[156] Many a Council has been held in Tours. In 1055 came Gregory VII, the reformer. In 1095 Urban II preached the First Crusade, and dedicated a Romanesque abbatial at Marmoutier. In 1107 Pope Paschal II came, in 1119 Calixtus II, in 1134 Innocent II, and Alexander III in 1163. At the Council of 1163 the new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, pleaded for St. Anselm’s canonization, and the builder of Lisieux Cathedral, the politic Arnoul, delivered an address that urged the unity and liberty of the Church; yet later he upheld Henry II in his dispute with St. Thomas Becket. Tours can even boast a pope, for Martin IV (d. 1285) had long been a canon in St. Martin’s abbey.
[157] Such is the architectural wealth within reach of Tours that one can draw but a few monuments to the traveler’s attention. At Amboise is St. Hubert’s marvelously sculptured little chapel (c. 1491) and the church of St. Florentin (c. 1445). At Loches is Anne of Brittany’s oratory, a Virgin statue of Michel Colombe’s school of Tours, and the tomb of Agnes Sorel, attributed to the master who made Souvigny’s ducal tomb, Jacques Morel. The collegiate church of St. Ours is of exceptional interest to archæologists; its narthex (now the first bay), covered by a tower, was built by Fulk II of Anjou; the porch, also with a tower over it, was added in the XII century. To that date belong the two bays of the church covered by hollow pyramids, said by Mr. A. Kingsley Porter to be an attempt to make a stone roof without wooden centering. At Beaulieu-lès-Loches, founded by Fulk Nerra, the choir is late-Gothic (1440-1540). At St. Catherine de Fierbois, where Jeanne d’Arc found her sword, is a charming Flamboyant Gothic church. There are Plantagenet Gothic vaults at Chinon. Nine miles from Chinon, at Champigny-sur-Veude, is a rich mass of Renaissance glass attributed to Pinagrier, with Bourbon-Montpensier portraits.
Some twenty miles from Blois is the Romanesque church of Fleury Abbey at St. Benoît-sur-Loire, with a superb XI-century narthex of three bays, surmounted by a tower. In 1562 the Huguenots wrecked the church. Also, between Orléans and Nevers, beside Sancerre, is the abbey church of St. Satur, a forerunner of Flamboyant Gothic, as early as 1361. The Benedictine church of La Charité-sur-Loire derives chiefly from the Burgundian Romanesque school, influenced by Berry and Auvergne. Its central and west towers, its nave, and chevet belong to the second half of the XII century, the transept is earlier; there was a reconstruction of the nave after 1559.
Louis Serbat, “La Charité-sur-Loire,” in Congrès Archéologique, 1913, p. 374; Abbe Bossebœuf, Amboise. For Loches, see Congrès Archéol., 1869, 1910; G. Rigault, Orléans et le val de Loire (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres); F. Bournon, Blois, Chambord et les châteaux du Blésois (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres); A. Marignan, “Une visite à l’abbaye de Fleury à St. Benoît-sur-Loire,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1901-02, p. 291; L. Cloquet et J. Casier, “Excursion de la Gilde de St. Thomas et de St. Luc dans la Maine, la Touraine, et l’Anjou,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1889-90, vols. 42, 43; La Touraine artistique et monumental; Amboise (Tours, Pericet, 1899); Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, Twenty-five Great Houses of France (New York and London, 1916).
[158] Lucien Bégule et C. Guigue, Monographic de la cathédrale de Lyon (Lyon, 1880); Lucien Bégule, La cathédrale de Lyon (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); ibid., Les vitraux du moyen âge et de la Renaissance dans la région lyonnaise (Lyon, A. Rey et Cie, 1911); ibid., Les incrustations décoratives des cathédrales de Lyon et de Vienne (Lyon, 1905); H. Havard, éd., La France artistique et monumentale, vol. 3, p. 80, C. Guigue; Émile Màle, L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle, pp. 52-59, on the glass of Lyons Cathedral; Congrès Archéologique, 1907, p. 527, on St. Martin d’Ainay; Abbé Martin, Histoire des églises et chapelles de Lyon (1909); André Steyert, Nouvelle histoire de Lyon ... (Lyon, Bernoux et Gamin, 1895), 3 vols.; Meynis, Grands souvenirs de l’église de Lyon (Lyon, 1886); Charletz, Histoire de Lyon (Lyon, 1902); Hefele, History of the Christian Councils, 12 vols.; H. d’Hennezel, Lyon (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Léon Maitre, “Les premières basiliques de Lyon et leurs cryptes,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1900, p. 445; Henri Foeillon, Le Musée de Lyon (Paris, H. Laurens); L. Barron, Le Rhone (Collection, Fleuves de France), (Paris, H. Laurens).
[159] Paul Allard, Histoire des persécutions (Paris, 1892), 5 vols.; Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 1, pp. 290, 324, on St. Irenæus and the churches of Lyons and Vienne (Paris, 1733).
[160] The church of St. Nizier also possessed a manécanterie in which Alphonse Daudet, as Le Petit Chose, spent some happy years. Another romance based on reality whose scene is Lyons is René Bazin’s l’Isolée. An ancient crypt under St. Nizier, shaped like a Greek cross, dedicated to St. Pothin since the IV century, has been ruined by restorations; the actual church is Rayonnant and Flamboyant Gothic, with a portal of the Renaissance by a son of Lyons, Philibert Delorme (d. 1570). Jean Perréal was also born here, as was Coysevox, who made the Virgin of St. Nizier (1676). Eminence in religious or idealistic mural painting has been attained by two sons of Lyons, Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98), who decorated the Museum with Le Bois Sacré, and Flandrin (1809-64), who frescoed the walls of St. Martin d’Ainay. Meissonier (d. 1891) was born here; so was Ampère, scientist and Christian believer (d. 1836). In the hospital of fifteen thousand free beds which opened its doors in the VI century and has never since closed them, worked a loved physician who was father of Frédéric Ozanam, the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. St. Vincent’s heart is treasured in a chapel of the cathedral. Another of the leaders of the Catholic reform, St. Francis de Sales, died in Lyons in 1622.
[161] The see of Vienne was founded A.D. 160. The cathedral of St. Maurice, well set on the Rhone, contains vestiges of the church consecrated in 1106 by Paschal II, and which had been aided by that archbishop of Vienne, of the first line of Burgundy’s Capetian dukes, who became Pope Calixtus II in 1119. The present edifice is due to Bishop Jean de Bernin (1218-66), and was consecrated by Innocent IV in 1251. Only in 1533 were its façade and the four bays behind it finished. There is no transept. The XV century made the northern entrance, and the XVI century that to the south. The red incrustations form friezes, in the choir, below both triforium and clearstory.
A V-century bishop of Vienne was Claudianus Mamertus, who upheld Latin culture against the Barbarians, like his friend and fellow poet, Bishop Apollinaris Sidonius at Clermont. To Vienne’s bishop is attributed the noted hymn Pange lingua gloriosi proclium certamini, and the institution of the Rogation days of penance and procession before the Ascension, in that hour when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions had terrorized central France. In 1312 Vienne was the scene of a general Council of the Church at which the Templars were suppressed by a pope cowed into obedience by the king of France, who arrived at the Council with an escort of the size of an army. The majority of the bishops present held that to abolish the Order was not a legal act, since the charges against them were unproven. Therefore, Clement V was forced to fall back on the expedient plea of solicitude for the public good.
Congrès Archéologique, 1879; J. Ch. Roux, Vienne (Paris, Bloud et Cie, 1909); M. Reymond, Grenoble, Vienne (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, II. Laurens); Lucien Bégule, L’ancienne cathédrale de Vienne-en-Dauphiné (Paris, II. Laurens, 1914); Paul Berret, Le Dauphiné (Collection, Provinces françaises), (Paris, II. Laurens).