The Story of Chartres

Druids and Romans: The Crypt

BUILT half on the slope and half on the strath in a depression of calcareous soil, Chartres lies along the banks of the gliding Eure, breaking the long levels of La Beauce.

La Beauce, indeed, is still the waterless, shadeless, woodless plain that the Bishop of Poitiers described in the sixth century, but it is now also one immense field of corn in which man has planted a few scattered farms and pleasure houses.[1] It is the granary of France. Le blé c'est la Beauce et la Beauce c'est Chartres.[2]

And on every side of it, spread out in the summer time like a many-coloured carpet under the great dome of the sky, stretch the cornfields, cut by the black lines of the railway, or by the straight, disheartening lengths of roads which run beyond the distant horizon of monotonous level, to Dreux, to Orléans, to Paris. The twin spires of Chartres are the only landmark. The sole beauty in this country must be found in its fecundity; in the fields of standing corn, which the passing breezes curve into travelling waves, and in the endless perspective of sameness which inspires the same emotions of mingled pleasure and sadness as the sight of the vast and melancholy ocean. And, like a ship for ever a-sail in the distance, everywhere the great Church of Chartres is visible, with the passing light or shadow upon its grey, weather-beaten surfaces, or, as it seemed to Lowell:-

'Silent and grey as forest-leaguered cliff

Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat.'

Chartres is no place for an Atheist.[3] The exclamation of Napoleon on first entering the Cathedral of Notre-Dame is the keynote and summary of the town. For from the earliest dawn of its history down to the present day Chartres has preserved, almost unbroken, the tradition of a religious centre. Other notes have indeed been struck here and died away in the distance of ages. There have been discords in the score of her worldly history. The armies of C?sar and of Hastings have come and gone; the armies of England, of France, of Germany, have marched through the narrow, tortuous streets of this ancient city and left scarce a trace behind. Medi?valism with all its charm and all its vileness has disappeared before the excesses of that Revolution which sowed the seed of modern French civilisation. The thick forests which were once the glory of the Druids have vanished and given place to innumerable acres of tillage, whilst the sound of the woodman's axe has been replaced by the swish of the scythe and the hum of the threshing machine. But through all these changes Chartres has remained true to her heritage. She has been always the first town of Our Lady, the chosen citadel of the Virgin. The friars of the Middle Ages, who obtained the right of coining money, stamped on their coins the legend Prima Sedes Francie, and Charles-le-Chauve, when he presented to the town the Veil of the Blessed Mary, chose the Church of Chartres as the earliest and most august sanctuary of the cult of the Virgin. And even before the Christian era it was so. For, by a strange coincidence, in which there has been found something more than a coincidence, or nothing more than a reflection of Isis worship, or, again, merely a monkish invention, but by a strange coincidence, at any rate, the grotto, above which, in after years, the medi?val masons were to rear the superb superstructure of their Cathedral, was dedicated by the ancient Druids: 'To the Virgin who shall bear a son'-Virgini Paritur?.-There, upon the very spot in the dim vast crypt which is to-day the most famous and the most frequented shrine in the world, they worshipped an image which was the forerunner of the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.

Were they moved by some echo of those most ancient Eastern rites which include the cult of a virgin mother and child, or had they heard, these wise and inscrutable priests, some echo of Isaiah's prophecy: A virgin shall conceive and bear a son? Possibly. At any rate, we know that a hundred years before the coming of Christ the Messianic idea had grown familiar to the Gentile world. The works of Greek and Roman writers are eloquent of this fact. Plato, in a passage which seems to echo the very words of Scripture, had long ago foretold what would be the fate of the perfectly just man upon earth; and Vergil, voicing the prevailing belief that the world's great age was soon to begin anew, and referring to an oracle of the Sybil, prayed for the speedy coming of the promised Saviour in language strikingly like that in which the prophets of the Old Testament speak of the Messiah. The Magi, the wise men and watchful astrologers of the East, waited impatiently for the coming of God upon earth, till they beheld a new star which rose over Bethlehem and announced His Nativity. And these ancient Druids also gave expression to the yearning of all Creation. Virgini Paritur?-To the Virgin who shall bear a son, they dedicated a wooden statue in the mysterious sanctuary hidden in the depths of their sacred forest, beneath the shade of which was the meeting-place of the Carnutes.

Thus it comes about that with the dawn of history we see, through the mist of the ages as it were, a solemn procession winding amongst the trees of the primeval forest.

At the head are two white bulls and the sacrificial priests, and in their train follow bards and novices chanting anthems, and a herald clad in white. The Druids follow. One of them is carrying bread, another a vase full of water, the third an ivory hand, the emblem of Justice. The high priest closes the procession, and about him cluster the other priests of the Oak and the chiefs of the local tribes. For the oak, Pliny tells us in his Natural History, is the Druid's sacred tree, and the mistletoe that grows thereon they regard as sent from Heaven and as the sign of a tree chosen by God. This golden bough of mistletoe, which they call All-Heal, the high priest is now about to cull from the chosen oak with his golden hook. As it falls, the sacred plant is caught beneath in a white mantle; the victims are slain, and the mistletoe is distributed whilst God is besought to prosper His gift to them unto whom He has vouchsafed it.

Such rites, so it may appear to the least imaginative of us as we behold to-day the pilgrims crowding to the shrine of Our Lady, or the long processions of priests and choristers winding their way from the sculptured portals of the Cathedral to visit the Abbey of S. Père, or the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, or through the crypt to the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre,[4] are curiously prophetic of the history of the place. So thinking, we shall look at the western towers and note, like Gaston Latour, the bigness of the actual stones of the masonry, contrary to the usual Gothic manner, as if in reminiscence of those old Druidic piles amid which the Virgin of Chartres had been adored, long before the birth of Christ, by a mystic race, possessed of some prophetic sense of the grace in store for them.

Who then were these Druids and who the Carnutes? From the Carnutes the modern name of this their town is derived, and philologists assure us that the root of the name is to be found in the word for oak, which, in Celtic, bears some resemblance to the Latin quercus. Similarly évreux is derived from the word ebvre = forest. All Central Gaul in those days was covered with oak forests as with a garment. Hence, it is suggested, the name of Carnutes was applied as a generic term to the dwellers in those forests, and was specialised as the title of the Chartrains par excellence on account of the choice of this spot by the Druids for their deliberations and their sacrifices. It may be so. Philology is one of the most amusing diversions. It is quite as intellectual as most other parlour games, and often much more entertaining. Human as heraldry and more profitable than pedigree hunting it certainly is, but somehow it is less convincing. Therefore if anyone prefer to derive this word Carnutes from cairn-the stone which formed the Druidical altar and equally with oaks seems to have played an important part in their ceremonies, he may be as much right as anybody else.

The condition of the Gauls at the time of the Roman conquest has been described by their conqueror. C?sar in his Commentaries states that the Gauls were divided into three classes-priests, nobles and nobodies. The priests, who enjoyed complete immunity from military service, insisted on oral tradition in the teaching of their tenets. Their object in so doing, as C?sar conjectured, was to prevent the memory from being weakened and their doctrines from being vulgarised; but the result has been that, apart from the few facts I shall mention and a vast superstructure of theory and legend which has been built upon them, they have faded from the ken of mankind. Chief among their tenets C?sar mentions the belief in the immortality and the transmigration of the soul. The Druids were properly the highest of three orders of priests-Bards, Soothsayers and Druids, the latter being philosophers who, to the natural science studied by the soothsayers, added the study of ethics. There would seem to have been much of the Pythagorean and something also of the Brahman in these philosophers, whose teaching was once expounded by the Arch-Druid Divitiacus, in Rome, to the sympathetic ears of Marcus Tullius Cicero and his brother Quintus.

That teaching, alas! has not been enshrined in Cicero's sonorous page, but Lucan in his Pharsalia corroborates C?sar:-

'The Druids now, while arms are heard no more,

Old mysteries and barbarous rites restore:

A tribe who singular religion love,

And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove.

If dying mortals' doom they sing aright

No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night,

No parting souls to grisly Pluto go,

Nor seek the dreary silent shades below:

But forth they fly immortal in their kind

And other bodies in new worlds they find.

Thus life forever runs its endless race,

And like a line death but divides the space.

A stop which can but for a moment last,

A point between the future and the past.

Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies

Who that worst fear, the fear of death, despise!'

In another passage the same poet describes in dark colours the gloomy rites of the barbarous priests; their rude, misshapen images, and the scene of their ritual in the sacred wood, smeared with human blood.

But of their ritual we really know nothing, apart from the fact of human sacrifices, which, in extreme cases, they justified by the dogma that 'unless for the life of a man man's life be rendered the wrath of the immortal gods cannot be appeased,' and excepting their veneration for the mistletoe.[5]

The power of this priesthood was not confined to things spiritual. The Druids acted as a court of public arbitration, and the most important private suits, especially cases of murder and homicide, were submitted to their judgment. Now Britain was the headquarters of Druidism, but once a year, it is recorded by C?sar, a general assembly of the order was held within the territories of the Carnutes, and there the sacred rites were celebrated, the young priests, after a prolonged course of training, initiated, and the Arch-Druid annually elected. It is probable that these ceremonies took place at Chartres-although it is possible that the claim of Dreux, of Senantes, of Alluyes, or of other neighbouring places which can boast Druidical remains, may be as well grounded.

But, at least, it is evident that the Pays Chartrain was a stronghold of priests rather than of fighters, and, perhaps, it was for this reason that in the early years of the Gallic War, the Carnutes, who among the Celtic Gauls were subject to the Remi (Reims), took but little part in the active resistance to C?sar's arms. They had, in fact, welcomed rather than resisted the Proconsul, regarding him as their champion and liberator from the invasion of the Helvetii and the threatened dominion of the Germans. But when he began to meddle with their institutions they grew restive, and determined to throw off the Roman yoke. For, before

C?sar's time, there had been, apparently, a general movement against monarchical government throughout Gaul, with the result that most of the tribes were free, but with a constitution decidedly aristocratical or theocratic. Thus at Chartres-Autricum was its Latin name-fifty years before the coming of the Romans, Priscus had been reigning.

A pious legend recounts that, during the lifetime of this King the son of one of the great chieftains was drawn lifeless from a deep well into which he had fallen. The father took in his arms the body of his child, already cold in death, mounted his charger, and, riding at a gallop for twenty leagues, approached the altar of the Virgin, whom the Druids worshipped, and laid the boy at her feet. Then life came back to the lad, he opened his eyes and smiled at the sacred statue. King Priscus, the legend adds, on hearing of this miracle, summoned a great assembly of priests and nobles, and appointed the Lady of Miracles his heiress and the Queen of his realms.

Thus legend. In fact we know that after the days of Priscus monarchy no longer obtained among the Carnutes.

But there was a certain Tasgetius, a descendant of the old royal house of the Carnutes. As a reward for his services to the Romans C?sar restored him to his hereditary throne. The theocracy felt itself attacked; the Druids roused the republican spirit of the people. The doubtful success of C?sar's second expedition to Britain seemed to offer a good opportunity for successful revolt. The people rose and assassinated their King, who was also the Roman nominee. C?sar immediately ordered a legion under Lucius Plancus to advance upon Chartres, punish the conspirators, and take up its winter quarters there.

When the railway was being constructed in 1846, it was necessary to remove a vast mound which lay to the west of the town between the Portes des épars and Porte Chastelet. Many Roman, Gallic and Carlovingian coins[6] were found in it, and it is supposed that this mound represented in part the material dug out when the foundations of the crypt and of the Cathedral were sunk, and in part the remains of the camp of Plancus.

The threatening aspect of affairs in Gaul called for prompt action on the part of C?sar. Before the end of the winter (53 B.C.) he made a dash into the country of the Nervii, and then in the early spring held his usual Council of Gaul, probably at Amiens. The Carnutes, Senones and Treveri, omitted to send their representatives. C?sar took this as a declaration of war. He immediately broke up the Council and ordered it to meet again at Paris, which was a convenient point for operating against the Senones at Sens, and thereafter against their neighbours the Carnutes at Chartres. The brilliant rapidity of his movements terrified these tribes. Acco, the leader of the conspiracy, summoned his supporters to the towns. But whilst they were endeavouring to obey the summons, news came that the Romans were already in their midst. Through the ?dui and Remi, who acted as mediators, the Carnutes and Senones sent to make submission and beg for pardon. C?sar granted it for the time, and then devoted his energies to the destruction of Ambiorix, and the chastisement of the Treveri and the tribes on the Rhine.

But it was only a short respite, not pardon, that they were granted. Returning at the end of the year from his hunt for Ambiorix and taking his revenge upon the Eburones, C?sar brought his army back to Reims and then convened the Council of Gaul. An inquiry was held into the conspiracy among the Senones and Carnutes. Acco was condemned to suffer death after the cruel old fashion of the Romans. He was stripped, his neck was thrust into a fork, and he was then flogged to death. But the flames of rebellion thus rudely repressed were not destroyed. They broke out again the same winter with redoubled fury when the absence of C?sar in Italy afforded an opportunity. The murder of Clodius and the reported anarchy at Rome fanned into a flame the slumbering embers of discontent. The death of Acco was discussed by the Gallic chieftains when they held their councils in their secret woodland retreats, perhaps, indeed, at Chartres itself, and the bitterness of the Roman yoke began to seem intolerable. To regain their lost liberty all were eager for a general revolt. It was decided to begin at once in order to cut C?sar off from his army in Gaul. When the question rose as to who should incur the danger of leading the way, the Carnutes undertook this duty. They first exacted a solemn pledge of support from their countrymen by the Gallic custom of mingling their standards, then, on the appointed day, under the leadership of Gutruatus and Conconnetodumnus, they gave the signal for the great revolt by murdering every Roman citizen they could find in their chief trading town on the Loire, Orléans. With the terrible struggle that ensued between the brilliant energy of C?sar and the noble patriotism of Vercingetorix we are not here concerned. Suffice it to say that among his first acts of revenge C?sar sacked and burned Orléans, the town of the Carnutes. Nothing daunted, the Carnutes furnished 12,000 men to the army raised to deliver Vercingetorix, who was holding Alise with desperate valour. On the fall of that town the Carnutes, in obedience to the advice of their leader, Gutruatus, entered into yet another league for their common deliverance from the yoke of their oppressor. They joined the Bituriges and other peoples of Gaul, but when C?sar himself marched against them with his sixth and seventh legion they fled with their cattle into the woods. Yet, even in the secret retreats of their mighty forests, they were not safe from the hand of the Roman general. They were compelled to submit and to pass under the yoke, and their chief, Gutruatus, was beaten with rods until he died.

Thus the country of the Chartrains was absorbed into the Roman Empire, and it remained under the domination of Rome, reaping the fruits of that strong administration in the form of roads and good order and the minimum of oppression, until the coming, at the end of the fifth century, of Clovis, the Frankish hero.

Meanwhile, when Augustus gave laws to the conquests of C?sar, he introduced a division of Gaul equally adapted to the progress of the legions, to the course of the rivers and to the principal national distinctions, which had comprehended above a hundred independent states. The Province in which Chartres (Autricum) now found itself embraced the country between the Loire and the Seine, and was styled Celtic Gaul, or, as it soon came to be known, Gallia Lugdunensis, borrowing its name from the celebrated colony of Lugdunum or Lyons. The principal towns of this Province were still Chartres, Dreux, and, above all, Orléans, to which the Emperor Aurelian was later on to give his name when he separated it from the territory of the Carnutes, and raised it to the rank of a city. For the rest, there were a great number of villages and strongholds even in C?sar's day scattered about in the clearings of the forest. These would increase in size and importance as the great Roman roads running from Dieppe to Dreux, from Rouen to Paris, and from Paris to Autun, were built, and as the country grew more settled. For Druidism, which had long shown itself a disturbing influence and an irreconcilable factor, was at length proscribed by Tiberius and Claudius, and thereafter, Dion Cassius assures us, the Loire could be navigated in as much security as the Po or Rhone. 'The blue waters of the fair-haired Carnutan' grew familiar, not only to the Roman merchant and official, but also to the Roman poet and traveller.[7]

But if the legend of the Druidical Virgin be indeed true, it would appear that the Druids, equally with the Romans, had done something to prepare the soil for the seed of Christianity. As to the first sowers of that seed there is some dispute, and also as to the first sowing, which some date from the first century, others from the third.

Whether Celtic Gaul was evangelised in the days of the Apostles or not, it is at least historically certain that as early as the middle of the second century the country was sufficiently provided with churches to form the principle theatre of the great persecution under Marcus Aurelius. And as Gaul was notoriously evangelised only piecemeal and slowly, and not by a sudden outburst of religious fervour, it is quite possible that the foundation of the Church of Chartres dates back from the first century. If this is so, it accords well with local traditions drawn from various sources, but agreeing in substance. For it is said[8] that S. Peter sent forth S. Savinian, S. Potentian and S. Albin to preach the Gospel to the Gallic nation. In the course of their mission they came to Sens and converted many virtuous heathen, amongst whom were Sérotin and Eodald. To these two, together with Potentian and Altin, Savinian, warned by a mysterious vision, gave this charge:-'Take unto you,' he said, 'the shield of an unconquerable faith; go through the other towns of Gaul and banish all false superstition by preaching everywhere the truth of the Gospel.' Leaving him, therefore, to organise the church at Sens, they set forth to Orléans, and thence, coming down that Roman road which is still known as the Chemin de César, they arrived at Chartres. There, perhaps, they found the altar of the Druids and the statue to the Virgin who should bear the Unknown God. Him declared they unto the people. As the word of the missionaries was supported by the miracles they wrought, and the saintly lives they led, a great part of the inhabitants believed on Christ. 'When they saw this, the holy men of God consecrated a church dedicated to the glory of Mary, Mother of God, and built just within the walls of the town.'

The northern walls of Chartres, under the Romans, ran along the street du Cheval Blanc, where now the houses of the cloister stand. The site of the Church of S. Potentian may therefore be identified, as on other grounds we naturally should identify it, with that of the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre in the crypt of the Cathedral. To that impressive underchurch we will pay a visit at the end of this chapter, and endeavour to describe the various stages through which it has passed. But first we will trace the tragic history of these Christian pioneers.

The rapid advance of Christianity soon brought it into conflict with the Roman administration. Domitian decided to check it when it was observed to be spreading among the subject races in opposition to the State religion. It became the duty of governors in the Provinces to treat the refusal to worship the Emperor's image as an act of sacrilege. There was a governor, Quirinus by name, who proceeded to execute his duty with truly Roman thoroughness and impartiality. He summoned the missionaries of what Tacitus called 'that pernicious religion' to his presence and demanded why they had brought hither the ignominy of their absurd doctrine. They answered him boldly, and bade him cease from the worship of idols and embrace the true faith. But Quirinus hardened his heart. He scourged and threw into prison three men 'hated for their abominations, and known to the vulgar as Christians'; notorious, according to the great Roman historian, 'for their hatred of the human race.' Such cases of persecution as this, it should be remembered, were but occasional exceptions to the general tolerance of Roman administration. The Christians were punished, according to the Roman view, for their inflexible obstinacy, their unsocial habits and indiscreet enthusiasm, rather than for the mere holding of their peculiar religious notions.

In the present instance crowds of believers collected about the doors of the prison into which the martyrs had been thrown, and by their continual prayers for the deliverance of their teachers roused Quirinus to savage action. He surrounded them with his soldiers when they were met together to pray and sing hymns to the Lord, and falling upon them suddenly put them to the sword. Amongst those who had been foremost in the faith was a young girl by name Modesta, whom popular tradition asserts to have been the daughter of Quirinus himself. She, it is said, was seized upon this occasion and brought before her father. His fury was increased to madness when he learned that she, his only daughter, had joined the sect and had been baptized. She must abjure, he declared, or she must die.

'Strike,' she exclaimed, 'I am a Christian!'[9] She was brutally tortured, and her body was then thrown along with the bodies of the other martyrs into a deep well, 'which was situated within the Church of the Mother of God.'

'The sober discretion of the present age,' wrote Gibbon, 'will more readily censure than admire, but can more easily admire than imitate the fervour of the first Christians who, according to the lively expression of Sulpicius Severus, desired martyrdom with more eagerness than his own contemporaries solicited a bishopric.'

S. MODESTA (SOUTH PORCH)

The blood of martyrs became here, as elsewhere, the seed of the Church. Quirinus was struck down by sudden death in the midst of his persecutions. His persecutions had only increased the number of the faithful. S. Aventin became the first Bishop of Chartres, and, profiting by the calm which followed Quirinus's death, rebuilt above the ancient altar of the Druids the church which Potentian had consecrated and the Roman governor destroyed. This building may well have lasted down to the final persecution of the Christians under Diocletian. For in the meantime the indifference of some princes and the indulgence of others permitted the Christians to enjoy though not perhaps a legal yet an actual and public toleration of their religion.

The courage and constancy of these first Christians were not forgotten. The well down which their corpses were thrown came to be known as the Lieu-Fort,[10] and later as the Puits des Saints Forts, in memory of them.

Le Puits des Saints Forts.

It is in connection with this well that one of the most beautiful of the legends of Chartres is told.

'A ceremony is still observed in the Cathedral' (wrote Sébastien Rouillard) 'which surprises many people. The reason of it deserves to be known. When the bishop officiating chants the Pax Vobis or a priest the Dominus Vobiscum, whether at Mass, Vespers or Matins, the choir does not respond in full, but only the nearest priest in a low voice. Some say that this is a perpetual memorial of the first Christian martyrs, in accordance with the saying of the venerable Fulbert in his third epistle, that the divine service which in times of liberty is celebrated with joy and gladness becometh mute during the days of tyranny and oppression. Others say that the custom arose when the crowds of pilgrims and worshippers in the Cathedral were so large and the resulting noise so great that those who were in the choir and at the altar could not easily hear each other so as to sing the responses.'

But there is another explanation. When Godfrey, founder of the Abbey of Josaphat, was Bishop of Chartres (1116), the usual devout and solemn procession to the grottoes and holy places was being made on the eve of All Saints.

Now among the choristers who bore candles in their hands, chanting in this procession, was one beautiful lad, blue-eyed and golden-haired, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. It was the one joy of her life to listen to the flute-like notes of his glorious treble, and in spirit to join in those praises of the Most High to which her son gave heartfelt, wonderful utterance. And on this occasion she, as ever, was among the crowd of worshippers, hearing only-a mother's ear is so fond and so fine-amidst the whole chorus of those soaring voices the voice of her beloved son. Suddenly, though the chant had not ceased, there was, for her, silence. She listened and listened in vain for the voice of her boy. Mad with anxiety, she pushed her way through the crowd, only to find a group of grieving priests standing round the Well of the Constant Saints. The boy, all unheeding in the ecstasy of his song, had stepped over the dim unguarded edge and fallen into the fathomless depths.

For days distraught the mother haunted the holy grottoes, ever praying and waiting for her son to be given back to her. At last, on the octave of the feast, the solemn procession wound its way once more through the crypt. The mother listened, dazed with grief, to the chant as it came. But for her there was no music in the sweet harmonies that were sung.

Then suddenly there struck upon her astonished ear the silver notes of that well-known voice, how musical! She raised her eyes, half in hope and half in fear, and beheld, walking in his accustomed place and carrying in his hand a golden candlestick, her lost darling. And his face as he sang was as it had been the face of an angel.

They asked the boy what had happened to him at the bottom of the well, and he told them that he had heard the angels rejoicing and singing in response to the prayers that were being offered in the Church of Chartres. And since that day the choir does not make response aloud to the Pax Vobis. For so men hope that they may hear the angels singing.

That this holy well of the martyrs was near the spot where is now the altar of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre we are assured by the repeated testimony of old writers. Numerous efforts were made during the nineteenth century to locate it, and made in vain. But in the year 1901 it was at last discovered behind the wall of that altar. Let us take the present opportunity in our history then to visit the crypt,[11] to behold the first beginnings of the Cathedral, the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre and the new-found ancient well of the martyrs.

'The crypt,' says Raoul Boutrais, in his Latin poem in praise of Chartres (1624), 'lies darkling in a hollow of the earth, resting on many an arch, as long and as wide as is the whole church above it. A dim religious light struggles through the deep-set windows. Enter and behold a sacred altar. Your being is filled with a mysterious awe as you descend. Then by the light of a thousand torches the sacred place becomes visible. The smoke of fragrant incense rises from the altar. Priests move to and fro performing their sacred office before the image of the Virgin. Many offerings of gold and silver, in token of granted prayers, hang at the shrines.

'We pass into recesses dug deep within the earth, and are conscious of a strange emotion. Here was the first origin of the church, when the early Christians sang their hymns in these dark places to escape the cruel punishments of the Prefect Quirinus, and yet undaunted by the cross, the sword, the fire of his mad rage. He snatched this heroic band from their Christ, and flung their mangled bodies into the deeps of a well. Still may be seen the well, fenced about that none may fall therein; for, 'tis said, that some have fallen. And it was not only to sing their hymns that the Christians assembled here, but here they passed their lives for fear of persecution. Therefore in their hiding they dug a well that they might have to drink.'

It is evident from this and other passages that the famous well was in existence in the first half of the seventeenth century; but shortly afterwards 'it was covered up by reason of the vapours with which it filled these subterranean places.'[12] It was covered up, and the site of it deliberately falsified when the sanctuary of the Virgin was decorated and the transverse wall between the real site of the well and the altar was built. After the alterations which were then made were completed (1671), the public was informed that the well was now under the step of the new altar, so that those who knelt there, and had a particular devotion to the Martyrs' Well, appeared to be rendering homage to the Virgin. The statements of the historians to the effect that the well was behind the altar were explained away by the very canon who had superintended the filling up of the well, for he made the misleading assertion that the altar itself had been moved back in the course of the alterations. He was believed. When in the nineteenth century efforts were made again and again to find this well, they were always made on the assumption that the altar had been so moved. The cynical precept which warns us to be on our guard against the occasional untrustworthiness of those who never lie was forgotten. It was not till M. René Merlet's pamphlet, L'Ancienne Chapelle de Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, appeared in 1900 that investigations, based on historical research and arch?ological acumen, began to be prosecuted, and were before long crowned with success. Boutrais's words are now once more true, and 'the well may still be seen' behind the altar of the Virgin.

Crypt: Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre.

The oldest portions of the crypt, and therefore of the Cathedral, that remain to us are to be found in the Martyrium or Chapel of S. Lubin. The crypt, it must be understood, was not in origin a crypt or a martyrium or a meeting-house of prayer dug beneath the level of the soil, but a tiny church set on the crest of the hill, and raised above the surface of the earth. It only became a crypt properly so-called when it had been covered up and the surrounding soil raised by the débris and deposits of succeeding years; so that when the new church was built it was erected naturally upon the top of the old. The spade of the arch?ologist has proved that the soil of a medi?val European town was raised by the accumulation of dust and rubble as much as one or two feet per century. And at Chartres excavations have revealed Gallo-Roman sub-structures at a depth of some eighteen feet. When we reach the Martyrium or Chapel of S. Lubin we shall find there a piece of the Gallo-Roman walls of the fourth century. This probably is part of the apsidal wall of the church of that date. As the church, with the vicissitudes of the town which we have yet to recount, was alternately built and burnt, destroyed and rebuilt, the crypt was developed until it is now the largest in France, and next to that of S. Peter's at Rome, and that of Canterbury, the largest in the world. It consists of two lateral galleries which run from the western towers under the aisles of the upper church, and form a horse-shoe curve beneath the choir and sanctuary 366 feet long, and seventeen to eighteen feet broad; of two transepts, seven apsidal chapels, and the martyrium which is under the choir of the upper church.

The successive developments of the crypt may be summarised as follows:-

Against the fourth century apsidal wall, of which traces are found in the martyrium, were built in 858 two large columns to support the new choir above. At the same time the circular wall of the apse was pierced with windows. In order to support the apse of the upper church other two large isolated piers were built in 962, whilst the windows in the circular apse were blocked by a second strengthening wall. The same year saw the addition of a double transept at the commencement of the apse. Fulbert, in 1020, developed these transepts by carrying them out westwards almost to their present extent, and by so doing he left the altar dedicated to the Virgin, though unmoved, no longer before a thick wall, but stranded as it were in a corridor-a situation which aided, and still aids, the progress of the pilgrims past the shrine. The great bishop also extended the crypt by piercing the wall which closed the transepts towards the east, and making the ambulatory out of which opened the three large chapels with deep, round-headed windows (S. Joseph, S. John the Baptist, and S. Anne). To support the vaulting of this ambulatory a new wall was built round the martyrium.

In the twelfth century, when the two western towers were constructed, Fulbert's long galleries were extended and connected with them. The windows were raised and enlarged with the exception of those which were blinded by the porches of the upper church. Four smaller chapels, with pointed windows, were inserted between the large apsidal chapels of Fulbert, and these still exhibit traces of early thirteenth-century painting. At the same period, the transepts being now prolonged, it was found necessary to make two new flights of steps by which they might be entered.

The beautiful doorway of the south staircase dates from this time. Lastly, when the porches of the Cathedral were completed, the transepts were connected therewith by means of vaulted passages, of which the one on the north side is near the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, and the other southern one was turned into the Chapel of S. Nicholas in 1681.

Entering the crypt by the south-eastern door, after noticing the windows of its apsidal chapels, you descend a stone staircase, and by the dim candlelight perceive on your left the long south gallery begun by Fulbert in 1020, and extended in the following century right up to the western tower.

You are now in the original south transept of the crypt, and much of the masonry dates obviously from the tenth century. Turning to the left, the first chapel on the left is now dedicated to S. Martin. It was not originally a chapel, but in the twelfth century was used as an entrance to the crypt. Altered in the seventeenth century, as the windows and vaulting show, it was converted into a chapel in the nineteenth. It contains a few fragments of the original choir screen of the Cathedral destroyed by seventeenth-century vandals.

These fragments, which represent some scenes from the Birth of Our Lord, are very beautiful. Above them, fixed to the wall, are some admirable keystones of the vaulting, and two bas-reliefs with signs of the Zodiac, which still retain some of their original thirteenth-century colouring. Opposite the wooden nineteenth-century grille is a stone from the Church of S. Martin-le-Viandier, which was destroyed during the Revolution. Upon this stone are represented S. Eustace hunting, and on his knees before Christ, who appears to him between the horns of a stag; S. Martin giving his cloak to a poor man; the Virgin and Child between S. Louis and S. John.

Below is a fine early stoup from the Cathedral and, in the corner, the sarcophagus of S. Calétric (see p. 36). The date inscribed upon it has been changed to suit the date of the translation and festival of this saint, who was Bishop of Chartres, and died 557.

The next chapel on the left is that of S. Nicholas (recently restored by M. Durand). We have already spoken of it. Opposite it is the Chapel of S. Clement, where are some mural decorations of the twelfth century. The figures, beginning from the right, are recognisable as those of S. Nicholas, S. James, S. Giles, and of a King kneeling.

The wooden screen which here crosses the crypt was put up in 1687: behind it on the left is a thirteenth-century piscina, above which is a partly-obliterated twelfth-century fresco of the Nativity. Several windows are blocked by the Cathedral porch; and the lowest and narrowest of these is one of Fulbert's original windows, which was not enlarged like the rest in the twelfth century, because it was blocked at that time by a porch erected in the eleventh century. At the end of the gallery is a large monolithic font, intended for complete baptismal immersion. It belongs to the eleventh century. The capitals of the four columns which flank it are curious and noteworthy.

The plinths and abaci of the last bay of this gallery betray the fact that it was added in the twelfth century, when the old south-western tower (Clocher Vieux), with which a flight of steps connects it, was built. The walls of this gallery, like that of the northern one, are decorated with modern mural paintings illustrative of events in the history of Chartres, or of the saints who have been connected with the diocese. They are already in a bad state, and even at their best they must always have displayed more science than art.

Turning now and retracing our steps we pass the staircase by which we descended and make our way round the horse-shoe curve of the apse. On our right we perceive the seven apsidal chapels, of which the first, third, fifth and seventh are the Chapels of S. Mary Magdalene, S. Ives (see pp. 91 ff.), S. Fulbert (see pp. 69 ff.), and the Sacristy. They were added in 1194; whilst the second, fourth and sixth are the Chapels of S. Anne, S. John the Baptist, and S. Joseph, and they date from 1020. The window of the Chapel of S. Anne should be noted. S. Anne is represented carrying the Blessed Mary. When we examine the upper church we shall be struck by the importance of the position allotted to S. Anne in glass and statuary-as, for instance, in the great window of the north transept. The explanation is that Louis, Count of Chartres, who died on the fourth Crusade, sent to the Chapter from Constantinople the head of that saint.

Opposite the Sacristy is the entrance to the Martyrium or Chapel of S. Lubin (see p. 36), which is immediately under the sanctuary. Of this chapel enough has been or will be said.[13] At this point it will suffice to call attention to the architectural features which serve to illustrate its history. First, the fact that you descend into it by a modern entrance, which has replaced the old staircase and doorway; and secondly, the depth of the base of the round column on the right, indicating the original level of the primitive church floor; thirdly, the hiding place for the treasure; next, the fourth-century wall, with its layers of thin horizontal Roman bricks; and lastly, the circular wall and the ninth and tenth-century piers. The Gallo-Roman wall on the west is probably a portion of the old enceinte of the town.

Going westwards on leaving the martyrium, we pass a staircase on our right and the Puits des Saints Forts on the left, behind the wall of the altar of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre. When this wall was built and the well concealed in the seventeenth century, the circular passage by which the chapel could be approached had also to be made, and the masonry was so treated as to suggest the natural rocks of the old Druidical 'grotto.'

The chapel is at the end of the northern gallery (eleventh and twelfth century), which runs from the base of the Clocher Neuf. It is lit by two long rows of pendant lamps. Here, then, is that mysterious shrine which Boutrais has so well described. Here is that famous statue which for a thousand years has drawn countless myriads of pilgrims from all parts of the earth.[14] Kings and commons, rich and poor, scholars and Crusaders, sinners and saints unnumbered have knelt at this shrine since the day when Fulbert, having completed his crypt, left, it is said, the 'Statue of the Druids' in the same place as that in which the Gallic priests had held their assemblies in finibus Carnutum, on Carnutan territory. That statue was held in honour till the year 1793, when it was burnt by the Revolutionists before the Porche Royal. The present Madonna was made on the model of the old, and erected in 1857, after the crypt, which for sixty years had been used as a cooper's warehouse, was restored to its sacred uses. On the north wall may be seen the traces of three twelfth-century windows, which were blocked when the north porch was built; on the south wall traces of twelfth-century frescoes. Other frescoes in the chapel are recent symbolic work by M. Paul Durand. The vaulting was painted in the seventeenth century.

Whether the statue which was destroyed in 1793 was older than the eleventh century is a doubtful point. Some suppose that the previous Druidical statue 'Virgini Paritur?' was burnt in the fire of 1020, and that Fulbert had a new one carved and set up then. Others, arguing from the colour of the wood, believe that it dated from the days of the Druids. For the face of the Madonna was 'black, but comely,'[15] like that of the Vierge Noire, Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, in the Cathedral proper. But whether this blackness arose from the action of time upon the wood, or whether it was another instance of that tendency to represent Eastern types and colouring and design, which seems to me very noticeable in the glass and statuary of the Cathedral, cannot be definitely decided.

One other curious point remains to be noted. We are told that the eyes of the Child were open, but those of the Mother who held Him on her knees were shut. The Druids, it is said, intended by this device to signify that faith was still in darkness, and that she whom they worshipped was not yet born. But the eyes of the Child, whom she in the fulness of time should supernaturally conceive and bear, were open; for He was without beginning and without end, the Spectator of all time and all existence.