CRIPTA DE SAN PABLO DE NARBONA

The city of Narbonne was a Roman foundation by the consul Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus as ‘Narbo Martius Colony’, under the protection of the god of war Mars, being the first Roman colony established outside the Italian peninsula. From the Roman past, the arch of the Old Bridge, the road of the Town Hall Square (Via Domitia), the horreum, the neighborhood of Clos de la Lombarde (villas with rich wall paintings) and several cemeteries with sarcophagi, funerary epigraphs, sculptures, mosaics, etc. Nearby there was an important ceramic center in Salléles d`Aude.

The city was part of the Visigoth Kingdom of Tolosa and after its defeat in the battle of Vouillé (507) it belonged to Gaul Narbonense or Septimania of the Visigoth Kingdom of Toledo. After its disappearance in 711, it was occupied by Muslims for a few decades, but the Franks soon incorporated it into their kingdom. The city was an episcopal seat from the 3rd century until the French Revolution.

The church of Saint Paul of Narbonne is dedicated to the first bishop of the city, Paul of Narbonne or Paul Sergius, apparently of Italian origin. According to tradition (recorded by Gregory of Tours in his Historia </ i> Francorum </ i>), he was sent to evangelize Gaul by Pope Fabian, around 250. He died of a natural death and is buried under this church. A medieval legend attempts to bring the life of Paul of Narbonne to the 1st century AD. C., making him a disciple of Paul of Tarsus himself, who would send him to evangelize Gaul. He died a natural death and after his burial, an early Christian necropolis arose around him, on which a primitive basilica was built in the 4th century, after the Edict of Milan (313) by Constantine, which allowed free worship of Christians. The church suffered a fire in the 5th century and was restored in the middle of that century.

The current church has Romanesque and Gothic elements, beginning in the 12th century (Romanesque), to continue in the 13th century in Gothic style. The church began in Romanesque style and has a single nave, which would later be extended at the end of the 14th century. It has an ambulatory and is very slender and elevated, 22 m high and 82 m long. The Gothic choir began in the year 1224. It preserves a Romanesque capital with scenes of the Last Judgment and a curious font with a carved frog. Legend says that the frogs interfered with the bishop’s prayers and he turned them into stone. It has cruciform pillars with embedded columns and in the clerestory the windows are blinded.

It is in the basement where the crypt is located, with mosaics from the 2nd and 3rd centuries and numerous tombs. The necropolis of the crypt presents various stone sarcophagi, with trough lids and tombs excavated in the ground with stone walls. Other burials are carried out in amphorae and these are characteristic of children in the Roman world.

The early Christian cemetery would correspond to the 3rd and 4th centuries and, as in the catacombs of Rome, it has two spaces in the cella memoriae. >: the room of the sarcophagi and the room of the funerary banquets. It is worth highlighting one of the preserved sarcophagi, which has a decoration of strigils or parallel curved lines on the walls; A winged Victory appears on the axis. This element taken from paganism acquires a new Christian interpretation. On the cover the portraits of the deceased appear between the Moon (Isis-Selene) and the Sun (Serapis-Helios. At this initial moment of Christian art the decorative motifs are taken from the pagan world, but Christian interpretations will be assigned to them. The The work is made of marble and the style seems to correspond to the so-called “School of Arles”.

Francisco Javier Fernández Gamero for URBS REGIA

VV.AA., 2022: País cátaro: Carcasona y Narbona.

BASILIQUE SAINT-PAUL

Basílica de Saint Paul Serge