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France in the Third Cruside. De m
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There are many other epen gas ng
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Fre
d'Or, beside the Rhône.

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a the beautiful Pavé de la Tête

t was a wood, in which it was said Saviar in gold formed part. Hence

a treasure was concealed, of which a best & It is divided into two gets the plansque and the scientific; the former is led by the world of fashion every day, and by all classes of society on Sundays; its iful lake, with its islets an swans builos and gondolas, is perhaps its principal charm, while in the scientific pertion are zodigical and botanical collections.

Lyons, in spite of its frequent turbulence, its free-thought, and its democracy, has always been a very religious city. It has long been the most important centre of Jesuit intrigue, and the head-quarters of the Socity for the Propagation of the Faith. In no other City of France are the upper classes so completely dominated by clerical influence. After the Restoration the priests grew rampant, and threw into the mud the hats of those who passed without saluting them. Under Louis Philippe they were compelled to plot beretly, bat during the Second Empire, under the protection of Marshal Castellane, pretimit rose to its height of proud insolence. The convents, seminaries, and religious

forts became innumerable. The city was the first to receive with enthusiasm the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and in honour thereof made the 8th of December 1 gradest festival. The churches of Lyons are very numerous, and their associations cum un back to the very first introduction of Christianity into Gaul. Greek Christians ir n. A wire the first teachers of the Gospel in ancient France; and in the second extury there were a considerable number of the faithful in Lyons, when a terrible perempton brike cat under Marcus Aurelius, in 177. Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, A dis⠀ d the Apostle John, sent Pothinus to be the apostle and pastor of the church 1.29 .. In an underground crypt, afterwards the Church of St. Nizier, the ? tuamus eibeutel divine service. The time of persecution began; the Christians sanded 1 var as humiliations; whenever they appeared in public they were pursued em was, and baten and stoned. On being brought before magistrates, they chleseed their fath, and t rture and imprisonment were alike powerless to move their dugons; and at the annual gathering of people from all 1 with each other in the great Forum, it was resolved to

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make a public example of those who refused to abjure the Christian religion. Eusebius has preserved a pathetic "Epistle of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons to the brethren which are in Asia and Phrygia," in which the sufferings of the Lyonnese martyrs are detailed. Blandina was tortured from morning till evening, till the executioners sank with fatigue. Many were tortured and then strangled. The Deacon Sanctus was burned with hot irons, lacerated with scourges, and thrown to the wild beasts. Maturus and Attala experienced a similar fate. The venerable Bishop Pothinus, more than ninety years of age, was so cruelly beaten that he died in his dungeon two days afterwards. Blandina was suspended from a cross amongst the wild beasts, but none of them touched her. Ultimately, however, she succumbed under the most brutal torture.

Such were the fiery conflicts through which the infant Church of Lyons had to pass. Above the crypt where St. Pothinus used to assemble the brethren, rose the church now known as that of St. Nizier, in memory of the bishop of that name, who was buried there. It was one of the churches destroyed by the Saracens, and subsequently restored by Leydrade. It has been rebuilt at various times; the present construction offers a fine example of fifteenth-century Gothic. The fine Renaissance portal is the work of the celebrated architect Philibert Delorme, a native of Lyons. Some beautiful marble statues of the Virgin, St. Pothinus, etc., and some fine paintings, adorn the majestic interior. The crypt has been restored, and connected with it is a mortuary hall, where pyramids of bones in triple range display the accumulations of centuries. From the ancient tower the Protestants, in 1562, fired on the Hôtel de Ville, and forced the guards to capitulate. In the émeute of 1834 several hundred insurgents were killed in this church. St. Nizier is not only interesting as the cradle of Christianity in Lyons: it was also the cradle of civic liberty. Here the growing Commune met in the days of its resistance to the bishops, and the bell in the ancient tower used to call the citizens together to elect their magistrates.

The Church of Ainay is a very remarkable monument, linked as it is with both Pagan and Christian associations. As we have already said, close by this spot the Rhône and Saône met, until Perrache removed the place of confluence. Here was the earliest Forum, where, overlooked by the Roman city on the Hill of Fourvières, Greeks, Orientals, Africans, Gauls, and Spaniards met to exchange the products of their various countries. Here the Gauls, reconciled by Augustus to the loss of their liberty, and proud of their new civilisation and polytheism, erected an altar, which they dedicated to the Emperor and to Rome. The altar, twenty feet in height, stood in the midst of the open Forum. The approach was flanked by two colossal columns of Egyptian granite, each surmounted by a statue of Victory. Near the altar was the Temple of Augustus, bright with brilliant mosaics, and adorned with sixty statues, representing the sixty Gallic nations who had shared in the construction of the edifice. Close by were the grand houses of the priests and pontiffs, who were chosen from the highest citizens of the State. Grand was the spectacle when Drusus, after his victories beyond the Rhine, solemnly inaugurated the Altar of Augustus ; but far grander in its moral significance was the moment when Pothinus and Blandina, and their fellow-martyrs, were dragged before this altar to forswear their faith, and met all remonstrance with the simple answer, "I am a Christian!" The fate of these noble champions of the truth has already been told.

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At the Altar of Augustus the worship of Pallas Athene was solemnised, and the name of this goddess became corrupted into Ainay, which name the church still bears. In the reign of Constantine the Christians built at Ainay, above the dungeons where the martyrs were immured, a church sacred to St. Blandina. Badulph and other hermits came to well close by, and hence arose a monastery, of considerable fame in its day. The church was destroyed by Huns, and Vandals and Lombards, and Saracens, but always rose again

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THE PLACE BELLECOUR.

After its destruction by the Lombards, it was rebuilt on a scale of royal mat dicence by Queen Brunchaut, the terrible lady whose beauty and cruelty are celebrated it the "Nebeltgen Lied." It was again rebuilt in Byzantine style in the twelfth century, and conserrated by Pope Paschal II; the pontiff at the same time specially blessed a sidechapel, said to contain some hair of the Virgin Mary and part of the cradle and swaddlingcoture of our Saviour. It was in this church, in 1193, that the young Chevalier Bayard, at the age of seventeen, came to receive a blessing on his arms, previous to winning his first triumph in a tournament before Charles VIII. and a grand assemblage of ladies and nobles. The monastery was destroyed by the Protestants in 1562, again rebuilt,

finally razed in 1793, and new streets were formed on the site. Amongst the celebrities

who had temporarily resided in it we may mention Francis I., Henry II., Louis XIII., Christine of France, Marie de Medicis, and Anne of Austria.

The church is to all intents and purposes the same that Paschal consecrated in the twelfth century; the west tower is Carlovingian, and the crypt dates from the ninth century. But in re-constructing the church before that date, there is no doubt that the same materials were used over again, as for the most part they are evidently remains of earlier Roman edifices. The four columns supporting the cupola were procured by cutting in

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two each of the two columns previously mentioned as flanking the Altar of Augustus. Some admirable sculptures and mosaics adorn the building. The sacristy is formed of the ancient Chapel of St. Blandina. In the crypt, which has been restored, there are distinct traces of Roman work. Adjoining it are the alleged prisons of Pothinus and Blandina-gloomy cells below the level of the river, only to be approached by creeping on the hands and knees through low apertures. Until towards the middle of the eighteenth century the ramparts of Ainay, planted with trees, formed a magnificent promenade, washed by the waters of the two rivers, and commanded by the abbey-palace and the church, with its pyramidal tower.

In the western portion of the city, beyond the Saône, are found some very interesting ancient churches. St. Irénée was built by the Bishop St. Patient in the fifth century,

above a crypt in which the early Christians were wont to assemble round the tombs of the martyrs under St. Irenæus, the successor of St. Pothinus in the see of Lyons. The crypt, although, like the church above, sadly undermined, is very antique and primitive in its character. In the midst of it is a well, into which, according to tradition, the bodies of 19,000 Christians were thrown when the Emperor Severus revenged himself on Lyons for its adherence to the cause of Albinus.

The church built by St. Patient was destroyed by the barbarians in the ninth century, and rebuilt shortly afterwards. It was again sacked and pulled down by the Baron des Adrets, in 1562. The Protestant general caused the bones and débris of animals to be thrown down the well in the crypt, but a careful separation was subsequently effected; and it is alleged that the bones now shown behind a triple iron grating at the entrance of the crypt are the bones of the martyrs, and nothing else. When Des Adrets sacked the church, the head of St. Irenæus was set up as a laughing-stock for the soldiers; but a medical man contrived to obtain possession of it, and preserved it till the disturbances

were over.

The present edifice consists of a single nave, the choir being crowned by a double cupola. It has been rebuilt at various epochs, and its present modern style does not harmonise with its historical associations.

Nearer to the river than St. Irénée stands the Church of St. Just. Early in the third century a crypt was formed here, in memory of all the first native martyrs, then called the Macchabees. Above the crypt soon rose a church, which, like all other Christian edifices in the district, was destroyed by the barbarians. St. Patient rebuilt it on a grand scale, devoting to it his immense fortune; and when the body of St. Just, the third bishop of Lyons, was brought back from its solitary grave in Egypt, it was deposited here, and the church received his name. In connection with the church was a vast monastic castle with massive walls and towers. Many sovereigns made these cloisters a temporary abode. In 1245 Innocent IV., fleeing before the German Emperor Frederick II., found a refuge here, and remained in safety for seven years, till his enemy's death. To this strong fastness the canon-barons retreated when the citizens were rising against their authority, and sustained more than one siege from the bourgeois army. Here dwelt the Regent Louisa of Savoy whilst her son Francis I., the first of French monarchs to cross the Alps with artillery, was campaigning in Italy, and here she received the famous letter after the battle of Pavia, "All is lost except honour!" In 1562, when the Protestants were ravaging Lyons, it was at St. Just that their zealous fury seemed to culminate. The golden shrine that enclosed the body of St. Just, raised upon four marble columns ten feet in height, the Rose d'Or, and other priceless gifts of popes and princes, and all the vast wealth in the treasury of the church, were pillaged and dispersed; the relics and tombs were profaned, and all the historic title-deeds and monuments destroyed. The present structure was in building from 1661 to 1747.

Still nearer to the river, at the end of the Quai de l'Archevêché, stands the primatial Church of St. Jean Baptiste, the Cathedral of Lyons. The primitive cathedral was the Church of St. Nizier, already described, but St. Jean belongs to the epoch when the pastors of the Church had become powerful barons, wielding temporal as well as spiritual power.

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