Stained Glass of St-Gatien Cathedral, Tours

More Stained Glass from the Cathédrale St-Gatien de Tours

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Link to Maps of the Pilgrimage Roads of France

Link to some early medieval French Saints, Kings and Queens

The magnificent flying buttresses cast their morning shadows on the windows about St-James the Greater over the south ambulatory of St-Gatien's Cathedral

The North Transept Rose Window (1300) - St-Gatien's Cathedral. 70 years later the buttress had to be added as the delicate tracery was showing signs of collapse.

SAINT MARTIN (c316 - 397 (81))

Saint Martin de Tours is also a Patron Saint of France. He was a Hungarian who, unusually, survived life in the Roman army as a declared Christian, and went on to an apprenticeship in Poitiers under its bishop St-Hilaire, before reluctantly accepting the role of Bishop of Tours in 371. At heart, like many of his medieval ilk, he was an aesthetic hermit monk with a lot in common with the late 1100s St-Francis, and amongst other foundations he was responsible for building up Marmoutier (Wikipedia page on Marmoutier - there's only a few ruins left today) into one of the greatest early medieval abbeys. On the way he got a reputation for having visions and doing miracles, and after his death soon became widely venerated as a saint (like St-Hilaire, one of the earliest non-martyr saints).

Link to some early medieval French Saints, Kings and Queens

The panels below are from the double St-Martin window on the lower level of the apse, and date from about 1300.

St-Martin is ordained Bishop of Tours by St-Hilaire de Poitiers after a lot of popular pressure, though as one can see he was not very happy about it.

St-Martin's body is sailed back down the Loire to Tours after earlier being stolen

ST-JULIEN DE BRIOUDE

A soldier martyr who was in the army of Diocletian, the last and most vicious of the Christian persecutor Emperors. A relic from his tomb is in the beautiful Auvergne Romanesque Basilica St-Julien de Brioude, and below is a detail from the medieval memorial window celebrating his life in the Cathédrale St-Gatien.

The panels below are from the St-Julien window on the lower level of the apse, and also date from about 1300.