Note 370 — Chapter X · Gothic Art in Normandy[314] (continued 2)

Near Hauteville-sur-mer are the ruins of Hambye Abbey, whose destruction was an irreparable loss for art, since its church was Primary Gothic. On the road from Coutances to Cherbourg is the abbatial of Lessay (a contemporary of St. Étienne at Caen), said by M. Arcisse de Caumont to be one of the purest models of Norman Romanesque, an austere monument of the XI-century type. Differences in the pier’s profiles show where, in the nave, the XII century resumed work. In this latter period Gothic ribs were prepared for from the planting of the piers, but the actual diagonals of the nave were built in the XIII century. Mr. John Bilson claims that the Gothic ribs of the two sections preceding the apse are of the XI century, which again brings up the controversy of priority in the use of diagonals.

The Cistercian church of La Blanche at Mortain was another abbatial of the Manche, dedicated in 1206. At Cerisy-la-Forêt the abbey church was begun (c. 1130) by the Fécamp school of William of Volpiano, continued by Duke Robert the Magnificent, and finished by his son William the Conqueror. The nave was built from west to east in the last quarter of the XI century, the apse slightly after 1100, the actual vaulting a century later. The religious wars and the Revolution sacked the abbatial; in 1811 its demolition was still going on.

Congrès Archéologique, 1908, p. 242, “Lessay,” Lefèvre-Pontalis; p. 553, “Cerisy-la-Forêt,” André Rhein; Congrès Archéologique, 1860, on Cherbourg; La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Manche, p. 173, “Lessay”; p. 1, “St. Lô”; p. 51, “Carentan”; p. 73, “Cerisy-la-Forêt”; p. 153, “Hambye”; R. Le Conte, Études hist. et archéol. sur les abbayes bénédictines en général, et sur celle de Hambye en particulier (Bernay, 1890).