Le Mans Cathedral: A Romanesque and Gothic Cathedral in France
Site at a Glance
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- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page26 sections
History
Le Mans Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Le Mans, France, dedicated to Saint Julian of Le Mans. It is the seat of the Diocese of Le Mans and combines a Romanesque nave with a Gothic choir and transept, reflecting construction and rebuilding from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Saint Julian, traditionally regarded as the city’s first bishop, is also an important figure in Eastern Christianity.
Early cathedral and eleventh-century rebuilding
A predecessor cathedral probably stood at Le Mans in the fourth or fifth century under Bishop Innocent. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Saints Gervais and Protais, it provided the early Christian foundation for the cathedral’s later history.
In 1056, Bishop Vulgrin ordered the older building to be demolished and selected a new site opposite the city’s northern defensive wall. The replacement soon encountered structural difficulties and collapsed roughly ten years after work had begun. Bishop Arnaud, who took office in 1067, resumed construction. By 1081, the choir and crypt were complete, while the foundations of the transept and its towers had been laid. Only part of the northern transept arch survives from this phase.
Bishop Hoël continued the project from 1085 and brought builders from Normandy to Le Mans. Their methods influenced the completion of the towers and the aisles of the nave. The prolonged building campaign prevented pilgrims from reaching Saint Julian’s relics and tomb, affecting the local economy. Residents therefore compelled the builders to open the finished part of the cathedral on 17 October 1093.
Completion and Plantagenet associations
Bishop Hildebert de Lavardin took up supervision three years later and placed the work under Jean, a monk of the Abbey of the Trinity at Vendôme. The cathedral was considered complete in 1120, when Hildebert celebrated its dedication before Foulques, Count of Anjou, and Erembourg, Countess of Maine.
The building became connected with the Plantagenet dynasty, a medieval ruling family whose territories included England and western France. In 1128, Geoffroy Plantagenet, the son of Foulques and Erembourg, married Matilda, heir to the English throne, at the cathedral. Geoffroy was later buried there, and their son, the future King Henry II, was baptized in the building.
Fire, rebuilding, and the Gothic choir
A storm-triggered fire in 1134 destroyed houses on Plantagenet Hill and damaged the cathedral. Another fire struck both the city and the building four years later. The central nave and southern tower were then rebuilt, and Bishop Guillaume de Passavant inaugurated and dedicated the renewed cathedral on 18 April 1158. Work resumed in 1220.
The earlier choir was considered too narrow and dark, so a larger replacement was planned with thirteen chapels opening around the apse. The southern part of the city wall was demolished for this work in 1217 and later rebuilt with materials unlike those used by the early Plantagenet kings. Bishop Geoffroy de Loudon initiated the transformation that produced the cathedral’s later form. The new choir was completed in April 1254, followed by the construction of a sacristy connected with the ambulatory, the passage around the choir and apse.
Late medieval enlargement
The difference in height between the older nave and the new choir was considered unsatisfactory. To bring the main parts into closer alignment, the transept and nave were raised by 10 metres. Jehan le Mazçon began this work in 1385, and the southern transept was completed around 1392. An archive room was also made above the nave portal.
Construction of the northern transept began in 1403 but was interrupted by the Hundred Years’ War, the prolonged conflict chiefly between England and France that disrupted building across northern France. In 1419, concerns that the cathedral might collapse led to the consolidation of its foundations. The northern transept was completed around 1430, giving the building essentially its present overall form.
After the war, further enlargement was proposed, particularly to raise the nave, but lack of funds brought the plans to an end. King Louis XI supported restoration through letters patent issued on 21 November 1467 and renewed his royal protection in September 1482. Cardinal Philippe de Luxembourg later sponsored a jubé, a monumental rood screen separating the choir from the nave. It was destroyed in 1562, while a seventeenth-century replacement and the astronomical clock were destroyed during the eighteenth century.
Modern alteration and conservation
Bishop Louis-André de Grimaldi closed the cathedral from 1768 to 1771 for modernization. Marble was laid over the floor, the walls were painted grey-blue, and older furnishings were removed. The walls were stripped again in the nineteenth century, producing their present appearance.
A vault near the organ collapsed in 1811 or 1812 and damaged the instrument. The organ underwent major restoration from 1847 to 1853 by the Claude brothers of Mirecourt. Hail on 18 August 1858 caused extensive damage, particularly to the choir windows.
Le Mans Cathedral was placed on France’s list of historic monuments in 1862, and the instrumental section of its organ received separate protection in 1954. Atmospheric pollution and natural ageing have required almost continuous renovation. The building escaped bombing during both world wars, and its spire was restored in 2009, increasing its height by several metres. Archaeological excavations in November 2019 found a heart-shaped lead reliquary case in the upper chapel known as the Chapel of the Musician Angels.
Remains
Setting and overall structure
Le Mans Cathedral stands on Vieux-Mans hill, on a promontory between the Isaac valley and the Sarthe River. It lies northeast of the historic Plantagenet City and is bordered by the Place du Cardinal-Grente, Place Saint-Michel, the psallette and its gardens, and the Place du Jet-d’Eau. The building terminates the Grande Rue, the principal route through the old city, and is oriented from northwest to southeast.
The cathedral is approximately 134 metres long, and its tower reaches 64 metres. Its Romanesque nave is about 55 metres long and 23 metres wide, while the Gothic choir rises 10 metres above the rest of the building. The nave, choir, and transept preserve the different structural phases that shaped the cathedral over several centuries.
Romanesque exterior
Western facade
The western facade belongs to the Romanesque campaign of the twelfth century and was completed around 1110 to 1115. Three semicircular portals form its lower composition, with a large central entrance between two smaller lateral ones. Each portal is surmounted by a semicircular window, and the facade ends in a triangular gable.
Blind arcades flank the central portal. Reliefs above it show a centaur and Christ crowned and blessing. The large semicircular window has moulded bands following its arch, supported on small columns, and is framed by additional blind arcades. The gable carries a two-colour geometric checkerboard pattern. Two buttresses were added beside the central bay around 1160 to counter the pressure of the nave vaults.
Royal Portal
The richly carved southern entrance of the nave is known as the Royal Portal. Probably begun after 1145 and certainly finished before 1158, it is an important example of early Gothic sculpture. A porch was added shortly afterward. Ribbed vaulting covers the porch, which opens on three sides through slightly pointed arches.
The portal’s tympanum, the sculpted area enclosed by the arch above the entrance, presents Christ within a tetramorph, an image of the four Evangelists through symbolic figures. The lintel shows the Twelve Apostles beneath semicircular arcades. Five statue-columns representing kings and queens stand on each side of the doorjambs, while scenes from Christ’s life fill the archivolts, the moulded bands that follow the arch.
Nave, choir, and sacristy
Romanesque nave
The Romanesque nave acquired higher and wider windows during its rebuilding, together with rib vaults and strengthened pillars. Sculpted reliefs remain on the nave and its portals. Small stone figures, including birds, were informal additions made by building craftsmen and may express artistic protest or a wish for greater freedom.
Gothic choir
The Gothic choir is arranged around an apse with thirteen radiating chapels. These chapels contain altars, sculptures, and funerary monuments, while the Romanesque nave has no chapels. Their arrangement is connected by the ambulatory, the passage running behind and around the choir.
Gothic sacristy
The Gothic sacristy lies between the southern arm of the transept and the southern side of the choir, at the choir’s third bay. A monumental Baroque marble door connects it with the ambulatory. Sixteenth-century carved wooden pieces from the choir stalls were reassembled along its walls. The room also contains portraits of Le Mans bishops from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a seventeenth-century Baroque marble lavabo set in a polychrome-marble retable, and transparent eighteenth-century windows.
Stained glass and wall painting
Romanesque and Gothic windows
About twenty Romanesque stained-glass windows survive in the nave, forming one of Europe’s oldest surviving groups. The Ascension window, made around 1120, remains in its original position and is distinguished by its upward movement and vivid colours. After the Second World War, Paul and André Rault’s workshop in Rennes restored the Romanesque windows.
More numerous Gothic windows occupy mainly the upper choir and the Chapel of the Virgin. Glass made between 1230 and 1270 was financed by merchant and craft communities, including bakers, cloth merchants, winegrowers, and money changers. Several panels show these occupations. The large rose window in the northern transept dates from the fifteenth century, during the Hundred Years’ War, and represents the Credo.
Many older windows were restored in the nineteenth century. Local workshops added twentieth-century glazing, including a cycle on the life of Joan of Arc made in the 1920s. Transparent eighteenth-century windows were produced for the sacristy.
Chapel of the Virgin
The Chapel of the Virgin is the principal radiating chapel of the apse and stands on the choir’s central axis. Its wall paintings were uncovered beneath plaster in 1842. Made in the late fourteenth century, the paintings on the pointed vaults include forty-seven musician angels. They are attributed to a painter associated with the courts of Charles V and Charles VI, possibly Jean de Bruges.
Sculpture, tombs, and tapestries
Terracotta sculpture
The cathedral preserves seventeenth-century terracotta sculpture from Le Mans, including two multi-figure Entombments of Christ. The larger group, known as the Great Entombment, was made in 1621 and is attributed to Gervais Delabarre. Works attributed to Charles Hoyau include Saint Cecilia, Saint Margaret, the Virgin of Sorrows, and the Virgin and Child. These sculptures have been restored.
Funerary monuments
The funerary monument of Charles IV of Anjou, Count of Maine and Guise, who died in 1472, dates from around 1480. It is attributed to the Italo-Dalmatian sculptor Francesco Laurana and is among the earliest examples of Italian Renaissance sculpture in France. The tomb of Guillaume de Langey du Bellay dates from 1557 and is attributed to Pierre Bontemps.
Tapestry cycles
A tapestry cycle depicts the lives of Saints Gervais and Protais, whose cult was associated with the predecessor cathedral. Made in Paris around 1510 by the Flemish weaver Gauthier de Campes, the surviving group contains five tapestries with seventeen scenes from an original twenty and measures 30 metres in total.
A second cycle illustrates the life of Saint Julian. Seven of its original twelve tapestries survive, three complete and four fragmentary. Produced in Flanders or Paris in the early sixteenth century, the cycle was commissioned by Canon Baudouin de Crépy. Several seventeenth-century tapestries from the Aubusson manufactory are also preserved.
Organ, bells, and associated monuments
Principal organ
The principal organ stands at the rear of the southern transept. Pierre Bert built it between 1529 and 1535 in a Renaissance case designed and carved according to Simon Hayneufve’s instructions. Jean and François de Héman restored it in 1634, when it had 42 stops. The Claude brothers expanded it to 46 stops in 1848, and the number reached 52 in 1913.
Pierre Chéron, Joseph Beuchet, and the Danion-Gonzalez firm restored the organ from 1959 to 1963, adding mechanical work and a neo-Classical sound section. Orgues Giroud and Orgues Plet carried out another restoration from 2016 to 2018. The present instrument has 63 stops, four manuals, a pedalboard, and 4,204 pipes. Its key action is mechanical, while the stop and coupler action is electro-mechanical.
Bells and choir cross
The tower holds seven bells. One is a fourteenth-century fixed bell, or timbre, weighing about 1,200 kilograms. The other six were cast in 1859 by the Bollée foundry of Le Mans. They are Julien, weighing 6,423 kilograms; Marie, 2,580 kilograms; Gervaise, 1,788 kilograms; Protaise, 1,255 kilograms; Liboire, 1,044 kilograms; and Aldrique, approximately 772 kilograms. The belfry and bell installation underwent extensive restoration in 2014.
A cross called Christ with Open Arms was made by the artist Goudji at the request of the Diocese of Le Mans. It was blessed and installed in the choir on 20 October 2013.
Western menhir
A prehistoric sandstone menhir 4.55 metres high stands on the cathedral’s western side in Place Saint-Michel. It was moved there in 1778 after the destruction of the Pierre au lait dolmen and has been protected as a historic monument since 1889.
