The Story of Rouen. Theodore Andrea Cook
never get satisfaction on the principals, leapt upon the prey that had so contemptuously been flung to him, and cut the slave to pieces with his sword. And this was the sole reparation that was ever given for the murder of the bishop. But the people never forgot the Pretextatus who lived for centuries in their memory as a martyred saint. His terrible fate has more than atoned, in their eyes, for the impolitic events of his earlier life, or his unwise affection for the unfortunate prince he had baptised.
The monk Fridegode relates that it was in 533 that the first stones of what was afterwards to be the famous Abbey of St. Ouen[5] were laid by the first Hlothair. Others say that a church founded nearly two centuries before was restored by the son of Hlotild the holy Queen and dedicated first to the Holy Apostles, and then to St. Peter and St. Paul. Its name was changed to the one it bears now in 686 when the body of St. Ouen was moved there on Ascension Day three years after his death. But not a trace of the original church remains, and most probably it was built almost entirely of wood, like that shrine of St. Martin in which Brunhilda and her young husband fled for sanctuary in about the year 580. In this same century we first hear too of that legendary Kingdom of Yvetôt, whose lord was freed from all service to the Royal House of France by the penitence of King Hlothair. Its history is chiefly confined to the airy fantasies of poets, and is completely justified of its existence by Beranger's verses:
"Il était un roi d'Yvetôt
Peu connu dans l'histoire
Se levant tard se couchant tôt
Dormant fort bien sans gloire
Et couronné par Jeanneton
D'un simple bonnet de coton,"
which may very well serve as the epitome and epitaph of a lazy independence that needed no more serious chronicler.[6]
Early in the next century occurs the name of a saint who was destined to be famous in the story of the town
Yet the miracle that is related to-day about St. Romain is so persistent and so widely spread, that it must be told, if only to explain the many allusions contained in picture, in carving, and in song,[8] throughout the tale of Rouen, and in the very stones and windows of her most sacred buildings. The story is but another variant of our own St. George, of St. Martha and the Tarasque in Provence, of many others in almost every country. It is but one more personification of that struggle of Good against Evil, Light against Darkness, Truth against Error, Civilisation against Barbarism, which is as old as the book of Genesis and as the history of the world. It has been represented by Apollo and the python, by Anubis and the serpent, by the Grand'gueule of Poitiers, by the dragons of Louvain and of St. Marcel. The general truth was appropriated by each particular locality until every church and town had its peculiar monster slain by its especial saint. Thus at Bordeaux there was St. Martial, thus Metz had St. Clément, Asti and Venice had their guardian saints, Bayeux had St. Vigor, Rouen had St. Romain. The emblem of eternal strife had become a universal allegory acceptable in every place and in all centuries, and so commonly believed, that until some poignant necessity arose for its assertion, it was never—as we shall see—mentioned even by those historians of the life of St. Romain, who might more especially be expected to know the details of his life.
For St. Romain, so the fable runs, delivered Rouen from an immense and voracious monster, called the "Gargouille," who dwelt in the morasses and reed-beds of the river, and devoured the inhabitants of the town.[9] The wily saint employed a condemned criminal as a bait, lured the dragon from its den, then made the sign of the cross over it, and dragged it, unresisting, by his holy stole into the town, "où elle fut arse et bruslez." To commemorate this deliverance in 626, continues the legend, the good King Dagobert (or was it Hlothair?) at the saint's request, allowed the Cathedral to release a prisoner every year upon Ascension Day, as the saint had released the prisoner who had assisted in the destruction of the "Gargouille."
All this is a very pretty example of a holy hypothesis constructed to explain facts that arose in a very different manner; and though it is no pleasant task to undermine a picturesque belief, yet the chain of events which led to its universal acceptance are too remarkable to be left without a firm historical basis, or at any rate a suggestion more in accordance with the science of dates than that which was related by the Church throughout so many centuries. For there is no disputing that if the "miracle" had in actual fact occurred, some mention would have been made of it after the death of St. Romain in 638, or at any rate after 686, when the historians had the whole life of St. Ouen and his times to describe. Yet neither St. Ouen himself nor Dudo of St. Quentin in the tenth century, nor William of Jumièges, nor Orderic Vital, nor Anselm, Abbot of Bec, in the eleventh, say a word about it; and these are all most respectable and painstaking authorities. In 1108, when an assembly was held by William the Conqueror at Lillebonne, with the express object of regulating privileges, not a word was said by the Archbishop of Rouen there present about the most extraordinary privilege enjoyed by his chapter. It is only at the beginning of the thirteenth century that the inevitable quarrels between the civil and ecclesiastical powers over a criminal claimed by both can first be traced; and it may be safely argued that while the privilege was not questioned it did not exist. It is as late as 1394 that the first mention of the famous "Gargouille" itself occurs in any reputable document. It was not till a twenty-second of May 1425, that Henry, King of France and England, did command the Bishop of Bayeux and Raoul le Sage to inquire into the "usage et coutume d'exercer le privilège de Saint Romain"; for the good reason that in this year the chapter desired to release, by the exercise of their privilege, one Geoffroy Cordebœuf, who had slain an Englishman. In 1485, one Étienne Tuvache, was summoned to uphold the privilege before the "Lit de Justice" of Charles VIII. on the 27th of April; and in 1512 we find the definite confirmation of the privilege by Louis XII.; and even yet there are only a few confused and vague rumours of the "Gargouille" and its saintly conqueror.
There are, therefore, far more numerous and more authentic traces of the privilege than of the miracle; the effect is undoubted; it remains to conjecture its prime cause; and as I shall show at greater length in its right place, there is every reason to believe that the origin of the privilege was one of the great