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The actual inception of the cathedral is attributed to Rudolphe de Turenne, forty-sixth Archbishop of Bourges. Of his known work only the round-arched crypt remains, upon which foundation the present grand pile was reared. The west front possesses a quintette of portals, deeply recessed, but of a decidedly mixed Gothic and Renaissance treatment as to decoration.
It faces east, turning its back upon the little town built on the site of a Roman colonial city, originally named in honour of the pagan Emperor rather than the Christian Confessor and ascetic. Mediaeval piety bestowed on it the saintly prefix, along with a round-arched cathedral church, of no great size, but massive proportions and somewhat gloomy aspect.
We passed by the former home of the Jeronomite monks of the Parral, which was once called an earthly paradise, and in later years has been a pen for swine; past crumbling convents and ruined churches; past the charming Romanesque San Millan, girdled with its round-arched cloisters; the granite palace of his Reverence the Bishop of Segovia, and the elegant tower of St.
But the handsomest features of this upper hall are the Palladian windows, admitting a flood of light at each end, with their rectangular sashes each side of a higher, round-arched central window and a delightful arrangement of curved sash bars at the top.
I remember the first rhymes of it, which I heard as I turned away my head and we moved on toward the church: We entered the church through the south porch under a round-arched door carved very richly, and with a sculpture over the doorway and under the arch, which, as far as I could see by the moonlight, figured St. Michael and the Dragon.
Down to the eleventh century, the Romanesque, or "round-arched" architecture, derived from Italy, had been the one prevalent style in Western Europe. In the modification of it, called the Norman style, we find the round arch associated with massive piers and narrow windows. Durham cathedral is an example of the Norman Romanesque type of building.
And, on the Sunday he was at Leurre, he went, as a part of his old home-habits, to mass at the old round-arched church, where he and Eustacie had played each other so many teasing tricks at his mother's feet, and had received so many admonitory nips and strokes of her fan.
Its finest architectural feature is the antique Palace of the Commune: Gothic arcades of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with wonderfully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched windows.
Flanked by four circular turrets, which are pierced by round-topped windows and surmounted by Oriental domes that add a stunted, solid appearance to the whole, the principal cupola rises to the same height as the previously mentioned turrets. The whole is a marvel of simple architectural resource within the narrow limits of the round-arched style.
The columns are of cipollino; the caps, once gilded, are very like those of the pulpit, which seems to be of the same date. It is octagonal and surrounded by round-arched arcading, two arches to a side, with coupled columns on the sides and three at the angles, above single arches resting upon shafts of precious marbles with elaborate caps which also at one time were gilded.
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