Évreux

“ Of all the cathedral interiors in Normandy there are none that possess a finer or more perfectly proportioned nave than Evreux, and if I were asked to point out the two most impressive interiors of the churches in this division of France I should couple the cathedral at Evreux with St Ouen at Rouen.
It was our own Henry I. who having destroyed the previous building set to work to build a new one and it is his nave that we see to-day. The whole cathedral has since that time been made to reflect the changing ideals of the seven centuries that have passed. ”

“ The chief towns are Louviers, a busy cloth-manufacturing centre with an art treasure of the first rank in its beautifully flamboyant church; and Evreux with its bizarre cathedral, headquarters of the Department of the Eure; while northward and westward, by Conches and Beaumont-le-Roger to Caen and Bayeux, lies a wonderful country of picturesque and historic towns, such as Lisieux; Bernay, famous for its horse-fair; Falaise, the birthplace of William the Conqueror; and Dives, where he set sail for England’s shores,—names which will awaken memories of the past in a most vivid fashion. ”

“ And I think any one would find the road from Lisieux by Bernay, 20 miles, and on to Evreux, 36 miles, visiting there the celebrated cathedral, and then up straight north to the Seine, one of the prettiest roads. Vernon, 25 miles, is easily reached from Evreux, and few or many days can be happily spent along the ever changing and delightful scenery of the silvery Seine, while here and there one comes upon high chalk cliffs, honey-combed with caves, which are fitted with doors and windows, and which form the dwellings of many families. ”

“ Nevertheless, it need hardly be said, that between the several villages, and the several detached houses which chequered the forest of Evreux, large spaces were left without anything like a human habitation; and the traveller on either of the two highways, or on any of the multifarious cross-roads which wandered through the woods, might walk on for many a long and weary mile, without seeing anything in the likeness of mankind. ”

“ Ouen's is far surpassed by many other French churches. But perhaps a vain desire to rival the vast height of their neighbours sometimes set the Norman builders to attempt something of comparative height by stinting their churches in the article of breadth. This peculiarity may be seen to an almost painful extent at Evreux. ”

“ E. of Lisbon, once a strong place, and the seat of an archbishop; it abounds in Roman antiquities.
Evremond, Saint, a lively and witty Frenchman; got into trouble in France from the unbridled indulgence of his wit, and fled to England, where he became a great favourite at the court of Charles II., and enjoyed himself to the top of his bent; his letters are written in a most graceful style (1613-1703) .
Evreux (14) , capital of the dep. of Eure, on the Iton, 67 m. NW. of Paris; is an elegant town; has a fine 11th-century cathedral, an episcopal palace with an old clock tower ”

“ The administrative district of Evora coincides with the central part of Alemtejo (q.v.) ; pop. (1900) 128,062; area, 2856 sq. m.
ÉVREUX, a town of north-western France, capital of the department of Eure, 67 m. W.N.W. of Paris on the Western railway to Cherbourg. Pop. (1906) town, 13,773; commune, 18,971. Situated in the pleasant valley of the Iton, arms of which traverse it, the town, on the south, slopes up toward the public gardens and the railway station. It is the seat of a bishop, and its cathedral is one of the largest and finest in France. ”

“ I was led to a pretty garden, planted with hedges of alaternus, having at the entrance a screen at an exceeding height, accurately cut in topiary work, with well understood architecture, consisting of pillars, niches, friezes, and other ornaments, with great curiosity; some of the columns curiously wreathed, others spiral, all according to art.
PARIS
28th March, 1644. We went toward Paris, lying the first night at Evreux, a Bishop's seat, an ancient town, with a fair cathedral; so the next day we arrived at Paris. ”

“ The capital of the ancient Eburii is now Evreux, and they seem, no doubt for some excellent reason, to have been confused with the Cenomani, a people seemingly akin to our British Cenomagni, Iceni, or Cantii.
Fig. 174, bearing the inscription Eburo, is a coin of the Eburones who inhabited the neighbourhood of Liége. It is a noteworthy fact that the people of Liége are admittedly conspicuous as the most courteous and charming of all Belgians. Their coins were inscribed Ebur, Eburo, and sometimes Com—a curious and unexplained legend which occurs frequently upon the tokens of Britain. ”

“ The counts of Dreux, for two centuries and a half (1132–1377) , and the counts of Evreux, from 1307 to 1425, also belonged to the family of the Capets,—other members of which worthy of mention are the Dunois and the Longuevilles, illegitimate branches of the house of Valois, which produced many famous warriors and courtiers. ”

“ It is a region of rich farms, great prairies, and apple orchards, in which apple-trees are set out twenty-five or thirty to the acre. Nowhere more than in the Plain of St. André and the country district of Neubourg, which immediately environs Evreux, is there to be found anything more characteristically Norman.
Little by little great pasture-lands have been made into tilled fields, to the prosperity of the individual and the nation as well. ”

“ Actually, since its construction, it has changed its name as often as it has changed its occupants. Its first occupant was its builder, Louis d'Auvergne, Comte d'Evreux, who built himself this great town house on a plot of land which had been given him by Louis XV. Apparently the young man had no means of his own for the construction of his luxurious city dwelling, for he refilled his coffers by marriage with the rich daughter of the financier Crozat. ”

“ In this year died the Earl Robert of Flanders, and his son Baldwin succeeded thereto. (141) This year was the winter very long, and the season heavy and severe; and through that were the fruits of the earth sorely marred, and there was the greatest murrain of cattle that any man could remember.
A.D. 1112. All this year remained the King Henry in Normandy on account of the broils that he had with France, and with the Earl of Anjou, who held Maine against him. And whilst he was there, he deprived of their lands the Earl of Evreux, and William Crispin, and drove them out of Normandy. ”

“ Bouillon, Duke of, Lord of Evreux, at the revolution, 83. Bourg-Achard, seat of an abbey, dedicated to St. Eustatius, 96 —leaden font, 97. Bourg-Theroude, 104. Bourgueville, his antiquities of Caen, 164 —present at the exhumation of the Conqueror's remains, 303. Boy, bishop, annually elected at Caen, 261. Bretteville l'Orgueilleuse, church of, 226. Brionne, situation of, 116 —seat of the council which condemned the tenets of Berengarius, 117 —castle, 116. Brito, his account of the siege of Gournay, 41 —of Château Gaillard, 60 —of the murder of the French garrison of Evreux, 82 —of Caen, 166. ”

“ There is perhaps a slight feeling of disappointment at finding that here at Saint-Evroul there is nothing directly to remind us of the man for whose sake we have come thither. We would fain see something that had met the eyes of the island-born child in the first years of his coming to his foreign home. We would fain see even the church of Robert of Grantmesnil, much more the elder church from which the High Chancellor of Duke Hugh the Great carried away the body of Saint Evroul himself, as a piece of holy spoil which Normandy had to yield to France. ”

“ But they found the ladies in England of a far different taste from those who had rendered them famous in France: the rhetoric of the one had no effect on the fair sex, and the fine mien of the other distinguished him only in a minuet, which he first introduced into England, and which he danced with tolerable success. The English court had been too long accustomed to the solid wit of Saint Evremond, and the natural and singular charms of his hero, to be seduced by appearances ”

“ Next day we had a beautiful drive to Avranches. A winding road leads up to the town, which is situated on an elevated plateau, commanding a view of Brittany on one side and of Normandy on the other—a broad expanse of land and sea, the former extending over the valley of the Sée, with its network of small streams interlacing each other; Mont St. Michel appears in the distance. The finest view is from the Botanic gardens. The cathedral of Avranches fell at the end of the last century, but a model of it is preserved in the museum. ”

“ At almost every turn rise the blue hills, completing the landscape and throwing the sunny meadows into relief.
We can hardly realise to ourselves the protective value of the river in old times without rowing both up and down the stream for a mile or more. Above the town, before reaching the railway bridge we should look back and notice how steeply the land rises from the river on this side. On the margin is the mill, and above are the houses, roof over roof, descending again in steps to the river bridge. At the top is the Bell Tower, and the church spires are seen near it. ”

“ Robert Selwyn performed the sacred rites with dignity and true feeling, and preached a noble discourse, such an one as makes men's hearts strong against sin, but soft toward the erring.
After the services, when all save she had left the church, Lady Evremond lingered for some time before a white marble monument, which stood under a high church window. The sculpture on this monument represented the young Lord Evremond, as he lay on his couch, when dying,—and an angel, with a face very like his, lovingly lifting him from his mother's arms, to bear him to heaven. ”

“ So you see a man of blood cannot always bribe Heaven with gifts."
"It is no use then to found churches and monasteries; I have heard my father say the same," said Evroult.
"Yet in any case it is better than to build castles to become dens of cruelty—to torture captives and spread terror through a neighbourhood."
"It is pleasant to be the lord of such a castle," said [Pg 174] the incorrigible Evroult, "and to be the master of all around."
"And, alas, my boy, if it end in like manner with you as with the baron whose story I have just related, of what avail will it all be?" ”

“ He passes on without delay, bowing gaily to men and women alike. And they all salute him too; and most of them swear with anxiety, fearing more than he does himself, for his shame and for his hurt. The mere sight of his countenance, his great beauty and his bearing, has so won to him the hearts of all, that knights, ladies, and maids alike fear his harm. King Evrain hears the news that men were arriving at his court who brought with them a numerous train, and by his harness it appeared that their leader was a count or king. ”

“ The sheep are feeding now in that “odd angle of the isle” that then was piled high with corpses. And so we come to a high railway embankment, and thence to a bridge, and the beautiful bell-tower leaps into view, soaring above the mills and roofs of Evesham.{100}
THE AVON FROM EVESHAM TO TEWKESBURY
TO remember Evesham is to call up a broad and smiling vale; a river looped about a green hill and returning almost on itself, on the lower slope of the hill, beside the river, a little town; and above its mills and roofs, two spires and one pre-eminent tower, all set in the same church-yard. ”

“ And then grey-headed men were found who had heard their fathers talk of the time when St. Evroult, who despised the world, had made himself a dwelling in these wilds, and how his brethren had been driven away by the soldiers of Hugh the Great. The good knight Gaston de Montfort rebuilt the church, and the abbey was afterwards restored and colonised from Jumièges; and at last, in 1130, two hundred years after the forcible translation of the relics from Ouche to Orleans, they were brought back to their rightful home, in consequence of the eloquent entreaties of St. Bernard. ”

“ The court amusements in those days were of a description perfectly in unison with the tastes and habits of the higher classes, to whom the satire of St. Evremond, upon a similar order of persons in France, might have been, without even a shadow of sarcasm, applied. “You live in a country,” says St. Evremond, writing to Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, “where people have wonderful opportunities of saving their souls: there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode as virtue; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good manners, almost as much as religion.” ”

“ Evroult glistened with animation: he would have rushed on in the train of the huntsmen, but the hermit restrained him.
"They would bid their dogs tear you," he said, "when [Pg 115] they saw you were a leper." Then he continued, "Ah, my child, it is a sad sight: sin brought all this into the world,—God's creatures delighting to rend each other; so will the fiends hunt the souls of the wicked after death, until they drive them into the lake of fire."
"Ah, here comes the poor deer," said Richard, who had caught the hermit's love of all that moved. "See, he has turned: open the door, father." ”

“ Some sought shelter with kinsfolk and friends. The Abbess herself and three nuns went to Saint-Evroul, where Orderic, who tells the story, dwelled as the monk Vital. They found a shelter and a place of worship in an ancient chapel where Saint Evroul himself had dwelled—"coelesti theoriae intentus solitarie degebat." There they abode six months, till in the next year they were able to go back to Almenèches and to begin to set up their ruined home again. For ten years Abbess Emma laboured at gathering the sisterhood together and rebuilding the church. ”