Auch Cathedral: A Gothic Cathedral and Primatial Church in France
Site at a Glance
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- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page23 sections
History
Auch Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Auch, France, dedicated to Saint Mary and serving as the seat of the Archdiocese of Auch. It is also a minor basilica, a church granted a special papal distinction, and a primatial church, a cathedral with an honorary primatial rank. The present building was begun in the late Gothic period with strong Renaissance influence and took almost two centuries to complete.
Early Christian foundations
The beginnings of the episcopal center at Auch are linked to the transfer of the see from Eauze. Later tradition says that Saint Sernin stopped at Auch in the late first century and founded a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter. Another tradition places the transfer of relics and an altar from Eauze around 290, when Saint Taurin is said to have brought them to an oratory on the site of the cathedral. These traditions belong to the early religious history of Auch and are distinct from the documented construction phases of the later cathedral.
In the early fourth century, Critère became the first bishop of Auch and was based at the church of Saint-Jean. During the sixth century, King Clovis I funded a church dedicated to Saint Martin and an adjoining monastery in the lower town. Both buildings later disappeared. Around 724, Muslim raiders destroyed an oratory associated with Saint Taurin.
The medieval cathedral
Around 845, Bishop Taurin II built a church dedicated to Saint Mary as the metropolitan church. He transferred the altar associated with Eauze to the new church and moved the canons there, while the bishops continued to reside at Saint-Martin. At the end of the ninth century, the ruined see of Eauze was united with Auch, probably in connection with the Council of Toulouse of 829. A letter issued by Pope John VIII on 13 June 879 granted Taurin II’s successor, Ayrard, the title of archbishop of Auch.
Another Muslim attack around 920 forced Archbishop Odilo to leave the city. In the eleventh century, Archbishop Raymond I established a cloister beside Sainte-Marie for canons following the Rule of Saint Augustine, a set of medieval regulations for communities of canons. His successor, Saint Austinde, rebuilt and enlarged the church with donations from Guillaume Astanove, Count of Fezensac. Archbishop Bernard II of Sainte-Christie consecrated the cathedral and its high altar to Saint Mary on 12 February 1121.
Around 1180, a conflict between Count Bernard IV of Armagnac and Archbishop Géraud de La Barthe led to the seizure and partial destruction of the cathedral and cloister. The church of Saint-Martin was burned during the same conflict. The damage contributed to a long sequence of rebuilding efforts before the present cathedral was begun.
Rebuilding from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century
Archbishop Arnaud Aubert began another reconstruction in 1371. Cardinal Philippe d’Alençon granted indulgences in 1382 to people who contributed to the restoration. Archbishop Philippe I de Lévis resumed work that had been abandoned for a long period in 1429. Lightning damaged the building in 1469 and again in 1474, leading to further appeals for financial support.
Archbishop François de Savoie relaunched the rebuilding in 1483. The foundations of the present cathedral were dug on 4 July 1489, and Abbot Pierre d’Armagnac laid the first stone at the lower part of the Montesquiou Chapel. Parliamentary orders issued in 1487 and 1492 assigned parts of ecclesiastical income and alms to the building works. The later order required the archbishop and clergy to contribute under threat of seizure of their property. Stone was obtained from quarries at Duran near Auch.
The new cathedral rose over the ruins of the Romanesque church associated with Saint Austinde. By 1507, the ambulatory, radiating chapels, choir, and transept had been completed, although they still lacked vaults. Arnaud de Moles finished the stained glass in 1513, the choir stalls were substantially complete by 1520, and the Sainte-Catherine altar was made in 1524.
Bishop Jean Dumas, serving as grand vicar of Archbishop François de Tournon, consecrated the cathedral on 12 February 1548 even though the vaults and nave remained unfinished. Jean de Beaujeu had worked on the building before the consecration, and inscriptions beside the porch in 1561 and 1562 commemorated his contribution. He died in 1568 and was buried beneath the porch. Antoine Labernye, Pierre Bouldoutre, and Jacques Carrière continued the work.
An inspection in 1609 found the porch incomplete, the main nave still without a vault, and only the ambulatory covered. The choir altar by Pierre II Souffron was also unfinished. Guillaume Bauduer became architect in 1610, and he and Pierre Levesville completed the choir vault between 1617 and 1620. Its first stone had been laid on 16 May 1618.
In 1629, Archbishop Léonard de Trappes consecrated the altar of the Blessed Sacrament. That year Jean Cailhon received a contract for the vaults of the nave, aisles, and transept, as well as the western wall, its rose window, the transept rose windows, stone paving, an altar in each chapel, and the roof timbers. Work continued intensively from 1639 to 1670, including the glazing and protective grilles and the construction of temporary bell towers.
Pierre Miressou undertook the definitive bell towers in 1670. François Auxion carved the reliefs and statues of the façade between 1677 and 1680. Completion of the façade in 1680 marked the effective end of the cathedral’s long construction period.
The chapter and revolutionary disruption
The cathedral chapter, the body of clergy responsible for assisting the bishop and maintaining the cathedral’s liturgical life, followed the Rule of Saint Augustine for about five centuries. It contained 25 canons until 1331, when the number was reduced to 20; all were nobles. Four lay honorary canons were associated with the chapter, including the Count of Armagnac or the King of France and the barons of Montaut, Montesquiou, and L’Isle. The chapter was secularized in 1548.
During the French Revolution, the cathedral was damaged and an order of 1793 required its heraldic arms to be removed. The constitutional bishop was imprisoned, maintenance stopped, and the crypt was profaned. Burials were violated during the same year.
Restoration and heritage status
The Concordat of 15 July 1801 transferred the archbishopric to Agen. Local authorities then sought the restoration of the archiepiscopal see at Auch. During a visit in 1808, Napoleon I promised funds for the work, and a decree of 24 July allocated 19,000 francs. The archbishopric was restored during the ecclesiastical reorganization confirmed by Pope Pius VII’s bull of 6 October 1822.
Maintenance was interrupted between 1812 and 1816. From 1826, nearby houses were acquired and demolished to clear the spaces before the west and north façades. Jean-Baptiste Lodoyer proposed a broad restoration of the nave, choir, and transept and addressed rainwater drainage. Hippolyte Durand directed restoration and maintenance from 1849, followed by Charles Laisné from 1856 to 1879. Jean Camille Formigé, Charles Albert Potdevin, Adrien Chancel, and Alexandre Marcel continued the program.
A fire partially destroyed the interior of the north tower on 18 October 1921, after which architect Marcel Poutaraud directed its restoration. The cathedral became a minor basilica on 25 April 1928. Auch Cathedral has been protected as a French historic monument since 1906 and has formed part of the UNESCO World Heritage property “Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France” since 1998. Three stained-glass windows in the Saint-Louis Chapel were restored between December 2017 and March 2019, and the cathedral museum holds numerous works of sacred art.
Remains
Plan and exterior
Auch Cathedral is approximately 102 metres long and 35 metres wide. Its Latin-cross plan contains a central nave, two aisles, peripheral chapels, a transept that does not project beyond the main body, and a choir encircled by an ambulatory, a passage around the choir, with radiating chapels opening from it. The building contains 21 chapels, including 18 side chapels in the western extension.
The transept lies roughly midway along the building. Although it does not extend beyond the outer walls, it rises to the level of the central nave vault and stands higher than the aisles. Five portals provide entry: three in the western façade, opening into the nave and aisles, and one at each end of the transept. The upper part of the south portal is unfinished, as is the north portal.
The cathedral was begun in a flamboyant Late Gothic style strongly shaped by Renaissance influence. Its western façade and towers display later Renaissance forms. The façade and portico were completed in the late seventeenth century, with Corinthian architectural details, and the portico is enclosed by refined eighteenth-century ironwork.
Nave and choir
Nave structure
The central nave has five bays and three levels. Pointed arches form the lowest level, a simple triforium, or narrow gallery above the main arches, occupies the middle level, and a clerestory, the upper windowed part of the nave, forms the third. The vaults reach approximately 26 metres. The cathedral’s arches rise directly from lateral supports without capitals, a feature associated with Late Gothic construction. Cylindrical piers separate the nave, aisles, and chapels and continue directly into the vaults.
Choir and retable
The choir measures approximately 33.80 by 11.80 metres and forms a separately enclosed space within the church. A monumental retable, an ornamental structure behind an altar, by Pierre II Souffron closes it on the east, while the choir stalls surround it on the other three sides. Under Antoine de Salinis, the choir received a mosaic pavement and an elaborate light-oak revetment around its exterior perimeter.
Archbishop Léonard de Trappes commissioned the principal retable from Pierre II Souffron in 1609. Its columns use black marble veined with white from the quarry at Izaourt. Gervais Drouet made the upper section and central group.
Choir stalls
The choir stalls are generally dated from about 1510 to 1554. Made of hard, patinated oak, including oak that had long been immersed in water, they number 113, with low and high seats arranged around the choir. Buttresses divide the high backs, each carrying four figures, while a continuous canopy and crest surmount the group.
The stalls contain about 1,500 carved motifs. Biblical scenes, saints’ lives, prophets, Sibyls, plants, animals, and fantastic beasts combine medieval religious imagery with Renaissance variety. A Sibyl is a prophetic female figure from classical tradition who was adopted into Christian art as a symbolic witness to sacred history. Most of the makers are unknown, but the Toulouse sculptor Dominique Bertin was responsible for the final arrangements in 1552 to 1554. The imagery includes figures from the Old and New Testaments and the Sibyls, presenting prophecy in relation to the coming of Christ. A Renaissance-style lectern for antiphonaries once stood at the center of the choir.
Former choir screen
The former jubé, a monumental screen separating the choir from the nave, was made in the seventeenth century from marble. It had paired Corinthian columns, red Italian marble, a balustrade, and white-marble figures of the four Evangelists. Larger-than-life statues of David, Joshua, the Virgin Mary, and Saint John stood beside a gilded wooden Crucifixion group. Gervais Drouet completed the screen in 1671, while Pierre Miressou built its spiral stairs after receiving the commission in 1670.
The crucifix of the jubé was burned in 1793. During the episcopate of Antoine de Salinis in the mid-nineteenth century, the screen was demolished and replaced by the present ante-choir arrangement. Its sculptures were moved to the platform above the main choir retable.
Stained glass and chapels
Ambulatory windows
Arnaud de Moles made the 18 Renaissance stained-glass windows in the ambulatory chapels between 1507 and 1513. The final window, showing the Resurrection, records its installation on 25 June 1513 and bears the master glazier’s signature. The cycle begins with the Creation and Original Sin, proceeds through the Crucifixion of Christ, and concludes with the Resurrection.
Other windows show patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and Greco-Roman Sibyls. The sequence runs from the Gospel side, on the right when facing west, through the axial chapel to the Epistle side. The windows occupy the ambulatory chapels except the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, whose wall adjoins the former archbishop’s palace and therefore has a blind window.
Holy Sepulchre Chapel
The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre contains an Entombment group from the beginning of the sixteenth century, traditionally attributed to Arnaud de Moles because of similarities in the faces. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus hold Christ’s shroud, while Saint John supports Mary. Several holy women and two guards observe the tomb. Above the scene is a Throne of Glory showing God the Father holding Christ on the cross, with a dove representing the Holy Spirit.
Later glazing
Additional glazing was installed between 1620 and 1649. François Bierges and Pierre Autipout supplied the high choir windows in 1620. Protective grilles were placed on 33 windows in 1641. Pierre Autipout glazed the three rose windows and 18 high windows in the nave, while the Flemish glazier Jacques Damen made the windows of the side chapels in 1648 and 1649.
Organs
Tribune organ
The tribune organ was made by Jean de Joyeuse between 1688 and 1694 and installed on a gallery built in 1689 by Barthélemy Duran, Pierre Duran, and Barthélemy Biamouret. It has mechanical action, four manuals, a 29-note pedalboard, 42 stops, and 3,060 pipes.
Neglected during the nineteenth century, the instrument was found silent but intact by the musicologist Norbert Dufourcq in 1932. Victor Gonzalez restored it from 1954, and it was inaugurated in 1958. Jean-François Muno restored it again between 1994 and 1998 to recover its seventeenth-century sound; the restoration was inaugurated on 9 October 1998.
Choir organ
Aristide Cavaillé-Coll built the choir organ in 1860 at the request of Archbishop Antoine de Salinis. It has mechanical action, 708 pipes, 15 stops, two manuals, and a 20-note pedalboard without independent stops. The instrument stands in a Neo-Gothic wooden case above the ante-choir arrangement.
Bells and crypt
Bell towers
Nine swinging bells are distributed between the two towers. The clock tower contains the 2.18-metre-diameter bourdon dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Cast in 1853 by Gédéon Morel of Lyon, it weighs 6,750 kilograms and sounds E2. The north tower holds the other eight bells, including one weighing 2,500 kilograms cast in 1929 by André Darricau of Tarbes and seven made by the Bollée foundry of Orléans in 1924. Their weights are 1,175, 1,050, 850, 700, 450, 300, and 260 kilograms.
Crypt
The crypt is reached from the cathedral by two stairways, although the northern stair is blocked. It compensates for the slope of the ground and is level with the courtyard of the former archbishop’s palace. Five chapels lie beneath the ambulatory chapels.
The crypt contains the tomb of Saint Leotade, bishop of Auch from 691 to 718, in a white Pyrenean-marble Merovingian sarcophagus of the Aquitanian school. The sarcophagus came from the former Saint-Orens Abbey, which was destroyed during the Revolution. The tombs of Saint Austinde and Saint Taurin, earlier bishops of Auch, are Renaissance-style carved stone sarcophagi.
Relics venerated by pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela were kept in the crypt. After its profanation in 1793, Hippolyte Durand proposed restoration in 1851, and Charles Laisné carried out the work after 1856.
