I might include Rocamadour in the Department of Lot among the
interesting rock churches. It consists of a cluster of chapels clinging
to the rock or dug out of it, and looking like a range of swallows'
nests plastered against the face of the cliff. The people of the place
fondly hold that Zaccheus, who climbed up a sycamore tree to see Our
Lord pass by, came into Quercy, and having a natural propensity for
climbing, scrambled up the face of the precipice to a hole he perceived
in it, and there spent the remainder of his days, and changed his name
to Amator. No trace of such an identification occurs before 1427, when
Pope Martin V. affirmed it in a bull, although in the local breviary
there was no such identification. It is extremely doubtful whether any
saint of the name of Amator settled here, the story concerning him is
an appropriation from Lucca. [Footnote: _Analecta Bollandiana_, T.
xxviii., pp. 57 _et seq_.]
But I will not describe this, one of the most remarkable sites in
Europe, as I have done so already in my "Deserts of Southern France,"
and as of late years it has been visited by a good many English
tourists, and the French railway stations exhibit highly coloured views
of it, turning Rocamadour into a national show place.
At Lirac, in Gard, is La Sainte Baume, a small church or chapel,
excavated out of the rock, 60 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 30 feet
high. It is lighted by an aperture in the vault. Three other caves
behind the choir are almost as large.
At Mimet, in Bouches-du-Rhône, is the church of Our Lady of the Angels,
hewn out of limestone rock, with stalactites depending from the roof.
At Peyre, near Millau, in Tarn, is the church of S. Christophe, scooped
out of the living rock, with above it an old crenellated bell tower.
[Illustration: SUBTERRANEAN CHURCH, AUBETERRE. Looking east. In the
choir is the mausoleum. The floor of the church is raised four feet by
it having been made the parish cemetery. The process of degradation of
the pillars is noticeable at their heads.]
At Caudon, on the Dordogne, now in the parish of Domme, the old parish
church is monolithic, entirely excavated in the rock, but with a
structural bell-cot above it. As already mentioned, Caudon was a
parish, but as owing to the devastations of the Companies, all the
inhabitants had deserted it and fled to Spain, it was annexed to Domme.
What is curious is that before it had been carved out of the limestone
as a church there had been cave-dwellers in or about it, that have left
their traces in the sides of the church. The Marquis de Maleville, who
has his château near, has put the church in thorough repair, and it is
still occasionally used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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