XXII Other Old-Time Cathedrals in and About — The Basin of the Garonne
Dax
At Dax, an ancient thermal station of the Romans, is a small cathedral, mainly modern, with a portal of the thirteenth century.
It was reconstructed from these thirteenth-century remains in the seventeenth century, and exhibits no marks of beauty which would have established its ranking greatness even at that time.
Dax was a bishopric in the province of Auch in the third century, but the see was suppressed in 1802.
Eauze
Eauze was an archbishopric in the third century, when St. Paterne was its first dignitary. Subsequently—in the following century—the archbishopric was transferred to Auch.
As Elusa it was an important place in the time of Cæsar, but was completely destroyed in the early part of the tenth century. Eauze, therefore, has no church edifice which ever ranked as a cathedral, but there is a fine Gothic church of the late fifteenth century which is, in every way, an architectural monument worthy of remark.
Lombez
The bishopric of Lombez, in the ancient ecclesiastical province of Toulouse, endured from 1328 (a tenth-century Benedictine abbey foundation).
Its first bishop was one Roger de Comminges, a monk who came from the monastic community of St. Bertrand de Comminges.
The see was suppressed in 1790.
St. Papoul
St. Papoul was a bishopric from 1317 until 1790. Its cathedral is in many respects a really fine work. It was an ancient abbatial church in the Romanesque style, and has an attractive cloister built after the same manner.
Rieux
Rieux is perhaps the tiniest ville of France which has ever possessed episcopal dignity. It is situated on a mere rivulet—a branch of the Arize, which itself is not much more, but which in turn goes to swell the flood of La Garonne. Its one-time cathedral is perhaps not remarkable in any way, though it has a fine fifteenth-century tower in brique. The bishopric was founded in 1370 under Guillaumé de Brutia, and was suppressed in 1790.
Lavaur
Lavaur was a bishopric, in the ecclesiastical province of Toulouse, from 1317 to 1790.
Its cathedral of brick is of the fourteenth century, with a clocher dating from 1515, and a smaller tower, embracing a jacquemart, of the sixteenth century.
In the interior is a fine sixteenth-century painting, but there are no other artistic treasures or details of note.
Oloron
Oloron was a bishopric under St. Gratus in the sixth century; it ceased its functions as the head of a diocese at the suppression of 1790.
The former cathedral of Ste. Marie is a fine Romanic-Ogivale edifice of the eleventh century, though its constructive era may be said to extend well toward the fifteenth before it reached completion. There is a remarkably beautiful Romanesque sculptured portal. The nave is doubled, as to its aisles, and is one hundred and fifty feet or more in length and one hundred and six wide, an astonishing breadth when one comes to think of it, and a dimension which is not equalled by any minor cathedral.
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.