Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, round
the church, to the south porch, which was the gift of Pierre
Mauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great-
grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII and
Philip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, married
the young man, in 1212, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany,
and this marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of the
Crown. He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of Queen
Blanche in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him to
be deposed in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned.
Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but
then was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned his
turbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in
1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de
Dreux was a masculine character,--a bad cleric, as his nickname
Mauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and,
what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the south
porch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage with
Alix in 1212, and the statuary is of the same date with that of the
north porch, but, like that, it was not finished when Pierre died in
1250.
One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the southern
entrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim to the
Virgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as the
northern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much deference
to women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protection of
the Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly as
possible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre,
Christ was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically as
Blanche asserted hers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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