The Cathedrals of Northern FranceMansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
History
The Cathedrals of Northern France
Mansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
Cathedrals -- France; France -- Description and travel
Loftiness and grandeur are equally lacking in the interior, and there is
great variation of style with respect to the pillars of nave and choir.
This is also the case with the windows, which play the gamut from the
severe round-headed Romanesque to the latest flamboyant development, a
feature which not only disregards most conventions, but, as every one
will admit, most flagrantly offends, with sad results, against the
general constructive elements. A plain triforium, in the nave, blossoms
out, in the south transept and choir, in no hesitating manner, into
exceeding richness. The choir has an apsidal termination and contains
carved wooden stalls which are classed as work of the mid-seventeenth
century, though appearing much more time-worn.
The really popular attribute of the church lies in the reconstructed
monument to St. Yves, the patron saint of advocates, and commonly
considered the most popular in all the Brittany calendar.
Born near Treguier in 1253, St. Yves' "unheard-of probity and
consideration for the sick and the poor" gained such general respect
that, with his death on the nineteenth of May, 1303, there was
inaugurated a great feast which to-day is yearly celebrated, and all
grieving against a real or fancied wrong have recourse promptly to the
supposedly just favour of this universal patron of the law.
[Illustration: S. BRIEUC]
XIII
ST. BRIEUC
Unlike many of the smaller towns which contain cathedral churches, St.
Brieuc is a present day bishopric; hence the Cathedral takes on,
perhaps, more significance than it would, were it but an example of a
Mediaeval church.
In reality it is not a very wonderful structure, and the guide-books
will tell one practically nothing about it. The town itself is a dull
place, a tidal port, at some little distance from the sea, which flushes
in upon it twice during the round of the clock.
A monastery was founded here in the fifth century by St. Brieuc, from
whom the town itself and the present cathedral take their name. He was a
Celtic monk from Wales, who, upon being expelled from his native land,
located his establishment here, on the site of a former Gallo-Roman
town. The patronal feast of St. Brieuc is held each year on the first of
May and is a curious survival of a mediaeval custom.
Some remains of an early church are built into the choir walls, but in
the main this not very grand edifice is of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
The tower, with its loopholes, would supposedly indicate that the church
was likewise intended as somewhat of a fortification. The apse is
rounded in the usual form, and on either side extend transepts to the
width of two bays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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