Note 160 — Chapter VI · Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours, Lyons, Le Mans

The church of St. Nizier also possessed a manécanterie in which Alphonse Daudet, as Le Petit Chose, spent some happy years. Another romance based on reality whose scene is Lyons is René Bazin’s l’Isolée. An ancient crypt under St. Nizier, shaped like a Greek cross, dedicated to St. Pothin since the IV century, has been ruined by restorations; the actual church is Rayonnant and Flamboyant Gothic, with a portal of the Renaissance by a son of Lyons, Philibert Delorme (d. 1570). Jean Perréal was also born here, as was Coysevox, who made the Virgin of St. Nizier (1676). Eminence in religious or idealistic mural painting has been attained by two sons of Lyons, Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98), who decorated the Museum with Le Bois Sacré, and Flandrin (1809-64), who frescoed the walls of St. Martin d’Ainay. Meissonier (d. 1891) was born here; so was Ampère, scientist and Christian believer (d. 1836). In the hospital of fifteen thousand free beds which opened its doors in the VI century and has never since closed them, worked a loved physician who was father of Frédéric Ozanam, the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. St. Vincent’s heart is treasured in a chapel of the cathedral. Another of the leaders of the Catholic reform, St. Francis de Sales, died in Lyons in 1622.