Saint Ouen, Rouen

Saint Ouen, Rouen by Esther Singleton

"Saint Ouen, Rouen" presents the abbey church of Saint Ouen in Rouen as one of the supreme achievements of French Gothic architecture, tracing its history from early Christian origins through its medieval construction and into its nineteenth-century alterations, while providing a detailed aesthetic and structural analysis of its architecture, sculpture, and stained glass. The text situates Saint Ouen among four exceptional fourteenth-century French churches — alongside the Cathedral of Saint Quentin, Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, and Saint Nazaire of Carcassonne — noting that Saint Ouen and Saint Nazaire alone survive nearly intact. Compared to Rouen's Notre-Dame, Saint Ouen is described as longer, cleaner, more unified in structure, superior in harmony and compactness though inferior in scale; Notre-Dame attracts poets, Saint Ouen draws scholars. The historical narrative begins with an oratory built by Saint Victrice around 535, upon which Clotaire erected a church dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the late seventh century, Saint Ouen restored the building and chose it as his sepulchre. The abbey subsequently endured the depredations of the Northmen — sacked in 841, repaired in 1046 by Abbé Nicholas of Normandy, and burned repeatedly. A remnant of Nicholas's apse survives as the Chambre aux clercs. The abbey's true architectural glory began with Abbé Jean Roussel, known as Marc d'Argent, born in Quincampoix near Rouen. Disciplined, energetic, and administratively astute, he doubled the monastery's revenues, restored monastic order, and resolved — as Suger had at Saint Denis — to rebuild the abbey in the latest architectural mode. His unnamed master architect had evidently studied Amiens, Beauvais, Troyes, and Séez. Construction began in 1318; when Marc d'Argent died in 1339, over 79,936 livres had been paid to stone-cutters alone. At his death, the choir, eleven transept chapels including the large terminal chapel, and much of the transept and nave were advanced or complete. His funding derived from royal timber rights in the forest Verte and careful financial management, though popular legend credited him with coining gold. The Hundred Years' War slowed but did not halt construction. Charles VI contributed 3,000 livres in 1380 to hasten the work. The south transept portal, the Portail des Marmousets, was given over to sculptors. By 1439, master Alexandre de Berneval completed the two great transept roses. Under Admiral d'Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, a Gothic rood-screen closed the choir entrance, later destroyed in 1791. The nave, central tower, and façade remained unfinished until the very end of the fifteenth century under Abbé Bohier. The square tower — eighty-two metres high, adorned with bays, gables, corner buttresses, and an open-worked octagonal belfry crown — is compared stylistically to Rouen's Tour de Beurre. A surviving plan from this period shows an original design for two diagonally placed square towers with lateral porches, never executed; the stumps were demolished by architect Grégoire in 1840, who replaced them with thin spires and a commonplace façade. The structural analysis emphasizes the building's defining qualities: minimal solid wall, maximum tracery and open-work, perfectly homogeneous style throughout (with minor exceptions near the porch), and an architecture of elevation, ease, and permeability. Pillars consist entirely of clustered arch profiles with no capitals except in the oldest choir sections. Ribs cross wall masses to leap outside as bracing arches. The triforium drops unusually low, terminating not in a massive ledge but in lacework gallery to expose the luminous windows of the upper story through its openings. Total length reaches 138 metres; nave width is restricted to twenty-six — proportions the text defends as superbly unified. The stained glass receives extensive attention. Windows spanning the entire church form what the text calls an immense, translucent, radiant tapestry depicting patriarchs, martyrs, prophets, abbots, kings, and sibyls in the manner of Renaissance glass painting rather than the mosaic style of earlier centuries. Particular praise is given to the series of sibyls — pagan figures given Christian significance by the Middle Ages and treated voluptuously by the sixteenth century — shown as elegantly dressed ladies in architectural landscapes. The sibyl of Samos, in an embroidered jeweled robe with doves at her feet, is singled out as a near-portrait. Iron bars armature the windows against destruction. The two transept roses — one showing God the Father enthroned above adoring kings, the other depicting the Glory of Paradise — carry the famous legend of Alexandre de Berneval, who allegedly killed a jealous pupil who designed the second rose and was himself executed. The text dismisses this legend, noting that Berneval's tomb, shared with a pupil or perhaps his son Colin, lies in the second nave chapel; the monks would not have honored a murderer with a superb sepulchral stone. The tomb effigy shows both architects in long fur-lined robes with large hats, the elder holding a compass, the younger a plan, both with feet resting on lions beneath Gothic canopies. Interior sculpture has been largely lost: nave pillar statues in fourteenth-century style were destroyed in 1794 when the building served as a forge. The Portail des Marmousets preserves the finest surviving carving — a tympanum in three registers depicting the death, funeral, assumption, and heavenly reception of the Virgin, with a vivid popular scene of an impious Jew attempting to overturn the coffin, his hands severed by the Archangel Michael and restored by Saint Peter upon his conversion. The pier narrates in bas-relief the life and miracles of Saint Ouen; the saint's statue was decapitated by Reformers. The exterior apse, best viewed from the public garden, displays the full elegance of the design: pinacled buttresses launching graceful double flying-buttresses, pyramidal-roofed chapels crowned by a balustrade of quatrefoils, and stone galleries of extraordinary precision that define the essential structural lines amid the complexity of secondary forms. The text closes by affirming that Saint Ouen — from any vantage — exemplifies the most refined construction, and will always be regarded by architects as one of the chefs-d'œuvre of French building.

By Esther Singleton · First published 1903 · Genre: Architecture, Art History, Church History · 3,283 words

First lines

L. DE FOURCAUD

The Fourteenth Century erected in France four churches of a peculiar / grandeur and magnificence: the Cathedral of Saint Quentin; the abbey of / Saint Bertin, Saint Omer; Saint Nazaire of Carcassonne and Saint Ouen / of Rouen. The first two have disappeared, but the two others have come / down to us almost intact, and both of them derive their disconcerting / basilicas from the end of the Thirteenth Century; Saint Urbain of / Troyes is a piece of stone jewelry.

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architecture · gothic · church · religious · medieval · france · history · travel · monument · guide · ecclesiastical · art-history

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