Laval Cathedral: A Roman Catholic Cathedral in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page12 sections
History
Laval Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Laval, France, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Christian doctrine of one God in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It began as a medieval parish chapel in the eleventh century and developed through Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, neo-Romanesque, and early-twentieth-century phases. Since 1855, it has been the seat of the Diocese of Laval, a territorial district governed by a bishop.
From chapel to parish church
The church’s foundation remains historically disputed, but it was probably begun around 1070 by monks of La Couture Abbey near Le Mans. The nearby priory of Notre-Dame de Pritz, a smaller monastic institution associated with the territory around early Laval, was difficult to reach during wartime. A church within the town’s fortifications offered a more practical place of worship as Laval developed around its castle. An expenditure note written by a monk of La Couture in the eleventh century provides the earliest written mention of the church and refers to its original plan.
The first building was a small Romanesque church, probably serving the settlement that was forming around the castle. Between 1150 and 1185 it became a parish church. This change brought a major enlargement. Angevin Gothic vaults, a western French form of Gothic architecture characterized by strongly domed rib vaults, were inserted into the earlier nave, and the tower was rebuilt. The work required the reinforcement of the original pillars, which projected substantially on both the inside and outside of the building.
A fire connected with celebrations for Guy X de Laval’s accession as count in 1333, or otherwise assigned to the fourteenth century, destroyed the spire. It was rebuilt on the same plan. Lightning caused a second major fire in 1383, melting the lead roof so that the metal flowed in streams. These disasters formed part of a period of wider instability, as Laval was captured by the English during the Hundred Years’ War, the long conflict between the English and French crowns, and later retaken by the French.
Rebuilding after the Hundred Years’ War
Damage from the war was followed by extensive rebuilding in the second half of the fifteenth century. Laval recovered through the textile trade and demographic growth, allowing parishioners and local patrons to improve the church. A sacristy was built against the south-west wall of the nave in 1462, and a new porch followed in 1465. In 1482 the Romanesque choir was demolished and replaced on a larger area that incorporated land from an older cemetery.
The sixteenth century brought further expansion, although the site was restricted by the former cemetery, Rue Renaise, and the fortifications along the south-west side. Parishioners resisted Guy XVI de Laval’s claim to be regarded as the church’s founder and took legal action against him. In 1516 an uprising forced the count to flee Laval. Two chapels were then built at parish expense to the north-west of the choir between 1517 and 1541.
The Laval family contributed to the church’s decoration. Guy XVII de Laval and his wife donated two stained-glass windows in 1542. François de Laval commissioned another window dated 1543 and one for the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Pitié dated 1556. The latter works have not survived. The spire was destroyed by fire on 16 January 1563 and was never rebuilt. A small square tower replaced it. Construction of the transept portal, the entrance associated with the crosswise arm of the church, was completed in 1597 after interruption during the Wars of Religion, the French conflicts between Catholics and Protestants from 1583 to 1595.
Confessional violence and eighteenth-century repairs
On 28 May 1600, the parish priest Antoine Besnier was shot with an arquebus at the altar. The motive and the identity of the killer remained unknown, although Protestants were suspected and the name of René Duboys de Mesneuf circulated. An annual service was established in Besnier’s memory. The door from which the shot was fired was walled up, and the resulting recess later became a chapel for the baptismal font.
A storm on 2 February 1701 destroyed about 40 feet of the high roof structure over the nave. Some of the wreckage fell onto the vault and some onto a neighbouring house, and three women were killed in the panic that followed. The vault itself remained standing, but repairs and strengthening proved more extensive than first expected. An access staircase was built in 1734.
Before the French Revolution, the church contained fifteen altars and several large retables, ornamental structures placed behind altars and incorporating architectural framing, sculpture, or paintings. A principal altar with marble steps and credence tables was installed in the mid-eighteenth century, and an organ gallery was built in 1770. During the Revolution, the church was damaged and converted into a Temple of Reason for the Cult of Reason and the Supreme Being. Many statues and ornaments were broken. The statue of the Virgin was spared and transformed into a statue of Liberty.
Cathedral status and nineteenth-century transformation
The medieval fortifications near the church were demolished around 1840, creating room for enlargement. In the same year, the cathedral was designated a protected historic monument as one of 1,034 ancient and medieval monuments selected for protection. Between 1847 and 1850, a south-west transept arm and a choir aisle were constructed in the neo-Romanesque style, balancing the earlier sixteenth-century extensions.
In 1855, the church became a cathedral when the Diocese of Laval was created from parts of the dioceses of Angers and Le Mans. As a cathedral, it became state property under the 1905 law separating church and state, while remaining assigned to religious worship. Renovation began in 1885. The nave’s pillars and buttresses were strengthened after storm damage, the cracked south facade was rebuilt in neo-Romanesque form between 1889 and 1900, and a new sacristy was added in 1897.
The crossing tower, which rises above the central junction of the church, was altered at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its supports were replaced by thinner granite columns in 1900, and the tower received an additional granite storey in 1904–1905, based on the tower of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. These interventions gave Laval Cathedral its present composite character, in which medieval fabric and later rebuilding remain joined within one structure.
The cathedral forms part of the Trinité-Avesnières-Cordeliers parish, which has been entrusted to the Community of Saint Martin, a Roman Catholic religious community serving parishes and ecclesiastical institutions, since 2019. It continues to be used for Roman Catholic worship.
Remains
Site, plan, and nave
Laval Cathedral stands in central Laval between Place Hardy-de-Lévaré and Place de la Trémoille. It occupies the former fortified area above the Mayenne River and is oriented south-east rather than east because the original site was too confined. Its irregular Latin-cross plan reflects repeated enlargement and alteration. The nave retains approximately the dimensions of the eleventh-century church, while most of the eastern parts belong to later rebuilding.
The original church was a small single-nave Romanesque building with a narrow transept, a crossing tower, and a choir ending in a half-dome apse flanked by two small apses. The choir stood on an earthen platform. The present nave is a single vessel divided into three square bays on two levels. Its surviving Romanesque features include the large semicircular arch between the nave and transept, the former passageways beside that arch, and the Romanesque nave pillars.
The twelfth-century vaults are strongly convex rib vaults of the Angevin Gothic type, inspired by those of Saint-Maurice Cathedral in Angers. Their insertion required the eleventh-century pillars to be enlarged, with the strengthened supports projecting about one metre on both the interior and exterior. Each bay is lit by two paired windows with semicircular arches. The outer bay alone has lierne ribs, secondary ribs forming patterns within the vault, and its keystone bears an Agnus Dei, or Lamb of God, a Christian symbol representing Jesus Christ. Its different treatment indicates that it was the last bay constructed, after work had begun at the transept.
Transepts and choir
The present transept combines sixteenth- and nineteenth-century work and occupies a different position from the medieval transept, which disappeared when the choir was enlarged. The former last bay of the nave now serves as the crossing. The north-east transept arm belongs to the sixteenth century. Building it required part of the nave wall to be demolished, and the new arm was constructed in tuffeau, a local limestone, beneath an oval domed vault divided into geometric panels. A central opening originally held a window that provided light from above.
The south-west transept arm was built in the nineteenth century in a neo-Romanesque style. It likewise required the removal of part of the nave wall and consumed part of the fifteenth-century sacristy. Its form was designed to balance the sixteenth-century arm. Pierre Guillot built its coffered vault in 1575 and began the south portal; after his death around 1593, Jean Guillot completed the portal and its gable.
The choir incorporates fragments of the Romanesque eastern end but is structurally defined by the larger fifteenth-century rebuilding. That choir had a flat Gothic termination flanked by two rectangular chapels. It was widened on both sides in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and is now almost as broad as the transept. The sixteenth-century ambulatory, a passage running around or behind the choir, contains small vaults with flat, round keystones that echo the oval shape of the contemporary transept dome. The granite columns installed in the early twentieth century opened up the former eleventh-century crossing, which had restricted the choir.
Towers, portals, and screen
The square crossing tower has occupied the central junction since the eleventh century. Its lower section dates from the twelfth century and contains paired openings surrounded by moulded stone frames. The original spire was destroyed by fire in the fourteenth century and again in 1563. The present upper storey, added in 1905, is built of granite, has wider paired openings, and carries a slate roof.
The sixteenth-century transept portal combines Renaissance and emerging Classical features with medieval elements. Registers, Corinthian columns, entablatures, and an antique-style arrangement recall the retables produced by the Laval school in the seventeenth century, while a Romanesque arch rises above the doorway. Its niches originally held stone statues that were removed during the Revolution. Replacement statues installed in 1853 were removed in 2010 and replaced by copies. They represent Saints Ambrose, Leo, Bernard, Augustine, Gregory, and Benedict.
The south transept portal is nineteenth-century and neo-Romanesque. The medieval Romanesque nave portal opens onto a narrow street. The 1709 wooden screen enclosing the north transept portal has carved fluted Corinthian pilasters, projecting cornices, and triangular radiant motifs symbolizing the Trinity. Its upper section supports a flower basket.
Altars, organ, and retables
The eighteenth-century furnishings include the organ gallery, whose ironwork balustrade rests on Corinthian columns, an oval red-marble baptismal font beneath it, and a polychrome wooden crucifix. The pulpit dates from 1803. A second marble holy-water basin dates from 1554 and may be Laval’s earliest marble work.
The gallery organ was built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1853, with 26 stops on two manuals and pedal, after a subscription raised the previous year. Jean Renaud restored it in 1980, and it now has 28 stops on two manuals and pedal. The original large organ was transferred to the parish of Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron.
The main retable is attributed to Pierre Corbineau and represents the seventeenth-century Laval school, a regional tradition of church sculpture and retable-making whose influence extended across western France. About eight metres high, it combines a limestone structure with marble columns and inlays. Terracotta statues of Saint John, Saint Peter, and the Trinity occupy the composition. Its central painting is signed “P. Le tourneur fecit 1640,” and an escutcheon places its creation between 1633 and 1640.
The Communion altar, installed in the aisle in 1812, incorporates elements from the demolished Saint Michael altar of the Cordeliers church, including pairs of marble columns, small entablatures, and a curved broken pediment. Another seventeenth-century retable, dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament, also came from the Cordeliers church. Made by François II Houdault, it has black marble columns from Louverné, carved friezes, a cornice, a garland, a structure containing a statue of the Virgin, and baskets of flowers and fruit.
The Blessed Sacrament retable was originally dedicated to Saint Anthony and later held a painting of Saint Charles. It was altered and dedicated to the Sacred Heart in 1853. Its central painting, a copy of a work by Pierre Mignard, shows Charles Borromeo giving Communion to plague victims and includes a representation of Abbé Matagrin. The painting returned to its original position at the end of the twentieth century.
Paintings, sculpture, and tapestries
The cathedral contains Louis Boullogne’s Adoration of the Magi and a Last Supper attributed to Philippe de Champaigne. A sixteenth-century triptych attributed to Pieter Aertsen presents the history of Saint John the Baptist. Its central panel depicts John’s beheading in a Flemish town, where halberdiers and physicians appear in sixteenth-century dress. The side panels show John preaching in the desert and the Baptism of Christ. The exterior presents the beheading ordered by Herod Antipas, and the work uses strong contrasts of light and dark.
A polychrome wooden Virgin and Child of unknown provenance, formerly located in Laval’s market halls, was installed in the cathedral in 1892. It is known as the Virgin of the Market Halls. A Carrara-marble Virgin of the Magnificat, donated by a Laval merchant in 1683 and inspired by Bernini, was renamed the Goddess of Reason during the Revolution to protect it from destruction.
Two terracotta statuettes probably from the Patience convent represent Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi. They are characteristic of the Le Mans school and are attributed to Charles Hoyau. Other sculpture includes an eighteenth-century natural-wood statue probably representing Tugdual of Tréguier, Laval’s patron saint, and a seventeenth-century polychrome stone statue of Saint Anne teaching the Virgin. An eighteenth-century wooden bas-relief depicts the Baptism of Christ. It came from a private chapel built in 1701 and destroyed in 1944. Another bas-relief represents the fourteen martyrs of Laval.
Six tapestries displayed in the nave illustrate the Book of Judith. Made during the second half of the seventeenth century by a workshop at Felletin near Aubusson, they probably came from the Benedictine convent formerly on Place de Hercé. Their scenes show Judith being implored by the people of Bethulia, praying, going to Holofernes’ camp, appearing before Holofernes, beheading Holofernes, and returning to Bethulia. The figures wear Oriental dress, while Judith is consistently identified by her clothing. The tapestries were stolen on 24 October 1991, recovered on 7 November, and returned to display in 1996.
Tombs and episcopal memorials
The nave contains the recumbent effigy of Guillaume Ouvrouin, bishop of Rennes, who died in 1347. His tomb originally stood in a cemetery and was transferred to the cathedral in 1808. Before that transfer, the same wall recess had contained the remains of a fourteenth-century Laval bourgeois couple.
The cathedral also preserves burials or funerary memorials for the bishops Casimir Wicart, Jules-Denis Le Hardy du Marais, Victor Maréchal, Louis Bougaud, Jules Cléret, Eugène Grellier, Jacques Guilhem, and Paul-Louis Carrière. These include the bishops’ crypt, commemorative plaques, and monuments. Two bronze statues by J. Blanchard and the Thiébaut brothers represent later nineteenth-century bishops: Casimir Alexis Joseph Wicart kneels in supplication in a work dated 1898, while Émile Bougaud is shown recumbent.
