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Updated: May 10, 2025
We, who had gone there in hopes of seeing something of the eleventh-century buildings, were disappointed at being taken through corridors and rooms containing objects which were looked upon as relics, and finally round some elaborately laid out and luxuriant gardens to one or two natural curiosities.
The treasury contains a relique in the form of the veil of the Virgin, supposed to have been presented by Charlemagne to Princess Irene. Other interior details of note are an eleventh-century font; the large crypt beneath the choir; the unequal level of the pavement of nave and choir; and the maze, which still exists in the nave.
The design of the tapestry is very unequal, some of the latter scenes being weak in comparison, especially that of the death of Harold; the eleventh-century artist, perhaps becoming tired of the work, or having, more probably, a presentiment that this scene would be painted and exhibited annually, by English artists, to the end of time.
Of this eleventh-century church nothing remains to-day. In the twelfth century, a new building was begun, but the process of construction continued slowly, and it was not until two hundred years later that the apse was finally finished.
To-day it stands summed up thus a grand building, rich, confused, and unequal in design and workmanship. The lower portion of the northwest tower, called the Tour St. Romain, is all that is left of the eleventh-century building, the remainder of which was destroyed by fire in 1200. Rebuilding followed in succeeding years and shows work of many styles.
That's why I can't go through another such ordeal without company; yet I wouldn't miss this eleventh-century castle for a bag of your English sovereigns." "If only it had been left alone, and not restored!" I groaned. "In that case we should meet no one but bats." "We? Then you will go with me?" "I suppose so," I sighed. "It can't add more than a dozen grey hairs, and what are they among so many?"
If the eleventh-century mind had been as rigid as the Roman mind of the first century, mediaeval civilization could hardly, after the collapse of the crusades, have failed to degenerate as Roman civilization degenerated after the defeat of Varus. Being more elastic, it began, under an increased tension, to develop new phases of thought.
Apart from some touches of the marvellous such as the two hundred years of Charlemagne and the intervention of angels the whole atmosphere of the work is that of eleventh-century France, with its aristocratic society, its barbaric vigour, its brutality, and its high sentiments of piety and honour. The beauty of the poem lies in the grand simplicity of its style.
On either side of the entrance are fine busts of Charles VIII. and Marie of Anjou. Rooms II., IX. and X. should next be visited. In IX. stands the oldest fragment of mediæval sculpture in the Louvre, a capital from the old abbey of St. Genevieve, whereon an eleventh-century artist has carved a quaint relief of Daniel in the Lions' Den.
Reliefs of the tenth century are encrusted in the wall of a house on the site of the ancient church of S. Peter; and the Casa dei Santi in the Via Predol, which probably occupies part of the area of the convent and church of S. Cassiano, has two figures on brackets between the windows of the first floor, apparently late eleventh-century work.
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