XII Cathédrale de Vaison
The Provençal town of Vaison, like Carpentras and Cavaillon, is really of the basin of the Rhône, rather than of the region of the snow-crowned Alps which form its background. It is of little interest to-day as a cathedral city, though the see dates from a foundation of the fourth century, by St. Aubin, until the suppression of 1790.
Its former cathedral is hardly the equal of many others which have supported episcopal dignity, but it has a few accessories and attributes which make it notable.
Its nave is finely vaulted, and there is an eleventh-century cloister, which flanks the main body of the church on the left, which would be remarked under any circumstances.
The cloister, though practically a ruin,—but a well preserved one,—shows in its construction many beautiful Gallo-Romain and early Gothic columns which are exceedingly beautiful in their proportions. In this cloister, also, are some fragments of early Christian tombs, which will offer unlimited suggestion to the archæologist, but which to the lover of art and architecture are quite unappealing.
The Église St. Quinin is a conglomerate edifice which has been built up, in part, from a former church which stood on the same site in the seventh century. It is by no means a great architectural achievement as it stands to-day, but is highly interesting because of its antiquity. In the cathedral the chief article of real artistic value is a bénitier, made from the capital of a luxurious Corinthian column. One has seen sun-dials and drinking-fountains made from pedestals and sarcophagi before—and the effect has not been pleasing, and smacks not only of vandalism, but of a debased ideal of art, but this column-top, which has been transformed into a bénitier, cannot be despised.
The bête-noir of all this region, and of Vaison in particular,—if one is to believe local sentiment,—is the high sweeping wind, which at certain seasons blows in a tempestuous manner. The habitant used to say that “le mistral, le Parlement, et Durance sont les trois fléaux de Provence.”