St-Alain Cathedral (Lavaur)
The former Saint-Alain cathedral in Lavaur is the most striking and largest building in the southern French city of Lavaur in the Tarn department . It has been designated as a Monument historique since 1911 .
location
The medieval Gothic cathedral is not in the center of the city, but on its eastern edge above a bend of the Agout river .
history
The origins of the veneration of St. Alanus ( Saint-Alain ) go back to an abbot, who allegedly died in the 7th century, of a monastery he founded himself in Lavaur, about whom next to nothing is known. It is the only church in the south of France where this saint is venerated. A church with this patronage was first mentioned in Lavaur in 1098 as the priory church of the Abbey of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières . The demolition and construction of this church began shortly thereafter, but the new church was destroyed as part of the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) - probably in 1211.
The construction of today's church, which was initially still designed as a priory church, began around the middle of the 13th century. However, in 1317 Pope John XXII. the town of Lavaur, which became prosperous through the cultivation and trade of woad ( pastel ), became a diocese ; the priory church thus became a bishop's church, i.e. a cathedral . In the period that followed, further construction work was carried out - including the new construction (1328) of a larger cloister on the north side of the church and the construction of ten chapels between the buttresses. The most important architectural innovations, however, were the redesign of the originally rather unadorned western facade, carried out by Bishops Jean Vigier and Pierre du Rosier in the years 1469 to 1515, which was replaced by a massive vestibule-like structure with an octagonal tower and an - already destroyed in 1540 - Helmspitze was upgraded. Like the bishop's palace ( palais épiscopal ), which was destroyed during the French Revolution , this westwork dates from the end of the 15th century.
In 1790, the Lavaur diocese was dissolved by the revolutionaries. In the 1801 Concordat between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII , the abolition of the diocese was confirmed.
architecture
The entire building is - based on Tolosan models - essentially made of bricks ; the sandstone , which has to be procured from afar and is therefore expensive, can be found on some cornices and corner stones or on the pillars, capitals or archivolts of the portal. In the outer area of the walls, v. a. In the lower area of the bell tower, some fragments of sandstone are walled up, which may have come from the demolition of the older church and were used here as spoilage .
Exterior construction
The exterior is impressive because of its height; It is easy to see the buttresses used to stabilize the wall and the outer walls of the side chapels in between. As is common in southern French Gothic, the windows do not take up the entire space between the buttresses, but are usually reduced to small lancet windows, which underlines the overall defensive impression of the building. The mighty westwork is square in the lower area; the eight-sided basement of the tower rises above it. In the recessed corners of the octagon there are four turrets - round below, octagonal above - with small pointed helmets. The stone parapet grille, which runs around several levels, reinforces the castle-like character of the tower. There is no entrance to the west of the church; the beautiful late Gothic sandstone portal is on the south side.
inner space
The single-nave interior of the church, spanned by a five-bay Gothic ribbed vault, is almost 14 meters wide, 53 meters long and about 23 meters high; In the 19th century - perhaps even earlier - it was furnished with vegetable and geometric decorative paintings. The sides of the ground floor open to the differently designed chapels.
Furnishing
The oldest piece of equipment is the Romanesque altar panel from the end of the 11th century, made from a marble block about 15 centimeters thick, the border of which is decorated with figurative and vegetable motifs. The third chapel on the right has a complicated late Gothic ribbed vault; An impressive Pietà figure can be seen above the altar . Several pictures depicting the Passion of Christ ( Way of the Cross ) decorate the walls of the choir and the apse .
The large organ in the west of the nave dates from 1876 ; it was made in the workshop of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll . The instrument has 32 stops on three manual works and a pedal . The playing and stop actions are mechanical; the action of the Grand Orgue is equipped with barker machines.
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- Coupling : I / I (sub-octave coupling), II / I, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P
- Playing aids: Tutti, tongue plate (I, II, III)
- Effect register: Sturm (Orage)
Jacquemart
A bell tower is documented as early as 1523, but it is uncertain whether there was already a bell-striker ( Jacquemart ) at that time . In any case, a legend reports that a prisoner had to ring the bell every hour in order to prove his presence in this way; However, he had secretly constructed the machine - coupled with the tower clock - and was able to flee without anyone noticing his absence. While such figures are more common in the northern half of France and Flanders (e.g. Notre-Dame in Dijon ), the Jacquemart by Lavaur is the only one of its kind in the south of the country.
literature
- Guy Ahlsell de Toulza: Cathédrale Saint-Alain de Lavaur.
Web links
- Lavaur Cathedral - Photos + Info (French)
- Lavaur Cathedral - photos + brief information (French)
- Lavaur Cathedral - photos + brief information (French)
- Lavaur Cathedral - Photos
- Lavaur Cathedral - photo
Individual evidence
- ↑ Église Saint-Alain, Lavaur in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ Information on the organ (accessed on July 19, 2019).
Coordinates: 43 ° 41 ′ 57.2 " N , 1 ° 49 ′ 18.7" E