Ch. 4 - Normandy and the Ile de France

From Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads across
Normandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres,
which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture,
Normandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the Ile de France, with
Paris, was a third; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were a
fourth and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, lay
the counties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres one
should go up the Seine and down the Loire, from Angers to Le Mans,
and so enter Chartres from Brittany after a complete circle; but if
we set out to do our pleasure on that scale, we must start from the
Pyramid of Cheops. We have set out from Mont-Saint-Michel; we will
go next to Paris.

The architectural highway lies through Coutances, Bayeux, Caen,
Rouen, and Mantes. Every great artistic kingdom solved its
architectural problems in its own way, as it did its religious,
political, and social problems, and no two solutions were ever quite
the same; but among them the Norman was commonly the most practical,
and sometimes the most dignified. We can test this rule by the
standard of the first town we stop at--Coutances. We can test it
equally well at Bayeux or Caen, but Coutances comes first after
Mont-Saint-Michel let us begin with it, and state the problems with
their Norman solution, so that it may be ready at hand to compare
with the French solution, before coming to the solution at Chartres.

The cathedral at Coutances is said to be about the age of the
Merveille (1200-50), but the exact dates are unknown, and the work
is so Norman as to stand by itself; yet the architect has grappled
with more problems than one need hope to see solved in any single
church in the tie de France. Even at Chartres, although the two
stone fleches are, by exception, completed, they are not of the same
age, as they are here. Neither at Chartres nor at Paris, nor at Laon
or Amiens or Rheims or Bourges, will you see a central tower to
compare with the enormous pile at Coutances. Indeed the architects
of France failed to solve this particular church problem, and we-
shall leave it behind us in leaving Normandy, although it is the
most effective feature of any possible church. "A clocher of that
period (circa 1200), built over the croisee of a cathedral,
following lines so happy, should be a monument of the greatest
beauty; unfortunately we possess not a single one in France. Fire,
and the hand of man more than time, have destroyed them all, and we
find on our greatest religious edifices no more than bases and
fragments of these beautiful constructions. The cathedral of
Coutances alone has preserved its central clocher of the thirteenth
century, and even there