Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 2Turner, Dawson
History
Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 2
Turner, Dawson
Architecture -- France -- Normandy; Normandy (France) -- Antiquities; Normandy (France) -- Description and travel
especially of this monarch, Henry selected the sufferers from among
those, who, for their crimes, had, subjected themselves to the pain of
death.
From these various attacks, but principally from those of 1417 and 1589,
the fortifications of Falaise have suffered materially; and since the
last no care has been taken to repair them. The injuries sustained at
that period, and the more fatal, though less obvious ones, wrought by
the silent operation of two centuries of neglect, have brought the walls
and towers to their present state of dilapidation.
The people of Falaise are commonly supposed to be Normans καÏ,, εξοÏ?ην
[English. Not in Original: pre-eminently, especially, above all]; and
when a Norman is introduced upon the French stage, he calls himself a
Falesian, just as any Irishman, in an English farce, is presumed to come
from Tipperary. The town in the French royal calendar is stated to
contain about fourteen thousand inhabitants; but we are assured that the
real number does not exceed nine thousand. Its staple trade is the
manufacture of stockings, coarse caps, and lace. The streets are wide;
and the public fountains, which are continually playing, impart a
freshness, which, at the present burning season, is particularly
agreeable.--The town now retains only four churches, two within its
precincts, and two in the suburbs. The revolution has deprived it of
eight others. Of those which are now standing, the most ancient is that
situated near the castle, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Langevin
assures us that it was built upon the ruins of the temple of Felé, Isis,
Belenus, and the heavenly host of constellations, and that in the fifth
century it changed its heathen for its Christian patrons. The oldest
part (a very small one it is) of the present structure, appertains to a
building which was consecrated in 1126, by the Archbishop of Rouen, in
the presence of Henry Ist, but which was almost entirely destroyed by
the cannonade in the fifteenth century. An inscription in gothic
letters, near the entrance, relates, that after this desolation, a
beginning was made towards the re-building of the church, "in 1438, a
year of war, and death, and plague, and famine;" but it is certain that
not much of the part now standing can be referred even to that period.
The choir was not completed till the middle of the sixteenth century,
nor the Lady-Chapel till the beginning of the following one.
Architecturally considered, therefore, the church is a medley of various
styles and ages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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