Archbishop of Rouen

“ Clement V, the builder of Bordeaux’ Rayonnant choir, arranged that his nephew, who was archbishop of Rouen and had got into difficulties with the Norman nobles, should exchange his see with Gilles Aycelin, the prelate who was erecting Narbonne Cathedral, brother of the bishop-builder of Clermont’s nave. A little later another archbishop of Rouen became the Avignon pontiff who built the audience hall and the chief chapel of the palace on the Rhone. Other XIV-century additions to Rouen Cathedral are the side chapels; every guild and corporation craved thus to honor its own particular patron. ”

“ The archbishop of Rouen, prior to the revolution, took the title of Primate of Neustria; and his spiritual jurisdiction then extended over six suffragans, the bishops of Bayeux, Avranches, Evreux, Séez, Lisieux, and Coutances. ”

“ His own immediate superior at Rouen had been reduced very low by a virulent attack of gastric fever, brought on by immoderate eating of peaches; and, according to the last account from Rouen, the archbishop, immediately on his recovery, had again attacked the fruit of which he was passionately fond, in opposition to the express orders of his physician. If the archbishop were to be again prostrated, there was every chance of his vacating an archiepiscopal throne, and also of placing a cardinal’s hat at the disposal of the Pope. ”

“ The revered shrine of St. Romain, that Fierte which represented the proudest token of ecclesiastical liberty, had been borne in solemn procession round the town. Public sentiment had been intensely agitated by the unwonted course events had taken. On the fateful 21st of August the Cathedral was packed with hundreds of the faithful, eager to be first to hear the decision of the canons. By three o'clock the ten bells of the Cathedral had summoned the canons to the matins which preceded the election that was to release the Church from widowhood, and give to Rouen a new archbishop. ”

“ Far behind your right shoulder rise the spires of Rouen; away to the left is the church tower of Darnétal; in the opposite horizon the great slope of St. Catherine rises to the sky. Within this quiet square Archbishop Guillaume de l'Estrange built the Chartreuse de Notre Dame de la Rose, in 1386, rather more than a mile from the Porte St. Hilaire, in that cool valley between St. Catherine and Darnétal, which is shut in by the interlacing arms of Robec and Aubette. ”

“ Fifty years of Paganism succeeded; at the expiration of which period, Rollo embraced the faith of Christ, and Rouen saw once more within its walls, by the munificence and piety of the conqueror, a place of Christian worship. Richard Ist, grandson of this duke, and his son Robert, the archbishop, enlarged the edifice in the middle of the tenth century; but it was still not completed till 1063, when, according to Ordericus Vitalis, it was dedicated by the Archbishop Maurilius with great pomp, in the presence of William, Duke of Normandy, and the bishops of the province. ”

“ Outside in the market-place Burgundian orators were rousing the passions of the mob, and chief among the leaders of the people were Alain Blanchart and De Livet, a canon of the Cathedral, then in charge of the diocese during the absence of Louis d'Harcourt, who much preferred the amusements of a courtier to the pious seclusion of an archbishop. As soon as the news of all this reached Paris, the Dauphin himself, with a brilliant suite, set out for Rouen, and encamped in the fortress on St. Catherine's Hill, to the south-east of the town, between the Aubette and the Seine. ”

“ Abbey, of Fécamp, 62 —Montivilliers, 68 —Pavilly, 133. Abbot of the Conards, his patent, 195. Academy, Royal, at Rouen, 220. Angel weighing the good and evil deeds of a departed spirit, on a capital in the church at Montivilliers, 69. Archbishop, tomb of, in Rouen cathedral, 155. Archbishop of Rouen, formerly had jurisdiction at Dieppe, 23 —his present salary, 165 —the oath taken by him on his accession, 214. Architecture, perpendicular style of, unknown in Normandy, 167. Arques, battle of, 35. Arques, castle of, its origin, 33 —its history, 34 —situation, 36 —described, 36 —when built, 38. ”

“ Many poor and sick who need money, and clothes, and help in every way,—and to try and do good, and give comfort to all the unhappy souls in Rouen is a hard task, even for an Archbishop."
Cazeau linked his thin hands together with an action of pious fervour and assented.
"There is a broken-hearted creature near us," pursued Patoux leisurely—"We call her Marguerite La Folle;—I have often thought I would ask Pere Laurent to speak to Monseigneur for her, that she might be released from the devils that are tearing her. ”

“ Whilst in the north wall of Rouen Cathedral is the tomb of an early archbishop, who having accidentally killed a man by hitting him with a soup ladle, because the soup given by the servant to the poor was of an inferior quality, thought himself unworthy of a resting-place within the church, and disliking to be buried without, was interred in the wall itself. ”

“ We find in the [Pg 9] preface to the life of Saint-Eloi by Saint-Ouen, that, even in the VIIth century, they read authors of whose works nothing now remains.
Saint-Ouen, founded or enriched a great many religious establishments in Rouen and its environs. It was under his episcopate, that a monument was first raised to Saint-Nicaise within the walls of Rouen. He also caused to be built the celebrated abbeys of Fontenelle (since Saint-Wandrille) , Jumiéges, and Saint-Austreberthe.
In the time of this archbishop, there was a state prison near the end of the rue de la Poterne. ”

“ All debts had to receive special postponement, and commerce suffered almost as fatally as agriculture. All over Rouen houses were continually being put up to auction for public or private defalcations, to be bought by those Englishmen who had not been already given estates as a reward for their services.196 The buildings of the Abbey of St. Ouen were entirely occupied by the men of the Duke of Suffolk, so that the archbishop of 1423 was unable to pass the night before his entry in the abbey, as of immemorial custom, because the English filled up every inch of it. ”

“ In one of the neighbouring rooms are two paintings of large dimensions, by Lemonnier, a native of Rouen. One of these paintings represents the audience given by Louis XVIth to the Chamber of commerce of Rouen, on the 28th june 1786, in the great hall of the archbishop's palace, called the Salle des États. All the figures are of natural size, and are striking likenesses. ”

“ It is thought generally, however, that Saint-Romain, constructed one of the churches, which succeeded each other on the site of the Cathedral, but, they were deceived who have said that this bishop extirpated paganism from Rouen, and from the province. Saint-Ouen, who came after Saint-Romain, found the people clownish, superstitious, and idolatrous, in consequence of the negligence of some bishops, his predecessors. The inhabitants of the neighbouring country, were coarse, cruel and dishonest; morals and the sciences were cultivated only among the higher classes of society. ”

“ The Place du Vieux Marché is a spot almost as historic in its way as the Parvis of the Cathedral, so that there is interest at both ends of the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. Its most terrible memory is the burning of Jeanne d'Arc, which (as I shall show from Lelieur's plan in a later chapter) took place at the angle of the modern halls, and close to the cemetery of the vanished church of St. Sauveur, on the same spot in the Vieux Marché used since the earliest history of Rouen as one of the many places of public execution. ”

“ The champion of the poor, the fatherless and the widow, the worshipper and communicant in Rouen Cathedral, the builder of67 hospitals and monasteries, above all the friend of Lanfranc, was easily able to secure the voice of the Pope in favour of a claim based not on heredity, not on election, not on bequest, but made by virtue of the personal injury done to him by Harold, and made to avenge the insulted saints of Normandy by recalling pagan England into the fold of Rome. ”

“ Now it was fitting that the Maid of the Armagnacs should be yet more elaborately and more solemnly tried, with a yet greater concourse of doctors and of prelates; and thus it was ordained by the Lord Bishop of Beauvais. As councillors and assessors he summoned the canons of Rouen in as great a number as possible. Among those who [Pg ii.208] answered his summons we may mention Raoul Roussel, treasurer of the chapter; Gilles Deschamps, who had been chaplain to the late King, Charles VI, in 1415; Pierre Maurice, doctor in theology, rector of the University of Paris in 1428 ”

“ Sever has so many shops that several of them have had to masquerade as churches. But the many "sacred buildings" you may see to-day are not much more than half of the churches and chapels of the sixteenth century which rose after the English garrison had disappeared. With the few exceptions I have already noted, Rouen has been almost entirely reconstructed since 1450, and in nothing can this be realised so well as in its churches. When Charles VII. first rode into Rouen, of the greater churches only the Cathedral was within a little of completion. ”

“ But if the poor had their Danse Macabre, the great ones of the city spared nothing to impress on their survivors that the magnificence of their lives should follow them even to the tomb. In the Chapelle de la Vierge of Rouen Cathedral are two of the most famous funereal monuments of the sixteenth century, and in one of these you will notice a very remarkable example of the way in which the sculptors of the rich understood their task. ”

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

“ As to the destruction of a temple dedicated to the pretended idol Roth, I think I have proved in an other work [2] , first, that there never existed an idol of that name, neither was the temple situated on the ground occupied by the church of Saint-Lo; secondly, that this temple was demolished by Saint-Romain, nearly four hundred years later. [Pg 6]
Nothing very remarkable happened at Rouen, under the successors of Saint-Mellon, until Saint-Victrice. But, here commences a new era for the town. Its population increases, its reputation extends, the temples of the true god are multiplied ”

“ They have also many confessions to receive from other parishes; but for the Easter communion every one is expected to go to his own parish priest, or at least to communicate at his own church. He says Rouen is rather a religious place. I did not ask him the proportion of communicants, for fear I should seem to be inquiring for criticism. He was obliged to leave us soon after dinner, but sent us on to one of his vicaires, who took us to the house of the Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes, and introduced us to one of them, who showed us the chapel, dormitory, &c. ”

“ It was when King Louis came with his mother, Blanche of Castile, to keep the Christmas of 1255 at Rouen, that the greater part of the choir, transept, and nave of the Cathedral as we see it now was finished. The monastical developments of previous centuries had done their work; the power of the great abbots and priors, which raised them into feudal dignitaries, with large wealth and wide possessions, had reached its limit. ”

“ The interior is scarcely less interesting, though it has suffered very much from modern religiosity. Only forty-seven and a half metres long, by scarcely twenty-five in width, its height is nearly twenty-three metres in the three bays of the nave, rising to thirty-nine at the lantern. Its greatest treasure now is the exquisite Escalier des Orgues, from which the staircase to the organ loft at Ely was imitated. This was built in 1519 for two hundred and five livres by Pierre Gringoire, "Maistre Machon de Rouen." ”

“ The foundations of another cathedral had been laid in 990, where Robec and Aubette still defined an "Ile Notre Dame de Rouen" whose inhabitants were under the jurisdiction of the chapterhouse. It was brought to a conclusion by Maurilius in 1063, and in the foundation and lower storeys of the northern71 tower of the west façade (known as the Tour St. Romain) are perhaps some of the few relics that remain of the architecture of these destructive years. But a far more beautiful and more authentic fragment is to be seen close to the Abbey Church of St. ”

“ To a certain degree they have succeeded: the spirit of religion is stronger than the law; and the spirit of contradiction, which teaches the subject to do whatever the law forbids, is stronger than either. Hence, most towns in France contain establishments, which may be considered either as the embers of expiring monachism, or the sparks of its reviving flame. Rouen has now a convent of Ursulines, who undertake the education of young females. ”

“ In sketching the more sombre features of this extraordinary century, it is impossible to omit any reference to those religious troubles which may have been already suggested to you by the kneeling monks upon the tomb of Georges d'Amboise. They were as terrible in Rouen as in almost every other town in France; the violent deaths and tortures they made so common in the city cannot be omitted in any estimate of the horrors of the time ”