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c h a p t e r 6 The Modern Cult of Saint Gerald The French Revolution seemed to signal the end of the cult of Saint Gerald. Yet the churches dedicated to Saint Gerald were closed for less than a decade, and when the Catholic religion was restored in France in 1801 Saint Gerald returned to Aurillac and to thirty or so of his other churches across southern France. With the dispersion of the last canons of Aurillac, however, the official keepers of the memory of Saint Gerald were gone, and even where devotion was renewed, knowledge of Gerald faded. A proposal sent to the bishop of Saint-Flour in 1803 even requested that the church dedicated to Saint Gerald in Aurillac be rededicated to the Virgin Mary—a request that was denied.1 The fairs held at Aurillac and elsewhere on Saint Gerald’s feast day, October 13, continued until the middle of the twentieth century, but these were slim reminders of the former devotion to the saint.2 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (the period that will be called ‘‘modern’’ in what follows), Saint Gerald’s memory survived—but in surprisingly distorted forms. The Modern Churches of Saint Gerald The church of Saint Gerald in Aurillac can stand as an example, better documented than most, of the fates of the churches dedicated to the saint. The church had been renovated over many centuries. Its origins date back to Gerald himself, although the earliest parts remaining today survive only from its reconstruction in the years before 972 and only in a few details.3 Most of the church is from the late eleventh century, Romanesque in style, though it was renovated in the fifteenth century, perhaps to repair damage done to it 152 chapter 6 during the burghers’ revolt of 1233, and modernized in the Gothic style. The church suffered greatly during the Protestant takeover of the town in the sixteenth century, but was also partly restored in the mid-seventeenth century .4 During the French Revolution its Romanesque bell tower was demolished . A description of the church given in 1803 is pitiful: The church is very deteriorated and cut short, it is squared off and ungraceful, the windows are open and the vaults pierced through, with currents of air that disturb the lighted candles and cause melted wax to fall suddenly and abundantly over the altar cloths, the ornaments , the steps, the gilt, and depreciate all of these objects. These currents of air make problems for the faithful, too. . . . A channel of water flows continuously across the square of the wheat market [in front of the church]. It has allowed large amounts of water to filter through the ground and the paving of this square and it immediately fills the trenches and holes dug to discover the state of the foundations . This water also penetrates under the pavement of the church and through the miserable wall that serves as its facade. To this water is added the water from the ordinary rains that swell this stream from their start both above and below the floor of the church.5 There were other priorities for civic restoration, however, so money was set aside only for the most urgent of repairs to the church.6 The whirlwind changes in French governments in the nineteenth century seem to have alternatively helped and hindered the cause of restoration. In 1820 the restored Bourbon monarchy pledged money for it. Additional emergency funds were given again in 1825, 1828, 1838, and 1845 for the most urgent repairs, but it was not until 1849 that a plan was developed that called not only for the renovation of the church in a neo-Gothic style, but also for enlarging it and furnishing it with a new bell tower. The work took place between 1856 and 1864, financed in part by the imperial government of Napoleon III and in part by a public appeal launched on what was believed to be the millennial celebration of the birth of Saint Gerald. Even then, when the first stone of the renovation was laid in a public ceremony in 1857, the depth of devotion to Saint Gerald was questionable. The bishop of Saint-Flour presiding at the dedication wondered aloud whether anyone would frequent the church, even if it were rebuilt. ‘‘Will you leave these altars deserted,’’ he asked the attending crowd, ‘‘will you leave God alone in his abandoned tabernacles?’’7 It was not until 1898...

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