Note 157 — Chapter VI · Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours, Lyons, Le Mans
Reading edition
Such is the architectural wealth within reach of Tours that one can draw but a few monuments to the traveler’s attention. At Amboise is St. Hubert’s marvelously sculptured little chapel (c. 1491) and the church of St. Florentin (c. 1445). At Loches is Anne of Brittany’s oratory, a Virgin statue of Michel Colombe’s school of Tours, and the tomb of Agnes Sorel, attributed to the master who made Souvigny’s ducal tomb, Jacques Morel. The collegiate church of St. Ours is of exceptional interest to archæologists; its narthex (now the first bay), covered by a tower, was built by Fulk II of Anjou; the porch, also with a tower over it, was added in the XII century. To that date belong the two bays of the church covered by hollow pyramids, said by Mr. A. Kingsley Porter to be an attempt to make a stone roof without wooden centering. At Beaulieu-lès-Loches, founded by Fulk Nerra, the choir is late-Gothic (1440-1540). At St. Catherine de Fierbois, where Jeanne d’Arc found her sword, is a charming Flamboyant Gothic church. There are Plantagenet Gothic vaults at Chinon. Nine miles from Chinon, at Champigny-sur-Veude, is a rich mass of Renaissance glass attributed to Pinagrier, with Bourbon-Montpensier portraits.
Some twenty miles from Blois is the Romanesque church of Fleury Abbey at St. Benoît-sur-Loire, with a superb XI-century narthex of three bays, surmounted by a tower. In 1562 the Huguenots wrecked the church. Also, between Orléans and Nevers, beside Sancerre, is the abbey church of St. Satur, a forerunner of Flamboyant Gothic, as early as 1361. The Benedictine church of La Charité-sur-Loire derives chiefly from the Burgundian Romanesque school, influenced by Berry and Auvergne. Its central and west towers, its nave, and chevet belong to the second half of the XII century, the transept is earlier; there was a reconstruction of the nave after 1559.
Louis Serbat, “La Charité-sur-Loire,” in Congrès Archéologique, 1913, p. 374; Abbe Bossebœuf, Amboise. For Loches, see Congrès Archéol., 1869, 1910; G. Rigault, Orléans et le val de Loire (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres); F. Bournon, Blois, Chambord et les châteaux du Blésois (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres); A. Marignan, “Une visite à l’abbaye de Fleury à St. Benoît-sur-Loire,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1901-02, p. 291; L. Cloquet et J. Casier, “Excursion de la Gilde de St. Thomas et de St. Luc dans la Maine, la Touraine, et l’Anjou,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1889-90, vols. 42, 43; La Touraine artistique et monumental; Amboise (Tours, Pericet, 1899); Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, Twenty-five Great Houses of France (New York and London, 1916).