Churches in Paris and elsewhere

  90 Toulouse, France - St Stephen’s Cathedral While we’re on cathedrals in the South West of France, here is St Stephen’s cathedral in Toulouse. You’ll have heard of Stephen - first ever Christian martyr, killed around 34 AD, stoned by a crowd including St Paul,  skilled at signs and wonders. In the aftermath of Stephen's death, the remaining disciples except for the apostles fled to distant lands, many to Antioch. His relics are in Rome, including an elaborate gold and jewel-encrusted box alleged to contain soil soaked with his  blood. Most of the church is 12th to 16th century, Southern Gothic. Built of brick because of the lack of suitable stone around. Very pretty old alms box. Tons of side-chapels. Pierre-Paul  Riquet who organized the building of the canal du Midi, the foremost engineering triumph of its age, is buried here.

  89 Agen, France: Cathedral of Saint Caprasius: My money is on Temperance. The cathedral is dedicated to this guy Caprasius who got in just in time to be a martyr before the Roman Empire decided it was cool with the Christian gig and stopped martyring folk. Only seven years later, it would have been too late. The Roman Empire in crisis, in the form of Constantine, decided that an international literate network of enthusiasts might be useful, and that this new monotheistic thingy might also help unify the empire. It worked for a while, but there were other factors in action. 800 years later, Caprasius was posthumously named bishop of Agen where he had been decapitated (an otherwise lovely town in the South-West of France that my wife comes from). The cathedral is on the pilgrims’ way to Compostela. It has beautiful painted walls (with captions in Latin) and pillars, a rare kind of pulpit which has a hidden entrance, and a couple of magnificent confessionals. Also you can see a painting