Laon Cathedral: An Early Gothic Cathedral in France
Site at a Glance
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- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page23 sections
History
Laon Cathedral is a Catholic church in Laon, France, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and built by medieval French builders in the early Gothic period, principally between about 1155 and 1235. Formerly the seat of the Diocese of Laon, it is now a parish church in the Diocese of Soissons. The cathedral stands on the summit of Laon’s hill, where it developed through several earlier buildings and became an influential example of the formative phase of French Gothic architecture.
Early Episcopal Cathedral
The Diocese of Laon was created by dividing the Diocese of Reims, probably in the late fifth or sixth century. An early cathedral probably stood on the hilltop, although its form is unknown. Bishop Gerfid later rebuilt the church as a Carolingian cathedral dedicated to the Savior and Saint Mary. The building was consecrated on 6 September 800 in the presence of Charlemagne, king of the Franks and later Western emperor.
Under Bishop Élinand, construction of a Romanesque cathedral began in 1052. Romanesque architecture was the medieval style that preceded the Gothic, generally characterized by heavy masonry and rounded arches. The new church was inaugurated on 25 December 1071 during the second coronation of Philip I, king of France. A communal uprising on 25 April 1112 seriously damaged the cathedral without completely destroying it. Repairs followed, and Bishop Bartholomew of Jur rededicated the church in 1114.
Construction of the Gothic Cathedral
The present cathedral replaced the earlier sanctuary on the same site. Work began under Bishop Walter de Mortagne around 1155 and continued in successive campaigns until about 1235. Construction started with the choir and transept, allowing the church to accommodate pilgrims while other parts were still being built. The relics of Saint Beatus were translated to Laon in 1164.
Between about 1170 and 1175, builders concentrated on the north transept end, its portals, and the adjoining bays. The capital forms and pier profiles developed during this campaign were used in later parts of the building. From about 1175 to 1185, work advanced on the transept, its north and south portals, the lantern tower above the crossing, and the eastern bays of the nave. The north transept tower became known as the Thomas Becket Tower, recalling Thomas Becket’s passage through Laon in 1163. Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in 1170 after his conflict with King Henry II and was later venerated as a martyr. The opposite transept tower became known as the Clock Tower.
The north rose window, associated with the liberal arts, was installed around 1180. The nave and west facade were completed around 1200. The original choir, only three bays deep, soon proved too small and was demolished. Between 1205 and 1220 it was replaced by the present ten-bay, flat-ended choir. The cathedral was dedicated around 1235–1238, and spires were added to the southwest tower and the south transept tower in 1250.
Architectural Influence and Later Medieval Changes
Laon Cathedral belongs to the early, or primitive, phase of French Gothic architecture. Its construction followed major early Gothic projects at Saint-Denis, Noyon, and Sens and was contemporary with Notre-Dame de Paris. Its design influenced later cathedrals at Bamberg, Magdeburg, Limbourg, and Chartres.
During the fourteenth century, 27 chapels were built between the exterior buttresses. The south transept facade was partly altered during the same period, when two doors were opened at its base and the original rose window was replaced by a large pointed-arch window. From 1555 to 1697, the chapels were progressively enclosed by stone screens.
Damage, Restoration, and Changing Status
An earthquake on 18 September 1692 shook the lantern spire, which later fell. A major storm struck in 1705. In 1772, the lintel of the central portal was raised to make it easier for processional canopies to pass through.
The French Revolution brought further destruction in 1793. The spire of the southwest tower, the belfry between the west towers, and part of the portal sculpture were demolished or destroyed. The west facade subsequently settled by about 80 centimeters, leading to restoration under Émile Boeswillwald from 1853. Laon Cathedral had been protected as a historic monument since 1840, and the cloister received protection in 1889. Major restoration campaigns continued through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including work carried out between 1853 and 1913.
An explosion at a nearby powder magazine in 1870 destroyed many windows and killed approximately 500 people. Fragments of the eastern glazing were collected, but half of the north rose glazing was lost, while the chapel windows could not be recovered. Restoration continued until 1914, and later work removed some Baroque additions.
The Diocese of Laon was suppressed and incorporated into the Diocese of Soissons in 1801. The former cathedral consequently became a parish church, now associated with the Sainte-Céline de la Montagne Couronnée parish. The building belongs to the municipality of Laon. Its religious and cultural use continues through parish worship, the chapel treasury, and a conservatory responsible for preserving the sacred-art collection and making the treasury accessible.
Laon was occupied by the German army from 2 September 1914 to 13 October 1918, but the cathedral suffered no destruction because the city lay outside the combat zone. It was also spared during British air raids on Laon in April 1944. The evacuation of explosives placed around the cathedral was reportedly secured through the intervention of Abbé Robert Lavarte.
Remains
Laon Cathedral occupies the summit of the “Laon mountain,” about 100 meters above the surrounding plain. Its Latin-cross plan consists of an eleven-bay nave, two aisles, a transept, and a choir. Major west, north, and south facades contain monumental portals. The building is approximately 110.50 meters long and 30.65 meters wide. It is built mainly of Lutetian limestone containing ditrupa fossils, while finer limestone containing milioles was used for portal sculpture. Stone came from underground quarries beneath Laon and from other Tertiary hills around the city.
Exterior Towers and Facades
West Towers
The cathedral was originally planned with seven towers, while five major towers rise substantially today. The two west facade towers begin with square lower stages containing paired openings fitted with sound shutters and corner turrets. Their upper stages are octagonal, with hollow corner turrets intended to reduce wind pressure. Balustraded terraces terminate the towers. The southwest tower, known as the Saint Paul Tower, formerly carried a high stone spire that was demolished in 1793. Sixteen life-size stone oxen stand on the upper intermediate platforms of the corner turrets of the four bell towers. Their meaning remains uncertain. A later legend associates them with oxen that hauled limestone from nearby quarries, including quarries at Chermizy more than 15 kilometers away, but no securely established religious symbolism is known.
Lantern and Transept Towers
The lantern tower rises above the crossing, the central space where the nave, choir, and transept meet, and admits light into the interior. Its square lower structure has a blind triforium, a gallery-like middle level, and eight large arches, two on each side. Above these are eight windows, also arranged as two on each side. The crossing rises more than 30 meters internally and about 48 meters externally. The lantern tower reaches about 42 meters.
The north transept tower, called the Thomas Becket Tower, is about 56 meters high and more slender than the west towers. An unfinished tower stands on the opposite side of the double north transept portal. The Clock Tower on the other transept side is hollow through three levels and has octagonal corner turrets on its upper stages. It was reportedly a model for the towers of Bamberg Cathedral. The eastern towers at the transept ends were left incomplete, with their upper stages unfinished.
West Facade
The west facade projects beyond the width of the nave and provides lateral support. Its ground level contains three porches and three deeply recessed portals. Above them is a wheel-like rose window with twelve stone spokes and two tall side windows. An open gallery follows, with a central section rising above the lateral sections, and a sculptural group of the Virgin surrounded by two angels stands above the central gallery. Individual porches, triangular gables, towers, corner turrets, and receding vertical layers give the facade a strongly articulated composition. The facade combines early Gothic features with elements inspired by older Carolingian architecture and was substantially reworked during nineteenth-century repairs.
Medieval sculpture survives in the tympana and archivolts of the west portals. A tympanum is the field enclosed by a portal arch, while an archivolt is a band of molding or sculpture that follows the curve of the arch. The central portal’s lintel was destroyed in the seventeenth century, and sculptures on the jambs were destroyed during the Revolution. Its tympanum shows the seated Virgin Mary with the seated Christ, angels, and other Marian imagery. The archivolts contain angels, the Tree of Jesse, which traces Christ’s ancestry through Jesse and the kings of Judah, and prophets. Traces of polychromy, or colored surface decoration, remain.
Portal Sculpture
The tympanum and first two archivolts of the Last Judgment portal date from about 1160, while the other three archivolts date from the late twelfth century. The sculpture presents Christ in Majesty, angels carrying the instruments of the Passion, the Virgin and apostles, the resurrection of the dead, and Saint Michael separating the condemned from the elect. The blessed enter Paradise, while the outer archivolt illustrates the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, which contrasts spiritual preparedness with unpreparedness.
The Nativity portal shows the Virgin lying beside the infant Christ, who rests on an altar of sacrifice. Curtains and a lamp frame the scene, which also includes the ox, ass, shepherds, Magi, Joseph, and an angel. Its archivolts contain angels, the struggle between virtues and vices, prophets, biblical figures, and Charity giving her cloak to a poor man.
Nave and Transept
Nave
The nave has eleven bays and sexpartite vaults, ribbed vaults divided into six sections, except in the first bay. Its elevation rises through four levels: pointed main arcades, open galleries, a blind triforium, and clerestory windows. Alternating strong and weak circular supports carry the arcades. The stronger supports receive five ribs, while the weaker supports receive three. The two strong piers nearest the crossing consist of a central round column surrounded by five shafts.
The aisles on either side of the central vessel have quadripartite vaults, each divided into four sections. Twenty-seven chapels were built between the exterior buttresses, giving the cathedral 28 chapels distributed along its sides. The chapel of the Blessed Sacrament near the south transept retains eighteenth-century stone screens on two sides. A chapel opening toward the north transept houses a thirteenth-century wooden icon of the Holy Face, reportedly presented by Pope Urban IV. The Saint Nicaise Chapel houses the cathedral treasury.
Transept
Built mainly between about 1170 and 1185, the transept is unusually extensive, with broad aisles and four bays in each arm. Each arm ends in a two-level apsidiole, a small apse-like termination attached to a larger liturgical space. The elevation repeats the nave’s arrangement of arcades, galleries, triforium, and upper windows. The north transept rose is associated with the liberal arts. Its stained glass was made in 1865 to a design by Adolphe Charles Edouard Steinheil. The south transept rose was later replaced by a pointed-arch window with High Gothic tracery.
Choir and Eastern Glazing
Choir Structure
The choir is slightly misaligned with the nave and now ends in a flat wall. Its central vessel has five bays, while each lateral aisle has ten bays. The eastern wall contains three tall pointed windows below a large rose window. The lower part projects outward and contains three large pointed niches separated by compound piers, with each niche corresponding to a tall window. The present rectangular form replaced an earlier plan for a semicircular or shallow rounded termination between 1205 and 1220. Its flat-ended design reflects Anglo-Norman and English influence and creates visual unity with the flat ends of the transept.
Choir Windows
The central eastern window depicts the Passion of Christ in fifteen episodes, from the Entry into Jerusalem to the Ascension. The choir rose, approximately 9 meters in diameter, presents the Glorification of the Virgin Mary. Its composition includes the enthroned Virgin and Child, angels, Isaiah, John the Baptist, the Twelve Apostles, and the Elders of the Apocalypse. Made around 1210–1215, the rose was badly damaged by the 1870 powder-magazine explosion, integrally restored afterward, and conservatively restored between 1989 and 1991.
The other two choir windows also date from about 1215 and were restored after the 1870 explosion. Beneath the right-hand window, a fourteenth-century painted-stucco high relief depicts Christ on the cross between the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist. Surviving color on architectural details and portal sculpture, especially in lower arcades and areas formerly protected by later installations, indicates that the cathedral originally made extensive use of polychromy.
Choir Furnishings
An elaborate wrought-iron grille encloses the choir. Gilded and painted during the first half of the eighteenth century, it probably came from the Celestine convent at Villeneuve-Saint-Germain. It was transferred to Laon in 1806, installed in 1807, restored in Paris in 1887, and extended by one panel at each end. Its central medallion is by Geoffroy Dechaume.
A central eighteenth-century altar in front of the choir probably came from Saint-Martin Abbey. It carries medallions of saints and animal figures. The choir also contains wooden stalls and a choir organ on the north side. The stalls comprise 47 oak seats arranged in two rows, with carved woodwork and low backs, and date from the eighteenth century.
The later high altar was made between 1906 and 1913 in a Neo-Gothic style, replacing a Baroque altar. It is formed from white marble with bronze and colored-glass inserts. Reliefs show the Virgin and Child, Saint Remigius, Saint Beatus, Saint Genebald, and Saint Canoel. Bronze figures of the Twelve Apostles stand around a tabernacle beneath a tall Neo-Gothic canopy.
Treasury, Artworks, and Liturgical Objects
The treasury contains approximately twenty reliquaries, containers for saints’ relics, along with ciboria, chalices, crosses, processional staffs, monstrances, processional banners, chasubles, a sixteenth-century Bible, a reredos, an altar with reredos, and the Holy Face icon. The collection includes objects entered in the French Palissy cultural-property database.
The Holy Face is a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century icon from Serbia. Jacques Pantaléon, then an archdeacon of Laon and later Pope Urban IV, acquired it at Bari in 1249. Other surviving works include a fourteenth-century wall painting and high relief of Christ on the cross, an anonymous Adoration of the Magi from around the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, two Assumption paintings by Jean-Simon Berthélemy dated 1766 and 1790, and an anonymous nineteenth-century Christ on the cross.
The baptismal font is made of Tournai stone and dates from the second half of the twelfth century. Its shallow relief shows foliage, a bird, and a dog, with the dog symbolizing fidelity. On the north side of the nave, the pulpit by Michel Ducastel has an octagonal platform carried on a projecting wooden structure, a concealed staircase, a carved back, and a five-sided domed soundboard.
Organs and Bells
Main Organ
The main organ retains the Baroque case of an earlier instrument made by Pierre Puget in 1698. Its present instrumental section was built by Henri Didier in 1899. It has three manuals of 56 notes, a 30-note pedalboard, and 54 stops, with mechanical action that includes a Barker lever for the stops. The case and instrumental section were separately protected as historic monuments in 1971 and 1979.
Choir Organ and Bells
A second organ, also built by Henri Didier late in the nineteenth century, stands beneath the second left arch of the choir. Its Neo-Gothic case has five bays and entirely mechanical action. The instrument has two manuals of 56 notes with 54 playable notes and a straight 25-note pedalboard.
Five swinging bells were cast by the Paccard foundry of Annecy in 1927 and baptized on Easter Monday, 18 April 1927. They are named Leonie-Marie-Therese, Marguerite-Berthe-Marie, Jeanne-Christiane, Marie-Bernadette-Therese, and Jacqueline-Francoise-Marguerite. Their stated weights are approximately 2,999, 2,135, 1,491, 1,190, and 835 kilograms respectively.
Cloister
The cloister lies along the south side of the nave, between the former Hotel-Dieu of Laon and the south portal. Its surviving arrangement consists of a seven-bay gallery facing the church, with a return toward the cathedral at each end. The resulting plan is approximately seven times longer than it is wide.
