Noyon Cathedral: An Early Gothic Cathedral in France
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- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
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- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page21 sections
History
Noyon Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in France, rebuilt in the early Gothic style during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries after the fire of 1131. It served as the seat of the bishopric of Noyon from the mid-sixth century until 1790 and remains dedicated to Notre-Dame, with an association with the parish of Saint-Éloi de Noyon.
The first cathedrals
A first cathedral was probably built in the early sixth century, possibly when Bishop Medard transferred the episcopal seat from Vermand to the fortified town of Noyon in 531. The church is attested by about 658–659, when it was apparently already in poor condition. A fire devastated Noyon in 676 and probably destroyed the building. A tradition in the life of Saint Godeberthe holds that she miraculously protected the cathedral from the flames, but the church was probably rebuilt after the disaster.
This successor may have been the cathedral in which Charlemagne was crowned king of the Franks in 768. A Norman attack in 859 brought further destruction, as the town was plundered and its inhabitants were massacred. A rebuilt cathedral is mentioned in the annals of Flodoard in 932 and apparently occupied approximately the same area as the present building. Excavations conducted in 1921–1923 found no remains of the first three cathedrals.
From the Carolingian church to the Gothic rebuilding
Some researchers, including Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis, proposed that a fourth cathedral was built in the eleventh century. That interpretation is now questioned. The earlier Carolingian cathedral was probably restored and redecorated at the end of the eleventh century instead.
Another major fire destroyed the cathedral and much of Noyon in 1131. The decision to construct the present church was made in 1148, probably on the site of the damaged Carolingian building. Construction is conventionally dated from 1145, although the precise beginning of the campaign remains uncertain. Bishop Baudouin II initiated the Gothic rebuilding, beginning with the radiating chapels after 1150. The translation of Saint Éloi’s relics in 1157 probably helped finance the work, while the translation of Saint Godeberthe’s relics in 1167 likely served a similar purpose.
The lower parts of the transept were under construction by 1167. The transept and the adjoining episcopal Chapel of Saint Nicholas may have been completed around 1183. An episcopal regulation of 1185 indicates that the chevet, transept, and eastern bays of the nave were substantially complete by that time. The nave and west façade were finished by 1231, when an act required the great bells to be rung. The principal construction period is generally given as 1145–1235, although work continued afterward.
Medieval alteration and repair
A three-gallery cloister was built approximately during the 1240s–1250s. Its west gallery adjoined the chapter room, while its east side adjoined the sacristy, which was built in the fourteenth century. A fire on 19 July 1293 particularly damaged the western part of the cathedral and weakened its structure. Some pillars had a documented deviation of 30 centimetres between their bases and tops. The north tower was restored, the north nave chapels were added soon afterward, and one chapel was added on the south side. The six-part vaults damaged in the fire were subsequently replaced by four-part vaults.
During the fifteenth century, the master masons Florent Bleuet and Pierre Tarisel restored the north tower of the chevet, the pillars of the straight choral bays, vaults in two bays of the south transept, several nave vaults, the north façade tower, and several flying buttresses. The eastern towers were lowered to their lower level in 1450. The crossing vault collapsed and was renewed in 1462.
Later changes and the Revolution
Seventeenth-century work altered the chevet towers and introduced new decorative elements. A further campaign in 1747–1753 changed the chevet, apse, and upper-level external supports. These interventions affected the appearance and structure of the eastern end before the later restorations.
The French Revolution caused serious damage to the cathedral. Statues on the west façade, furnishings, and the bishops’ tombs were destroyed. The building stood empty and was offered for sale as national property, but no buyer was found. Worship resumed in 1799, before the 1801 Concordat, the agreement that reorganized relations between the French state and the Catholic Church.
Protection, war damage, and restoration
Noyon Cathedral was placed on France’s first list of historic monuments in 1840. The chapter house and cloister received protection in 1862, followed by the chapter library in 1889. Restoration began in 1843 and continued from 1860 to 1872, with extensive work on the chevet, high windows, and other parts of the fabric. Work in 1884 transformed the south transept.
Bombardment during the First World War caused severe damage. On 1 April 1918, the collapse of the burning fourteenth-century roof structure brought down vaults and parts of the upper walls, and almost all surviving windows were lost. Artillery also heavily damaged the west façade. Reconstruction and restoration lasted from 1918 to 1938 under André Collin, chief architect of historic monuments for the Oise. This campaign placed greater emphasis on respecting surviving fabric than the nineteenth-century restorations, while photographic records made during the work improved later archaeological analysis of the building.
The main organ was destroyed in the bombardments of 1918. An Auguste Convers organ acquired in 1941 was never installed and was sold in the late 1980s. A new instrument was commissioned from Henri Saby, who reused pipework from the former Merklin organ of the Prat Hall in Marseille. It was inaugurated in 2005. The choir organ was built in 1704 by the organ builder Selmersheim with two manuals, a pedalboard, and sixteen stops. John Abbey rebuilt it in 1928 with pneumatic action and a Neo-Gothic façade; Beuchet-Debierre restored it in 1952, and it was rebuilt again in 1988–1989. Since September 2013, a Sunday evening Mass has been celebrated according to the traditional Latin rite, using practices that predate the liturgical reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council.
Remains
Overall plan and eastern end
Noyon Cathedral is an early Gothic church on a Latin-cross plan, with three aisles and upper galleries above the side aisles. This arrangement is known as a gallery basilica. The building is oriented toward the east and measures 103.11 metres externally and 91.33 metres internally. The transept is 48.6 metres long, while the west façade is 32.8 metres wide. The nave measures 10.23 metres between the column axes, and each aisle is 4.75 metres wide. The nave vaults rise to 22.73 metres, compared with 8.77 metres for the nave aisles.
The chevet
The chevet, the eastern termination containing the choir, apse, ambulatory, and chapels, consists of three rectangular bays and a semicircular apse. Side aisles, two square corner towers, four rectangular chapels, and five shallow semicircular radiating chapels surround it. The lower external courses are built of sandstone and do not follow the outline of the present cathedral, possibly preserving traces of an early rebuilding project begun after the fire of 1131 by Bishop Simon of Vermandois. Above this level rises the early Gothic chevet.
The five radiating chapels are the oldest part of the surviving building. Each has two windows separated externally by a column-like buttress. Flying buttresses, exterior arches that transfer the thrust of vaults to supports outside the main wall, spring between the chapels and support the outer gallery wall. The high choir originally lacked external buttresses, but additional supports were installed in the eighteenth century. The steep roof was rebuilt after the First World War on the model of the fourteenth-century roof constructed after the fire of 1293.
The transept
Each arm of the transept ends in a rounded apse, an exceptionally rare arrangement among early Gothic cathedrals. The arms repeat the basic model of the chevet but do not have its side aisles, ambulatory, or chapels. Each opens eastward through a porch. The north transept portal is dedicated to Saint Peter, although its sculpture was almost entirely destroyed during the Revolution.
The transept consists of two straight bays followed by a five-sided apse. Its lower level combines a base with wall arcades and a large applied arcade framing a small niche. Above it is a blind triforium, an arcaded passage or arcade set above the main openings. The two upper levels are lit by paired openings, with the highest openings set directly through the wall. The transept is 9.6 metres wide internally.
Nave and west façade
The nave elevation
The nave contains eleven bays, including the western bay, which forms a small internal transept. Its four-level elevation comprises pointed great arcades opening onto the aisles, galleries, a blind triforium, and a high-window level. The upper levels retain semicircular arches, while pointed arches appear in the great arcades and galleries. The nave was probably built mainly between about 1180 and 1205.
Clustered-column piers alternate with single-cylinder piers. The arrangement initially appears to have been intended for sexpartite vaulting, which divides a bay into six sections, but technical problems in balancing the loads led to the adoption of quadripartite vaults, divided into four sections. The alternating supports were retained for aesthetic reasons. The galleries contain paired openings with trefoil-traceried oculi and finely wrought-iron balustrades. Above them, the blind triforium has four small arches per bay, while the high-window level consists of paired openings.
The nave chapels
Six lateral chapels open from the north nave aisle. Three much larger chapels occupy the south aisle and date from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The central sixteenth-century chapel, Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, is especially richly decorated and belongs to the architectural tradition of the reign of Francis I.
The west façade
The west façade has a three-portal porch added in the fourteenth century. Its side walls are thick, and two buttresses were inserted between the arcades during the same period. Revolutionary destruction left the three portals in fragments. Their lower jambs, central supports, and lintels carried floral decoration, while the jamb statues were lost. The central portal represented the Last Judgment.
The portals resemble those of Amiens Cathedral, produced around 1225–1235, suggesting that the Noyon sculpture dates from approximately 1230–1235. Above them are three groups of round-headed windows set within pointed arches. The central group was modified after the fire of 1293 and may previously have contained either a tripartite window or a rose window. A gallery of six slender arcades runs across each of the three divisions of the façade’s third level. The south tower retains three tall pointed arcades on each face. The altered north tower has two openings on each face, each containing paired lancets surmounted by a rose. The planned spires were never built, and the north tower is higher and more richly decorated than the south tower.
Choir, vaults, and materials
The choir interior
The choir has four levels separated by arcades, galleries, a triforium, and high windows. The straight bays of the gallery have two pointed openings, while each of the five apsidal sides has one. The triforium contains between three and five small trefoil-headed arcades per bay. The upper windows were heavily altered in the eighteenth century, making their original appearance difficult to determine.
The gallery vaults are decorated with sculpted keystones showing human heads and masks. Portions of their polychromy remain, with colour emphasizing cheeks, lips, eyes, and hair. Their individualized features make them important examples of regional sculpture of the 1160s.
Vaults and construction
The chevet is entirely rib-vaulted. In the radiating chapels, the ribs consist of two rounded mouldings separated by a narrow flat band and spring from engaged, banded columns. The chapel walls have applied arcades, moulded string courses, and two pointed windows each. A large arcade connects each chapel to the ambulatory, the passage running around the choir and apse. The ambulatory ribs have a different three-moulding profile, while its transverse arches are simple, sharp-edged arches. In the choir, the supports of the straight bays were modified in the fifteenth century, while most other supports retain their original arrangement.
The cathedral is built mainly of dressed Lutetian limestone, probably quarried near Mont Saint-Siméon northeast of Noyon. Its foundations and lower courses use harder, watertight Eocene sandstone, probably obtained from slightly higher geological deposits farther east. This material helped protect the walls from rising damp. The eastern choir is otherwise unusually well preserved and retains its four-level arrangement of ambulatory, gallery, triforium, and clerestory, the upper windowed level of the church wall.
Canonical buildings and furnishings
The cloister and chapter buildings
Part of the former canonical quarter survives around the cathedral. The western gallery of the thirteenth-century cloister remains, while the other galleries have been destroyed. Built approximately during the 1240s–1250s, the cloister opened west toward the chapter room and east toward the later sacristy.
The former canons’ refectory, now the chapter room, stands along the surviving gallery above a cellar. Its entrance is decorated with statues of bishops and other sculptures. At the northeast corner, a two-storey building housed a prison on the ground floor and the ecclesiastical officiality above. This officiality was a church court or administrative office with jurisdiction in religious and related legal matters.
The library, sacristy, and treasury
A building extending from the former officiality served as a residence and adjoins the former chapter library. Built at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the library has an open ground-floor gallery and an upper half-timbered storey supported by ten wooden posts.
Another building along the former eastern cloister gallery once housed the chapter room and now serves as the sacristy. Across the north transept, a small two-storey building contained the medieval sacristy on the lower floor and the cathedral treasury above. The treasury held goldsmiths’ work, relics, and other sacred objects.
Parish church and interior furnishings
The former Church of La Madeleine, whose oldest parts date from the twelfth century, served as the parish church for residents of the canonical quarter. Inside the cathedral, the 1779 high altar has a Neoclassical baldachin, a canopy over an altar, shaped like an ancient circular temple. It stands on the raised choir floor but occupies the crossing in plan.
Other surviving or documented furnishings include a wrought-iron choir screen, a Gothic capital converted into a baptismal font, a monumental group representing the rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, a fresco of the Resurrection of Christ, and a Baroque statue of Saint Michael. The current main organ has 47 stops on three manuals and pedals, with mechanical action for both playing and registration. Its construction incorporated older pipework in the Saby organ inaugurated in 2005.
