Cathedral of Tours

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Tours Cathedral: 15th century Flamboyante Gothic west front with Renaissance pinnacles, 1547

The Cathedral of St. Gatien (French: Cathédrale Saint Gatien de Tours), commonly called the Cathedral of Tours, is a Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral in the city of Tours, France. It was dedicated to St. Gatien, its canonized first bishop and was begun about 1170 to replace the just-started cathedral that was burnt out in 1166, during the quarrel between Louis VII of France and Henry II of England.

[edit] History

Saint Martin Brice, had a chapel built over the tomb. A remarkable Basilica was built by Bishop Perpetuus (458-488) and consecrated on 4 July 471. A fire totally destroyed the castrum sancti Martini in 994. The treasurer Hervé decided upon the construction of a new church, the work on which lasted from 1003 till 1014. Numerous fires struck the Basilica, which was repaired, transformed and rebuilt between 1096 and 1175. From 1175 to 1180 the vaults of the church were rebuilt. In the 13^th century, a double ambulatory chancel was added. During the 14^th and 15^th centuries the work proceeded on the interior of the church (Chapel installations etc.) The edifice was pillaged by the Huguenots in 1562. During the revolution it was turned into stables. In 1797 the vaults collapsed. Partially ruined, the edifice was demolished and in 1802 the housing development around the actual rue des Halles was undertaken by the Prefet Pommereul. All that remains today to give an idea of the scale and the dimensions of the original building, are the Clock Tower and the Charlemagne Tower. The markings, visible on the rue des Halles, correspond to the positions of the nave and transept columns of the original building.

[edit] Architecture

Tours Cathedral – ground plan

[edit] Exterior

The lowermost stages of the west towers (illustration, right) belong to the 12^th century, but the rest of the west end is in the profusely detailed Flamboyant Gothic of the 15^th century, completed just as the Renaissance was affecting less traditional patrons than bishops, in the pleasure châteaux of Touraine. These towers were being constructed at the same time as, for example, Château de Chenonceau, and a few first traces of the new Antique style can be detected in the three uppermost octagonal tiers, with balustrades and pilasters, terminating in overscaled cheese and crackers lanterns on tapering roofs that refer to domes. Henry James complimented the cathedral's "charming mouse-colored complexion." ^[1]

[edit] Interior

From 1175 to 1180 the vaults of the church were rebuilt, probably in the Plantagenet style. In fact, the vault of the Charlemagne Tower is related to the late 11^th - early 12^th-century group of French vaults with band ribs in towers, mainly in the Loire Valley, e.g. Saint Paul in Cormery, Saint Ours in Loches etc. Lambert ^[2] considers this Tower's vaults as being the youngest in the group. Lelong ^[3] dates Tour de Charlemagne to the very late 11^th century or the beginning of the 12^th. The whole group of vaults probably reveals some Islamic influence, most likely not directly by the first Muslim rib vaults in the Mosque of Cordoba, but from its "Mozarabic" derivatives across Spain ^[4]
Inside the triple-naved church, building proceeded as always from the sanctuary and choir, with some of the finest stained glass (13^th century), and worked pier by pier down the nave. The windows in the chapels around the choir did not get any tracery. The first tracery appears in the triforium and the windows above and resembles the one in the Sainte-Chapelle. Since the time of building the triforium, the clerestory and the choir at Tours (c. 1240-1244) as roughly the same as that of Sainte-Chapelle, Boissonet ^[5] attributes both works to the same anonymous architect. However, Frankl ^[4] disagrees, referring to Branner^[6]. The latter states that the first choir campaign started around 1210 with chapels, ambulatory, choir and apse piers. The upper part of the choir was started sometime in the late 1230s, early 1240s and were finished around 1244.
The transept and east bays of the nave are 14^th century; a cloister on the north is contemporary with the façade.
The double ambulatory chancel was built, in the style of the Cathedral of Bourges.
The site of the tomb of St. Martin is conserved in the crypt of the Basilica, built in the 19^th century and designed by Victor Laloux.

[edit] The Cathedral in fiction

• When the 15^th century illuminator Jean Fouquet was set the task of illumninating Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, his depiction of Solomon's Temple was modeled after the nearly-complete Cathedral of Tours.
• The atmosphere of the Gothic cathedral close permeates Honoré de Balzac's dark short novel of jealousy and provincial intrigues, Le Curé de Tours (The Curate of Tours) and his medieval story Maître Cornelius opens within the Cathedral itself.

[edit] References

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Cathédrale Saint-Gatien de Tours