Saint-Etienne (right) and Saint-Michel (left).
We set out from our hotel on the Place du Président Wilson and entered the centre of charming Dijon. Our plan: a walk along the most interesting churches of the city. There happen to be quite a number of those, although some of these buildings are no longer in use as churches nowadays. This for instance applies to the first church we stumbled upon, that of Saint-Étienne on the intersection of the Place du Théâtre and Rue Vaillant. Saint-Étienne was built in the fifteenth century and was part of an abbey for a long time; on the south side of it we can still see remnants of a cloister. The church, dedicated to Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, was deconsecrated as early as 1613. However, after the creation of the diocese of Dijon in 1731 the building was granted a second new as a church. In fact, between 1731 and 1792 Saint-Étienne even served as cathedral of the city. The simple eighteenth-century façade of the building dates from this period. At present the former church serves as the seat of the Bibliothèque Colette. The building also houses the Musée Rude, which is administered by the Musée des Beaux Arts. The museum is built around plaster casts of the local sculptor François Rude (1784-1855).
Directly behind Saint-Étienne stands the beautiful church of Saint-Michel, dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. This is a parish church of which the history in any case goes back to the ninth century. Construction of the present church started in 1497, and in 1529 the building was consecrated. In terms of style it is an interesting mix of so-called Flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance architecture. The front portal, with splendidly carved reliefs, is especially interesting. The identical towers of the façade date from the seventeenth century.
Inside the church, it was a sculpted Entombment from the fifteenth century in the Chapelle du Sépulchre that immediately drew my attention. The sculpture group represents the funeral of Jesus, and five figures have been preserved. These have been identified as the Virgin Mary, Saint John, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary of Bethany. Christ himself has been lost, while the statues of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea are also gone (in the cathedral of Langres we can find a lonely Christ, also once part of an Entombment, but there does not appear to be any relationship with the Entombment in Dijon).
Interior of the church.
Entombment, fifteenth century.
It is rather dark inside the church of Saint-Michel. Part of the light enters the building through the lovely stained glass windows, which look like they are nineteenth-century. As regards art, we can admire an Annunciation by the local painter Philippe Quantin (ca. 1600-1636). On the other side of the church we then find a mural with the death of the Virgin or Dormitio Virginis as its theme. The church claims it is a work by Nicolas van Houy (ca. 1494-1533), a painter from the Dutch city of Leiden. I have not been to find any further information about this painter. He is in any case not the Nicolas van Houy (ca. 1550-1611) whose work I had seen in the Musée des Beaux Arts. As the second Nicolas was also from Leiden, it is possible that the first Nicolas was his grandfather.
Annunciation – Philippe Quantin / Dormitio Virginis – Nicolas van Houy.
We continued our walk, passed by the bustling Place de la Libération and the former palace of the Duke of Burgundy, and arrived at the church of Notre-Dame. This church was built in the first half of the thirteenth century and has a very conspicuous Gothic façade. This façade consists of a portico at ground level with two galleries above it. We furthermore see three rows of gargoyles, but these are nineteenth-century. On the little tower on the right four figures strike the hours, half hours and quarters. The oldest of the four figures is Jacquemart. He is a piece of looted art from the fourteenth century, taken from Kortrijk by Duke Philip the Bold, whose troops pillaged this Flemish city in 1382. Jacquemart has been accompanied by Jacqueline since 1651. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the couple had children, whose names are Jacquelinet and Jacquelinette.
Jacquemart and family.
The Gothic interior of the church is a bit dark, but impressive nonetheless. It is the result of a restoration in the nineteenth century, which aimed at giving the church back its original medieval interior. The Notre-Dame has several dozen stained glass windows, which in most cases also date from the nineteenth century and are the work of Édouard Didron (1836-1902). Especially the large rose windows in the transept are very impressive. Those in the northern transept represent the Creation of the Earth (Rosance de la Création), those in the southern transept the Last Judgment (Rosance du Jugement). The church moreover still has five original stained glass windows from the thirteenth century. They feature stories from the lives of Saints Peter and Andrew.
Interior of the Notre-Dame.
Rosance de la Création.
Stained glass window, thirteenth century.
On the left side of the church we find the Chapelle de la Croix. This dates from the fifteenth century and is the only chapel that was spared during the nineteenth-century restoration. Other chapels were demolished because they were not medieval. The chapel houses a part of the funerary monument of Pierre de Bauffremont (1400-1472), an advisor to Duke Philip the Good who was married to one of Philip’s illegitimate daughters (Philip had 26 illegitimate children). Also from the fifteenth century dates a mural in the transept. It represents a Crucifixion or Calvary. The crucified Christ is missing, but he was originally present in the form of a wooden crucifix. The work dates from ca. 1450 and is attributed to Guillaume Spicre, a Dutch painter who worked at the Burgundian court for some time. Very little is known about Spicre. It is sometimes assumed that he was also active on Sicily, but it is hard to obtain certainty. Later a certain Pierre Spicre was active at the Burgundian court, probably the son of Guillaume.
Calvary (detail) – Guillaume Spicre.
The Notre-Dame is famous for two sculptures. The first is inside the church, in a chapel to the right of the choir. It is the Notre-Dame de Bon-Espoir or Vierge noire (Black Virgin, although the black paint has been from her face decades ago). What we see, is a Romanesque statue from the eleventh or twelfth century, which was made well before the church itself was built. Several miracles are attributed to the Notre-Dame de Bon-Espoir. She is for example credited with saving Dijon from the Swiss when these besieged the city in 1513. Unfortunately the Virgin nowadays has to perform her miracles without her hands, while baby Jesus has been missing since the days of the French revolution.
The second sculpture can be found outside, in the Rue de la Chouette north of the church. It is a stone bird that adorns one of the buttresses. The bird is usually identified as an owl, hence the name chouette (‘owl’ in French). That identification appears to be correct, although the sculpture is heavily worn and almost all of its details have been lost. Tourists like to rub the chouette, as this is said to bring good luck.
After getting ice cream it was time to walk to the cathedral of Dijon. Here we passed by the church of Saint-Jean, which was built in 1448-1470 and was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. The church has been deconsecrated and currently houses the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne. The former church building looks oddly squat, which is the result of its apse having been demolished. A little bit further to the west we next find the church of Saint-Philibert, which was once dedicated to an abbot-saint from the seventh century. Nowadays it is no longer in use as a church. Saint-Philibert is nevertheless special, as it is the only church in Dijon that still has Romanesque elements. Its towers and portico are Gothic though.
Place François Rude.
Next to Saint-Philibert we find the cathedral of Saint-Bénigne. It is dedicated to Benignus of Dijon, a somewhat obscure martyr from the second or third century. The history of the church goes back to the sixth century, but in its current form it was built between 1280 and 1325 and consecrated in 1393. For a long time Saint-Bénigne was part of an abbey. It has only served as cathedral of Dijon since 1792. The Gothic building has a nice façade and the glazed rooftiles that are characteristic of Dijon.
The interior of the cathedral is rather sober. We regretfully did not see the crypt with the remains of Saint Benignus of Dijon, as it was closed. The most interesting works of art in the cathedral are the funerary monuments of the president of the parliament of Burgundy, which existed between 1354 and 1790 and had its seat in Dijon since 1480. Among other things we saw the monuments for Jean-Baptiste Le Goux de la Berchère (1568-1661) and Jean de Berbisey (1663-1756). Also worth mentioning are the funerary monument for the wife of the former, Marguerite Brulard (died 1631), and the funerary monument for Claude Fremiot (died 1670). Fremiot was secundus praeses, a sort of vice president of the Burgundian parliament. Note that in those days a parliament was a court, not a parliament in the modern sense of the word (i.e. a representative body). Along the walls we lastly see a number of medieval tomb slabs of monks and soldiers.
Interior of the cathedral.
Monument for Jean-Baptiste Le Goux de la Berchère.
In 1792 the remains of the Dukes of Burgundy were removed from the monastery of Champmol, just west of the city, and re-buried in the cathedral of Saint-Bénigne. A commemorative plate in the building refers to this event. The funerary monuments of the Dukes Philip the Bold (1363-1404) and John the Fearless (1404-1419) were also taken from Champmol to the cathedral, but they did not remain in place there for long. Already in 1793 the monuments were disassembled and large parts of them were lost. Nowadays we can admire the monuments for Philip, John and John’s wife Margaret of Bavaria in the Musée des Beaux Arts. The two tombs are still very impressive, but visitors should realise that the effigies of the deceased are replicas from the nineteenth century.
Monument for Marguerite Brulard.
