. Courtier, on which Jehan de Beauce had also done some work. Among the
carvings, it is said, was one which represented a pig churning
butter--an epigram in stone against notorious heretics, for Calvin is
frequently treated as a pig in this sort of imagery.
CHAPTER X
_Mathurin Regnier and the Renaissance at Chartres_
‘J’ai vécu sans nul pensement
Me laissant aller doucement
A la bonne loi naturelle;
Et si m’étonne fort pourquoi
La Mort daigna penser à moi
Qui ne pensai jamais à elle.’
_Epitaph of Régnier._
Unlike the English, who, in public, prefer to ignore genius, the French
provincials, when they have any great men born within the borders of
their town, are not ashamed to honour them. They erect monuments easily,
and it even occurs to them to call their streets after the names of
great writers. In Chartres you have the Rue Félibien[92] and the Rue
Régnier,[93] with the house in which Mathurin Régnier was born.
God has made the men of La Beauce in the image of the soil whence they
have sprung. They have the regularity, the monotony and the hardness of
their native land. They are without passion or imagination, cold and
avaricious, and their women are like them. Their wit, when they have
any, is of the kind that delights in carping, ironical raillery. Their
minds, when they are developed, are cast in a logical and scientific
mould. Therefore it is that the representative writers of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries at Chartres are Pierre Nicole, the moralist
and theologian of the Port Royal School (_Essais de Morale_); Michel
Félibien, the critical and scientific historian of Paris (_Histoire de
la Ville de Paris_); the cold, but elegant, courtier poet, Philippe
Desportes, and his nephew, Mathurin Régnier, the creator of French
satire (1573-1613).
The School of Chartres had, we know, long been famous. When, at the end
of the fifteenth century, the new movement in literature, philosophy and
art began to be felt through France, the successors of Fulbert were not
unaffected by it. They welcomed the new learning. The discussions of the
schoolmen yielded place to the new appreciation of Greek and Latin, art
and literature. Nor were the Chartrains slow to apply the new discovery
of the art of printing. Twelve years after the introduction of
Gutenberg’s invention into France, Pierre Plume, a learned canon of
Notre-Dame, caused to be printed, at his own expense, in his house in
the cloister, and by the printer Jean Dupré, a magnificent folio missal
for the use of the diocese (1482). A fine copy of this missal (_Missale
Secundum usum ecclesiæ Carnotensis_) is in the town library.
In the architecture of this period the same tendency towards the
adoption or imitation of classical models, as interpreted by the Italian
artists, is evident. Jean de Beauce abandoned the Flamboyant style in
which he had hitherto so triumphantly wrought, and built the Renaissance
clock tower of the Cathedral; and a certain doctor, Claude Huvé by name
(1501-1559), in his enthusiasm for the revival of the old classical
style, erected the house in the Rue du Grand Cerf (number
[Illustration: Courtyard Maison du Medecin]
8), which still goes by the name of the _Maison du Médecin_. The
Renaissance façade and court of this house contrast strikingly with the
narrow, mediæval streets and Gothic style of the old town. They speak
with strange distinctness of the intellectual and artistic awakening of
the world after the slumber of the Dark Ages. And, as you read the
inscription on the front of the house--
SIC CONSTRUXIT CLAUDI HW’
IAT ΡΟΣ DECORI URBIS
AC POSTERITATI CONSULENS,[94]
--you sympathise at once in the pride and delight which this child of
the new era must have taken in the new birth of old things revealed to
him by the Italian artists of the Renaissance. The front of this house
may be compared with the entrance of the Château d’Anet, built by Philip
Delorme at the same period (1548), and now preserved in L’École des
Beaux Arts at Paris.
About the same time, in the domain of literature, the satiric turn of
mind which we have noted as typical of his countrymen, was illustrated
by a young poet of good Chartrain family, named Laurent des Moulins. He
wrote a long poetical satire, which is, however, really only a sermon in
verse, entitled _Le Catholicon des mal advisés_. It is an allegorical
vision, written after the manner of the _Roman de la Rose_. For Master
Laurent, like all the poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth century,
cast his verses in the mould of Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meung. He
turns a good verse out of that mould now and again, and he writes with a
genuine moral intention, so that, in spite of his oddities, his
tediousness and his prosaic view of life, he goes some way towards
filling up, for the curious student of French letters, the dreary gap
which separates Villon from Marot. He shows us the usual dreamer falling
asleep, like William Langland, ‘on a May morning on Malvern Hills,’ and
seeing troops of types in whom there is no good. And of them (‘All I saw
sleeping, as I shall you tell’) he writes in several thousand lines,
good, bad and indifferent,--
‘Mêlant le vin rouge avec le vin blanc.’
Very different in style and in spirit from this sombre and unpolished
poet was Philippe Desportes, Abbot of Tiron and Josaphat (1546-1606),
the favourite poet, first, of Charles IX., who gave him ten thousand
crowns for his _La Mort de Rodomont_, and afterwards of Henry III. and
his _mignons_.
To them this most unclerical cleric, this courtier poet and successful
diplomatist, wrote in his earlier days songs and sonnets of remarkable
sweetness and grace, and was rewarded with poetic crowns and many
abbacies. Devoid of the poetic passion and picturesque invention of his
master, Ronsard, he was often content to translate or imitate an Italian
celebration of an imaginary mistress, and to compensate by his gift of
happy expression for his utter lack of sentiment or enthusiasm. Though
the most prominent of Ronsard’s own particular disciples, his style is
so simple and correct that he seems to be rather a forerunner of
Malherbe than a follower of the school which had endeavoured to
introduce into French poetry curious words and a peculiar phraseology,
and to substitute, for simplicity and directness of speech, ingenious
periphrases.
The following _villanelle_, charming in its neatness of expression and
polished elegance of style and form, is, I think, a good example of
Desportes at his best in his lighter and more mundane manner. It was
repeated, one may note, by Henri de Guise at Blois a few minutes before
he fell by the dagger of an assassin.
‘Rozette, pour un peu d’absence
Votre cœur vous avez changé
Et moi, sachant cette inconstance,
Le mien, autre part j’ai rangé.
Jamais plus beauté si légère
Sur moi tant de pouvoir n’aura.
Nous verrons, volage bergère,
Qui premier s’en repentira.
Tandis qu’en pleurs je me consume
Maudissant cet éloignement,
Vous, n’aimiez que par coutume
Caressiez un nouvel amant.
Jamais légère girouette
Au vent si tôt ne se vira.
Nous verrons, bergère Rozette,
Qui premier s’en repentira.
Où sont tant de promesses saintes,
Tant de pleurs versés en partant?
Est-il vrai que ces tristes plaintes
Sortissent d’un cœur inconstant?
Dieux, que vous êtes mensongère!
Maudit soit qui plus vous croira!
Nous verrons, volage bergère,
Qui premier s’en repentira.
Celui qui a gagné ma place
Ne vous peut aimer tant que moi;
Et celle que j’aime vous passe
De beauté, d’amour et de foi.
Gardé bien votre amitié neuve;
La mienne plus ne variera;
Et puis nous verrons à l’épreuve
Qui premier s’en repentira!’
Later, Desportes had other moods, more befitting his cloth, and under
their influence he wrote devotional poems of considerable merit and
somewhat feeble versions of the Psalms. Malherbe was quite justified in
his criticism;--‘Your soup is better than your Psalms.’ For the table of
the rich and sensual Abbot of Tiron, Bonport, Aurillac and other places
was excellent, whilst the more edifying verses of his old age failed to
acquire the bouquet of his wines.
Mathurin Régnier was born at Chartres in 1573. His mother was the sister
of Desportes, and Mathurin, in spite of his father’s protests,
determined to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and to be a poet. So
great was his natural talent that, notwithstanding his idleness and such
indulgence in debauchery that his life was shortened by his excesses, he
certainly succeeded. He holds a place unique in French literature. For
he is, perhaps, the only French poet before the so-called classical
period who has had the good fortune continuously to maintain his
position. He attacked Malherbe, yet was praised by him. He was an ardent
supporter of the Pléiade, that group of men who, with Ronsard, ‘the
prince of poets,’ at their head, aimed at the reformation of the French
language and literature by means of the study and imitation of ancient,
classical models. His defence of the Ronsardising tradition secured him,
later, the approval of the first Romantics. But he earned also the
admiration of Boileau. And the praise of Boileau, who said that he was
the French writer, before Molière, who best knew human nature, made his
reputation safe during the eighteenth century.
Of his life we do not know much: what we do know is chiefly
discreditable. His father was a citizen of position, and he wisely
desired for his son the ecclesiastical but not the poetical eminence of
his brother-in-law, Desportes. Mathurin, therefore, was tonsured at the
age of eleven. For himself he had no hesitation. His uncle’s example
was too alluring. He began to write early, and he never wholly shook off
the tradition of the school which his uncle represented and Malherbe
with excessive bitterness and pedantry attacked. As he says himself in
his Ninth Satire, wherein he so vigorously criticises the critics of the
Pléiade:--
‘Je vais le grand chemin que mon oncle m’apprit
Laissant là ces Docteurs que les Muses instruisent
En des arts tout nouveaux; et s’ils font, comme ils disent,
De ses fautes un livre aussi gros que le sien,
Telles je les croirai quand ils auront du bien,
Et que leur belle muse, à mordre si cuisante,
Leur donra, comme à lui, dix mil écus de rente.’
His father, so he tells us, had endeavoured to keep him from following
the paths of poetry by instancing the present troubles of the country
and the troubles that threatened. Poetry, he said, like many another
father since, with as good reason and with as little effect, would not
pay. His uncle’s good fortune was exceptional and misleading.
‘La muse est inutile, et si ton oncle a su
S’avancer par cet art, tu t’y verras deçu.
Un même astre toujours n’éclaire en cette terre;
Mars tout ardent de feu nous menace de guerre,
Tout le monde fremit et ces grande mouvements
Couvent en leurs fureurs de piteux changements;
Penses-tu que le luth et la lyre des poëtes
S’accordent d’harmonie avec les trompettes,
Les fifres, les tambours, le canon et le fer
Concert extravagant des musiques d’enfer.’
_Sat. IV._
The clatter of drums and cannons, however, was destined soon to cease,
and the voice of Régnier’s muse was before long to be heard in the land.
Régnier was a true child of the Renaissance in that he not only
imitated, like his uncle, the Italian poets of his day, but he also
based his satire on a close study of the classical writers. For he knew
his Ovid thoroughly; like Ronsard, he modelled himself on Juvenal, and,
like Joachim du Bellay, he recalls the manner of Horace. But apart from
the knowledge and appreciation of great models, Régnier enjoyed also the
genuine inspiration of a poet. He tells us how, in his youth, he would
wander in the woods dreaming of fame and fortune, and learning the
mysteries of the Muse:--
‘Rêveur je m’égarai tout seul par les détours
Des antres et des bois affreux et solitaires,
Où la Muse, en dormant, m’enseignait ses mystères,
M’apprenait des secrets, et m’échauffant le sein
De gloire et de renom relevait mon dessein.’
_Sat. IV._
This and other passages are enough to show that Régnier had the
imagination as well as the temperament of the true poet. Therefore, in
spite of his free imitation of the ancients, he remains original--a
great poet of the order of Clément Marot. What he borrows he makes his
own, and in adapting passages from the Roman writers to the Gallic
manners of his own day he not infrequently improves them. And apart from
his satires, he reveals in his lyrics, to a high degree, the same
poetical sensibility, and he describes with a melodious melancholy the
poet’s regret for the days that are no more:--
‘Un regret pensif et confus
D’avoir été et n’être plus
Rend mon âme aux douleurs ouverte;
A mes dépens, las! je vois bien
Qu’un bonheur comme était le mien
Ne se cognait que par la perte.’
Mathurin was relieved from the restraints of paternal authority in 1591.
For in that year his father was thrown into prison, under circumstances
typical of the time. Philippe Desportes had chosen Jacques Régnier to
farm one of his benefices, the Abbey of Josaphat, but he, instead of
devoting himself wholly to the peaceful cultivation of the land, exerted
himself politically on the side of the Chartrain _Ligueurs_. The good
King Henry, whose habit it was to draw less blood than money from
rebellious citizens, fined him sixteen hundred crowns, and, when he
failed to pay, threw him into prison at Chartres. There he remained some
months. His son, meanwhile, who had already got himself into trouble by
writing lampoons on the inhabitants of his native town, and repeating
them to the frequenters of a tennis-court which his father had built,
took this opportunity of slipping away to Paris. There his uncle,
Desportes, recommended him to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toulouse,
François de Joyeuse, and he took part in that prelate’s embassy to Rome.
At the same time he was presented with the small priory of Bouzancourt.
Thus one fine morning he,
‘Vif de courage abandonna la France.’
He seemed to be on the high road to fortune. But though a better poet he
was a worse courtier than his uncle. In ten years spent with Joyeuse and
his successor, the young secretary earned nothing except experience. Of
that and its fruits he earned more than enough. He indulged without
restraint in the careless joy of living, and he suffered, like so many
of his contemporaries, from the intense delight in life and the feverish
gratification of the pleasures of the flesh which marked the Renaissance
movement. For men were encouraged to give free reign to the _bonne loi
naturelle_ by the whole spirit of an age which was a revolt from the
gloomy monasticism of the Middle Ages. Of the results, in his own case,
of such indulgence and of his sufferings, which had nothing in common
with those of the saints, Mathurin Régnier tells us in some of his
passages more than we care to know.
They taught him at any rate a certain philosophy of a not very exalted
sort, which he expounds to us in one of his satires. It is a kind of
epicurean pococurantism, summed up in the words of Swinburne, ‘Hope thou
not much and fear thou not at all,’ and expressed by the poet himself:--
‘N’avoir crainte de rien et ne rien espérer
Ami, c’est ce qui peut les hommes bien-heurer.’
The best comment on it, perhaps, is that implied in the epitaph on
himself which heads this chapter.
Régnier returned from Italy, then, with an ample provision of memories,
and perhaps with those poems which are based on the works of the Italian
satirists. He took up his abode in his uncle’s house at Paris, and
there, as in Rome, he noted in the intervals of dissipations the manners
and the characters of men. He saw and knew the high personages who
frequented the house of Desportes, and whose names occur in his poems.
And not being a time-server himself,
‘Instruit par le temps à la fin j’ai connu
Que la fidélité n’est pas grand revenu,’
he was content to draw with biting irony the portrait of a courtier
bard, who,
‘Ambitieux, pour les vers qu’il compose,
Quelque bon benefice en l’esprit se propose,
Et dessus un cheval comme un singe attaché
Meditant un sonnet, medite un evesché.’
_Sat. II._
Or of the vain beggar poets who
‘L’œil farouche et troublé, l’esprit à l’abandon
Vous viennent accoster comme personnes yvres,
[Illustration: Renaissance
Oriel Rue de la Corroierie]
Et disent pour bon-jour “Monsieur, je fais des livres,
On les vend au Palais, et les doctes du temps,
A les lire amusez, n’ont autre passe-temps.”’
_Sat. II._
Or, again, he marks down a courtier with a vigour and point which
Molière could not surpass:--
‘Laissons-le discourir,
Dire cent et cent fois: Il en faudrait mourir;
Sa barbe pinçoter, cageoller la science,
Relever ses cheveux, dire; En ma conscience;
Faire la belle main, mordre un bout de ses gants,
Rire hors de propos, monstrer ses belles dents,
Se carrer sur un pied, faire arser son épée,
Et s’adoucir les yeux ainsi qu’une poupée.’
_Sat. VIII._
A dozen other examples might be quoted to show with what satiric acid he
can etch a portrait. Régnier can paint a scene, too, with same unerring
detail and bitter accuracy, as, for instance, ‘Le Souper Ridicule’ and
the less savoury ‘Mauvais Gîte.’ The latter poem is indeed the only one
which deserves the imputation conveyed by Boileau’s phrase about the
author’s _rimes cyniques_. Régnier is essentially a moral writer, for he
makes vice, even when he describes it openly, the reverse of attractive.
The worst that can and may be said of him is that, like Juvenal, he
attacks vice with arms that make virtue blush. He says himself:--
‘Je croirai qu’il n’est rien au monde qui guarisse
Un homme vicieux comme son propre vice,’
and certainly the sincere and vigorous pictures he draws will prove a
temptation to no one, though they may inspire, like his habit of calling
a spade a spade, feelings of repugnance and disgust. But this is the
aim, as these are the means of all genuine satirists. Régnier’s comment
on his own failings is pathetic, but does not condone them. It reminds
one of Ovid’s words, ‘_Video meliora proboque. Deteriora sequor._’
‘Étant homme, on ne peut
Ni vivre comme on doit, ni vivre comme on veut.’
For, happily, the consequences of his loose living had wrought in him a
tardy repentance. His conversion was as late and as sincere as that of
La Fontaine--and not less needed. As he left politics alone, and
attacked not individuals but social types, he made no enemies. For most
men group others in classes but not themselves, or at any rate suppose
themselves to be free from the vices of the class to which they belong.
So they called our satirist Bon Régnier, as later they spoke of Bon la
Fontaine, and the _bonhomie_ implied by their nickname had the same
seasoning of malice. But it was not rewarded with any great share in the
goods of this world. His uncle, dying in 1606, left him only a legacy of
2000 _livres_ on the Abbey _des Vaus de Cernay_. Henry IV., by
conferring this request, gained the friendship of the poet, who
expressed his gratitude in the admirable verses of his first satire. In
1608, the year in which his works were first published, he was presented
with a stall in the Cathedral of Chartres. But only five years later he
left Royaumont, the abbey of the Bishop of Chartres, who always made him
welcome, and found his way to Rouen. There he consulted a quack doctor,
a famous empiric, Le Sonneur by name, who promised to heal him of all
his diseases. But he died after dining with this too encouraging
physician.
I have spoken of Régnier as the creator of French satire, and so, in a
sense, he was. But the phrase requires qualification. His satires are
not indeed absolutely the first of their kind in France. They had been
preceded by the terrific invectives of D’Aubigné, the vigorous
outbursts of Jean de la Taille, and the less vehement but more polished
satirical portraits of Vauquelin de Fresnaye. But in breadth and
technical merit he far surpassed all his predecessors, and, in force,
all except D’Aubigné. The longest, the best known, and undoubtedly the
best of his sixteen satires, is the thirteenth. There, under the title
of Macette, he describes an old woman who hides vice under a mask of
hypocrisy, and corrupts youth with her evil philosophy of the world and
its ways. The type is not new, but Régnier’s description of it is
original and vigorous in the extreme. His Macette, in fact, is the
grandmother of Molière’s Tartuffe.
‘Loin du monde elle fait sa demeure et son giste
Son œil tout penitent ne pleure qu’eau beniste.
Enfin c’est un exemple, en ce siècle tortu
D’amour, de charité, d’honneur et de vertu.
Pour beate partout le peuple la renomme,
Et la gazette même a déja dit à Rome,
La voyant aimer Dieu et la chair maîtriser
Qu’on n’attend que sa mort pour la canoniser.’
Clearly the style of comedy had been found when a man could write like
that, and Molière, fifty years later, had only to choose among the lines
of Régnier when he wished to draw the character of Tartuffe.
‘Le péché que l’on cache est demi-pardonné,’
becomes in Tartuffe
‘Et ce n’est point pécher que pécher en silence.’
And in many other instances our Chartrain poet has supplied the great
comedian with lines and hints, which Molière, true to his principle, _Je
prends mon bien où je le trouve_, has appropriated as unblushingly and
as successfully as a Vergil. This, apart from his other merits, and in
spite of his faults, is in itself enough to justify the existence of the
_rimes cyniques_ of Mathurin Régnier.
CHAPTER XI
_The Coronation of Henri Quatre_
When Henri III. fell beneath the dagger of the assassin, Jacques
Clément, the King of Navarre was hailed King of France at S. Cloud. But
the fair realm which was one day to be his
‘Et par droit de naissance
Et par droit de conquête,’
was far from being prepared as yet to accept Henri Quatre as its ruler.
The throne of S. Louis could not, in the eyes of a large section of the
nation, belong to a heretic, and Henri de Béarn was a Huguenot. Paris,
which was devoted to the Catholic League, closed its gates to him, and
Chartres, equally enthusiastic in the same cause, refused to admit him.
Resolved to make himself master of a town which was regarded as a
boulevard of the capital, Henri had forced the rest of the Duchy to
recognise him by the end of 1590, but Chartres was still stubborn. He
sent, therefore, Marshal de Biron to lay siege to the town, and he began
operations on the 12th February. But, contrary to the expectations of
Henri, who was in communication with many of the citizens, the
resistance offered by the Catholic city was vigorous and prolonged.
Instead of a few days the siege lasted two months, and the defence was
conducted with such energy and skill that M. de Réclainville, who had
been summoned to their aid, with some troops of the Ligue, complimented
the citizens on their bravery and resource. He had taken a part, he
said, in many an affair, but never had he seen a finer struggle than the
siege of Chartres.
The first few days were taken up with skirmishes in the suburbs and
sorties by the garrison, who endeavoured, too late, to destroy the cover
which the outlying buildings afforded the enemy. On the 15th of the
month the King himself arrived, and the Royalists thereupon constructed
a barricade, facing the ravelin of the Porte Drouaise, and opened a
trench in the Pig Market, under cover of a battery masked by the ruined
houses, and directed against the ravelin of the Porte des Épars. The
latter point was chosen because there the walls of the ravelin being
incomplete, gave greater scope for the effective play of the artillery.
But before commencing hostilities Henri resolved to try more peaceable
means of gaining possession of the town. He had no wish to be involved
in the expense and delay of an unnecessary siege. A trumpeter and herald
were sent therefore on the 16th, the day after his arrival, to summon
the Chartrains to surrender. But Suireau, the mayor, and La
Bourdaisière, the military governor, rivalled one another in the
vehemence of their refusal to open the gates so long as the King
remained a heretic. Their vehemence was probably stimulated by the
suspicion which had recently been thrown on their sincerity. For an
epigram had recently been pasted on the walls of the town accusing them
of treacherous intentions--
‘Écoutez, Messieurs de Chartres
Si ne mettez bien tôt en chartres
La Bourdaisière et Suireau
Ils vous mettront tous au tombeau.’
Whether there was any truth in the accusation or not, their answer now
was uncompromising enough. The Royalists retorted by pushing their
trench and mines up to the ravelin of the Porte des Épars, whilst, on
their side, the besieged prepared counter-mines. Meanwhile, they dealt
successfully with the barricade which threatened the Porte Drouaise.
Three heavy pieces of artillery were brought up, the feint of a sortie
was made to distract the attention of the enemy, and when this had been
successfully accomplished, the cannon were unmasked, and a few rounds
‘poured into their nest quickly turned the birds out,’ as a contemporary
puts it.[95] The Chartrains completely destroyed the barricades during
the ensuing night. But the besiegers quickly opened another trench, and
began to run other mines against the counterscarp of the ditch between
the Porte Châtelet and the Porte S. Jean. In order, if possible, to
destroy the barricade which protected this trench a gun-platform was
hastily erected, and some heavy pieces placed in position.
The King, who had a large number of supporters among the better class of
citizens, had expected to take Chartres at the first attempt. Before
beginning the bombardment he again summoned the town to surrender, and
so anxious was he not to be drawn into the trouble of a siege that he
engaged in still further parleyings with the governor and mayor. But it
was all to no purpose. The people were determined to resist, and they
cut short all attempts at negotiation.
On Ash Wednesday, therefore, February 27, the bombardment commenced. A
battery of seven pieces established in the trench of the Pig Market,
opened fire on the walls between S. Foy and the Porte des Épars. A
furious cannonade was maintained at intervals during that day and the
next, and made a serious impression upon the defences. Many houses also
were levelled to the ground; the spire of S. Foy was knocked down; one
cannon ball entered the room of the Bishop’s Palace, in which Henri III.
had been wont to assemble his Council, and in which, it is said, the
Massacre of Blois was arranged; another ball lodged between the two
spires of the Cathedral, and broke one of the figures in the Gallery of
Kings. A third, weighing 42 pounds, entered the old spire; and a fourth
crashed through a section of the western rose window and fell into the
choir. After that, the Chapter decided to perform the service in the
crypt.
The resistance of the besieged was desperate. But, none the less, the
enemy succeeded in a few days in pushing their trenches and galleries
right up to the walls of the ravelin of the Porte des Épars. The King
decided that the moment had come to deliver an assault. On the 5th of
March, accordingly, a terrific bombardment took place, which had the
undesired effect of knocking some of the masonry of the gate into the
breach--an accident which prompted Gramont to remark, that the King of
Navarre had fired five hundred rounds and only succeeded in filling the
breach, but that he would have to fire fifteen hundred more to open it
again. Under cover of this bombardment, a party of soldiers massed
themselves behind the barricade in preparation for the assault. But an
officer of the garrison, who was on guard in the _Clocher Neuf_ espied
this movement, and informed La Bourdaisière of it. His warning saved the
town. The besieged concentrated their forces to repel the attack when
the enemy attempted to scale the breach of the ravelin. The struggle
even so was long and desperate. It lasted from three in the afternoon
till nightfall, when the Royalists were compelled to retire, leaving
many of their number dead in the ditch. The Chartrains had also
suffered heavily. Their losses included forty soldiers and twenty
citizens. The gallant De Pescheray, one of the chief defenders of the
town, was mortally wounded in this fight. But an important check had
been given to the besiegers, who contented themselves for some days with
driving their galleries and mines.
Ill with impatience, the King swore to make the citizens of Chartres pay
dearly for the powder which they made him burn. But they, looking daily
to be relieved by the Ligue from the quarter of Dreux or elsewhere,
actively counter-mined the Royalist sappers, and when the fire of the
arquebusiers had no effect upon them, they adopted Gramont’s suggestion,
and hurled bottles of burning oil and _fleurs de soufre_ amongst the
enemy.
And now the siege had lasted a month, when one morning--it was the 15th
of March--Henri was amazed to hear all the bells of the town, _Marie_
and _Gabrielle_ and the rest, ring out in joyful peals. The streets, it
was soon reported, were filled with processions of the inhabitants, who
were celebrating with unwonted fervour and extraordinary pomp the
anniversary of the deliverance of the town upon the investment of Condé.
Yet, even as they did so, many shook their heads at the evil augury of
the statue of the Virgin that had been set above the Porte Drouaise.
Throughout the siege of 1568, it was pointed out, the cannon-balls of
the Prince de Condé had never been able to touch it, but Henri’s
bombardment had succeeded in upsetting, though not in breaking it.
Struck by the devotion of the citizens, it is said, and charmed by the
melody of the bells, Henri gave orders that no guns should be fired that
day, in order that the harmony of the celebration should not be
troubled.
If this story be true, the garrison acknowledged the courtesy of Henri
in a scurvy fashion. For on the evening of this day Gramont exploded a
counter-mine before the Porte des Épars. In so doing he not only
destroyed the enemy’s works, but also a large section of his own
ravelin. The result might have been serious if an assault had been
delivered at once. But, contrary to the King’s directions, the citizens
were given time to repair the damage.
Still there was no sign of immediate succour from without. Fair words
from the Ligueurs at Dreux, and promises from the Duc de Mayenne came in
abundance. But those in charge of the defence knew that unless aid came
quickly or provisions were thrown into the town, it would be impossible
to hold out long. Already they were dependent for their flour upon the
little wind-mills set up in the town, one of which had just been
discovered in the Clocher Neuf, where it had lain since the days when
the English besieged Chartres.[96] Those in command of the garrison were
indeed by this time quite ready to deliver up the town into the King’s
hands, but the inhabitants refused to entertain the idea of yielding to
the heretic of Navarre. They therefore decided to gain time by any
means. Negotiations were opened with this object. La Bourdaisière and
Gramont held an interview with the King’s representatives on the 19th,
and again on the 26th. Biron and others, with a strong escort, came to
the Porte S. Michel, when Gramont went forth to parley with them. But
hardly had the conference begun when a cannon-shot, fired by mistake
from the Royalist camp, ricochetted near them. The people of Chartres,
thinking themselves betrayed, replied with a volley, which accounted for
several soldiers of Biron’s escort, and abruptly put an end to
parleyings. Next day Gramont and others had an interview with the King
in person at the Monastery of S. Lubin, and brought back terms which
were promptly rejected by the Ligueurs, who were still in a majority in
the Council. They would rather die, they said, than surrender to a
Huguenot King. This reply provoked an assault from the enemy, but the
Chartrains were still unshaken. They informed the King that they would
recognise him when he returned to the bosom of the Church, and meanwhile
proposed such terms of capitulation that Henri swore a _Mort Dieu_,
instead of his usual _Ventre S. Gris_, and cried out that as soon as he
had taken the town he would hang these mutinous rascals who made fun of
him.
His next step was to shift all his batteries suddenly to the side of the
bishop’s palace, and, concentrating his fire on a small section of the
wall in that quarter, speedily to effect a new breach. Every effort had
been made by the defenders during the short respite allowed them to
strengthen their position against the inevitable assault. And when the
assault was delivered the defence was admirable. Six times the Royalist
troops rushed to the breach; six times they were flung back by the
desperate courage of the besieged. They retired finally at seven o’clock
in the evening, after five hours’ fighting. They had lost three hundred
men. The trenches were filled with dead and dying. Among the Chartrains
the losses were almost as heavy. After the fourth assault, not one of
the defenders of the first entrenchment had remained unwounded. A truce
for the removal of the dead was arranged, and during the following night
the besieged filled up the gap in the walls with sacks and gabions. But
a new trial was in store for them. The Royalists built a large wooden
bridge, closed like a gallery, and this, on the night of the 7th, they
rolled on barrels up to and over the moat. The garrison were filled with
consternation when they woke to see it in position, and the soldiers
within, safe from attack, engaged in pulling down the sacks and gabions
with which the breach had just been built up. The discouragement was
great. Many began openly to declare that further resistance was useless.
In some cases the soldiers were only induced to enter the ravelin,
which, they maintained, was now untenable, by the persuasion of their
officers’ swords. The King, hearing of the growing spirit of
discouragement within the walls, made yet another attempt to bring about
a surrender. But such was the suicidal intolerance and obstinacy of the
leading Ligueurs, that in the proposals they submitted they still
insisted on the absolute prohibition of the reformed cult, a governor of
their own choice, and a long truce, to enable them to inform the Duke of
Mayenne of what was being done. Henri, of course, tore up the paper on
which these absurd conditions were written, and proceeded to impose his
own terms. They were accepted on the 10th of April, and proved to be
extraordinarily lenient.
Henri authorised the practice of the Catholic religion, and forbade that
of the reformed cult in the town and suburbs; he confirmed the
established government and offices, and promised to punish no one for an
act of war. The Ligueurs were granted permission to retire from the
town, and eight days were allowed in which to warn Mayenne. If within
that time a relieving force of four hundred men or more succeeded in
throwing themselves into the town, the capitulation should be regarded
as not having taken place. Henri took care, of course, that no force
should so find its way into the town. With the object of intercepting
any relief that might arrive, he himself, it is said, rode unceasingly
round the environs of the town, and so wore himself out with his
excessive vigilance that one day, overwhelmed by fatigue, he dismounted,
made his pages lie down side by side on the ground, and, stretching
himself upon them, slept thus for some hours.
It was also provided that the professional soldiers who formed the
garrison should be allowed to march out of the town with their arms and
baggage, colours flying and drums beating, and that they should make
arrangements, in which the King would aid them, for the care of their
wounded.
The clergy were still firm in their refusal to treat with the heretic
and held out hopes of a miracle. But La Bourdaisière and Gramont and the
majority of responsible people declared that the age of miracles was
past and the day of necessity was upon them.
No succour arrived, and on the 19th of April the garrison marched out
through the Porte S. Michel between two rows of Royalist soldiery. They
were accompanied by the principal Ligueurs among the citizens. It was
arranged that next day all the clergy and communities of the town should
present themselves at the same gate on the morrow to receive the King
and conduct him in full procession to the Porte Royale of Notre-Dame,
and that there the Bishop, De Thou, should pronounce an official
harangue. The King arrived on horseback with his staff at the appointed
hour and was presented with the keys of the city by the mayor. ‘Sire,’
he said, ‘we are obliged to obey you both by human law and law divine.’
‘You might add by _canon_ law,’ threw in the conqueror, with a laugh.
Thereafter, beneath a canopy of blue velvet fringed with gold and
silver, and supported by four aldermen, His Majesty went in triumphant
procession across the city by the streets S. Michel and Des Changes
until he came to the Cathedral. But then, instead of stopping opposite
the western porch, he went on his way to the episcopal palace, without
appearing to notice the Bishop and Chapter who awaited him on the steps.
Not to be cheated of the opportunity of delivering their address,
Bishop and Chapter cut across through the church and appeared beneath
the northern porch in time to stop the King, make the harangue and
receive a gracious reply.
Henri Quatre made arrangements for converting the Porte S. Michel into a
citadel and for levying a large sum of money from the citizens, and
then, after attending the Protestant meeting-house, he left Chartres.
For the moment it must have seemed that the obstinate defence of the
town had done little except add to the lustre of its arms. For the
Catholic city was held now by the Protestant troops and became, next to
Tours, the most important place in the hands of the Huguenot King.
Henri, indeed, soon made it his seat of government. He summoned the
Parliament, the Cour des Aides and the Council of State to meet here,
and here they sat till the year 1594. It was in that year that he took
the ‘perilous leap,’ as he termed it, which was, however, nothing more
or less than a step of the highest political wisdom. He put a stop to
the civil war, which was plunging France into anarchy and ruin, by
reconciling himself with the Church of Rome. Amongst those prelates,
before whom at S. Denis he solemnly abjured his Calvinistic errors and
made profession of the Catholic, Roman and Apostolic faith, was Nicholas
de Thou, Bishop of Chartres. And from that same bishop, whom he had
flouted three years before, he received the royal consecration in the
Cathedral of Chartres. For to prove the sincerity of his conversion,
which was still much doubted, he demanded of the Church the Holy Unction
which consecrates the kings. And Reims, the proper place of coronation
for the French kings, being still occupied by the troops of Mayenne,
Henri chose the ‘town of his good council’ as the scene of this august
ceremony. ‘He was moved to make this choice,’ says a writer of his day,
‘by reason of the peculiar devotion entertained for Notre-Dame by the
Dukes of Vendôme, his ancestors, and also because that magnificent
temple is the most ancient in Christendom.’ But whatever the cause, it
may well have seemed to the Bishop and Chapter of Notre-Dame on this
occasion that the conqueror was conquered and felt his captive’s charms,
that ‘her arts victorious triumphed o’er his arms.’
The occupation of Reims by the enemy rendered it impossible for the
sacred vessel of oil to be used for Henri’s consecration, but as the
monks of Marmoutiers possessed a phial of miraculous oil, the King sent
a deputation to ask them to send it to be used for his coronation. The
precious relic arrived in the capital of La Beauce on February 19, 1594,
brought by three brethren, monks and officials of the monastery, and
escorted by De Souvré, the King’s deputy, the Bishop of Angers and a
great number of gentlemen, presidents and councillors. The Bishop of
Chartres had sent to meet them all the clergy of the parishes and
monasteries of the town, who were joined by Guy Robert, the Provost of
Chartres, and twelve notable burgesses, carrying torches decorated with
the royal arms and those of the town. A huge concourse of citizens in
festal garb accompanied them.
The relic was then carried in procession through the streets, which were
hung with tapestry, and to the sound of peals of bells, till it reached
the Abbey of S. Père. There it was entrusted to the care of Yves
Gaudeau, the prior, and four other monks. On Sunday, the 27th, the
Comtes de Cheverny, D’Halluin, De Lauzun and the Baron de Termes
presented themselves at the abbey and begged Brother Giron and his
comrades of Marmoutiers to bring the holy oil to Notre-Dame to anoint
His Majesty withal. The monks acquiesced, but first exacted from the
King’s deputies an oath, which was given before notaries, to the effect
that the said sacred vessel should be brought back in good faith to S.
Père after the said consecration was performed. Then Brother Giron,
mounted on a white hackney, bore the precious phial under a magnificent
canopy of red damask, followed by the lords responsible for its safety,
notable citizens and the multitude of the people. The bishop, Nicholas
de Thou, received the sacred vessel from the hands of Brother Giron, and
took the oath exacted from the deputies. Then commenced the ceremony of
the coronation. Apart from its picturesqueness and the fact that it
illustrates a really important moment in French history, the following
account, drawn from a contemporary record, may prove of particular
interest in this year of grace 1902. It will be not uninteresting to
compare the ceremony with that which is to take place in Westminster
Abbey in June. The choir of the Cathedral had been hung with rich
tapestry. Two arm-chairs had been placed before the high altar, one for
the King and one for the officiating Bishop. Behind these, seats were
reserved for the peers spiritual and temporal, and for the seigneurs and
magistrates invited to assist at the splendid ceremony, whilst the
galleries of the choir and nave were expressly left for those who could
find a place there through the good offices of those in charge.[97] The
King, who had had to listen the previous evening to a preachment on the
custom of anointing the kings of France, emerged from the episcopal
palace clad in a _camisole_ of crimson satin and a long robe of silver
cloth. He entered the Cathedral by the Porte Royale, accompanied by the
Bishops of Nantes and Maillezais and preceded by the archers of the
Grand Provost, the clergy, the Swiss Guards, heralds, Knights of the
Holy Spirit, the Scots Guards, and the Marshal de Matignon bearing the
Constable’s sword. Behind him came the Grand Chancellor of France, the
Grand Master, the Lord Chamberlain and the First Gentleman of the
Bedchamber. The King walked straight towards the altar, accompanied by
the two bishops aforesaid, and deposited there as an offering a casket
of silver gilt. Then he took the seat prepared for him at the foot of
the altar steps. The Bishop of Chartres now took the sacred oil from the
hands of the monks of Marmoutiers, showed it to the people and placed it
on the high altar. Next, turning towards His Majesty, he said, ‘We
demand of you that you should grant unto each one of us, and to the
churches whereof we have charge, the lawful and canonical privileges,
rights and justice, and that you should defend us as a king in his
kingdom should defend all the bishops and their churches.’
The King standing upright, his right hand on the Book of the Gospels,
replied, ‘I promise and grant you that I will preserve to you your
canonical privileges and your churches, and that I will give you good
laws and administer justice to you and defend you, by God’s grace,
according to my power, as a king in his kingdom should do by right and
reason on behalf of the bishops and their churches.’
After he had made this response the Bishops of Nantes and Maillezais
raised the King from his chair and asked those present whether they
wished to accept him as king. Hailed as legitimate sovereign by the
whole of that vast and magnificent assembly, Henri IV. then took the
oath, his right hand resting on the Holy Book.
‘I promise,’ he said, ‘in the name of Jesus Christ, three things to the
Christians, my subjects. Firstly, I will take pains that the Christian
people may live in peace with the Church of God. Further, I will strive
that on all occasions robbery and injustice may cease. Further, I will
command that in all judgments equity and pity be observed, to the end
that God in His infinite mercy and pity may have pity upon me and upon
you. Further, I will strive to my uttermost, in good faith, to chase
from my jurisdiction and lands all heretics denounced by the Church,
promising on oath to observe all that has been said, so may God and this
His holy Gospel help me!’
The Bishop of Chartres, with the aid of the spiritual peers, then
anointed Henri with the holy oil, and after the peers had been summoned
by the Chancellor of France, taking the crown, and raising it above the
head of the monarch, he gave it to the dukes and peers to hold, blessed
it and placed it upon the brow of the King. Henri IV. was forthwith
conducted by the Bishop and the great lords to the throne which had been
erected on the Jubé, that all the people might behold him. The bishop
officiating next bade the monarch be seated, and prayed to God ‘to
confirm him on his throne and to render him invincible and unshaken
before those who strive unjustly to snatch from him the crown which has
legitimately fallen to him.’ Then he gave him the kiss of peace and
cried aloud three times, ‘Vive le Roi!’ The cry was taken up and
repeated by the peers and all the people. The sound of clarions,
hautbois, trumpets, drums and other instruments of music echoed through
the vaulting of the ancient Cathedral, whilst heralds threw amongst the
crowd pieces of gold and silver ‘marked with the effigy of the King and
with the date of the day and the year of his anointing and coronation.’
Mass was then celebrated, and the King, having received absolution from
the bishop, partook of the communion with great humility. The service
over, the bishops and lords escorted the monarch back to the episcopal
palace. The Duke of Montbazon led the way, bearing the crown on a velvet
cushion, whilst others accompanied him with the sceptre and the royal
sword. The sacred vessel was taken back at once in procession to the
Abbey of S. Père by the barons. They restored it to the safe keeping of
the monks of Marmoutiers.
Meanwhile the King, clad in fresh robes of equal magnificence, ‘sat at
table under a canopy of beautiful stuff, in the great episcopal hall,
which was adorned with rich tapestries.’ On his right, at another table,
were ranged the spiritual peers in pontifical garb; on the left, and at
another table, the temporal peers in their coronation robes. Below the
stage reserved for the King and these high personages, the ambassadors,
the Chancellor, Knights of the Order and the principal officers of the
realm took their place at yet another table. The banquet finished with a
fanfare of trumpets, hautbois and clarions, and the King retired,
preceded by the Marshal de Matignon, carrying before him the royal sword
‘bared outright.’
In the evening there was another splendid banquet, after which grace was
said and sung as the late King Henri III. had been wont to have it.
So closed that day of solemn pomp and of ceremonies not meaningless. For
they impressed upon the people the reality of a conversion which was
politically of almost as much importance to France as the conversion to
Christianity of Clovis and his followers. The report of the consecration
of the King at Chartres was followed almost immediately by the surrender
of Paris, and Henri became in fact what he had so long been in name
only, King of France.
I have endeavoured to illustrate each stage of this story of a French
ecclesiastical town by the mention or description of some building, and
to illumine each notable building by some historic episode connected
with it or with the period at which it was constructed. There is little
left of the walls and gates which he bombarded to remind us of the
taking of the town by Henri Quatre. But if we go to the Municipal Museum
and Library we shall find pictures of this siege[98] and of the
unsuccessful siege laid by Condé, besides numerous old maps and plans
which show us, with varying degrees of accuracy, the town as it was in
those days of storm and stress.
The Hôtel de Ville,[99] in which the museum is lodged, is a fine
building of red brick and stone, composed of three sections and a very
handsome gateway. It is itself connected with the period under review;
for, when Henri was besieging the place nearly half the town was in
correspondence with the besiegers, and, among the rest, was the
important family of Montescot. Montescot was a good courtier, and he was
rewarded with a canon’s stall in Notre-Dame. But he was also a good
citizen, and he acted as intermediary between Chartres and the King in
the matter of the pecuniary contributions levied from the town. He it
was who built,[100] as a mansion for himself, the present _Hôtel de
Ville_ (1614), and in his character of good courtier he inscribed those
words, ‘HENRICO MAGNO,’ over the principal entrance. The bust of Marie
de Médici figures on the doorway of the right wing, the bust of Louis
XIII. on that of the left. The old _Parloir aux Bourgeois_, or site of
municipal administration, which had been in the hôtel known as the
_Perron des Trois-Rois_ in the _Rue des Changes_ since 1571, was moved
here in 1792. One wing of the building abuts on the _Place des Halles_,
or market-place, at the corner of which is the Librairie Selleret
(Petrot-Garnier), the booksellers and publishers whose name is
honourably connected with most of the publications of Chartres.
The municipal rooms, hung with tapestry, are on the ground floor; the
library and museum above. The library is of exceptional interest, and it
is admirably arranged. Unfortunately it is only open on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays from 12 to 3.30 p.m. But, if the hours are short,
the visitor who may wish to study the extremely rich collection of books
and manuscripts, which were removed here from the surrounding
monasteries during the Revolution, will find every encouragement to do
so. Without credentials or explanation I have read there myself many
days, and it is with grateful pleasure that I take this opportunity of
acknowledging the polite attention and the ready help proffered to me, a
stranger, by the Librarian and his assistants. The collection includes
over 100,000 volumes, and among the thousand manuscripts six hundred are
earlier than the sixteenth century, and many beautifully illuminated.
The Museum, the entrance to which faces that of the Library, is open to
the public on Thursdays and Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. (gratuity).
Catalogue, 1 franc, 50 centimes. I have referred already, in the course
of my story, to most of the interesting things to
[Illustration: Place de l’Hôtel de Ville]
be seen there. I have mentioned some of the Roman antiquities--the coins
and pottery found in the neighbourhood--the armour of Philippe-le-Bel,
and of Charles V., his son, offered to Notre-Dame after the battle of
Mons-en-Puelle; and among the pictures, the numerous maps and pictures
and portraits that relate to the history of Chartres.
It remains to call attention to the Layé collection of arms, armour,
porcelain and medals, and, in the room above, what should on no account
be missed, the magnificent pieces of Flemish tapestry (sixteenth
century) which were brought here from the choir of the Cathedral. Five
out of the original ten are to be seen in the Hôtel de Ville. The
borders are rich and the work exquisite. They were presented originally
to the church by that Bishop de Thou of whom we have spoken above. The
designs of the five panels are based on those of the cartoons made by
Raphael for the Vatican, and they represent incidents from the life of
Moses.
A beautiful example of fourteenth-century French needlework should be
noted in a triptych here.
CHAPTER XII
_The Revolution--S. Père_
The events recorded in the last chapter, culminating in the coronation
of Henri Quatre in the Cathedral of the town which, as the Huguenot
King, he had besieged three years before, are the last in which Chartres
played a part of real importance in the history of France. She suffered,
indeed, during the troubles of the Fronde, both from the massing of
troops that occurred continually about her borders, and from many
serious attacks of plague and famine, for which they were doubtless, to
a large extent, responsible. But the trials which she had undergone had
damped her military ardour. Bitter experiences in the past had exhausted
the vehemence of her enthusiasm. Henceforth she lays aside her militant
character and devotes herself to the peaceful pursuit of a quiet
municipal life. The part she takes in politics is distinguished by
ecclesiastical sobriety and commercial prudence.
An excellent college, founded by a good merchant, Pocquet by name,
sprang into prominence in the life of the town, whilst the citadel,
established by Henri Quatre at the Port S. Michel, is declared to be no
longer needed. It is handed over, in 1600, to the citizens, and
converted again into a church. And the Huguenots, so much has the spirit
of the age changed, are provided with a church, so that each may worship
in peace according to his own conscience.
The year 1623 saw two changes which affected the nominal position of
Chartres and continue still to affect it. In the first place the diocese
of Chartres became in that year the first suffragan of the newly-created
Archbishopric of Paris, and, in the second place, the Duchy of Chartres,
definitely and officially united with the crown, passed to Gaston, Duke
of Orléans, and has ever since remained in the house of Orléans. The
Duchy, it will be remembered, had been created by François I. in favour
of Rénée, daughter of Louis XII. Louis XIII. now bought it back from the
Duke of Nemours, and himself, Duke of Chartres, visited the town in
October of the same year. (It was on a previous occasion that, as the
historian Doyen narrates, he came to pay his devotions at the shrine of
Notre-Dame, and thereafter was indulging in a game of tennis at the
court in the market-place when he was informed that there was a certain
woman there who played a strong game. He sent for her and played a set
with her. But she beat him. _Cette femme prit un caleçon et gagna le
roi, en jouant par-dessous la jambe._) Three years later he presented
his brother Gaston, on the occasion of his marriage and in exchange for
the Duchy of Anjou, with the County of Blois and the Duchies of Orléans
and Chartres. On the death of Gaston, the opponent of Mazarin, the Duchy
of Chartres reverted to the Crown again, but Louis XIV., a few weeks
afterwards, settled it, together with the Duchy of Orléans as an
appanage, on his only brother, Philippe, on the occasion of the marriage
of that prince with Henrietta of England. Since that time the title of
Duke of Chartres has always been the appanage of the eldest son of the
house of Orléans.
For the rest, Chartres passed more and more into the condition of a
_Ville de Province_, where only the echoes of what is being said and
done in Paris and France are to be heard.
The mystic heresy of the _Illuminisme_, propagated by the ‘alumbrados’
of Spain, appeared here in the first half of the seventeenth century,
but was routed out before long. The method by which it was crushed is,
however, significant. This heresy represented a revolt against the
hierarchy of the Church. It rejected all dogmas and all ministers of
religion. The chief exponent of it at Chartres was a hermit who took up
his abode in the woods of Lèves, and soon secured a strong following
among the unlettered classes. The heretics, in fact, began to make such
progress in La Beauce and Picardie that Richelieu became alarmed. The
Government gave orders that the sect was to be exterminated. The hermit
of Chartres was therefore arrested and sent to Paris, where he recanted
his errors.
He and his followers, in earlier days, would doubtless have been burnt
at the stake without more ado. Now, such has been the growth of the
central power, they were merely sent to Paris and converted. The
punishment of heterodoxy had become generally much less severe. Very
little hanging was now done for conscience’s sake. We only come across
one instance of a monk being hung at this time, and that was for
celebrating Mass without having been ordained priest.
Throughout the succeeding centuries, then, the political action of
Chartres is reduced to that of an ordinary commercial municipality. It
suffered none the less in common with the rest of France from all those
causes which had issue in the Revolution. The crash of 1789 was
precipitated by the coincidence of two events--the imminent bankruptcy
of the Government and the great famine which, following on one of the
worst winters on record, produced universal rioting throughout the
country and ended in pure anarchy. For the Government, having no money
and no credit, could not feed the people. The people might bring the
King from Versailles and sack the Bastille but that did not make bread
cheaper. The Constituent Assembly was as helpless as the King. The
pressure in Paris was worse in October than during the siege by the
Prussians. These famine riots continued in Paris and all over the
country till good harvests came. Then the country would have settled
down. But the Revolution had been begun, and, under the extreme party,
with the aid of the Jacobin clubs, was destined to bring in its train
the Reign of Terror. The Girondins wished for war and that the country
should not settle down.
The Government had been more or less insolvent since 1715, but since
1783 the share taken by France in the War of American Independence had
rendered total failure inevitable. The wealth of the country was not
small and it was rapidly increasing. But the Government had for years
put an immense strain upon their preposterous financial system, and the
ridiculous machine had now completely broken down. Since 1783, one
Superintendent of Finance after another had declared that the only
possible way to avert bankruptcy was to introduce a sweeping change in
the system of taxation. As soon as they came to that conclusion they
were dismissed, for Louis XVI., who half knew that they were right,
could not stand against his Court. But in the year 1788 the fact became
too obvious. The Superintendent Necker declared that, unless some reform
were undertaken, bankruptcy, in a few months, was inevitable. Now, the
National Debt was held almost entirely by the official class in France,
to whom, therefore, even the loss of their privileges, which consisted
to a large extent in not paying taxes, seemed better than the
bankruptcy of the country. Necker advised the King to summon the
States-General and to carry out reforms in connection with it.
The demand for it to be summoned was already loud. It was the old
Parliament of France, but it had not met since 1614. Then it had
consisted of three separate houses, the Nobles, the Clergy, and the
Third Estate, each acting independently of each other and enjoying the
right of presenting petitions to the King. How the Third Estate asserted
itself and, after the States-General had been converted into the
Constituent Assembly, proceeded to fulfil its Tennis-Court Oath and to
give a Constitution to France we need not repeat here. What from the
point of view of the story of Chartres requires to be noticed is that
the new Constitution, which was gradually drawn up between the years
1789-1791, represented to a great extent the ideas implied in the list
of grievances, _cahier des plaintes_, submitted to the Chartrain
representatives of the Third Estate. They had had a sufficiently bitter
experience in past years of the heavy and unjust incidence of taxation,
and the congestion and confusion of the judicial system, which, together
with the existence of the official class, were the real grievances of
the age. The administrative arrangements of the new Constitution
embodied the theories of Rousseau, who advocated extreme democratic
decentralisation. For this was a panacea which the followers of Diderot
and the Encyclopædists, believing that the correction of bad laws and
bad government would produce the millennium, that, in fact, you can
change the character of the whole by changing the arrangement of the
units, imagined would cure all the evils of Society. Almost all real
power, therefore, was taken from the King and placed in the hands of
municipal and village Councils, of what Carlyle called ‘forty thousand
sovereign bodies.’ One need not emphasise the grim comment passed by
history upon these theories.
So far as Chartres was concerned they had their immediate and lasting
effect in a decree of the National Assembly, dated January 15, 1790,
which constituted our town Capital of the Department of Eure-et-Loir and
gave it a departmental administration. The bishopric was preserved, and
only a court of appeal was wanting. The assembly of citizens, some 1500
in number, met and elected the members of the new municipal body, which
included a mayor, eleven municipal officers, twenty-four _notables_, and
a _procureur de la commune_.
Besides drawing up a new Constitution, the Constituent Assembly had been
busy promulgating a series of decrees, of which some, such as those
bringing in a new financial system, proved inoperative, and others, such
as that concerning seigneurial dues, were concerned with abolishing what
had already ceased to exist. But their decrees concerning the Church had
some effect, and that bad. In the first place, the whole property of the
Church was confiscated and tithes were abolished. In the second place,
under the civil constitution of the clergy, all beneficed clergy were,
it was decided, to be beneficed by the State (July 12, 1790). Thirdly,
all beneficed clergy were required to submit themselves to free election
at the hands of laymen, and to undertake the discharge of their holy
office only after swearing a solemn oath to obey the rules of the new
Constitution. This decree was an immense blunder. It was offensive in
the extreme to every good Roman Catholic, to whom the spectacle of a
purely lay power interfering in questions of ecclesiastical discipline
was unbearable.
The Pope intervened and forbade the bishops to take an oath which
involved the renunciation of all Papal claims. The greater number of
bishops and clergy obeyed the Papal order, and were supported by the
majority of the lower orders in whom the love of the Church was still
quite strong and deeply rooted. At Chartres, M. de Lubessac refused to
take the oath, and the assembly of departmental electors met and
appointed in his place Nicolas Boisnet, a doctor of theology and vicar
of the parish of S. Michel. He was a worthy man who for forty years had
offered an example of all the Christian virtues, and he only accepted
the See of the civic episcopate on the express condition that he would
render it to him who had abandoned it when he should see fit to come and
take it again.
Meantime the revenues of the Church had been sequestrated, and the
Chapter, yielding to force, had passed out of existence. It was after
this fashion that religion, like the monarchy, was provided with a
Constitution.
The Girondin Clubs had taken possession of Chartres as of the other
towns. They soon had their way, and France was at war with Prussia and
Austria. That war was entered into without any very definite plan or
enthusiasm by the Allies, who expected a mere parade march to Paris and
an opportunity of aggrandisement for themselves. But France, thinking
that the victory of the Allies would mean the restoration of the old
_régime_, took the war very seriously from the beginning. A voluntary
movement of unequalled size and enthusiasm took place in the spring of
1792. Eure-et-Loir furnished several battalions of volunteers, and
Chartres gave to France, as captain of their first battalion, the young
and chivalrous Marceau. The vigour of this resistance surprised the
Allies, who in the face of it would have been at a loss to know what to
do if they had arrived at Paris. Instead of exerting themselves,
therefore, they fell back upon the frontier. But their advance had
proved fatal to Louis, who must have hoped for their success. As they
advanced the panic in Paris had increased. The crisis came with the 10th
of August, on which day a big mob rising, clearly engineered by the
Girondins, drove the King to seek safety in the Assembly, whence he
passed to spend his last sad hours in the Temple prison, and finally to
meet death on the scaffold. Meanwhile, the Girondin leaders dictated
three decrees to the Chamber. The King was suspended from his functions,
the new Commune of Paris was recognised, and it was decided to summon an
extraordinary National Convention, a single Chamber with powers to do
what it pleased, elected by universal suffrage. To that celebrated
Assembly Chartres contributed some very notable deputies. The upheaval
of public opinion in the town is indicated by its representatives, for
among them was Jérôme Pétion, Mayor of Paris in 1792 and President of
the Convention, and Brissot de Warville. These men were Girondins, and
when the party split in two they remained Girondins and suffered death
in the following year at the hands of the extreme section, the Jacobins.
As a Girondin town Chartres, then, was typical of the provincial towns
of France. For while as to political theory Girondins and Jacobins were
agreed in aiming at an ideally democratic Republic extremely
decentralised, on the practical question of ways and means they
differed. The Girondins insisted, in spite of the war, on carrying out
their decentralising projects at once, but the Jacobins recognised that
if Paris was to be defended at all in the ensuing campaign of ‘93, a
strong central government, a dictatorship in fact, was absolutely
necessary. The soul of the Jacobin party was Danton, the one man neither
fanatic nor fool, and he saw not only the necessity for improvising a
strong central government, but also how it could be done. It could be
done by means of the organisation supplied by the political clubs
scattered through France, and by terrorising the majority. For the
numbers of the Jacobins were always small, but the audacity of their
measures produced the illusion of power. Paris was cowed, the Girondin
party crushed by force, and the Jacobin conquest of France, after the
suppression of the risings in the Girondin provincial towns, for a while
complete.
The Reign of Terror had begun and lasted till July 1794. It lasted, in
other words, till the Jacobin party had done that side of its work,
which was thoroughly national and popular, and, thanks to its conduct of
the war, under Carnot, the danger on the frontier had ceased. Then the
Jacobin Government fell at once. It was because they were doing their
work with regard to the war, and no one else could do it, that France
tolerated the policy of brigandage and butchery by which they
governed;--for this reason, and because those most likely to resist were
away at the frontier, and also through fear. For the Jacobins were an
organised party, and the rest were a chaotic mass of individuals.
Therefore they slew not less than thirty thousand men and women of all
classes. A minority that had begun to rule by terror, they could not go
back. They felt the weakness of their position, and went on increasing
the pressure, themselves almost mad with terror. Individual zeal was
required to make up for their lack of numbers. A scrutiny was held of
their own members, and those who showed a lack of energy were expelled
and guillotined. They executed also that they might confiscate, and thus
provide the sinews of war. And an official theory, stated by the chiefs
and formulated by Robespierre, was not lacking to justify their
[Illustration: Rue des Béguines]
behaviour. Owing to centuries of despotic government, it was said, the
mass of Frenchmen were corrupt and unfit for citizenship in the ideal
Republic that was going to be established. They must wipe out the bad
blood.
In this matter of wiping out bad blood a certain amount of moderation at
any rate was observed at Chartres. But, short of bloodshed, every
outrage and abomination conceivable by a horde of raging maniacs was
solemnly proposed and perpetrated. The priceless treasure of the
Cathedral was looted, and all the churches pillaged. The leaden roofs
thereof, and the bells of the Cathedral, and all leaden tombs that could
be found, were melted down to supply the army with money and with
cannon. It was decreed that every statue within and without the
Cathedral should be destroyed. The work of destruction had already begun
on the north porch, when a member of the Convention, Sergent Marceau,
raised his voice against the measure, and, in the interest of art, the
decree was repealed. But next day, at a meeting of the Chartrain Club, a
member arose, and, declaring that the Cathedral dominated this
Republican city too much, proposed that it should be destroyed. The
proposal was considered, and actually adopted.
But the Cathedral of Chartres was in the end allowed to stand. For a
curious reason. It was found that the difficulty of getting rid of the
vast masses of _débris_ would be insuperable. No citizen would undertake
to allow the fragments of the building to be cast upon his land, and,
seeing that the town would be endlessly encumbered by them, it was
decided that the Cathedral should not be destroyed.
But, if not destroyed, it must be profaned. Hideous orgies were prepared
to celebrate the Feast of Reason. The group of the Assumption in the
choir was converted into a group more conformable to the patriotic
sentiments of the moment by setting a red cap on the head of the Virgin,
and placing a pike in her hand. The marbles of the choir were inscribed
with Republican maxims, and in the centre of the sanctuary a miniature
mountain was raised. On the summit was reared a statue of Reason,
leaning against an oak, on the highest branch of which was perched a
cock holding in his beak a tricolour. The Temple of Reason was
inaugurated by a sermon, in which the citizens were informed that they
had recovered their liberty, and were once more men, pure as Nature
herself. This discourse was followed by a musical drama, entitled
_Reason Victorious over Fanaticism_, in which Watchfulness, in a robe
sown with eyes, and Fanaticism in priestly garb figured, with Rousseau
and Voltaire as acolytes of the former. Philosophy then engaged and
easily vanquished with argument Fanaticism, who, seeing himself beaten,
hurled himself, shrieking abuse, on Watchfulness. But the cry, ‘To
Arms!’ was raised, and lo! the Republic, in the guise of a woman in a
tricolour robe, rose from a cavern near and cast down Fanaticism,
pierced him with a dart, broke the altars and trampled under foot a
crucifix. Then a machine in the form of a cloud raised the Republic to
the mountain top and set her beside the statue of Reason.
And M. Thirion, of the Convention, closed the proceedings with an
address.
These profane and grotesque celebrations were followed up a month later
(December 23, 1793) by a bonfire, which was lit in front of the Porte
Royale on the day which would have been Sunday had not Sundays been
abolished. Into this bonfire were hurled all ornaments of the Church
which were not of precious metal--books and wooden crucifixes and
statues. And with them was burnt the ‘Druidical Statue,’
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.
On the civil side, bread riots and brigandage were the order of the day
at Chartres, but at last, under the Directory, comparative quiet began
to be restored. The town, however, was accused of not supporting that
highly centralised administration with sufficient warmth, and, indeed,
Delarue, the deputy of the Five Hundred, made a report, in which he
stated that the Chartrains ‘had furnished arms and ammunition to five
hundred brigands to suppress the liberty of the legislative body.’ The
municipal administration defended themselves vigorously against this
charge. It was probably true enough that Chartres was not in favour of
the Directory, which, from the beginning, rested on the support of the
army, and thus began that process which was to end in the
Consulate--when the army set up its own man. From this time forth the
army is France. It had been enormously improved since 1792. Out of the
unskilled rabble that had fled before the Allies without striking a blow
it had been converted into an organised machine. Under Carnot, at the
War Office, good men were coming to the front. In 1796 they took the
offensive, and arranged a big triple advance upon Vienna. Jourdan was to
advance from the Netherlands, Moreau from Alsace, Bonaparte through
North Italy. The brilliant successes of the latter covered the failure
of the other two, who were beaten back to the French frontier. But
before their retirement the Battle of Altenkirchen had been fought, and
there had fallen the young Chartrain, General Marceau--François Séverin
Marceau-Degraviers--whose statue stands in the centre of the Place des
Épars. He was only twenty-seven years of age at the time of his death.
His praises were pronounced to the Council of the Five Hundred by his
old friend and comrade in arms, Jourdan, who secured for his mother a
handsome pension. Marceau represents to the Chartrains the ideal of that
military ardour which is the keynote of modern France.
Nothing could be more eloquent of the difference between mediæval and
modern France, of the change from the rule of Church and King to the
domination of the established army, than the present state of the old
Benedictine Abbey of S. Pierre, locally called S. Père, and its
precincts. For the site of the old dormitory, refectory and cloisters is
now used for cavalry barracks, and Chasseurs d’Afrique now stable their
horses where once the cloistered monk tended his garden and fish ponds.
The church itself is one of the most remarkable in existence, and would
doubtless be better known had Chartres no Cathedral. As it is, the
magnificence of Notre-Dame obscures the excellence of the smaller
church, and obliterates from the memory its striking characteristics. In
any other town its glass alone would bring pilgrims from afar. For not
only are the thirty-six great lancet windows of rare beauty, being
filled, to a great extent, with thirteenth and fourteenth-century glass,
but the impression which they give you on first entering the church is
almost unique. The apse is ablaze with colour, the triforium of the
choir glazed, chiefly in grisaille, and the delicate triforium of the
nave is topped by huge lights of colour and grisaille, which are
interrupted by hardly any framework of stone. It seems as if the whole
of the upper part of the building were one continuous sheet of glass
gloriously coloured. The effect, indeed, is scarce an illusion.
For the monks of S. Père have taken up the idea of the flying buttresses
where the builders of the Cathedral had left it. We have seen (p. 189)
how those builders had felt their way with the buttresses of the nave,
and developed those later ones of the choir. In happy rivalry of the
Cathedral, our monks now, it would appear, determined to show the full
possibilities of the idea. They built a temple of glass and supported it
with flying buttresses. Windows took the place of walls in their church,
and the walls were set several yards outside the windows. That is the
effect of this amazing _tour-de-force_ as you look at it from the east
or west. The line of buttresses show like the solid wall of the church
without. Yet so cunningly were those buttresses arranged to carry the
thrust of the building, that the church, windows and roof and all, still
stands unimpaired.
Something of the history of this once large and famous abbey we have
already given in the course of our extracts from the Chartulary of S.
Pierre, which was written in great part by the monk Paul in the eleventh
century. There is an old tradition, quite devoid of foundation, that a
church was built at Chartres in honour of S. Peter, who then held the
See of Rome, by S. Potentian and his disciples. This church, tradition
further asserts, was connected with an abbey by Clovis, and endowed by
Queen Clotilda on the death of her husband. However that may be, the
church was certainly founded by the middle of the seventh century, and
probably the monastery also. They grew and flourished exceedingly in
spite of wars and sieges, burnings and bishops, and waxed in wealth and
importance to such an extent as to provoke serious jealousy in the
hearts of the clergy and adherents of Notre-Dame. Thus, even as early as
the year 840, we find the monks asserting the rights of their
constitution against the Bishop Hélie, and refusing to recognise the
episcopal jurisdiction. The bishop did not hesitate to have recourse to
arms. The very threshold of the Church of S. Père was stained with
blood. The greater part of the monks were forced to flee from their
monastery, whilst the prelate seized all the precious ornaments and
property that belonged to them, and left but a bare sustenance for the
small band of brethren who had dared to remain. The hand of the Northman
completed, in 857 and 911, the ruin of the abbey thus begun by the
bishop, and it was not till 930 that that ‘noble, rich and virtuous
prelate,’ Aganon, built on the site of the ruins a vast monastery and
great church, and restored to the brethren and canons thereof their
confiscated vineyards and property. The work of the material and
spiritual reformation of the monastery was continued by his successor,
Ragenfroy. To this period must be referred the great square western
tower, of which we have spoken as being contemporary with the Cathedral
of Fulbert (_see_ p. 66 ff.). It is even possible that it formed a part
of the church reconstructed by the Bishop Aganon about the year 940. It
is certainly much the oldest portion of the building. The rest, together
with the monastic buildings, perished in the great fire which destroyed
the town and damaged the Cathedral in 1134. After that disaster the monk
Hilduard was entrusted by his abbot with the task of rebuilding the
church of the monastery, and he began to work in the year 1150. After he
had finished the choir, however, lack of funds brought matters to a
standstill. A wall was built across the western end of the choir in
order to enclose it. But whilst the foundations of this wall, which was
meant to serve as a temporary west end, were being dug a discovery was
made, the result of which was quickly to furnish the means needful for
continuing the construction of the church. A small vaulted chamber was
opened, in which was found the body of S. Gilduin. Miracles began to
occur. The faithful flocked to the new shrine, bringing rich gifts, and
about the year 1210 the building was again able to be taken in hand. The
church was completed. But when this was done, either because they were
not content with the choir of Hilduard, as being unworthy of the later
nave, or because it was already in need of repair, the monks of S. Père
rebuilt the choir towards the end of the reign of S. Louis. The apse was
finished in or about the year 1310. The monks made it, as it were,
almost one sheet of glass, and supported their beautiful, if daring,
creation by a series of sixteen buttresses without, which are higher,
lighter and more graceful than those of the nave. A beautiful
thirteenth-century doorway on the north side of the church is the
remaining feature of note on the exterior. But, in spite of the variety
of dates to which the various portions of the building belong, it is, as
a whole, singularly well proportioned and full of grace.
Within, since the Revolution, when the tombs of Fulbert and many other
bishops were destroyed together with much valuable and artistic
furniture, carved stalls and a Renaissance jubé, there are two main
attractions--the windows and the Limousin enamels. But before speaking
of them we must mention the epitaph of Robert, son of Richard, first
Duke of Normandy, who was _not_ Archbishop of Rouen, as the inscription
which is in the aisle states. Also the very rich and graceful triforium
of the nave, and the later and still more delicate triforium of the
choir, cannot fail to please.
The unique gallery of fourteenth-century glass presented by the windows
of S. Père is, as M. l’Abbé Bulteau remarked, arranged methodically in a
carefully-considered combination and not according to the whims of the
various founders, as was to a large extent the case with the
thirteenth-century lights of the Cathedral. On the left-hand side of the
nave are represented the Apostles and episodes from the Gospel story; on
the right, the Confessors and incidents drawn from the lives of the
martyrs; in the choir, martyrs, prophets and saints group round our
Saviour, who, as a little child, is borne on His mother’s arm, and as a
grown man hangs upon the tree of the Cross.
All the windows of the church, therefore, viewed thus, seem to converge
towards a common centre, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.
The scheme of the majority of windows is the presentation of large
single figures of stained glass surrounded by broad bands of grisaille.
On the north or left-hand side, beginning from the west end, next the
old tower, are two Apostles, set in a broad frame of grisaille.
These two Apostles are S. James the Less and S. Matthias. The next
window gives S. Jude and S. Barnabas, and the next two tell the story of
S. John the Baptist--(_a_) Baptizing Jesus; the daughter of Herodias
demanding his head and presenting his head in a charger to her mother;
John showing the Divine Lamb to his disciples. (_b_) The announcement to
Zacharias; his childhood, preaching, and answering Herod. The fifth
window shows S. Andrew (with a book) and S. John (with a book open). In
the next S. Bartholomew holds a cutlass and S. James a book, whilst the
seventh and eighth recount the history of S. Peter. For the seventh
shows him with his disciples, healing a man born blind, preaching, and
being delivered from prison by an angel. In the eighth S. Peter receives
the keys, appears before Nero, confronts Simon, is crucified and taken
up to heaven.
S. Thomas and S. Philip, S. Matthew and S. James fill the ninth and
tenth windows. The eleventh and twelfth recount the chief incidents in
the life of Jesus Christ. In the eleventh, the entry into Jerusalem, the
Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the
‘Touch me not’ are represented, and in the twelfth the disciples of
Emmaus, S. Thomas, the Ascension, Pentecost and Judgment. On the
right-hand or south side of the nave we are shown the Confessors and
incidents from ecclesiastical history. The first, next to the tower,
gives S. Benedict and S. Maur, for the Church of S. Père, it will be
remembered, was the church of a Benedictine monastery. The second light
gives S. Avitus and S. Laumer. The third relates the legend of S. Agnes;
she repels the son of the Proconsul and her modesty is miraculously
shielded; she is burnt at the stake and transferred. The story of S.
Catherine, who disputed with the Emperor and converted the heathen
philosophers and led them to martyrdom, is told in the fourth.
S. Malard and S. Solemnis, S. Lubin and S. Martin fill the fifth and
sixth. The seventh and eighth, which are now in a deplorable condition,
once illustrated the lives of S. Denis and S. Clement, the pope and
martyr. S. Gregory and S. Sylvester fill the ninth, the Virgin and
Child, with the donor kneeling below, the tenth.
The eleventh traces the history of the parents of the Virgin. Joachim
and Anna are repelled by the priest, Anne by her servant. Joachim feeds
his flocks; an angel appears to him and also to S. Anne, who goes out
and meets her husband at the gates of Jerusalem. She gives birth to
Mary, who presents herself at the Temple and marries Joseph.
The twelfth window portrays further scenes in the life of the
Virgin--the Annunciation, Visitation, Birth of Christ, Adoration of the
Magi, the Presentation and Death of Mary.
The windows of the choir, with the exception of those in the apse, are
of thirteenth-century glass. In them the patriarchs, prophets and
personages of the Old Testament are shown, to the number of forty,
carrying palms in their hands, and speaking, apparently, to each other.
The six apsidal windows contain the most brilliant glass in the abbey.
They are as remarkable, so M. l’Abbé Clerval observes, for elegance of
design as for vivacity of colouring. Each of them holds four life-size
figures of bishops or apostles surrounded with rich architectural
ornamentation; whilst the heads, divided into three quatrefoils, give
scenes of martyrdom and an angel bearing a crown for the martyred saints
below.
The grisailles of the triforium were replaced in the early part of the
nineteenth century by some glass painted in 1527 by Robert Pinaigrier,
which had been saved from the adjacent Church of S. Hilaire, destroyed
during the Revolution. Unfortunately they have been arranged with
extraordinary indifference to their meaning, and pieces of glass have
been stuck in pell-mell according as they happened to suit the shape of
the window or convenience of the glazier. The result is that windows
which, both in colouring and design, were quite exceptionally good have
been deprived of all the charm of their design and much of the effect of
their colour.
The lower series of windows of the church are for the most part modern.
They represent chiefly scenes from the Gospel story of the life of
Christ and come from the hand of M. Lorin, the glass-painter of
Chartres, whose _atelier_ is in the Rue de la Tannerie.
Leaving the study of the glass you should now go to the apsidal chapel
dedicated to the Conception. This chapel has been restored and
polychromed by M. Paul Durand, and contains a statue of the Virgin by
Bridan and the tombstone of Simon de Beron, Canon of Chartres in the
twelfth century. But it is the magnificent Limoges enamels of Leonard
Limousin, 1547, which we wish to see. They are ranged round the walls of
the chapel, and in order to see them you must ring the bell near the
chapel railings and summon the attendant.
These enamels, which are of extraordinary beauty and size (24 x 10⅝),
exquisite in colour and shading, and are in perfect preservation, come
from the chapel of the famous Château d’Anet, which Diane de Poitiers
built, _voulant une œuvre toute Française_, and of which Henri II.
wrote to his Queen--
‘S’il vous souvient, Madame, d’avoir lu
En quelque livre élégante et eslu
Le dessein rare et la description
De quelque lieu beau en perfection
Je vous supply imaginer et croire
Que c’est d’Annet le pourtraict et l’histoire.’
This magnificent château, the noblest type of the Renaissance in France,
was destroyed to a large extent (1799-1810,) but was in great part
restored by the late M. Moreau. Lying, as it does, on the Évreux line,
it is quite worth stopping to see. But the tourist may be grateful for
the information that it is 1½ kilomètres from the station, and is
only shown on Thursdays and Sundays.
The beautiful enamels before us, so rich in their varied shades of blue,
were presented by Henri II. to the lovely and accomplished mistress,
who, in spite of her years, had won his heart when he was but a lad of
thirteen.
They had been wrought for François I. by the famous Léonard
Limousin,[101] after the designs of Michel Rochetel. The date (1547)
and the initials and salamander of François bear witness to this fact,
and the initials L. L. on the handle of the sword of S. Paul and beneath
S. James the Less proclaim the artist.
The panels represent the twelve apostles, with their characteristic
emblems, and each apostle is set in a framework of Renaissance
ornament--genii and fantastic animals and garlands of flowers.
There is nothing else in S. Père of sufficient interest to detain us.
CHAPTER XIII
_The Prussians at Chartres_
‘Je sais le plan de Trochu
Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan!
Mon Dieu! quel beau plan!
Je sais le plan de Trochu!’
On the 26th of October 1901 a monument, standing at the entrance of the
Promenade des Charbonniers, near the Place du Châtelet, and dedicated to
the memory of the children of Eure-et-Loir, who laid down their lives
for their fatherland, was unveiled by M. Caillaux, the Minister of
Finance. The monument was designed by M. Nénot, and consists of a
triumphal arch in the Classic style, crowned by a pediment bearing the
arms of Chartres, Châteaudun, Dreux and Nogent-le-Rotrou. This is
accompanied by three groups in bronze: on either side an artilleryman
and a foot soldier of the _mobile_; in the centre, beneath the arch
itself, the principal group, representing ‘France calling to the
defence.’ It consists of a female figure, who personifies the Fatherland
and the Republic, brandishing in one hand a flag tattered and torn with
bullets, and pointing with the other in the direction of the enemy. And
an officer at her feet fires a revolver in that direction.
To the France of to-day this monument is not a mere memorial of the past
and useless valour of her sons, but a warning also, lest she should
forget the coming of the Prussians in 1870, her own military
unpreparedness, and, it should be, her own fatal political weakness.
Something, too, it doubtless expresses of that thirst for revenge which
threw her some years ago into the arms of Russia, and which that
alliance was really certain to prevent her from gratifying.
It was on Friday, the 30th of September 1870, that the Prussian soldiers
appeared for the first time near Chartres.[102] 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. It was agreed that half the
French garrison should evacuate the town, and that the Prussians should
halt at the Three Bridges till half-past four, and then take possession.
When the news of the capitulation was heard by the troops assembled on
the Boulevard Chasles,[103] they protested, and
[Illustration: Old Houses in the Rue Ste Même]
raised the cry of treason, which was the watchword of the whole war.
It had been expressly stipulated that the National Guard should be
disarmed, and Colonel Heiduck, who conducted the negotiations at
Morancez, had demanded the surrender of 2000 rifles. ‘But,’ replied M.
Labiche, the prefect, ‘there never have been more than 1300, and we
really have not time to get any more to make up the 2000.’ With such
inadequate means of defence, and with the threat of immediate
bombardment from the artillery, which was ranged in a semi-circle round
the town on the south-west side, hanging over their heads, the
representatives of Chartres behaved wisely in yielding at once. The
stranger at least cannot regret that the Cathedral was preserved from
the ordeal of a bombardment.
‘The Prussian troops,’ said the _Cologne Gazette_, ‘entered Chartres
with bands playing and saluted with enthusiastic cheers Prince Albert of
Prussia, whom they marched past. Next morning presented a striking scene
when these German warriors met in the famous crypt of the Cathedral, and
visited by the light of the lamps every part of that splendid
subterranean building.’
The occupation of Chartres lasted for five months--the place, of course,
was important to hold during the siege of Paris--but the inhabitants
would appear to have suffered very little, except from German music.
This is how M. Caillot, the historian of the occupation, describes the
behaviour of the Prussians on the morrow of their entry.
‘Towards nine o’clock in the morning their infernal music, which they
had had the indecency to parade through the town the night before,
echoed through the Place des Épars. The officers, smart and pomaded like
circus-clowns, strutted round the musicians and saluted each other with
a stiffness that they seemed to have borrowed from the English. Out of
the hotels and houses they poured in an endless stream, men of all
colours, sizes and ages, stiff, proud and haughty, with all the airs of
conquerors.’
Conquerors, after all, they were, but though, like all the French
writers of the period, M. Caillot refers to the Germans as barbarians
and savages, they seem to have done little that can honestly be called
savage--unless leaving without paying their bill, which amounted to
nearly half a million francs, can be considered so. The fact is that,
according to the unanimous testimony of foreign observers who
accompanied the army, the moderation of the German soldiers was as
remarkable as their successes.
During the weary months that ensued, the Chartrains remained as ignorant
of what was going on in the Department and round Paris as the
beleaguered Parisians themselves. The same unfounded hopes and false
rumours, the same invincible optimism and futile belief in the ‘plan of
Trochu,’ in successful sorties from Paris or in the victories of the
army of the Loire prevailed as in Paris itself. They are recorded in M.
Caillot’s little volume with something of the same pathos, but not with
the same spirit that distinguishes Francisque Sarcey’s _Le Siège de
Paris_. There we learn how the Chartrains listened to the battle of
Loigny raging in the distance, and thought that the sound of the
Prussian artillery was that of the French guns till the arrival of 2400
French prisoners told them the bitter truth, and how they rejoiced at
the lyrical proclamations of Gambetta, only to be reduced to despair at
the news of the fall of Orléans.
They learnt on the 29th of January, with bitter grief and mortification,
that Paris had been forced at last to capitulate, and from that time
onwards they were busy with the payment of their share of the
impositions and indemnities that were inflicted upon the conquered
nation.
The Prussians left Chartres on the 16th of March 1871.
CHAPTER XIV
_Itinerary and Expeditions_
The following scheme may perhaps prove of use to those who have but a
few hours to spend in Chartres and wish to find their way quickly about
the picturesque but tortuous streets of the old, lower town.
Leaving the station, go down the Rue Jean de Beauce, cross to the far
corner of the Place Châtelet, go down the Rue Sainte Même, take the
first turning to the left down the Rue du Cheval Blanc, and keeping up
to the right, where the street divides, you come out opposite the west
front of the Cathedral. Go down the Rue des Changes (opposite the south
porch of the Cathedral), and turning to the left before reaching the
Place Billard (the old site of the Castle of the Counts) reach the Place
de la Poissonnerie (fish-market: Maison du Saumon). Pass on into the Rue
S. Eman, and turning to the right pass Queen Bertha’s staircase, which
is in the Rue des Écuyers, opposite the Rue du Bourg. Bearing up the Rue
des Écuyers, follow the Rue S. Pierre. You leave the Church of S. Aignan
on your right and arrive at the old Abbey Church of S. Père. Leaving the
Place S. Pierre by the Rue du Pont S. Hilaire at the eastern corner of
it, cross the water and turn sharp to the left down the Rue Foulerie,
which skirts the river with its picturesque tanneries and wash-houses.
You pass on the right the street leading down to the Porte Guillaume.
Continuing, the Rue de la Foulerie becomes the Rue de la Tannerie, and
the Rue de la Tannerie the Rue Massacre. Cross the river and visit the
ruined Church of S. André, then go down the Rue de la Brèche. The Chapel
of Notre-Dame de la Brèche is on the right in this street, which runs
into the Place Drouaise. Before reaching this take the turn to the left
up the Rue Muret, which winds up into the Rue du Cardinal Pie (formerly
called the Rue du Marché de Filasse), from which a picturesque archway
leads through the old cloister buildings into the Rue S. Ives, which
opens on the north porch of the Cathedral. The Bishop’s Palace is now on
your left.
The promenade[104] known as the Tour de la Ville, at the foot of the
ancient ramparts and round the old moat of the town, should not be
omitted. You will start naturally from the Place Châtelet, down the
Promenade des Charbonniers, which brings you to the Place Drouaise, and
so on across the Pont Neuf to the Porte Guillaume and the Boulevard de
la Porte Morard. Hence the Rue du Pont de la Courtille leads to the
Place S. Michel, and thence by the Boulevard Chasles to the Place des
Epars.
The Rue Régnier leads from the Boulevard Chasles to the Place des
Halles.
Some magnificent views of the Cathedral and the town, and ‘bits’ of the
old walls and moat, will be obtained in the course of this circuit.
EXPEDITIONS.
The Château de Maintenon (Duc de Noailles) lies on the line between
Chartres and Paris, and, with its waterworks, is well worth a visit.
Other châteaux in the neighbourhood are those of Villebon, near
Courville, which belongs to the Marquis de Pontoi-Poncarré, and
Éclimont, near Gallardon, the property of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld.
DATES OF THE CHIEF FESTIVALS AT CHARTRES.
May 31.--Notre-Dame du Pilier.
August 15.--Feast of the Assumption.
September 8 and 15; December 8.--On September 15 and December 8 a
magnificent procession through the Crypt takes place in the evening.
[Illustration: Map]
INDEX
A
Acco, leader of conspiracy in Gaul, 12;
death, 13.
Adèle, widow of Count Etienne, dispute with S. Ives, 104, 105.
Aganon, Bishop of Chartres, 58.
Agincourt, battle of, 255.
Albert the Dean, election of, as Bishop of
Chartres, in opposition to that of Theodoric, 75.
Albigenses, 236.
Amiens, Cathedral of, compared with that of Chartres, 187.
Âne qui vielle, 125;
passage called after, 127.
Angel-dial, 126.
Anne of Bretagne, bell known as, 191.
Apprentices in the Middle Ages, 166.
Aquitaine, Duke of, contributes to building of Cathedral, 73.
Arrald, Bishop of Chartres, 89, 90.
Avoués and Bourgeois, quarrel between, and outbreak of the people, 236-238.
B
Banvin, right of, 235.
Bells of Clocher Neuf, 191, 192, 193.
Bells of Clocher Vieux, 193, 194.
Berchères-l’Évêque, quarries of, 118, 147.
Bishop and Chapter, quarrel between, 261.
Bishop’s Palace, custom of sacking, 102.
Bohémond of Tarentum, Prince of Antioch, marriage of, 105;
preaches crusade, 105.
Burgundians and Armagnacs, civil war between, 253 ff.
C
Cæsar in Gaul, 8 ff.
Canons, encroachment of, and struggle with Counts, 102, 103.
“ remains of old house of, 103.
Carnutes, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Casket of Teudon and other relics preserved in Cathedral, 48.
Castor, Bishop of Chartres, 31.
Cathedral, 2, 57, 113, 118, 119, 149, 165, 182, 187, 195-198.
“ dimensions of, 230.
“ foundation of early Church, 15, 16.
“ oldest portions of, 23.
“ Vulphard’s, 63-66;
burnt, 70.
“ Fulbert begins the rebuilding of, 72;
work completed, 76;
architect of, 76;
description of, 76-78;
continuation of work, and dedication by Theodoric 79.
“ rebuilt in part by S. Ives, 106;
decoration of, 107;
enthusiasm of men and women in advancing the building, 114-117;
artists of, their work, payment, etc. 119 ff.;
burnt, 49, 140, 141, 184.
“ Pope’s legate incites to rebuilding of, 142;
repetition of former enthusiasm, 142 ff.
“ windows of, 150 ff.
“ date of building of various parts of, 182, 183.
Cathedral, dedication of, 183.
“ gradual growth of building, 184.
“ interior of extant building, style of architecture,
ornamentation, etc., 184 ff., 198 ff.
“ destructive work of alteration, 201, 202.
“ desecration of, by Revolutionists, 202.
“ porches of, 208 ff.
“ looting of, 333.
“ profane celebrations in, 334.
“ ornaments and images of, burnt, 334.
“ gifts to, 40, 43, 51, 59, 108, 256.
Chambre des Sonneurs, 190.
Chapel of the Seven Sorrows, 184, 200.
Chapelle Vendôme, 200.
Charles VII., 257, 258.
Charles-le-Mauvais, 248.
Charles the Wise, 252.
Charter, town of Chartres receives, 238.
“ conditions of, 241, 242.
Chartrain Crusaders, 100.
Chartres, _passim_.
“ defences of, in fourteenth century, 244, 247.
“ made the capital of the Burgundians, 255, 256.
“ retaken by stratagem, 257, 258.
“ siege of, by Condé, 272-279;
record and relics of siege, 279, 280, 281.
“ siege of, by Henry IV., 302 ff.
“ constituted the capital of the Department of Eure-et-Loir, 327.
“ march upon, and occupation of, by Prussians, 346-350.
“ school of, 71, 78, 286.
Château d’Anet, 289, 343.
Chemin de César, 16.
Chevauchée, equestrian promenade to Josaphat-Lès-Chartres, 98, 99.
Citadel, Porte S. Michel converted into, 311, 322.
Claude Huvé, 286.
Clement, glazier of Chartres, 164.
Clement Marot, 269, 270.
Clocher Neuf, 28, 110, 113, 118, 140, 189-193.
“ “ signals from, during siege, 272.
Clocher Vieux, 27, 109, 110, 113, 114, 118, 125, 126, 190, 193.
Cloister, 102; remains of gates, 103.
Clôture du Chœur, 201, 202-207.
Clovis, 14, 35, 36.
Cnut, contributes to building of Cathedral, 73.
Coalition of Chartrains, Champenois and Angevins
ainst King of England, 233.
College founded at Chartres, 322.
Communes, way prepared for their institution, 95.
Conconnetodumnus, leader of revolt in Gaul, 13.
Condé, Prince of, 271, 272, 273, 279.
Consecration of Henry IV., miraculous oil used for, 312;
its arrival at Chartres, 312, 313;
taken back to Marmoutiers, 316.
Constituent Assembly, decrees of, concerning Church, 327.
Corporations, trading, in the Middle Ages, 165, 166, 167.
Council of Clermont, 95.
Countess Catherine, 236.
Counts, government by, 53.
“ power of, 231.
“ of Chartres, castle of, 54, 55, 83.
County of Chartres bought by Philippe-le-Bel, 238.
County of Chartres raised to a duchy, 266.
Courtier, P., carver in wood, 284.
Crécy and Poitiers, 244.
Crimes, compensation for, by cash, 85.
Crown, intervention of, in private quarrels, 85;
power over monastic property, 85.
Crusades, effects of, 96 ff.
Crypt of Cathedral, 21 ff.
D
D’Ardelay, colonel of the Gascons, 277, 278.
Dimensions of Cathedral, 230.
Divine intervention on behalf of justice, 87, 88.
Divitiacus, Arch-Druid, 7.
Dreux, battle under walls of, 271.
Druids, 3 ff., 11, 15, 19, 29.
Du Cheval Blanc, street, 16.
Duchy of Chartres, 266, 323.
E
English archers, 244, 255.
Eodald, converted heathen, 16.
Etienne, Count, Chartrain Crusader, 100-102, 104.
Eudes, Count of Chartres, 59;
narrative in connection with, 59, 60.
Eudes II., 73, 74, 75.
Evrard, Viscomte of Chartres, Chartrain Crusader, 100.
Evreux, sacked and burnt, 141.
F
Feast of Fools, 99.
Feudalism, change resulting from advent of, 52.
Field of the Repulsed (Pré des Reculés), 47, 279.
France, distressful state of country after Poitiers, 244, 248, 249.
Franciscans, monastery and library of, near Chartres, destroyed, 272.
François de Cologne, 78.
Frotbold, Bishop of Chartres, slain with his followers, 42.
Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres (S. Fulbert), 69-79.
G
Gallardon, taken by Chartrains, 258.
Gantelme, Bishop of Chartres, 58.
Gasselin, Bishop of Chartres, saves the town, 45, 46.
Gaul, division of, under Augustus, 14.
Geoffrey the First, Bishop of Chartres, 90, 91, 92.
Girondins, 328-330.
Godfrey, Bishop of Chartres, 20.
Godfrey, Viscount of Châteaudun, 74.
Grandes compagnies (freebooters), 252.
Grotto, the, 3, 28.
Guillaume Morhier, seizure and imprisonment of daughter, 253.
Gutruatus, leader of revolt in Gaul, 13;
his death, 14.
H
Hardouin, Bishop of Chartres, 59, 63.
Hastings, Chartres taken and burnt by, 42.
Henry I. of England, letter of S. Ives to, 107;
responds through Queen Matilda, 108.
Henry I., successor of Robert the Good, 77;
present at dedication of Cathedral, 79.
Henry IV. of France, besieges Chartres, 302 ff.;
makes terms with besieged, 309;
his entry into Chartres, 310, 311;
makes Chartres his seat of government, 311;
reconciled with Church of Rome, 311;
coronation at Chartres, 312-316.
Henry V. of England, 255, 256.
Henry, son of Thibault the Great, 232.
Hospital, or Hôtel-Dieu, of Notre-Dame, 103, 104, 127.
Hôtel-de-Ville, 317, 318;
library at, 318.
House of the Old Consuls, 267.
Huguenots, under Condé, destroy parts of Cathedral, 38;
besiege Chartres, 272-279;
persecuted at Chartres, 270;
allowed their own church, 322.
Hugues, Viscomte de Chartres, 104, 105;
joins Crusade, 106.
Hunald, Chartres taken and burnt by, 40.
Hundred Years’ War, 243, 244.
I
Illuminisme, heresy of, 324.
Irene, Empress, 43.
“ “ veil of, 48.
J
Jacobins, 329, 330.
Jean, carpenter of Cathedral, 108.
Jean de Frétigny, Bishop of Chartres, 256, 258.
Jean Dupré, printer, 286.
Jean-le-Bon, 244, 252.
Jehan de Beauce, architect, 110, 190, 194, 200, 203, 283, 284, 286.
Jehan Soulas, sculptor, 203.
Joan of Arc, 256;
her brother, Captain of Chartres, 256.
John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, 234, 235.
John the Fearless, 253-255.
Josaphat-Lès-Chartres, abbey of, 98;
equestrian promenade to, 98, 99.
Jubé (roodloft), 106, 122, 201.
Judicial combat, disputes decided by, 86, 87.
L
La Dame des Grottes, 195.
La Hire, 257, 258.
La Huguenotte, 273.
Laurent des Moulins, poet, 289, 290.
Layé collection of arms, etc., 321.
Leonard Limousin, enamels of, 343, 344.
Lieu-Fort, Puits des Saints Forts, 19 ff.
“ chapel of, 65.
Life and property, insecurity of, in eleventh and twelfth centuries, 84.
Louis, Count of Chartres and King of Bithynia, 235, 236.
Louis-le-Jeune, 232, 233.
Louis XI., 261, 262.
Lubessac, M. de, Bishop of Chartres, refuses oath to New Constitution, 328.
Lucius Plancus, 11;
remains of camp, 12.
M
Magenard, Abbot of S. Père, 61-63.
Maison du Médecin, 289.
Maison du Saumon, 268.
Malledegonde, Sister to S. Calétric, 36.
Marceau, General, 328, 335, 336.
Marot, 269-270.
Martyrium, or Chapel of S. Lubin, 23, 27, 28.
Mary Queen of Scots, reception at Chartres, 263, 265.
Mary and Gabriel, bells known as, 193, 306.
Mathurin Régnier, 286, 292-301.
Matilda, wife of Henry I., her gifts to Cathedral, 108.
Métier de la Rivière, 167, 168.
Michel Félibien, historian, 286.
Miles d’Illiers, Bishop of Chartres, 261.
Miracles wrought by Our Lady of Chartres, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148.
Modesta, martyr, 17, 18.
Mosaic glass, colours and manufacture of, 151-155.
Municipal Museum, 317, 318.
N
Nicholas de Thou, Bishop of Chartres, 310, 311, 321;
assists at coronation of Henry IV., 313-316.
Nicolas Boisnet, appointed Bishop in place of M. de Lubessac, 328.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, 280, 306;
miraculous intervention of, 281, 282.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, chapel of, 5, 280, 282.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire, 242.
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, 4, 5, 21, 28, 29, 30, 274;
burnt by Revolutionists, 335.
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, chapel of, 16, 25, 28, 65.
O
Old wooden houses in Chartres, 267, 268.
Orléans, sacked and burnt, 13;
named after Aurelian, 14;
besieged by Attila, 33.
P
Paix Fourrée, 253, 255.
Peace of Longjumeau, 279.
Peasants, amelioration of condition of, 84.
Pepin, 40.
Peter the Hermit, 96.
Philippe I., marriage of, opposed by S. Ives, 93.
Philippe Auguste, 233, 237.
Philippe-le-Bel, 238, 239, 242.
Philippe de Valois, 243.
Philip Delorme, 289.
Pierre, Abbot of Celles and S. Remy, Bishop of Chartres, 235.
Pierre Nicole, theologian, 286.
Pierre Plume, Canon of Notre-Dame, has folio missal printed, 286.
Pilgrims to Chartres and their offerings, 144, 145.
Place Billard, 54, 83.
Place de l’Étape au Vin, 83.
Porche Royal, 29, 98, 106, 126, 127 ff.
Porte Guillaume, 247.
Porte Neuve, and eight other gates, part of enclosure of cloister, 103.
Porte Royale, Porte Speciosa, Porte Triumphalis, 128.
Priscus, King of the Carnutes, 11.
Procession, annual, on anniversary of deliverance of town, 279, 280, 306.
Q
Queen Bertha, 267, 268.
Queen Bertha’s staircase, 267.
Quirinus, 17, 22;
sudden death, 18.
R
Ragenfroi, Bishop of Chartres, 58, 59.
Reformation, the, and its supporters, 269.
Regnault de Mouçon, Bishop of Chartres, 140, 235.
Renaissance, influence of, 200, 201.
Revolution, 324 ff.
Robert, King, 72, 74;
Canticles composed by, 78.
Robert of Tours, Bishop of Chartres, Cardinal and Legate, 89.
Robert-le-Breton, Bishop of Chartres, 233.
Robert Pinaigrier, window painted by, 342.
Roger, architect, 139.
Rollo, 44, 49, 51.
Rose of France, window so called, 159, 183.
Rue de la Brèche, 279.
S
S. Aignan, 33, 39.
“ church of, 33, 34, 35, 83.
S. Albin, 15, 16.
S. André, church of, 282-284.
S. Anne, chapel of, 27.
“ head of, sent from Constantinople, 27, 212.
S. Aventin, first Bishop of Chartres, 18.
S. Bernard, preaches crusade, 232.
S. Calétric, Bishop of Chartres, 36, 37.
“ sarcophagus of, 26.
S. Chéron, 31.
“ abbey of, destroyed, 42;
restored, 50.
“ church of, destroyed, 273.
S. Chéron-du-Chemin, 31.
S. Clement, chapel of, 26, 65.
S. Denis, 31.
S. Denis, battle of, 271.
S. Eustace, 163.
S. Fiacre, chapel of, 248.
S. Fulbert; see Fulbert.
S. Fulbert, chapel of, 27.
S. Foy, church of, destroyed, 274;
rebuilt, 274.
S. Jean-en-Vallée, monastery of, 75.
S. John the Baptist, chapel of, 27.
S. Joseph, chapel of, 27.
S. Ives, Bishop of Chartres, 91, ff., 283;
his attitude towards divorce, 92;
opposes marriage of Philippe I. with Bertrade de Montfort, 93, 94;
seized, and lands ravaged, 94;
takes part in Council of Clermont, 95;
preaches crusade, 99;
dispute with Adèle, widow of Count Etienne, 104, 105;
death, 106.
S. Laumer, 162.
S. Laumer, church of, restored, 50.
S. Lubin, Bishop of Chartres, 36, 37.
“ tomb of, 38.
“ church of, restored, 50.
“ chapel of, or martyrium, 23, 27, 28.
S. Martin, 31.
“ abbey of, restored, 50.
“ chapel of, 25, 26.
S. Martin-au-Val, church of, 37, 38, 39, 43, 64, 65.
“ monastery of, 31.
S. Martin-le-Viandier, church of, 26.
S. Mary Magdalene, chapel of, 27.
S. Nicholas, chapel of, 25, 26, 37.
S. Père, abbey of, 5, 36, 58, 59, 83;
destroyed, 42;
restored, 50, 58;
election of abbot, dispute concerning, 61, 62, 63;
monks of, their right of jurisdiction, 85, 86, 337;
abbey church of, 65, 336 ff.;
barracks on site of abbey, 103, 336.
S. Piat, 44.
S. Potentian, 15, 16.
S. Potentian, church consecrated by, 16;
destroyed and rebuilt, 19;
“ chapel of, 65.
S. Savinian, 16.
“ chapel of, 65.
Sancta Camisia, or Veil of the Blessed Virgin,
3, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 142, 143.
Serfage, 52.
Serfs, ecclesiastical, claimed by secular Lords, 234.
Sérotin, converted heathen, 16.
Social conditions in the days of chivalry, 88, 89.
Sœurs-cryptes, les, 194, 195.
Streets of Chartres, filthy condition of, 264, 265.
T
Talbot, 258.
Tanners and cobblers, 168, 169.
Tasgetius, nominated king by Cæsar, assassinated, 11.
Tertres, 83.
The Forest, old roof known as, 193.
Theodoric, Bishop of Chartres, 75, 79.
Thibault-le-Tricheur, first hereditary Count of Chartres, 53, 54, 59.
Thibault II., 61, 62, 63.
Thibault, successor of Eudes II., 75, 76.
Thibault the Great, 231.
Thibault-le-Bon, 232, 233.
Thomas of Canterbury, 233.
Tocsin bell, 192, 193.
Tour de Ville, la Chandelle du Tour, 279, 280.
Tour le Roi, Tour le Comte, 57.
Treaty of Brétigny, 249;
preliminaries and miraculous intervention
of Notre-Dame de Chartres, 249-252.
Treaty of Troyes, 255.
Tribunal, judicial, set up at Chartres, 266.
Tribunal of Commerce, 267.
Truce of God, the, 95.
Truie qui file, 125.
V
Vercingetorix, 13.
Vierge Noire, Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, 29, 201, 279;
offerings at shrine, 242, 243.
“ chapel of, 208.
Vintage of La Beauce, 169, 170.
Virgini Parituræ, 4, 16, 29, 30.
“ chapel dedicated to, 31.
Vulphard, Bishop of Chartres, 63.
W
William of the White Hands, Bishop of Chartres, 233.
Windows of Cathedral--apse, 158, 161;
aisles, 156, 157;
choir, 150, 161;
designers of, 164;
donors of, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170;
nave, 150, 153, 154, 157;
north transept, 155, 159, 160;
rose, 153, 158, 159, 160, 184, 185;
western, 150, 158;
south transept, 160;
subjects of, 170 ff.
Z
Zodiacal Signs, months of the year, treatment of, 130, 131.
EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND COY. LIMITED
PRINTERS
FOOTNOTES:
[1]
‘Belsia, triste Solum, cui desunt bis tria tantum:
Fontes, prata, nemus, lapides, arbusta, racemus.’
The couplet has been neatly translated:--
‘Le triste pays que la Beauce!
Car il ne baisse ni ne hausse;
Et de six choses de grand prix
Collines, fontaines, ombrages,
Vendanges, bois et pâturages
En Beauce il n’en manque ... que six!’
[2] In this connection, _see_ the window, No. 6, in the clerestory
of the nave of the Cathedral, north side, the subject of which is
‘Tilling the Ground.’
[3] Un Athée serait mal à l’aise ici.
[4] September 15 and December 8.
[5] For a theory of the relation of their ceremonial to that of other
primitive cults, _see_ Mr. J. G. Fraser’s fascinating book, _The
Golden Bough_ (2nd Edition), and Mr. Andrew Lang’s criticism of that
theory in his _Magic and Religion_ (New Edition).
[6] Such Roman remains as have been found at Chartres together with
these coins will be found in the Musée, Hôtel de Ville (Rue de la
Mairie, Place des Halles).
[7] Tibullus, i. 8.
[8] _Acta SS. MM. Saviniani et Potentiani_, manuscripts edited by
L’Abbé Hénault, Origines Chrétiennes de la Gaule Celtique.
[9] Representations of these early martyrdoms are to be found in the
beautiful statue of Modesta, with bas-relief of the well, etc., and
the statue of S. Potentian, with bas-relief of his martyrdom, on the
western supports of the north porch (looking towards the new tower),
and in the first window of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart.
[10] The monk Paul, who lived at Chartres towards the end of the
eleventh century and wrote the _Cartulaire de Saint Père_, speaks of
it as _Locus Fortis_.
[11] The crypt is open and free from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., and shown
to visitors by the concierge at certain hours throughout the day
for a small fee. Apply to the lodge of the Maison des Clercs at the
south-east corner of the church.
[12] Pintard MS.
[13] _See_ pp. 23, 43, 64, 76.
[14] Notice in this connection the two beadwork belts dedicated by
the chiefs of the Hurons, 1676, and Abnaqui Indians, 1700, which are
now in the western recess, which is the Chapel of S. Savinian or the
Saints Forts.
[15] Wisdom.
[16] The Rue des Changes, starting almost opposite the south porch of
the Cathedral, leads in a direct line to the Place S. Aignan.
[17] The third window from the north-west corner is called the
Bishop’s Window, and contains figures of S. Aignan, S. Martin of
Tours, S. Denis, and S. Nicholas.
[18] See him portrayed in the beautiful brown and yellow glass of the
fifth window of the south clerestory of the Cathedral nave.
[19] Third window of the south clerestory of the nave.
[20] The episcopal palace as it now stands is a handsome
eighteenth-century red brick building, and was built by the Bishop
de Fleury in 1760. Vast and sumptuous, with its Italian portico and
flights of steps, with its gardens of which you see but a small part
through the _grille_ which opens on the cloister near the north porch
of the Cathedral, with its wing ‘de la Duchesse,’ as it was called
after the Duchesse de Fleury, mother of the bishop, and the wing
built in 1702, wherein are the immense reception-rooms, this palace,
regal almost in its size and magnificence, suggests the temporal and
spiritual power of the prelates who numbered among their vassals
the highest barons of the realm and whose diocese was known at Rome
as the Great Bishopric. But it is little in accord with the life or
the means of the twentieth-century bishops, to whom, as to their
Anglican brethren, the palaces they have to maintain are usually white
elephants.
[21] There is a punning saying that this church has ‘trois clochers et
deux cents cloches’ (deux _sans_).
[22] He figures in the Galerie des Rois, on the western façade of the
Cathedral.
[23] As early as 680 the Episcopal schools of Chartres were held in
repute.
[24] The story of this presentation is told in the glass of the
Chapel of S. John the Baptist in the Church of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Charles-le-Chauve caused it to be brought thence into France.
[25] S. Piat preached the Gospel to the Carnutes in the third century
before going to gain the crown of martyrdom at Tours. He is the saint
to be invoked by farmers for fair weather in the rainy years. See the
chapel dedicated to him, built out beyond the apse of the Cathedral.
This chapel was added in the fourteenth century, and is a good example
of that period, the doorway at the foot of the staircase which
gives access to it from the Cathedral being especially beautiful.
In the tympanum of this doorway is a statue of the Virgin and the
Christ-Child playing with a dove. The bracket of the tympanum of the
doorway at the top of the staircase once supported a statue of S.
Piat. It has been destroyed, but you may see a picture of the saint
in the grisaille above this door. The glass belongs partly to the
fourteenth and partly to the fifteenth century, and is good, though
not so good as that of the rest of the Cathedral. It has suffered
from an ignorant application of oil-colour some fifty years ago.
The polychrome bosses in the roof and the rich capitals are full of
detail, and skilfully wrought. The exterior, unlike the interior,
is unprepossessing. Before the year 1793 it could boast a spire of
lead and wood, which may have done something to relieve the present
effect of heaviness. The staircase which connects the chapel with the
Cathedral is, however, very beautiful.
[26] _Roman de Rou._
[27] _Le livre des Miracles de Chartres_ (translated into French verse
from some Latin collection in the thirteenth century).
[28] _Cartulaire de S. Père._
[29] It was outside the walls of that day. The New Gate was that which
afterwards formed the gate of the cloister, opposite the Renaissance
clock tower, north-west of the Cathedral, destroyed at the end of the
eighteenth century. Two pillars of the gate then destroyed are still
visible.
[30] Le Pré des Reculés.
[31] To visit the treasure, apply to the chaplain who guards the
Chapel of Notre-Dame du Pilier. (Fee, half a franc.)
[32] _Cf._ the phrase in the Charter of King John (1356) ‘quam-quidem
ecclesiam ipsa virgo gloriosa elegit pro sua camera speciali.’
[33] _Cf._
‘Ne leissent en Chartrain et en Duneiz bordel,
Ne mezon en estant ki seit fors du chastel;
Ne leissent boef ne vaque, genice ni torel
Coc, capon, ne geline, ne viez chien ne chael.’
_Roman de Rou._
[34] Compare the castles and cathedrals of Durham and Lincoln.
[35] This monastery, south of the town, like that of S. Martin-au-Val,
formed part of the domain of the Counts.
[36] Fulbert’s name in Chartres has been given to a street which
runs parallel with the south-west corner of the Cathedral. A statue
of the bishop, holding in his hand a scroll on which is incorrectly
displayed a plan of the _present_ Cathedral, is to be seen on the
eastern extremity of the choir screen. A fresco portrait of him was
discovered some years ago in the Church S. Hilaire at Poitiers. The
curious portrait of him speaking to his people _within his Cathedral_,
which is here reproduced, was painted on vellum by André de Mici in
1028, the year of Fulbert’s death, and illustrates a _tombeau_, or
panegyric, composed in his honour by his pupil, the musician, Sigo.
[37] _Migne’s Patrology_, Vol. 141.
[38] _Cf._ York Minster.
[39] It was situated outside the walls, on the north side. Destroyed
by the Huguenots in 1568, the site is still marked by the name of the
Clos S. Jean, which is near the railway station, and upon which you
look from the Butte des Charbonniers.
[40] Monographie de la Cathédrale de Chartres par l’Abbé Bulteau, 2nd
edition, 1887-1891. Two vols.
[41] Henricus Rex hujus ecclesiæ lacunar construxit.
[42] Those who are curious on this subject will find some examples of
his plain-song in a volume edited by M. Merlet and M. L’Abbé Clerval,
and entitled _Un Manuscript Chartrain du XI^e. Siècle_.
[43] _Œuvres de Fulbert_, p. 177, 1608 edition.
[44] S. Eman of Cappadocia founded a small hermitage beneath the
shadow of Notre-Dame, and this hermitage was afterwards turned into a
chapel, fragments of the walls of which still remain (Rue S. Eman).
The apse was formerly supported by the old town wall of the ninth
century.
[45] It is only fair to add that the _Cartulaire_ of Notre-Dame speaks
of this bishop (Abbot of Brêmes) in terms of the highest praise. Under
Arrald, among many other benefactions, _William the Conqueror_ (1070)
caused ‘a good, a precious’ campanile to be erected over the central
point of the transept of the Cathedral, ‘for the repose of the soul
of his daughter Adeliza,’ piously observing that ‘The gifts which we
offer to God, and which we dedicate to His glory, are not for us loss
or sacrifice, for thus we only preserve our riches and multiply them
with the hope of eternal life.’
[46] The Pope had condemned the royal investiture by cross and ring as
implying spiritual jurisdiction in the throne.
[47] Fresnay l’Évêque. The bishop’s house may still be traced in the
name of a farm, Château de l’Évêque.
[48] A _Bénitier_ saved from it is to be found in the Cathedral crypt.
[49] Marquis, may the monks of Cluny make you their head or may you be
Abbot of Cîteaux, since you have a heart so base as to prefer two oxen
and a plough at Montferrat to being Emperor elsewhere.
[50] Stalls first, and then shops, were set up about the western porch
as soon as it was built. Pilgrimages meant commerce. There was traffic
not only in images of the Virgin, but also in the necessaries of
life. Merchants found here a ready market, and one in which they were
protected from the rapacity and exactions of the feudal lords.
[51] Lépinois’s _Histoire de Chartres_, 2 vols., 1858.
[52] The present one is on a pivot, and serves as a weather-cock.
[53] The roodloft or gallery over the entrance into the choir is
sometimes called the Jubé, from the words ‘Jubé, Domine, benedicere,’
pronounced from it. (Parker).
[54] Page 25.
[55] The south tower of the west front.
[56]
Clocher de Chartres, nef d’Amiens,
Chœur de Beauvais, Portail de Reims.
[57] The octagonal spire is made of the light stone of Marboué.
[58] ‘The endless upward reach of the great west front, the clear
silvery tone of its surface, the way three or four magnificent
features are made to occupy its serene expanse, its simplicity,
majesty and dignity--these things crowd upon one’s sense with a force
that makes the act of vision for the moment almost all of life. There
is an inexpressible harmony in the façade of Chartres.’--HENRY
JAMES--_Portraits of Places._
[59] _Livre des Miracles._
[60]
Mens hebes ad verum per materialia surgit
Et demersa prius hac visa luce resurgit.
[61] There were formerly five statues on the front of the south-west
tower. The Ass is resting on two human heads that seem crushed by
his weight. The Sow is much mutilated. A similar piece occurs on the
façade of S. Pol-de-Léon (Finisterre). The motive of an ass playing
a lyre is found in ancient Egyptian monuments; a dog playing a lyre
occurs at Poitiers.
[62] The same legend is connected with the Imp of Lincoln and also
with one of the churches at Rome.
[63] I drink--burn wood--prune vines--give grass--flowers--field
sports--hay--harvest--vintage--sow corn--fatten swine on acorns--kill
swine.
[64] Revelation, chaps. iv., v.
[65] _La Cathédrale._
[66] ‘Cui toto par nulla hodie splendescit in orbe.’--Book IV.
[67]
‘La haute dame glorieuse
Qui voloit avoir merveilleuse
Iglise et haute et longue et lee
Si que sa per ne fu trouée
Son douz fils pria doucement
Que miracles apertement
En son iglise a Chartres feist
Que touz le peuples le veist
Si que de toutes pars venissent
Gens qui offerendes tant feissent
Que achevée fust siglise
Qui estoit a faire emprise.’
_Livre des Miracles_, p. 32.
[68]
‘Lors vindrent gens de totes pars
Qui en charrestes et en chars
Grans dons a l’iglise aportoient
Qui a l’œuvre mestier avoient . . .
Tant y venoit de pelerins
Et par voïes et par chemins
Que c’estoit une grand merveille,
Chacune nuit fesoient veille
Et en avoit tant en l’iglise . . .
Si que li clerc qui a matines
De nuit a l’iglise venolent
Entrer ou cloitre ne poaient.’
[69] The window which recorded in a series of medallions many of these
miracles has been sadly mutilated (south aisle).
[70] _Histoire de la Peinture sur verre d’après ses Monuments en
France_, 2 Vols., folio, 1841. The coloured plates of this fine work
give no idea, however, of the real richness of the colours of the
glass. _Windows_, by Lewis Day, is the best English book upon stained
glass.
[71] The strong iron bars supporting the glass are frequently bent
to follow the outline of the medallions. This is only found in early
glazing.
[72] The subject of the French apprentice is pleasantly expounded in
Mr. Tighe Hopkins’s _An Idler in Old France_. His German counterpart I
have dealt with in my _Story of Nuremberg_.
[73] Henry James, _Portraits of Places_.
[74] A similar legend is told of the consecration of Westminster
Abbey. ‘One stormy Sunday night during the reign of King Sebert,
the eve of the day fixed by Mellitus, Bishop of London, for the
consecration of Sebert’s newly-finished church at Thorney, it happened
that one Edrie, a fisherman, was casting his nets into the Thames. His
attention was arrested by a voice calling from the opposite shore at
Lambeth. He crossed, and found there a venerable stranger in foreign
garb, who desired to be ferried over to Thorney Isle. Edrie complied
with the request. The stranger landed and went at once to the church.
And while Edrie waited on the bank, suddenly the air grew bright with
celestial splendours, there was no darkness more or shadow in the
monastery, and choirs of angels he beheld ascending and descending on
a ladder which reached from heaven to earth, with song and flaming
tapers and sweet odours of incense. The fisherman remained gazing
at these wonders and caught nothing all night. At last the stranger
returned and said unto Edrie, “I am Peter, keeper of the keys of
Heaven. When Mellitus comes to-morrow, tell him all that you have
seen, and show him that I, S. Peter, have consecrated my own Church of
S. Peter, Westminster.”‘
[75] Rouillard, _Parthénie_.
[76]
‘Quer tele fu sa destinée
Que dou seint feu fut alumée
Dont li martir ardant alument
Qui a seint Leu Fort acoustument
En la crote à Chartres venir
La ou la Dame fet fenir
Dedens ix jorz la maladie
Ou soit a mort ou soit a vie.’
JEHAN LE MARCHANT.
[77] _Cf._ Walter Pater, Gaston de Latour.
[78] _Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture._
[79] Chartres.
[80] The choir is the largest in France, after that of Laon.
[81] Two large statues of Leah and Rachel were formerly on the piers
here, but were destroyed in 1793.
[82] Restored 1901.
[83] First used on some _jettons d’argent_ struck for distribution on
January 1, 1775. It is, perhaps, an adaptation in elegiac verse of the
‘Ob cives servatos’ found on certain coins of Augustus.
[84] Jacques Bonhomme was the nickname of the French peasantry, and
his cry had been
‘Cessez, cessez, gens d’armes et piétons
De piller et manger le Bonhomme
Qui de long temps Jacques Bonhomme
Se nomme.’
[85] It was in this very year that Louis de Bourbon, Comte de Vendôme,
in expiation of the vow which he had made when held prisoner by his
brother, the Count of Marche, having come as a pilgrim to Chartres,
began to build the Flamboyant chapel, in the south aisle of the
Cathedral, which bears his name.
[86] Of this La Hire the following anecdote is told. He was marching
to relieve Montargis, which was in dire straits after a long
resistance to the besieging English. On his way he met a priest, from
whom he demanded absolution. ‘Confess your sins, then,’ returned the
priest. ‘I have no time,’ was the reply, ‘for I am in a hurry to
engage the English; and, besides, the tale of a soldier’s sins is
not a short one.’ The priest somewhat hesitatingly pronounced the
sentence of absolution. La Hire immediately knelt down by the wayside
and prayed aloud, ‘God, I pray Thee to do this day on La Hire’s behalf
what Thou wouldst that La Hire should do for Thee, supposing he was
God and Thou wast La Hire.’ His somewhat uncanonical prayer was
granted. He attacked the English and obliged them to raise the siege
of Montargis. I note a curious parallel between this prayer of his and
the quaint old English epitaph of John Hildebrod,--
‘Here lies the body of old John Hildebrod.
Have mercy on his soul, O God!
As he would do, if he were God,
And you were old John Hildebrod.’
[87] Contemporary MS. (Bibliothèque Municipale), Duparc, 1578.
[88] _Siège de Paris_, Francisque Sarcey.
[89] This incident is represented in the engraving by Perrissim, 1570,
here reproduced. It will be noticed that the artist has ignored the
river.
[90] Edited by M. L’Abbé Métais, 1895.
[91] (_See_ p. 198).
[92] Left of the Place de la Gare.
[93] Connecting the Boulevard Chasles with the Rue des Bouchers.
[94] Thus built Claudius Huvé, physician, for the adornment of the
city and the benefit of posterity.
[95] _Journal des Choses plus Mémorables Advenues à Chartres_,
1579-1592.
[96] _Histoire de Chartres_, Souchet.
[97] Cérémonies observées au sacre et couronement du très-chrestien et
très valeureux Henry IV., etc.--Paris. Jamet Mettayer. 1594.
[98] No. 189, a picture of the Flemish school, represents Henri
Quatre surrounded by his staff and watching the effect of the
bombardment of the town. The quarter of S. Jean is in flames. His
soldiers are endeavouring to force their way through the breach at the
Porte-Drouaise. The Cathedral, it will be observed, has here its third
_flêche_. The towers in the fortifications are square.
[99] Starting from the Place des Épars, you reach the Place des Halles
by the Rue du Bois Merrain, and enter the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue de
la Mairie.
[100] On the window of the façade runs the following
inscription:--‘Atavitam Montescotiorum domum qua natus Cl. restituit
an. 1614.’ He built it, then, on the site of his old home.
[101] Leonard the Limousin, so called to distinguish him from Leonard
the Engraver, was retained by Francois I., who gave him the post of
one of his valets. He was the greatest enameller of his day, excelling
chiefly in portraiture. His other work is unequal, being often
inferior in colour and marred by the influence of the Italian school,
the defects and absurdities of which, without its merits, he, in
common with the decorators of Fontainebleau, too frequently reproduced.
[102] _Les Prussiens à Chartres._ Ernest Caillot. Petrot-Garnier, 1871.
[103] So called after M. Michel Chasles, the eminent geometrician, who
was a Chartrain.
[104] Carriages may be hired by the _Course_, 75 centimes; by the
hour, 1 franc 75 centimes. Outside the town the fare is 2 francs the
hour.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
its terrestial eyes=> its terrestrial eyes {pg 124}
in the the Church=> in the Church {pg 188}
S. Perè, abbey of, 5, 36, 58, 59, 83;=> S. Père, abbey of, 5, 36, 58,
59, 83; {pg 360}
the Toru du Roy=> the Tour du Roy {pg 268}
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Story of Chartres" ***
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