Читать книгу The Story of Chartres - Cecil Headlam - Страница 12

‘Vers la bataille vait le pas

Tote la ville sune à glas.’

The sortie was well timed, for just at that moment the helmets and bucklers of the advancing Burgundians and Franks were seen glittering in the distance. The besieged fell with resistless enthusiasm upon the astonished enemy. The enemy, dazed by the glory of the precious relics, caught between the sallying citizens and the relieving force, retreated to the Hill of Lèves and there entrenched themselves. So terrible had been the slaughter that the bodies of the slain (says Paul the monk) heaped in the Eure for a while completely choked the stream. And they tell us that the Place des Épars,[29] in which to-day the principal hotels of the town are found, owes its name to the flight of the Normans who were scattered on this occasion (s’éparpillèrent). Others, however, more prosaically explain the name as meaning the ‘hub’ whence the various roads of the province diverge.

It was at this juncture, when Rollo had rallied his men at Lèves, that the Count of Poitiers arrived on the scene, and bitterly he reproached his brothers of Burgundy and France for having given battle before he arrived. In high dudgeon he set off in pursuit of the enemy. But the Northmen outwitted him. Rollo despatched three soldiers into the plain to sound trumpets and thus draw off the enemy to engage an imaginary foe, whilst he and his followers effected their escape.

This signal victory long left its mark on the land. The plain near the gate where the Normans were defeated was known thereafter as the Field of the Repulse or of the Men Repulsed.[30] And the first bas-relief on the south side of the choir screen, which represents the bishop displaying the holy veil to the besiegers, also commemorates this event.

The veil was brought back in triumphant procession to the Cathedral, and shortly afterwards a skilful goldsmith of the town, Teudon by name, constructed a very rich and beautiful casket of gold and cedar wood to contain it. Many miracles were wrought in favour of the devout who sought the aid of the Virgin, like Edward III. of England and Henry IV. of France, by passing under this coffer. Numerous knights who carried the token of the veil were rescued from the greatest dangers, and women, especially queens, who wore taffeta imitations of it, were protected in the pains and perils of their travail. Countless rings and priceless jewels were inlaid in the sides of the casket and hung upon it by the grateful or the expectant, so that it soon became the most valuable treasure of Chartres, in a treasury, that is, of mediæval jewellery such as we have to make a very systematic effort even to imagine.[31] ‘The still extant register of the furniture and sacred apparel leaves the soul of the ecclesiologist athirst.’ The register to which Pater refers in the sentence I have just quoted was composed in 1682, and an annotated edition of it has been published by M. Merlet (Catalogues des Reliques et Joyaux de Notre-Dame de Chartres). The curious reader will peruse with astonishment and scan with regret the long list of precious offerings which the exactions of kings, the exigencies of warfare and the rapacity of the revolutionists have caused in great part to disappear.

The veil, together with the casket in which it had lain for nearly 800 years, was seized during the Revolution. The casket and jewels were sold. The veil, though rent in twain, was recovered, but not in its entirety (3¼ yards by 6 feet). It is kept now in two coffers of cedar wood, covered with silver gilt. Beneath the veil is another known as the Veil of the Empress Irene, which is made of embroidered Byzantine stuff of the eighth century. The visitor to Chartres should on no account omit to see these curious relics, and the extremely rich enamelled triptich of the School of Limoges (thirteenth century, but in part eighteenth century restoration). For the rest, though the Casket of Teudon, which was valued in 1562 at £8980, without counting the diamonds and rubies, enamels and pearls which adorned it, has disappeared; though the head and the slipper of S. Anne are gone and the relics of many another saint; though the golden eagles of S. Eloi, the sapphires of King Robert, and the gems of Henry III. of England; though cameos and crucifixes of emerald or agate, crystal or ivory, have, like the tapestries of Queen Bertha and the golden girdle of Anne of Brittany, with its fifteen rubies, ten sapphires and sixty-four pearls, and the flagon which contained the blood of Thomas-à-Becket, all been seized and sold by sacrilegious hands, yet there remain to be seen the delicate incense-boat, given by Miles d’Illiers, Bishop of Luçon, in 1540, the graceful chalice of Henry III. (1582), and the green marble altar of the English, dedicated by them in 1420, when Chartres was in their hands.

You will also notice a medal, which was struck to commemorate the outbreak of cholera in 1832 and the part played by the Sainte Chemise at that time. For not once only, or only in the mediæval days, has the veil of the Virgin played a part in the history of Chartres. It was taken at the height of the plague, in obedience to the clamour of the people, in solemn procession through the streets, and from that moment, it is said, the plague was stayed, and all who were ill, save two, who had mocked at this act of piety, recovered.

Nor should it be forgotten that it was the possession of this veil which, when Fulbert’s Cathedral had been burnt down in 1194, stimulated the desire and provided the means to build a still larger and more beautiful cathedral, worthy to contain it, and to be, in the words of the chroniclers, ‘the very couch and chamber of Our Lady.’[32]

A few months after his defeat before Chartres, Rollo the Ganger married the daughter of Charles-le-Simple and embraced the Christian faith. Neustria was ceded to the Normans. Their depredations ceased for a while, but, under the young Duke Richard of Normandy, fifteen years later, there was a heathen reaction in Pirates’ land. Their fleets once more swarmed up the Seine, and Chartres was the central point of their attack. United in its defence, loud and frequent rang the cry of the House of France, ‘Montjoie!’ mingled with that of the Counts of Chartres and Vendôme, ‘Chartres et Passavant!’

‘Frachois crie Mont-joye et Normans Dez-aie,

Flamans crie Afras et Angevin ralie,

Et li cuens Thiebaut Chartre et Passavant crie.’

Wace—Roman de Rou.

But soon these visitations ceased. Gradually heathen Norman pirates became French Christians, their descendants feudal nobles, and Pirates’ land the most loyal of the fiefs of France. Christianity was embraced by all, from duke to peasant. By the people it was welcomed with an almost passionate fanaticism. Every road was crowded with pilgrims. Monasteries rose in every forest glade, cathedrals in every town. The Abbeys of S. Père, S. Chéron and S. Martin, and the Churches of S. Lubin and S. Laumer in the neighbouring vineyards, were re-established and restored. The Church of Bishop Wulphard was built, and this restoration of religious centres meant, in a brutal age, the assertion of the rights of humanity, in an age of ignorance the encouragement of learning, of science and art, in an age of devastation the promotion, by means of pilgrimages, of industry and commerce. The growing number of windmills, wine-presses and tanneries on the monastic properties is the index of the civilising influence of the monks. The fragments of their castles remain as the sign of the more picturesque but less admirable occupation of the knights of chivalry.