SAINT PAUL-TROIS-CHÂTEAUX. – Ancient diocese and chief town of an arrondissement in the department of Drôme (France). It was the ancient capital of the Tricastini and was called Augusta Tricastinorum. It was devastated by the Vandals in the 5th century, by the Saracens in 736, and during the Wars of Religion.
The first bishop of the diocese, St Restitutus, was identified with a Paulus who took part in the Council of Valence in 374 and whom a 15th-century legend claimed to identify with the man born blind in the Gospel.
According to the legend (Anal. Boll., 11 [1892], p. 375, from the manuscript of Grenoble 49), St Paul was a Roman, and incola civitatis Romensis v, and in the 6th century became bishop of the region; the see took its name from him, and Adon remembers him on 1 February. His successors were Florentius, Eralla, Victor, Eusebius, Agricola, and Berto, whose names appear among the bishops present at the Councils of Gaul between 527 and 690. In the time of Louis the Pious (827–39), the two sees of Orange and Trois-Châteaux were united by Pope Gregory IV, as is shown by a bull of Urban II (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 5561); the first common bishop was Boniface, followed by Lando and Germanicus.
The diocese was suppressed by the French Revolution;
today it forms Valence (v.), whose bishop still bears the title.
The ancient Cathedral dates from the 12th century and offers one of the most characteristic examples of the Provençal Romanesque school. It has three naves of harmonious proportions; the central nave is provided with windows and reaches a height of 24 m.; an octagonal dome rises at the center of the transept; the central apse is adorned with small arches and flanked by two smaller apses. On one pillar is a roughly carved representation of the descent of Jesus Christ into limbo (13th century); in the apse are remains of a 13th-century mosaic in which Jerusalem can still be discerned. The central portal is richly decorated; the portico is vaulted and contains numerous sculpted panels. The present sacristy occupies the former Gothic chapel built by Bishop Stefano Genèves (d. 1470).
Three km. from St-P.-T.-C. lies the village of St-Restitut, with a church dating from the end of the 12th century and having a square tower, where the bishop St Restitutus was buried; legend identifies him as the first bishop of the diocese. The church has a single nave and an apse with small arches and Corinthian capitals; a characteristic carved frieze from the 12th century represents Jesus Christ, the Divine Lamb, the Magi, the signs of the zodiac, knights, hunting scenes, workers, and fantastic animals.
The village of La-Baume-du-Transit also has a noteworthy Romanesque church, originally composed of four apses with small arches arranged around a quadrilateral with a dome, on the model of the baptistery of Venasque; the entrance portico and the bell tower date from the 14th century; in the 16th century the central apse was transformed into a nave.