Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 1Turner, Dawson
History
Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 1
Turner, Dawson
Architecture -- France -- Normandy; Normandy (France) -- Antiquities; Normandy (France) -- Description and travel
The present archbishop is the Cardinal Cambacérés, brother to the
ex-consul of that name, a man of moral life and regular in his religious
duties. He was placed here by Napoléon, all of whose appointments of
this nature, with one or two exceptions, have been suffered to remain;
but I need scarcely add that, though the title of archbishop is left,
and its present possessor is decorated with the Roman purple, neither
the revenue, nor the dignity, nor the establishment, resemble those of
former times. The chapter, which, before the revolution, consisted of an
archbishop, a dean, fifty canons, and ten prebendaries, besides
numberless attendants, now consists but of his eminence, with the dean,
the treasurer, the archdeacon, and twelve canons. The independent annual
income of the church, previous to the revolution, exceeded one hundred
thousand pounds sterling; but now its ministers are all salaried by
government, whose stated allowance, as I am credibly informed, is to
every archbishop six hundred and twenty-five pounds per annum; to every
bishop four hundred and sixteen pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence;
and to every canon forty-one pounds thirteen shillings and four-pence.
But each of these stipends is doubled by an allowance of the same amount
from the department; and care is taken to select men of independent
property for the highest dignities.--From the foregoing scale, you may
judge of the state of the religious establishment in France. It is,
indeed, unjustly and unreasonably depressed, and there is much room for
amendment; but we must still hope and trust that things will not soon
regain their former standard, though attempts are daily making to
identify the Catholic clergy with the present dynasty; and the most
lively expectations are entertained from the well-known character of
some of the royal family.
Footnotes:
[71] _Bentham, History of Ely, 2nd edit_. I. p. 34.
[72] _Liverpool Panorama of Arts and Sciences_, article _Architecture_.
[73] The only views of the cathedral with which I am acquainted, are,
A single plate of the west front, 16 in. by 11-1/2in.--_Anonymous_;
. . . . . . . . . . . north side, 16 in. by 11-1/2in.--Marked _S.L.B._;
A small north-west view, engraved by Pouncey, in the first volume
of _Gough's Alien Priories_;
And the west front, on an extremely reduced; scale, in _Seroux
d'Agincourt's Histoire de l'Art par les Monumens, Architecture_,
t. 64. f. 21. p. 68.
[74] This great benefactor to Rouen died the following year, deeply
lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all,
regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of
Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the
History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.--The
western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, twenty years
after his death.
[75] A representation of this has recently been published from an
engraving on stone by Langlois.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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