Rue de Calix
The Rue de Calix was the inspiration for at least 2 paintings by French painter Stanislas Lepine. The 2 paintings titled "CAEN, LA RUE DE CALIX SOUS LA NEIGE" and "LA RUE DE CALIX". The painting "La Rue de Calix" was painted circa 1872-1874 and had provenance that included PROVENANCE: Nicolas Auguste Hazard, Orrouy, Oise.
The Village of Calix
Calix is the name of a former village in the northeast of the city of Caen. It was part of the Bourg-l'Abbesse estate. The district is now included in that of Saint-Jean-Eudes - Saint-Gilles.
Calix was located northeast of the city of Caen, on the left bank of the Orne, which then drew large meanders straightened at the end of the eighteenth century. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Caen canal to the sea was pierced north of the canalized river and the area gradually industrialized, making the last traces of the meanders disappear. It was on the upper edge of the limestone plateau of the countryside of Caen. This plateau culminates at 65-70 m.
According to René and Lucien Musset, Calix is one of the five villae that, by their meeting, are at the origin of the city of Caen with Villers (current Saint-Ouen district), Cadomum (village around the Saint-Martin church), Darnétal (around the church of Saint-Pierre) and Vaucelles[5]. The locality therefore existed before the foundation of Caen as a rural villa, that is to say a set of cultivated land where "the house is only an accessory, only an operating building" and not a domus in the urban sense of the term[6]. At the time of William the Conqueror, the village that is outside the city's walls is considered independent of the rest of the Caen territory but is the subject of a donation from William to the Abbey of the Ladies[7]in 1083 to appease the dispute between the inhabitants and the monks of Saint-Etienne[8]. In the cartular of the Trinity, it is described as "territorial extra murum"[6]. It is difficult to determine, for lack of sources, the date on which the "villa" Calix is fully integrated into the Bourg l'Abbesse but this could be at the time of the creation of the parish of Saint-Gilles in the 11th century[4]. The villa of Calix had the particularity of not having a parish, unlike the four other villas on the site, which were organized around the Saint-Ouen church for Villers, the Saint-Martin church for Cadomum, the Saint-Pierre church for Darnétal and the Saint-Michel church for Vaucelles[5]. When Queen Mathilde founded her village, she brought together in a single seigneury the inhabitants of Calix and the inhabitants of the vici detached from the ducal village that Guillaume gave her[N3], and she gives them a parish: Saint-Gilles[N 4]. Until the end of the Middle Ages, the seigneury of the abbess was indifferently called Calix or Bourg l'Abbesse in the charters and cartulars of the Trinity. "This union of the two territories had the effect of involving the villa of Calix in the land regime of Caen, of which it gradually became a neighborhood"[6]. However, a 14th century text speaks of the possessions of the nuns in terms of "lands and seigneury of both their village and their city of Callix", indicating that the heart of the village is still outside the village of l'Abbesse[6],[4]. In the following century, King Henry V of England, who had just conquered Normandy, designated Calix and Vaucelles as "forbourgs de nostre ville de Caen" in an edict of May 2, 1418 concerning the possession of their stone quarries. These quarries were operated on the outskirts of the Abbey of Dames, along the current Basse and Saint-Gilles streets, rue de Calix and rue Traversière. They form a very extensive network, branched out of galleries that connect them to each other. Attested from the thirteenth century but probably exploited from the 11th century under Guillaume for the construction of the abbey of the Ladies of Caen, the quarries of Calix experienced intense activity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Until then exploited in the open air, they were dug from that time on at a depth of up to 12 m underground. They were in operation until the beginning of the seventeenth century but gradually declined during the sixteenth century mainly due to the risks to the quarries represented by the instability of the ceilings and the significant cost of their maintenance, in time and means. In 1541, the nuns of the Trinity, owners of part of Calix's quarries, sold them to individuals. They are transformed into sheltered gardens, storage places or mushroom holds. Used for construction, Calix stones were also used for the production of lime [2]. It seems that Calix also had workshops where finished products were manufactured in Caen stone: troughs and mortars whose witnesses were found on site during excavations carried out in two underground quarries in the Saint-Gilles district in the early 1990s. Calix was undoubtedly from the 11th century one of the boarding sites of the Caen stone to England through the port of Ouistreham. Its immediate proximity to the Orne and the traces of carrier path found during these excavations in some properties on Rue Basse confirm this hypothesis[9]. In the far north, on the confines of the village and Hérouville, there is a seclusion for lepers: the chapel Saint-Thomas l'Abbatu (also known as the martyr of the fields). This lepery dates from at least the 12th century and disappears during the Revolution[10]. Nearby, is the Sainte-Marguerite chapel[N5]which depends on the parish of Hérouville[10]. The abbey village has its own fair, established by Queen Mathilde, whose profits go to her and which takes place over three days. Known as the Trinity, this fair is held in front of the gates of the abbey and takes place on the 8th day of Pentecost[6]. The abbey lost this right in 1477, when Louis XI transferred it to the city of Rouen who had requested it[12].
After the departure of the nuns in March 1791, the land and enclosures of the abbey were sold and they took the name of their new owner. Some have kept their toponym such as Clos Herbert or Clos Beaumois[13]. The former village of Calix in 1890, after the recovery of the Orne during the drilling of the maritime canal. In the Napoleonic cadastre of the early nineteenth century, the name of Calix, described as a village, still appears on the map of Caen[10], In the middle of the nineteenth century, the territory of the old village was affected by the digging of the Caen canal to the sea. At the level of the chaussée de Calix was built one of the four revolving bridges of the canal. It is called the Calix Bridge. It was rebuilt during the widening of the canal at the beginning of the 20th century and damaged during the Allied bombings of 1944[18]. It was rebuilt and then demolished in March 1994 to allow larger boats to reach the Calix basin[19]. The suburb of Calix and the banks of the canal, with their shades, offer a popular walking place for the people of Caen[20]. With the recovery of the Orne, the meanders of the river become dead arms of which only a small pond located next to the domain of La Rochelle remains in the following century[10]
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