Le Puy Cathedral () is a Catholic church located in Le Puy-en-Velay, in the French region of Auvergne. The cathedral is a national monument. It has been a centre of pilgrimage in its own right since before the time of Charlemagne, as well as being a stopover on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. Since 1998 it has been part of a multi-location UNESCO World Heritage Site along France's Santiago pilgrimage routes. It is the seat of the Bishop of Le Puy.
The cathedral forms the highest point of the city, rising from the foot of the Rocher Corneille. Constructed over centuries, it contains architecture of every period from the 5th century to the 15th, which gives it an individual appearance. The bulk of the construction, however, dates from the first half of the 12th century.
Black Madonna and pilgrimage
A town called Anicium existed on the site since at least the 6th century. Fragments of Roman temple sculpture were reused in the walls of the cathedral, and Roman funeral monuments, and Paleochristian sculptures and other artifacts have been found nearby. These fragments mention the name of an early bishop, Scutaire, and date from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. (They are now found in the Crozatier Museum in Le Puy).
Documents from the period indicate that the early Christian church contained a celebrated image of the Virgin Mary and child, made of ebony. According to some sources, the statue was dressed in gowns made of gold and other precious fabrics. The cult of the so-called Black Madonna was found in many other French churches of the time and helped attract pilgrims. The original statue was destroyed in 1794 during the French Revolution, but many illustrations of it still exist. It was replaced in the 19th century by a new statue, now on the altar.
Beginning in the 10th century Le Puy became a major stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. With the influx of pilgrims, the size of the cathedral chapter grew to forty priests, and the chapter constructed a "Hôtel-Dieu" or residence for impoverished pilgrims. A large number of chapels, convents, schools, and other religious institutions were founded around the cathedral as a consequence of the pilgrimage.
The Carolingian and Romanesque cathedral The new cathedral and its cloister were built close to the old church, at the highest point in the town, next to a massive rock butte, the Corneille. The cloister was built like a fortress, surrounded by a wall and fortified gates. It was governed exclusively by the clergy, and even contained its own prison, in a stone tower. Excavations from 1992 to 1995 found vestiges of foundations of the earlier church, dating from the 9th century, These were reused in the 10th century for the construction of a larger church in the Carolingian style; it had a nave and collateral aisles, covering three traverses; a choir with two rectangular apse chapels attached to the lower side; and a flat apse on the west end.
Beginning in the mid-11th century, this church was enlarged further; the choir was preserved, but a large transept was added, with tribunes covering the apse chapels. The wider new nave had four traverses. The rounded barrel vaults of the nave were supported by cross-shaped pillars for the central nave and double columns and pilasters for the transept. The crossing of the transept was covered with a dome, over which was constructed an octagonal lantern tower.
The new cathedral, with a cloister, was built against a steep hillside, and a new point of access from the town below was needed. A new porch was built on the west side just below the cathedral, with a stairway leading up to the nave. In the 12th century, this lower porch was enlarged with the construction of two new chapels, and the portal was given large doorways of cedar wood, and the monumental west front covering the porch was constructed with a decoration of multicoloured stone. From the porch at the bottom to the nave at the top. All of the structure was decorated with multicolour stone and fresco painting.
The second part of the 12th century saw the partial reconstruction of the walls of the nave, and the reconstruction of the Chapel of Saint Martin on the west side, plus the addition of cupolas which replaced the old vaults of the nave. The pointed Gothic arch made its first appearance, and new porches were added to the angles of the transept and chevet.
As the pilgrimage flourished, the complex of church buildings was expanded around the cloister on the north side of the cathedral. This included rich sculptural and polychrome decoration of the galleries and walls, and the construction of a grim square new tower, the Saint-Mayol tower, which served as a prison for the chapter. This tower, except for the lower two levels, was demolished in 1948.
On the west side of the complex was the Hotel-Dieu, the massive guest house for poor pilgrims, and the building of the Machicoulis (Named for its castle-like upper walls) which was a depot and kitchen for the chapter and the large Hotel-de-Dieu next to it, as well as a defensive structure if needed. Each of the five stories of the building had its own entrances. To the east of the cloister, and north of the transept of the cathedral, was the chapter house, the headquarters and residence hall for clergy, built in the last part of the 12th century. The oldest structure to the east is a Romanesque portal with sculpture on Rue Grasmement dating to the mid-12th century, which was formerly the entrance of the medieval hospital,
After 1375, the west front had to be reinforced by a new buttress, and several of the vaults of the nave had to be rebuilt. In 1427, an earthquake caused serious damage to the structure, and in 1527, the vaults of the north transept had to be rebuilt. In 1516 lightning struck the bell tower, causing debris to fall onto the roof of the chapel of the Holy Crucifix below. Some modifications were made to the Romanesque features; larger windows were installed north transept, and in the adjoining parts of the nave. The whole complex suffered from a lack of maintenance; roofs leaked, damaging the masonry of the vaults below.
17th–18th centuries
In the 17th century, the bishop Armand de Bethune undertook renovations and a program of decoration in the more classical French style, with clear glass windows bringing more light and lavishly decorated furniture, as well as a new organ, a new pulpit, and a new bishop's throne. He also constructed a monument to the King of Poland, John III Sobieski, a relative of the bishop who fought successfully against the Russians, the Swedes and the Turks.
Between 1723 and 1727, the Grand Altar of the Virgin was put into place. It is covered with plaques of coloured marble and decorated with sculpture by the Italian sculptor Caffieri, and now features a recreation of the statue of the original Black Madonna, destroyed during the French Revolution.
At the end of the 18th century, the cathedral was in serious need of structural reinforcement and consolidation, as attested by the Director of Public Works of Languedoc province. However, Bishop Marie-Joseph de Galard chose instead to carry out a large-scale program of interior redecoration. He relocated the main stairway giving access to the building away from the nave to the cloister, where a new door was cut into the west wall. The medieval rood screen separating the choir and nave and surrounding choir screen were removed, and the interior was stripped of medieval decoration and redecorated with moulded plaster and false vaults, Some portions which were too difficult to remodel were simply abandoned; the north transept was closed and the south transept was turned into a dormitory.
19th century
The French Revolution closed the cathedral and saw it deteriorate further. The new bishop, Louis Jacques Maurice de Bonald, did not take charge of the cathedral until 1823. A program of renovation finally began in 1844, under a new bishop, Pierre-Marie-Joseph Darcimoles, with the support of the Ministry of Cults of the French government. It was conducted by architect Aymond Gilbert Mallay, under the supervision of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Mallay proposed to demolish all of the recent reconstructions and to return the cathedral to its medieval appearance. He demolished the new bell tower that had been built over the transept and completely reconstructed the transept and its vaults. He rebuilt the transept higher, with new pillars, and covered the vaults of the nave with Neo-Romanesque cupolas, though these had not existed before. He restored the old apse and proposed that Neo-Romanesque murals should cover the interior of the transept. This last idea was vetoed by Prosper Mérimée, the head of the French government's program to restore medieval landmarks.
Mallay modified the stairway to the nave on north side and built a new stairway on the south side. In 1846 he demolished the old west front and rebuilt it entirely, followed by the first two traverses of the nave. The cloister, next to the church was entirely redone between 1850 and 1852. Mallay retired in 1853, but his successors continued the project, demolishing the old chevet at the east end and replacing it with a new version that matched the transept and nave. They also demolished the Gothic sacristy, since it was not in harmony with Romanesque style. The last project was the bell tower, which was extensively modified and its upper three sections entirely rebuilt.
20th century In 1905 the church officially became the property of the French State, with exclusive use granted to the Catholic Church. In 1989, the French state began a new program to clean and embellish the building. The windows were cleaned to bring in more light; the old stairway, closed in the 18th century, was restored; the choir was given a new altar; the murals were cleaned and the organ was moved to a new tribune in the nave and restored in 1999. In 2004 and 2005 the west front and its murals were also cleaned and restored.
Plan
The cathedral West front
The plan of the cathedral is largely determined by the steep slope upon which it is built. Before the end of the 19th century, access to the cathedral was by a steep narrow street lined with shops selling pilgrimage souvenirs, which led into a large space under the cathedral floor, and from which pilgrims mounted a separate stairway emerging near the altar. The current stairway was built at the end of the 19th century and goes directly up to the nave.
The facade, or west front of the cathedral is in the form of a large arch of triumph, with three portals and three levels. The portals are considerably lower than the floor of the nave. It is constructed of white sandstone and dark volcanic stone, Through it passes a stairway of sixty steps that comes up from outside the cathedral through the entrance arcades and climbs to the level of the nave.
On the lowest level, the three portals open to the space beneath the first bays of the nave. The level above has three windows that give light to the nave; at the top are three triangular frontons, or triangular gables. The window of the central fronton admits light to the nave, while the others have no glass and open onto the roof of the collateral aisles.
West porch
To reach the nave of the church a visitor must walk up sixty steps on a monumental stairway from the street to the west porch, and then another sixty steps to the nave. The porch or terrace of the cathedral was constructed in the 11th century on the site of the pre-Romanesque church. It was expanded in the mid-12th century when the church above was enlarged, and given massive pillars, columns and pilasters to form three traverses and three grand arcades.