IX Cathédrale de Montauban
Montauban, the location of an ancient abbey, was created a bishopric, in the Province of Toulouse, in 1317, under Bertrand du Puy. It was a suffragan of the see of Toulouse after that city had been made an archbishopric in the same year, a rank it virtually holds to-day, though the mother-see is now known by the double vocable of Toulouse-Narbonne.
Montauban is in many ways a remarkable little city; remarkable for its tidy picturesqueness, for its admirable situation, for the added attraction of the river Tarn, which rushes tumblingly past its quais on its way from the Gorges to the Garonne; in short, Montauban is a most fascinating centre of a life and activity, not so modern that it jars, nor yet so mediæval that it is uncomfortably squalid.
The lover of architecture will interest himself far more in the thirteenth-century bridge of bricks which crosses the Tarn on seven ogival arches, than he will in the painfully ordinary and unworthy cathedral, which is a combination of most of the undesirable features of Renaissance church-building.
The façade is, moreover, set about with a series of enormous sculptured effigies perched indiscriminately wherever it would appear that a foothold presented itself. There are still a few unoccupied niches and cornices, which some day may yet be peopled with other figures as gaunt.
Two ungraceful towers flank a classical portico, one of which is possessed of the usual ludicrous clock-face.
The interior, with its unusual flood of light from the windows of the clerestory, is cold and bare. Its imposed pilasters and heavy cornices are little in keeping with the true conception of Christian architecture, and its great height of nave—some eighty odd feet—lends a further chilliness to one’s already lukewarm appreciation.
The one artistic detail of Montauban’s cathedral is the fine painting by Ingres (1781-1867) to be seen in the sacristy, if by any chance you can find the sacristan—which is doubtful. It is one of this artist’s most celebrated paintings, and is commonly referred to as “The Vow of Louis XIII.”