The monastery of Champmol

In the more distant past the monastery of Champmol was situated a bit outside Dijon, but nowadays the former monastic terrain is firmly within the city. Our trip to Champmol from the city centre proved to be anything but easy. On paper it looked so simple, but one way traffic, streets that were closed off and road maintenance made our lives miserable. I still consider myself fortunate that I did not get a fine anywhere, as I believe I once accidentally took a lane reserved for buses. Because the roadworks made it impossible for us to get to the car park of Champmol, we ultimately decided to leave our car in the Rue Hoche. In the Rue Faubourg Raines around the corner there is an entrance to the terrain. The former monastery currently houses a psychiatric hospital, but visitors are more than welcome to enter the premises to admire Champmol’s greatest treasure: the Well of Moses, made by Claus Sluter (died ca. 1406), a sculptor from Haarlem.

History

In 1377 Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy (1363-1404) bought a plot of land outside Dijon. Six years later his wife Margaret of Male and son John the Fearless laid the foundation stone for the Carthusian monastery that Philip wanted to establish here. Although Philip was undeniably a pious man, his choice for a monastery for Carthusians was remarkable nonetheless. Belgian author Bart van Loo snidely remarked that “Philip, that coquettish man who would purchase no less than 160 different hats between 1392 and 1394 alone, chose the most contemplative and ascetic monastic order of his time”.[1] Champmol, however, would certainly not become a sober monastery, as Philip immediately made plans to turn it into the ducal mausoleum. These plans were subsequently implemented. His own beautiful funerary monument was made over a period of 29 years by the sculptors Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, Claus van de Werve, the painter Johan Maelwael and many assistants. It was placed inside the church of the monastery in 1410. The monument then had to wait patiently for another sixty years before it was accompanied by the tomb of Philip’s son John, who had been murdered in 1419. That tomb was a co-production of Jean de la Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier. Currently the two funerary monuments can be viewed in the Musée des Beaux Arts of Dijon, where they can undoubtedly be counted among the highlights of the collection.

It is a tad ironic that the greatest and longest-reigning of all the Burgundian dukes was never granted a tomb in Champmol, although there can be little doubt that the original plan was to give him one as well. I am of course referring to Philip the Good, who ruled from 1419 until his death in 1467, and who was not just Duke of Burgundy, but also Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Brabant, Limburg and Luxemburg, as well as Count of Flanders, Artesia, Franche-Comté, Holland, Zealand, Namur, Boulogne, Charolais, Guînes, Ponthieu and Saint-Pol, and – by the way – also margrave of Antwerp, lord of West Frisia, Mechlin and Salins.[2] Philip the Good was married three times and fathered 26 illegitimate children. In 1456, he managed to get one of these, a bastard son named David, appointed Bishop of Utrecht. Henceforth Philip also effectively controlled the provinces of Sticht and Oversticht. He had a finger in the pie in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège as well. Moreover, the duke was the founder of the chivalric order of the Golden Fleece. He was very eager to be awarded the title of king, so that he could rule over all his territories as King of Burgundy. But both emperor Frederick III of the Holy Roman Empire (1452-1493) – most of Philip’s territories were formally part of that empire – and the Kings of France refused to cooperate.

Philip the Good died on 15 June 1467 in Bruges in present-day Belgium. He was seventy years old. The Duke was buried in the church of Saint Donatian, which has long since been demolished. In early 1474 his son Charles the Bold had the remains of his father and those of his mother Isabella of Portugal translated to Champmol. These remains were re-buried in the crypt of the church of the monastery, near those of Philip’s father and grandfather, but it appears that Charles the Bold never commissioned any funerary monuments from anyone. There is a perfectly logical explanation for this: the Duke was far too busy waging all kinds of wars. Although Charles commanded a professional army with excellent artillery, his performance on the battlefield was dismal. In 1476 he suffered heavy defeats against the Swiss at Grandson and Muerten, and on 5 January 1477 he was killed in action at Nancy while fighting René II, Duke of Lorraine. Charles was never interred at Champmol: his mutilated corpse was buried in Nancy. It was his great-grandson Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman emperor, who in 1550 managed to get the body moved to Bruges, where it was re-buried in the Church of Our Lady. In that church we may nowadays admire two funerary monuments, that of Charles the Bold and that of his daughter Mary of Burgundy (1457-1482), the grandmother of Charles V.

Things to see

The monastery of Champmol unfortunately became a victim of the French Revolution. In the Spring of 1791 the Carthusians were expelled, after which the complex was acquired by the merchant Emmanuel Crétet (1747-1809), who later became the first Gouverneur de la Banque de France. Crétet used the monastery as his country residence and had large parts of it demolished. As a consequence, the little church that we find here today is anything but original. It is, in fact, a nineteenth-century building (photo above). An original element is, however, the portal of the church (photo above). It has been embellished with five statues. In the centre we see the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus on her arm. On the left Philip the Bold is kneeling with his hands folded in prayer, while the saint behind him is John the Baptist. The kneeling woman to the right of the Virgin is Philip’s wife Margaret, daughter of the Count of Flanders. She is accompanied by Saint Catherine of Alexandria. A wheel spoke seems to be protruding from her robes, a reference to her botched execution on the breaking wheel.

There is some discussion about who exactly sculpted the portal. The aforementioned Bart van Loo without reserve attributes it to Claus Sluter[3], but that is probably not the whole story. The design of the portal is sometimes attributed to the French architect of Champmol, Drouet de Dammartin (died 1413), while the first sculptures may have been made by Jean de Marville, whose principal assistant happened to be Claus Sluter. It is likely that, upon the death of Jean de Marville in 1389, Sluter continued work on the portal. He was from the Dutch city of Haarlem and can be considered a member of the group of “northern” artists that Philip the Bold hired to work for him in Burgundy. Other artists of this group were the woodcarver Jacob de Baerze from Dendermonde and the painter Melchior Broederlam from Ieper, whose Crucifixion altarpiece for the church of Champmol is now in the Musée des Beaux Arts. There we also find the Altarpiece of Saints and Martyrs, which is a co-production of the two Flemish masters as well.

Now it is time to discuss the Well of Moses, which is definitely a work by Claus Sluter. And by his assistants of course, as the artist from Haarlem had dozens of these working for him in his studio. The most remarkable fact about the Well of Moses (Puits de Moïse) is that it is, in fact, not a well at all. Originally it was a pedestal that served as a base for a Crucifixion. Save a few fragments[4], the figures of this Crucifixion have been lost, but the Musée des Beaux Arts has a nineteenth-century scale model, made of wood and plaster, that gives a fair idea of what the work must have looked like (photo on the right). Emmanuel Crétet kept the pedestal and used it to embellish a well in his garden, and that is how the Well of Moses got its now familiar name. The well is nowadays surrounded by a small hexagonal building on the former monastic terrain (photo above). I had kind of expected hordes of tourists waiting in line to see this remarkable object, but apart from a French couple Champmol was completely deserted.

The Well of Moses consists of six statues of prophets. These are of course Moses himself, and David, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Daniel and Isaiah. Above the prophets are beautifully sculpted angels. Parts of the original colours have been preserved: after they were completed the statues were polychromated by the aforementioned Johan Maelwael, the artist who also painted the tomb of Philip the Bold.

Name giver Moses is an impressive figure with a forked beard. On his head we see little horns, the result of a well-known mistranslation of a passage from the Book of Exodus (rather than horns there should have been rays of lights). Michelangelo would later follow the very same mistranslation when he worked on his famous statue of Moses in Rome. David is a king, so he is obviously wearing a crown, which in this case has been decorated with the French fleur-de-lis (Philip the Bold was the fourth son of the French king John II). His right hand rests on a harp, which is however largely covered by his cloak. In his left hand David is holding a text from Psalm 22. It is often claimed that the prophet Jeremiah has the face of Philip the Bold. The text on his scroll comes from the Book of Lamentations. Zechariah, Daniel and Isaiah are all holding a text from their own Book from the Bible. The latter two, moreover, appear to be having a conversation with each other.

Notes

[1] “Filips, de behaagzieke man die alleen al tussen 1392 en 1394 160 verschillende hoofddeksels zou aanschaffen, koos voor de meest contemplatieve en ascetische kloosterorde van zijn tijd”. See Bart van Loo, De Bourgondiërs, p. 160.

[2] The list comes from De Bourgondiërs, p. 315-316.

[3] De Bourgondiërs, p. 169-170.

[4] The legs of Christ, the arms of a woman (Mary or Mary Magdalen) and part of the body of Christ, including his head.