The Story of Rouen

Chapter were permitted to release two prisoners in 1194 to compensate for the voluntary lapse of one year. This again would show that the privilege was already known and recognised as traditional and proper. We can go still further back in the process of limitation; for Orderic Vital, who died in 1141, describes the first bringing of St. Romain"s body to the Cathedral, and says nothing either of the dragon or the privilege; nor, indeed, could the essential part of the ceremony known as the "Levee de la Fierte" have taken place before the jewelled shrine had been made (see p. 98) to hold the sacred relics which the prisoner bore upon his shoulders. Now it is not likely that Henry Plantagenet, when he came into his kingdom in 1145, would have permitted so grave a limitation of the royal prerogative to arise for the first time; and, on the other hand, it is extremely probable that it should arise during the years of his minority, when, as we have seen, experiments in independence were quite the fashion. It is therefore practically certain that the Privilege de St. Romain began soon after 1135, though not so late as 1145.

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But a still further, and an even less recognised source of wealth that was a direct result of Duke William"s invasion, may be found in the settlement of Jewish traders who followed him from Normandy, and especially from Rouen. These were the capitalists, who helped the King of England to collect his revenue in money rather than in kind. Though liable to special fiscal exactions, they were protected by the King from many of the taxes imposed upon their neighbours. They were established, as they had been elsewhere in Europe, in separate "Jewries," or places kept apart for them in every city. Never having been allowed to possess either land or the rights of citizenship, their wealth was nearly always in gold. The Jews, indeed, were already the capitalists of Europe. Many a castle and cathedral alike owed its existence to their loans. Everyone at once abhorred yet could not do without them. In Rouen their history is soon marked by ma.s.sacre and crime. As soon as Duke Robert had gone to the Crusades in 1096, the townsmen rose against the inhabitants of the Rue aux Juifs, and murdered numbers of men with their wives and children. The great fire that took place in the Parish of St. Lo, between 1116 and 1126, may very likely have been caused by another attack of the same kind. In any case, it was the unhappy Jews who paid the penalty; and still more trouble must have been caused by the fire already mentioned in 1131 which raged round the Porte Ma.s.sacre, close to their quarter. When Philip Augustus drove them all out of France in 1182, the town of Rouen seized the opportunity to take possession of the synagogue and houses in the Rue aux Juifs, and the Jews were only allowed to return sixteen years afterwards, on the payment of large sums of money. In 1202 they were again mercilessly "bled" by King John, and the protection naturally accorded by this needy prince to their usurious practices was bitterly resented by the burghers.

The fires that were of such continual occurrence even in the small s.p.a.ce of the Jews" quarter were by no means confined, unfortunately, to that part of the city. I have had to notice several times already the repeated devastation caused in this way to a town that was still chiefly built of wood, and in the last days of the Norman Dukes the ravages of fire were exceptionally widespread and pitiless. The year 1116 was a peculiarly fatal one, and only ten years afterwards flames broke out in the Rue des Carmes, and devoured both the Abbey of St. Amand and the Abbey of St. Ouen, while the Cathedral itself only just escaped, and an earthquake that immediately followed the fire completed the destruction of what little had been left standing within its area. But the Metropolitan Church which had been struck by lightning and injured in 1117, was not spared by the soldiers of Geoffrey of Anjou in 1136; and before the end of the century the whole of the building that William the Conqueror had seen consecrated before the invasion of England was destroyed by the flames on Easter Eve, and of the Cathedral built by his Bishop Maurilius where the Lion Heart received his crusading sword and banner from the Archbishop Gautier, nothing now remains except the lower part of the Tour St. Romain. In that same terrible year of 1200 the first shrine of St. Maclou was also burnt to the ground with several other churches, and the fire swept through the southern parts of the city to the river itself, and even set alight some buildings of the Tour de Rouen which the Norman dukes had built, though the chapel must have been saved, for it is recorded that in 1203 this building was given to his chancellor by John Lackland. But the ancient donjon to which Henri Beauclerc had added the palace standing where the Halles are now, and the fortifications which were erected near the spot by the same Duke, whose walls were strong enough to resist for three months a close siege by Geoffrey Plantagenet after the faubourg of St. Sever had been ruined, all this was utterly destroyed by Philip Augustus in 1204, and the Chateau of the French Kings was built near the Porte Bouvreuil where the donjon still remains that preserves the most shameful record in the story of the town. Rouen has kept no memory of its native dukes.

All this will explain how it was that the French King began his rule in a Rouen that was almost as stripped of buildings as the Rotomagus that Rollo took. But there was the vital difference that the "unarmed crowd" had been replaced by burgesses conscious of their strength, by confreries whose privileges and statutes did not depend on bricks and mortar, and by citizens who had just begun to realise the value of their civic independence. The Knights Templars had of course their own commanderie in so important a centre of industry and wealth, but all vestiges of their habitation were swept away when the order was so mercilessly suppressed by Philippe-le-Bel. I have shown elsewhere that by 1312 this order had become as much the bankers of Europe as were the Jews of a century before, and that the charges of witchcraft had merely been trumped up by royal debtors who preferred hanging their creditors to paying their bills. The sign of the Barde or Barge Royale, now in the Musee des Antiquites is the only remnant of the Templars left in Rouen. A "Commanderie" that lasted far longer in the town was that of St. Antoine, which was established in 1095 to care for those suffering from the horrible disease known as St. Anthony"s Fire. It continued its good work until 1790. Another foundation that had its origin in the same charitable instincts was the Hospital of the Mont-aux-Malades, founded to care for cases of the terrible leprosy brought back by the Crusaders from the East. This was first inst.i.tuted by the citizens themselves in 1131, and a few years afterwards was placed under the care of a priory of Augustinian monks. The Church of St. Gilles was then founded on the same spot, and the hospital"s funds were increased by Guillaume Baril of St. Maclou. In 1162, Henry II. of England still further added to the revenues of the priory and hospital by giving it the rent and privileges of the Foire de St. Gilles with half of the octroi duty. It was to be held for a week on the first of September every year, and fourteen years afterwards the same king rebuilt the hospital entirely and placed the new church under the patronage of St. Thomas of Canterbury.

This church is one of the few buildings of the time before Philip Augustus that you may still see. To reach it you go up the Rue Cauchoise, along the Rue St. Gervais, past the Abbey of St. Gervais, where the Conqueror died, and where the old crypt of St. Mellon still exists, then up a long and steep hill, on whose very summit is a village street with a broad iron railing that opens to your right into a pretty avenue of limes, with the worn steps of an old stone cross or fountain to the left of the church inside. At first you will be shocked and disappointed by the hideous modern restoration of the west front, with its side aisles, that are but poor specimens of pointed architecture. But go boldly inside and you will see the church of good, plain Norman work, dedicated by King Henry to the memory of the murdered English archbishop, and built by his chamberlain, Roscelin. The original building had the simple nave with its apse beyond, that we shall see on the other side of the town of St. Julien. There is a further disappointment in store when you find the incongruous windows inserted in the chancel and the aisles that were added later on to the original nave. To understand what has happened you must go to the outside of the east end, and there you will see how the old round Norman apse was cut off, and a squared end was stuck on instead with a large pointed window, and how a new outside roof was clumsily fitted on to cover both the aisles and the nave as well, a job so badly calculated that the tops of the eastern aisle-windows on both sides show above the line of roof, and the openings themselves are blocked. When I saw it in 1897 the church was in process of being joined on to the religious buildings which surround it, and the closed eastern openings had been altered, in the north aisle to a round-headed recess, and in the south aisle to the altar of a chapel. But the five round-headed Norman arches of the nave remain, with the four smaller ones in the choir. Above the nave arches are five narrow round-arched windows which do not correspond with the pillars beneath, but are merely holes in a thick wall instead of s.p.a.ces between vaulting-shafts, as they are in the perfect Gothic of St. Ouen. But even so these windows are far better than the incongruous pointed work in the newer aisles. There is no transept, and the roof is a plain vault. The round columns, too, are quite plain, with slight carving here and there upon the capitals. And this is all that is left of the church which Henry II. ordered to be built in 1176.

Twenty-one parishes used to send their lepers to this hospital, and those who could not pay their fees were helped to do so from the parish purse. In 1478 each leper was obliged to bring with him (among other things), a bed with its sheets, all his body-linen and towels, his cooking pots and table ware, and various articles of clothing, besides 62 sous 1 denier for the prior, 5 sous for the servants,[21] and three "hanaps" or drinking vessels, one of silver. Evidently all this was not what a poor patient could often afford, and we find, without surprise, the parish St. John objecting to the rule in case of one Perrecte Deshays, who had been sent there by order of the officials, and could not possibly afford the list of necessaries claimed by the prior. So a compromise was made that for all lepers in the twenty-one parishes who could not give what the rules required, a sum of twenty livres from the parish authorities would be accepted as an equivalent. The treasurers of every parish were bound, in the public safety, to report to the proper town official every case of leprosy within their bounds. This official then took medical advice about the sick person, and if the leprosy was certified ordered the sequestration of the invalid. The acts in which these orders were carried out continue very frequent, even in the first half of the sixteenth century, and especially in the parish of Octeville. The leper was conducted to the hospital with exactly the same ceremony as was used for the interment of the dead, and was followed by all the members of the confrerie to which he belonged, and preceded by a mourner ringing a dirge. One of the statutes of a confrerie ordaining this procession has been preserved (Arch. de la Seine Inferieure, G. 5,238):--"Le seroient tenus convoier jusques a sa malladerie le maistre et varlets portans leurs sourplis et capperons vestus a toult la croix et banniere et clochette, et sy luy feroit l"en semblable service comme a ung trespa.s.se en l"eglise ou il seroit demourant en lad. ville et sy seroit led. varlet tenu crier par les carfours comme pour ung trespa.s.se."

[Footnote 21: The complete list has been printed from the archives of Rouen by M. Ch. de Beaurepaire.]

Another of these charitable refuges for lepers was built for Rouen by an English king in 1183 at Pet.i.t-Quevilly, outside the town on the south side of the Seine. The Hospital of St. Julien was placed by King Henry II. under the protection of the older Priory of Grammont, which is now a powder magazine. It was called the "Salle aux Pucelles," or "n.o.bles Lepreuses," because its patients were at first limited to royal or n.o.bles families. In 1366 the "Maladrerie" appears to have outlived its original objects, and was changed into a priory, which retained the old chapel, and seems to have kept up a public hospital of wider scope under the patronage of Charles V. of France. It was then known as the Prieure St. Julien. Later on it got the name of "Chartreux," which still remains, because the besieging army of Henri Quatre wrecked the abbey on St. Catherine"s hill, above the town, and the monks came to Quevilly, where the Carthusians had already settled themselves when the English turned them out of the Chartreuse de la Rose, which was the headquarters of our Henry the Fifth during his siege of Rouen early in the fifteenth century. Something of all this changing history is perceived in the names that the traveller sees on his way to the little church to-day. For he can either go there from the Pont Boieldieu in an electric car marked "Place Chartreux," or he may tell his coachman to drive him to the "Chapelle St. Julien, Rue de l"Hospice, Pet.i.t-Quevilly." Unless he enjoys hunting on foot for two small gabled roofs and a round apse, hidden away in the corner of some ancient and twisting streets among deserted fields, driving there will be far more satisfactory, and the visit is well worth his while.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL OF ST. JULIEN, PEt.i.t-QUeVILLY]

The little building, whose very isolation has perhaps helped to preserve it, is now very justly cla.s.sed among the best of the "Monuments Historiques de France" in Normandy. There is no tower. On the line beneath the roof round apse and nave, the corbels are carved with the heads of hairy Franks and Saxons, according to the tradition of the older Norman architecture at the Church of St. Paul"s, which we shall next visit, near the river. Near the western end, on the northern exterior, is a dilapidated Madonna, and an old bricked-up doorway. But it is the inside that will chiefly repay you for your trouble. Through the triple portal of the west entrance, with plain round arches set on slightly carved Norman capitals, you pa.s.s at once into the nave. The whole effect is that which can be only given by simple, honest, and good workmanship. The restoration was carried out with a reverential conscientiousness that is far too rare, by M. Guillaume Lecointe, and by him this precious relic of twelfth-century architecture and art was given to the Commune of Pet.i.t-Quevilly. A small arcade of engaged colonnettes goes right round the whole church; the larger pillars have carved capitals, and there is the usual conventional Norman moulding on the round arches.

In the apse are four round-headed windows, all slightly smaller than the four in the choir and the six in the nave. In the chancel-arch there are two cl.u.s.tered columns, and also in the nave and apse. The others have plain round shafts. The simple vaulting of the choir and apse is excellently done, and on the roof above the choir you see the frescoes that are the chief treasure of the place, representing scenes from the Annunciation, the Wise Men, the Flight into Egypt, and other Biblical subjects. These paintings are boldly and well executed, and are of the highest interest. Indeed, their workmanship is such, that many antiquaries refused to believe that they were contemporary with the building itself. As if the little chapel had not suffered vicissitudes enough, it was put up to public auction at the Revolution in 1789, and used by its new proprietors as a stable and granary. They were careful to cover the whole of their ceiling with a thick coat of whitewash, and it is only in the last few years that the patriotic work of M. Lecointe has been completed by the careful recovery of these ancient paintings from beneath their bed of whitewash. Even then their value was not fully appreciated, and only when M. LeRoy had submitted certain detached portions to a chemical a.n.a.lysis was it proved that frescoes of the twelfth century had really been preserved.

By this careful observer it has been shown that a couch of sandy mortar was first laid on the stones of the vault, then a second layer, rich in lime, and especially in white of egg, was applied, and the surface was ready for the application of the colours. These are blue, green, yellow ochre, reddish-brown, black, and white. Cobalt blue, or "azure," was only discovered in the sixteenth century by a German gla.s.s-maker. The blue used in these paintings is the true "outremer" of the twelfth century, the solid colour made from lapislazuli, which was worth its weight in gold. That it was employed at all, is one more evidence of the munificence of Henry II. in his foundation. The green is a mixture of this blue with the yellow ochre. The white was made of powdered egg sh.e.l.ls, and the black is lamp black. From the fact that the colouring matter has in no case penetrated the prepared surface, but adheres to it, we may argue finally that the process in which white of egg is the chief const.i.tuent was used to lay on the colours.

Besides the heart of Richard Coeur de Lion, the Cathedral of Rouen contains another relic of the Norman days in the tomb of that Empress Matilda, who as Countess of Anjou, gave Henry Plantagenet to the throne of England, and died in 1167. Her rich sepulchre at Bec was pillaged by the English in 1421, and the restored monument was desecrated in 1793, but in 1846 the original casket was discovered by the fortunate stroke of a pickaxe, and now rests in the Cathedral. In 1124 the shrine containing the body of the famous St. Romain was opened in the presence of the King and Queen of England, and fifty-four years afterwards, as the decorations made for it by Guillaume Bonne ame had been taken for alms to the poor, Archbishop Rotrou made a new and more magnificent covering for the venerated relics that play so large a part in the story of the town. This new and Norman shrine it must have been which was carried by the two prisoners, delivered by the Privilege of the Fierte in 1194, but it has long ago been replaced by later work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORBEL FROM THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. PAUL]

There is but one more religious monument, the last building I can show you in this chapter, that has remained from these centuries until now. Walk along the riverside eastwards, and as the waters flow from Paris towards you on your right, stop where the chalk cliffs of St. Catherine"s Mount begin to slope downwards from the left hand of the road. Just between it and the river is the Church of St. Paul, which stands where the first Christian altar replaced the Temple of Adonis, and watched with St. Gervais and St. G.o.dard the infant town of Rothomagus arise.

It was no doubt at the time when St. Romain himself finally destroyed the Tarasque of idolatry that this first church arose above the ruins of the pagan shrine. But of Roman or Merovingian structures St. Paul can show no trace. It has, however, an extremely interesting early Norman apse, which is different to everything else in Rouen, and older than any other building, save St. Mellon"s crypt at St. Gervais. By going round the outside you can see three apses, and as you stand there, the midmost apse is the Norman building, that on your left is of the ninth century, and that on the right of the fourteenth. This Norman flat-b.u.t.tressed and round-arched apse is directed to the east of summer, while the new church in the same place points to the east of winter, and is almost at right angles to the older one. The corbels outside, beneath the roof, are carved with the hairy-bearded faces of conquered Franks and Saxons, who were thus set up to the perpetual derision of their clean-shaved Norman victors. The idea is as old as the Temple of Agrigentum in 600 B.C., where the conquered Africans hold up the weight of the building, and recalls the barbarity of the primitive Sagas, which relate how the bleeding heads of enemies themselves were placed around the temples of the Nors.e.m.e.n.

The nave goes back into some private property beyond the churchyard, in which a forgotten tomb lies mouldering behind the railings. In the gra.s.s to the right of the old apse you can see a pointed arch springing from a capital, which shows how the surrounding soil has risen since the thirteenth century. This old building is all used as the vestry of the new church, through which you must pa.s.s to see the interior of the ancient buildings. Once within them, you will find nearest to you the fourteenth-century work of which a fragment showed outside. Then comes the Norman chapel, that recalls the work in the abbey of St. George"s de Boscherville. Beyond that again is the ninth-century "Saxon" buildings. The archaic quality of the decoration is very notable in the capital that represents the adoration of the Magi, and indicates the relative importance of the personages by the size in which each is carved, just as is done in the Egyptian sculptures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: APSE OF THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. PAUL]

With these few relics the tale of Norman architecture in Rouen is finished. From a short survey of this town alone, no one who had never seen Caen or Coutances would imagine that he was in the duchy which possessed a school of architecture that was developed into Notre Dame, on the one hand, in the Ile de France, and into Durham, on the other, in England. In our own island the architecture before the eleventh century, which it supplanted, known as the Anglo-Saxon, was a primitive Romanesque of purely Italian origin, as shown in Bradford-on-Avon Church, which was built by Ealdhelm in Wess.e.x long before the Conquest. This is the only entire building of the earlier style that we have, though the towers of Earl"s Barton, of Bywell, of St. Benets in Cambridge, remain to show its affinity to the styles of Italy and Western Europe, and of the Campaniles. Even when the Norman work first appears, it is not without a great deal of that Byzantine element which is expressed by a spreading cupola and a central lantern. But this early Norman building is very rare, and that is why the three churches I have just described in Rouen have a value that is scarcely realised by travellers who are in search for Gothic or Renaissance architecture only. They are somewhat difficult of access too, and little known, but they will repay a visit. They show the form of the Latin cross, with little in its eastern limb besides the apse, the choir beneath the central tower that replaced the Byzantine cupola, and a little vaulting in the aisles. Originally they had a flat ceiling for frescoes. This is a style that was neither that of Southern Italy nor that of Aquitaine. It may have been a distinctively national development of the Lombard schools of Pavia or Milan. But in any case, though purely local at first, it utterly supplanted the Primitive Romanesque that had hitherto been the common possession of Western Europe, just as, in later centuries, the pointed style utterly swept away the round arch in all its forms of expression. And in the coming chapters it is with the pointed arch that we shall have more and more to deal. To Italy, who imitated it helplessly, the Northern Gothic never became even remotely national in its expression. The native Southern Romanesque was there only appropriately replaced by the really Italian style developed in the Roman Renaissance. But in the North, where the early pointed arch had been at first only a memory of Paynim victories, or a trophy of early Saracenic work, the pointed style as a school of architecture was destined to triumph immediately it rose from the position of mere ornament to the necessity of a constructive feature. It was the problem of vaulting over a s.p.a.ce that was not square, which gave the pointed arch its reason for absolute existence, its beauty of proved strength and adequate proportion. Some of the n.o.blest forms of its development are to be found in the buildings we shall see later on in Rouen.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP D.

ROUEN SHEWING WALLS OF THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

CHAPTER VI.

A French Town.

Lapis de pariete clamabit, et lignum, quod inter juncturas aedificiorum est, respondebit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARMS OF FRANCE]

If the Norman capital that Philip Augustus added to the royal domain of France was not particularly rich, as I have shown, in architectural beauty, it possessed something more enduring even than stone, more vital than any school of architecture, something also far more precious as an indication of coming prosperity and strength; and this was the beginning of the independence and wealth of the citizens of Rouen, as symbolised by the beginning of their Commune. This spirit of independence, and bold a.s.sertion of consecrated privilege, was not limited to the laymen. Perhaps its most unexpected expansion is to be found in that Privilege de St. Romain exercised by the Cathedral.

Chapterhouse.

, whose beginning has been already mentioned in the fables of the Church (see pp. 38 to 41). To appreciate the state of things in this connection, which Philip Augustus found in Rouen, you must recall two facts that I stated in earlier pages. They are, first, the inst.i.tution of the Foire du Pardon by the Conqueror (see p. 69), and, second, the opportunity offered for experiments in independence whether civic or ecclesiastical, by the years of Stephen"s anarchy in England, and of Henry Plantagenet"s minority in France (see p. 84) between the years 1135 and 1145.

I am enabled to limit the date of the beginning of the Privilege de St. Romain to this particular interval, because a formal inquiry in 1210 established the facts, on sworn testimony, that there had been no objection made to the privilege in the reigns of Richard Coeur de Lion or of Henry II., and the details given of the procession to the Norman castle and the visit of the canons to the dungeons show that the machinery of ceremonial had already advanced to a certain degree of age and elaboration. In the first of these reigns there is indeed definite reference to the fact that no prisoner was released in 1193, because the Lion-hearted Duke was himself a captive; and as a graceful recognition of this courtesy the Chapter were permitted to release two prisoners in 1194 to compensate for the voluntary lapse of one year. This again would show that the privilege was already known and recognised as traditional and proper. We can go still further back in the process of limitation; for Orderic Vital, who died in 1141, describes the first bringing of St. Romain"s body to the Cathedral, and says nothing either of the dragon or the privilege; nor, indeed, could the essential part of the ceremony known as the "Levee de la Fierte" have taken place before the jewelled shrine had been made (see p. 98) to hold the sacred relics which the prisoner bore upon his shoulders. Now it is not likely that Henry Plantagenet, when he came into his kingdom in 1145, would have permitted so grave a limitation of the royal prerogative to arise for the first time; and, on the other hand, it is extremely probable that it should arise during the years of his minority, when, as we have seen, experiments in independence were quite the fashion. It is therefore practically certain that the Privilege de St. Romain began soon after 1135, though not so late as 1145.

The year 1210, already mentioned, is the first date on which an actual record exists of the liberated prisoner"s name. His crime is not mentioned, though we know that it involved the penalty of death. But the date is important because of the inquiry insisted on by the governor of the Castle, when the Chapter of the Cathedral claimed his release by exercising their famous Privilege. When the dispute was referred to Philip Augustus, who was naturally anxious to conciliate the powerful clergy in his new domains, the chevalier Richard (who was the military protector of the abbey of St. Medard at Soissons), was given to the canons, and in grat.i.tude for this escape from mortal peril,[22] he granted the Cathedral the perpetual rent upon his public mill.

[Footnote 22: "c.u.m essem in periculo corporis mei in regio carcere apud Rothomagum detentus," he says.]

From this case it is clear that so glaring a renunciation of the incommunicable sovereign rights of life and death could only have been successfully obtained by the regular intercession made to each duke for the release of one prisoner every year; and the origin of that intercession can be explained with perfect probability by the persistent mediaeval custom of the "Mysteries" or Miracle Plays, which came into fashion as soon as the confreries of various trades had been consolidated, just about the time the craft guilds appeared in England, in 1130, a date that fits in very well with the beginning of St. Romain"s "privilege." These Mysteries or Miracle Plays were, as has been noticed, often performed in the Parvis of the Cathedral, and their first object was to represent the truths of Scripture to the people in the most intelligible and picturesque way. Ascension Day was one of the festivals of the Church which most especially needed some such educational and popular celebration, to impress upon men"s minds how Christ by ascending to His Father to free them from the Devil and from everlasting death, had opened wide the gates of heaven, and taken captivity captive. No more striking significance could have been given to the meaning of the festival than by the public release of a prisoner who had been condemned to death. By slow degrees this release became an annual grace accorded to the Church in its holy office of public instructor.

And it was no new thing to invest with such extraordinary privileges the powerful princes of a church which was the visible representative of Divine Providence on earth.[23] The bishops of Orleans, for instance, possessed even until the last years of Louis XV. the prerogative of pardoning every single criminal in the prisons on the day of their solemn entry into their episcopal see. This, at first sight, appears a wider power than any possessed by a bishop of Rouen, who, on one day in the year, voted as a canon in his Chapterhouse for the release of one prisoner and his accomplices. But the opportunity of the bishops of Orleans came only once in a lifetime, that of the.

Chapterhouse.

of Rouen was renewed against all opposition every year for some six centuries, and M. Floquet has discovered a ma.n.u.script which proves that the prerogative of pardon was granted in addition, within certain limits, to the bishop by virtue of his office, as it was in 1393, when Guillaume de Vienne entered his diocese in state on a Sunday in September 1393. Yet no historian seems yet to have noticed this most striking fact. How it must have impressed the popular imagination may easily be estimated from the known horrors of the dungeons and "lakes of misery" in which, at Rouen and most mediaeval cities, the criminals were condemned to linger. The "resurrection of the dead" would be no exaggerated description for the act of pardon which released a prisoner from the hideous dens of a twelfth-century jail. Certainly no act could more clearly fix on all men"s minds the meaning of a sacred season and the power of the Church.

[Footnote 23: Outside France the Bishop of Geneva is a famous example of this ecclesiastical right of pardon; and even limiting ourselves to French Territory, apart from Orleans, we shall find instances at Laon, at Vendome on the Fete of St. Lazare, at the Pet.i.t Chatelet of Paris on Palm Sunday, and at Embrun. But in none of these cases is there either proof or record of so continuous and persistent an exercise of the privilege as is found at Rouen.]

In 1135 the great fete of St. Romain, the most important yet held in Rouen, had been inst.i.tuted for only about fifty years. Its pardons, its processions, and its fair were still fresh in the popular imagination, and would be very likely to be secured as the chief attraction in the first great "Miracle-Play" that was given under the patronage of the Church at Ascension-tide, for they kept alive the memory of the patron saint of Rouen, who had delivered his city from the Dragon of Idolatry by means of a condemned prisoner. So the idea of the Ascension Mystery became inextricably connected with the great saint of the town, yet the Privilege itself was not exerted on his feast day, the 23rd of October, but on Ascension Day, when the Virgin was also represented as crushing the serpent"s head. For two days in the great Ascension Festival the flaming monster was moved before the cross through all the streets of Rouen. On the third day, which was Ascension Day itself, the dragon followed, bound and vanquished, behind it.

So it is that we find this first recorded prisoner, Chevalier Richard, speaking of the "Privilege" as "en l"honneur de la glorieuse Vierge Marie et de Saint Romain."[24] By 1210, therefore, these two holy names had become definitely a.s.sociated with the "Levee de la Fierte," and the fierte was already raised upon the shoulders of the prisoner to signify the new yoke of the Christian religion which he took upon him in exchange for the sins from whose consequence he had been mercifully delivered. Where Chevalier Richard, in 1210, raised the jewelled shrine of the relics of St. Romain, at the chapel of the old castle of the Dukes of Normandy, on the very same spot did Nicolas Beherie and his wife raise it in 1790, on the last occasion when the "Privilege" was exercised. The custom had continued through the centuries in the place of its origin, though Norman castles had been replaced by the prison of Philip Augustus, though the Baillage had been built, though the Englishmen under Henry V. had taken the town, though the Conciergerie of later reigns existed. The conservatism of the Church had led her thus unconsciously to preserve the secret of the origin of her Privilege from the days when the prisons of the last Norman dukes had been the only appropriate scene for her most striking and gorgeous public ceremony.

[Footnote 24: With this phrase in 1210 compare the words recorded in MS. 69 in the Rouen Library, where the privilege is spoken of as "accorde a la Sainte vierge Marie et au bienheureux Saint Romain," in 1299.]

The little open chapel built upon the same spot now (see p. 37), saw the last deliverance of 1790, and still preserves the name of the "Fierte St. Romain." An excellent and well-proportioned example of the architecture of the sixteenth century, it was used for the first time in 1543, and shows in every detail of its construction and arrangement that it was expressly planned for this especial ceremony. Of the ceremony itself I shall have more to say later on. For the present I must content myself with this necessary explanation of its origin and locality. From the lists of the prisoners I shall very frequently have occasion to take a striking example of the manners of the time, as the tale of the city is gradually unfolded, in which this Privilege de St. Romain is perhaps the most exceptional and striking feature. But it is only by the second half of the fourteenth century that the names are written down with a sufficient regularity to admit of useful reference. During the thirteenth century, at which I have now arrived, there are only three names actually preserved, though the continuation of the Privilege is fully proved by the inevitable quarrels between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, of which conspicuous examples occur in 1207 and in 1299.

The canons did not shrink from laying the town under an interdict when the lawyers proved recalcitrant, and took every opportunity to enforce the recognition of their permanent right of choosing their prisoner at the season of the year consecrated to the exercise of their peculiar privilege. The same Bailly of Rouen who had objected to this in 1299, found, to his cost, that it was dangerous to repeat his attempts to thwart the ecclesiastics. For when their freedom of choice was again infringed only three years afterwards, the Chapter brought the sacred shrine to the chapel in the Place de la Vieille Tour, and, after explaining what had happened to the people, they left this venerated palladium of the town out in the open square until their privileges had been recognised. For the Thursday of Ascension Day, for the Friday and Sat.u.r.day following, it remained there guarded by certain of the clergy and by many pious citizens. Each day it was solemnly visited by a procession from the Cathedral, accompanied by a sympathising crowd that daily grew larger and more vehement. By the Sunday morning the Baillage gave in, and the canons released the prisoner with a ceremony that was more than usually impressive after the opposition that had preceded it.

Such quarrels were the more probable just now, because the ecclesiastics were thus tenacious of their "privilege" just when the infant commune was beginning to feel its strength, when commerce was becoming regular, and even a town militia makes its appearance; for the "Compagnie de la Cinquantaine," sometimes called the Arbaletriers, were able to trace back their foundations to 1204, when an inquiry was held and their privileges confirmed more than five hundred and fifty years afterwards. The commune itself was also fully approved by Philip Augustus, who confirmed its possession of certain common lands in the suburbs which had been granted by Duke Richard. By the same date the "bourgeois" or sworn freemen were exercising the free choice of their twelve councillors and twelve aldermen, and sent up to the King from among them three candidates out of whom His Majesty selected the Mayor of Rouen; and this civic const.i.tution lasted until 1320. It was revised by St. Louis, in 1255, and the same king reformed the civic expenditure by establishing the Chambre des Comptes which held its sittings in later centuries in the Renaissance building north-west of the Cathedral. In 1220 the commune obtained from the King for an annual rent of 40 livres, the house and land of the Earl of Leicester close to the Porte Ma.s.sacre, and the Church of Notre Dame de la Ronde, and there they built the Belfry Tower and the Hotel de Ville, which lasted until 1449 and is still represented by the buildings in the Rue de la Grosse Horloge above the famous archway near the Hotel de Nord.

This fief of the Earl of Leicester was but one of the many acquisitions by which Philip Augustus gradually bought out the feudal barons and made sure of Normandy. Other property of the Montforts, and of William the Marshal[25] are examples. And if the King allowed his burgesses their Hotel de Ville, we may be sure he destroyed the castles of the barons whenever it was possible. Even that ancient fortress of the Dukes of Normandy, called the Tour de Rouen, or the Haute Vieille Tour, he pulled down, destroying their double wall and filling up their triple moat, and erected on the "Place Bouvreuil" the new castle of the kings of France, with its six towers and the donjon keep which still exists, and is called the Tour Jeanne d"Arc. The other buildings only lasted until 1590, though a mill could be seen for almost another century which was still worked by the water that ran from the stream of Gaalor which supplied the well of the castle-keep, and was used later on for many other fountains in the city. By 1250 it had already been led through underground channels to the Rue Ma.s.sacre, and by 1456 the Fountain of the Town Belfry was established which is now represented by the Fontaine de la Grosse Horloge, built in 1732. The waters themselves come originally from a spring near the foot of the Mont-aux-Malades. In his new castle Philip Augustus ordained the echiquier de Normandie, as the supreme Tribunal of Justice in the province, whose courts were to lie alternately at Rouen, Caen, and Falaise.

[Footnote 25: M. Paul Meyer, head of the ecole des Chartes, has, I hear, just discovered a mediaeval poem about this interesting person, called the "Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal." It was in the British Museum, and his edition will be of great interest to British history.]

Soon afterwards the land occupied by the palace of William the Conqueror was nearly all given up to the burgesses for purposes of their trade. They were permitted to extend the buildings to the quays provided they did not intercept traffic on the river. By 1224 the drapers had obtained lands in the forest of Roumare for the proper manufacture of their woollen stuffs, which were always a staple of commerce in Rouen, and they used these "Halles" for the exhibition and sale of their wares. The courtyard must have looked very much as it does to-day, with the addition of cloisters and open shop-fronts. By 1325 commerce had grown there so much that "sales in the dark" had to be forbidden by law. St. Louis granted the extension of the market-halls over the whole ground on which the Norman dukes had built, and established in 1256 the market called "Marche de la Vieille Tour." This king was an especial friend of the Archbishop Odo Rigaud, and both were zealous in the reforms necessary to Church and State. In 1262 the Cathedral gave up to the King certain possessions outside the town in exchange for the public mills of Rouen; and property was further centralised by the royal charter granting these Halles, with the Marche de la Vieille Tour, for an annual rent to the mayor and burgesses of the town, who were also given full rights of possession in the streams of Robec and Aubette. St. Louis also established the right of the citizens to insist on their debtors coming to Rouen itself to adjust their legal difficulties, and further a.s.sisted commerce by prohibiting strange merchants from retail trade in the city, and by making all Jews wear a circle of yellow (called rouelle) on back and breast, as a distinctive mark.

The commercial privileges which I have already mentioned (see p. 85) were fully confirmed by Philip Augustus, especially with regard to exports to Ireland, while Louis IX. continued the gradual consolidation of the river trade in the hands of the Rouen merchants. What this involved, may be seen from the case which was brought before the Parliament of Paris in 1272, when the Mayor of Rouen had seized six barrels of wine which a landowner was bringing (as he a.s.serted) from his vineyards to his own house by river. Every quay along the bank was rapidly taken possession of by the merchants, and by 1282 the famous "Clos aux Galees," between the Rue du Vieux Palais and the Rue de Fontenelle, was built in the parish of St. Eloi as a dockyard for purposes of commerce and of war. But not long after this the s.p.a.ce appears to have been needed for other purposes, and the real "Clos des Galees" was moved across the river to the other bank at the end of the Empress Bridge, or "Pont de Mathilde." In a charter of 1297, the change is marked by the name, "Neuves-Galees," and this occurs again in 1308. It is remarkable as the first a.r.s.enal ever used for artillery in France; for cannon, arms, and powder were all stored here in later times, and here were built the ships that fought in the Hundred Years" War by Charles VI., out of wood from the forests of Roumare. Just before the great siege by the English in 1418 the citizens destroyed it, but the name remained in the hostelry called the "Enseigne de la Galere." Then the "Grenier a sel" and the "Hotel des Gabelles" were built on the same spot; and finally you can only imagine very vaguely where the first dockyards of Rouen were when you look now at the Caserne St. Sever.

In tracing out the changes that have come in each century to the aspect of the town, it is not often we shall find a locality so persistent in its character as the Place de la Haute et Ba.s.se Vieille Tour, when once its military strength had been changed into commercial convenience. The older castle, originally built more to the north-west by Rollo, between the Church of St. Pierre du Chastel and the Rue des Charrettes, had long ago absolutely disappeared, and its place was taken by a Franciscan convent, given to the brethren in 1248 by Archbishop Rigaud, who had been originally a monk of the Order; and the ruins of their building may be seen in the street which, as Rue des Cordeliers, still preserves their name. Another change that is still recorded in the nomenclature of the streets took place when Louis VIII. allowed the inhabitants to build gardens and almshouses in what had once been the moat of the old town walls. This you may trace in the name of the Rue des Fosses Louis VIII., formerly the Rue de l"Aumone. In the same way the Rue des Carmes preserves the fact that the Carmelite monks brought by St. Louis from the Holy Land, migrated to the street that bears their name in 1336, and remained there for a very long time.

But everything did not go smoothly in the streets of Rouen while these pacific changes were in progress. In 1213 the town was filled with the levy of counts, barons, and knights, with all their men-at-arms, whom Philip was collecting to attack the King of England; and in 1250 a far more disorderly and plebeian a.s.sembly gathered under the leadership of Andre de St. Leonard to express in the practical form of riot and pillage their disapprobation of the ten per cent. exacted by the Church for grinding corn in the ecclesiastical mills. Near the Pont de Robec and the Rue du Pere Adam flour and wheat were forcibly stolen, but Archbishop Odo Rigaud soon a.s.serted his authority, by fining the ringleader 100 marks of silver, equivalent to about 2000 sterling, and the dissatisfaction ceased. In the next year a rising, that had some slight degree of religious colour in it, gave a good deal of trouble, not to Rouen only, but to the rest of France. Bands of peasants, styling themselves "Pastoureaux," a.s.serted their indignation at the captivity of King Louis IX. by chasing the archbishop out of his cathedral. From the fact that they had been joined, not merely by all the lazy ruffians of the neighbourhood, but by some burgesses, and even by certain munic.i.p.al office-holders, we may infer that the privileges or prerogatives of the Church were once more the real objects of the dispute. Though the ecclesiastics were as usual strong enough to exact a public apology and absolution from the mayor and his councillors, the strange frenzy spread to the Provinces; men averred that the Holy Virgin and her angels had appeared to urge them to release St. Louis, and it was necessary for Queen Blanche herself to intervene before the trouble was stopped in Paris and many parts of France.

This widespread affection felt for St. Louis may, perhaps, be explained not only by his personality, but by the fact that he was always moving from one part of his dominions to another, in spite of the obvious inconveniences of mediaeval travel. I have already noticed some of the things he did for Rouen on his various visits. But such pilgrimages as that of 1255 to Adam Bacon, the solitary abbot of St. Catherine, cannot have failed to increase his local reputation. He celebrated Christmas here in 1264, after another short visit previously on his way from Pont de l"Arche to Bec, and in 1269 he came again from Port-Audemer. On every such occasion he prayed in the churches and left offerings suitable to his rank; he ate in the refectories with the monks, he dispensed alms to the poor, and gave money or its equivalent to the hospitals. His charity was, indeed, extraordinary, for Queen Margaret"s Confessor has related that he not only fed the hungry at his every meal, but went round the beds in the sick houses, smoothing the pillows of the sufferers, speaking to them, and trying to supply their wants.

It was when King Louis came with his mother, Blanche of Castile, to keep the Christmas of 1255 at Rouen, that the greater part of the choir, transept, and nave of the Cathedral as we see it now was finished. The monastical developments of previous centuries had done their work; the power of the great abbots and priors, which raised them into feudal dignitaries, with large wealth and wide possessions, had reached its limit. The rise of the communes in every town, and the pa.s.sion for civic liberty which accompanied them and gave them birth, as we have traced it in Rouen, was taken advantage of by the archbishops in those fruitful years which lay between 1180 and 1240. The royal power, personified here by Philip Augustus, was as much concerned as the burgesses in the diminution of feudality. Even the great secular n.o.bles were not averse to encouraging a movement that appeared to counteract the importance of their most dangerous ecclesiastical rivals. So that religious and political motives came together, just at this one momentous period, to produce an enthusiasm for building which has never been equalled before or since. The gradual development of the sacred edifice from the crypt, like that catacomb of St. Gervais, through the form of the Roman basilica, with its simple nave and round apse, to the new developments of choir and chapels, introduced by Suger, had not proceeded without leaving on the finished product--which has been called Gothic--the traces of its growth. And this is one reason why, until the fourteenth century at least, the Cathedral retained the mingled characteristics of a building that was both civil and ecclesiastical, that was used both for the divine offices and for political, even military a.s.semblies.

In what I shall have to say of the architecture called Gothic,[26] I would not have it thought that I exclude the praise of beauty from every other form of building, for there are Renaissance buildings, for instance, in Rouen alone that would contradict such barren dogmatism at the outset. The reserve and the harmonious proportion of the Cour des Comptes have a value of their own quite independent of the Gothic unrestraint and revelry of carving in the Portail des Libraires. But I cannot conceal my preference for one form of beauty over another, my delight in the most organic form of art the world has ever seen, the true "master art" of Gothic, as opposed to that "looking backward" which was the Renaissance, to that defiance of the rule of progress which bade men advance to different developments of organic living forms in every single branch of life, except in the greatest art of all. The Middle Ages had inherited a direct succession of harmonious forms, one rising out of another until the perfection was attained. Then came the Black Death, and the no less fatal scourges of Commercialism and Bureaucracy. Men"s thoughts apparently became so riveted upon the grave that they must go back to the art of the dead Romans and the formalism of cla.s.sical examples to keep breath in their bones at all. And even so, they informed the skeleton with a new life. In such new creations of the aged spirit as the French Renaissance Chateaux of Touraine, or Rouen"s Hotel Bourgtheroulde, they showed what vigour there was left, if only it had been permitted to remain original. Nor is there any hope of betterment in architecture, or any art, to-day, until something of the spirit has come back to us which made each citizen proud of the house he lived in, or of the House of G.o.d he helped to build, until the love of workmanship that built the old cathedrals has returned.

[Footnote 26: In the matter of this word "Gothic," I am of the opinion of Renan, who writes: "En Allemagne jusqu"au quatorzieme siecle ce style s"appela "opus Francigenum," et c"est la le nom qu"il aurait du garder." If it is too much to expect of future writers that they will give up the phrase, let them at least follow the advice of Mr Moore and limit "Gothic" to the French pointed school of the Ile de France. Our own architecture has already received quite enough additional labels to prevent confusion.]

Through those doors, which were shut sternly in the face of princes under the Church"s ban, the poor man gladly pa.s.sed from the hovel that was his home. Out of the dark twisting streets whose crowded houses pressed even against the walls of the Cathedral, the humblest citizen might turn towards the beauty of a building greater and more wonderful than any that his feudal lord could boast. He found there not merely the sanctuary, not merely the shrine of all that was holiest in history or in creed, but the epitome of his own life, the handicrafts of his various guilds, as at Rouen, the tale of all his humblest occupations, the mockery of his neighbours" foibles, the lessons of the horror of sin. For before the end of the thirteenth century, the handicraftsmen, a.s.sociated into such guilds as we have seen in Rouen, had not only won their freedom from arbitrary oppression, but had secured so large a share in the government of the towns, that within the next fifty years, the heads of the communes were nearly always the delegates from the craft-guilds. The zenith of Gothic architecture coincided with this period of their triumph; its bright, and glittering, and joyful art spread all over the intelligent world, and more especially in France; it was not contented with merely architectural forms in colourless cathedrals, but decorated them with carvings painted in gay colours, used every s.p.a.ce for pictures, drew upon all literature for its materials. In Dante, Chaucer, and Petrarch, in the German Niebelungenlied, in the French romances, in the Icelandic Sagas, in Froissart and the chroniclers, you may find the same spirit; and each town smote its own epic into stone upon the walls of its cathedral. Every village, even, had its painter, its carvers, its actors; the cathedrals that have remained are but the standard from which we may imagine the loving perfection to which every form of craftsman"s art was carried. And their work gives us such pleasure now because they had such intense pleasure in doing the work themselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MASON AT WORK, FROM A MISERICORDE IN THE CHOIR OF ROUEN CATHEDRAL]

For the masons had gone to their new task with a will. Freed from the thick and shadowy archways piled upon heavy piers, which had obscured the old priestly and dogmatic Romanesque, the builders of the new cathedral revelled in the new found Gothic of the people, and raised their soaring arches to the sky, and crowned their pinnacles with wreaths that flamed into the clouds. And upon every inch of wall they wrote and wrought upon the living stone, "magistri de vivis lapidibus," until every detail of the world of worshippers was gathered up and sanctified by this expression of its new found meaning, as a part of the mystery and the beauty of holiness.

It is significant of the democratic nature of this architectural outburst, that the first communes signalised their liberty by the earliest cathedrals, at Noyon, Soissons, Laon, Reims, Amiens, in the capital of France, and in the capital of Normandy. It was early in this same century (1203) that Normandy became part of the crown domain together with Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou, and Limousin. Before the century was done, Languedoc, the County of Toulouse, part of Auvergne, and Champagne were also included in the royal domain. More than this, the Head of the Church himself had come in 1309 to live in Avignon, and this movement had, no doubt, its effect upon religious sentiment in the nation to whose charge St. Peter"s representative committed himself; for religion had of course the greatest part in a movement that could never have been so widespread and so creative without its powerful motives; but, even in spite of the immense impulse given by the crusades, religion would never have got its opportunity at all, if "politics" had not at the very moment been ripe for contemporaneous expansion, if the people and the King had not simultaneously been ready to give expression to a movement in which liberty and unity were the greatest factors. Thus it is that the cathedrals are the first visible basis of that French nationality into which the scattered provinces of Gaul had expanded, the first germ of that creative genius of French art which has not yet lost its right of place in Europe, the first clear record of the national intellect. And the people were not slow to recognise the meaning of the carvings that were placed where all who ran might read, placed there by men of like pa.s.sions with themselves, copied often so directly from themselves, that the cathedrals may be regarded as the great record of the ancestry of the common people. The emblazoned tomb, or the herald"s parchment, might fitly chronicle the proud descent of the solitary feudal lord; but the brothers and kinsmen of his dependents were carved in their habits as they lived upon the church"s walls, and there they work at their appointed tasks, and laugh at their superiors, unto this day. So the people filled their church with throngs of worshippers, with merry-making crowds, with vast audiences of the great mediaeval Mystery Plays, with riotous a.s.semblages sometimes not too decent, whose rough humour has been preserved for us in the thousand grotesque carvings of the time.

I have been at this length in explaining the building of the cathedrals, because it would be impossible for you, without some such suggestion of their origin, to realise the meaning of the carvings which cover the great north and south porches of the transept at Rouen. I choose them first out of the ma.s.s of detail and construction in this enormous and heterogeneous building, because they are most typical of the feeling which gave it birth, and of the craftsmen who worked upon it. It is well-nigh impossible to attempt any explanation of the many styles, from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, which are commingled, superimposed even, without any feeling in the mind of the architect, for the time being, except that of the imperious need for self-expression, regardless of the fashions of his predecessor. In the great western facade this mingling of the styles is most observable. The angle towers are absolutely unlike, the arches are broken, the pinnacles are smashed short off, niches are mutilated, and arabesques are worn away, yet in the healing rays of moonlight, the whole composes into a mysterious beauty of its own that will not bear the strict a.n.a.lysis of glaring day.

But the Portail aux Libraires which Jean Davi, the architect of the Chapelle de la Vierge, built for Archbishop Guillaume de Flavacourt in 1278, will bear microscopic examination in every part, and the reverently careful restorations carried out some time ago by MM. Desmarest and Barthelemy have only brought to light the exquisite perfection of the original work. This gate to the northern transept got its name from the special trade which gradually was connected with that portion of the Cathedral bounds. I have already noticed how the Parvis was filled with various shops and booths, and this s.p.a.ce before the northern gate was similarly appropriated by booksellers until at least some time after the sixteenth century was over. What I have to say now is connected with the actual portal itself. The forecourt once filled with bookstalls, that leads up to it, was only decorated in 1480 by Guillaume Pontifz, who also erected the fine screen that opens into it from the Rue St. Romain. On the east side of this court you may see St. Genevieve standing with a Bible in her left hand, and a candle in her right. Upon one shoulder a tiny angel tries to kindle the light, while on the other a wicked little devil with a pair of bellows is perched ready to blow it out again. The panel decoration upon the b.u.t.tresses of this north door has been selected by Mr Ruskin as the high-water mark of Gothic tracery before its decline began. It takes the form of blind windows carved upon the solid stone, and is certainly an exquisite example of varied, yet severe proportion and arrangement. Its plan expresses the true qualities of the material with a right regard for ma.s.s in decoration, rather than for line, the fatal change which wrought so much damage after the earlier ruling principle had been given up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTAIL DES LIBRAIRES (DOOR OF NORTH TRANSEPT OF ROUEN CATHEDRAL)]

This same acute observer, blessed with more leisure time than I have ever had in Rouen or elsewhere, was able to make certain remarks on the detailed carvings of the door itself, which must be at least suggested in any other description. My own count of the separate carvings does not agree with that made by Mr Ruskin, and in a mere matter of mathematics I may be bold enough to differ publicly, where agreement is so inevitable with the main thesis of his argument. Some idea may be obtained of the work expended on this one portion of the Cathedral alone, when I say that in the centre of the door is a square pedestal, on each of whose four sides are five medallions vertically arranged. Within the great encompa.s.sing arch, on each side, is a cl.u.s.ter of three more square pedestals similarly decorated. The arch itself has seventeen medallions upon each pillar, the top five on each side being cut in half by a moulding. Beyond the arch to right and left are two other pedestals with the same five ornaments on their two faces. Thus, if you count the smaller pillars only, there are twenty-four rows of five, or 120 medallions, and adding those on the arch, you get a total of 154. Even this is not all; for on each medallion or panel its separate bas-relief is contained within a quatrefoil. None of their arcs are semi-circles, and none of their basic figures are squares, for each panel is slightly varied in size from its neighbours. The result is that intervals of various shapes are left at each of the four angles of every quatrefoil, and into each interval is fitted a different animal, which gives the astonishing result of 596 minor carvings in this one doorway, all of them representing living things, and all of them subsidiary to the larger subjects which they frame. If you measure these tiny sculptures you will find the base of the curved triangle they adorn to average about four inches long, its height being just half that distance. When you look closer at those which are least worn away you will find them clearly enough carved to represent unmistakably in one instance the peculiar reverted eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and ready to run away with it; in another, the wrinkled skin that is pressed over a cheekbone by an angry fist; in a third, the growth of wing and scale upon a lizard.

Think of the life and energy that were pulsing through the brain of the craftsman who could so fill the surface of the stone. Think of the time that he was ready to give up to patient chiselling at this one task till it was perfect to his mind. And then consider more closely the quatrefoils, small in themselves, which are yet far larger than the details which surround them. The best known is one that has suffered terribly in the wear and tear of nearly six centuries. It is the famous bas-relief of the hooded pig playing on a violin, a motive which recurs at Winchester and in York Minster. Its fingers are placed so accurately upon the bow that the method of playing has formed a type of late twelfth-century style in all collections of musical antiquities. The Minstrel"s Gallery in Exeter Cathedral may profitably be compared with it. This accuracy of execution in an essential detail shows the patient copying from life which accompanied--and indeed was necessary to--the vivid imagination that could create so many non-existent monsters. For among all these grotesque chimeras and fantastic mixtures of the animal and human element you will notice the creative faculty in its strongest development. These strange beasts, half man and half a goat, part woman and part fish, have each of them a reality of individual life, a possibility of visualised construction, that is marvellous in its appeal to the spectator. Another violin player appears upon this same door, this time with a human head set on the body of a beast, and beside it some small animal dances to the tune.

The mediaeval carver was no mystic symbolist. But he felt so much and so vividly that when two strongly opposed ideas came into his head at once he had to express himself by throwing them together into one newly-forged creation of a woman-ape, or a dog-man. He had besides his own thoughts all that strange gallery to draw from, of sirens, harpies, centaurs, which a dying mythology bequeathed. You may trace most of the Metamorphoses of Ovid on the walls of the cathedrals. Then there were the queer bestiaries of his own doctors, the early Mandevilles, the Presterjohns of the twelfth century, the Munchausens of all time. From these he inherited the Sciopod upon the door of Sens, the cynoscephalae, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." He lived, too, in an age far more pictorial, far more given to the living allegory, than any centuries to which the cold print of a book alone appealed. Architecture, as he knew it, ceased when printing became cheap. But in his days the Bible of the people, the encyclopaedia of the poor, the general guide to heav

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