SUMMARY

 

Jean-Luc BOUDARTCHOUK, Henri MOLET, Catherine VIERS, The Capitolium of Toulouse, the church of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Géraud and the martyr of Bishop Saturnin : new data  

An archaeological survey in 2004-2005 at 6-8 place Esquirol has allowed more precise calculations of the exact dimensions of the temple (probably a Capitolium) in the forum of Toulouse and the structure of the base of the cella. Some remainders of the church of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Géraud, which had been founded on the vestiges of the temple, were also discovered. At the same time, reevaluation of textual evidence allowed better knowledge of the history of the priory of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Géraud, from its foundation in the sixth century to its donation to the abbot of Aurillac. The church was originally dedicated to Saint Pierre and belonged most probably to the family of the viscounts of Toulouse. As for the martyrdom of Bishop Saturninus in 250, which would have taken place here, while vestiges of a cult found at the foot of the temple can be tied to the Bishops cult, the Vita of Saturninus, on the other hand, seems to be a rather late mix, and one must probably dissociate the narrative of his appearance at the Capitole from the unlikely story of the bull dragging the Bishop’s body about the town.

 

Patrice CABAU and Anne-Laure NAPOLÉONE, From the “Maurand Tower” to the Collège de Périgord  

 The works recently carried out in the former Collège de Périgord have made possible some interesting archaeological observations, which have led to a reexamination of the history of this building. The story of the institution, intended for poor students, founded by the celebrated cardinal Talleyrand de Périgord, begins in 1362. Abundant archival records provide details on the successive purchase of several buildings on the same block, including a Romanesque house: the “Maurand Tower”. Accounts of fourteenth-century works provide numerous details on the Tower and five other town houses, partially destroyed, as well as one new building. Illustrated documents from the eighteenth century round out this preliminary image of the college, before its near-complete destruction in the nineteenth century.

 

Jean-Marc STOUFFS, The conservation-restoration of the paintings in the church of Notre-Dame-du-Taur (Toulouse)  

The church of Notre-Dame-du-Taur contains gothic murals, discovered in 1872 when the building was renovated. Copied and restored at the time of the discovery, they were then hidden by paneling and uncovered only in the late 1950’s.
            The work of conservation and restoration, undertaken in 2001 and finished in November, 2004, is described in detail in the article. The work has, thanks to studies pursued at the same time, provided us with information on the construction materials and techniques employed. Moreover, removal of previous attempts at restoration and a new graphic restoration have allowed us to better read this rather well-conserved ensemble.

 

Michelle FOURNIÉ, The chapel of Saint-Rémi and the Hospitalers of Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem: the miracles of 1496 at Toulouse  

 A trial, beginning in 1496, brings to light the existence of a chapel dedicated to Saint Remy, in the Dalbade quarter. The ritual setting of this sanctuary included a wall decorated with a monumental group of paintings and statues, an open chapel in the same wall, with an altar and liturgical fittings, and a “table’ holding a collection plate and offerings, situated right on the street itself.
            The wall runs the length of the rue Saint-Remezy and set off the buildings of the Hospitalers of Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem, giving rise to conflicts. Although the chapel was small and partly constructed of insubstantial materials, it lasted until the nineteenth century, and served the cult of Saint Remi, a saint associated with French royalty. According to the toulousain tradition, Saint Remi was a kind of godfather to Saint Germier, one of the bishops that followed Saint Saturninus, and gave to him his Episcopal insignia.

 

Géraldine CAZALS, A new contribution to the history of Toulouse: the Catalogue and Summary of the Foundation […] of Toulouse of Guillaume de La Perrière (1539-1540)  

In 1539, at the request of the capitouls of Toulouse, the humanist Guillaume de la Perrière undertook to draw up the Catalogue et summaire de la fondation, principalles coustumes, libertez, droictz, privilieges et aultres actes des cité, conté, capitoulz, citoyens et habitans de Tholoze. The work was to include the new authorized copy of the Liber magnus albus anticus resulting from the division of the collection begun by Bernard de Sainte-Eulalie in 1295. This work, which was preserved for us by two manuscripts in the Archives Municipales of Toulouse, constitutes an interesting and little-known version of Toulousan historiography, midway between Nicolas Bertrand’s Gestes and Antoine Noguier’s Histoire tolosaine. In fact La Perrière’s erudition, his classical scholarship, his theological knowledge, as well as his humanistic studies give a singular depth to the ancient legends concerning the history of Toulouse. At a time when royal sovereignty was being extended over the municipality, yet the author cleverly managed to uphold the juridical claims of the town’s magistrates.

 

Jeanne BAYLE, The painter-glassmakers of Toulouse in the sixteenth century  

In the early sixteenth century, the painter-glassmakers of Toulouse had the same regulations as the painters and glaziers, from which they had slowly evolved. Few in number - only thirty for the entire century - only six or seven of them had any status. The most prosperous workshop was that of Antoine Ferret, active from 1512 to 1554, to whom is attributed the glasswork of the Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc chapel in the Cathedral of Toulouse. In the last quarter of the century, the brothers Jean and Arnaud Mous were the only real painter-glassmakers. The art of stained glass disappeared from Toulouse, and no local school developed as emerged in Normandy and Champagne.

 

François BORDES, Rites and ceremonies at Toulouse in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance  

Analyzing the structure of great urban processions and studying related rites allow us to understand their significance for the community and especially for its primary representatives, the capitouls. Typical processions, in particular the Corpus Domini procession, placed the capitouls in the foreground: they carried the dais sheltering the Holy Sacrament. The entry of kings, of princes and of national or regional notables displayed a hierarchy that depended on the importance of the visitor, but was apparently above all a decisive moment for expressing a communal identity. Lastly, funeral services for deceased monarchs were so many occasions for collisions between municipal and royal power. The whole power structure of the town was in question during these great urban spectacles.

 

Georges COSTA, The funeral monument of Henri de Sponde, Bishop of Pamiers, in the Cathedral of Toulouse  

The monument of Henri de Sponde is justly considered a characteristic work of funerary architecture of the seventeenth century. It was erected in memory of the learned prelate, who had consecrated his studies to the history of the Church. He had begun this task in Rome before being named Bishop of Pamiers, in 1626. Henri de Sponde died May 18, 1643, and was buried in the Cathedral of Toulouse, to which he had retired.
            In the same year, his funeral monument was entrusted to Didier Sansonnet, a respected master mason, active in Toulouse and its region in the first half of the seventeenth century, who thus found an opportunity to express a lesser-known side of his expertise. The monument is presented as a stone frontispiece decorated with marble, where the bust of the deceased is set in an oval, surmounting the epitaph, which occupies the center of the composition. The applied ornament model experienced great popularity in the Italian Renaissance, as it did in France, where its evolution can be traced, thanks to extant drawings.

 

Jean-Michel LASSURE, Painted platters and plates from the seventeenth century workshops of Giroussens (Tarn)  

Analysis of the painted decoration of roughly one hundred platters and plates, from the workshops of Giroussens (Tarn), today in the collections of the Musée du Pays rabastinois, has made it possible to catalog the motifs employed, and to understand the rules by which they were brought together. On these pieces, whose decoration is organized into two areas, wing motifs are almost always floral in inspiration, radiating, spiraling or sometimes mixed. On basins, the flowers – alone or in vases – were much favored, but animals from daily life were also pictured: horses, dogs, goats and birds. Human figures are uncommon, but not without their own charm. The representation of the retable of the Sainte-Rafine chapel of the parish church – executed with relative fidelity – is an isolated motif.

 

Guy AHLSELL DE TOULZA, The Brussels tapestries of the Story of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, at the Château of Saint-Géry (Tarn)  

The Château of Saint-Géry, near Rabastens, possessed a series of fifteen Brussels tapestries of the seventeenth century depicting the story of Zenobia, that were sold in 1928. This series involved the eight pieces of the Story of Aurelian and Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, completed by seven other pieces taken from the Story of Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius and from the Story of Dido and Aeneas, the whole constituting an impressive set 56,70m in length. The tapestries were woven, in wool and silk, around 1665-1670, in the atelier of Geraert Peemans, at that time one of the most important in Brussels. The cartoons were the work of Juste d’Egmont, who had worked with P. P. Rubens and Simon Vouet in Paris, before he went to Antwerp. Enriched by sumptuous borders, the tapestries are among the masterpieces of Flemish baroque art.

Pascal JULIEN, That marbles may better float: the maps of the “Course of the Garonne” drawn in 1716-1720 by Hyppolite Matis, geographer of the King  

As Director of the Royal Buildings, from 1708, the Duke of Antin supervised marble supplies to the construction sites under his direction. For reasons at once domestic, financial and political, but also and above all because of their beauty, he sought to improve the extraction and transportation of French marble, especially from the Pyrenees. Among other undertakings, he commissioned Hippolite Matis, geographer to Louis XIV, to draw up a plan of the entire course of the Garonne and its tributaries, from its rise to Bordeaux. By doing so, he hoped to control and improve the navigation of barges carrying stone from the Pyrenees to the Gironde. These long maps have been preserved, constituting exceptional documents, of great geographic, historic and aesthetic value.

 

Louis PEYRUSSE and Bruno TOLLON, “Dame Tholose” and the Dupuy column  

Recent studies consecrated to humanism in Toulouse required a new look at the story of “Dame Tholose”. Its creation in 1544 makes perfect sense in the Toulousan context, which saw, in these years, a more informed borrowing from antiquity (triumphal gates commissioned by the City, figures for the houses of the wealthy, not to mention the setting of the portraits of the capitouls). Alongside Nicolas Bachelier, Jean Rancy played a major role in breaking away from traditions in vogue up to that time.
            The Dupuy monument, the setting for “Dame Tholose”, was in 1832 a masterpiece composed of reworked materials and assemblage. It commands our attention by the marriage of modern techniques and tradition, as well as by the singular expertise of Griffoul Dorval’s sculpture.

 

Bernard MONTAGNES O.P., Dominican buildings in Toulouse during the nineteenth century, between the rue Vélane and the rue Espinasse.

Father Lacordaire established the Dominicans in Toulouse in 1853 in a private house, at 14 rue Vélane. A neo-gothic chapel, built from 1854-1855, the work of the architect Auguste Delort, was the only new construction. After 1870, the purchase of the Mansencal mansion, on the rue Espinasse, permitted the construction in its garden of a large church in the gothic style, and the seeds of a new monastery, all under the direction of architect Henri Bach. The church, begun in 1880, held up by the expulsions, was only consecrated in 1895. Of this collection of buildings between the rue Vélane and the rue Espinasse, the last remainder was destroyed in 1971. Only plans and old photographs allow us to envision them.

 

Bulletin of the Academic Year 2004-2005 

The minutes of the meetings of the Society give an account of its various activities, recording in particular the discussions which follow the lectures presented, whether or not the latter are published in the Mémoires. Also included is information on archaeological digs, restorations in progress and various discoveries in Toulouse and the region, as well as summaries and notes: “Father’s Lacordaire” chasuble; New and old transmission in the mansions of the Renaissance in Toulouse; Two painted beams in the Château of Flamarens; Painters and gilders in Roussillon (1650-1730); The Notre-Dame chapel in the church of Saint-Exupère at Coupiac (Aveyron); The Hospital of Saint-Joseph de La Grave; Note about the origin and translation of the relics of Saint Antonin of Frédélas-Pamiers; Notes on the architecture of the abbey church of Conques; A Merovingian buckle from Montbrun-des-Corbières (Aude); Works carried out in 1736 on a mill in Labastide-Savès...

 

 

Translated by Pamela Marquez
Department of History
Metropolitan State College of Denver

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