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cathedral located in Yonne, in France
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Sens Cathedral (French: Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Sens) is a Catholic cathedral in Sens in Burgundy, eastern France. The cathedral, dedicated to Saint Stephen, is the seat of the Archbishop of Sens.
Sens was the first cathedral to be built in the Gothic architectural style (the Basilica of Saint Denis, the other pioneer Gothic building built at about the same time, was an Abbey, not a cathedral). The choir was begun between 1135 and 1140, shortly before Notre Dame de Paris. The sanctuary was consecrated in 1164, but work continued until 1176. It is a national monument of France. The structure was completed in the late 15th–early 16th century with Flamboyant style transepts and a new tower. The architecture of its choir influenced that of Canterbury Cathedral, rebuilt in Gothic style by the master mason William of Sens.
Sens was an important and prosperous town during the late Roman Empire, located at the meeting point of two rivers and at the intersection of two major Roman roads. During the Carolingian Empire it became a major center of the early French Christian church.
In 876 AD, Pope John VIII gave the Archbishop of Sens the title "Primate of the Gauls and Germans". He was placed at the head of six and later seven dioceses, including Paris, Chartres, Orleans, and Troyes. The religious jurisdiction was transferred to the Archbishop of Lyon in the 11th century, but the Archbishop of Sens still keeps the honorific title "Primate of the Gauls and Germans".
The first cathedral of Sens described in medieval records was built sometime between the 6th and 9th centuries, probably on the same site. According to medieval records, it was composed of three separate buildings, a baptistry and two churches. The date of their construction is not recorded, but medieval chronicles report they were destroyed by fire between 958 and 967, and replaced by a single structure.
By the 12th century, Sens was flourishing economically and growing in population. In 1122, Henri Sanglier, a member of the court of Louis VI of France, was named archbishop of Sens and began the project of building a larger and grander cathedral. In 1128 the new bishop received a series of letters from Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian order, urging him as an archbishop to live a less luxurious and more austere life, advice which the new archbishop followed, as he amassed the funds and resources needed for his cathedral.
Construction of the new cathedral began between 1130 and 1135. The vaulting over the nave and choir was revolutionary, composed of square six-part rib vaults, which distributed the weight downward to alternating columns and piers between the bays. These vaults had been used experimentally in one portion of Durham Cathedral in England and at Saint Denis Basilica near Paris, but Sens was the first cathedral to use them throughout the structure.
Above the arcades of pillars and columns on the ground floor was the triforium, which overlooked the lower roof, and above that the clerestory, or upper walls. Thanks to the new flying buttresses installed outside between the bays to the walls, the clerestory was later given large stained glass windows.
The ground floor of the new cathedral had the traditional form of a basilica, with a long nave and a large choir, and no transepts. A walkway or ambulatory surrounded the outside of the nave and choir. There were two chapels flanking the choir. Excavations in the 20th century showed there had originally been a rectangular chapel in the apse at the east end, hidden by later modifications. The dimensions of the new cathedral were extraordinary for the time: 113.5 metres long, 27.5 metres wide, and with a height of 24.4 metres. The church is larger in overall scale than its contemporaries at Saint Denis, Noyon or Senlis. The first phase of construction was completed by about 1160. It had an immediate influence on the construction of other churches, particularly the choir of the Abbey church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris, completed in 1163, and Vézelay Abbey (completed about 1180).
Sens Cathedral immediately became a destination for important visitors. Pope Alexander III came to Sens with his court in September 1163, in the midst of a dispute with The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and remained for three years. At the end of 1164, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, came to Sens as an exile, forced to leave because of his opposition to the seizure of church property by King Henry II of England. Becket remained in France until December 1170. He returned to England, where he was murdered by four knights in Canterbury Cathedral. A collection of personal effects belonging to Becket, including his church vestments, are on display in the treasury of Sens Cathedral. A major window on the north side of the choir of the cathedral, made in 1200–1210, illustrates the life of Becket.
The founder of the cathedral, Henri Sanglier, died in 1142, and the work was carried on by his successors, archbishops Hugues de Toucy (1142–1168) and then Guillaume de Champagne (1169–1176), before he became archbishop of Reims (1176–1202). The last part of the original cathedral to be completed was the west facade, with its three portals and original two towers.
Under a new archbishop, Gauthier Cornut (1221–1241), the cathedral was the site of an important royal wedding, between King Louis IX and Marguerite of Provence on 27 May 1234, which solidified the alliance between France and Provence. The cathedral also briefly hosted the reputed Crown of Thorns from the Crucifixion, purchased by Louis IX from the Emperor of Constantinople, as it was handed over to the King with great ceremony, and then transported by boat to Paris for eventual placement in the Sainte-Chapelle.
Archbishop Cornut made a series of important modifications. To bring in more light, He raised the upper walls of the choir and installed larger stained glass windows, a process that also took place at Notre Dame de Paris at about the same time. This project was continued by Cornut's successors, and was not finished until 1309. He also began the construction of the Archbishops' palace adjoining the cathedral, the remodelling of the Saint Severin chapel, and the installation of an ornate jubé, or rood screen, between the choir and nave.
The works were interrupted by a disaster, the collapse on 5 April 1268 of the south tower, which caused several casualties and damaged the adjoining Archbishop's Palace. The rebuilding of the tower was long delayed for lack of funds, but was finally completed by a legacy in the will of the Archbishop Étienne Bécard de Penoul (1292–1309).
The same Archbishop also remade the Chapel of Saint Savinien. The original rectangular chapel was replaced by a more ornate polygonal structure with an eight-ribbed vault and five windows. This chapel introduced the High Gothic, or "Classic" style into the cathedral. The 14th century also saw the addition of series of new small chapels for private ceremonies along the aisles on either side of the choir and nave.
The other major 13th-century modification was the reconstruction of the early Gothic Chapel of the Virgin, built in 1150, into the Rayonnant style, with larger and more decorative windows. An even more ambitious project, a transept similar to that of Notre Dame de Paris, was started but, evidently because of a shortage of funds, was not built until between 1490 and 1518. It was finally made in the exuberant late Gothic Flamboyant style by the master mason Martin Chambiges, whose other works included the transept of Senlis Cathedral, of Beauvais Cathedral (1499), and the west front of Troyes Cathedral (1502–1531).
The money for the transept was raised by an ambitious fund-raising campaign, featuring displays of the cathedral relics and special sermons. The King also made a modest contribution from the taxes on his properties in the region. The portal of the new south transept, the portal of Moses, was built first, between 1491 and 1496, A new rose window was installed, along with a Tree of Jesse Window, between 1502 and 1503. Construction of the north transept was begun in about 1502 under a different master builder, Hugues Cuvelier, since Martin Chambiges was by then occupied building the transept of Beauvais Cathedral. The great south rose window, known as the Window of the Angel Musicians, was not put into place until 1515–1517. A few more additions were made in the 16th century. A belfry was added to the new tower (called the lead tower), but the new bells, the largest two of which weighed fourteen tons and twelve tons, were not cast in the foundry and put into place until 1560.
The work on the cathedral was delayed in the late 16th century by the Wars of Religion, opposing Protestants and Catholics. Sens was in the center of the war, not recognising the Protestant King Henry IV, and the city and was besieged without success by a Protestant army. In 1621, the new Archbishop of Paris, Henri de Gondi, persuaded the new King Louis XIII, and Pope Gregory XV to make the Archdiocese of Paris, rather than that of Sens, the principal diocese of France. Thereafter the new Archbishop of Sens, Octave de Belgrade, only had authority over the bishops of neighbouring Auxerre, Nevers and Troyes. Nonetheless, Sens remained an important religious center, attracting monastic communities of the Jesuits, Carmelites, Benedictines, and Ursulines.
Few important additions to the cathedral were made in the following decades. In 1638, the explosions of cannons firing to celebrate the birth of the future Louis XIV broke the stained glass windows installed over the west portal. They were replaced by plain glass. In 1644 a windstorm broke the stained glass window depicting the patron saints on the north transept. It was replaced with a new window designed by painter Antoine Soulignac in 1646.
The pace of change picked up in the 18th century. In 1760, King Louis XV ordered that the golden table, which served as the centerpiece of the altar, be melted down to help refill the royal treasury after a costly war. In the 1760s two new altars, one devoted to Saint Louis (on the left) and Saint Martin (on right) were put in place along with an ornate wrought iron grill and gateway, with the coat of arms of the Cardinal de Luynes. New stalls were installed in the choir in the 1780s. The stone floor of the cathedral was replaced in 1767–69, which destroyed the labyrinth, which had occupied the entire space of the floor at the entry of the nave. This also caused the removal of many medieval tombstones, which were replaced with simple names and dates. In 1785 A project was prepared for a new west portal of the Church, in the form of a classical portico with columns, designed by François Soufflot, nephew of the future architect of the Pantheon in Paris, but it was rejected too radical. A fund for a "Reconstruction in the Gothic style" was granted by Louis XVI in 1786, but the French Revolution intervened.
The Outbreak of the French Revolution in Sens preceded that in Paris by a day: on 13 July 1789, peasants broke down the gates of the Palace of the Archbishop to seize the grain that had been confiscated and stored in the courtyard. The Archbishop himself, Lomenie de Brienne, took an oath to the new Constitution. The belongings of the cathedral were nationalised on 23 November 1790. In September 1792, the voting for the deputies to the new Convention took place within the cathedral. Archbishop de Brienne became a Constitutional Bishop, and, later in the month, the abolition of the monarchy and declaration of the Republic was announced in the cathedral.
In November 1793, the revolutionary army called the Marseillaises marched from Paris to put down a counter-Revolutionary outbreak in Lyon. They stopped in Sens for a few hours on November 7, 1793, and took the time to smash the sculpture on the central portal of the cathedral, sparing only the statue of Saint-Etienne, because a quick-thinking clergyman had put a Revolutionary cap on its head. Eight of the bells were taken down from the tower to be melted down for their bronze, though the two largest, the bourdons, remained in place. In February 1794 the Festival of Reason was celebrated in the cathedral, and on June 8 the cathedral was formally renamed the Temple of the Supreme Being.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Sens Cathedral”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.