Town Plan No. 11.—Poitiers.
During the religious wars of the sixteenth century the city was taken, turn by turn, by Catholics and Protestants.
The Churches of Poitiers.—Among the Romanesque churches Notre Dame-la-Grande makes the greatest impression, owing to its hoary west front, encrusted with the strange carving of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to which the building as a whole belongs. The life of the Virgin is shown in the lowest sculptures, and the other rows of figures represent the Apostles, St. Hilaire and St. Martin. On the right side the figures of two wrestlers appear to be in every way similar to those on the remarkable Norman font at Cowlam, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The gable above has a figure of Christ triumphant. It is interesting to notice that the lower parts of the walls seem to belong to an earlier church, possibly of the eighth or ninth century. The interior is covered with crude painting in herring-bone, zigzag, and striped patterns, giving a strange atmosphere to the church, almost suggesting that one was in Southern Spain.
The Cathedral of St. Pierre was largely built at the expense of Henry II. of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, all the principal work being completed before the death of Henry in 1189. It is therefore a Romanesque building, with the exception of the western façade, with its two low towers, and the north door, which were added in the thirteenth century, and are therefore Gothic. The exterior is disappointing on account of the restoration, which has robbed it of the charms of age. With only one exception—that of Notre Dame de la Roche, near Chevreuse—the choir-stalls are the oldest in France, dating from 1235 to 1257, and the stained glass includes some remarkable windows at the east end, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The most interesting is the one of the Crucifixion, which also shows Henry II. and Eleanor.
St. Hilaire-le-Grand was reconstructed in the tenth and eleventh centuries on the site of a Roman building. During the siege by Coligny in the Huguenot wars the tower was damaged so much that it eventually fell, crushing the façade and the west end of the nave. This nave, which has been restored with one bay less, is the only one in France with triple aisles, and the effect is that of five naves with two aisles, or even of seven naves. On the walls there are paintings attributed to the eleventh or thirteenth centuries, and in the southernmost aisle there is an Early Christian sarcophagus lid of the fourth or sixth century. St. Porchaire has retained its very beautiful tower, built at the end of the eleventh century. The three tiers of arcading, enriched with carved capitals, corbels, and mouldings, leave no surface unadorned. The church is otherwise a poor reconstruction of the sixteenth century, and is only interesting for the sixth-century sarcophagus of St. Porchaire under an altar.
St. Radegonde was founded in the sixth century as a mortuary chapel for the Queen, St. Radegonde, who fled from her fierce husband, Clotaire I., and took the veil in the Abbey of St. Croix, where she died in 587, and has ever afterwards been venerated as patroness of Poitiers, her tomb becoming a place of pilgrimage.
The chapel was made into a collegiate church, and was reconstructed in the eleventh century and consecrated in 1099. There is a beautiful Flamboyant west doorway, with empty niches, and the north and south entrances are of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
On the right of the nave is the Chapelle du Pas de Dieu, having an old tomb, with two statues, showing the apparition of Christ to St. Radegonde, the impression of Christ’s foot being left on a stone between the two figures.
The crypt in the centre of the church contains the tomb of St. Radegonde, an empty sarcophagus of black marble, reposing on a massive table of the twelfth century.
The Church of Montierneuf (= monastère neuf) belonged to an eleventh-century abbey. The Romanesque choir was altered in the thirteenth century, with the addition of a central apse, known as ‘La Lanterne.’ It was mutilated during the religious wars, and has since been badly restored, but retains some remarkable eleventh-century work.