ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY.
125
preserved their fidelity to their sovereign inviolate, hut he undertook a mission to the French king,for the purpose of remonstrating upon the favorable reception given to the primate, on which occasionhe received the following memorable answer:—■“ Tell your master, that, if he cannot submit to theabolition of the ordinances, which he designates as the customs of his ancestors, because he thinks itwould compromise the dignity of his crown, although, as it is reported, they are but little conformableto the will of God , still less can I consent to sacrifice a right that, has always been enjoyed by the kingsof France . I mean the right of giving shelter to all persons in affliction, but principally to those whoare exiled for justice sake, and of affording them, during their persecution, all manner of protection andassistance/’—John de Bertaut lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century: he was principalalmoner to Mary de Medicis, and was afterwards in high favor with Henry iv., to whose conversion heis said to have mainly contributed. He likewise distinguished himself as a poet.—A third bishop of Seez,Serlo, already mentioned, was a man of such commanding eloquence, that, when he had the honor ofpreaching before Henry i and his court, at Carentan, in 1106, he declaimed with so much effect againstthe effeminate custom of wearing long beards and long hair, that the sovereign declared himself aconvert, and the bishop, eactractis e manticd forcipibus, primo regem turn cceteros optimates attondit *The church of Seez may be compared in its architecture with those of Coutances and of Lisieux :they are unlike, indeed, but by no means different. The points of resemblance exceed those of acontrary description.
“ facies non omnibus una,ee Nec diversa tarnen, qualem decet esse sororum.”
Severe simplicity characterizes Lisieux: Coutances is distinguished by elegance, abounding indecoration: Seez, at the same time that it unites the excellencies of both, can rival neither in thosewhich are peculiarly its own. On the first view of the church, its mean and insignificant western towerstrikes the spectator with an unfavorable impression, which, on a nearer approach, the mutilated andencumbered state of the western front is by no means calculated to remove. And yet this western front,all degraded as it is, cannot fail to derive importance from the great depth of the central door-way, whichis no less than forty-seven feet f, a projection exceeding that of the galilee of Peterborough cathedral .It is in the interior that the beauty of the church of Seez is conspicuous. The noble lofty archesbelow; the moresque ornament, like those at Bayeux and at Coutances , in the spandrils; the doublelancet arches of the triforium placed in triplets; and the larger pointed arches above, arranged twoor three together, and encircled with arches of the Norman form, though not of the Norman style;-—all these beauties, added to the enrichments of the sculptured walls and windows of the aisles,render the cathedral, if not the first of Norman religious buildings, at least in the number of thoseof the first class,
“ Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores.”
* Gallia Christiana, xi. p. 684.
f The following are the dimensions of the other parts of the building.
Length of nave (including a space of sixty-four feet under the towers) .....
Ditto of choir.
Ditto of aisle behind the choir....
Ditto of Lady-Chapel .
Ditto of each transept..
Width of nave and choir, including aisles.....
Ditto of Lady-Chapel ... . .<.
Ditto of transepts ....
Height of nave and choir ..<.
Ditto of north-west spire...
Ditto of south-west ditto ....
FINIS.
Sloman, Printer, Yarmouth.