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Paradoxplace France Photo Galleries Links to all French Cathedral and Abbey Photo Pages in Paradoxplace
More Stained Glass from the Cathédrale St-Gatien de Tours
Back to Tours and Cathédrale St-Gatien main page
Link to Maps of the Pilgrimage Roads of France Link to some early medieval French Saints, Kings and Queens
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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St-Martin's body is sailed back down the Loire to Tours after earlier being stolen
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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.
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Still to come: An Annunciation, the Magi and Adam and Eve
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All original material on this site © Adrian Fletcher 2000-08 - The contents may not be hotlinked, or reproduced without permission
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