Not only ordinary English tourists, but English historical scholars have been led astray in the topography of early Angers by an obstinate local tradition which long persisted in asserting that the counts and the bishops of Angers had at some time or other made an exchange of dwellings; that the old ruined hall within the castle enclosure was a piece of Roman work, and had served, before this exchange, as the synodal hall of the bishops. The date adopted for this exchange, when I visited Angers in 1877 (I have no knowledge of the place since that time) was “the ninth century”; some years before it was the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the synodal hall of the present bishop’s palace, with its undercroft, was shown and accepted as the home of all the Angevin counts down to Geoffrey Plantagenet at least. The whole history of the two palaces—that of the counts and that of the bishops—has, however, been cleared up by two local archæologists, M. de Beauregard (“Le Palais épiscopal et l’Eglise cathédrale d’Angers,” in Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire, 1855, vol. i. pp. 246–256), and M. d’Espinay, president of the Archæological Commission of Maine-et-Loire (“Le Palais des Comtes d’Anjou,” Revue historique de l’Anjou, 1872, vol. viii. pp. 153–170; “L’Evêché d’Angers,” ib. pp. 185–201). The foundation and result of their arguments may be briefly summed up. The first bit of evidence on the subject is a charter (printed by M. de Beauregard, Revue de l’Anjou et de Maine-et-Loire, as above, vol. i. pp. 248, 249; also in Gallia Christiana, vol. xiv. instr. cols. 145, 146) of Charles the Bald, dated July 2, 851, and ratifying an exchange of lands between “Dodo venerabilis Andegavorum Episcopus et Odo illustris comes.” The exchange is thus described:—“Dedit itaque præfatus Dodo episcopus antedicto Odoni comiti, ex rebus matris ecclesiæ S. Mauricii, æquis mensuris funibusque determinatam paginam terræ juxta murum civitatis Andegavensis, in quâ opportunitas jam dicti comitis mansuræ sedis suorumque successorum esse cognoscitur. Et, e contra, in compensatione hujus rei, dedit idem Odo comes ex comitatu suo terram S. Mauricio æquis mensuris similiter funibus determinatam prænominato Dodoni episcopo successoribusque suis habendam in quâ predecessorum suorum comitum sedes fuisse memoratur.” As M. de Beauregard points out, the traditionary version—whether placing the exchange in the ninth century or in the twelfth—is based on a misunderstanding of this charter. The charter says not a word of the bishop giving up his own actual abode to the count; it says he gave a plot of ground near the city wall, and suitable for the count to build himself a house upon. Moreover the words “sedes fuisse memoratur” seem to imply that what the count gave was not his own present dwelling either, but only that which had been occupied by his predecessors. There can be little doubt that the Merovingian counts dwelt on the site of the Roman citadel of Juliomagus; and this was unquestionably where the bishop’s palace now stands. That it already stood there in the closing years of the eleventh century is proved by a charter, quoted by M. d’Espinay (Revue historique de l’Anjou, vol. viii. p. 200, note 2) from the cartulary of S. Aubin’s Abbey, giving an account of a meeting held “in domibus episcopalibus juxta S. Mauricium Andegavorum matrem ecclesiam,” in A.D. 1098.
So much for the position of the bishop’s dwelling from 851 downwards. Of the position of the count’s palace—the abode of Odo and his successors, built on the piece of land near the city wall—the first indication is in an account of a great fire at Angers in 1132: “Flante Aquilone, accensus est in mediâ civitate ignis, videlicet apud S. Anianum; et tanto incendio grassatus est ut ecclesiam S. Laudi et omnes officinas, deinde comitis aulam et omnes cameras miserabiliter combureret et in cinerem redigeret. Sicque per Aquariam descendens,” etc. (Chron. S. Serg. a. 1132, Marchegay, Eglises, p. 144). The church of S. Laud was the old chapel of S. Geneviève,—“capella B. Genovefæ virginis, infra muros civitatis Andegavæ, ante forum videlicet comitalis aulæ posita,” as it is described in a charter of Geoffrey Martel (Revue Hist. de l’Anjou, 1872, vol. viii. p. 161)—the exact position of a ruined chapel which was still visible, some twenty years ago, within the castle enclosure, not far from the hall which still remains. A fire beginning in the middle of the city and carried by a north-east wind down to S. Laud and the Evière would not touch the present bishop’s palace, but could not fail to pass over the site of the castle. The last witness is Ralf de Diceto (Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 291, 292), who distinctly places the palace of the counts in his own day—the day of Count Henry Fitz-Empress—in the south-west corner of the city, with the river at its feet and the vine-clad hills at its back; and his description of the “thalami noviter constructi” just fits in with the account of the fire, the destruction thereby wrought having doubtless been followed by a rebuilding on a more regal scale. It seems impossible to doubt the conclusion of these Angevin archæologists, that the dwelling of the bishops and the palace of the counts have occupied their present sites ever since the ninth century. In that case the present synodal hall, an undoubted work of the early twelfth century, must have been originally built for none other than its present use; and to a student of the history of the Angevin counts and kings the most precious relic in all Angers is the ruined hall looking out upon the Mayenne from over the castle ramparts. M. d’Espinay denies its Roman origin; he considers it to be a work of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh—the one fragment, in fact, of the dwelling-place of Geoffrey Greygown and Fulk the Black which has survived, not only the fire of 1132, but also the later destruction in which the apartments built by Henry have perished.