Part 4 (1/2)

No one, for instance, need go to La Lande-Patry, unless he is anxious to get a better understanding of a single sentence of the _Roman de Rou_.

Even at Tinchebray the strictly historic interest is all. Unless we except that single arcade on the tower of St. Remigius, there is really nothing memorable to show in the shape of either church or castle. With Argentan the case is different. Any one who has a turn for mediaeval antiquities in any shape would surely reckon that town as one of high interest. With no such single memory as the great fight of Tinchebray, it plays a certain part in history through many ages; the local history of the town itself is remarkable, and its existing monuments are of various kinds and instructive in several ways. And the means of getting there are as simple as any means well can be; for Argentan is a princ.i.p.al station on the line from Paris to Granville. It is also a station on the great cross line from Caen to Le Mans. This position makes it a good centre for seeing several places in various directions, to say nothing of others for which none of the many railways of Normandy has as yet done anything. In the journey now recorded it served as a centre for Falaise and Seez, and for what will to most people be the less familiar names of Exmes and Almeneches, and it might easily have been made a centre for other places.

Argentan is a kind of town to which it would be hard to find an exact fellow in England. It is not the head of any district; it is not the seat of any great ecclesiastical foundation; such importance as it has in history seems to have come from the presence of a castle which not uncommonly received princely sojourners. Yet it is plainly something more than one of those towns which have simply sprung up at the gate of a castle. It has one main characteristic of a cla.s.s of towns much greater than its own: the fortress and the great church stand side by side in its most prominent quarter. That in the general view the church is far more conspicuous than the fortress is the result of later havoc; but we are surprised to find that a church of such dignity in itself and placed in such a position as the chief church of Argentan was never the seat of abbot or dean. Falaise is now a larger town than Argentan; but we feel that at Falaise the town has simply grown up at the foot of the castle hill. Saint Gervase at Falaise is no fellow to the mighty fortress on the _felsen_, as Saint German of Argentan must have been to the _donjon_ of Argentan, even when that _donjon_ was better seen than it is now. The name of Argentan does not at once lead us to some Gaulish tribe or to some Roman prince; but it does not, like that of Falaise, at once carry its own meaning with it in the speech of some or other of the Teutonic conquerors of Gaul. We feel that Falaise, looking up to the great keep and to the tower of Talbot, is merely a magnificent Dunster or Richmond--we cannot say Windsor; for the _sainte chapelle_ of Saint George has no fellow there. But Argentan is a miniature, a very small miniature certainly, but still a miniature, of Durham and Lincoln and Angers. That is, church and fortress stand together on the highest point in the town.

Is Argentan therefore to be set down among the hill-towns? Falaise, of all places in the world, a.s.suredly is not; the castle is set on a hill, but not the town. But can we give the name to Argentan? Some scruple may be felt by one who has come from Saint-Lo, from Coutances, or from Avranches. Yet the ascent from the Orne to the upper part of the town is very marked, and as the chief buildings, ecclesiastical and military, are gathered together on the higher ground, there is a true akropolis.

And there is no doubt that this akropolis had its own circuit of wall, distinct from that of the lower town. This last took in a large s.p.a.ce, and was of a strangely complicated shape, running out hither and thither in various directions. According to all our experience of other places, we would take for granted that the inner circuit was the older. Here, we should say, was the original settlement; the town, after the usual manner of towns, outstripped its boundaries; it spread itself in whatever directions suited its inhabitants; lastly, the suburbs which thus grew up were taken into the town, and were fenced in by a second wall. This, one need hardly say, is a thing which has happened over and over again, in this place and that, till we take it for granted as the explanation of such a state of things as we see at Argentan. But in a local book, in which a great deal of information about Argentan is brought together, _Le Vieil Argentan_, by M. Eugene Vimont, it is distinctly a.s.serted that the case is the other way. The wider circuit, he tells us, is the older. In the wars of the early days of William, King Henry of France burned Argentan. The burning is undoubted; it is recorded by William of Jumieges. But M. Vimont's inference seems strange--namely, that after this destruction the town was rebuilt, but on a smaller scale. The case would be something like one stage in the history of Perigueux, when only a part of old Vesona was fortified at the time of the barbarian invasion of 407, and the part outside the new walls was forsaken.[49] But an ordinary burning of a town in warfare like that which went on between France and Normandy did not commonly lead to such great changes as this, and it is very hard to believe that the town of Argentan can, in the first half of the eleventh century, have reached this great extent and this irregular shape. We are bound to suppose that a local writer who shows much local knowledge has some reason for what he says. But for a thing so hard to believe some direct authority should be quoted, and M. Vimont quotes none. Till some other convincing authority is produced, we shall believe that the growth of Argentan followed the same law as that of other towns.

It is only in a few small pieces here and there that either the wider or the narrower circuit of wall has left any sign of itself. But we can believe both on M. Vimont's witness, and indeed they hardly need any witness. Each circuit has left its stamp behind it in the way that town walls do leave it, even when, as walls, they have altogether vanished.

We hold, then, that the narrower circuit, taking in only the higher ground with the church of Saint German, and the two castles, is the oldest. The church and the _donjon_ doubtless had predecessors before King Henry came against Argentan. His burning need not have wrought any more of lasting destruction than a hundred other such burnings. The town sprang up again; in course of time, when Argentan flourished under princely favour, it grew beyond its old bounds. The growth of the inhabited town called for a wider circuit of walls. The new suburbs, with the church of Saint Martin, were taken within the fortified area.

Argentan no longer merely looked down on the Orne, but was washed by it.

The upper town, then, besides the church of Saint German, contains not only one, but two castles. On the highest ground of all, in the north-west corner of the enclosure, are the remains of a large polygonal keep, which keeps its name of the _donjon_. It makes very little show, being sadly crowded in by houses. Somewhat lower down is the _chateau_, a graceful building of the late French Gothic, now used as the Palace of Justice. The building itself has hardly any defensive character about it, but it stands as part of the general line of defence, and it was also connected with the _donjon_ by an inner wall, parting the two castles from the town. Some parts of the wall in this neighbourhood, both inner and outer, are still standing; and near the _chateau_ is the desecrated chapel of Saint Nicolas, keeping some good windows.

The _chateau_ would attract anywhere; the fragment of the _donjon_ simply peeps over houses. The chief thing in Argentan after all is the great church of Saint German. Both this and the smaller church of Saint Martin down below give us most instructive lessons in the course by which the late Gothic of France gradually changed into _Renaissance_. As we have often said, this transition has in England to be studied almost wholly in houses, while in France we trace it in churches, and grand churches also. The church of Saint German at Argentan is undoubtedly a n.o.ble pile. At a distance it suggests the memory of Saint Peter at Coutances on a larger scale. We seem to look on the same grouping of central and western towers, though the central tower of Saint German's is not octagonal, but square. But the western tower at Argentan is not western in the same sense as the western tower at Coutances. That is, it does not stand in the same line with the central tower. It is not a western, but a north-western tower. This allows a greater variety of outline than can be had at Saint Peter's. But the general effect of the towers, all of which evidently received their last finish after the days of pure Gothic had pa.s.sed away, is essentially the same in the two cases. In the central tower of Saint German this finish is nothing more than a cupola of wood and lead on a handsome but not lofty lantern of late Gothic, wonderfully good, outside at least, for the date of 1555.

But the general effect is not bad. The north-western tower, known as _la grosse tour_, has a more curious history. The lowest stage is good and rich Flamboyant, with a highly adorned porch. On this is a much plainer stage, from which the Gothic feeling has pa.s.sed, but which has no distinctly _Renaissance_ detail. It has long narrow windows with flat-arched heads. This must have been building in 1617, when the governor of the town forbade the tower to be carried higher, lest it should overlook the _donjon_. We think of William Rufus bidding Hildebert of Le Mans to pull down his pair of newly built towers.[50]

The hindrance was afterwards withdrawn, and in 1638 the tower was finished with its fantastic, but certainly taking, cupola. The nave was begun in 1421, when Normandy was ruled for a season by the descendants of its ancient dukes. It was carried on gradually for 220 years, and was finished in 1641. The changes in style during this time are easily traced. The nave is late but pure Gothic, a really fine design, though a good deal spoiled by the loss of tracery in so many of the windows both in aisles and clerestory. In a large panelled triforium a very keen eye may possibly detect in the lowest range of ornament a tendency--it is nothing more--to _Renaissance_ ideas. Or it may only be fancy suggested by the stages further east. Certainly the nave, if not quite of first-rate merit, has a really striking effect, and is far better than most panel work of the time. The transepts are of the same style. They are finished north and south with apses, which are really graceful, though we miss the rose-windows which we should otherwise have looked for in a French church on such a scale as this. The choir too, as seen out of the nave, is well-proportioned and effective, though we see that the windows in the apse have flat arches and no tracery. The apse, if we can call it so, has the strange singularity of ending in a point, and some odd details have crept into the bosses of the vault. But, in the general view from the nave, the only thing that mars the general harmony and good effect is the treatment of the lantern. The four lantern arches have the flattened shape of the latest Gothic; but, oddly enough, the variety here chosen is the English four-centred arch, not the usual French shape, three-centred, elliptic, or actually flat-headed. But both the English and the French form are quite unsuited for pier-arches, and for lantern arches yet more. And, though the work of the lantern is quite good outside, yet within we see that the enemy has begun to take possession. There is perhaps no actual un-Gothic detail, but the feeling of the arcade of flat-headed arches which forms the gallery shows the way in which things are tending.

We go into the choir. There, setting aside the apse windows, the arcade, triforium, clerestory, are still pure, if very late Gothic; the new fas.h.i.+on comes in one detail only; the vaulting shafts have an odd kind of Ionic capital. It is in the latest part of all, the chapels round the choir, that the new taste comes in most strongly, and even there it is not altogether dominant. It is very strange outside, where heavy flying-b.u.t.tresses are tricked out with little columns. Within, pairs of such little columns are the chief ornament. But they support no arches, only sc.r.a.ps of entablature. The arches of the roof, the windows, and everything else, are still of the elliptic shape, and they still keep the late Gothic mouldings. No building better shows what a long fight was waged between the two styles. Saint German at Argentan is not like Saint Eustace, where we see a grand Gothic conception carried out without a single correct Gothic detail. Here not only the conception, but the great ma.s.s of the internal detail, is purely Gothic; the new fas.h.i.+on thrusts itself in only in particular parts.

This last remark is specially true of the smaller church of Argentan, that of Saint Martin. Here we have not the full cruciform shape. There is no central tower or lantern, but only lower transepts projecting from a continuous nave and choir, whose roof-line, within and without, runs uninterruptedly from east to west. The only tower is a small octagonal one with a spire at the north-west corner. The peculiarity within is that, while the arcade and clerestory are still late Gothic, the triforium between them has run off into _Renaissance_. The reason seems clear. The new fas.h.i.+on affected details long before it touched the great lines of the building. The triforium at this date is, as at Saint German, simply a matter of detail, an arrangement of panelling and the like. That stage, therefore, was naturally touched by the intruding foes, while the main features, like the pillars and pier-arches, are as yet not all affected. At Saint Martin the windows are some of them good Flamboyant, while some are a kind of very bad Perpendicular. From others, as at Saint German, the tracery has been cut away altogether.

This church, smaller than Saint German, of a less effective outline, and standing in the lower part of the town, has nothing like the same grand effect as the two towers of Saint German on the hill. But it has, with its tall clerestory, a stately look from some approaches, and it has its lesson to tell in the history of art.

One is surprised to hear that in the old days Argentan had but a single _cure_, whose sphere of usefulness took in both Saint German and Saint Martin. One fully expects to find that such a church as Saint German was collegiate. But this is one of the characteristic features of French architecture. We are used in England to great town churches, which never were more than parish churches, covering a good deal more ground than Saint German's. But we are not used, save at Sh.o.r.eham and Bristol, to see them built, like Saint German, so thoroughly on the type of churches of higher rank. Boston, Newark, Saint Michael's at Coventry, Trinity Church at Hull, are as grand in their way as Saint German at Argentan, only it is in quite another way.

There are a few other things to see at Argentan. On the slope of the hill is a good late Gothic house, with two arches of street arcade in front. Add a little more, and we should have the arcade of Carentan; add a great deal more, and we should have the arcades of Bern. Those who seek for it will also find a mediaeval bridge of two pointed arches over one of the branches of the Orne. And it is grievous when, after moving from Argentan to new quarters at Laigle, we take another look at M.

Vimont's book, and find that we have failed to see a small desecrated Romanesque church called _Notre-Dame de la Place_. We relieve ourselves by finding fault with M. Vimont, who certainly does not always put things in those parts of his book where we should most naturally look for them.

But we have one point to settle with witnesses nearer home. In the war between William Rufus and Duke Robert, the Duke, with his ally King Philip of France, took a castle in which Roger the Poitevin, son of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury and brother of Robert of Belleme, commanded for William at the head of 700 knights. Strange to say, they all surrendered without shedding of blood on the first day of the siege. Our chronicle calls the place _Argentses_, which Florence of Worcester translates by _Argentinum castrum_.[51] The name looks like Argences, much nearer to Caen than Argentan. But one doubts whether Argences could ever have been a fortress of such importance, perhaps whether it was a fortress at all.

And Robert of Torigny, who must have known the country better than anybody at Peterborough or Worcester, has _Argentomum_, which certainly means Argentan, and which may perhaps have the force of a correction. If so, we have a second visit to Argentan by a French king of the eleventh century, but not one which made any new building needful.

There is a good deal more to say about Argentan in later times, from Henry the Second of Normandy and England to Henry the Fourth of Navarre and France. The traveller is most likely to sojourn at the _Hotel des Trois Maries_, a resting-place which, in its foundation rather than in its buildings, goes back to the fourteenth century. It has received many memorable guests, and its host is said to have purveyed for the last Henry that we have spoken of. It stands in the main street on the lower ground. The thought did suggest itself that it might be a trifle too near the Orne, whose waters at Argentan are not attractively clean, and that the _Hotel du Donjon_ on the top of the hill might have a better air. But we can say nothing as to the further merits or demerits of the Donjon, and the Three Maries sheltered us well enough by the s.p.a.ce of six days.

EXMES AND ALMENeCHES

1892

Exmes and Almeneches; one fancies that those names will sound strange to almost any one save those who have been lately reading the eleventh book of Orderic the Englishman. Exmes indeed is one of those unlucky places which, even in the year 1891, remain without the comfort of a railway.

But Almeneches has a station happily placed on two lines; it is visited by trains between Granville and Paris, and also by trains between Caen and Le Mans. It thus seems to stand in a closer relation to the world of modern times than Exmes, to which he who does not care to trust himself to a Norman omnibus must go on his own account. To Almeneches too one may go on one's own account; each place makes a pleasant drive from Argentan. There is nothing very striking on the road to either, but the road to Almeneches decidedly goes through the prettier country. Each has a church and a castle to show, or rather each has a church and the site of a castle. As in so many places, the ecclesiastical building has outlived the fortress. And this is more to be noticed at Almeneches, where the church was monastic, and therefore ran greater chances of destruction in the days of havoc. In general history we cannot venture to say that either spot has a place. In special Norman history Exmes, under some or other of the forms of its name, _Oximum_, _Hiesmes_, anything else, often shows itself; its early importance is noticed by its giving its name to the large district, _Pagus Oximensis_, _Oixmeiz_, _Hiesmsis_. And the _Oximenses_ are sometimes spoken of in a special way, as if they were a distinct people, capable of acting for themselves. Of Almeneches we hardly hear anything but at one particular moment, and then we hear of Exmes along with it.

In short, the history of Almeneches, as far as we are concerned with it, might be summed up under a sensational heading, as ”The Sorrows of Abbess Emma.” Her sorrows did not last long, but they were heavy while they lasted. It was hard for the head of a devout Sisterhood to have three of the great ones of the earth set upon her at once, one of them being her own brother. She was daughter of Roger of Montgomery, afterwards Earl of two s.h.i.+res in England, and of his first wife, Mabel of Belleme, who bears so evil a reputation for bloodshed and treachery.

She was therefore sister to the heir of her mother's estates and crimes, to that Robert of Belleme who is charged with a crime from which the worst Merwing would have shrunk, that of pulling out the eyes of his little G.o.dson, seemingly only for the fun of the thing. But Emma and her sisters are described as being much better than any of their brothers, even those who were not so bad as Robert. She may therefore not have been wholly unfit for the post in which she was set when her father put her at the head of his newly founded abbey, though she could hardly have been qualified according to the rule which Gregory the Great laid down for the monasteries of Sicily, that no abbess should be under sixty years of age.

The troubles of Abbess Emma began in the year 1102, when her brother Robert was happily driven out of England, with his brothers and his whole followings and belongings. It might seem a little hard when King Henry, in getting rid of the whole stock, seized on the English lands which Earl Roger had given to his daughter's Norman Abbey. But we remember that, in so doing, he was forestalling, not the Eighth of his name, but the Fifth. We did not want alien priories in England. Robert came back to his native Normandy, began to work every kind of mischief there, and his brothers Arnulf and Roger helped him for awhile in so doing. Arnulf is famous at Pembroke.[52] Roger the _Poitevin_, so called from his marriage, had been lord of that land between Mersey and Ribble, which afterwards went to patch up the modern s.h.i.+re of Lancaster.

Presently the brothers quarrelled. Robert of Belleme refused to give Arnulf and Roger any share in their father's inheritance. Then they forsook him, and Arnulf took an active part against him on behalf of Duke Robert. We read how, in June, 1103, he seized his brother's _munitio_ of Almeneches, and how it was occupied for the Duke. This was dangerous to his sister's abbey, where his followers did not scruple to occupy the buildings and to stable their horses in the church. Then Robert of Belleme, looking on the abbey as a hostile fortress, comes down on Almeneches, burns the church and all the buildings of the monastery, and leaves his sister and her nuns to find shelter where they can. The Duke's followers, who fall into his hands, he deals with after his manner; they are killed, mutilated, or kept in hard bonds. Robert of Belleme, it must be remembered, is the man of whom it was said that he refused ransom for his prisoners, despising gain, compared with the keener pleasure of tormenting them. The Duke then and his following set forth to do something against the hateful tyrant--”_odibilis tyrannus_”

he is called, a phrase in which we must not forget the ancient sense of ”_tyrannus_.”[53] Counts and lords are with him, and the whole force of the land of Exmes. They hold their councils in the castle of Exmes; they did what they could against the tyrant; but he was too strong for them.

He defeated the Duke in battle, and got possession of the castle of Exmes.