XI St. Caprais D’Agen
Agen, with Cahors, Tulle, Limoges, Périgueux, Angoulême, and Poitiers, are, in a way, in a class of themselves with respect to their cathedrals. They have not favoured aggrandizement, or even restoration to the extent of mitigating the sentiment which will always surround a really ancient fabric.
The cathedral at Bordeaux came strongly under the Gothic spell; so did that at Clermont-Ferrand, and St. Nazaire, in the Cité de Carcassonne. But those before-mentioned did not, to any appreciable extent, come under the influence of the new style affected by the architects of the Isle of France during the times of Philippe-Auguste (d. 1223).
At the death of Philippe le Bel (1314), the royal domain was considerably extended, and the cathedrals at Montpellier, Carcassonne, and Narbonne succumbed and took on Gothic features.
The diocese of Agen was founded in the fourth century as a suffragan of Bordeaux. Its first bishop was St. Phérade. To-day the diocese is still under the parent jurisdiction of Bordeaux, and the see comprises the department of Lot-et-Garonne.
A former cathedral church—St. Etienne—was destroyed at the Revolution.
The Romanesque cathedral of St. Caprais dates, as to its apses and transepts, from the eleventh century.
Its size is not commonly accredited great, but for a fact its nave is over fifty-five feet in width; greater than Chartres, and nearly as great as Amiens in the north.
This is a comparison which will show how futile it is not to take into consideration the peers, compeers, or contemporaries of architectural types when striving to impress its salient features upon one’s senses.
This immense vault is covered with a series of cupolas of a modified form which finally take the feature of the early development of the ogival arch. This, then, ranks as one of the early transitions between barrel-vaulted and domed roofs, and the Gothic arched vaulting which became so common in the century following.
As to the general ground-plan, the area is not great. Its Romanesque nave is stunted in length, if not in width, and the transepts are equally contracted. The choir is semicircular, and the general effect is that of a tri-apsed church, seldom seen beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Rhine valley.
The interior effect is considerably marred by the modern mural frescoes by Bézard, after a supposed old manner. The combination of colour can only be described as polychromatic, and the effect is not good.
There are a series of Roman capitals in the nave, which are of more decided artistic worth and interest than any other distinct feature.
At the side of the cathedral is the Chapelle des Innocents, the ancient chapter-house of St. Caprais, now used as the chapel of the college. Its façade has some remarkable sculptures, and its interior attractions of curiously carved capitals and some tombs—supposed to date from the first years of the Christian era—are of as great interest as any of the specific features of the cathedral proper.