of Gaul,” the city was dominated by its bishops, who exercised the most effective
political power throughout the Middle Ages. Although destroyed by Pepin the Short in
761 and pillaged by the Normans in 854 and 916, Clermont regained its prominence in
the mid-10th century, as witnessed by the building of a new cathedral in the 940s. In
1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II issued his call to Christian warriors to
wrest the Holy Land from the Muslims, and the age of the Crusades was born.
Following several setbacks in his attempts to seize control of Clermont from the
bishop, the count of Auvergne, Guillaume VI, established a fortified bourg at
Montferrand, 2 miles to the northeast, in the 1120s. This local conflict was played out
against a background of international politics, for the count was the vassal of the duke of
Aquitaine, Henry II Plantagenêt, after 1152 the king of England, while the bishop was
supported steadfastly by Philip II Augustus. Repeated comital assaults finally led to
Philip’s aggressive armed intervention, and by 1213 the city and region were firmly
under royal control. Montferrand, sold to Philip IV the Fair in 1292, became the seat of
royal administration. In 1630, however, it was joined administratively to Clermont, hence
the name Clermont-Ferrand, and gradually declined into little more than a distant suburb
of the larger city.
The architecture of Clermont-Ferrand offers a kaleidoscope of styles that reflects both
stylistic developments over time as well as the city’s location between northern and
southern France. The crypt of the cathedral, dedicated in 946, is one of the earliest
examples in Europe of a plan with an ambulatory and radiating chapels. A fully
developed version of this scheme appears at Notre-Dame-du-Port, one of the
quintessential examples of the vital school of Romanesque architecture and sculpture that
flourished in Auvergne in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. The elevation and fully
vaulted structure of Notre-Dame-du-Port are connected closely to the so-called
pilgrimage-road basilicas of the Loire Valley and Languedoc, such as Saint-Martin at
Tours, Sainte-Foy at Conques, or Saint-Sernin at Toulouse. The powerful, thick-set
figures that inhabit the capitals and the south portal relate as well to the work at Toulouse
and Conques.
The Gothic made its first tentative inroads into Clermont with the arrival of the
mendicant orders in the early 13th century, but, as seen in the chapels of the Franciscans
and Dominicans, it was limited to such details as crocket capitals and pointed arches.
With the reconstruction of the cathedral, the architecture of Paris and the Île-de-France
was transplanted to Auvergne. Begun in 1248 by Jean Deschamps, who drew upon such
recent projects as the nave chapels of Notre-Dame (Paris), the new work at Saint-Denis,
the Sainte-Chapelle, and Beauvais cathedral, Clermont’s verticality, thin walls, and
luminous windows broke emphatically with previous Auvergnat traditions to establish a
clear manifestation of episcopal authority allied staunchly to the French crown. The
cathedral workshop also seems to have erected a new chapel for the Franciscans between
1264 and 1284, now engulfed in the Préfecture. However, in keeping with the order’s
statutes, the church eschews architectural elaboration in favor of a simple single vessel
covered by ribbed vaults, a scheme repeated for the Carmelite house (1329), today the
parish church of Saint-Genès. Notre-Dame in Montferrand (ca. 1300–16th c.),
constructed as a single-nave edifice, reflects not only the impact of monastic ideas on
secular church architecture but also building traditions from southern France.
Michael T.Davis
The Encyclopedia 439