Limoges was active in the Renaissance days. Her bishop, Jean de Langeac, erected an elaborate _jubé_ between choir and transept, a rood loft which is one mass of hanging keystones, channeling, bas-reliefs, and arabesque panels, with six big statues of the Virtues made in 1536 by an artist of Tours named Jean Arnaud. It is plain to see that the Renaissance was in full swing. The Labors of Hercules were set forth, and Bacchus was placed beside Ambrose and Augustine. Perhaps the huge _jubé_ and the episcopal tomb both came from the studios of Tours, where had settled the earliest artists of the transalpine Renaissance. The master hand that made the bishop's tomb, says M. Mâle, followed Dürer, but his eight Apocalypse panels were an improvement over the designs of the German. Unfortunately the bronze recumbent figure of the munificent prelate whose pride it was to adorn his church was melted up for pennies in 1793. There are two other notable tombs in the choir's procession path--that of a bishop-builder, Raynaud de la Porte--the only funeral monument in France that represents stone curtains drawn aside by angels--and the tomb of his nephew, Bernard Brun (d. 1350). Three of the Avignon popes were natives of art-loving Limousin. The Revolution robbed Limoges of the noble abbey church of St. Martial, which had been dedicated by the pope of the First Crusade in 1095. St. Martial had formed the center of the Château section of Limoges, ruled by its own counts with a totally different administration from that of the Cité division, where the cathedral stood, and whose civic master was the bishop. Many a feud had Cité with Château. The abbatial of the "apostle of Aquitaine" would tell us the story had not blind passion laid it in ruins. For three hundred years no effort was made at Limoges to complete its cathedral's nave until, through the enterprise of Monseigneur Duquesnay, the first stone of the sorely needed western church was laid in 1876 and the structure finished in 1888. It was joined, by means of a narthex or forechurch, to the ancient tower which had been built isolated before the Romanesque cathedral of St. Étienne. In its three lower stories, now hidden by cumbersome masonry propping, save on the east side, the tower belonged to the cathedral which Urban II blessed in 1095 when he dedicated St. Martial's abbatial. Its four upper stories, mainly of the XII century, were begun by Bishop Sebrand-Chabot while the overlord of the province, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, was on his crusading venture. In this very region, at the castle of Chalus near Limoges, the Lion-hearted met his death in 1199.