The Cathedrals of Southern FranceMansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
History
The Cathedrals of Southern France
Mansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
Cathedrals -- France; France -- Description and travel
There are no other notable features beyond the general attractiveness of
its charming environment.
The ancient _évêche_ has a fine Romanesque tower, and the cathedral
itself is reckoned, by a paternal government, as a "_monument
historique_," and as such is cared for at public expense.
_Vabres_
Vabres was a bishopric which came into being as an aftergrowth of a
Benedictine foundation of the ninth century, though its episcopal
functions only began in 1318, and ceased with the Revolutionary
suppression. It was a suffragan in the archiepiscopal diocese of Albi.
Its former cathedral, while little to be remarked to-day as a really
grand church edifice, was by no means an unworthy fane. It dates from
the fourteenth century, and in part is thoroughly representative of the
Gothic of that era. It was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and a fine
_clocher_ added.
_St. Lizier or Couserans_
The present-day St. Lizier--a tiny Pyrenean city--was the former
Gallo-Romain city of Couserans. It retained this name when it was first
made a bishopric by St. Valère in the fifth century. The see was
suppressed in 1790.
The Église de St. Lizier, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
consists of a choir and a nave, but no aisles. It shows some traces of
fine Roman sculpture, and a mere suggestion of a cloister.
The former bishop's palace dates only from the seventeenth century.
_Sarlat_
A Benedictine abbey was founded here in the eighth century, and from
this grew up the bishopric which took form in 1317 under Raimond de
Roquecarne, which in due course was finally abolished and the town
stripped of its episcopal rank.
The former cathedral dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and
in part from the fifteenth. Connected therewith is a sepulchral chapel,
called the _tour des Maures_. It is of two _étages_, and dates from the
twelfth century.
_St. Pons de Tomiers_
St. Pons is the seat of an ancient bishopric now suppressed. It is a
charming village--it can hardly be named more ambitiously--situated at
the source of the river Jaur, which rises in the Montagnes Noir in Lower
Languedoc.
Its former cathedral is not of great interest as an architectural type,
though it dates from the twelfth century.
The façade is of the eighteenth century, but one of its side chapels
dates from the fourteenth.
_St. Maurice de Mirepoix_
Mirepoix is a charming little city of the slopes of the Pyrenees.
Its ancient cathedral of St. Maurice dates from the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and has no very splendid features or
appointments,--not even of the Renaissance order,--as might be expected
from its magnitude. Its sole possession of note is the _clocher_, which
rises to an approximate height of two hundred feet.
The bishopric was founded in 1318 by Raimond Athone, but was suppressed
in 1790.
[Illustration: THE END.]
_Appendices_
I
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