Part 6 (1/2)

With the churches of the Trinity and of St. Georges before him, the reader will best be enabled to judge what Norman architecture really was: no difficulty or doubt can arise as to the history or the date of either; and he may rest satisfied, that whatever has been selected from them, is, as far as human observation can decide, exactly in the state in which it was left by the original builder.

The abbey of the Holy Trinity was founded in 1066, by Matilda of Flanders, wife to William II. Duke of Normandy; and its church was dedicated on the eighteenth of June of the same year, by Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, a.s.sisted by the bishops and abbots of the province, and in the presence of the duke and d.u.c.h.ess, together with their princ.i.p.al barons. The sovereign, upon the same day, presented at the altar his infant daughter, Cecilia, devoting her to the service of G.o.d in this monastery, in which she was accordingly educated, and was its first nun and second abbess. History has recorded the name of the first abbess, Matilda, and relates that she was of one of the most n.o.ble families of the duchy; but no farther particulars are known respecting her. The foundation-charters of this convent, which bear date in the years 1066 and 1082, are full of donations in every respect princely; and these, not only on the part of the sovereign, but also of his n.o.bles, whose signatures are likewise attached to the instruments. The queen, also, at her decease, left the monastery her crown, sceptre, and ornaments of state;[51] thus setting the example, which was shortly afterwards followed by her royal consort, with regard to the abbey of St. Stephen. Robert, the Conqueror's successor in the dukedom, was not behind-hand with his father in his liberality to the convent of the Trinity. The latter, in his charter, dated 1083, had reserved to himself the right of the fishery of the Orne, together with sundry possessions outside the walls of the town, in the direction of the suburb of Vaugeux. All these were ceded by the new duke to his sister; and out of the various grants, on the part of the father and son, was formed what was denominated the _Bourg l'Abbesse_, or _Barony of St. Giles_. Duke Robert did yet more; for, after having distinguished himself at the capture of Jerusalem, and refused the crown of the Holy Land, he brought home with him, on his return to France, and deposited in the abbatial church founded by his mother, the great standard of the Saracens, wrested from them by his valor in the field of Ascalon.

Among the privileges conferred upon the abbey of the Trinity, by the Norman princes, was the right of holding a fair upon Trinity-Sunday and the days that immediately preceded and followed it. The abbess, during these days, was ent.i.tled to all the town dues; and, to leave no doubt of her right, she was in the habit of sending some of her officers at vespers time on the Friday, to affix her armorial bearings to every entrance of the town. The same officers also attached their own boxes for the receipt of customs to the gates, in lieu of those of the farmer-general. Water alone could be brought in without payment of toll.

As long as the fair lasted, the abbess was likewise treated with military honors; the commandant of the garrison, whatever his rank, was bound to apply to her, in person, for the parole of the day. The Abbe De la Rue, from whose work most of the historical facts concerning this convent are extracted, states, that he has himself seen the Marechal de Harcourt, while governor of Normandy, wait upon the abbess for the purpose; and he is of opinion, that the custom existed from the very foundation of the monastery.

It will not be matter of surprise, that an establishment, thus gifted and distinguished, should have been tenanted by the children of those who had contributed to the endowment. The names of the daughters and nieces of the chief Norman barons, will be found in the catalogue of the first nuns. Such, however, was at that period the state of society, that even an abbey, so founded, endowed, and occupied, was doomed to afford a remarkable instance of the capricious barbarity of the times. No sooner was the death of the Conqueror known, than the very n.o.bles, who, but a few years previously, had been foremost as benefactors to the convent, a.s.sumed the opposite character, and did every thing in their power to despoil, and to destroy it. They had themselves subscribed the following denunciation:--”Si quis ver horum omnium, quae praedictae S. Trinitatis ecclesiae data ostensa sunt, temeraria praesumptione aliquando, (quod absit) violator effectus, in sua impudenti obstinatione perst.i.terit: Noverit ille se anathema factum a Domino, sancta ac beata fidelium omnium communione privatum Divino judicio, perpetualiter esse plectendum.”--But no consideration, human or divine, could restrain their rapacity: they pillaged the lands; seized the corn and cattle belonging to the monastery; imprisoned some of the tenants and va.s.sals, and put others to the sword. These, and many other facts, most curiously ill.u.s.trative of the manners of the age, are to be found in the collection of the charters of the abbey. They prove indisputably, (if such a fact needs proof) that the days of chivalry were far from being days of honesty. But they also shew, what the reader may not be equally prepared to see, that among these plunderers was Henry himself, the Conqueror's youngest son, who did not scruple to lay waste the lands given to the abbey by his mother; and who, as the Abbe de la Rue remarks, had probably, even at that early period, conceived the intention of seizing upon his paternal territory, and might be engaged in the ama.s.sing of those pecuniary resources, by the aid of which he ultimately succeeded in his usurpation of the throne.

Among the possessions of the abbey of the Holy Trinity, were several estates[52] and advowsons in England; for the better administration of which, the presence of the abbess was occasionally required on this side of the water. The names of more than one of the holy ladies are on record, who honored our island with their presence. The journal of the tour of the abbess, Georgette du Molley Bacon, states her to have embarked at Caen, on the sixteenth of August, 1570, with fifteen persons in her suite, and to have landed in London, and proceeded to her manor-house at Felsted, in Ess.e.x, from which she did not return to Normandy till Trinity-Sunday in the following year.

Hence it may be easily inferred, that the rules of the convent were not of the strictest description. The establishment indeed was, from its origin, under the regulation of the order of St. Benedict, but the nuns, though they lived under the same roof, were not bound by vows: they were accustomed to receive their friends in their own apartments; and many of them had nieces or other relations with them, whom they brought up. The refectory was common; and they ate meat several days in the week. There were also stated times, on which it was allowable for them to take the air in a garden at a short distance from the convent. The abbess herself had her Country-house at Oistreham, where she frequently resided; and upon the occasion of those festivals which are distinguished by public processions, the whole body of the community used to go in procession to each of the different churches of Caen. Sometimes too the abbess attended with a party of her nuns at the performance of any mystery or similar scenical representation. The account of the revenues of the monastery in 1423, shews how Nicole de Rupalley, then abbess, was present at the acting of the _Miracle of St. Vincent_, and rewarded the performers with a gratuity of ten sols, a sum equivalent, at that time, to ten bushels of wheat.

About the year 1515, an attempt was made by the superior, Isabel of Bourbon, to curtail the indulgences of the sisterhood, by keeping them more closely confined, increasing the number of fast-days, and generally introducing a system of greater rigor. But the nuns remonstrated against the innovation, and had recourse to the Bishop of Bayeux, alledging the injustice of their being called upon to submit themselves to regulations, to which they had not originally subscribed. The prelate, who felt the point to be a delicate one, refused to decide; and the matter ended in an appeal to the Pope, who, finally, allowed the nuns to retire into other convents, where they might enjoy the freedom they claimed.

When, after the capture of Caen by Edward, in 1346, the inhabitants resolved upon fortifying the town anew, the abbeys of St. Stephen and of the Trinity, both of which lay in the suburbs, were excluded from the line of circ.u.mvallation; and the consequence was their exposure to insults and pillage. The monks and nuns were therefore obliged to look to their own defence; and, upon King John's coming to Caen, eight years afterwards, they obtained from him letters patent, authorizing them to encircle their convents with walls, towers, and fosses of their own.

Hence originated the strange anomaly of a fortress and nunnery within the same precincts. The sisterhood, alarmed at their situation, sold their plate, and even the shrines of their relics, to provide for their safety; and permission was afterwards granted them to levy contributions upon their va.s.sals, for the purpose of expediting and completing the task.--In the reign of Henry VI. during the wane of the British power in France, orders were issued by the monarch for the dismantling of the fort of the Trinity, lest it should be seized by the inhabitants of the neighborhood, who were endeavoring to get possession of Caen. But the abbess resisted the royal edict; and, under an apprehension, lest the attempt to carry it into effect should induce her to open the gates to the insurgents, her resistance was allowed to be effectual.--King Charles repeatedly took up his quarters in this monastery, while his army was laying siege to Caen, in 1450, and mention continues to be made of the fortress till the commencement of the following century; but after that time, it appears to have been suffered to go to ruin.

M. De la Rue rejects, as unfounded, the statement of the Bishop of Avranches, which has obtained general credence, that the spires of the western towers of the abbey were destroyed in 1360, by Charles the Bad, on account of their use for the detecting of the approach of an enemy.

His princ.i.p.al argument against the fact is, that the King of Navarre was at that very time at peace with France; and therefore, supposing it to be certain that they were taken down by that prince, he is of opinion, that their demolition must have been ordered to prevent them from serving as landmarks to the English. At the same time, he is evidently inclined to think that the towers were never surmounted by spires at all; and he observes, with much apparent justice, that, if there really were any, and if they were really destroyed at the period alledged, the towers must have been left for a long time in a ruined state, as their present termination is known to be the work of the eighteenth century.

The original charters and t.i.tle-deeds of the abbey of the Trinity were lost during the revolution. They perished in consequence of the extreme care of the last abbess, who, full of anxiety for their preservation, secured them in trunks, and hid them in the ceiling of the church. But, in those disastrous times, the lead that covered the churches was among the earliest objects of plunder; and the consequence was, that the roof was stripped; the boxes exposed to the rain; the wood and paper wholly destroyed; and the tin cases that held the charters so eaten by rust, that their contents were rendered illegible. It was in this state that they were found by the Abbe De la Rue, who was in possession of the secret, and who, on his return to France, after the cessation of the troubles and the death of the abbess, obtained permission from the prefect for the search to be made.

The church of the abbey of the Trinity had its own peculiar rites; and, till the period of the revolution, the community were in the habit of printing their liturgy annually in latin. A very beautiful quarto volume, containing the ritual, was published at Caen, in 1622, by the order of Laurence de Budos, then abbess. It was probably from pride at a privilege of this nature, and from a confidence in their strength, that the nuns persisted in celebrating the ridiculous, or, it might almost be called, blasphemous _Fete des Fous_, for a hundred years after the Council of Basle had decreed the suppression of it throughout Christendom. In imitation too of the Boy-Bishops of Bayeux, Salisbury, and other churches, the nuns of the Holy Trinity had their Girl-Abbesses. The ancient rolls of the monastery make mention, under the head of expenses in 1423, of six sols given, by way of offering, on Innocents'-Day, ”_aux pet.i.tes Abbesses_.” This was the day on which the Girl-Abbess was elected: the superior of the convent resigned to her the abbatial stall and crozier at vespers, as soon as they came to the verse of the _Magnificat_, beginning ”_Deposuit potentes de sede_;” and the farce was kept up till the same hour the succeeding evening. The Abbe De la Rue, who mentions this fact, observes with justice, that another circ.u.mstance, which appears from these accounts, is still more extraordinary;--that, even as late as 1546, the abbess was in the habit of making an annual payment of five sols to the cathedral of Bayeux, for its Boy-Bishop. The entry is in the following terms: ”_Au pet.i.t eveque de Bayeux, pour sa pension, ainsi qu'il est accoutume, V. sous._” During the early part of the preceding century, the abbot of St. Stephen was also accustomed to pay twenty sols per annum, on the same account; but his payment was probably discontinued immediately after the edict of the Council of Basle, though the ceremony of the Boy-Bishop was not suppressed at Bayeux till 1482. Indeed, only six years before that time, the inventory of the sacristy of the cathedral enumerated, among its other valuables,

”Two mitres for the Boy-Bishop, The crozier belonging to the Boy-Bishop, The Boy-Bishop's mittens, And four small copes of scarlet satin, for the use of the singing-boys on Innocents'-Day.”

The abbess of Caen, through the medium of her official, exercised spiritual jurisdiction over the parishes of St. Giles, Carpiquet, Oistreham, and St. Aubin-d'Arquenay, by virtue of a privilege granted by the bishops of Bayeux, as well for herself and her nuns, as for the va.s.sals of the several parishes. This privilege, however, extended no farther than to an exemption from certain pecuniary fines, which the diocesans, in the middle ages, exacted from their flocks; and even in this confined acceptation, it was more than once the subject of litigation between the convent and the see. In like manner, the civil and criminal jurisdiction claimed by the abbess over the same parishes, brought her occasionally into disputes with the bailiff and viscount of Caen: her rights were repeatedly called in question, and she was obliged to have recourse to legal tribunals to establish them. The following very extraordinary suit is at once ill.u.s.trative of the fact, and of the character of the times:--In the year 1480, an infant was eaten up in its cradle, by a _bestia porcina_, within the precincts of the parish of St.

Giles. The abbess' officers seized the delinquent, and inst.i.tuted a process for its condemnation before the seneschal of the convent. During the time, however, that the question was pending, the king's attorney-general interfered. He summoned the abbess before the high-bailiff, and, maintaining that the crime had been committed within the cognizance of the bailiwick, he claimed the beast, and demanded that its trial should take place before one of the royal tribunals. Debates immediately arose as to the limits of their respective jurisdictions: inquiries were set on foot; memorials and counter-memorials were presented; and the abbess finally succeeded in carrying her point, only by dint of proving that she had, some years previously, burned a young woman in the _Place aux Campions_, for having murdered a man in the self-same house where the hog devoured the child.

Among the obligations originally imposed upon this convent, was that of giving a dinner annually, on Trinity Sunday, to such of the inhabitants of the parish of Vaux-sur-Saulles and their domestics, as had resided there a year and a day. The repast was served up within the abbey walls, and in the following manner:--After the guests had washed their hands in a tub of water, they seated themselves on the ground, and a cloth was spread before them. A loaf, of the weight of twenty-one ounces, was then given to each individual, and with it a slice of boiled bacon, six inches square. To this was added a rasher of bacon, fried; and the feast concluded with a basin of bread and milk for every person, all of them having likewise as much beer and cider as they could drink. The dinner, as may naturally be supposed, lasted from three to four hours; and it will also not be difficult to imagine, that the entertaining of such a motley throng on such a day, could not fail to be attended with great annoyance to the nuns, and with various inconveniences. The convent had therefore, from a very early date, endeavored to free themselves from the obligation, by the payment of a sum of money; and, in times of war, the town of Caen had occasionally interposed, and forced the people to accept the composition, from an apprehension, lest the enemy should gain possession of the fort of the Trinity, by introducing themselves into it among the authorized guests. It appears that, in 1429, the abbess purchased an exemption at the price of thirty livres, a sum equivalent to thirty-seven and a half quarters of corn, at a time when wheat sold for two sols the bushel; and twenty-two years subsequently, Charles VII.

then King of France, granted his letters patent, abolis.h.i.+ng the dinner altogether, upon condition of a like sum being annually paid to the parochial chest.

To the abbey church of the Trinity were attached several chapels, as well without as within its walls: the most remarkable of these was that of St. Thomas, generally known by the name of _St. Thomas l'Abattu_, in the suburb of St. Giles. It was, in its original state, an hospital, and was called the Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr in the fields, whence De la Rue infers that it was built in commemoration of Thomas-a-Becket, and was probably erected immediately after his canonization in 1173.

Huet, on the contrary, tells us, that it had existed ”from time immemorial;” and Ducarel, who has described and figured it,[53] appears to have also regarded it as of very high antiquity. The gradual disappearance of leprosy had caused it to be long since diverted from its original purpose. In 1569, it was pillaged by the Huguenots; and, as no pains were taken to repair the injuries then done, it continued in a state of dilapidation, imperceptibly wasting away, till the period of the revolution, when it was sold, together with the other national property; and even its ruins have now disappeared.

Happily, the abbatial church of the Trinity was at that time more fortunate: it was suffered to continue unappropriated, till, upon the inst.i.tution of the Legion of Honor, Napoleon applied it to some purposes connected with that body, by whom it was a few years ago ceded for its present object, that of a workhouse for the department. The choir alone is now used as a church: the nave serves for work-rooms; and, to render it the better applicable to this purpose, a floor has been thrown across, which divides it into two stories.

It has been observed in a recent publication,[54] that ”a finer specimen of the solid grandeur of Norman architecture, is scarcely to be found any where than in the west front of this church,” (the subject of the _twenty-fourth plate_.) ”The corresponding part of the rival abbey of St. Stephen, is poor when compared to it; and Jumieges and St. Georges equally fail in the comparison. In all these, there is some architectural anomaly: in the Trinity none, excepting indeed the bal.u.s.trade at the top of the towers; and this is so obviously an addition of modern times, that no one can be misled by it.[55] This bal.u.s.trade was erected towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the oval apertures and scrolls, seen in Ducarel's print,[56] were introduced.”--It may be well to take the present opportunity of making a general observation, that though, in speaking of this and of other churches, the term, _west front_, may commonly be applied to the part containing the princ.i.p.al entrance; yet that this term must be received with a certain degree of lat.i.tude. The Norman religious edifices are far from being equally regular in their position as the English. With a general inclination to the west, they vary to every point of the compa.s.s.[57] The church of the abbey of the Trinity fronts the north-west--The architrave of the central door-way is composed of many surfaces of great depth: two-thirds of them are flat and plain, and recede so little, as to afford but small opportunity for light and shade. Its decorations are few and simple, consisting almost wholly of the billet and chevron moulding, the former occupying the exterior, the latter the interior, circles. In the outermost band, the billets form a single row, and take the curve of the arch; the succeeding circle exhibits them with an unusual arrangement, placed compound, and all pointing to the centre of the door. These, with the addition of quatrefoils, and of some grotesque heads, which serve as key-stones to the mouldings over the windows of the triforium, are the only ornaments which this front can boast. The capitals throughout it are of the simplest forms, being in general little more than inverted cones, slightly truncated, for the purpose of making them correspond with the columns below. Some few of them have the addition of small projecting k.n.o.bs immediately below the angles of the impost; while those in the square towers are formed by a short cylinder, whose diameter exceeds that of the shaft, surmounted by a square block, by way of abacus. The towers and b.u.t.tresses decrease in size upwards.--An architectural peculiarity deserving of notice in this front, lies in the triangular mouldings, observable in the spandrils of the arches of the clerestory.

The same are occasionally, though rarely, found in other buildings of unquestionably Norman origin, as in the church at Falaise, and in Norwich Cathedral[58] in our own country. They are here more particularly noticed, as serving to ill.u.s.trate what has been considered an anomaly in the architecture of some of the round-towered churches in Norfolk and Suffolk,[59] where the windows are formed with heads of this shape. Antiquaries, unwilling to admit that the _flat-sided arch_, as it has been called by a perversion of terms, was introduced into England prior to the fourteenth century, have labored to prove that such windows were alterations of that period, contrary to the evidence of every part of the building.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 25. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY, CAEN.

_East End._]

The east-end of the choir (_plate twenty-five_) presents a bold termination, pierced with ten s.p.a.cious windows, that give light to the choir, each of them encircled with a broad band, composed of the same ornaments as are found in the rest of the exterior of the edifice. This part of the church is divided in its elevation into three compartments, the lower containing a row of small blank arches, while in each of the upper two is a window of an unusual size for a Norman building, but still without mullions or tracery. The windows ore separated by thick cylindrical pillars, which rise from immediately above a row of windows that give light to the crypt. The heads of these windows are level with the surface of the ground; and the wall, in this subterranean part of the building, is considerably thicker than it is above. The bal.u.s.trade of quatrefoils above appears coeval with the rest, and may be regarded as tending to establish the originality of that in the nave of the abbey church of St. Stephen.[60]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 26. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.

_East end, interior._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate 27. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN.