Crossword-Solution: TIRON 5 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 5

Was there a guild, a brotherhood of these image-makers, devoted to the holy work, who went from place to place to be employed by monks as helpers of the masons and labourers, builders for God? Did they first come from the Benedictine Abbey of Tiron founded at Chartres near the market, by that Abbot Saint Bernard whose name figures on the list of benefactors to the church, in the necrology of the cathedral? None may know.

Having, we may suppose, been assigned to the first vacancy that occurred in any of the royal colleges, his first destination had been Tiron, the roughest and most remote of the twelve.

Returning to Normandy he was presented to the king by Jacques of Matignon; after he had abjured Protestantism, being again presented by Philip Desportes, abbot of Tiron, as a young man without equal for knowledge and talent, he was appointed reader to the king.

And of them (‘All I saw sleeping, as I shall you tell’) he writes in several thousand lines, good, bad and indifferent,-- ‘Mêlant le vin rouge avec le vin blanc.’ Very different in style and in spirit from this sombre and unpolished poet was Philippe Desportes, Abbot of Tiron and Josaphat (1546-1606), the favourite poet, first, of Charles IX., who gave him ten thousand crowns for his _La Mort de Rodomont_, and afterwards of Henry III.

Malherbe was quite justified in his criticism;--‘Your soup is better than your Psalms.’ For the table of the rich and sensual Abbot of Tiron, Bonport, Aurillac and other places was excellent, whilst the more edifying verses of his old age failed to acquire the bouquet of his wines.