From this catalogue it will be inferred that the great attractions of the cathedral at St. Flour are mainly the artistic accessories with which it has been embellished.
There are no remarkably beautiful or striking constructive elements, though the plan is hardy and not unbeautiful. It ranks among cathedrals well down in the second class, but it is a highly interesting church nevertheless.
A chapel in the nave gives entrance to the eighteenth-century episcopal palace, which is in no way notable except for its beautifully laid-out gardens and terraces. The sacristy was built in 1382 of the remains of the ancient Château de St. Flour, called De Brezons, which was itself originally built in the year 1000.
IX
ST. PIERRE DE SAINTES
The chief architectural feature of this ancient town—the Mediolanum Santonum, chief town of the Santoni—is not its rather uninspiring cathedral (rebuilt in 1585), nor yet the church of St. Eutrope (1081—96) with its underground crypt—the largest in France.
As a historical monument of rank far more interest centres around the Arc de Triomphe of Germanicus, which originally formed a part of the bridge which spans the Charente at this point. It was erected in the reign of Nero by Caius Julius Rufus, a priest of Roma and Augustus, in memory of Germanicus, Tiberius, his uncle, and his father, Drusus.
The bridge itself, or what was left of it, was razed in the nineteenth century, which is of course to be regretted. A monument which could have endured a matter of eighteen hundred years might well have been left alone to takes its further chances with Father Time. Since then the bridge has been rebuilt on its former site, a procedure which makes the hiatus and the false position of the arch the more apparent. The cloister of the cathedral, in spite of the anachronism, is in the early Gothic manner, and the campanile is of the fifteenth century.
Saintes became a bishopric, in the province of Bordeaux, in the third century. St. Eutrope—whose name is perpetuated in a fine Romanesque church of the city—was the first bishop. The year 1793 saw the suppression of the diocesan seat here, in favour of Angoulême.
In the main, the edifice is of a late date, in that it was entirely rebuilt in the latter years of the sixteenth century, after having suffered practical devastation in the religious wars of that time.
The first mention of a cathedral church here is of a structure which took form in 1117—the progenitor of the present edifice. Such considerable repairs as were necessary were undertaken in the fifteenth century, but the church seen to-day is almost entirely of the century following.