o

«I

,<% '^

>A ■ t

'I

4

.( - '

•►*'

'^^

J_

f!i' ••-

46745

SANTA ANA PUBLIC LIBRARY Santa Ana, California ^

PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS

Mont' Saint- Michel and Chartres

Chartres: The Tree of Jesse Window (Upper part)

Mont- Saint- Michel and Chartres

BY

HENRY ADAMS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM

Illustrated

715^)6

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

OCT "i iC34

SANTA ANA

Public Library

SANTA ANA. CALIF.

7l(«

COPYRIGHT, I90S, BY HENRY ADAMS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

TWENTIETH IMPRESSION, MARCH, 1932

tCbt fiiuetaftie J0tt»»

CAMBRIDGE ■ MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Editor's Note

FROM the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mo7it- Saint-Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privately printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from its hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of col- lectors and amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by its intrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve.

To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express a fact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, the poli- tics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and art of that greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in the alembic of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic force of a per- sonal and distinguished style. A judgment that might well have been biased by personal inclination received the endorsement of many in two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better able to speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour of saying to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 19 12, that the American Institute of Architects asked the distinguished privilege of arranging for the publication of an edition for general sale, under its own imprimatur. The result is the volume now made available for public circulation.

In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication is, in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in which neither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, nor the Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book is presented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctant consent to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have no part or parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith, — as he estimated the project of giving his book to the public.

vi EDITOR'S NOTE

In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. Mont- Saint- Michel and Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions to litera- ture and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study of mediaeval- ism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of this great epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many and valuable works on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, its politics, and its art, but in nearly every instance, whichever field has been traversed has been considered almost as an isolated phenomenon, with insufficient reference to the other aspects of an era that was singularly united and at one with itself. Hugh of Saint Victor and Saint Thomas Aquinas are fully comprehensible only in their relationship to Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, and the development of Catholic dogma and life; feu- dalism, the crusades, the guilds and communes weave themselves into this same religious development and into the vicissitudes of cres- cent nationalities; Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculp- tors, and music masters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of philosophy, statecraft, economics, and religious devotion; — indeed, it may be said that the Middle Ages, more than any other recorded epoch of history, must be considered en bloc, as a period of consistent unity as highly emphasized as was its dynamic force.

It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Adams deals with the art of the Middle Ages after this fashion: he is not of those who would deter- mine every element in art from its material antecedents. He realizes very fully that its essential element, the thing that differentiates it from the art that preceded and that which followed, is its spiritual impulse; the manifestation may have been, and probably was, more or less accidental, but that which makes Chartres Cathedral and its glass, the sculptures of Rheims, the Dies Irce, Aucassin and Nicolette, the Song of Roland, the Arthurian Legends, great art and unique, is neither their technical mastery nor their fidelity to the enduring laws of all great art, — though these are singular in their perfection, — but rather the peculiar spiritual impulse which informed the time, and

EDITOR'S NOTE vii

6y Its intensity, its penetrating power, and its dynamic force wrought a rounded and complete civilization and manifested this through a thousand varied channels.

Greater, perhaps, even than his grasp of the singular entirety of mediaeval civilization, is Mr. Adams's power of merging himself in a long dead time, of thinking and feeling with the men and women thereof, and so breathing on the dead bones of antiquity that again they clothe themselves with flesh and vesture, call back their sev- ered souls, and live again, not only to the consciousness of the reader, but before his very eyes. And it is not a thin simulacrum he raises by some doubtful alchemy: it is no phantasm of the past that shines dimly before us in these magical pages; it is the very time itself in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and his monks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of the Arch- angel : we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens, — Blanche of Castile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne, — fighting their battles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomas of Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court of Love, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the Canons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days we kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light-heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike simplicity and frankness, its normal and healthy and all-embracing devotion.

And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from the de- sirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiously erron- eous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in all history, it is vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives new and not always flattering standards for the judgment of contemporary men and things, so does it establish new ideals, new goals for attainment. To live for

viii EDITOR'S NOTE

a day in a world that built Chartres Cathedral, even If it makes the living in a world that creates the "Black Country" of England or an Iron City of America less a thing of joy and gladness than before, equally opens up the far prospect of another thirteenth century in the times that are to come and urges to ardent action toward its attain- ment.

But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont-Saint- Michel and Chartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory of mediae- val art and the elements that brought it into being is not lightly to be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen form of expression, it must appear unique and invaluable, and to none more than the architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, its power, and its teaching force, can only applaud the action of the American In- stitute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an Honorary Member, as one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, and voice his gratitude that it has brought the book within his reach and given it publicity before the world.

Whitehall, Sudbury, Massachusetts, June, 1913. •

Contents

Preface xiii

I. Saint Michiel de la Mer del Peril . . . . i II. La Chanson de Roland 14

III. The Merveille 32

IV. Normandy and the Ile de France 46

V. Towers and Portals 62

VI. The Virgin of Chartres 89

VII. Roses and Apses 106

VIII. The Twelfth-Century Glass 128

IX. The Legendary Windows 149

X. The Court of the Queen of Heaven .... 179

XL The Three Queens 198

XII. Nicolette and Marion 230

XIII. Les Miracles de Notre Dame 251

XIV. Abelard 285

XV. The Mystics 320

XVI. Saint Thomas Aquinas 347

Index 385

\

Illustrations

i.

V

Chartres: The Tree of Jesse Window (upper part) (p. 127)

Colored Frontispiece

Mont-Saint-Michel 2

Mont-Saint-Michel: The Hall of the Knights ... 24

Mont-Saint-Michel: The Refectory 34

CouTANCEs Cathedral 46

Caen: The "Abba ye aux Dames" 58

Chartres Cathedral 62

Chartres : Detail of West Portal 70

Chartres: The North Porch 78

Chartres: The South Porch 86

Chartres: The Nave no

Chartres: The Prodigal Son Window 174

Saint Thomas Aquinas 348

Preface

(December, 1904.I

Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines: —

. . . Who reads me, when I am ashes. Is my son in wishes

The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may have existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be true for ours. The utmost that any writer could hope of his readers now is that they should consent to regard themselves as nephews, and even then he would expect only a more or less civil refusal from most of them. Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he would have observed that nephews, as a social class, no longer read at all, and that there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who read his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads me, when I am ashes, is my nephew in wishes."

The same objections do not apply to the word " niece." The change restores the verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieces have been known to read in early youth, and in some cases may have read their uncles. The relationship, too, is convenient and easy, capable of being anything or nothing, at the will of either party, like a Moham- medan or Polynesian or American marriage. No valid objection can be offered to this change in the verse. Niece let it be !

The following pages, then, are written for nieces, or for those who are willing, for the time, to be nieces in wish. For convenience of

xiv PREFACE

travel in France, where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, are some- times wanting in space as well as luxury, the nieces shall count as one only. As many more may come as like, but one niece is enough for the uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more likely than two to listen. One niece is also more likely than two to carry a kodak and take inter- est in it, since she has nothing else, except her uncle, to interest her, and instances occur when she takes interest neither in the uncle nor in the journey. One cannot assume, even in a niece, too emotional a nature, but one may assume a kodak.

The party, then, with such variations of detail as may suit its tastes, has sailed from New York, let us say, early in June for an entire sum- mer in France. One pleasant June morning it has landed at Cherbourg or Havre and takes the train across Normandy to Pontorson, where, with the evening light, the tourists drive along the chaussee, over the sands or through the tide, till they stop at Madame Poulard's famous hotel within the Gate of the Mount.

The uncle talks: —

Mont'Saint- Michel and Chartres

CHAPTER I

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL

THE Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Chris- tianity, put 'themsel ves under his powerful protection. So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the tremor of the immense ocean, — immensi tremor oceani, — as Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people followed, and still follow, like ourselves.

The church stands high on the summit of this granite rock, and on its west front is the platform, to which the tourist ought first to climb. From the edge of this platform, the eye plunges down, two hundred and thirty-five feet, to the wide sands or the wider ocean, as the tides recede or advance, under an infinite sky, over a restless sea, which even we tourists can understand and feel without books or guides; but

2 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

when we turn from the western view, and look at the church door, thirty or forty yards from the parapet where we stand, one needs to be eight centuries old to know what this mass of encrusted architecture meant to its builders, and even then one must still learn to feel it. The man who wanders into the twelfth century is lost, unless he can grow prematurely young.

One can do it, as one can play with children. Wordsworth, whose practical sense equalled his intuitive genius, carefully limited us to "a season of calm weather," which is certainly best; but granting a fair frame of mind, one can still "have sight of that immortal sea" which brought us hither from the twelfth century; one can even travel thither and see the children sporting on the shore. Our sense is par- tially atrophied from disuse, but it is still alive, at least in old people, who alone, as a class, have the time to be young.

One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one will. From the top of this Abbey Church one looks across the bay to Avranches, and towards Coutances and the Cotentin, — the Constan- tinus pagus, — whose shore, facing us, recalls the coast of New Eng- land. The relation between the granite of one coast and that of the other may be fanciful, but the relation between the people who live on each is as hard and practical a fact as the granite itself. When one enters the church, one notes first the four great triumphal piers or columns, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and on looking into M. Corroyer's architectural study which is the chief source of all one's acquaintance with the Mount, one learns that these piers were constructed in 1058. Four out of five American tourists will instantly recall the only date of mediaeval history they ever knew, the date of the Norman Conquest. Eight years after these piers were built, in 1066, Duke William of Normandy raised an army of forty thousand men in these parts, and in northern France, whom he took to England, where they mostly stayed. For a hundred and fifty years, until 1204, Normandy and England were united ; the Norman peasant went freely

w w

u

H

I

H

o

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 3

to England with his lord, spiritual or temporal; the Norman woman, a very capable person, followed her husband or her parents; Normans held nearly all the English fiefs; filled the English Church ; crowded the English Court; created the English law; and we know that French was still currently spoken in England as late as 1400, or thereabouts, "After the scole of Stratford atte bo we." The aristocratic Norman names still survive in part, and if we look up their origin here we shall gener- ally find them in villages so remote and insignificant that their place can hardly be found on any ordinary map; but the common people had no surnames, and cannot be traced, although for every noble whose name or blood survived in England or in Normandy, we must reckon hundreds of peasants. Since the generation which followed William to England in 1066, we can reckon twenty-eight or thirty from father to son, and, if you care to figure up the sum, you will find that you had about two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors living in the middle of the eleventh century. The whole population of England and northern France may then have numbered five million, but if it were fifty it would not much affect the certainty that, if you have any English blood at all, you have also Norman. If we could go back and live again in all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors of the eleventh century, we should find ourselves doing many surprising things, but among the rest we should pretty certainly be ploughing most of the fields of the Cotentin and Calvados; going to mass in every parish church in Normandy; rendering military service to every lord, spiritual or temporal, in all this region; and helping to build the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint-Michel. From the roof of the Cathedral of Coutances over yonder, one may look away over the hills and woods, the farms and fields of Normandy, and so familiar, so Lomelike are they, one can almost take oath that in this, or the other, or in all, one knew life once and has never so fully known it since.

Never so fully known it since! For we of the eleventh century, hard- headed, close-fisted, grasping, shrewd, as we were,. and as Normans

4 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

are still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world's move- ment than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, and a great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos and Gregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in their great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte Cas- sino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began this Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. When William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that moment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade. Our activity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined by Anjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out to Hauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert and Roger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the Abbey Church was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in 1066, and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. If you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in politics, you have only to look at our art. Religious art is the measure of human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, cries aloud. If this church on the Mount is not proof enough of Norman character, we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Then we will go to Caen and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worth our while to leap at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 or thereabouts that Roger began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the Chapel Royal at Palermo ; it was about the year 11 74 that his grandson William began the Cathedral of Monreale. No art — either Greek or Byzantine, Italian or Arab — has ever created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so impress- ive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, looking down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and the Sicilian seas.

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 5

Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was fairly master of the world in architecture as in arms, although the thirteenth century belonged to France, and we must look for its glories on the Seine and Marne and Loire; but for the present we are in the eleventh century, — tenants of the Duke or of the Church or of small feudal lords who take their names from the neighbourhood, — Beaumont, Carteret, Greville, Percy, Pierpont, — who, at the Duke's bidding, will each call out his tenants, perhaps ten men-at-arms with their attendants, to fight in Brittany, or in the Vexin toward Paris, or on the great campaign for the conquest of England which is to come within ten years, — the greatest military effort that has been made in western Europe since Charlemagne and Roland were defeated at Roncesvalles three hundred years ago. For the moment, we are helping to quarry granite for the Abbey Church, and to haul it to the Mount, or load it on our boat. We never fail to make our annual pilgrimage to the Mount on the Archangel's Day, October 16, We expect to be called out for a new campaign which Duke William threatens against Brittany, and we hear stories that Harold the Saxon, the powerful Earl of Wessex in England, is a guest, or, as some say, a prisoner or a hostage, at the Duke's Court, and will go with us on the campaign. The year is 1058. i<

All this time we have been standing on the parvis, looking out over the sea and sands which are as good eleventh-century landscape as they ever were; or turning at times towards the church door which is the pons seclorum, the bridge of ages, between us and our ancestors. Now that we have made an attempt, such as it is, to get our minds into a condition to cross the bridge without breaking down in the effort, we enter the church and stand face to face with eleventh-century archi- tecture; a ground-plan which dates from 1020; a central tower, or its piers, dating from 1058; and a church completed in 1135. France can offer few buildings of this importance equally old, with dates so exact. Perhaps the closest parallel to Mont-Saint- Michel is Saint-Benoit-sur«

6 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

Loire, above Orleans, which seems to have been a shrine almost as popular as the Mount, at the same time. Chartres was also a famous shrine, but of the Virgin, and the west porch of Chartres, which is to be our peculiar pilgrimage, was a hundred years later than the ground- plan of Mont-Saint-Michel, although Chartres porch is the usual starting-point of northern French art. Queen Matilda's Abbaye-aux- Dames, now the Church of the Trinity, at Caen, dates from 1066. Saint Semin at Toulouse, the porch of the Abbey Church at Moissac, Notre-Dame-du-Port at Clermont, the Abbey Church at Vezelay, are all said to be twelfth-century. Even San Marco at Venice was new in 1020.

Yet in 1020 Norman art was already too ambitious. Certainly nine hundred years leave their traces on granite as well as on other material. but the granite of Abbot Hildebert would have stood securely enough, if the Abbot had not asked too much from it. Perhaps he asked too much from the Archangel, for the thought of the Archangel's superior- ity was clearly the inspiration of his plan. The apex of the granite rock rose like a sugar-loaf two hundred and forty feet (73.6 metres) above mean sea-level. Instead of cutting the summit away to give his church a secure rock foundation, which would have sacrificed about thirty feet of height, the Abbot took the apex of the rock for his level, and on all sides built out foundations of masonry to support the walls of his church. The apex of the rock is the floor of the croisee, the intersection of nave and transept. On this solid foundation the Abbot rested the chief weight of the church, which was the central tower, supported by the four great piers which still stand ; but from the croisee in the centre westward to the parapet of the platform, the Abbot filled the whole space with masonry, and his successors built out still farther, until some two hundred feet of stonework ends now in a perpendicular wall of eighty feet or more. In this space are several ranges of chambers, but the structure might perhaps have proved strong enough to support the light Romanesque front which was usual in the eleventh century,

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 7

had not fashions in architecture changed in the great epoch of build- ing, a hundred and fifty years later, when Abbot Robert de Torigny thought proper to reconstruct the west front, and build out two towers on its flanks. The towers were no doubt beautiful, if one may judge from the towers of Bayeux and Coutances, but their weight broke down the vaulting beneath, and one of them fell in 1300. In 1618 the whole fagade began to give way, and in 1776 not only the fagade but also three of the seven spans of the nave were pulled down. Of Abbot Hildebert's nave, only four arches remain.

Still, the overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stamped on a great scale here, not only in the four spans of the nave, and in the transepts, but chiefly in the triumphal columns of the croisee. No one is likely to forget what Norman architecture was, who takes the trouble to pass once through this fragment of its earliest bloom. The dimensions are not great, though greater than safe construction war- ranted. Abbot Hildebert's whole church did not exceed two hundred and thirty feet in length in the interior, and the span of the triumphal arch was only about twenty-three feet, if the books can be trusted. The nave of the Abbaye-aux- Dames appears to have about the same width, and probably neither of them was meant to be vaulted. The roof was of timber, and about sixty-three feet high at its apex. Com- pared with the great churches of the thirteenth century, this build- ing is modest, but its size is not what matters to us. Its style is the starting-point of all our future travels. Here is your first eleventh- century church! How does it affect you?

Serious and simple to excess! is it not? Young people rarely enjoy it. They prefer the Gothic, even as you see it here, looking at us from the choir, through the great Norman arch. No doubt they are right, since they are young : but men and women who have lived long and are tired, — who want rest, — who have done with aspirations and ambi- tion, — whose life has been a broken arch, — feel this repose and self- restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength of these curved

8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

lines, the solid support of these heavy columns, the moderate propor^ tions, even the modified lights, the absence of display, of eflfort, of self- consciousness, satisfy them as no other art does. They come back to it to rest, after a long circle of pilgrimage, — the cradle of rest from which their ancestors started. Even here they find the repose none too deep.

Indeed, when you look longer at it, you begin to doubt whether there is any repose in it at all, — whether it is not the most unrepose- ful thought ever put into architectural form. Perched on the extreme point of this abrupt rock, the Church Militant with its aspirant Arch- angel stands high above the world, and seems to threaten heaven itself. The idea is the stronger and more restless because the Church of Saint Michael is surrounded and protected by the world and the society over which it rises, as Duke William rested on his barons and their men Neither the Saint nor the Duke was troubled by doubts about his mission. Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other. Neither Church nor State is intellectual, or learned, or even strict in dogma. Here we do not feel the Trinity at all; the Virgin but little; Christ hardly more; we feel only the Archangel and the Unity of God. We have little logic here, and simple faith, but we have energy. We cannot do many things which are done in the centre of civilization, at Byzantium, but we can fight, and we can build a church. No doubt we think first of the church, and next of our temporal lord; only in the last instance do we think of our private aflfairs, and our private affairs sometimes suffer for it; but we reckon the affairs of Church and State to be ours, too, and we carry this idea very far. Our church on the Mount is ambi- tious, restless, striving for effect; our conquest of England, with which the Duke is infatuated, is more ambitious still; but all this is a trifle to the outburst which is coming in the next generation; and Saint Michael on his Mount expresses it all.

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 9

Taking architecture as an expression of energy, we can some day compare Mont-Saint-Michel with Beauvais, and draw from the com parison whatever moral suits our frame of mind ; but you should first note that here, in the eleventh century, the Church, however simple- minded or unschooled, was not cheap. Its self-respect is worth notic- ing, because it was short-lived in its art. Mont-Saint- Michel, through- out, even up to the delicate and intricate stonework of its cloisters, is built of granite. The crypts and substructures are as well constructed as the surfaces most exposed to view. When we get to Chartres, which is largely a twelfth-century work, you will see that the cathedral there, too, is superbly built, of the hardest and heaviest stone within reach, which has nowhere settled or given way; while, beneath, you will find a cr>'pt that rivals the church above. The thirteenth century did not build so. The great cathedrals after 1200 show economy, and sometimes worse. The world grew cheap, as worlds must.

You may like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, less militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as you may like the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV, — Madame du Barry better than Madame de Montespan, — for taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginning with the earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, whatever it is, where you prefer to stop, we must try to understand a little of the kind of energy which Norman art expressed, or would have expressed if it had thought in our modes. The only word which describes the Norman style is the French word natf. Littre says that naif comes from natif, as vulgar comes from vulgus, as though native traits must be simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both these derivative mean- ings were strange to the eleventh century. Naivete was simply natural and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivete was not different in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony or Lombardy, but it was slightly different in expression, as you will see when you travel south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only a mutilated trunk of

lo MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

an eleventh-century church to judge by. We have not even a facade, and shall have to stop at some Norman village — at Thaon or Ouistre ham — to find a west front which might suit the Abbey here, but wherever we find it we shall find something a little more serious, more military, and more practical than you will meet in other Romanesque work, farther south. So, too, the central tower or lantern — the most striking feature of Norman churches — has fallen here at Mont-Saint- Michel, and we shall have to replace it from Cerisy-la-Foret, and Lessay, and Falaise. We shall find much to say about the value of the lantern on a Norman church, and the singular power it expresses. We shall have still more to say of the towers which flank the west front of Norman churches, but these are mostly twelfth-century, and will lead us far beyond Coutances and Bayeux, homfl^he to fleche, till we come to the fleche of all fleches, at Chartres.

We shall have a whole chapter of study, too, over the eleventh- century apse, but here at Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbot Hildebert's choir went the way of his nave and tower. He built out even more boldly to the east than to the west, and although the choir stood for some four hundred years, which is a sufficient life for most architecture, the foundations gave way at last, and it fell in 1421, in the midst of the English wars, and remained a ruin until 1450. Then it was rebuilt, a monument of the last days of the Gothic, so that now, standing at the western door, you can look down the church, and see the two limits of mediaeval architecture married together, — the earliest Nor- man and the latest French. Through the Romanesque arches of 1058, you look into the exuberant choir of latest Gothic, finished in 1521. Although the two structures are some five hundred years apart, they live pleasantly together. The Gothic died gracefully in France. The choir is charming, — far more charming than the nave, as the beauti- ful woman is more charming than the elderly man. One need not quar- rel about styles of beauty, as long as the man and woman are evidently satisfied and love and admire each other still, with all the solidity of

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL ii

faith to hold them up; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as ono looks from the older to the younger style, that whatever the woman's sixteenth-century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century trait of naivete; — far from it! The simple, serious, silent dignity and energy of the eleventh century have gone. Something more compli- cated stands in their place; graceful, self-conscious, rhetorical, and beautiful as perfect rhetoric, with its clearness, light, and line, and the wealth of tracery that verges on the florid.

The crypt of the same period, beneath, is almost finer still, and even in seriousness stands up boldly by the side of the Romanesque; but we have no time to run off into the sixteenth century: we have still to learn the alphabet of art in France. One must live deep into the . eleventh century in order to understand the twelfth, and even after passing years in the twelfth, we shall find the thirteenth in many ways a world of its own, with a beauty not always inherited, and sometimes not bequeathed. At the Mount we can go no farther into the eleventh as far as concerns architecture. We shall have to follow the Roman- esque to Caen and so up the Seine to the He de France, and across to the Loire and the Rhone, far to the South where its home lay. All the other eleventh-century work has been destroyed here or built over, except at one point, on the level of the splendid crypt we just turned from, called the Gros Piliers, beneath the choir.

There, according to M. Corroyer, in a corner between great con- structions of the twelfth century and the vast Merveille of the thir- teenth, the old refectory of the eleventh was left as a passage from one group of buildings to the other. Below it is the kitchen of Hildebert. Above, on the level of the church, was the dormitory. These eleventh- century abbatial buildings faced north and west, and are close to the present parvis, opposite the last arch of the nave. The lower levels of Hildebert's plan served as supports or buttresses to the church above and must therefore be older than the nave; probably older than the triumphal piers of 1058.

12 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

Hildebert planned them in 1020, and died after carrying his plans out so far that they could be completed by Abbot Ralph de Beau- mont, who was especially selected by Duke William in 1048, "more for his high birth than for his merits." Ralph de Beaumont died in 1060, and was succeeded by Abbot Ranulph, an especial favourite of Duchess Matilda, and held in high esteem by Duke William. The list of names shows how much social importance was attributed to the place. The Abbot's duties included that of entertainment on a great scale. The Mount was one of the most famous shrines of northern Europe. We are free to take for granted that all the great people of Normandy slept at the Mount and, supposing M. Corroyer to be right, that they dined in this room, between 1050, when the building must have been in use, down to 1 1 22 when the new abbatial quarters were built.

How far the monastic rules restricted social habits is a matter for antiquaries to settle if they can, and how far those rules were observed in the case of great secular princes; but the eleventh century was not very strict, and the rule of the Benedictines was always mild, until the Cistercians and Saint Bernard stiffened its discipline toward 1120. Even then the Church showed strong leanings toward secular poetry and popular tastes. The drama belonged to it almost exclusively, and the Mysteries and Miracle plays which were acted under its patronage often contained nothing of religion except the miracle. The greatest poem of the eleventh century was the "Chanson de Roland," and of that the Church took a sort of possession. At Chartres we shall find Charlemagne and Roland dear to the Virgin, and at about the same time, as far away as at Assisi in the Perugian country, Saint Francis himself — the nearest approach the Western world ever made to an Oriental incarnation of the divine essence — loved the French ro- mans, and typified himself in the " Chanson de Roland." With Mont- Saint-Michel, the "Chanson de Roland" is almost one. The "Chan- son" is in poetry what the Mount is in architecture. Without the "Chanson," one cannot approach the feeling which the eleventh

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL 13

century built into the Archangel's church. Probably there was never a day, certainly never a week, during several centuries, when portions of the "Chanson" were not sung, or recited, at the Mount, and if there was one room where it was most at home, this one, supposing it to be the old refectory, claims to be the place.

CHAPTER II

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND

Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt Comment I'igliese fut fiindee Premierement et estoree. Cil qui lor dient de I'estoire Que cil demandent en memoire Ne I'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant En plusors leus e mespernant. Por faire la apertement Entendre a eels qui escient N'unt de clerzie I'a tornee De latin tote et ordenee Pars veirs romieus novelement Molt en segrei por son convent Una jovencels moine est del Munt Deus en son reigne part li dunt. Guillaume a non de Saint Paier Cen vei escrit en cest quaier. El tens Robeirt de Torignie Fut cil romanz fait e trove.

Most pilgrims who come to the Mount

Enquire much and are quite right,

How the church was foimded

At first, and established.

Those who tell them the story

That they ask, in memory

Have it not well, but fall in error

In many places, and misapprehension.

In order to make it clearly

Intelligible to those who have

No knowledge of letters, it has been turned

From the Latin, and wholly rendered

In Romanesque verses, newly.

Much in secret, for his convent.

By a youth ; a monk he is of the Mount.

God in his kingdom grant him part!

WilUam is his name, of Saint Pair

As is seen written in this book.

In the time of Robert of Torigny

Was this roman made and invented.

THESE verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and if the spelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire; more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but as tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when roughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every one who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language of this " Roman " was the literary language of England. William of Saint-Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better suited to English than to

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 15

French; even the words and idioms are more English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous seventeenth-century prudes.

The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human oeings like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme in creating their literature for the practical reason that they remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in their heads.

These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled at the Mount from 11 54 to 1186. We have got to travel again and again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Con- queror and the "Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in here, out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of the annual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be more or less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and what had existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912: —

Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. The day was dear, without much wind.

Les meschines e les vallez The maidens and the varlets

Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez. Each of them said verse or song;

Neis li viellart revunt chantant Even the old people go singing;

i6

MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

De leece funt tuit semblant. Qui plus ne seit si chante outree E Dex ate u Asusee. Cil jugleor la u il vunt Tuit lor vieles traites unt Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant.

Li tens est beals la joie est grant. Cil palefrei a cil destrier E cil roncin e cil sommier Qui errouent par le chemin Que menouent cil pelerin De totes parz henissant vunt For la grant joie que il unt. Neis par les bois chantouent tuit Li oiselet grant et petit.

Li buef les vaches vunt tnuant Par les forez e repaissant. Cors e boisines e fresteals E fleutes e chalemeals Sonnoent si que les montaignes En retintoent et les pleignes. Que esteit dont les plaiseiz E des forez e des larriz. En eels par a tel sonneiz Com si ce fust cers acolliz.

Entor le mont el bois foUu Cil travetier unt tres tendu Rues unt fait par les chemins. Plentei i out de divers vins Pain e pastez fruit e poissons Oisels obleies veneisons De totes parz aveit a vendre Assez en out qui ad que tendre.

All have a look of joy. Who knows no more sings Hurrah, Or God help, or Up and On I The minstrels there where they go Have all brought their viols; Lays and songs playing as they go.

The weather is fine; the joy is great;

The palfreys and the chargers,

And the hackneys and the packhorses

Which wander along the road

That the pilgrims follow,

On all sides neighing go.

For the great joy they feel.

Even in the woods sing all

The Uttle birds, big and small.

The oxen and the cows go lowing

Through the forests as they feed.

Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes

And flutes and pipes of reed

Sound so that the mountains

Echo to them, and the plains.

How was it then with the glades

And with the forests and the pastures?

In these there was such sound

As though it were a stag at bay.

About the Mount, in the leafy wood, The workmen have tents set up; Streets have made along the roads. Plenty there was of divers wines, Bread and pasties, fruit and fish, Birds, cakes, venison, Everywhere there was for sale. Enough he had who has the means to pay.

If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art could be caught. Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards: —

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND ij

Whanne that April with his shoures sote

The droughte of March hath perced to the rote . . .

Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken strange strondes . . .

And especially, from every shires ende

Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende

The holy blisful martyr for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.

The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was their chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of Mont-Saint- Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: but, just, now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much as the min- strel who sang to amuse him, — the jugleor or jongleur, — who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at every shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the street-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a word of abuse, equivalent to blackguard ; and from the beginning the profession seems to have been socially decried, like that of a music-hall singer or dancer in later times; but in the eleventh century, or perhaps earlier still, the jongleur seems to have been a poet, and to have composed the songs he sang. The immense mass of poetry known as the " Chansons de Geste " seems to have been composed as well as sung by the unnamed Homers of France, and of all spots in the many provinces where the French language in its many dialects prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should have been the favourite with the jongleur, not only because the swarms of pilgrims assured him food and an occasional small piece of silver, but also because Saint Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors whose exploits in war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste." William of Saint- Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his "Roman "was not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but the "Chanson de Roland" was a different affair.

So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or prede- cessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. Wace,

i8 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the "Roman de Rou," or "Rollo," is an English classic of the first rank, was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a singer. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose did not yet exist; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfth century were as different, in kind, from the grand style of the eleventh, as Virgil was different from Homer.

William of Saint- Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to the jongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before his time, and were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going on pilgrimages in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who would probably most interest every one, after eight hundred years have passed, would be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. Through William of Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charming literary monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, we can build up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be as historically exact as the battle of Hastings, and as artistically true as the Abbey Church.

According to Wace's "Roman de Rou," when Harold's father. Earl Godwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release of certain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given to Edward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whom Edward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping. Wace took the story from other and older sources, and its accuracy is much disputed, but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to be certain, and you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold asking permission of King Edward to make the journey, and departing on horseback, with his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship at Bosham, near Chichester and Portsmouth. The date alone is doubtful. Common sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date could not be too

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 19

early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to a throne who put himself in the power of a rival in the eleventh century. When that rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not even boyhood could ex- cuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authority on this delicate subject, inclined to think that Harold was forty years old when he committed his blunder, and that the year was about 1064. Between 1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose what year he likes, and the tourist is still freer. To save trouble for the memory, the year 1058 will serve, since this is the date of the triumphal arches of the Abbey Church on the Mount. Harold, in sailing from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, must have been bound for Caen or Rouen, but the usual west winds drove him eastward till he was thrown ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, between Abbeville and Boulogne, where he fell into the hands of the Count of Ponthieu, from whom he was rescued or ran- somed by Duke William of Normandy and taken to Rouen. Accord- ing to Wace and the "Roman de Rou": —

Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour William kept Harold many a day,

Si com il dut a grant enor. As was his due in great honour.

A maint riche torneiement To many a rich tournament

Le fist aller mult noblement. Made him go very nobly.

Chevals e armes li dona Horses and arms gave him

Et en Bretaigne le mena And into Brittany led him

Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre I know not truly whether three or four times

Quant as Bretons se dut combattre. When he had to make war on the Bretons.

Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which tra- dition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men-at- arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin legend: — "Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hie Harold dux trahebat eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to Mont-Saint-Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands.

20

MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame by saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to the Mount: — " Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of Saint Michael.

If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur — jugleor — was not far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this favourite was, — his name, his character, and his song. To him Wace owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault at Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance against the English lines: —

Taillefer qui mult bien chantout Sor un cheval qui tost alout Devant le due alout chantant De Karlemaigne e de Rollant E d'Oliver e des vassals Qui morurent en Rencevals. Quant il orent chevalchie tant Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant: '' Sire," dist Taillefer, " merci! lo vos ai longuement servi. Tot mon servise me devez. Hui se vos plaist le me rendez. For tot guerredon vos requier E si vos voil forment preier Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille." Li dus respondi: " Io rotrei."

Taillefer who was famed for song, Mounted on a charger strong, Rode on before the Duke, and sang Of Roland and of Charlemagne, Oliver and the vassals all Who fell in fight at Roncesvals. When they had ridden till they saw The English battle close before: " Sire," said Taillefer, " a grace! I have served you long and well; All reward you owe me still; .

To-day repay me if you please. For all guerdon I require, And ask of you in formal prayer. Grant to me as mine of right The first blow struck in the fight." The Duke answered: "I grant."

Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt every- thing. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not as old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient proof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace wrote z

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 21

hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a monument as Mont-Saint- Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland" ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the starting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself rest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll of Battle Abbey in ques' tion. The whole fabric of society totters; the British peerage turns pale.

Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is sup- posed to have written his prose chronicle about 11 20 when many of the men who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expressly said: "Tunc cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplum pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fighting temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof to satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena Rollandi ' ' must have been a Norman ' ' Chanson de Rou, ' ' or " Rollo, ' ' or at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Nor- man chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is quite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old enough.

Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmes- bury. If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur happens to be known on still better authority than that of William of Malmes- bury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of Queen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of Hastings which must have been complete within ten years after the battle was

22 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the Duke's bat- tle:—

Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus.

"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, but Taillefer was also an actor: —

Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat.

"A jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled." The jongleur was not noble by birth, but was ennobled by his bravery.

Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo.

Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoflfroy Gaimer who wrote about 1 1 50, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added the story that Taillefer died in the melee.

The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing of the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke: —

"Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille."

Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered to pay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the Duke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant battalion, — the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io I'otrei!" seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed the story: "His- trio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat"; a stage-player — a juggler — the Duke's singer — whose bravery ennobled him. The Dukt granted him — octroya — his patent of nobility on the field.

All this preamble leads only to unite the " Chanson " with the archi- tecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton cam- paign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go together, and explain each other. Their common trait is their military character

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 23

peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch is masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the end. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attempted no such feat.

Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled at supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumpha' piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side "a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer is at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins: —

Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes Charles the king, our emperor, the great,

Set anz tuz plains ad estet en Espaigne Seven years complete has been in Spain,

Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne Conquered the land as far as the high seas,

Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne Nor is there castle that holds against him,

Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre. Nor wall or city left to capture.

The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct and personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like prophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England where Charlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of the means to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the anxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath that he would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much confidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval society. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them all about him.

24 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold that his own brother. Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the plunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as to require a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle-scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them. They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, Charlemagne or his suc- cessor was still at Aix, and the Moors were still in Spain. Archbishop Turpin of Rheims had fought with sword and mace in Spain, while Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his men at Hastings, like a modern general, with a staff, but both were equally at home on the field of battle. Verse by verse, the song was a literal mirror of the Mount. The battle of Hastings was to be fought on the Archangel's Day. What happened to Roland at Roncesvalles was to happen to Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as he was dying like Roland, was to see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver. Even Taillefer was to be a part, and a distinguished part, of his chanson. Sooner or later, all were to die in the large and simple way of the eleventh century. Duke William himself, twenty years later, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in the same spirit, and if Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at least, like an eleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, the whole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while the monks shrived them and prayed.

Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to this day every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knows these verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heart of every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battle and the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such power over an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who were actors as well as listeners. In the melee at Roncesvalles, overborne by innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help: —

H X

o z

U!

W W H

o hJ <

W K H

J' U X U

z

I— I

<

tn I

H

z o

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND

25

Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler. RoUant apelet sun ami e sun per; " Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez. A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret." Aoi.

" Montjoie!" he cries, loud and clear. Roland he calls, his friend and peer: " Sir Friend! ride now to help me here! Parted to-day, great pity were."

Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knows neither how it was sung nor even how it was pronounced. The asso- nances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses or assonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi," has long ago vanished from verse or song. The sense is as simple as the " Ballad of Chevy Chase," but one must imagine the voice and acting. Doubtless Taillefer acted each motive ; when Oliver called loud and clear, Taille- fer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef," the singer must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, with the singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, bowed to each other in parting and turned to face their deaths, Taillefer may have indicated the movement as he sang. The verses gave room for great acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Roland rode up, and at sight of the desperate field, lost for a moment his consciousness: —

As vus Rollant sur sun cheval pasmet E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez! Tant ad 'sainiet li oil li sunt trublet Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel. Sun cumpaignun cum il I'ad encuntret Sil fiert amunt sur I'elme a or gemmet Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel Mais en la teste ne I'ad mie adeset. A icel colp I'ad Rollanz reguardet Si li demandet dulcement et suef "Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred? Ja est CO Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer. Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet," Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler lo ne vus vei. Veied vus damnedeus! Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!" Rollanz respunt: "Jo n'ai nient de mel. Jol vus parduins ici e devant deu." A icel mot I'uns al altre ad clinet. Par tcl amur as les vus desevrezi

There Roland sits unconscious on his horse,

And Oliver who wounded is to death,

So much has bled, his eyes grow dark to him,

Nor far nor near can see so clear

As to recognize any mortal man.

His friend, when he has encountered him.

He strikes upon the helmet of gemmed gold,

Splits it from the crown to the nose-piece,

But to the head he has not reached at all.

At this blow Roland looks at him.

Asks him gently and softly:

"Sir Friend, do you it in earnest?

You know 't is Roland who has so loved you.

In no way have you sent to me defiance."

Says OUver: "Indeed I hear you speak,

I do not see you. May God see and save you!

Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me."

Roland replies: "I have no harm at all.

I pardon you here and before God ! "

At this word, one to the other bends himself.

With such affection, there they separate.

26 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

No one should try to render this into English — or, indeed, into modern French — verse, but any one who will take the trouble to catch the metre and will remember that each verse in the " leash " ends in the same sound, -r- aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, mel, deu, suef, nasel, — however the terminal syllables may be spelled, can fol- low the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greek hexam- eter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, as he feels Homer. It is the grand style, — the eleventh century: — Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez!

Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen. Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt : — Ja est 50 Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer!

Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramatic effects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached, and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William's barons must have clung to his voice and action as though they were in the very m^lee, striking at the helmets of gemmed gold. They had all been there, and were to be there again. As the climax approached, they saw the scene itself; probably they had seen it every year, more or less, since they could swing a sword. Taillefer chanted the death of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all the other barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for dead by the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's returning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling a Saracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of his ivory horn — oliphant — he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, which he could not leave to infidels. In the singular triple repetition which gives more of the same solidity and architectural weight to the verse, he made three attempts to break the sword, with a lament — a plaint — for each. Three times he struck with all his force against the rock; each time the sword rebounded without breaking. The third time —

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 27

Rollanz ferit en une pierre bise Roland strikes on a grey stone,

Plus en abat que jo ne vus sai dire. More of it cuts off than I can tell you.

L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset The sword grinds, but shatters not nor breaks,

Cuntre le ciel amunt est resortie. Upward against the sky it rebounds.

Quant veil li quens que ne la fraindrat mie When the Count sees that he can never break it,

Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme. Very gently he mourns it to himself:

"E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme! "Ah, Durendal, how fair you are and sacred!

En I'oret punt asez i ad reliques. In your golden guard are many relics,

La dent saint Pierre e del sane seint Basilic The tooth of Saint Peter and blood of Saint

Basil,

E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie And hair of my seigneur Saint -Denis,

Del vestment i ad seinte Marie. Of the garment too of Saint Mary.

II nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent. It is not right that pagans should own you.

De chrestiens devez estre servie. By Christians you should be served,

Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie ! Nor should man have you who does cowardice.

Mult larges terres de vus averai cunquises Many wide lands by you I have conquered

Que Carles tient ki la barbe ad flurie. That Charles holds, who has the white beard,

E li emperere en est e ber e riches." And emperor of them b noble and rich."

This "laisse" is even more eleventh-century than the other, but it appealed no longer to the warriors; it sf>oke rather to the monks. To the warriors, the sword itself was the religion, and the relics were details of ornament or strength. To the priest, the list of relics was more eloquent than the Regent diamond on the hilt and the Kohinoor on the scabbard. Even to us it is interesting if it is understood. Roland had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He had stopped at Rome and won the friendship of Saint Peter, as the tooth proved; he had passed through Constantinople and secured the help of Saint Basil; he had reached Jerusalem and gained the affection of the Virgin; he had come home to France and secured the support of his "seigneur" Saint Denis; for Roland, like Hugh Capet, was a liege-man of Saint Denis and French to the heart. France, to him, was Saint Denis, and at most the He de France, but not Anjou or even Mame. These were countries he had conquered with Durendal: —

Jo I'en crmquis e Anjou e Bretaigne Si Ten cunquis e Peitou e le Maine Jo Ten cunquis Normendie la tranche Si Ten cunquis Provence e Equitaigne.

28

MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

He had conquered these for his emperor Charlemagne with the help of his immediate spiritual lord or seigneur Saint Denis, but the monks knew that he could never have done these feats without the help of Saint Peter, Saint Basil, and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, whose relics, in the hilt of his sword, were worth more than any king's ran- som. To this day a tunic of the Virgin is the most precious property of the cathedral at Chartres. Either one of Roland's relics would have made the glory of any shrine in Europe, and every monk knew their enormous value and power better than he knew the value of Ro- land's conquests.

Yet even the religion is martial, as though it were meant for the fighting Archangel and Odo of Bayeux. The relics serve the sword; the sword is not in service of the relics. As the death-scene approaches, the song becomes even more military: —

^o sent Rollanz que la mort le tresprent

Devers la teste sur le quer U descent.

Desuz un pin i est alez curanz

Sur 1' erbe verte si est culchiez adenz

Desuz lui met s'espee e I'olifant

Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent.

Pur CO I'ad fait que il voelt veirement

Que Carles diet et trestute sa gent

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz.

Then Roland feels that death is taking him; Down from the head upon the heart it falb. Beneath a pine he hastens running; On the green grass he throws himself down; Beneath him puts his sword and oliphant, Turns his face toward the pagan army. For this he does it, that he wishes greatly That Charles should say and all his men, The gentle Count has died a conqueror.

Thus far, not a thought or a word strays from the field of war. With a childlike intensity, every syllable bends toward the single idea —

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz.

Only then the singer allowed the Church to assert some of its rights: —

Qo sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut A I'une main si ad sun piz batut. " Deus meie culpe vers les tues vertuz De mes pecchiez des granz e des menuz Que jo ai fait des I'ure que nez fui Tresqu'a cest jur que ci sui consouz." Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut Angle del del i descendent a lui. Aoi.

Then Roland feels that his last hour has come Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill, While with one hand he beats upon his breast: " Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles Pardon my sins, the great as well as small. That I have done from the hour I was born Down to this day that I have now attained." His right glove toward God he lifted up. Angels from heaven descend on him. AoL

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND

29

Lt quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis De plusiu^ choses a remembrer li prist De tantes teues cume li bers cunquist

De dulce France des humes de sun lign De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubil Claimet sa culpa si priet deu mercit. "Veire pateme ki unkes ne mentis Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis E Daniel des liuns guaresis Guaris de mei I'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis."

Sun destre guant a deu en puroflFrit E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint L' anme del cunte portent en pareis.

Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine And toward Spain has turned his face away. Of many things he called the memory back, Of many lands that he, the brave, had con*

quered, Of gentle France, the men of his lineage. Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him; He cannot help but weep and sigh for these, But for himself will not forget to care; He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace. "O God the Father who has never lied, Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death, And Daniel from the lions saved. Save my soul from all the perils For the sins that in my life I did! "

His right-hand glove to God he profiFered; Saint Gabriel from his hand took it ; Upon his arm he held his head inclined, Folding his hands he passed to his end. God sent to him his angel cherubim And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril, Together with them came Saint Gabriel. The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise.

Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for colour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women. Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh century felt in these verses of the " Chanson," and there is no reason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for once to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning. The naivete of the poetry is that of the society. God the Father was the feudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus — his baron or vassal — from the grave, and freed Daniel, AS an evidence of his power and loyalty; a seigneur who never lied, or was false to his word. God the Father, as feudal seigneur, absorbs the Trinity, and, what is more significant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who is not mentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland in dying, proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an act of homage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his represen- tative to accept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William

30 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

and his barons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was not farther away than Charlemagne.

Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that time must have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland's life was not exemplary. The " Chanson " had taken pains to show that the disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong folly and temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults, or repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda, his betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests, his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douce France." He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ. The poet regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church; all the warrior cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess.

The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or the his- torical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art. The naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of the verse. Word and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing ever matched it. The words bubble like a stream in the woods : —

^o sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus.

Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen: —

Que jo ai fait des I'ure que nez fui. The words may remain exactly the same, but the poetry will have gone out of them. Five hundred years later, even the English critics had so far lost their sense for military poetry that they professed to be shocked by Milton's monosyllables: —

Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, Smote him into the midrifi with a stone That beat out life.

Milton's language was indeed more or less archaic and Biblical; it was a Puritan affectation; but the "Chanson" in the refectory act- ually reflected, repeated, echoed, the piers and arches of the Abbey Church just rising above. The verse is built up. The qualities of the

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND 31

architecture reproduce themselves in the song: the same directness, simplicity, absence of self-consciousness; the same intensity of pur- pose; even the same material; the prayer is granite: —

Guaris de mei I'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fisl

The action of dying is felt, like the dropping of a keystone into the

vault, and if the Romanesque arches in the church, which are within

hearing, could speak, they would describe what they are doing in the

precise words of the poem : —

Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin Upon their shoulders have their heads inclined,

Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. Folded their hands, and sunken to their rest.

Many thousands of times these verses must have been sung at the Mount and echoed in every castle and on every battle-field from the Welsh Marches to the shores of the Dead Sea. No modern opera or play ever approached the popularity of the " Chanson." None has ever expressed with anything like the same completeness the society that produced it. Chanted by every minstrel, — known by heart, from beginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay or clerica\ — translated into every tongue, — more intensely felt, if possible, in Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England, — perhaps most effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in their great castles in the Holy Land, — it is now best felt at Mont-Saint-Michel, and from the first must have been there at home. The proof is the line, evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, which invoked Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea at the climax of Roland's death, and one needs no original documents or contemporary authorities to prove that, when Taillefer came to this invocation, not only Duke William and his barons, but still more Abbot Ranulf and his monks, broke into a frenzy of sympathy which expressed the masculine and military pas- sions of the Archangel better than it accorded with the rules of Saint Benedict.

CHAPTER III

THE MERVEILLE

THE nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who moved in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh moved faster and more furiously still. The Norman con- quest of England was an immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but the first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European history. Never has the Western world shown any- thing like the energy and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the moment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe was a unity then, in thought, will, and object. Chris- tianity was the unit. Mont -Saint-Michel and Byzantium were near each other. The Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemagne were figured as allies and friends in the popular legend. The East was the common enemy, always superior in wealth and numbers, fre- quently in energy, and sometimes in thought and art. The outburst of the first crusade was splendid even in a military sense, but it was great beyond comparison in its reflection in architecture, ornament, poetry, colour, religion, and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, and its women were worth all the rest.

Mont-Saint-Michel, better than any other spot in the world, keeps the architectural record of that ferment, much as the Sicilian temples keep the record of the similar outburst of Greek energy, art, poetry, and thought, fifteen hundred years before. Of the eleventh century, it is true, nothing but the church remains at the Mount, and, if studied further, the century has got to be sought elsewhere, which is not diffi- cult, since it is preserved in any number of churches in every path of tourist travel. Normandy is full of it; Bayeux and Caen contain little else. At the Mount, the eleventh-century work was antiquated before

THE MERVEILLE 3,3

it was finished. In the year 1 1 12, Abbot Roger II was obliged to plan and construct a new group in such haste that it is said to have been finished in 1 122. It extends from what we have supposed to be the old refectory to the parvis, and abuts on the three lost spans of the church, covering about one hundred and twenty feet. As usual there were three levels; a cr^-pt or gallery beneath, known as the Aquilon; a cloister or promenoir above ; and on the level of the church a dormitory, now lost. The group is one ofthe most interesting in France, another pons seclorum, an antechamber to the west portal of Chartres, which bears the same date (11 10-25). It is the famous period of Transition, the glory of the twelfth century, the object of our pilgrimage.

Art is a fairly large field where no one need jostle his neighbour, and no one need shut himself up in a corner; but, if one insists on taking a corner of preference, one might ofTer some excuse for choosing the Gothic Transition. The quiet, restrained strength of the Romanesque married to the graceful curves and vaulting imagination of the Gothic makes a union nearer the ideal than is often allowed in marriage. The French, in their best days, loved it with a constancy that has thrown a sort of aureole over their fickleness since. They never tired of its possibilities. Sometimes they put the pointed arch within the round, or above it; sometimes they put the round within the pointed. Some- times a Roman arch covered a cluster of pointed windows, as though protecting and caressing its children; sometimes a huge pointed arch covered a great rose-window spreading across the whole front of an enormous cathedral, with an arcade of Romanesque windows beneath. The French architects felt no discord, and there was none. Even the pure Gothic was put side by side with the pure Roman. You will see no later Gothic than the choir of the Abbey Church above (1450- 1521), unless it is the north fl^che of Chartres Cathedral (1507-13); and if you will look down the nave, through the triumphal arches, into the pointed choir four hundred years more modern, you can judge whether there is any real discord. For those who feel the art, there is

34 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

none; the strength and the grace join hands; the man and woman love each other still.

The difference of sex is not imaginary. In 1058, when the triumphal columns were building, and Taillefer sang to William the Bastard and Harold the Saxon, Roland still prayed his "mea culpa" to God the Father and gave not a thought to Alda his betrothed. In the twelfth century Saint Bernard recited "Ave Stella Maris" in an ecstasy of miracle before the image of the Virgin, and the armies of France in battle cried, " Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie." What the Roman could not express flowered into the Gothic; what the masculine mind could not idealize in the warrior, it idealized in the woman ; no archi- tecture that ever grew on earth, except the Gothic, gave this effect of flinging its passion against the sky.

When men no longer felt the passion, they fell back on themselves, or lower. The architect returned to the round arch, and even further to the flatness of the Greek colonnade; but this was not the fault of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. What they had to say they said; what they felt they expressed; and if the seventeenth century forgot it, the twentieth in turn has forgotten the seventeenth. History is only a catalogue of the forgotten. The eleventh century is no worse off than its neighbours. The twelfth is, in architecture, rather better off than the nineteenth. These two rooms, the Aquilon and promenoir, which mark the beginning of the Transition, are, on the whole, more modern than Saint-Sulpice, or II Gesu at Rome. In the same situation, for the same purposes, any architect would be proud to repeat them to-day.

The Aquilon, though a hall or gallery of importance in its day, seems to be classed among crypts. M. Camille Enlart, in his " Manual of French Archaeology" (p. 252) gives a list of Romanesque and Tran- sition crypts, about one hundred and twenty, to serve as examples for the study. The Aquilon is not one of them, but the crypt of Saint- Denis and that of Chartres Cathedral would serve to teach any over- curious tourist all that he should want to know about such matters.

ABBEY OF MONT-SAINT-MICHEL : THE REFECTORY

THE MERVEILLE 35

Photographs such as those of the Monuments Historiques answer all the just purposes of underground travel. The Aquilon is one's first lesson in Transition architecture because it is dated (11 12); and the crypt of Saint-Denis serves almost equally well because the Abbe Suger must have begun his plans for it about 1122. Both have the same arcs douhleaux and arcs-formerets, though in opposite arrange- ment. Both show the first heavy hint at the broken arch. There are no nervures — no rib-vaulting, — and hardly a suggestion of the Gothic as one sees it in the splendid crypt of the Gros Piliers close at hand, except the elaborately intersecting vaults and the heavy columns; but the promenoir above is an astonishing leap in time and art. The promenoir has the same arrangement and columns as the Aquilon, but the vaults are beautifully arched and pointed, with ribs rising directly from the square capitals and intersecting the central spacings, in a spirit which neither you nor I know how to distinguish from the pure Gothic of the thirteenth century, unless it is that the arches are hardly pointed enough; they seem to the eye almost round. The height ap- pears to be about fourteen feet.

The promenoir of Abbot Roger II has an interest to pilgrims who are going on to the shrine of the Virgin, because the date of the pro- menoir seems to be exactly the same as the date which the Abb4 Bulteau assigns for the western portal of Chartres. Ordinarily a date is no great matter, but when one has to run forward and back, with the agility of an electric tram, between two or three fixed points, it is convenient to fix them once for all. The Transition is complete here in the promenoir, which was planned as early as 1 1 15. The subject of vaulting is far too ambitious for summer travel ; it is none too easy for a graduate of the Beaux Arts; and few architectural fields have been so earnestly discussed and disputed. We must not touch it. The age of the " Chanson de Roland " itself is not so dangerous a topic. Our vital needs are met, more or less sufficiently, by taking the promenoir at the Mount, the crypt at Saint-Denis, and the western portal at Chartres,

36 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

as the trinity of our Transition, and roughly calling their date the years 1 1 1 5-20. To overload the memory with dates is the vice of every schoolmaster and the passion of every second-rate scholar. Tourists want as few dates as possible; what they want is poetry. Yet a singu- lar coincidence, with which every classroom is only too familiar, has made of the years -'15a curiously convenient group, and the year 1 1 1 5 is as convenient as any for the beginning of the century of Transition. That was the year when Saint Bernard laid the foundations of his Abbey of Clairvaux. Perhaps 1115, or at latest 1117, was the year when Abelard sang love-songs to H61oise in Canon Fulbert's house in the Rue des Chantres, beside the cloister of Notre Dame in Paris. The Abbe Suger, the Abbe Bernard, and the Abbe Abelard are the three interesting men of the French Transition.

The promenoir, then, shall pass for the year 1 1 15, and, as such, is an exceedingly beautiful hall, uniting the splendid calm and serious- ness of the Romanesque with the exquisite lines of the Gothic. You will hardly see its equal in the twelfth century. At Angers the great hall of the Bishop's Palace survives to give a point of comparison, but commonly the halls of that date were not vaulted ; they had timber roofs, and have perished. The promenoir is about sixty feet long, and divided into two aisles, ten feet wide, by a row of columns. If it were used on great occasions as a refectory, eighty or a hundred persons could have been seated at table, and perhaps this may have been about the scale of the Abbey's needs, at that time. Whatever effort of fancy was needed to place Duke William and Harold in the old refectory of 1058, none whatever is required in order to see his successors in the halls of Roger II. With one exception they were not interesting per- sons. The exception was Henry II of England and Anjou, and his wife Eleanor of Guienne, who was for a while Regent of Normandy. One of their children was born at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the Abbot was asked to be godfather. In 11 58, just one hundred years after Duke William's visit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the

THE MERVEILLE 37

Abbey, heard mass, and dined in the refectory. " Rex venit ad Mon- tem Sancti Michaelis, audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec- torio cum baronibus suis." Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, and very possibly William of Saint-Pair looked on. Perhaps he recited parts of his "Roman" before the King. One may be quite sure that when Queen Eleanor came to the Mount she asked the poet to recite his verses, for Eleanor gave law to poets.

One might linger over Abbot Robert of Torigny, who was a very great man in his day, and an especially great architect, but too ambi- tious. All his work, including the two towers, crumbled and fell for want of proper support. What would correspond to the cathedrals of Noyon and Soissons and the old clocher and fl^che of Chartres is lost. We have no choice but to step down into the next century at once, and into the full and perfect Gothic of the great age when the new Chartres was building.

In the year 1203, Philip Augustus expelled the English from Nor- mandy and conquered the province; but, in the course of the war the Duke of Brittany, who was naturally a party to any war that took place under his eyes, happened to burn the town beneath the Abbey, and in doing so, set fire unintentionally to the Abbey itself. The sacri- lege shocked Philip Augustus, and the wish to conciliate so powerful a vassal as Saint Michel, or his abbot, led the King of France to give a large sum of money for repairing the buildings. The Abbot Jordan (i 191-1212) at once undertook to outdo all his predecessors, and, with an immense ambition, planned the huge pile which covers the whole north face of the Mount, and which has always borne the expressive name of the Merveille.

The general motive of abbatial building was common to them all. Abbeys were large households. The church was the centre, and at Mont-Saint-Michel the summit, for the situation compelled the ab- bots there to pile one building on another instead of arranging them on a level in squares or parallelograms. The dormitory in any case had to

38 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

be near a door of the church, because the Rule required constant serv- ices, day and night. The cloister was also hard-by the church door, and, at the Mount, had to be on the same level in order to be in open air. Naturally the refectory must be immediately beneath one or the other of these two principal structures, and the hall, or place of meet- ing for business with the outside world, or for internal administration, or for guests of importance, must be next the refectory. The kitchen and offices would be placed on the lowest stage, if for no other reason, because the magazines were two hundred feet below at the landing- place, and all supplies, including water, had to be hauled up an in- clined plane by windlass. To administer such a society required the most efficient management. An abbot on this scale was a very great man, indeed, who enjoyed an establishment of his own, close by, with officers in no small number; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and even these were not enough for the regular church services at seasons of pilgrimage. The Abbot was obliged to entertain scores and hun- dreds of guests, and these, too, of the highest importance, with large suites. Every ounce of food must be brought from the mainland, or fished from the sea. All the tenants and their farms, their rents and contributions, must be looked after. No secular prince had a more serious task of administration, and none did it so well. Tenani^s always preferred an abbot or bishop for landlord. The Abbey was the highest administrative creation of the Middle Ages, and when one has made one's pilgrimage to Chartres, one might well devote another summer to visiting what is left of Clairvaux, Citeaux, Cluny, and the other famous monasteries, with VioUet-le-Duc to guide, in order to satisfy one's mind whether, on the whole, such a life may not have had activity as well as idleness.

This is a matter of economics, to be settled with the keepers of more modern hotels, but the art had to suit the conditions, and when Abbot Jordan decided to plaster this huge structure against the side of the Mount, the architect had a relatively simple task to handle. The

THE MERVEILLE 39

engineering difficulties alone were very serious. The architectural plan was plain enough. As the Abbot laid his requirements before the architect, he seems to have begun by fixing the scale for a refectory capable of seating two hundred guests at table. Probably no king in Europe fed more persons at his table than this. According to M. Cor- royer's plan, the length of the new refectory is one hundred and twenty- three feet (37.5 metres). A row of columns down the centre divides it into two aisles, measuring twelve feet clear, from column to column, across the room. If tables were set the whole length of the two aisles, forty persons could have been easily seated, in four rows, or one hundred and sixty persons. Without crowding, the same space would give room for fifty guests, or two hundred in all.

Once the scale was fixed, the arrangement was easy. Beginning at the lowest possible level, one plain, very solidly built, vaulted room served as foundation for another, loftier and more delicately vaulted ; and this again bore another which stood on the level of the church, and opened directly into the north transept. This arrangement was then doubled; and the second set of rooms, at the west end, contained the cellar on the lower level, another great room or hall above it, and the cloister at the church door, also entering into the north transept. Door- ways, passages, and stairs unite them all. The two heavy halls on the lowest level are now called the almonry and the cellar, which is a distinction between administrative arrangements that does not con- cern us. Architecturally the rooms might, to our untrained eyes, be of the same age with the Aquilon. They are earliest Transition, as far as a tourist can see, or at least they belong to the class of crypts which has an architecture of its own. The rooms that concern us are those imme- diately above: the so-called Salle des Chevaliers at the west end; and the so-called refectory at the east. Every writer gives these rooms different names, and assigns them different purposes, but whatever they were meant for, they are, as halls, the finest in France; the purest in thirteenth-century perfection.

40 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

The Salle des Chevaliers of the Order of Saint Michael created by Louis XI in 1469 was, or shall be for tourist purposes, the great hall that every palace and castle contained, and in which the life of the chateau centred. Planned at about the same time with the Cathedral of Chartres (l 195-12 10), and before the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, this hall and its neighbour the refectory, studied together with the cathedral and the abbey, are an exceedingly liberal education for anybody, tourist or engineer or architect, and would make the fortune of an intelligent historian, if such should happen to exist; but the last thing we ask from them is education or instruction. We want only their poetry, and shall have to look for it elsewhere. Here is only the shell — the dead art — and silence. The hall is about ninety feet long, and sixty feet in its greatest width. It has three ranges of columns making four vaulted aisles which seem to rise about twenty-two feet in height. It is warmed by two huge and heavy cheminees or fireplaces in the outside wall, between the windows. It is lighted beautifully, but mostly from above through round windows in the arching of the vaults. The vaulting is a study for wiser men than we can ever be. More than twenty strong round columns, free or engaged, with Roman- esque capitals, support heavy ribs, or nervures, and while the two cen- tral aisles are eighteen feet wide, the outside aisle, into which the windows open, measures only ten feet in width, and has consequently one of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The whole design is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but what would take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be the instinct of the Archangel's presence which has animated his architecture. The masculine, military energy of Saint Michael lives still in every stone. The genius that realized this warlike emotion has stamped his power everywhere, on every centimetre of his work; in every ray of light; on the mass of every shadow; wherever the eye falls; still more strongly on all that the eye divines, and in the shadows that are felt like the lights. The architect intended it all. Any one who doubts has only to

THE MERVEILLE 41

Step through the doorway in the corner into the refectory. There the architect has undertaken to express the thirteenth-century idea of the Archangel; he has left the twelfth century behind him.

The refectory, which has already served for a measure of the Abbot's scale, is, in feeling, as different as possible from the hall. Six charming columns run down the centre, dividing the room into two vaulted aisles, apparently about twenty-seven feet in height. Wherever the hall was heavy and serious, the refectory was made light and graceful. Hardly a trace of the Romanesque remains. Only the slight, round columns are not yet grooved or fluted, and their round capitals are still slightly severe. Every detail is lightened. The great fireplaces are removed to one end of the room. The most interesting change is in the windows. When you reach Chartres, the great book of archi- tecture will open on the word "Fenestration," — Fenetre, — a word as ugly as the thing was beautiful ; and then, with pain and sorrow, you will have to toil till you see how the architects of 1200 subordinated every other problem to that of lighting their spaces. Without feeling their lights, you can never feel their shadows. These two halls at Mont-Saint-Michel are antechambers to the nave of Chartres; their fenestration, inside and out, controls the whole design. The lighting of the refectory is superb, but one feels its value in art only when it is taken in relation to the lighting of the hall, and both serve as a simple preamble to the romance of the Chartres windows.

The refectory shows what the architect did when, to lighten his effects, he wanted to use every possible square centimetre of light. He has made nine windows; six on the north, two on the east, and one on the south. They are nearly five feet wide, and about twenty feet high. They flood the room. Probably they were intended for glass, and M. Corroyer's volume contains wood-cuts of a few fragments of thir- teenth-century glass discovered in his various excavations; but one may take for granted that with so much light, colour was the object intended. The floors would be tiled in colour; the walls would be hung

42 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

with colour; probably the vaults were painted in colour; one can see it all in scores of illuminated manuscripts. The thirteenth century had a passion for colour, and made a colour-world of its own which we have got to explore.

The two halls remain almost the only monuments of what must be called secular architecture of the early and perfect period of Gothic art (1200-10). Churches enough remain, with Chartres at their head, but all the great abbeys, palaces and chateaux of that day are ruins. Arques, Gaillard, Montargis, Coucy, the old Louvre, Chinon, Angers, as well as Cluny, Clairvaux, Citeaux, Jumi^ges, Vezelay, Saint-Denis, Poissy, Fontevrault, and a score of other residences, royal or semi- royal, have disappeared wholly, or have lost their residential build- ings. When VioUet-le-Duc, under the Second Empire, was allowed to restore one great chateau, he chose the latest, Pierrefonds, built by Louis d'Orleans in 1390. Vestiges of Saint Louis's palace remain at the Conciergerie, but the first great royal residence to be compared with the Merveille is Amboise, dating from about 1500, three centu- ries later. Civilization made almost a clean sweep of art. Only here, at Mont-Saint-Michel, one may still sit at ease on the stone benches in the embrasures of the refectory windows, looking over the thirteenth- century ocean and watching the architect as he worked out the details which were to produce or accent his contrasts or harmonies, heighten his eflfects, or hide his show of effort, and all by means so true, simple, and apparently easy that one seems almost competent to follow him. One learns better in time. One gets to feel that these things were due in part to an instinct that the architect himself might not have been able to explain. The instinct vanishes as time creeps on. The halls at Rouen or at Blois are more easily understood ; the Salle des Caryatides of Pierre Lescot at the Louvre, charming as it is, is simpler still; and one feels entirely at home in the Salle des Glaces which filled the ambition of Louis XIV at Versailles.

If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professional clever-

THE MERVEILLE 43

ness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, we had best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door in its extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room some thirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by a large stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leading up to another square room above opening directly into the cloister. It is a little library or charter-house. The arrangement is almost too clever for gravity, as is the case with more than one arrangement in the Merveille. From the outside one can see that at this corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress against a double strain, and he built up from the rock below a square corner tower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase lead- ing from the cellar up to the cloisters. Just above the level of the great hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem. The place was near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint-Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his " Roman" there; monks might have illuminated missals there. A few steps upward brought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more brought them to the church for prayer. A few steps downward brought them to the great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into the refectory, for dinner. To conteniplate the goodness of God was a simple joy when one had such a room to work in; such a spot as the great hall to walk in, when the storms blew; or the cloisters in which to meditate, when the sun shone; such a dining-room as the refectory; and such a view from one's windows over the infinite ocean and the guiles of Satan's quicksands. From the battlements of Heaven, William of Saint-Pair looked down on it with envy.

Of all parts of the Merveille, in summer, the most charming must always have been the cloisters. Only the Abbey of the Mount was rich and splendid enough to build a cloister like this, all in granite, carved in forms as light as though it were wood; with columns arranged in a peculiar triangular order that excited the admiration of VioUet-le- Duc. "One of the most curious and complete cloisters that we have in

44 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

France," he said; although in France there are many beautiful and curious cloisters. For another reason it has value. The architect meant it to reassert, with all the art and grace he could command, the mastery of love, of thought and poetry, in religion, over the masculine, military energy of the great hall below. The thirteenth century rarely let slip a chance to insist on this moral that love is law. Saint Francis was preaching to the birds in 12 15 at Assisi, and the architect built this cloister in 1226 at Mont-Saint-Michel. Both sermons were satu- rated with the feeling of the time, and both are about equally worth noting, if one aspires to feel the art.

A conscientious student has yet to climb down the many steps, on the outside, and look up at the Merveille from below. Few buildings in France are better worth the trouble. The horizontal line at the roof measures two hundred and thirty-five feet. The vertical line of the buttresses measures in round numbers one hundred feet. To make walls of that height and length stand up at all was no easy matter, as Robert de Torigny had shown; and so the architect buttressed them from bottom to top with twelve long buttresses against the thrust of the interior arches, and three more, bearing against the interior walls. This gives, on the north front, fifteen strong vertical lines in a space of two hundred and thirty-five feel. Between these lines the windows tell their story; the seven long windows of the refectory on one side; the seven rounded windows of the hall on the other. Even the corner tower with the charter-house becomes as simple as the rest. The sum of this impossible wall, and its exaggerated vertical lines, is strength and intelligence at rest.

The whole Mount still kept the grand style; it expressed the unity of Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, Good and Bad ; it solved the whole problem of the universe. The priest and the soldier were both at home here, in 1215 as in 1 115 or in 1058; the politician was not outside of it; the sinner was welcome; the poet was made happy in his own spirit, with a sympathy, almost an affeo

THE MERVEILLE 45

tion, that suggests a habit of verse in the Abbot as well as in the archi- tect. God reconciles all. The world is an evident, obvious, sacred harmony. Even the discord of war is a detail on which the Abbey refuses to insist. Not till two centuries afterwards did the Mount take on the modern expression of war as a discord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of the fifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of the chStelet, as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-century entrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated mere military construction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what a chStelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite alien to the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; it forebodes wars of religion; dissolution of society; loss of unity; the end of a world. Nothing is sadder than the catastrophe of Gothic art, religion, and hope.

One looks back on it all as a picture; a symbol of unity; an assertion of God and Man in a bolder, stronger, closer union than ever was expressed by other art ; and when the idea is absorbed, accepted, and perhaps partially understood, one may move on.

CHAPTER IV

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE

FROM Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads across Nor- mandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres, which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture, Nor- mandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the He de France, with Paris, was a third ; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were a fourth ; and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, lay the coun- ties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres one should go up the Seine and down the Loire, from Angers to Le Mans, and so enter Chartres from Brittany after a complete circle; but if we set out to do our pleasure on that scale, we must start from the Pyramid of Cheops. We have set out from Mont-Saint- Michel ; we will go next to Paris.

The architectural highway lies through Coutances, Bayeux, Caen, Rouen, and Mantes. Every great artistic kingdom solved its archi- tectural problems in its own way, as it did its religious, political, and social problems, and no two solutions were ever quite the same; but among them the Norman was commonly the most practical, and sometimes the most dignified. We can test this rule by the standard of the first town we stop at — Coutances. We can test it equally well at Bayeux or Caen, but Coutances comes first after Mont-Saint-Michel; let us begin with it, and state the problems with their Norman solu- tion, so that it may be ready at hand to compare with the French solution, before coming to the solution at Chartres.

The cathedral at Coutances is said to be about the age of the Mer- veille (1200-50), but the exact dates are unknown, and the work is so Norman as to stand by itself; yet the architect has grappled with more problems than one need hope to see solved in any single church

COUTANXES CATHEDR.\L

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 47

A

in the He de France. Even at Chartres, although the two stone filches are, by exception, completed, they are not of the same age, as they are here. Neither at Chartres nor at Paris, nor at Laon or Amiens or Rheims or Bourges, will you see a central tower to compare with the enormous pile at Coutances. Indeed the architects of France failed to solve this particular church problem, and we shall leave it behind us in leaving Normandy, although it is the most effective feature of any possible church. "A clocher of that period (circa 1200), built over the croisee of a cathedral, following lines so happy, should be a monument of the greatest beauty; unfortunately we possess not a single one in France. Fire, and the hand of man more than time, have destroyed them all, and we find on our greatest religious edifices no more than bases and fragments of these beautiful constructions. The cathedral of Coutances alone has preserved its central clocher of the thirteenth century, and even there it is not complete; its stone fleche is wanting. As for its style, it belongs to Norman architecture, and diverges widely from the character of French architecture." So says Viollet-le-Duc; but although the great churches for the most part never had central clochers, which, on the scale of Amiens, Bourges, or Beauvais, would have required an impossible mass, the smaller churches frequently carry them still, and they are, like the dome, the most effective features they can carry. They were made to dominate the whole.

No doubt the fleche is wanting at Coutances, but you can supply it in imagination from the two filches of the western tower, which are as simple and severe as the spear of a man-at-arms. Supply the fleche, and the meaning of the tower cannot be mistaken ; it is as military as the "Chanson de Roland"; it is the man-at-arms himself, mounted and ready for battle, spear in rest. The mere seat of the central tower astride of the church, so firm, so fixed, so serious, so defiant, is Norman, like the seat of the Abbey Church on the Mount ; and at Falaise, where William the Bastard was born, we shall see a central tower on the church which is William himself, in armour, on horseback, ready to

48 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

fight for the Church, and perhaps, in his bad moods, against it. Such militant churches were capable of forcing Heaven itself; all of them look as though they had fought at Hastings or stormed Jerusalem. Wherever the Norman central clocher stands, the Church Militant of the eleventh century survives; — not the Church of Mary Queen, but of Michael the Archangel ; — not the Church of Christ, but of God the Father — Who never lied !

Taken together with the filches of the fagade, this clocher of Cou- tances forms a group such as one very seldom sees. The two towers of the fagade are something apart, quite by themselves among the innumerable church-towers of the Gothic time. We have got a happy summer before us, merely in looking for these church-towers. There is no livelier amusement for fine weather than in hunting them as though they were mushrooms, and no study in architecture nearly so delight- ful. No work of man has life like the fieche. One sees it for a greater distance and feels it for a longer time than is possible with any other human structure, unless it be the dome. There is more play of light on the octagonal faces of the fieche as the sun moves around them than can be got out of the square or the cone or any other combination of surfaces. For some reason, the facets of the hexagon or octagon are more pleasing than the rounded surfaces of the cone, and Normandy is said to be peculiarly the home of this particularly Gothic church ornament; yet clochers and fleches are scattered all over France until one gets to look for them on the horizon as though every church in every hamlet were an architectural monument. Hundreds of them literally are so, — Monuments Historiques, — protected by the Government; but when you undertake to compare them, or to decide whether they are more beautiful in Normandy than in the lie de France, or in Burgundy, or on the Loire or the Charente, you are lost. Even the superiority of the octagon is not evident to everyone. Over the little church at Fenioux on the Charente, not very far from La Rochelle, is a conical steeple that an infidel might adore; and if you

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 49

have to decide between provinces, you must reckon with the decision of architects and amateurs, who seem to be agreed that the first of all filches is at Chartres, the second at Vend6me, not far from Blois in Touraine, and the third at Auxerre in Burgundy. The towers of Coutances are not in the list, nor are those at Bayeux nor those at Caen. France is rich in art. Yet the towers of Coutances are in some ways as interesting, if not as beautiful, as the best.

The two stone filches here, with their octagon faces, do not descend, as in other churches, to their resting-place on a square tower, with the plan of junction more or less disguised; they throw out nests of smaller filches, and these cover buttressing corner towers, with lines that go directly to the ground. Whether the artist consciously intended it or not, the effect is to broaden the facade and lift it into the air. The fagade itself has a distinctly military look, as though a fortress had been altered into a church. A charming arcade at the top has the air of being thrown across in order to disguise the alteration, and perhaps owes much of its charm to the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Even the great west window looks like an afterthought ; one's instinct asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross orl the spire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional, — not even the con- ventionality.

If you have any doubts about this, you have only to compare the photograph of Coutances with the photograph of Chartres; and yet, surely, the facade of Chartres is severe enough to satisfy Saint Bernard himself. With the later fronts of Rheims and Amiens, there is no field for comparison; they have next to nothing in common; yet Coutances is said to be of the same date with Rheims, or nearly so, and one can believe it when one enters the interior. The Normans, as they slowly reveal themselves, disclose most unexpected qualities; one seems to

50 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

sound subterranean caverns of feeling hidden behind their iron nasals. No other cathedral in France or in Europe has an interior more re- fined — one is tempted to use even the hard-worn adjective, more tender — or more carefully studied. One test is crucial here and every- where. The treatment of the apse and choir is the architect's severest standard. This is a subject not to be touched lightly; one to which we shall have to come back in a humble spirit, prepared for patient study, at Chartres; but the choir of Coutances is a cousin to that of Chartres, as the fagades are cousins; Coutances like Chartres belongs to Notre Dame and is felt in the same spirit ; the church is built for the choir and apse, rather than for the nave and transepts; for the Virgin rather than for the public. In one respect Coutances is even more delicate in the feminine charm of the Virgin's peculiar grace than Chartres, but this was an afterthought of the fourteenth century. The system of chapels radiating about the apse was extended down the nave, in an arrange- ment "so beautiful and so rare," according to Viollet-le-Duc, that one shall seek far before finding its equal. Among the unexpected revela- tions of human nature that suddenly astonish historians, one of the least reasonable was the passionate outbreak of religious devotion to the ideal of feminine grace, charity, and love that took place here in Normandy while it was still a part of the English kingdom, and flamed up into almost fanatical frenzy among the most hard-hearted and hard-headed race in Europe.

So in this church, in the centre of this arrangement of apse and chapels with their quite unusual — perhaps quite singular — grace, the four huge piers which support the enormous central tower, offer a tour de force almost as exceptional as the refinement of the chapels. At Mont-Saint-Michel, among the monks, the union of strength and grace was striking, but at Coutances it is exaggerated, like Tristram and Iseult, — a roman of chivalry. The four "enormous" columns of the croisee, carry, as Viollet-le-Duc says, the "enormous octagonal tower," — like Saint Christopher supporting the Christ-child, before

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 51

the image of the Virgin, in her honour. Nothing like this can be seen at Chartres, or at any of the later palaces which France built for the pleasure of the Queen of Heaven.

We are slipping into the thirteenth century again; the temptation is terrible to feeble minds and tourist natures; but a great mass of twelfth- and eleventh-century work remains to be seen and felt. To go back is not so easy as to begin with it ; the heavy round arch is like old cognac compared with the champagne of the pointed and fretted spire; one must not quit Coutances without making an excursion to Lessay on the road to Cherbourg, where is a church of the twelfth century, with a square tower and almost untouched Norman interior, that closely repeats the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint-Michel. "One of the most complete models of Romanesque architecture to be found in Nor- mandy," says M. de Caumont. The central clocher will begin a pho- tographic collection of square towers, to replace that which was lost on the Mount; and a second example is near Bayeux, at a small place called Cerisy-la-For§t, where the church matches that on the Mount, according to M. Corroyer; for Cerisy-la-For6t was also an abbey, and thechurch, built by Richard II, Dukeof Normandy, at the beginning of the eleventh century, was larger than that on the Mount. It still keeps its central tower.

\ All this is intensely Norman, and is going to help very little in France; it would be more useful in England; but at Bayeux is a great cathedral much more to the purpose, with two superb western towers crowned by stone filches, cousins of those at Coutances, and distinctly related to the twelfth-century fl^che at Chartres. "The Normans," says Viollet-le-Duc, "had not that instinct of proportion which the architects of the He de France, Beauvais, and Soissons possessed to a high degree ; yet the boldness of their constructions, their perfect exe- cution, the elevation of the filches, had evident influence on the French school properly called, and that influence is felt in the old spire of Chartres." The Norman seemed to show distinction in another

52 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

respect which the French were less quick to imitate. What they began, they completed. Not one of the great French churches has two stone spires complete, of the same age, while each of the little towns of Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen contains its twin towers and fleches of stone, as solid and perfect now as they were seven hundred years ago. Still another Norman character is worth noting, because this is one part of the influence felt at Chartres. If you look carefully at the two western towers of the Bayeux Cathedral, perhaps you will feel what is said to be the strength of the way they are built up. They rise from their foundation with a quiet confidence of line and support, which passes directly up to the weather-cock on the summit of the fleches. At the plane where the square tower is changed into the octagon spire, you will see the corner turrets and the long intermediate windows which effect the change without disguising it. One can hardly call it a device; it is so simple and evident a piece of construction that it does not need to be explained ; yet you will have to carry a photo- graph of this fleche to Chartres, and from there to Vendome, for there is to be a great battle of fleches about this point of junction, and the Norman scheme is a sort of standing reproach to the French.

Coutances and Bayeux are interesting, but Caen is a Romanesque Mecca. There William the Conqueror dealt with the same architec- tural problems, and put his solution in his Abbaye-aux-Hommes, which bears the name of Saint Stephen. Queen Matilda put her solu- tion into her Abbaye-aux-Femmes, the Church of the Trinity. One ought particularly to look at the beautiful central clocher of the church at Vaucelles in the suburbs; and one must drive out to Thaon to see its eleventh-century church, with a charming Romanesque blind arcade on the outside, and a little clocher, "the more interesting to us," according to Viollet-le-Duc, " because it bears the stamp of the tradi- tions of defence of the primitive towers which were built over the porches." Even "a sort of chemin de ronde" remains around the clocher, perhaps once provided with a parapet of defence. "C'est lei,

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 53

du reste, un charmant Mifice." A tower with stone fl^che, which actu- ally served for defence in a famous recorded instance, is that of the church at Secqueville, not far off; this beautiful tower, as charming as anything in Norman art, is known to have served as a fortress in 1 105, which gives a valuable date. The pretty old Romanesque front of the little church at Ouistreham, with its portal that seems to come fresh from Poitiers and Moissac, can be taken in, while driving past; but we must on no account fail to make a serious pilgrimage to Saint- Pierre- sur-Dives, where the church-tower and fleche are not only classed among the best in Normandy, but have an exact date, 1145, and a very close relation with Chartres, as will appear. Finally, if for no other reason, at least for interest in Arlette, the tanner's daughter, one must go to Falaise, and look at the superb clocher of Saint-Gervais, which was finished and consecrated by 1 135.

Some day, if you like, we can follow this Romanesque style to the south, and on even to Italy where it may be supposed to have been born ; but France had an architectural life fully a thousand years old when these twelfth-century churches were built, and was long since artistically, as she was politically, independent. The Normans were new in~ France, but not the Romanesque architecture ; they only took the forms and stamped on them their own character. It is the stamp we want to distinguish, in order to trace up our lines of artistic ances- try. The Norman twelfth-century stamp was not easily effaced. If we have not seen enough of it at Mont-Saint-Michel, Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen, we can go to Rouen, and drive out to Boscherville, and visit the ruined Abbey of Jumi^ges. Wherever there is a church-tower with a tall fl^he, as at Boscherville, Secqueville, Saint-Pierre-sur- Div^es, Caen, and Bayeux, Viollet-le-Duc bids notice how the octag- onal steeple is fitted on to the square tower. Always the passage from the octagon to the square seems to be quite simply made. The Gothic or Romanesque spire had the advantage that a wooden fleche was as reasonable a covering for it as a stone one, and the Normans might

54 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

have indulged in freaks of form very easily, if they chose, but they seem never to have thought of it. The nearest approach to the free- dom of wooden roofs is not in the lofty fleches, but in the covering of the great square central towers, like Falaise or Vaucelles, a huge four- sided roof which tries to be a fltehe, and is as massive as the heavy structure it covers.

The last of the Norman towers that Viollet-le-Duc insists upon is the so-called Clocher de Saint- Romain, the northern tower on the west front of the Cathedral of Rouen. Unfortunately it has lost its primi- tive octagon fl^che if it ever had one, but "the tower remains entire, and," according to Viollet-le-Duc, "is certainly one of the most beau- tiful in this part of France ; it offers a mixture of the two styles of the He de France and of Normandy, in which the former element domin- ates"; it is of the same date as the old tower of Chartres (1140-60), and follows the same interior arrangement; "but here the petty, con- fused disposition of the Norman towers, with their division into stories of equal height, has been adopted by the French master builder, although in submitting to these local customs he has still thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony between the profiles, sculpture, and the general effect of the whole, which belong to the school he came from. He has managed his voids and solids with especial cleverness, giving the more importance to the voids, and enlarging the scale of his details, as the tower rose in height. These details have great beauty; the construction is executed in materials of small dimensions with the care that the twelfth-century architects put into their building; the profiles project little, and, in spite of their extreme finesse, produce much effect; the buttresses are skilfully planted and profiled. The staircase, which, on the east side, deranges the arrangement of the bays, is a chef-d'oeuvre of architecture." This long panegyric, by Viollet-le-Duc, on French taste at the expense of Norman temper, ought to be read, book in hand, before the Cathedral

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 55

of Rouen, with photographs of Bayeux to compare. Certain it is that the Normans and the French never talked quite. the same language, but it is equally certain that the Norman language, to the English ear, expressed itself quite as clearly as the French, and sometimes seemed to have more to express.

The complaint of the French artist against the Norman is the "mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into storeys of equal height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, artists already struggled over the best solution of this particularly American problem of the twentieth century, and when tourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-storey towers which deco- rate the city, to see whether the Norman or the French plan has won; but this, at least, will be sure in advance: — the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, and stops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states the beauties, and more or less fits the facts to suit them. Both styles are great : both can sometimes be tiresome.

Here we must take leave of Normandy; a small place, but one which, like Attica or Tuscany, has said a great deal to the world, and even goes on saying things — not often in the famous genre ennuyeux — to this day; for Gustave Flaubert's style is singularly like that of the Tour Saint- Romain and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. Going up the Seine one might read a few pages of his letters, or of " Madame de Bovary," to see how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, with- out changing its methods. Some critics have thought that at times Flaubert was mesquin like the Norman tower, but these are, as the French say, the defects of his qualities; we can pass over them, and let our eyes rest on the simplicity of the Norman fleche which pierces the line of our horizon.

The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a little church of Gassicourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. In arms as in architecture. Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest;

56 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. Geographically Mantes is in the lie de France, less than forty miles from Paris. Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to the southward, is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependent country. No matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, the boundary- line of the lie de France is not to be crossed without stopping. If he came down from the north or east, he would have equally to stop, — either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, or Soissons, — because there is an architectural douane to pass, and one's architectural baggage must be opened. Neither Notre Dame de Paris nor Notre Dame de Chartres is quite intelligible unless one has first seen Notre Dame de Mantes, and studied it in the sacred sources of M. Viollet-le-Duc.

Notre Dame de Mantes is a sister to the Cathedral of Paris, "built at the same time, perhaps by the same architect, and reproducing its general dispositions, its mode of structure, and some of its details"; but the Cathedral of Paris has been greatly altered, so that its original arrangement is quite changed, while the church at Mantes remains practically as it was, when both were new, about the year 1200. As nearly as the dates can be guessed, the cathedral was finished, up to its vaulting, in 1170, and was soon afterwards imitated on a smaller scale at Mantes. The scheme seems to have been unsatisfactory because of defects in the lighting, for the whole system of fenestration had been changed at Paris before 1230, naturally at great cost, since the alterations, according to Viollet-le-Duc (articles "Cathedral" and " Rose," and allusions "Triforium"), left little except the ground-plan unchanged. To understand the Paris design of 1160-70, which was a long advance from the older plans, one must come to Mantes; and, reflecting that the great triumph of Chartres was its fenestration, which must have been designed immediately after 1 195, one can under- stand how, in this triangle of churches only forty or fifty miles apart, the architects, watching each other's experiments, were influenced, almost from day to day, by the failures or successes which they saw

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 57

The fenestration which the Paris architect planned in 1160-70, and repeated at Mantes, 1 190-1200, was wholly abandoned, and a new system introduced, immediately after the success of Chartres in 12 10.

As they now stand. Mantes is the oldest. While conscientiously trying to keep as far away as we can from technique, about which we know nothing and should care if possible still less if only ignorance would help us to feel what we do not understand, still the conscience is happier if it gains a little conviction, founded on what it thinks a fact. Even theologians — even the great theologians of the thirteenth century — even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself — did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God; and what Saint Thomas found necessary in philosophy may also be a sure source of consolation in the difficulties of art. The church at Mantes is a very early fact in Gothic art; indeed, it is one of the earliest; for our purposes it will serve as the very earliest of pure Gothic churches, after the Transition, and this we are told to study in its windows.

Before one can get near enough fairly to mark the details of the fagade, one sees the great rose window which fills a space nearly twenty-seven feet in width. Gothic fanatics commonly reckon the great rose windows of the thirteenth century as the most beautiful creation of their art, among the details of ornament; and this particu- lar rose is the direct parent of that at Chartres, which is classic like the Parthenon, while both of them served as models or guides for that at Paris which dates from 1220, those in the north and south transepts at Rheims, about 1230, and so on, from parent to child, till the rose faded forever. No doubt there were Romanesque roses before 1200, and we shall see them, but this rose of Mantes is the first Gothic rose of great dimensions, and that from which the others grew; in its sim- plicity, its honesty, its large liberality of plan, it is also one of the best, if M. Viollet-le-Duc is a true guide; but you will see a hundred roses, fiirst or last, and can choose as you would among the flowers.

More interesting than even the great rose of the portal is the remark

58 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

that the same rose-motive is carried round the church throughout its entire system of fenestration. As one follows it, on the outside, one sees that all the windows are constructed on the same rose-scheme; but the most curious arrangement is in the choir inside the church. You look up to each of the windows through a sort of tunnel or telescope: an arch enlarging outwards, the roses at the end resembling "oeil-de- boeufs," "oculi." So curious is this arrangement that Viollet-le-Duc has shown it, under the head "Triforium," in drawings and sections which any one can study who likes; its interest to us is that this arrangement in the choir was probably the experiment which proved a failure in Notre Dame at Paris, and led to the tearing-out the old windows and substituting those which still stand. Perhaps the rose did not give enough light, although the church at Mantes seems well lighted, and even at Paris the rose windows remain in the transepts and in one bay of the nave.

All this is introduction to the windows of Chartres, but these three churches open another conundrum as one learns, bit by bit, a few of the questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church- towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are evi- dently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they have no fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has no fleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are finished in full preparation for them? This double omission on the part of the French architect seems exceedingly strange, because his rival at Chartres finished his fl^che just when the architect of Paris and Mantes was finishing his towers (1175-1200). The Frenchman was certainly consumed by jealousy at the triumph never attained on any- thing like the same scale by any architect of the lie de France; and he was actually engaged at the time on at least two fleches, close to Paris, one at Saint-Denis, another of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, which proved the active interest he took in the difficulties conquered at Chartres, and his perfect competence to deal with them.

CAEN: THE "ABBA YE AUX DAMES"

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 59

Indeed, one is tempted to say that these twin churches, Paris and Mantes, are the only French churches of the time (1200) which were left without a fl^che. As we go from Mantes to Paris, we pass, about half-way, at Poissy, under the towers of a very ancient and interesting church which has the additional merit of having witnessed the bap- tism of Saint Louis in 12 15. Parts of the church at Poissy go back to the seventh and ninth centuries. The square base of the tower dates back before the time of Hugh Capet, to the Carolingian age, and belongs, like the square tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres at Paris, to the old defensive military architecture; but it has a later, stone fleche and it has, too, by exception a central octagonal clocher, with a timber fleche which dates from near 1 100. Paris itself has not much to show, but in the immediate neighbourhood are a score of early churches with charming filches, and at fitampes, about thirty-five miles to the south, is an extremely interesting church with an exquisite fleche, which may claim an afternoon to visit. That at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is a still easier excursion, for one need only drive over from Chantilly a couple of miles. The fascinating old Abbey Church of Saint-Leu looks down over the valley of the Oise, and is a sort of antechamber to Chartres, as far as concerns architecture. Its fleche, built towards 1 160, — when that at Chartres was rising, — is unlike any other, and shows how much the French architects valued their lovely French creation. On its octagonal faces, it carries upright batons, or lances, as a device for relieving the severity of the outlines; a device both intelligent and amusing, though it was never imitated. A little farther from Paris, at Senlis, is another fleche, which shows still more plainly the effort of the French architects to vary and elaborate the Chartres scheme. As for Laon, which is interesting throughout, and altogether the most delightful building in the lie de France, the fleches are gone, but the towers are there, and you will have to study them, before study- ing those at Chartres, with all the intelligence you have to spare. They were the chef-d'oeuvre of the mediaeval architect, in his own opinion.

6o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

All this makes the absence of fleches at Paris and Mantes the more strange. Want of money was certainly not the cause, since the Paris- ians had money enough to pull their whole cathedral to pieces at the very time when fleches were rising in half the towns within sight of them. Possibly they were too ambitious, and could find no design that seemed to satisfy their ambition. They took pride in their cathedral, and they tried hard to make their shrine of Our Lady rival the great shrine at Chartres. Of course, one must study their beautiful church, but this can be done at leisure, for, as it stands, it Is later than Chartres and more conventional. Salnt-Germain-des-Pres leads more directly to Chartres; but perhaps the church most useful to know Is no longer a church at all, but a part of the Museum of Arts et Metiers, — the desecrated Salnt-Martin-des-Champs, a name which shows that it dates from a time when the present Porte-Saint-Martin was far out among fields. The choir of Saint-Martin, which is all that needs noting, is said by M. Enlart to date from about 1150. Hidden in a remnant of old Paris near the Pont Notre Dame, where the student life of the Middle Ages was to be most turbulent and the Latin Quarter most renowned, is the little church of Saint- JulIen-le-Pauvre, towards 11 70. On the whole, further search in Paris would not greatly help us. If one is to pursue the early centuries, one must go farther afield, for the schools of Normandy and the He de France were only two among half a dozen which flourished In the various provinces that were to be united In the kingdom of Saint Louis and his successors. We have not even looked to the south and east, whence the Impulse came. The old Carollngian school, with Its centre at Alx-la-Chapelle, is quite beyond our horizon. The Rhine had a great Romanesque architecture of its own. One broad architectural tide swept up the Rhone and filled the Burgundlan provinces as far as the watershed of the Seine. Another lined the Mediterranean, with a centre at Aries. Another spread up the western rivers, the Charente and the Loire, reaching to Le Mans and touching Chartres. Two more lay in the centre of France, spread-

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 61

ing from Perigord and Clermont in Auvergne. All these schools had individual character, and all have charm; but we have set out to go from Mont-Saint-Michel to Chartres in three centuries, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, trying to get, on the way, not technical knowl- edge; not accurate information; not correct views either on history, art, or religion; not anything that can possibly be useful or instructive; but only a sense of what those centuries had to say, and a sympathy with their ways of saying it. Let us go straight to Chartres!

CHAPTER V

TOWERS AND PORTALS

FOR a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when the Hghts are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathe- dral has moods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none too gay.

The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to be caught, is that of the two spires. With all the education that Nor- mandy and the He de France can give, one is still ignorant. The spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspira- tions of man at the moment when man's aspirationslwere highest. Yet nine persons out of ten — perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred — who come within sight of the two spires of Chartres will think it a jest if they are told that the smaller of the two, the simpler, the one that impresses them least, is the one which they are expected to recognize as the most perfect piece of architecture in the world. Perhap the French critics might deny that they make any such absolute claim; in that case you can ask them what their exact claim is; it will always be high enough to astonish the tourist.

Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of the Chartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before taking it as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower — always to be known as the "old tower" — are supposed to have been laid in 1 091, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably half a century later (i 145-70). The foundations of the new tower, opposite, were laid not before mo, when also the portal which stands between

CHARTRES CATHEDRAL

TOWERS AND PORTALS 63

them, was begun with the three lancet windows above it, but not the rose. For convenience, this old fagade — including the portal and the two towers, but not the filches, and the three lancet windows, but not the rose — may be dated as complete about 11 50.

X)nginally the whole portal — the three doors and the three lancets — stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interior foundation, or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw the towers forward, free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave room for a parvis, before the portal, — a porch, roofed over, to protect the pilgrims who always stopped there to pray before entering the church. When the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 11 94, and the architect was required to enlarge the interior, the old portal and lancets were moved bodily forward, to be flush with the front walls of the two towers, as you see the fagade to-day; and the fagade itself was heightened, to give room for the rose, and to cover the loftier pignon and vaulting behind. Finally, the wooden roof, above the stone vault, was masked by the Arcade of Kings and its railing, completed in the taste of Philip the Hardy, who reigned from 1270 to 1285.

These changes have, of course, altered the values of all the parts. The portal is injured by being thrown into a glare of light, when it was intended to stand in shadow, as you will see in the north and south porches over the transept portals. The towers are hurt by losing relief and shadow; but the old fl^che is obliged to suffer the cruellest wrong of all by having its right shoulder hunched up by half of a huge rose and the whole of a row of kings, when it was built to stand free, and to soar above the whole fagade from the top of its second storey. One can easily figure it so and replace the lost parts of the old fagade, more or less at haphazard, from the front of Noyon.

What an outrage it was you can see by a single glance at the new fleche opposite. The architect of 1500 has flatly refused to submit to such conditions, and has insisted, with very proper self-respect, on starting from the balustrade of the Arcade of Kings as his level. Not

64 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

even content with that, he has carried up his square tower another lofty storey before he would consent to touch the heart of his problem, the conversion of the square tower into the octagon fleche. In doing this, he has sacrificed once more the old fleche; but his own tower stands free as it should.

At VendOme, when you go there, you will be in a way to appreciate still better what happened to the Chartres fleche; for the clocher at Vendome, which is of the same date, — VioUet-le-Duc says earlier, and Enlart, " after 1 130, " — stood and still stands free, like an Italian campanile, which gives it a vast advantage. The tower of Saint-Leu- d'Esserent, also after 1130, stands free, above the second storey. Indeed, you will hardly find, in the long list of famous French spires, another which has been treated with so much indignity as this, the greatest and most famous of all ; and perhaps the most annoying part of it is that you must be grateful to the architect of 1195 for doing no worse. He has, on the contrary, done his best to show respect for the work of his predecessor, and has done so well that, handicapped as it is, the old tower still defies rivalry. Nearly three hundred and fifty feet high, or, to be exact, 106.5 metres from the church floor, it is built up with an amount of intelligence and refinement that leaves to unpro- fessional visitors no chance to think a criticism — much less to express one. Perhaps — when we have seen more — and feel less — who knows? — but certainly not now!

"The greatest and surely the most beautiful monument of this kind that we possess in France," says Viollet-le-Duc ; but although an ignorant spectator must accept the architect's decision on a point of relative merit, no one is compelled to accept his reasons, as final. "There is no need to dwell," he continues, "upon the beauty and the grandeur of composition in which the artist has given proof of rare sobriety, where all the effects are obtained, not by ornaments, but by the just and skilful proportion of the different parts. The transition, so hard to adjust, between the square base and ,the octagon of the fl^he,

TOWERS AND PORTALS 65

is managed and carried out with an address which has not been sur- passed in similar monuments." One stumbles a little at the word "adresse." One never caught one's self using the word in Norman churches. Your photographs of Bayeux or Boscherville or Secque- ville will show you at a glance whether the term "adresse" applies to them. Even Vendome would rather be praised for "droiture" than for "adresse." — Whether the word "adresse" means cleverness, dex- terity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, the thing itself is some- thing which the French have always admired more than the Normans ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be a little uncertain whether to lay most stress on the one or the other quality; "If one tries to appreciate the conception of this tower," quotes the Abbe Bulteau (11, 84), "one will see that it is as frank as the execution is simple and skilful. Starting from the bottom, one reaches the summit of the fl^che without marked break; without anything to interrupt the gen- eral form of the building. This clocher, whose base is broad (pleine), massive, and free from ornament, transforms itself, as it springs, into a sharp spire with eight faces, without its being possible to say where the massive construction ends and the light construction begins."

Granting, as one must, that this concealment of the transition is a beauty, one would still like to be quite sure that the Chartres scheme is the best. The Norman clochers being thrown out, and that at Ven- dome being admittedly simple, the Clocher de Saint-Jean on the Church of Saint-Germain at Auxerre seems to be thought among the next in importance, although it is only about one hundred and sixty feet in height (forty-nine metres), and therefore hardly in the same class with Chartres. Any photograph shows that the Auxerre spire is also simple; and that at £tampes you have seen already to be of the Vend6me rather than of the Chartres type. The clocher at Senlis is more "habile"; it shows an effort to be clever, and offers a standard of comparison ; but the mediaeval architects seem to have thought that none of them bore rivalry with Laon for technical skill. One of these

66 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

professional experts, named Villard de Honnecourt, who lived between 1 200 and 1250, left a notebook which you can see in the vitrines of the Biblioth^que Nationale in the Rue Richelieu, and which is the source of most that is known about the practical ideas of mediaeval architects. He came to Chartres, and, standing here before the doors, where we are standing, he made a rough drawing, not of the tower, but pf the rose, which was then probably new, since it must have been planned between 1195 and 1200. Apparently the tower did not impress him strongly, for he made no note of it; but on the other hand, when he went to Laon, he became vehement in praise of the cathedral tower there, which must have been then quite new: "I have been in many countries, as you can find in this book. In no place have I ever such a tower seen as that of Laon. — J'ai est6 en mult de tieres, si cum vus pores trover en cest livre. En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est cele de Loon." The reason for this admiration is the same that Viollet- le-Duc gives for admiring the tower of Chartres — the "adresse" with which the square is changed into the octagon. Not only is the tower itself changed into the fl^che without visible junction, under cover of four corner tourelles, of open work, on slender columns, which start as squares; but the tourelles also convert themselves into octagons in the very act of rising, and end in octagon fleches that carry up — or once carried up — the lines of profile to the central fleche that soared abovti them. Clearly this device far surpassed in cleverness the scheme of Chartres, which was comparatively heavy and structural, the weights being adjusted for their intended work, while the transformation at Laon takes place in the air, and challenges discovery in defiance of one's keenest eyesight. " Regard . . . how the tourelles pass from one disposition to another, in rising! Meditate on it!"

The fl^he of Laon is gone, but the tower and tourelles are still there to show what the architects of the thirteenth century thought their most brilliant achievement. One cannot compare Chartres directly with any of its contemporary rivals, but one can at least compare the

TOWERS AND PORTALS 67

old spire with the new one which stands opposite and rises above it. Perhai>s you will like the new best. Built at a time which is commonly agreed to have had the highest standard of taste, it does not encourage tourist or artist to insist on setting up standards of his own against it. Begun in 1507, it was finished in 151 7. The dome of Saint Peter's at Rome, over which Bramante and Raphael and Michael Angelo toiled, was building at the same time; Leonardo da Vinci was working at Amboise; Jean Bullant, Pierre Lescot, and their patron, Francis I, were beginning their architectural careers. Four hundred years, or thereabouts, separated the old spire from the new one; and four hun- dred more separate the new one from us. If Viollet-le-Duc, who him- self built Gothic spires, had cared to compare his filches at Clermont- Ferrand with the new fleche at Chartres, he might perhaps have given us a rule where "adresse" ceases to have charm, and where detail becomes tiresome ; but in the want of a schoolmaster to lay down a law of taste, you can admire the new fleche as much as you please. Of course, one sees that the lines of the new tower are not clean, like those of the old; the devices that cover the transition from the square to the xrtagon are rather too obvious; the proportion of the fleche to the tower quite alters the values of the parts; a rigid classical taste might even go so far as to hint that the new tower, in comparison with the old, showed signs of a certain tendency toward a dim and distant vulgarity. There can be no harm in admitting that the new tower is a little wanting in repose for a tower whose business is to counterpoise the very classic lines of the old one; but no law compels you to insist on absolute repose in any form of art; if such a law existed, it would have to deal with Michael Angelo before it dealt with us. The new tower has many faults, but it has great beauties, as you can prove by comparing it with other late Gothic spires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief fault is to be where it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint Bernard, it lacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, it recalls Diane de Poitiers.

68 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

In fact, the new tower, which in years is four centuries younger than its neighbour, is in feeling fully four hundred years older. It is self- conscious if not vain ; its coiffure is elaborately arranged to cover the effects of age, and its neck and shoulders are covered with lace and jewels to hide a certain sharpness of skeleton. Yet it may be beautiful, still; the poets derided the wrinkles of Diane de Poitiers at the very moment when King Henry II idealized her with the homage of a Don Quixote ; an atmosphere of physical beauty and decay hangs about the whole Renaissance.

One cannot push these resemblances too far, even for the twelfth century and the old tower. Exactly what date the old tower repre- sents, as a social symbol, is a question that might be as much disputed as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half the interest of archi- tecture consists in the sincerity of its reflection of the society that builds. In mere time, by actual date, the old tower represents the second crusade, and when, in 1 150, Saint Bernard was elected chief of that crusade in this very cathedral, — or rather, in the cathedral of 1 1 20, which was burned, — the workmen were probably setting in mor- tar the stones of the fleche as we now see them ; yet the fl^che does not represent Saint Bernard in feeling, for Saint Bernard held the whole array of church-towers in horror as signs merely of display, wealth and pride. The fleche rather represents Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny, Abbot Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de- Rhuys, and Queen Eleanor of Guienne, who had married Louis-le- Jeune in 1 137; who had taken the cross from Saint Bernard in 1147; who returned from the Holy Land in 11 49; and who compelled Saint Bernard to approve her divorce in 1 152. Eleanor and Saint Bernard were centuries apart, yet they lived at the same time and in the same church. Speaking exactly, the old tower represents neither of them ; the new tower itself is hardly more florid than Eleanor was; perhaps less so, if one can judge from the fashions of the court-dress of her time. The old tower is almost Norman, while Eleanor was wholly

TOWERS AND PORTALS 69

Gascon, and Gascony was always florid without being always correct. The new tower, if it had been built in 1150, like the old one, would have expressed Eleanor perfectly, even in height and apparent effort to dwarf its mate, except that Eleanor dwarfed her husband without an effort, and both in art and in history the result lacked harmony.

Be the contrast what it may, it does not affect the fact that no other church in France has two spires that need be discussed in comparison with these. Indeed, no other cathedral of the same class has any spires at all, and this superiority of Chartres gave most of its point to a saying that "with the spires of Chartres, the choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, and the fagade of Rheims," one could make a perfect church — for us tourists.

_The towers have taken much time, though they are the least religious and least complicated part of church circhitecture, and in no way essential to the church ; indeed, Saint Bernard thought them an excrescence due to pride and worldliness, and this is merely Saint Bernard's way of saying that they were an ornament created to gratify the artistic sense of beauty. Beautiful as they are, one's eyes must drop at last down to the church itself. If the spire symbolizes aspiration, the door symbolizes the way; and the portal of Chartres is the type of French doors; it stands first in the history of Gothic art; and, in the opinion of most Gothic artists, first in the interest of all art, though this is no concern of ours. Here is the Way to Eternal Life as it was seen by the Church and the Art of the first crusade!

The fortune of this monument has been the best attested Miracle de la Vierge in the long list of the Virgin's miracles, for it comes down, practically unharmed, through what may with literal accuracy be called the jaws of destruction and the flames of hell. ..Built some time -in- the first half of the twelfth century, it passed, apparently un- scathed, through the great fire of 11 94 which burnt out the church behind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it. Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure of

70 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

the great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive as fire can be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary and carving, but^ also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped the flames; and, what is almost equally strange, escaped also the hand of the builder afterwards, who, if he had resembled other architects, would have made a new front of his own, but who, with piety unexampled, tenderly took the old stones down, one by one, and replaced them forty feet in advance of their old position. The English wars and the wars of religion brought new dangers, sieges, and miseries; the revolu- tion of 1792 brought actual rapine and waste; boys have flung stoner at the saints; architects have wreaked their taste within and without' fire after fire has calcined the church vaults; the worst wrecker of all, the restorer of the nineteenth century, has prowled about it; yet th*' porch still stands, mutilated but not restored, burned but not con- sumed, as eloquent a witness to the power and perfections of Our Lady as it was seven hundred years ago, and perhaps more impressive.

You will see portals and porches more or less of the same period elsewhere in many different places, — at Paris, Le Mans, Sens, Autun, Vezelay, Clermont-Ferrand, Moissac, Aries, — a score of them ; for the same piety has protected them more than once; but you will see no other so complete or so instructive, and you may search far before you will find another equally good in workmanship. Study of the Chartres portal covers all the rest. The feeling and motive of all are nearly the same, or vary only to suit the character of the patron saint; and the point of all is that this feeling is the architectural child of the first crusade. At Chartres one can read the first crusade in the portal, as at Mont-Saint-Michel in the Aquilon and the promenoir.

The Abbe Bulteau gives reason for assuming the year 11 17 as the approximate date of the sculpture about the west portal, and you saw at Mont-Saint-Michel, in the promenoir of Abbot Roger II, an accurately dated work of the same decade; but whatever the date of the plan, the actual work and its spirit belong to 11 45 or thereabouts.

CHARTRES: DETAIL OF WEST PORTAL

TOWERS AND PORTALS 71

Some fifty years had passed since the crusaders streamed through Constantinople to Antioch and Jerusalem, and they were daily going and returning. You can see the ideas they brought back with the relics and missals and enamels they bought in Byzantium. Over the central door is the Christ, which might be sculptured after a Byzantine enamel, with its long nimbus or aureole or glory enclosing the whole figure. Over the left door is an Ascension, bearing the same stamp; and over the right door, the seated Virgin, with her crown and her two attendant archangels, is an empress. Here is the Church, the Way, and the Life of the twelfth century that we have undertaken to feel, if not to understand!

First comes the central doorway, and above it is the glory of Christ, as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year 1 1 50; for the glories of Christ were many, and the Chartres Christ is one. Whatever Christ may have been in other churches, here, on this portal, he offers himself to his flock as the herald of salvation alone. Among all the iniagery of these three doorways, there is no hint of fear, punish- ment, or damnation, and this is the note of the whole time. Before 1200, the Church seems not to have felt the need of appealing hab- itually to terror ; the promise of hope and happiness was enough ; even the portal at Autun, which displays a Last Judgment, belonged to Saint Lazarus the proof and symbol of resurrection. A hundred years later, every church portal showed Christ not as Saviour but as Judge, and He presided over a Last Judgment at Bourges and Amiens, and here on the south portal, where the despair of the damned is the evident joy of the artist, if it is not even sometimes a little his jest, which is worse. At Chartres Christ is identified with His Mother, the spirit of love and grace, and His Church is the Church Triumphant.

Not only is fear absent; there is not even a suggestion of pain; there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what is still more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the Nativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, the single scene

k

M

72 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as everywhere in this portal, the artists seem actually to have gone out of their way in order to avoid a suggestion of suffering. They have pictured Christ and His Mother in all the other events of their lives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty- four old men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, and princes, by the score ; the signs of the zodiac, and even the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dia- lectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; everything is there except misery.

Perhaps Our Lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious and gentle, and this may partially account also for the extreme popu- larity of her shrine; but whatever the reason, her church was clearly intended to show only this side of her nature, and to impress it on her Son. You can see it in the grave and gracious face and attitude of the Christ, raising His hand to bless you as you enter His kingdom; in the array of long figures which line the entrance to greet you as you pass ; in the expression of majesty and mercy of the Virgin herself on her throne above the southern doorway; never once are you regarded as a possible rebel, or traitor, or a stranger to be treated with suspicion, or as a child to be impressed by fear.

Equally distinct, perhaps even more emphatic, is the sculptor's earnestness to make you feel, without direct insistence, that you are entering the Court of the Queen of Heaven who is one with her Son and His Church. The central door always bore the name of the " Royal Door," because it belonged to the celestial majesty of Christ, and naturally bears the stamp of royalty; but the south door belongs to the Virgin and to us. Stop a moment to see how she receives us, remem- bering, or trying to remember, that to the priests and artists who designed the portal, and to the generations that went on the first and second crusades, the Virgin in her shrine was at least as living, as real, as personal an empress as the Basilissa at Constantinople!

On the lintel immediately above the doorway is a succession of small

TOWERS AND PORTALS 73

groups: first, the Annunciation; Mary stands to receive the Archangel Gabriel, who comes to announce to her that she is chosen to be the Mother of God. The second is the Visitation, and in this scene also Mary stands, but she already wears a crown; at least, the Abb6 Bul- teau says so, although time has dealt harshly with it. Then, in the centre, follows the Nativity; Mary lies on a low bed, beneath, or before, a sort of table or cradle on which lies the Infant, while Saint Joseph stands at the bed's head. Then the angel appears, directing three shepherds to the spot, filling the rest of the space.

In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of all queens, but the most womanly of women, as we shall see; and her double character is sustained throughout her palace. She was also intellectually gifted in the highest degree. In the upper zone you see her again, at the Presentation in the Temple, supporting the Child Jesus on the altar, while Simeon aids. Other figures bring offerings. The voussures of the arch above contain six archangels, with curious wings, offering wor- ship to the Infant and His Imperial Mother. Below are the signs of the zodiac ; the Fishes and the Twins. The rest of the arch is filled by the seven liberal arts, with Pythagoras, Aristotle, Cicero, Euclid, Nico- machus, Ptolemy, and Priscian as their representatives, testifying to the Queen's intellectual sup>eriority.

In the centre sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her Son in her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of all men, and all women; including, if you please, your homage and mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the Child, Who looks

74 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude, and raises His right hand to bless, while His left rests on the orb of empire. She and her Child are one.

All this was noble beyond the nobility of man, but its earthly form was inspired by the Empire rather than by the petty royalty of Louis- le-Gros or his pious queen Alix of Savoy. One mark of the period is the long, oval nimbus; another is the imperial character of the Virgin; a third is her unity with the Christ which is the Church. To us, the mark that will distinguish the Virgin of Chartres, or, if you prefer, the Virgin of the Crusades, is her crown and robes and throne. According to M. Rohault de Fleury's " Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge" (ii, 62), the Virgin's headdress and ornaments had been for long ages borrowed from the costume of the Empresses of the East in honour of the Queen of Heaven. No doubt the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin recog- nized by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, and was at least as old as Helena's pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. She was not a West- ern, feudalqueen, nor was her Son a feudal king; she typified an author- ity which the people wanted, and the fiefs feared; the Pax Romana; the omnipotence of God in government. In all Europe, at that time, there was no power able to enforce justice or to maintain order, and no sym- bol of such a power except Christ and His Mother and the Imperial Crown.

This idea is very different from that which was the object of our pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel; but since all Chartres is to be one long comment upon it, you can lay the history of the matter on the shelf for study at your leisure, if you ever care to study into the weary details of human illusions and disappointments, while here we pray to the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is your pleasure and which shall not teach either a moral or a useful lesson. The Empress Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whether you are an imperti- nent child, or a foolish old peasant- woman, or an insolent prince, or a more insolent tourist, she receives you with the same dignity; in fact.

TOWERS AND PORTALS 75

she probably sees very little diflference between you. An empress of Russia to-day would probably feel little difference in the relative rank of her subjects, and the Virgin was empress over emperors, patriarchs, and popes. Any one, however ignorant, can feel the sustained dignity of the sculptor's work, which is asserted with all the emphasis he could put into it. Not one of these long figures which line the three doorways but is an officer or official in attendance on the Empress or her Son, and bears the stamp of the Imperial Court. They are mutilated, but, if they have been treated with indignity, so were often their temporal rivals, torn to pieces, trampled on, to say nothing of being merely beheaded or poisoned, in the Sacred Palace and the Hippodrome, with- out losing that peculiar Oriental dignity of style which seems to drape the least dignified attitudes. The grand air of the twelfth century is something like that of a Greek temple; you can, if you like, hammer every separate stone to pieces, but you cannot hammer out the Greek style. There were originally twenty-four of these statues, and nineteen remain. Beginning at the north end, and passing over the first figure, which carries a head that does not belong to it, notice the second, a king with a long sceptre of empire, a book of law, and robes of Byzan- tine official splendour. Beneath his feet is a curious woman's head with heavy braids of hair, and a crown. The third figure is a queen, charm- ing as a woman, but particularly well-dressed, and with details of orna- ment and person elaborately wrought ; worth drawing, if one could only draw; worth photographing with utmost care to include the strange support on which she stands: a monkey, two dragons, a dog, a basilisk with a dog's head. Two prophets follow — not so interesting ; — prophets rarely interest. Then comes the central bay: two queens who claim particular attention, then a prophet, then a saint next the door- way; then on the southern jamb-shafts, another saint, a king, a queen, and another king. Last comes the southern bay, the Virgin's own, and there stands first a figure said to be a youthful king; then a strongly sculptured saint; next the door a figure called also a king, but so

76 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

charmingly delicate in expression that the robes alone betray his sex; and who this exquisite young aureoled king may have been who stands so close to the Virgin, at her right hand, no one can now reveal. Opposite him is a saint who may be, or should be, the Prince of the Apostles; then a bearded king with a broken sceptre, standing on two dragons; and, at last, a badly mutilated queen.

These statues are the Eginetan marbles of French art; from them all modern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularly interesting; as na'if as the smile on the faces of the Greek warriors, but no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothic grotesques in plenty, and you cannot mistake the two intentions; the twelfth cen- tury would sooner have tempted the tortures of every feudal dungeon in Europe than have put before the Virgin's eyes any figure that could be conceived as displeasing to her. These figures are full of feeling, and saturated with worship; but what is most to our purpose is the feminine side which they proclaim and insist upon. Not only the number of the female figures, and their beauty, but also the singularly youthful beauty of several of the males; the superb robes they wear; the expression of their faces and their figures; the details of hair, stuffs, ornaments, jewels; the refinement and feminine taste of the whole, are enough to startle our interest if we recognize what meaning they had to the twelfth century.

These figures looked stiff and long and thin and ridiculous to enlight- ened citizens of the eighteenth century, but they were made to fit the architecture; if you want to know what an enthusiast thinks of them, listen to M. Huysmans's "Cathedral." "Beyond a doubt, the most beautiful sculpture in the world is in this place." He can hardly find words to express his admiration for the queens, and particularly for the one on the right of the central doorway. "Never in any period has a more expressive figure been thus wrought by the genius of man; it is the chef-d'oeuvre of infantile grace and holy candour. . . . She is the elder sister of the Prodigal Son, the one of whom Saint Luke does not

TOWERS AND PORTALS 77

speak, but who, if she existed, would have pleaded the cause of the absent, and insisted, with the father, that he should kill the fatted calf at his son's return." The idea is charming if you are the returning son, as many twelfth-century pilgrims must have thought themselves; but, in truth, the figure is that of a queen; an Eleanor of Guienne; her position there is due to her majesty, which bears witness to the celes- tial majesty of the Court in which she is only a lady-in-waiting : and she is hardly more humanly fascinating than her brother, the youth- ful king at the Virgin's right hand, who has nothing of the Prodigal Son, but who certainly has much of Lohengrin, or even — almost — Tristan.

The Abbe Bulteau has done his best to name these statues, but the names would be only in your way. That the sculptor meant them for a Queen of Sheba or a King of Israel has little to do with their mean- ing in the twelfth century, when the people were much more likely to have named them after the queens and kings they knew. The whole charm lies for us in the twelfth-century humanity of Mary and her Court; not in the scriptural names under which it was made ortho- dox. Here, in this western portal, it stands as the crusaders of 1 100-50 imagined it; but by walking round the church to the porch over the entrance to the north transept, you shall see it again as Blanche of Castile and Saint Louis imagined it, a hundred years later, so that you will know better whether the earthly attributes are exaggerated or un- true.

-•^ Porches, like steeples, were rather a peculiarity of French churches, and were studied, varied, one might even say petted, by French archi- tects to an extent hardly attempted elsewhere; but among all the French porches, those of Chartres are the most famous. There are two: one on the north side, devoted to the Virgin; the other, on the south, devoted to the Son. "The mass of intelligence, knowledge, acquaintance with effects, practical experience, expended on these two porches of Chartres," says Viollet-le-Duc, "would be enough to.

78 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

establish the glory of a whole generation of artists." We begin with the north porch because it belonged to the Virgin; and it belonged to the Virgin because the north was cold, bleak, sunless, windy, and needed warmth, peace, affection, and power to protect against the assaults of Satan and his swarming devils. There the all-suffering but the all-powerful Mother received other mothers who suffered like her, but who, as a rule, were not powerful. Traditionally in the primi- tive church, the northern porch belonged to the women. When they needed help, they came here, because it was the only place in this world or in any other where they had much hof>e of finding even a recep- tion. See how Mary received them !

The porch extends the whole width of the transept, about one hun- dred and twenty feet (37.65 metres), divided into three bays some twenty feet deep, and covered with a stone vaulted roof supported on piers outside. Begun toward 121 5 under Philip Augustus, the archi- tectural part was finished toward 1225 under Louis VIII ; and after his death in 1226, the decorative work and statuary were carried on under the regency of his widow, Blanche of Castile, and through the reign of her son, Saint Louis (1235-70), until about 1275, when thg work was completed by Philip the Hardy. A gift of the royal family of France, all the members of the family seem to have had a share in building it, and several of their statues have been supposed to adorn it. ' The walls are lined — the porch, in a religious sense, is inhabited — by more than seven hundred figures, great and small, all, in one way or another, devoted to the glory of the Queen of Heaven. You will see that a hundred years have converted the Byzantine Empress into a French Queen, as the same years had converted Alix of Savoy into Blanche of Castile; but the note of majesty is the same, and the asser- tion of power is, if possible, more emphatic.

The highest note is struck at once, in the central bay, over the door, where you see the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven, a favour- ite subject in art from very early times, and the dominant idea of

a

u

« o

Oh

W H

O

w

K H

t/)

W

oi

H

<; w u

TOWERS AND PORTALS 79

Mary's church You see Mary on the left, seated on her throne; on the right, seated on a precisely similar throne, is Christ, Who holds up His right hand apparently to bless, since Mary already bears the crown. Mary bends forward, with her hands raised toward her Son, as though in gratitude or adoration or prayer, but certainly not in an attitude of feudal homage. On either side, an archangel swings a censer.

On the lintel below, on the left, is represented the death of Mary^. on the right, Christ carries, in the folds of His mantle, the soul of Mary in the form of a little child, and at the same time blesses the body which is carried away by angels — The Resurrection of Mary.

Below the lintel, supporting it, and dividing the doorway in halves, is the trumeau, — the central pier, — a new part of the portal which was unknown to the western door. Usually in the Virgin's churches, as at Rheims, or Amiens or Paris, the Virgin herself, with her Son in her arms, stands against this pier, trampling on the dragon with the woman's head. Here, not the Virgin with the Christ, but her mother Saint Anne stands, with the infant Virgin in her arms; while beneath is, or was. Saint Joachim, her husband, among his flocks, receiving from the Archangel Gabriel the annunciation.

So jit the entrance the Virgin declares herself divinely Queen in ■herown right; divinely bom; divinely resurrected from death, on the third day; seated by divine right on the throne of Heaven, at the right hand of God, the Son, with Whom she is one.

Unless we feel this assertion of divine right in the Queen of Heaven, apart from the Trinity, yet one with It, Chartres is unintelligible. The extreme emphasis laid upon it at the church door shows what the church means within. Of course, the assertion was not strictly ortho- dox; perhaps, since we are not members of the Church, we might be unnoticed and unrebuked if we start by suspecting that the worship of the Virgin never was strictly orthodox; but Chartres was hers .before it ever belonged to the Church, and, like Lourdes in our own

8o MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

time, was a shrine peculiarly favoured by her presence. The mere fact that it was a bishopric had little share in its sanctity. The bishop was much more afraid of Mary than he was of any Church Council ever held.

Critics are doing their best to destroy the peculiar personal interest of this porch, but tourists and pilgrims may be excused for insisting on their traditional rights here, since the porch is singular, even in the thirteenth century, for belonging entirely to them and the royal fam- ily of France, subject only to the Virgin. True artists, turned critics, think also less of rules than of values, and no ignorant public can be trusted to join the critics in losing temper judiciously over the date or correctness of a portrait until they knew something of its motives and merits. The public has always felt certain that some of the statues which stand against the outer piers of this porch are portraits, and t^ey see no force in the objection that such decoration was not customary in the Church. Many things at Chartres were not customary in the Church , although the Church now prefers not to dwell on them. Therefore the student returns to VioUet-le-Duc with his usual delight at finding at least one critic whose sense of values is stronger than his sense of rule: "Each statue," he says in his "Dictionar>'" (iii, i66), "possesses its personal character which remains graven on the memory like the recollection of a living being whom one has known. ... A large part of the statues in the porches of Notre Dame de Chartres, as well as of the portals of the Cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, possess these individual qualities, and this it is which explains why these statues produce on the crowd so vivid an impression that it names them, knows them, and attaches to each of them an idea, often a legend."

Probably the crowd did so from the first moment they saw the statues, and with good reason. At all events, they have attached to two of the most individual figures on the north porch, two names, perhaps the best known in France in the year 1226, but which since the year 1300 can have conveyed only the most shadowy meaning to

TOWERS AND PORTALS 8i

any but pure antiquarians. The group is so beautiful as to be given a plate to itself in the "Monographic" (number 26), as representing Philip Hurepel and his wife Mahaut de Boulogne. So little could any crowd, or even any antiquarian, at any time within six hundred years have been likely to pitch on just these persons to associate with Blanche of Castile in any kind of family unity, that the mere sugges- tion seems wild; yet Blanche outlived Pierre by nearly twenty years, and her power over this transept and porch ended only with her death as regent in 1252.

Philippe, nicknamed Hurepel, — Boarskin, — was a " fils de France," whose father, Philip Augustus, had serious, not to say fatal, difficul- ties with the Church about the legality of his marriage, and was forced to abandon his wife, who died in 1201, after giving birth to Hurepel in 1200. The child was recognized as legitimate, and stood next to the throne, after his half-brother Louis, who was thirteen years older. Almost at his birth he was affianced to Mahaut, Countess of Boulogne, and the marriage was celebrated in 1216. Rich and strongly connected, Hurepel naturally thought himself — and was — head of the royal family next to the King, and when his half-brother, Louis VHL died in 1226, leaving only a son, afterwards Saint Louis, a ten-year-old boy, to succeed, Hurepel very properly claimed the guardianship of his infant nephew, and deeply resented being excluded by Queen Blanche from what he regarded — perhaps with justice — as his right. Nearly all the great lords and the members of the royal family sided with him, and entered into a civil war against Blanche, at the moment when these two porches of Chartres were building, between 1228 and 1230. The two greatest leaders of the conspiracy were Hurepel, whom ye are expected to recognize on the pier of this porch, and Pierre Mauclerc, of Brittany and Dreux, whom we have no choice but to admit on the trumeau of the other. In those days every great feudal lord was more or less related by blood to the Crown, and although Blanche of Castile was also a cousin as well as queen-mother, they

82 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

hated her as a Spanish intruder with such hatred as men felt in an age when passions were real.

That these two men should be found here, associated with Blanche in the same work, at the same time, under the same roof, is a fantastic idea, and students can feel in this political difficulty a much stronger objection to admitting Hurepel to Queen Blanche's porch than any supposed rule of Church custom; yet the first privilege of tourist ig- norance is the right to see, or try to see, their thirteenth century with thirteenth-century eyes. Passing by the statues of Philip and Mahaut, and stepping inside the church door, almost the first figure that the visitor sees on lifting his eyes to the upper windows of the transept is another figure of Philippe Hurepel, in glass, on his knees, with clasped hands, before an altar ; and to prevent possibility of mistake his blazoned coat bears the words: " Phi: Conte de Bolone." Apparently he is the donor, for, in the rose above, he sits in arms on a white horse with a shield bearing the blazon of France. Obliged to make his peace with the Queen in 1230, Hurepel died in 1233 or 1234, while Blanche was still regent, and instantly took his place as of right side by side with Blanche's castles of Castile among the great benefactors of the church.

Beneath the next rose is Mahaut herself, as donor, bearing her husband's armsof France, suggesting that the windows must have been given together, probably before Philip's death in 1233, since Mahaut was married again in 1238, this time to Alfonso of Portugal, who re- pudiated her in 1249, and left her to die in her own town of Boulogne in 1258. Lastly, in the third window of the series, is her daughter Jeanne, — "lehenne," — who was probably born before 1220, and who was married in 1236 to Gaucher de Chatillon, one of the greatest warriors of his time. Jeanne also — according to the Abbe Bulteau (in, 225) — bears the armsof her father and mother; which seems to suggest that she gave this window before her marriage. These three windows, therefore, have the air of dating at least as early as 1233 when Philip Hurepel died, while next them follow two more roses, and

TOWERS AND PORTALS 83

the great rose of France, presumably of the same date, all scattered over with the castles of Queen Blanche. The motive of the porch outside is repeated in the glass, as it should be, and as the Saint Anne of the Rose of France, within, repeats the Saint Anne on the trumeau of the portal. iThe personal stamp of the royal family is intense, but the stamp of the Virgin's personality is intenser still. In the presence of Mary, not only did princes hide their quarrels, but they also put on their most courte- ous manners and the most refined and even austere address. The Byzantine display of luxury and adornment had vanished. All the figures suggest the sanctity of the King and his sister Isabel ; the court has the air of a convent; but the idea of Mary's majesty is asserted through it all. The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in their judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, and refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen Beatitudes; and, in- deed, though men are plenty and some of them are handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the intelligence. The Court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes.

M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison with his twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter into the spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer the thirteenth- century work, and think it equals the best Greek. Approaching, or surpassing this, — as you like, — is the sculpture you will see at Rheims, of the same period, and perhaps the same hands; but, for our purpose, the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-hand bay, is enough, because you can compare it on the spot with M. Huysmans's figure on the western portal, which may also be a Queen of Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, typified the Church, and therefore prefigured Mary herself. Both are types of Court beauty and grace, one from the twelfth century, the other from the thirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but

84 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

you want to bear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin. You can even take for a settled fact that these were the types of femi- nine beauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others.

The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art of these centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother, is something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach the depravity of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite the Virgin's taste was, and how pure. You can also see how she shrank from the sight of pain. Here, in the central bay, next to King David, who stands at her right hand, is the great figure of Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. If there is one subject more revolting than another to a woman who typifies the Mother, it is this subject of Abraham and Isaac, with its compound horror of masculine stupidity and brutality. The sculptor has tried to make even this motive a pleasing one. He has placed Abraham against the column in the correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned aside and up, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands and feet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father's knee with an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham's left hand quiets him and caresses the boy's face, with a movement that must have gone straight to Mary's heart, for Isaac always pre- figured Christ.

The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains no appeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace. If we were to stay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into every detail. The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer an Empress; she is Queen Mother, — an idealized Blanche of Castile; — too high to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not too high to pity, to punish, or to pardon. The women went to her porch for help as naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in her presence, fell on their knees because they feared her intelligence and her anger.

Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, round the church, to the south porch, which was the gift of Pierre

TOWERS AND PORTALS 85

Mauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great- grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII and Philip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, married the young man, in 12 12, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, and this marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of the Crown. He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of Queen Blanche in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him to be deposed in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned. Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but then was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned his turbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in 1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de Dreux was a mascu- line character, — a bad cleric, as his nickname Mauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and, what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the south porch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage with Alix in 12 12, and the statuary is of the same date with that of the north porch, but, like_that^ it_w^s..not fin-, ished when Pierre died in 1250.

One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the southern entrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim to the Virgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as the northern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much defer- ence to women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protec- tion of the Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly as possible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre, Christ was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically as Blanche as- serted hers.

Which porch is the more beautiful is a question for artists to discuss and decide, if they can. Either is good enough for us, whose pose is ignorance, and whose pose is strictly correct; but apart from its beauty or its art, there is also the question of feeling, of motive, which puts the Forche de Dreux in contrast with the Porche de France, and this is

86 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

wholly within our competence. At the outset, the central bay displays, above the doorway, Christ, on a throne, raising His hands to show the stigmata, the wounds which were the proof of man's salvation. At His right hand sits the Mother, — without her crown; on His left, in equal rank with the Mother, sits Saint John the Evangelist. Both are in the same attitude of supplication as intercessors; there is no distinction in rank or power between Mary and John, since neither has any power except what Christ gives them. Pierre did not, indeed, put the Mother on her knees before the Son, as you can see her at Amiens and in later churches, — certainly bad taste in Mary's own palace; but he al- lowed her no distinction which is not her strict right. The angels above and around bear the symbols of the Passion; they are unconscious of Mary's presence; they are absorbed in the perfections of the Son. On the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, where Saint Michael re- appears, weighing the souls of the dead which Mary and John above are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ. The whole melo- drama of Church terrors appears after the manner of the thirteenth century, on this church door, without regard to Mary's feelings; and below, against the trumeau, stands the great figure of Christ, — the whole Church, -^ trampling on the lion and dragon. On either side of the doorway stand six great figures of the Apostles asserting them- selves as the columns of the Church, and looking down at us with an expression no longer calculated to calm our fears or encourage extrav- agant hopes. No figure on this porch suggests a portrait or recalls,,, a memory.

Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the left bay_^ rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again; standing; bearing on His head the crown royal ; alone, except for the two angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, His witnesses. The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints Confessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith. Of the twenty-eight

u

o

X H

o

u a;

PS

<:

TOWERS AND PORTALS 87

great figures, the officers of the royal court, Wfho make thus the strength of_th6_Church beneath Christ, not one is a woman. The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither sex nor youth ; all are of a maturity which chills the blood, excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severity of their surroundings, so that the Abb6 Bulteau makes bold even to say that "the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore may be regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even as the two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenth century." On that point, let every one follow his taste; but one reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparing these twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however it may compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more power- ful than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your " Golden Legend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the first crusade, is matter of history ; but among these magnificent figures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion or sacred purity of the sub- ject, or even the miracles or the suflFerings, which inspire passion for Saint George and Saint Theodore, under the Abba's robe; it is with him, as with the plain boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield.

These two figures stand in the outer embrasures of the left bay, where they can be best admired, and perhaps this arrangement shows what Perron de Dreux, as he was commonly called, loved most, in his heart of hearts; but elsewhere, even in this porch, he relaxed his severity, and became at times almost gracious to women. Good judges have, indeed, preferred this porch to the northern one; but, be that as you please, it contains seven hundred and eighty-three figures, large and small, to serve for comparison. Among these, the female element has its share, though not a conspicuous one; and even the Virgin gets her rights, though not beside her Son. To see her, you

88 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

must stand outside in the square and, with a glass, look at the central pignon, or gable, of the porch. There, just above the point of the arch, you will see Mary on her throne, crowned, wearing her royal robes, and holding the Child on her knees, with the two archangels on either side offering incense. Pierre de Dreux, or some one else, admitted at last that she was Queen Regent, although evidently not eager to do so; and if you turn your glass up to the gable of the transept itself, above the great rose and the colonnade over it, you can see another and a colossal statue of the Virgin, but standing, with the Child on her left arm. She seems to be crowned, and to hold the globe in her right hand ; but the Abbe Bulteau says it is a flower. The two archangels are still there. This figure is thought to have been a part of the finishing decoration added by Philip the Fair in 1304.

In theology, Pierre de Dreux seems to show himself a more learned clerk than his cousins of France, and, as an expression of the meaning the church of Mary should externally display, the Porche de Dreux, if not as personal, is as energetic as the Porche de France, or the western portal. As we pass into the Cathedral, under the great Christ, on the trumeau, you must stop to look at Pierre himself. A bridegroom, crowned with flowers on his wedding-day, he kneels in prayer, while two servants distribute bread to the poor. Below, you see him again, seated with his wife Alix before a table with one loaf, assisting at the meal they give to the poor. Pierre kneels to God; he and his wife bow before the Virgin and the poor; — but not to Queen Blanche!

Now let us enter! —

CHAPTER VI

THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES

WE must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and we had better use them to seek the reason why we come to Chartres rather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathe- dral that fills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; there generally are, for doing the things we like; and after you have studied Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, you will never find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architects will probably listen to you with contempt; and even these excellent priests, whose kindness is great, whose patience is heavenly, and whose good opinion you would so gladly gain, will turn from you with pain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Ro- man, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern, when we come close to them ; but the Gothic gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with either man. The Church itself never agreed about it, and the architects agree even less than the priests. To most minds it casts too many shadows; it wraps itself in mystery; and when people talk of mystery, they commonly mean fear. To others, the Gothic seems hoary with age and decrepitude, and its shadows mean death. What is curious to watch is the fanatical conviction of the Gothic enthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means exuberant youth, the eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods like the day ; it is so simple and yet so complicated ; it sees so much and so little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few necessities; its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful

90 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

yearning for old thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterioua senility of the baby that —

Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind.

One need not take it more seriously than one takes the baby itself. Our amusement is to play with it, and to catch its meaning in its smile; and whatever Chartres maybe now, when young it was a smile. To the Church, no doubt, its cathedral here has a fixed and adminis- trative meaning, which is the same as that of every other bishop's seat and with which we have nothing whatever to do. To us, it is a child's fancy; a toy-house to please the Queen of Heaven, — to please her so much that she would be happy in it, — to charm her till she smiled. >fc^ The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; she could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a woman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament, — her toilette, robes, jewels; — who considered the arrangements of her palace with atten- tion, and liked both light and colour; who kept a keen eye on her Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from king and arch- bishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests. She protected her friends and punished her enemies. She required space, beyond what was known in the Courts of kings, because she was liable at all times to have ten thousand people begging her for favours — mostly inconsistent with law — and deaf to refusal. She was extremely sensitive to neglect, to disagreeable impressions, to want of intelligence in her surroundings. She was the greatest artist, as she was the great- est philosopher and musician and theologist, that ever lived on earth, except her Son, Who, at Chartres, is still an Infant under her guardian- ship. Her taste was infallible ; her sentence eternally final. This church was built for her in this spirit of simple-minded, practical, utilitarian faith, — in this singleness of thought, exactly as a little girl sets up a doll-house for her favourite blonde doll. Unless you can go back to

THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES 91

your dolls, you are out of place here. If you can go back to them, and get rid for one small hour of the weight of custom, you shall see Chartres in glory.

The palaces of earthly queens were hovels compared with these palaces of the Queen of Heaven at Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances, — a list that might be stretched into a volume. The nearest approach we have made to a palace was the Merveille at Mont-Saint-Michel, but no Queen had a palace equal to that. The Merveille was built, or designed, about the year 1200; toward the year 1500, Louis XI built a great castle at Loches in Touraine, and there Queen Anne de Bretagne had apartments which still exist, and which we will visit. At Blois you shall see the residence which served for Catherine de Medicis till her death in 1589. Anne de Bretagne was trebly queen, and Catherine de Medicis took her stand- ard of comfort from the luxury of Florence. At Versailles you can see the apartments which the queens of the Bourbon line occupied through their century of magnificence. All put together, and then trebled in importance, could not rival the splendour of any single cathedral dedicated to Queen Mary in the thirteenth century; and of them all, Chartres was built to be peculiarly and exceptionally her delight.

One has grown so used to this sort of loose comparison, this reckless waste of words, that one no longer adopts an idea unless it is driven in with hammers of statistics and columns of figures. With the irri- tating demand for literal exactness and perfectly straight lines which lights up every truly American eye, you will certainly ask when this exaltation of Mary began, and unless you get the dates, you will doubt the facts. It is your own fault if they are tiresome; you might easily read them all in the " Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge," by M. Ro- hault de Fleury, published in 1878. You can start at Byzantium with the Empress Helena in 326, or with the Council of Ephesus in 431. You will find the Virgin acting as the patron saint of Constantinople and of the Imperial residence, under as many names as Artemis 01

92 MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES

Aphrodite had borne. As Godmother (0eo/iijT7?p), Deipara (QeoroKoi), Pathfinder ('OBrjyrjrpia), she was the chief favourite of the Eastern Empire, and her picture was carried at the head of every procession and hung on the wall of every hut and hovel, as it is still wherever the Greek Church goes. In the year 6io, when Heraclius sailed from Carthage to dethrone Phocas at Constantinople, his ships carried the image of the Virgin at their mastheads. In 1 143, just before the fl^che on the Chartres clocher was begun, the Basileus John Comnenus died, and so devoted was he to the Virgin that, on a triumphal entry into Constantinople, he put the image of the Mother of God in his chariot, while he himself walked. In the Western Church the Virgin had al- ways been highly honoured, but it was not until the crusades that she began to overshadow the Trinity itself. Then her miracles became more frequent and her shrines more frequented, so that Chartres, soon after lioo, was rich enough to build its western portal with By- zantine splendour. A proof of the new outburst can be read in the story of Citeaux. For us, Citeaux means Saint Bernard, who joined the Order in