Architectural Antiquities of Normandy Part 20

"The keep cannot be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite sh.o.r.es, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned with dark forests."

NOTES:

[185] Vol. II. p. 113.

[186] So says Monstrelet; and he has generally been followed; but, according to Ma.s.seville, (_Histoire de Normandie_, IV. p. 84) the Norman Chronicle limits the duration of the siege to only seven months.

PLATE Lx.x.xII.

CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 82. ABBEY CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS.

_West End._]

Montivilliers is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, situated in a beautiful valley upon a small stream, called the _Lezarde_, near the western extremity of the Pays de Caux, within the distance of six leagues from Fecamp, and two from Havre de Grace. Its fortifications, now in ruins, were erected near the close of the fourteenth century, till which time it was altogether defenceless; but the state of France, just recovered from one English invasion and threatened with another, turned the thoughts of the government towards the securing of all vulnerable points on the northern frontier; and the trade of the place, though at present trifling, was at that period far otherwise. The cloths of Montivilliers were then considered to rival those of Flanders; and the preservation of the manufacture was regarded of so much consequence, that sundry regulations respecting it are to be found in the royal ordinances. The two circular towers of one of the gates now standing, afford a good specimen of the military architecture of the time.

Montivilliers is called in Latin, _Monasterium villare_; and in old French, _Monstier Vieil_: the present name of the town is obviously a corruption of these; and the same fact also denotes that the place derived its importance, if not its existence, from the monastery. Among the Norman historians, the foundation of Montivilliers is referred to the seventh century; during the latter half of which, St. Philibert, abbot of Jumieges, built a convent here for a community of nuns. The monastery was richly endowed; but no records are left of its history previously to the incursions of the Normans, under whose hands it at first suffered the same destruction as the other religious houses in Neustria, and afterwards rose, like them, from its ashes, with increased splendor and opulence. The immediate successors of Rollo rebuilt the abbey, but without restoring it to its original destination. Richard II.

conferred it, with all its dependencies, upon the more favored monks of Fecamp; and, in the donation, he makes use of the strong expression, "ut ex eo facerent quicquid vellent, tamquam ex proprio alodo." The union of the two establishments was, however, but short lived: either under the same prince, or, as some authors say, under his son Robert, Montivilliers once more resumed a state of independence, and became once more the retreat of holy virgins. The duke was moved to this step by the solicitation of his aunt Beatrice, who retired hither, and took the veil, and presided over the sisterhood; and the monastery of St. Taurin at Evreux was, on this occasion, ceded to Fecamp, in exchange for Montivilliers. A portion of the charter is preserved in the _Neustria Pia_; and, according to this work, the instrument was subsequently ratified by the signatures of William the Conqueror, and of Philip le Bel. At different times, various papal bulls were issued, for the purpose of placing the abbey of Montivilliers under the especial protection of the holy see, and of granting it sundry privileges and immunities. These are also recorded in the same publication. One of them, originating in a dispute between the archbishop of Rouen and the abbess of Montivilliers, is but little to the credit of either party. It represents the lady-abbess as by no means free from irregularities in the performance of her office; it charges one of her nuns with dissolute life; and it arraigns the primate himself of being the cause, if not the immediate instrument, of scandal:--"Siquidem, ex parte abbatissae fuit propositum et probatum, qud quidam, qui c.u.m eodem archiepiscopo et suis praedecessoribus venerant ad monasterium memoratum, turpia quaedam et illicita commiserunt contra honestatem observantiae regularis, in scandalum plurimorum: volumus et mandamus, ut, c.u.m archiepiscopus Rothomagensis ad monasterium ipsum, causa visitationis, accesserit, ab ingressu claustri aliarumque domorum, in quibus habitant moniales, familiam suam taliter studeat coercere, qud de caetero similia non contingant. Ipse quoque archiepiscopus, ejusdem monasterii claustrum vel capitulum intraturus, non nisi c.u.m moderata societate accedat, quae vita et moribus sit honesta; ut per officium visitationis ejusdem, non dissolutionis vel scandali, sed aedificationis potius materia ministretur."--The instrument, which is of considerable length, goes on to accuse the prelate of affording protection to some refractory nuns, and enjoins him never to suffer his clergy to frequent the abbey upon any pretext, or upon any occasion.

The church of Montivilliers, represented in the present plate, is the same as before the revolution belonged to the abbey. The portion to the north is the chapter-house, and is the work of the fourteenth century.

The greater part of the rest of the building, though altered in some places, may safely be referred to the eleventh; at which time it is upon record, that Elizabeth, who succeeded Beatrice as abbess, nearly, if not altogether, rebuilt the whole. At subsequent periods, the church underwent many considerable repairs and alterations. A sum of seven hundred florins was expended upon it in 1370, the proceeds of a fine imposed upon the town, for some injuries done to the nuns; and Toussaints Varrin, archbishop of Thessalonica, dedicated the edifice, in 1513, under the invocation of the Holy Virgin. Five years subsequently, the abbess, Jane Mustel, repaired the ceiling and painted windows, and made the stalls in the choir.[187]--The exterior of the Lady-Chapel affords a fine example of early pointed architecture; its lofty narrow windows are separated by slender cylindrical pillars, as in the church of the Holy Trinity, at Caen. The embattled ornament round the southern door of the western front, is far from commonly seen in such situations.

In the interior of the nave, the same ma.s.sive semi-circular architecture prevails as in the towers; but it is mixed with some peculiarities that will scarcely be found elsewhere, particularly a flat band in the form of a pilaster, enriched with losenges, which is attached to the front of one of the columns, and is continued over the roof, and again down the pillar on the opposite side. Mr. Turner noticed a small gallery, or pulpit, of elegant filigree stone-work, at the west end, near the roof;[188] and, upon the authority of the well-known antiquary, John Carter, he supposed it most probably intended to receive a band of singers on high festivals. But some corresponding erections in England would make it seem more likely that this gallery communicated with the apartments of the superior, and was placed here for the purpose of affording her the means of paying her devotions in private, when, either from the weather, or any other cause, she might not wish to occupy her throne in the choir.

Mr. Turner has also remarked upon the capitals of the columns at Montivilliers, which are very peculiar. Some of them are obvious imitations of the antique pattern, and of great beauty. Others are as rude and wild as any of those already figured in this work, from the churches of St. Georges or Gournay. The mysteries of Christianity, and the fables and allegories of heathenism, the latter, as well in its most refined as its most barbarous forms, occur in endless variety in almost every part of the edifice. One of the capitals contains a representation of the fabulous Sphynx, with her tail ending in a fleur-de-lys: upon another, is sculptured a figure of Christ in the act of destroying the Dragon, by thrusting the end of a crosier into its mouth. Two others, figured in the _Tour in Normandy_, exhibit a group of Centaurs, and the allegorical _psychostasia_: the remarks of the author of that publication, upon the latter of these, shall close the present article:--"In this you observe an angel weighing the good works of the deceased against his evil deeds; and, as the former are far exceeding the avoirdupois upon which Satan is to found his claim, he is endeavoring most unfairly to depress the scale with his two-p.r.o.nged fork.--This allegory is of frequent occurrence in the monkish legends.--The saint, who was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.--He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.--The devil pulled out an a.s.signation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.--The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.--Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of G.o.dliness with the sweets of sin; and still the saint was distressed beyond compare, by observing that the scale of the wicked thing (wise men call him the correcting principle,) always seemed the heaviest.

Almost did he despair of his client's salvation, when he luckily saw eight little jetty black claws just hooking and clenching over the rim of the golden basin. The claws at once betrayed the craft of the cloven foot. Old Nick had put a little cunning young devil under the balance, who, following the dictates of his senior, kept clinging to the scale, and swaying it down with all his might and main. The saint sent the imp to his proper place in a moment; and instantly the burthen of transgression was seen to kick the beam.--Painters and sculptors also often introduced this ancient allegory of the balance of good and evil, in their representations of the last judgment: it was even employed by Lucas Kranach."

NOTES:

[187] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 108.

[188] _Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 69.

PLATE Lx.x.xIII.

CHURCH OF ST. SANSON SUR RILLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 83. CHURCH OF ST. SANSON SUR RILLE.

_Remains of & capitals._]

Normandy, throughout the whole of its extent, can scarcely boast a lovelier stream than the Rille. Originating in the southern part of the duchy, this little river advances in a northerly direction, rolling its sparkling waters in rapid course, through a valley of the most brilliant verdure, till they mingle with the British Channel, at a very short distance from the west of the mouth of the Seine. The Rille, in every part of its current, is varied by an infinity of islands, formed by the division of its waters. Hence its princ.i.p.al beauty, and hence also considerable benefit for the purpose of manufacture; but the same circ.u.mstance is fatal to the more important objects of commerce; for it is in a great measure owing to this multiplicity of channels, that the river is navigable to only a very short way above Pont Audemer; a distance scarcely exceeding ten miles from its confluence with the ocean.

The small village of St. Sanson is situated upon the right bank of the Rille, within a league of its mouth. Its church, the same most probably as is figured in this plate, is enumerated among the possessions confirmed to the Benedictine monastery of St. Martin, at Troarn, by a bull of Pope Innocent III. dated in the year 1210. In after-times, the presentation to the living was in the hands of the bishops of Dol, in Brittany, who likewise continued till the revolution to be both temporal and spiritual lords of the parish, in right, as they alledged, of the ancient barony of St. Sanson, which was annexed to their see.[189] Other writers a.s.serted, that the bishops held their authority here, as successors to the superiors of an abbey, founded upon this spot in the middle of the sixth century, by Childebert I. in favor of St. Sanson, then bishop of Dol. But the monastery fell during the earliest incursions of the Normans, and never rose again. Old traditions state it to have been called in French, _Pentale_; and in Latin, _Monasterium Pentaliense_: a corruption, as it is supposed, of _Poenitentiale_. A neighboring chapel, under the invocation of _Notre Dame de Pentale_, gives color to the report.

Of the church of St. Sanson, nothing more is now left than is exhibited in the plate: the remains consist only of the chancel, and the arch which separated it from the nave. But even these, inconsiderable as they appear, have been judged deserving of a place among the more remarkable of the architectural antiquities of Normandy: the peculiar character of the capitals, and the small size of the whole, have ent.i.tled them to this distinction. Upon regarding the arch, it is scarcely possible but to be struck with the impression, that, though in its present state its height is barely sufficient to allow of a man walking upright through it, there must originally have been an inner member, which has now disappeared. The capitals differ materially from any others ever seen by Mr. Cotman in Normandy; but Mr. Joseph Woods, whose authority is unquestionable, says that similar ones are to be found in the Temple of Bacchus, at Teos. There are also several, which in shape resemble these at St. Sanson, in the very remarkable church of St. Vitalis, at Ravenna,[190] and in the cloisters of the monastery of St.

Scolastica,[191] at Subiaco: the latter also exhibit a certain degree of similarity in the sculpture.

NOTES:

[189] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 777.

[190] _Seroux d'Agincourt, Histoire de la Decadence de l'Art.

Architecture_, t. 23. f. 7, 8; _and_ t. 69. f. 14.

[191] _Ibid._ t. 29. f. 3, 4.

PLATE Lx.x.xIV.

WESTERN DOOR-WAY OF THE CHURCH OF FOULLEBEC.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 84. CHURCH OF FOULLEBEC.

_West Door-way._]

The church of Foullebec, a small village situated upon the Rille, nearly opposite to St. Sanson, is a building of Norman times; but the only portion of it particularly calculated to recommend it to attention, is the arch figured in this plate. This arch exhibits two peculiarities, which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to parallel in Normandy; the ornamented shafts of the pillars, and the extraordinary width of the southern capital, which is more than double that of the column below.

The same was also, in all probability, the case with the capital, now destroyed, on the opposite side of the door-way; and as it is plain that there never was a second pillar, either on the one side or the other, the only satisfactory mode of accounting for this singularity, is upon the supposition, that it was the original intention of the architect to have placed such, but that circ.u.mstances occurred which induced him to leave his design unfinished.--Ornamented shafts of columns, however unfrequently found in Normandy, are far from being of very uncommon occurrence in the specimens that are left of genuine Norman art in Great-Britain. Mr. Carter, in his elaborate work upon ancient English architecture, has collected a variety of similar enrichments in his thirty-third plate; and some of them extremely beautiful. Several others are to be found in the more splendid volumes of Mr. Britton.--The sculpture upon the archivolt is also deserving of observation: upon one of the central stones, is represented the bannered lamb; upon the other, a figure, probably intended for a representation of our Savior entering Jerusalem upon an a.s.s. The heads on either side are of an unusual character.

The church at Foullebec, as well in its nave as chancel, is externally divided by plain Norman b.u.t.tresses into a series of regular compartments, each containing a single circular-headed window. In the nave are four; in the chancel only two. The tower is square and low: it is placed at the west end, which is only pierced for the door-way, and is otherwise quite plain, except a b.u.t.tress at each corner. Internally, the only object to be noticed is an ancient cylindrical font; its sides sculptured with semi-circular arches, and a narrow moulding round the rim.

PLATE Lx.x.xV. AND Lx.x.xVI.

CASTLE AT TANCARVILLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 85. CASTLE AT TANCARVILLE.]

M. Nodier, who, in his _Voyages Pittoresques_, has devoted six plates to the ill.u.s.tration of the n.o.ble ruins of the castle at Tancarville, remarks with great justice, that, magnificent as the building must have been, "it is one that recals but few historical recollections." At the same time he gives the following quotation from the old _Norman Chronicle_:--"During the reign of King Philip le Bel, after the knight of the green lion had conquered the King of Arragon, a great dissention arose between two powerful barons in Normandy, the Lord of Harecourt and the Chamberlain of Tancarville. The cause of their strife was a mill, of which the Dwarf of Harecourt, a.s.sisted by forty of his people in arms, had taken forcible possession, mistreating the va.s.sals of the Chamberlain. The latter, incensed at the outrage, summoned his friends and attendants; and, having collected them to the number of two hundred, marched upon Lillebonne, where the Lord of Harecourt and the Dwarf, his brother, were at that time residing. Many and bitter were the reproaches uttered on either side; and severe was the contest that followed; for the Lord of Harecourt issued from the barriers with all his forces, and they defended themselves valiantly; and several lives were lost. The king, on receiving the tidings, was greatly discomforted, and bade the Sieur Enguerrand de Marigni summon the offending parties to appear before him. It chanced most untowardly, that they met as they were travelling towards the court; and the Lord of Harecourt attacked the Chamberlain, and with his gauntlet put out his left eye, and then returned to his own people. No sooner was he of Tancarville healed, than he repaired to the royal presence, and defied the Lord of Harecourt to single combat. The pledge was accepted by M. Charles de Valois, brother of the king, on behalf of his friend. On the other hand, M. Enguerrand de Marigny, privy counsellor of the monarch, maintained that Harecourt had been guilty of treason. This was denied by M. Charles, to whom Enguerrand in consequence gave the lie; and the former took the affront so cruelly to heart, that Enguerrand, brave man as he was, was afterwards hanged in consequence of it. When the conditions of battle were arranged, the Lord of Harecourt came into the field with his armor emblazoned with fleurs-de-lys; and the combatants fought with the utmost valor, till the Kings of England and of Navarre, who were present, besought the monarch of France to stay the fight; for that it would be great pity that two so valiant chiefs should fall by each other's hand.

Upon this, the king cried 'Ho!' and both parties were satisfied; and peace was made between them by the foreign sovereigns, in the year 1300."

The same circ.u.mstance is related, though with some trifling variations in the details, by Ma.s.seville, in his _History of Normandy_, a work of which almost every volume bears frequent testimony to the greatness of the house of Tancarville. This family enjoyed the hereditary dignity of chamberlain to the Norman dukes; but at what period it was conferred upon them, is lost in the obscurity of early history. Ralph de Tancarville, who founded the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville, about the year 1050,[192] is styled in the _Neustria Pia_, under the account of that monastry, as "Tancardi-Villae Toparcha, praefectus haereditarius cubiculo Guillelmi secundi." In 1066, the name of the _Count of Tancarville_[193] is enumerated among those who attended the Conqueror into England. The chamberlain of Tancarville is recorded both by Ordericus Vitalis and Ma.s.seville, in the list of Norman knights that distinguished themselves in the wars of Philip-Augustus. William of Tancarville, the same chieftain, probably, or his immediate predecessor, had previously suffered himself to be seduced by the arts of Eleanor, queen of Henry II. to join in the conspiracy of the sons of that monarch, against their father: he subsequently signalized his valor, when the banners of the lion-hearted Richard were unfurled upon the plains of Palestine. In 1197, Ralph of Tancarville was one of the witnesses to the treaty of exchange, already more than once mentioned in this work, made between the sovereign and the archbishop of Rouen, in consequence of the building of Chateau Gaillard; and when, eight years afterwards, Philip, having become undisputed master of Normandy, conciliated the favor of the clergy by important concessions, the signature and seal of the chamberlain of Tancarville were attached to the instrument.--The task were easy, by multiplying quotations from Ma.s.seville and the early chroniclers, to extend to a great length the instances in which the n.o.blemen of the house of Tancarville acted a prominent part in Norman history. It will be sufficient, upon the present occasion, to adduce two circ.u.mstances, as indisputable proofs of their importance. The name of Tancarville is found among the seventy-two members of the n.o.bility, who, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, were summoned to the Norman exchequer; and, in the same century, in the year 1320, after Philip VI. upon his accession to the throne of France, had received at Amiens the homage of Edward III. for the dukedom of Aquitaine and earldom of Ponthieu, the Count of Tancarville was selected for the important office of amba.s.sador to England, in conjunction with the Duke of Bourbon and the Earl of Harcourt, to obtain from the monarch some explanations that were considered indispensable for the dignity of the crown of France. As late as the year 1451, the Lord of Tancarville appears as one of the generals of the French forces, which, under the command of the Count of Longueville, finally succeeded in expelling the English from Normandy.

From that time forward, Ma.s.seville makes no mention of the family.

Respecting the castle, he is altogether silent, except upon the occasion of its capture by the French in 1435, and its surrender to them again in 1449.