Note 161 — Chapter VI · Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours, Lyons, Le Mans

The see of Vienne was founded A.D. 160. The cathedral of St. Maurice, well set on the Rhone, contains vestiges of the church consecrated in 1106 by Paschal II, and which had been aided by that archbishop of Vienne, of the first line of Burgundy’s Capetian dukes, who became Pope Calixtus II in 1119. The present edifice is due to Bishop Jean de Bernin (1218-66), and was consecrated by Innocent IV in 1251. Only in 1533 were its façade and the four bays behind it finished. There is no transept. The XV century made the northern entrance, and the XVI century that to the south. The red incrustations form friezes, in the choir, below both triforium and clearstory.

A V-century bishop of Vienne was Claudianus Mamertus, who upheld Latin culture against the Barbarians, like his friend and fellow poet, Bishop Apollinaris Sidonius at Clermont. To Vienne’s bishop is attributed the noted hymn Pange lingua gloriosi proclium certamini, and the institution of the Rogation days of penance and procession before the Ascension, in that hour when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions had terrorized central France. In 1312 Vienne was the scene of a general Council of the Church at which the Templars were suppressed by a pope cowed into obedience by the king of France, who arrived at the Council with an escort of the size of an army. The majority of the bishops present held that to abolish the Order was not a legal act, since the charges against them were unproven. Therefore, Clement V was forced to fall back on the expedient plea of solicitude for the public good.

Congrès Archéologique, 1879; J. Ch. Roux, Vienne (Paris, Bloud et Cie, 1909); M. Reymond, Grenoble, Vienne (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, II. Laurens); Lucien Bégule, L’ancienne cathédrale de Vienne-en-Dauphiné (Paris, II. Laurens, 1914); Paul Berret, Le Dauphiné (Collection, Provinces françaises), (Paris, II. Laurens).