The Cathedrals of Southern France

Vabres

Vabres was a bishopric which came into being as an aftergrowth of a Benedictine foundation of the ninth century, though its episcopal functions only began in 1318, and ceased with the Revolutionary suppression. It was a suffragan in the archiepiscopal diocese of Albi.

Its former cathedral, while little to be remarked to-day as a really grand church edifice, was by no means an unworthy fane. It dates from the fourteenth century, and in part is thoroughly representative of the Gothic of that era. It was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and a fine clocher added.

St. Lizier or Couserans

The present-day St. Lizier – a tiny Pyrenean city – was the former Gallo-Romain city of Couserans. It retained this name when it was first made a bishopric by St. Valère in the fifth century. The see was suppressed in 1790.

The Église de St. Lizier, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, consists of a choir and a nave, but no aisles. It shows some traces of fine Roman sculpture, and a mere suggestion of a cloister.

The former bishop's palace dates only from the seventeenth century.

Sarlat

A Benedictine abbey was founded here in the eighth century, and from this grew up the bishopric which took form in 1317 under Raimond de Roquecarne, which in due course was finally abolished and the town stripped of its episcopal rank.

The former cathedral dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in part from the fifteenth. Connected therewith is a sepulchral chapel, called the tour des Maures. It is of two étages, and dates from the twelfth century.

St. Pons de Tomiers

St. Pons is the seat of an ancient bishopric now suppressed. It is a charming village – it can hardly be named more ambitiously – situated at the source of the river Jaur, which rises in the Montagnes Noir in Lower Languedoc.

Its former cathedral is not of great interest as an architectural type, though it dates from the twelfth century.

The façade is of the eighteenth century, but one of its side chapels dates from the fourteenth.

St. Maurice de Mirepoix

Mirepoix is a charming little city of the slopes of the Pyrenees.

Its ancient cathedral of St. Maurice dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and has no very splendid features or appointments, – not even of the Renaissance order, – as might be expected from its magnitude. Its sole possession of note is the clocher, which rises to an approximate height of two hundred feet.

The bishopric was founded in 1318 by Raimond Athone, but was suppressed in 1790.

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