The Story of Rouen. Theodore Andrea Cook

St. Victrice had probably obtained from them the sacred fragments which were to be so carefully preserved for the strengthening of the faith among the infidels. But the little community of Christians at Rouen had its own relics that needed safe disposal too. For in this crypt on the left hand as you enter is the tomb of St. Mellon who died in 311, to whom a church is dedicated that still exists in Monmouthshire, and on the right lies St. Avitien who died in 325. The saint to whose name and memory the crypt was dedicated lies buried beneath the high altar of the Church of St. Ambrose at Milan. The body of St. Victrice, its builder, after lying in this same vault for nearly four centuries after his death, was transferred elsewhere.

       The cold and gloomy little pit is eleven metres forty long, by five metres forty broad, and five metres thirty high, and in the recessed arches above the tombs may still be traced the thin red bricks of the Roman builders and their strong cement between. In the circular apse opposite the tiny square-headed entrance is the high window, set in the east, that we saw from the outside, and in the wall on each side are two square recesses in which the sacred vessels were locked up. The altar on its raised platform stands upon two rude upright stones, and is marked with five small crosses incised upon its upper surface. Behind it, on the rounded wall, are faint traces of carving and of fresco. All round the walls, except at the altar and the entrance, runs a low stone seat after the true type of the Christian Catacomb. A flat projecting rib of stone divides the barrel roof of the nave from the circular vault of the apse which slopes upwards to the rounded summit of the tiny window. A few skulls lie in a shadowed hollow near the altar, but the State has fortunately put a stop to any further grubbing in the floor for corpses that should never have been disturbed.

      There is an absolute and elemental simplicity in this tiny crypt, with its stone bench and tombs of stone, that appeals far more strongly to the imagination than any bespangled ecclesiasticism above it. This is the true service of God and of His poor. The cold austerity of a faith that stood in no need of external attractiveness lays hold upon the senses as the reticent syllables of that first gospel, spelt out from its original sentences, must have gripped the hearts of those who heard it first. The Latin phrases of a long drawn litany, set to complicated tunes, rolled overhead with an emptiness of barren sound, among the clouds of incense and the glitter of the painted walls and all the service of "the clergyman for his rich."

      More beautiful places of worship we shall see in many parts of Rouen. But in all France there is nothing more sincere than the small crypt of St. Gervais.

      So the only remnant that is left of "Roman" Rouen is not Roman at all, but a type of that strong, naïve, and sincere Christianity which invigorated the Gothic captains who overthrew Rome. It is but fitting that there should be so little left. For the Romans were not so much a nation as an empire. They were not so much a people, as the embodiment of a power. When their work of spreading law and order, of diffusing Greek imagination through the channels of their strength was over, they split asunder at the vigorous touch of the truth that came against them. They left no personal traces in a town so far removed as Rouen from the centres of their civilisation.

      It was the same in London, which was still farther off. For if you believe that any "Roman" wall was built round Augusta before 400 a.d., there is little left of it to point to now, save at that south-eastern corner on which the Norman Conqueror built his tower, at the New Post Office buildings in St. Martin's le Grand, and in the churchyard of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In the British Museum and at Guildhall are some scanty relics of domestic life, some fragments of mosaic, shreds of pavement, and the like.

      At Rouen it is the same. The legions left the stamped impression of their armoured feet, impersonal and strong, a hallmark as it were, to guarantee the local strength and value of the first Rothomagus. But it was the Christian worshippers who left the only building that remains of those first centuries, to testify to what some men and women in that early time could really feel and think and do.

It is by another priest that the story of the town is carried on from "Roman" times to the next period of transition. St. Godard appropriately enough, a Frank by descent himself and born of a Roman mother, is the link between this shadowy twilight of early church history and the stronger colouring of the Frankish story that is to come. In 488 he was elected as the fourteenth bishop of Rouen by the unanimous vote of clergy and people together, and eight years afterwards he represented the diocese when Hlodowig or Clovis was baptised at Rheims, from which we may gather that the Frankish power had definitely embraced his town within its grasp some time before. He died about 525 and his body, which was first buried in the crypt of the church which bears his name, was afterwards removed to Soissons. It was at that same Soissons that the Romans were driven out of "France," and Hlodowig with his Franks took possession of the country to the Loire, and then pushed on the boundaries of their kingdom to the Pic du Midi. The profession of Christianity by Hlodowig was not a mere matter of policy. It was another expression of that Frankish quality of sincerity and truth, which has been already noticed, in the Gaul that was shaking off the bonds of Rome. It was perhaps the chief quality of that band of nations north of Tiber which stretched from English hills, across limestone plâteaux of Northern France, through German forests, to the vales of the Carpathians. These were the first wave of the "barbarian" invasion after Rome had fallen. Behind them, further to the north and east, drifted a piratical band of roaming warriors, who for the next five centuries press and harry the boundaries of the kingdoms, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, Saxons, Danes, and Scandinavians, of whom we shall hear more later.

       The Christian bishops were the shield after Rome fell, between the trembling conquered races and the first wave of conquering barbarian invasion. The strength of their faith we have seen already in the crypt of St. Gervais. This little altar, and the tiny shrine of St. Godard watched infant Rouen from beyond its walls. An edict in 399 had destroyed the rural temples of the old Pagan faith. About 450 a new law recommended the conversion of the old temples within the towns into churches. So in these years we may suppose that the first building had risen on the site of the Cathedral, with St. Herbland's earliest church in front, and upon other eyots in the Seine the shrines of St. Martin de la Roquette, St. Clément, and St. Eloi. When Julia Bona was finally deserted, Rouen became the home of a count, who held, under Clovis, administrative, judicial and military power. By the next century the town must have grown to a considerable size and importance. Yet there is absolutely nothing of Merovingian Rouen left except the few poor ornaments in the glass cases of the Musée des Antiquités. Here you will see some of the characteristically shaped bronze axe-heads of the period; but by far the larger part of what is left is woman's gear. Beside the axes there are a few lance and arrow-heads; but the finger rings (still on the bones that wore them) are numerous; there are necklaces too, and bracelets; nails and buttons, styles for writing, pins, needles, combs, and pottery. By such pitiful trifles that have survived the pride and strength of all their owners, you may be fitly introduced to the next chapter in the pageant of historic Rouen, the tale of Fredegond and Brunhilda.

CHAPTER III

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Merovingian Rouen

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      "Consurgit pater in filium, filius in patrem, frater in fratrem, proximus in propinquum."

       LITERALLY not one stone remains in Rouen to which I can point you as a witness