Saint-Étienne

“ Villiers de Saint-Etienne calls him the Aristarchus of his time, and says he was a staunch advocate of clerical poverty. On one occasion, preaching at Paul's Cross in 1464, he vehemently attacked the secular clergy and bishops for their arrogance, pride, and self-seeking (Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, p. 180; Gregory's Chronicle, p. 288) . ”

“ The avariciousness of the household yielded to the demands of religion. The old-iron dealers gave their alms punctually at the sacrament and to all the collections in church. When the vicar of Saint-Etienne called to ask help for his poor, Sauviat or his wife fetched at once without reluctance or sour faces the sum they thought their fair share of the parish duties. ”

“ If there were only monks in the priory, this one would have very little to do in looking after the linen; but there are many boys who, although they are being educated with a view to the religious life, have not yet put off such worldly things as shirts.
Very different from the sombre-looking Franciscan, bent over the wheelbarrow, is the Père Etienne. He is as cheerful and sprightly as if he were now convinced that a convent is the pleasantest place on earth to live in, and that outside of it all is vanity and vexation. He teaches the boys Latin, Greek, English, and the physical sciences. ”

“ For this work Louis XVI. decorated Etienne with the Order of Saint Michel, gave Joseph a pension of 1000 livres, raised their father to the nobility, and later granted the brothers 40,000 francs that they might devote their whole attention to aërial navigation. Their work was interrupted by the Revolution, and during the Reign of Terror Etienne, who had been administrator of his department, was denounced and escaped only through the devotion of his workmen. ”

“ The exterior of the great church of St Etienne disappoints so many, largely from the fact that the gaunt west front is the only view one really has of the building except from a distance. Inside, services seem to go on at most times of the day, and when you are quietly looking at the mighty nave with its plain, semicircular arches and massive piers, you are suddenly startled by the entry from somewhere of a procession of priests loudly singing some awe-inspiring chant, the guttural tones of the singers echoing through the aisles. ”

“ Etienne is another of those soaring monuments which rise skyward and hold the eye whenever one is in its vicinity. Standing on an eminence of200 not very great height, it dominates, from every point of view, the plain which surrounds the city and reminds one of Noyon or Laon in its comparative isolation. Not because its domicile is not a place of some magnitude, but rather because the neighbouring houses lie so huddled in a valley or plain, does the city give the impression of being of less size than it really is. ”

“ Dost thou think English torches fired an English house of God? Times are changed now, and thou seest me surrounded by the vassals of my father's house, who own no lord but their natural chieftain. But where is Etienne? We have watched your party all day, and know that the young tyrant was their leader. Is he amongst the dead?"
"Look for thyself."
No. Etienne was not amongst the dead. How, then, had he escaped?
"Search the premises--search the woods--stop the paths across the morass--men and dogs, all of you. Better all the rest had escaped: he shall never, never live to be lord of Aescendune." ”

“ Etienne, whom, after having sworn by the holy Evangelists to speak the truth, has confessed to us always to have seen a bright light in the dwelling of the said foreign woman, and heard much wild and diabolical laughter on the days and nights of feasts and fasts, notably during the days of the holy and Christmas weeks, as if a great number of people were in the house. ”

“ For that, the space about the sanctuary is to be kept clear of undergrowth, by order of the chief. For that old Mwezi waits beneath the altar, and maybe he whom he saw waits also.”
The dinner bugle had sounded a few moments before Père Etienne had finished, and now we rose to go. We stood a second, and I gazed over the side at the star-shine on the water, for the night was fine. When I looked up, Père Etienne was staring out into the darkness, a far-away look on his face, but he must have felt my eyes on him, for he turned quickly and smiled. ”

“ Etienne, like a silent witness day and night, had pointed upward to the great beyond, to the immeasurable depths of stars, away from this world of struggle, passion, and human desire. Men had fought, schemed, died, and been forgotten since the rising sun first turned its fane to golden fire ”

“ Bishop Étienne’s Carolingian cathedral became the prototype for the Auvergnat-Romanesque school.
In the good Étienne’s church prayed the first crusaders when by papal bidding there gathered at Clermont a mighty council at whose tenth and last session was preached the First Crusade. Nature herself seemed to have prepared the people’s minds for some vast enterprise, for all the chroniclers of western Christendom describe the sublime shower of astral stars, thick as snowflakes, which whirled in the sky. ”

“ As the traveller enters Caen the first object which greets his eye is the Church of St. Étienne, the Church of the Abbey of Men, which was founded by the Conqueror in 1036, the same year his Queen Matilda founded the Church of the Abbey of Women,—La Trinité, which one sees over yonder, both as an expiation of the sin they had committed in marrying within the forbidden degree of consanguinity. While singularly majestic, St. Étienne is simple to severity, but what do architects think about its façade and the odd-looking spires? ”

“ He lay in deep remorse, knowing that he still owed his life to the forbearance, and more than forbearance, with which he had been treated.
"If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."
Etienne now felt these coals of fire.
He was not all pride and cruelty. His education had made him what he was, and probably, under the same circumstances, with such a father and the training of a Norman castle, many of my young readers who have detested his arrogance would have been like him, more or less. ”

“ The busy tribe of variously gifted artists, labouring rapidly at the many works on hand for the final embellishment of the cathedral of St. Etienne, made those conventual buildings just then cheerful enough to lighten a melancholy, heavy even as that of our friend Denys. ”

“ They could not bear to leave their beloved parents at distant Limoges, and yet it was impossible to reach them or to help them in any way. France was a dangerous place for people with a 'de' in their names in those days, and for young men of military age most dangerous of all. Finally, Etienne and his brother Joseph settled to go to South America. ”

“ And, madame, I think often that more heaven is in him than we often know, and perhaps because I have prayed always under the window where the lights are all at last one glory, and the color itself is a prayer, Etienne is so born that he must have it, too. I take him there a baby, and he stretches his hands and smiles. He does not shout like the others, but his smile seems from heaven. He is an artist. He draws always with a bit of charcoal, with anything, and I think that he shall study, and, it may be, make other beautiful things that may live in a new St. ”

“ Etienne spoke these words with deep emotion, but still firmly and distinctly.
"Fear not, my son, thy father's death shall be avenged, or my sword has lost its power. Weep not for the dead--women weep, men avenge wrongs on the wrongdoer; but tell me, art thou certain of these facts? didst thou or any one else see this Wilfred at the head of the outlaws?"
"My liege, I saw him myself; I penetrated their fastnesses in the forest, and but narrowly escaped with life." ”

“ Étienne’s church are his windows beside those of his father-in-law, Engrand Le Prince, who, with his sons Jean and Nicholas, made the north and south rose windows of the cathedral and its splendid Peter and Paul window. Their tree of Jesse, in St. Étienne’s choir, is considered a masterpiece of color and design. To-day a Le Prince window in any French city is a matter of civic pride.
The old saying ran: “The choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the portals of Rheims, the towers of Chartres” make the most beautiful cathedral in the world. ”

“ That of St Étienne, formerly the cathedral, is a majestic Gothic building of the 13th to the 16th centuries. It is entered by three richly sculptured portals, over the middle and largest of which is a rose window; over the north portal rises a massive tower, but that which should surmount the south portal is unfinished. ”

“ Standing in thy majesty, while countless as the sand
On yonder shore, the multitude adore thee
As thou blessest all men with thy loving hand?
Athens is thy dwelling place:
Holy mother, give us grace.
In the town thy temple stands
Bright, all marble from thine hands,
While the gathering people kneel, journeying from many lands.
Is that thy priest who stands within the town?
Is that thy choir whose thunders roar and swell?
Hail to thee most mighty, great be thy renown,
While minstrels sing, and priests thy glory tell. ”

“ IT was to go and see their friend Jean that Roger, Marcel, Bernard, Jacques, and Etienne set out along the broad highroad that winds like a handsome yellow riband through the fields and meadows. Now they are off. They start all abreast; it is the best way. Only there is one defect in the arrangement this time; Etienne is too little to keep up.
He tries hard and puts his best foot foremost. His short legs stretch their widest. He swings his arms into the bargain. But he is too little; he cannot go as fast as his companions. He falls behind because he is too small; it is no use. ”

“ The courage of the people in Orleans was sustained by their bishop, who at length, as the city was just falling into the hands of the assailants, saw a cloud of dust, and cried, "It is the help of God." It was Aëtius, who, on the death of Boniface, had thought it prudent to fly to the Huns, had come back to Italy at the head of sixty thousand men, obtained forgiveness of Placidia, and been made master-general of her forces. He had united to the Roman troops the barbarians who had occupied Gaul, the Visigoths under Theodoric, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. ”

“ He had cruelly slain young Eadwin, and the mother of the murdered lad--for he knew her--had rescued him from what his conscience told him would have been a deserved fate, at least at the hands of the English.
There are crises in all men's lives--and this was one in the life of Etienne--when they choose good or evil. ”

“ Lady Morgan says, that the annual benediction of the beasts at Rome, in a church there dedicated to St. Anthony, lasts for some days: “for not only every Roman from the pope to the peasant, who has a horse, a mule, or an ass, sends his cattle to be blessed at St. Anthony’s shrine, but all the English go with their job horses and favourite dogs; and for the small offering of a couple of paoli, get them sprinkled, sanctified, and placed under the protection of this saint. ”

“ The King himself, who loved the arts and letters more out of vanity and the desire to imitate the princes of Italy than out of true intellectual loftiness, extended his protection to Robert Estienne, whom he considered an illustrious man whose glory would reflect upon his prince as a Maecenas. ”

“ Every one must see that Etienne knows that you are his best pupil. He does not speak to any one as he does to you, and you must know as well as I that it is not because you are a princess.{22}”
“Yes, of course; I know that perfectly well. But I fancy that Etienne, in his little critical heart, feels that he hasn’t got out of me what he looked for at first. ”

“ A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Étienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such! The old to heal up rents, the young to remove rubbish:—which latter is it not, indeed, the task here?
Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticest the Deputies from Nantes? ”

“ At many churches the priest who performs this function generally passes down in front of an array of old men and women; each receives a loaf and a bottle of wine, and that is all. But at S. Étienne it is a very quaint affair. A square portion of the nave is railed off; within sit the boys whose feet are to be washed, and upon a table are rows of loaves and bottles of wine. Then comes the curé, a tall, elegant-mannered man, and kneeling to each, he washes and wipes their feet, and then distributes the wine and bread. ”

“ My four remaining years then, at Eton, formed, indeed, a dream of happiness.
When not otherwise particularly engaged, it was my delight, on the instant of coming out of school, or church, to fix my eyes on some distant object, and to start off for it, merely, I suppose, because it was out of bounds. Being constantly in the habit of this, I became acquainted with the localities of the neighbourhood, perhaps more accurately than any other boy at Eton. The two most distant points I ever reached, were Staines and the race-course at Ascot Heath. These excursions I ever undertook in solitude. ”

“ It is here at Port Royal that we first see her with her husband. Charles de St. Etienne, the Chevalier de la Tour,—there is a world of romance in these mere names,—was a Huguenot nobleman who had a grant of Port Royal and of La Hive, from Louis XIII. He ceded La Hive to Razilli, the governor-in-chief of the provinces, who took a fancy to it, for a residence. He was living peacefully at Port Royal in 1647, when the Chevalier d'Aunay Charnise, having succeeded his brother Razilli at La Hive, tired of that place and removed to Port Royal. ”