1876

We have already spoken of the capital of the Cenomanni, and some mention of the district naturally follows on that of the capital. In no part of Gaul, in the days at least when Le Mans and Maine stand out most prominently in general history, are the city and the district more closely connected. Maine was not, like Normandy, a large territory, inhabited to a great extent by a distinct people a territory which, in all but name, was a kingdom rather than a duchy a territory which, though cumbered by the relations of a nominal vassalage, fairly ranked, according to the standard of those times, among the great powers of Europe. Maine was simply one of the states which were cut off from the great duchy of France, and one over which Anjou, another state cut off in the like sort, always asserted a superiority. Setting aside the great though momentary incident of the war of the Commune, the history of Maine during its life as a separate state consists almost wholly of its tossings to and fro between its northern and its southern neighbours, Normandy and Anjou. The land of Maine, in short, is that of the district of a single city, forming a single ecclesiastical diocese. In old times it contained no considerable town but the capital; and even now, when the old county forms two modern departments, with Le Mans for the chef-lieu of Sarthe and Laval for the chef-lieu of Mayenne, the more modern capital is still far from reaching the size and population of the ancient one. Normandy, with its seven ancient diocèses, its five modern departments, cuts quite another figure on the map. With so many local centres, Rouen never was Normandy in the sense in which Le Mans certainly was Maine; and the strong feeling of municipal life which, as the history of the commune shows, must have always gone on at Le Mans, may have tended to make a greater concentration of the being of the whole district in the capital than was found in other districts of the same kind. Add to this, that, though the land of Maine contained but a single diocese, yet that diocese was of much larger and greater extent than any of the seven diocèses of Normandy. This is shown by the fact that, while in the modern ecclesiastical arrangements of France, two of the Norman diocèses have been united with others, the one Cenomannian diocese has been divided into two.

In another point also Maine shows itself very distinctly as a Northern district. This is in its architecture. As Anjou is the architectural borderland between Northern and Southern Gaul, so Maine is again the architectural borderland between Normandy and Anjou. But it shows its character as a borderland, not by possessing an intermediate style, as the Angevin style is distinctly intermediate between the styles of Normandy and of Aquitaine, but rather by using the Norman and Angevin styles side by side. In the nave of St. Julian’s itself, an Angevin clerestory and vault is set upon an arcade and triforium which may be called Norman. At La Couture the nave has wholly given way to an Angevin rebuilding, while the choir remains Norman, with a touch of earlier days about it. In the third great church of Le Mans, that of Le Pre, the Angevin influence does not come in at all. In the department of military architecture, Sir Francis Palgrave says that the familiar Norman square keep was borrowed from Maine; but he brings no evidence in support of this theory, nor have we been able to find any. It seems far more likely that the fashion was originally Norman, and that it then spread into the borderland, and it is certain that some of the most historically famous castles in the land of Maine were the work of Norman invaders.

Maine is, in one point, one of the parts of France in which an Englishman is most inclined to feel himself at home. It shares, though perhaps in not so marked a degree, the same English look which runs through a large part of Normandy and Brittany. It has hedges and green pastures, a sight pleasing to the eye after the dreary look of so many districts of France. The land is also fairly wooded, and the vine, of which we hear so much in our accounts of ancient Cenomannian warfare, is, to say the least, not so prominent a feature as it was then. And we need not say that vines, except either on a hill-side or against a house, do not add to the picturesqueness of a landscape. The land, without being strictly hilly, much less mountainous, is far from flat, and it contains some considerable heights, as the ranges culminating in the peak of Mont Aigu, which forms a prominent object from the theatre at Jublains, and the high ground at and near Le Mans itself, some points of which proved of great importance in the last warfare which Maine has seen. In short, without containing any very striking elevations, there are many sites in Maine well suited for military positions in ancient warfare, sites where the castle has not failed to spring up, and where a town or village has naturally gathered round the fortress. But since the city of the Diablintes was swept from the earth, Maine has, at least till quite modern times, contained no place which can at all set itself up as a rival to the ancient capital. The hill fort which grew into the city of the Cenomanni still remains the undoubted queen of the land of Herbert and Helias.

It is well to enter the Cenomannian county by a point which is Cenomannian no longer, but which not only plays a great part in the local history, but gives a view of a very large part of the land from which it was long ago severed. This is from the hill of Domfront, the fortress and town which the Conqueror wrested from Maine and added to Normandy; but which till the changes of modern times kept a sign of its old allegiance in still forming for ecclesiastical purposes part of the Cenomannian diocese. Domfront, the conquest of William, the cherished possession of Henry, is indeed an outpost of the Norman land, placed like a natural watch-tower, from which we may gaze over well nigh the whole extent of the land which lay between Normandy and the home of the enemy at Angers. Like Nottingham, town and castle stand on two heights, with a slight fall between them, and the town itself is strongly fortified, with a noble range of walls and towers which are largely preserved. The shattered donjon rises on the height where the Varenne runs through a narrow dell between the castle hill and a wild rock on the other side. Castle and town alike equally look out in the direction of danger; from either height it needs no strong effort of imagination to fancy ourselves on the look-out against the hosts of Geoffrey of the Hammer coming from the South. Yet it is at Domfront that the traveller coming from the land of Coutances and Avranches finds himself in one important point brought back to the modern world. After going for many days by such conveyances as he can find, he is there enabled to make his journey into the land of Maine by the help of the railway which leads from Caen to Laval. His first stage will take him to a spot which formed another of William’s early conquests, but which was not, like Domfront, permanently cut off from the Cenomannian state.

This spot is Ambrieres, a town of the smallest class, hardly rising above a village, but which holds an important place in the wars of William and Geoffrey. There William built a castle, and the shattered piece of wall which overhangs the road running on the right bank of the Varenne may well be a part of his building. The little town climbs up, as it were, to the castle, and contains more than one house bearing signs of ancient date. It is clearly one of those towns which grew up immediately round the fortress. But of the castle itself so little is left that the most striking object now is the church, which stands apart on the other side of the river. A large cruciform building of nearly untouched and rather early Romanesque, it is thoroughly in harmony with the memories of the place. But the church of Ambrieres is more than this. It tells us in what direction we are travelling; its aisleless nave, though it would be narrow in Anjou, would be wide in England or Normandy; and there is another feature which looks as if the men of Ambrieres had got on almost too fast in their tendencies towards a southern type of architecture. The central tower is indeed low and massive, but so are many others both in Normandy and England; nor would the wooden spire with which it is crowned suggest that in the inside the four plain arches of its lantern support as perfect a cupola as if we were on the other side of the Loire. But both the arches of the lantern and the barrelled vault of the choir keep the round arch. Maine was far off from the land of the Saracen, and the pointed arch would here be a sign that later forms were not far off. From Ambrieres either the railway or, if the traveller likes it better, a road leading up and down over a series of low hills, will take him to another scene of William’s victories at Mayenne. Here the town slopes down to the river of its own name on both sides, and the castle, instead of crowning either height, rises immediately above the stream. Eight years does much in the way of building up as well as of pulling down; and we may note that since we made an almost casual reference to Mayenne in 1868, the eastern part of the great church, a building remarkable rather for a strange and picturesque outline than for any strict architectural beauty, has had its choir rebuilt on a vast scale after the type of a great minster. No place after the capital has a greater share in the history of the county. It was the lordship of that Geoffrey of Mayenne who played so prominent a part in all the wars of William’s day, a part which, both in its good and its bad side, well illustrates the position of the feudal noble. A faithful vassal to his lord, a patriotic defender of his country against an external invader, he could stoop to play the part of a perjured traitor when nobles had been forced to plight oaths against their will to be faithful to a civic commune. To the student of the twelfth century Mayenne is full of memories; to the student of earlier times its chief attraction will be that it is the most natural point of the journey to Jublains.

Further down the stream which gives its name alike to the town of Mayenne and the modern department, we come to the one place on Cenomannian ground which, as having become in modern times a seat of both civil and ecclesiastical rule, can alone pretend to any rivalry with the ancient capital. Laval, the chef-lieu of the department of Mayenne and the see of the newly founded bishopric, plays no great part in the early history of the district; but though still much smaller than Le Mans, it has fairly grown to the rank of a local capital as distinguished from a mere country town. It is one of the towns which have grown up on a hill and around a fortress, yet it is not a hill city like Le Mans. The old town of Laval, as distinguished from the later suburb on the other side of the river, does not stand on the hill, but climbs up its side. While the Grande Rue of Le Mans runs along the ridge, the Grande Rue of Laval finds its way up the slope. The castle, as at Mayenne, rises above the river, and still keeps a huge round donjon, patched somewhat, but still keeping several of its coupled Romanesque windows. On the height, hard by a grand town-gate, is the now cathedral church, uncouth enough in the external view, and we may fairly say unworthy of its new rank, but which reveals one of the most instructive pieces of architectural history to be found anywhere. Imbedded in later additions, we still find the choir, transepts, and lantern of a comparatively small Romanesque church, perhaps hardly on a level with Ambrieres, but its nave has given way to a vast Angevin nave as wide as the transepts of the original building, and itself furnished with transepts to the west of them. The antiquary will earnestly pray that no one may be led by zeal without discretion to rebuild this church on a scale and style more worthy of its present rank. Let the diocese of Laval, if anybody chooses, be furnished with a new cathedral; but let the present building stand untouched, as one that has undergone changes as instructive as any that can be found.

But the church of the new diocese, though perhaps, by virtue of its singular changes, the most interesting, is hardly the most attractive ecclesiastical building in Laval and its immediate neighbourhood. Not far off in a suburb by the river-side is the church of Our Lady of Avesnieres, not improved certainly by its modern spire, but keeping a most stately Romanesque apse with surrounding chapels. Inside it supplies one of the best examples of the transition, the pointed arch having made its way into the great constructive arcades, but not into any of the smaller arches. But the taste of those who designed its capitals must have been singular. Any kind of man, beast, or bird, it has been said, can put himself into such a posture as to make an Ionic volute. When the volutes are made by the heads of eagles, well and good; but it is certainly strange to make them out of the heads of cranes, who are holding down their long necks to peck each one at a human skull which he firmly holds down with one of his feet. And on the other side of Laval will also be found the church of Price, an almost untouched Romanesque building the masonry of which seems to carry it back to days before the growth of either Angevin or Norman taste. And the land of Maine too is full of other spots at which we can barely glance, many of which are famous in the history of the district. On the railway between Laval and Le Mans, Evron has its abbey, with portions both of the earlier Romanesque and of the later Gothic, but where one little transitional chapel on the north side is undoubtedly the most attractive feature of the church. Evron too opens the way to St. Susanne, the one castle which the Conqueror himself could never take, and where the shattered shell of the unconquered donjon, with its foundations raised on a vitrified fort of primitive times, rises on a rocky height, with the stream of the Arne winding in a narrow dell beneath it. Somewhat nearer to the capital, Sille-le-Guillaume, a spot famous in the war of the commune, has a castle and church which should not be passed by, though it is only the under-story of the church which keeps any portions which can belong to the days when Sille was besieged by the armed citizens of the Cenomannian commonwealth. North of Le Mans, on the upper source of the Sarthe, Beaumont-le-Vicomte keeps the shell of its castle, a castle which long withstood the Conqueror, rising in a lovely position over the river Beaumont, too, has seen warfare in later days, and he who looks down from the castle which withstood the Conqueror may hear the tale of the stout fighting which went on by the banks of the Sarthe, when Maine was invaded by the armies of a later William. The church too with some genuine Romanesque portions, is more curious for a kind of rude Renaissance which really reproduces a simple kind of Romanesque. In short, there is hardly a spot in the historic land of Maine which has not its attractions for those who can stoop to scenery which, though always pleasing, is never sublime, to buildings of which perhaps one only in the whole province reaches the first rank, and to a history which, though in itself it is mainly local, has not been without its influence on the destines both of England and of France.