Ile et Vilaine - Rennes - cathedral of Saint Pierre

Ile et Vilaine – Rennes - the cathedral of St Pierre – beauty a long time in the making

The cathedral of Rennes is unusual in that it isn’t the church of the first bishop, Saint Melaine. He reigned from 505 AD in a monastery built on the highest place in the city, a holy site since the Stone Age. The site of his church is now Nôtre-Dame-et-Saint-Melaine. Below the monastery, between the two rivers, the city spread luxuriously and without defences. Around 900 AD it was attacked by Vikings, who sacked the city-centre and the monasteries. The surviving population withdrew into the small untouched area next to the wharves on the Vilaine, and pillaged the wrecked buildings for stone to build a wall around themselves. The seat of the bishop was moved to a small church within the walled area, Saint-Pierre.

This edifice was rebuilt in the twelfth century in the gothic style, but in 1490 the towers of the western entrance fell down. There were other problems in the rest of the building, but efforts concentrated solely on replacing the façade. Plan after plan was proposed, but the city couldn’t afford them. At last in 1640 a renaissance-style proposal was pushed through, built in granite in short bursts as finances allowed and finally finished in 1753.

But there’d been no money to maintain the mediaeval nave and choir as well, and in 1754 a stone fell from the choir vault in mid service. The bishop asked the king’s building works specialist for help. Their architect produced plans for a completely new church, and in 1756 demolition of the existing one began. This costly work took twelve years, and left no money for building the intended design. In 1780 an architect from Nantes, Mathurin Crucy, proposed a new design, copied from the little basilicas he’d seen in Rome, small and so less expensive. Work began slowly in 1787.  Then came the Revolution and work stopped.

The revolutionaries banned the church. Napoléon I restored it, and in 1811 decreed that the cathedral of Rennes would be rebuilt, but no money arrived. Work finally began in 1816 under the restored monarchy of Louis XVIII but wasn’t finished until 1845 under the second empire of Napoléon III.

In 1859 the bishop of Rennes was made archbishop of Brittany. Saint-Pierre remains his cathedral, but compared to the cathedrals of other French archbishops, it’s extraordinarily tiny. It’s even smaller than most of the churches of the Tro Breiz. But it is unique. It has the only renaissance west front in Brittany. It is the only Roman-style basilica in Brittany. It is exquisite, a little jewel.

And when you visit,  you may be surprised to find that despite the Grecian columns of its façade and the Roman nave and choir and dome, the cathedral is strongly Breton. On the walls of the ambulatory around the choir are depicted all the saints whose names can still be found on a map of Brittany, depicted as marching in one huge crowd on the roads of the region, the Celtic churchmen and women whom the Catholic church doesn’t recognise as saints, but who worked hard to create the towns and the villages and the roads and the landscape which we still see today, heroes of Brittany who deserve to be remembered.

A little extra note for the English:

On 25 December 1483, Henry Tudor (head of the house of Lancaster, residing in exile in Rennes) stood before the high altar of Rennes cathedral, and, witness by the bishop and Duke, formally promised to marry Elizabeth of York. This gained him enough support from prominent Yorkists to facilitate his invasion of England and his defeat of Richard III on Bosworth field. He was then crowned as Henry VII, first king of the Tudor dynasty.

The end of thirty years of the Wars of the Roses was planned and initiated in Rennes.

Henry VII head of the house of Lancaster, and Elizabeth heiress of the house of York