BOSCHERVILLE
. Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville (Seine-Maritime) is one of the last great Norman
examples of 12th-century Romanesque architecture. In contrast to the founding of the
majority of great Norman abbeys, the foundation of Boscherville abbey was neither royal
nor ducal, but seigneurial; the seigneurs of Tancarville owned the land. The complex
history of the edifice has yet to be fully explained. A charter, dated to 1053–66, mentions
that a cham-berlain of William the Conqueror, Raoul de Tancarville, had replaced the
small church of Saint-George with a larger edifice in the form of a cross. There, he
installed a community of regular canons of the order of St. Augustine. Subsequently, the
Benedictines replaced the Augustinians. The abbey was virtually destroyed during the
Revolution; only the church and the chapter house escaped.
In construction, the abbey church is similar to certain Norman churches: Cérisy-la-
Forêt, Saint-Nicholas de Caen, Saint-Gabriel, and Lessay. It comprises a nave of eight
bays, a transept with a small apse at each arm, a choir of two bays bordered by aisles, a
straight chevet, and an apse. The cross-ribbed vaulting that exists today in the nave is not
original. Each arm of the transept is subdivided in height at the level of the triforium by a
gallery supported by a central column. Semicircular vaulting covers the two bays of the
choir. The façade consists of a central door, two-story windows, two corner towers, and a
central square tower that culminates in an octagonal spire. The chapter house, located at
the north arm of the transept, opens to the east by three bays. Arcades are supported by
pillars with historiated capitals. The interior exhibits ribbed vaulting and column statues.
A frieze runs along the walls, the work of Abbot Victor, completed ca. 1170.
E.Kay Harris
Besnard, A. Monographie de l’église et de l’abbaye Saint-Georges de Boscherville. Paris:
Lechevalier, 1899.
Lapeyre, André. Des façades occidentales de Saint-Denis et de Chartres aux portails de Laon.
Paris: Université de Paris, 1960.
Michon, Louis-Marie. “L’abbaye de Saint-Georges de Boscherville.” Congrès archéologique
(Rouen) 89(1926):531–49.
BOUCICAUT
. The sobriquet Boucicaut was given to members of the Le Meingre family of Touraine,
two of whom served as marshals of France during the Hundred Years’ War. The elder
Jean le Meingre, who was probably born in the decade before 1320, served as an esquire
in the campaigns of the 1330s and was one of the many people of undistinguished birth
who rose to positions of power under King John II. He was serving as seneschal of
Toulouse when the Battle of Poitiers (September 1356) decimated French leadership.
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