89 Agen, France: Cathedral of Saint Caprasius: My money is on Temperance.

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 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 of Temperance having defeated Voluptuousness (I think).






























































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