How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
The hill of Fourvière looms over the scene of the martyrdoms, the _forum
vetus_, the forum of Trajan, which gave its name to the neighboring
eminence to which many generations have come as to a pilgrimage shrine.
On the flank of the hill a hospice marks where St. Pothinus breathed his
last. The sumptuous new basilica that stands on the crest of the hill
beside an ancient chapel, now its annex, persistently dominates the old,
gray city. Lyons fulfilled its war vow of 1870 by the erection of this
church wherein are strange echoes of Greek, Sicilian, Byzantine, and
Gothic art that surely will make archæologists in the far future wonder
at much in our civilization. On its walls the city's proud apostolic
traditions are set forth in mosaics.
Equally venerated is the ancient church of St. Martin d'Ainay which
marks the holy ground where many of the martyrs were slaughtered at the
confluence of the Saône and the Rhone. There once had stood the temple
of the sixty nations of Gaul consecrated to the glory of Augustus.
Haunted by imperial visions, Napoleon at St. Helena suggested that his
burial site be where the Rhone met the Saône. No city is more nobly
girdled than Lyons. From the altar to Augustus came the four pillars at
the transept crossing of St. Martin's; two lofty classic columns were
cut in two to make them. The Burgundian queen, Brunehaut, of tragic
memory, rebuilt Ainay's original oratory over the Christian martyrs'
bones, and founded the monastery which is one of the oldest in France.
In the course of time it became affiliated with the world-power, Cluny.
The present church of St. Martin was blessed in 1106 by Paschal II, who
on this same journey had dedicated various new basilicas in northern
Italy. In the XII and XIII centuries St. Martin's outer aisles were
added. The crypt under the chapel of Ste. Blandine is not later than the
V century. A contemporary of St. Martin's is the little Romanesque
building touching the cathedral's façade, the _Manécanterie_ (to sing in
the morning).[160] Originally it formed the outer wall of a gallery of
the cloister.
The cathedral of St. John the Baptist faces the hill of Fourvière and
its apse overlooks the Saône. The Baptist was the first teacher of St.
John Evangelist to whom the city traces its Christianity. A preceding
Romanesque cathedral, building in 1084 and completed by 1117, was
destroyed during disorders between the two warring local authorities,
the archbishop and the counts of Forez. Lyons for a time was under the
titular jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire, but to all intents and
purposes was a free city with well developed communal rights. While the
Romanesque cathedral was building, St. Anselm of Canterbury passed
sixteen months in Lyons as guest of Archbishop Hugues.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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