Poitiers cathedral
From T Francis Bumpus' 'The Cathedrals of Southern France, 1895
Poitiers, built for the most part on the summit of a gentle hill, exhibits, with its white, bright, clean, and in many places, beautifully-foliages streets, hardly any of the antiquity and dinginess of Angers, and my first few hours' stroll put me in high good-humour. I felt that, ecclesiologically at least, I was in the centre of a type of Romanesque architecture which, for richness and elaboration of ornament, our latest and most refined specimens of that protean style are left behind; and if the cathedral and portion of Sainte Radegonde were not the fons et origo of that wonderful period of architecture known as the Transitional, they are, for grace and refinement, superior to some of their more widely-known sisters in the Domaine Royale and Champagne.
The four Romanesque churches of Poitiers bear such evident marks of resemblance to each other as to render the date of one of them very plausible presumption of the antiquity of the rest, even were the period of their construction unknown.
The circumstances attending the dedication of two of these, Saint Hilaire and Saint Jean Montierneuf, were sufficiently striking to attract the attention of contemporaries. There were present thirteen bishops and archbishops at the consecration of the former in 1049. the latter, commenced in 1066, completed in 1087, was dedicated in 1096 by Pope Urban II, on his return from the Council of Clermont in Auvergne, where he had preached the First Crusade.
Saint Hilaire and the Priory of Saint Nicholas had for their founder Agnes, wife of Guillaume III, Duke of Aquitaine, surnamed Tete-d'etoupes [Oakum-head]. This princess died in the year 1068. Eustache Beslai, wife of Guillaume, the succeeding Duke, is stated to have commenced Notre-Dame la Grande.
We first find mention of the monastery of Saint-Porchaire in a chart of the year 1068, and though this document furnishes no direct proof of the epoch of construction of this church, the close analogy to other Romanesque edifices of the province approaching this date displayed in the western tower, which is the only Romanesque portion remaining.. affords good grounds for believing that it was not replaced at a more modern period.
The apse of St Radegonde, destroyed by fire in 1084, was rebuilt and dedicated anew in 1099. the tower, at the west end, is Romanesque, but the original nave was rebuilt, without aisles, in the middle of the twelfth century, in that graceful style of Transition from Round-arched to Pointed.
On descending the steps leading from the south-western portal into the nave of the cathedral, the interior of this vast church awakens that sense of veneration which rarely finds language to express its feelings. I am an enthusiastic admirer of the well-developed triforia and clerestories of the north, but I must admit that of all the French churches from which those members are absent, I am at a loss to particularize any one the interior of which has so indelibly impressed its features on my memory as a chef d'oeuvre in design and execution ans this great western one of Poitiers.
[Bumpus speculates that this cathedral influenced the design of Paderborn, possibly by Villard de Honnecourt.]
In this splendid cathedral of Poitiers we find united nearly all the peculiar features of Transitional churches in the western central provinces of France. Though some discrepancies of style result from later insertions, it is, upon the whole, of so uniform a character that it would be difficult to fix upon an example better calculated to illustrate that brilliant architectural period constituting the link between the unmixed Romanesque style at one extremity and the confirmed Early Pointed at the other.
The plan, one of the greatest simplicity, is that of a parallelogram of eight bays, divided between a nave of four and a choir of eight bays, both with aisles of nearly the same height and continued to the extreme east end. The fifth bay on either side forms the crossing and opens into a transept, and at the west end, projecting beyond the aisles to the north and south and advanced in front of the church to the west, is a pair of towers.
Poitiers Cathedral is distinctly touched with some of the peculiarities of the land immediately to the north, peculiarities which come out more strongly in the other churches, particularly in the aisleless nave of Sainte Radegonde. A church that has aisles throughout cannot be called an Angevin church; but the vaulting of Poitiers Cathedral is Angevin; the decorative arcading under its high-set windows is Angevin, and the windows themselves, where later ones have not been inserted, have a distinctly Angevin look.
The aisles are contained under the same external roof with the nave; it is consequently of great expanse, but not very high pitched. The transepts are without aisles and about the width of the bay to the east and west of them; consequently, though their walls are of the same height as the external walls of the nave and choir, the ridge of their roofs falls below that of the principal roof, which is therefore unbroken from one end to the other. This arrangement gives the building, at a distance, the character of an enormous hall rather than a cathedral, especially as the western towers have not sufficient height to add much variety to the outline; yet its very simplicity produces much grandeur, which is increased by the flat elevation of the east end.
Although the church has no clerestory it is amply lighted by the windows which are placed high up in the walls of the aisles and recessed back over the internal face of them so as to leave a narrow passage affording a free circulation round the church. This is contrived by piercing, with a square-headed trefoil opening, the transverse strip of wall between the windows, to whose front are attached the vaulting shafts of the aisle. The balustrade to this passage is a Franco-Italian interpolation, as are the arches over which it is returned at the west end of a nave and aisles.
The superb stained glass with which a large number of windows in Poitiers Cathedral are enriched seems to have suffered but little injury during an outburst of Protestant iconoclasm in 1562... The glass is almost entirely in the mosaic style prevalent during the latter part of the twelfth century and the first half of the succeeding one, and may be looked for in the third bay of the south aisle of the nave, and the corresponding pair in the opposite aisle; in the transepts; in the first two windows of the south choir aisle; in the second of the north aisle; and in the three large single lancets at the east end. The earliest glass is in the last-named windows, that in the central one being particularly fine. At the top is Our Lord standing within a vesica adored by angels. Below is a large oblong compartment divided by the leading into a large red cross, on which the figure of Our Lord, very stiffly treated, is extended. The colour used in His cincture is a rich purple. Above the arms of the rood, on a blue ground, are full-length figures in attitudes of adoration. Below them, on a ruby ground, are the Blessed Virgin, St John and the soldier piercing the side of the Saviour. Under this the Crucifixion of St Peter is represented.
The western façade of Poitiers cathedral may in some points be compared with the not-far-distant one of Bourges. In both cathedrals the towers are outside the aisles... The three central portals at Bourges are so similar to those at Poitiers, both in design and execution, that it is not improbable they were the offspring of the same master mind... The sculpture in the tympanum of the central doorway at Poitiers represents the Last Judgment; in the northern tympanum are the Death and Coronation of the Virgin; and in the southern one scenes from the life of St Peter, to whom the cathedral is dedicated.