To the questions that reach the rectorate of the cathedral – especially through the guides of the Visitor Service – we sometimes answer in images. The subjects are varied and sometimes highlight unsuspected aspects of the cathedral…
We know that Monseigneur PANSARD wore a very old crozier on several occasions, which he said belonged to his fifty-first predecessor. What is the history of this crosier? Why didn’t we see it before?
Henri de Grez became bishop of Chartres in 1243, in a new cathedral that had not yet been consecrated. He died three years later, on December 6, 1246, and was buried with his brother Étienne, dean of the chapter who had died in 1243, in the Jacobins church. In 1931, his tomb, along with that of his brother Étienne, was discovered near the chapel of the community of the sisters of Saint-Paul (Chartres intra muros), built partly on the site of the former Jacobins church destroyed during the French Revolution. The crosier found in the tomb was deposited in the cathedral treasury by the museum of the Institute of the sisters’ community, the object’s owner.
Mgr Harscouët, bishop of Chartres from 1926 to 1954, was inspired by Henri de Grez’s scroll to create his personal pastoral crozier, which is held in the cathedral treasury. This is how he appears in a painting created around 1940 by Ivanov.
In 2008, for the ordination of two priests, Olivier Monnier and François Muchery, Monseigneur Pansard wore the crosier for the first time, mounted on a wooden stick as it was in the 13th century – the black trace had been found in the tomb. The idea was to show the continuity of the Chartres Church.
This crosier model is very similar to a crosier discovered in 1865 in the choir of the Chaalis abbey church; this object was discovered by Longpérier during the excavation of the tombs of the twelve bishops of Senlis buried in the nave of the Chaalis abbey church and debatably attributed to Guérin, bishop of Senlis, who died in 1227.