CAEN

. The medieval city of Caen (Calvados) gained importance in the 11th century owing to the favor of William the Conqueror, who established his base there for the governance of lower Normandy. Around the middle of the century, the duke built a castle and enclosed the town with walls, and shortly afterward he and his wife, Matilda, founded two monasteries at Caen. A short distance from the sea and situated where the Orne and the Odon rivers join, Caen enjoyed a flourishing trade, and the conquest of England in 1066 contributed to its prosperity. The excellent limestone of the area was for centuries one of Caen’s chief exports; it was even transported to England to rebuild the cathedral of Canterbury and palace of Westminster. Through the 12th century, Caen remained the military and administrative center of lower Normandy, and the supreme court of justice and finances, the Echiquier de Normandie, was held there.

Caen’s administrative importance declined after the conquest of Normandy in 1204 by the French king Philip II Augustus, but the town continued to prosper: cloth manufacturing became an especially important industry. The 13 th and 14 th centuries saw the flowering of High Gothic and Flamboyant Gothic architecture, best represented in Caen by the church of Saint-Pierre. During the

Caen (Calvados), plan of Saint-Etienne. After Conant.

Caen, Saint-Etienne, fagade. Photograph courtesy of Whitney S. Stoddard.

Hundred Years’ War, the town suffered much damage at the hands of the English, who were resolved to win back their French possessions. Sacked in 1346 and 1417, Caen served as the base for the English conquest and occupation of Normandy between 1417 and 1450. One positive outcome of the English possession of Caen was the duke of Bedford’s foundation of its university in the 1430s. After the Battle of Formigny in 1450, Caen, with the rest of Normandy, returned to the French.

Cassandra Potts

Caen, La Trinite, plan. After Musset.

In the last quarter of the 11th century, William the Conqueror transformed the site on the River Orne into a forest of Norman architecture. Despite destruction from World War II, well-preserved Norman Romanesque and Gothic structures surround vestiges of the Conqueror’s 11th-century fortress. Conveniently and strategically located, Caen also served as a place of atonement for the Conqueror and Queen Matilda. Between 1059 and 1065, Matilda founded the Abbaye-aux-Dames with its church of La Trinite. By 1063, William followed his wife with the foundation of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, including the church of Saint-Etienne at the other end of Caen. The town grew between the two abbeys and fortress.

Built in one campaign, the sleek, rectilinear surface of the west fagade of Saint-Etienne stretches to three stories before the western towers, topped with 17th-century spires, begin. Four massive buttresses and a series of regular roundheaded windows divide the west front into three sections, which correspond to the interior space with nave and side aisles. Inside the nave, alternating cluster piers delineate eight bays and a three-story elevation with arcade, triforium gallery, and clerestory with wall passage. The vaulted ceil-ing from 1130 is one of many subsequent alterations in the 11th-century fabric, which ends with the short transept arms. In the 13th century, Master William (whose tombstone can be found in the south part of the choir) replaced the original Romanesque choir with a Gothic chevet that retains the three-story elevation but departs from the original apse-in-echelon plan. Some conventual buildings of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes survive from the 13th to 15th centuries, and other portions were rebuilt in the 18th century.

At the far end of the rue Saint-Pierre, La Trinite (dedicated 1066) offers an alternative to the austerity of Saint-Etienne. While the west front shares the twin-tower design with Saint-Etienne, an accurate 19th-century reconstruction of molded blind arcades and windows achieves an exciting balance with variation in size and ornament. The narthex is lost. Although the central-portal tympanum sculpture is a 19th-century addition, much 11th - and 12th-century sculpture survives within the fabric: fanciful corbels line the exterior, and creatures reside in ambulatory capitals and one of the crypt capitals. The nave is notable for its great length and width, and the two-story elevation sports a false triforium on exterior and interior. Despite periodic campaigns of construction from 1059 until 1130, La Trinite is remarkably coherent in execution. Only a few parts of the church date from later than the 11th century: the 12th-century (1125-30) apse with semiambulatory and concurrent alterations in the transept arms, a 13th-century chapter house off the south arm, and modern apsidal chapels adjoining the the north arm. A black-marble slab designates the remains of Queen Matilda near the entrance to the choir.

Founded by monks of Saint-Etienne, the 11th-century parish church of Saint-Nicolas retains the Romanesque choir of Saint-Etienne and the narthex of La Trinite but is built on a smaller scale. Decoration, though minimal throughout most of the building, is explosive in the east end. Some vaults and spires are 13th - and 15th-century alterations.

Other ecclesiastical buildings in Caen include Saint-Pierre, a Gothic and Renaissance church (13th-15th c.), Saint-Jean (14th-15th c.), Saint-Sauveur (14th-15th c.), and, within the ramparts, the chapel of Saint-Georges (Romanesque nave). Of civic structures, 12th-, 14th-, and 15th-century walls surround the Conqueror’s fortress, later transformed into the chateau of Philip Augustus and captured by the English, who founded a university there in 1432. The chateau was heavily restored after World War II.

Stacy L. Boldrick

[See also: BEDFORD, JOHN OF LANCASTER, DUKE OF; NORMANDY: RECONQUEST OF FRANCE; ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE]

Bayle, Maylis. La Trinite de Caen: sa place dans I’histoire de I’architecture et du decor romans. Geneva: Droz, 1979.

De Bouard, Michel. Le chateau de Caen. Caen: Centre de Recherches Archeologiques Medievales, 1979.

Desert, Gabriel, ed. Histoire de Caen. Toulouse: Privat, 1981.

Jouet, Roger. La resistance a I’occupation anglaise en Basse-Normandie (1418-1450).

Lambert, Elie. “Caen roman et gothique.” Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de Normandie 43(1935).

Musset, Lucien. Caen: ville d’art. Colmar-Ingersheim: SAEP, 1971.

--. Normandie romane. 2 vols. La Pierre-qui-vire: Zodiaque, 1967.

Serbat, Leon. “Caen.” Congres archeologique (Caen) 75(1908): 3-132.