Chapter V: Some Types of Norman Architecture

The religious architecture of Normandy, from the tenth century onward, with regard to abbeys, cathedrals, and parish churches alike, was so abundant and splendid as to merit the naming of the style as Norman.

The monkish builders of these early days, following in the wake of the Conqueror, went throughout the length and breadth of Britain, sowing the seed that was to develop the Anglo-Norman variety which, truth to tell, differs in many instances not at all from the parent style, seen at its best in such great edifices as the abbey churches of Jumièges and St. Georges de Boscherville, near Rouen.

Normandy did not fall under the sway of the ogival or Gothic style, which had established itself in the Ile de France and Picardy, until quite a hundred years after it made its appearance there (1150).

The Norman-Romanesque, for such the local style really was, was distinguished by a relative strength and grandeur which ranked it far ahead of the pure Romanesque in its general interest. Its walls were of great thickness, and frequently of great height, and the demi-rond arcatures, often interlaced for decorative effect, were distinctly characteristic.

The capitals were richly decorated, but seldom, if ever, in the style imported by the Romans from the Greek, and the geometrical, and zigzag, and lozenge decorations of the walls were, if bizarre, a departure from anything heretofore seen. Seldom, if ever, were plant-forms made use of, and statuary and effigies were, in the beginning, excessively rare.

Frequently in the early Norman churches there was no ambulatory to the choir, and the easterly termination took the form of a flat chevet rather than that of the trefoil or fan-like arrangement which had to some extent obtained in the pure Romanesque type, and was undergoing a high development through the interpolation of the flying buttress or _arc-boutant_ in the newly innovated Gothic of the Ile de France.

The towers frequently numbered three, a great central tower and two smaller members flanking the façade, or perhaps one of the transepts. This great central tower gave rise to the lantern, which, for the purpose of lighting alone, proved a most desirable feature, and which, for long after the advent of Gothic, was retained in many Norman edifices in England.

From the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries the distinct Norman style developed rapidly before it was entirely crowded out by the onrushing wave of Gothic. In its rudimentary forms it is found as early as the ninth century, and some details lingered even after the wholesale advent of Gothic, but practically its reign was but three hundred years.

It was between 1180 and 1200 that Normandy received the first Gothic inspiration from the Ile de France. It resulted, at first, only in the interpolation of certain details of decoration, differing from the severer lines of the Normanesque; colonnets piled themselves up on columns, and instead of great cylinders and octagons, the ploughed and channelled Gothic piers slowly crept in. The windows gradually took on the pointed arch, and the tracery became more elaborate. Finally the triforium came, and balustrades, rosaces, and fleurons, and sculptured capitals, after the form of leaves and branches, completed the transition to pure Gothic forms.

At the end of the third ovigal period, when the Gothic was losing its individuality of character elsewhere in France, it was still flourishing in Normandy, and produced such marvellous examples as the south façade of Notre Dame de Louviers, the porch front at Alençon, and St. Maclou at Rouen, to say nothing of the more elaborate façade of Rouen’s cathedral.

In the Department of Manche one encounters frequent village churches with massive rectangular central towers after the manner of the large parish church in England, and once and again one comes upon a squared-off east end, such as is so greatly in vogue in England, and so infrequently seen in France,--the great parish church of Notre Dame at Grand Andelys, on the Seine, being one of the most notable Norman examples.

During the reign of Charles VII. and Louis XI. there was a great building revival wherein the principles of the Renaissance--brought from Italy, doubtless, by the nobles in the train of Charles VII.--flourished to the exclusion of any other style.

Here in Normandy, as elsewhere in France, the Renaissance architecture came to its greatest glories with respect to domestic establishments and civic buildings, though once and again there were manifestly good Renaissance details incorporated into the fabric of a great church, the most successful and notable example of such in Normandy being Hector Sohier’s work at St. Pierre in Caen.

The great château of the Archbishops of Rouen at Gaillon was a notable example of the other class, also the Hôtel Bourgtheroulde at Rouen, and such smaller works as the tomb of the Cardinals of Amboise in Rouen’s cathedral, and the Hôtel d’Escoville at Caen.

It is commonly thought that the beauties of the Renaissance in the lower Seine valley came as a result of the influence of the Cardinals of Amboise, who built the great château at Gaillon. So far as religious edifices went, it was mostly with respect to interpolated details or restorations that the style took on any very great proportions, though the evidences that one sees in the cathedral at Evreux and in the great hybrid church at Gisors are by no means slight in bulk.

The Towers of St. Eloi and St. Martin at Rouen are notable examples, and some parts of the parish church at Jumièges and the three chapels of the church of St. Jacques at Dieppe complete the list of really prominent religious Renaissance works in Normandy.