Lavaur Cathedral: A Southern French Gothic Cathedral in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- County of Toulouse, French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page21 sections
History
Lavaur Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Lavaur, France, dedicated to Saint Alain of Lavaur. It is a major example of southern French Gothic architecture and developed from a Benedictine religious foundation into the cathedral of the Diocese of Lavaur.
The Benedictine Foundation
A charter dated 5 August 1098 records Izarn, Bishop of Toulouse, giving the ruined church of Saint-Elan at Lavaur to the Benedictine monks of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières. The monks were charged with rebuilding the church and establishing a priory, a religious house governed by a prior. The charter indicates that the cult of Saint Alain at Lavaur was already established before 1098, although the identity of the saint venerated there remains unknown. He is not identified with Alain de la Roche or with the Saint Alain associated with Brittany.
Between 1099 and 1211, the Benedictines built a Romanesque church for the priory. That building was destroyed during the Albigensian Crusade, a military campaign against communities regarded by the Catholic Church as heretical, during the siege of Lavaur in 1211.
Construction of the Cathedral
The present church was begun around 1255 and was built largely during the second half of the thirteenth century. Its original form consisted of a lofty single nave with five bays, each end closed by a straight wall. The church became a cathedral in 1317, when the priory was transformed into the Bishopric of Lavaur. The new status led successive bishops to enlarge the building, and work continued until the beginning of the sixteenth century.
During the fourteenth century, chapels were inserted between the external buttresses. This arrangement is described as one of the earliest of its kind in Languedoc. In the middle of the fifteenth century, a chapel dedicated to Saint Martial was constructed. It now serves as the sacristy, the room used to store liturgical objects and prepare for worship. In 1480, the canons established a chapter house beside it. A chapter house is the room where cathedral canons met for administrative and religious business, and this one was dedicated to Saint Gauthier.
The Bishops’ Building Campaigns
Bishop Jean Vigier, who held office from 1469 to 1497, initiated major works that established much of the cathedral’s present form. After commissioning a new episcopal palace north of the church, he began the western bell tower and connected it to the earlier building by adding another bay. The palace was demolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Vigier’s successor, Hector de Bourbon, completed the western tower during his episcopate from 1497 to 1500. Its carved fleur-de-lis crown commemorates the succession between the two bishops. A southern chapel and a new lateral entrance were also added in the late fifteenth century. A spire that once stood above the western tower was destroyed in 1540.
Under Bishop Simon de Beausoleil, between 1514 and 1523, the sanctuary received its polygonal eastern termination. He also commissioned a jubé, or choir screen separating the choir from the nave, modeled on the one at Albi Cathedral. The cathedral’s jubé was demolished around 1780 during the episcopate of the last Bishop of Lavaur.
Diocesan Changes and Modern Preservation
Lavaur Cathedral remained the seat of the Diocese of Lavaur from 1317 until the diocese was suppressed during the French Revolution in 1790. It was then incorporated into the Diocese of Montpellier and became dependent again on the Archdiocese of Albi in 1822. The cathedral now belongs to the Archdiocese of Albi, Castres and Lavaur. The solemnity of Saint Alain is celebrated there each year on 25 November.
The cathedral was listed as a French historic monument in 1911. Its organ and organ case, along with certain interior furnishings and artworks, also benefit from historic-monument protection. A complete interior restoration took place from 2013 to 2018. On 5 February 2019, an attempted arson attack burned one chapel, and the damaged area was subsequently restored.
Remains
Lavaur Cathedral is approximately 73 metres long and 13.8 metres wide. Its principal space is a single nave about 23 metres high and 13.6 metres wide, built mainly of brick. Stone and sandstone were used for elements such as large tower arches and windows, as well as window tracery, balustrades, and corbels. The broad nave, substantial masonry, restrained exterior treatment, and extensive brickwork express the regional tradition known as southern French Gothic.
Nave and Western Tower
The Nave
The thirteenth-century church was laid out with five bays and straight closures at both ends. The later addition of a bay beside the western tower greatly enlarged the interior. During the fourteenth century, chapels were fitted between the outer buttresses, extending the building’s liturgical spaces while preserving the broad central nave.
The Western Bell Tower
The western bell tower is a three-terraced structure approximately 42 metres high. Its upper section carries a carved fleur-de-lis crown, while the tower was originally completed with a spire that was destroyed in 1540. The tower’s connection to the earlier church through an additional bay is one of the major changes that shaped the cathedral’s present interior.
Southern Entrances and Clock Tower
The Romanesque Portal
The southern Romanesque entrance portal survives with richly carved capitals showing episodes from the childhood of Christ. It belongs to the earlier architectural history of the site and preserves sculptural work associated with the medieval entrance.
The Later Southern Entrance
A later southern entrance was placed in the bay connecting the nave and western tower. Its decoration includes pinnacles and a bishop’s coat of arms. Nearby, the cathedral’s south side contains a smaller square clock tower with a jacquemart, an automaton in human form that strikes a bell to mark the hours. The first clock mechanism and bell date from 1523, while the present, third-generation automaton was probably installed in 1604. A local legend says that the first automaton was made by a prisoner who built a wooden figure to strike the bell in his place and thereby escaped.
Chapels and Chapter House
Southern Chapels
The Flamboyant Gothic portal, with a central vertical support known as a trumeau, was added in the early fifteenth century. Two southern chapels were later built beside the portal or bell-tower porch. Their highly decorated vaults use liernes and tiercerons, stone ribs that form ornamental patterns across the ceiling. One chapel contains a richly ornamented niche with a painted and gilded wooden Pieta from the seventeenth century.
Saint Martial Chapel and Chapter House
The former Saint Martial chapel now functions as the sacristy, while the adjoining chapter house preserves later medieval and early-modern elements. The chapter house contains frescoes painted in 1730 with scenes from the history of Lavaur. Damp has destroyed much of the painting, leaving the surviving portions as evidence of its former decorative program.
Sanctuary and Episcopal Tomb
Romanesque Altar Table
The sanctuary contains a Romanesque altar table of white marble, probably from Saint-Béat. Its exact provenance remains uncertain because it was found in 1876 in the chapel of Lavaur Hospital, which was not its original location. It may have come from the cathedral or from the former Sainte-Foy church at Lavaur.
The table has a slightly hollowed upper surface and sculpted chamfered edges. Its front shows Christ blessing within a circular mandorla, an aureole surrounding a sacred figure, with angels around him. Two angels appear to support the table on its right side, while the undecorated fourth side was intended to be set into masonry. Its sculptural program is comparable to the Romanesque altar table at Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, and both works are placed in the same period by stylistic analysis. The Lavaur table was probably made by a sculptor from Moissac at the time of Bernard Gilduin’s work at Saint-Sernin. Marcel Durliat interpreted the figures on its left side as angels venerating the bread of heaven.
Tomb of Simon de Beausoleil
To the right of the apse, a recessed tomb niche called an enfeu contains the gisant of Simon de Beausoleil, a sculpted recumbent effigy of the deceased. Beausoleil was Bishop of Lavaur from 1514 to 1525 and died in 1531. The recess originally held the seats of the deacon and subdeacon. It was walled up in the eighteenth century under Bishop Antoine de Castellane and rediscovered with the tomb during repairs carried out between 1860 and 1870. The monument was restored and repainted in the nineteenth century.
Organ and Interior Furnishings
Gallery Organ
The monumental gallery organ incorporates a Renaissance case of polychrome oak made in 1524 by Nicolas Bachelier, a sculptor active in Toulouse. Aristide Cavaillé-Coll rebuilt the instrumental section, which was inaugurated in 1876, and Michel Giroud faithfully restored the instrument in 1994. The organ has more than 2,000 pipes, including 104 visible pipes in the façade, and a console facing the choir with three manuals and a pedalboard.
Paintings and Decorative Works
The north lateral chapel contains a Pieta attributed to Marc Arcis, a sculptor associated with religious sculpture. Other furnishings include an eighteenth-century lectern of wrought iron and repoussé copper by Bernard Ortet, a nineteenth-century pulpit, and a painting of the Crucifixion from the school of José de Ribera. The sanctuary also contains paintings set in Régence-style frames.
During the nineteenth century, the Italian brothers Céroni painted the nave and choir in grisaille, a technique that uses shades of gray to imitate relief. Louis Cazottes added frescoes to several chapels. Immediately north of the cathedral, the Bishop’s Garden contains a statue of Emmanuel, Count of Las Cases, who accompanied Napoleon during his exile on Saint Helena.
