[39] M. Viollet-le-Duc considers the earliest part of the cloister to date from the tenth century; M. Mérimée thinks the eleventh century more likely.
[40] The Maîtrise was, I believe, the school attached to the cathedral.
[41] Mérimée, Notes d’un Voyage en Auvergne, p. 232.
[42] It is very difficult to understand precisely where these hangings were found. M. Aymard, a distinguished antiquary at Le Puy, in the Album Photographique d’Archéologie Religieuse, speaks of the painting on the wall of the Salle des États, and then, in another place, says that the tapestries given by Jean de Bourbon served to decorate the Salle des États of Velay, and after the regrettable destruction of that hall the remains of them were preserved part in the cathedral and part in the museum. Possibly he refers to the removal of the floor below the Salle des États, for the hall itself has not been destroyed.
[43] M. Mallay, of Clermont, says that the mosaic work of the church of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, was all set in red mortar originally.
[44] See further observations on this subject, page [223].
[45] The predecessor in the See, Stephen II., uncle of Bishop Peter I., was buried at Lavoulte-Chilhac.
[46] A diploma of A.D. 1146 is dated from the “Ville d’Anis” (i.e. Le Puy) and fixes the date at which this “cité” received the name of “ville.”
[47] See M. Aymard’s Album Photographique d’Archéologie Religieuse, and a communication from the same gentleman in the Bulletin Archéol. vol. ii. p. 645. M. Aymard mentions one other example, a diptych, figured in Montfaucon (L’Antiquité Expliquée) vol. iii. p. 89, which dates from about A.D. 900. The hand at Le Puy is larger than life, and has a double nimbus round it, the inner yellow, the outer dark red; the hand is white and the ground within the nimbus dark blue. The Secretary of the Comité Historique des Arts et Monuments considers that this representation of the Greek mode of giving the benediction makes it certain that the work at Le Puy is Byzantine in its origin. But one may, I think, be allowed to doubt whether this conclusion is to be absolutely depended on.
[48] M. Aymard. See footnote on preceding page.