[54] St. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Francorum) says that in A.D. 440 a church was erected in Clermont by the Bishop Namacius, 150 feet in length, 60 feet wide, 50 feet high from the seat of the bishop to the vault; a circular gallery surrounded the choir, and on each side were two aisles elegantly constructed. The church was in the form of a cross, had 42 windows, 70 columns, and 8 doors.--_L’Auvergne au Moyen Age._ [55] S. Hilaire at Poitiers and Angoulême cathedral have only four chapels. [56] At Mozat is a magnificent shrine of copper, enamelled, and at S. Nectaire a variety of precious relics, crosses, reliquaries, and the like, of which M. Mérimée has given a list. [57] See M. Mallay’s _Essai sur les Églises Romanes et Romano-Byzantines du département du Puy-de-Dôme_. Moulins, 1838. [58] St. Mark’s, Venice, was commenced in A.D. 977. [59] Plans (to a uniform scale) of S. Mark’s Venice, and of S. Front, Périgueux, are given in _Transactions_, Vol. IV. n.s. Illustn. xxviii., pp. 172–173. [60] Mr. Fergusson gives a section of a church at Granson on the Lake of Neufchâtel, in which the aisles and nave are roofed in the same way as at Conques and in the Auvergne churches. He says that the date of this church is the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century, but I do not know what his authority for this very early date is. [61] The Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Caen, has its aisles roofed with transverse barrel-vaults. [62] I ought to mention that this dome and the western part of S. Julien at Brioude are much older than the choir, to which I have before referred in speaking of the date of the church. [63] This qualification is necessary, for the curious evidence which M. Verneilh has given of the existence in the tenth century of a Venetian colony at Limoges would be enough to make it probable that, though S. Front is the earliest complete example extant of a French domed church, others may have been built before it and that some of those which M. Verneilh supposes to have been derived from S. Front may really have been derived more directly from the East. [64] There is no end to the diversity of the countries in which they are found. In the cathedral at Worms there are squinches formed by semi-domes. In S. Nicodime at Athens they are identical with those of S. Étienne at Nevers, and the same form is repeated in the domical vault of the steeple at Auxerre cathedral. At Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, the dome is circular, but the squinches below are octagonal in plan, and the circle (which is not, however, a true circle) is set upon the octagon. [65] This statement must of course be made with caution, inasmuch as the invariable whitewashing of the interior makes it very difficult to say what was the exact nature of the decorations with which they were adorned.