SAINT-PAUL-TROIS-CHÂTEAUX. - Ancient diocese and district capital town in the department of Drôme (France). It is 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 Paul who took part in 374 in the Council of Valence and whom a legend of the 15th century claimed to identify with the man born blind of the Gospel.
St. Paul, according to the legend (Anal. Boll., 11 [1892], p. 375, from the Grenoble manuscript 49), would have been a Roman, and incola civitatis Romensis v, and would have become in the 6th century bishop of the region; the see took its name from him and Ado commemorates him on 1 February; his successors were Florentius, Eralla, Victor, Eusebius, Agricola, 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 appears from 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 part of the diocese of Valence (v.), whose bishop still bears the title.
The ancient Cathedral dates back to 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 hall is provided with windows and reaches a height of 24 m.; in the centre of the transept rises an octagonal dome; the central apse is adorned with small arches and flanked by two lesser apses. On a pillar the descent of Jesus Christ into limbo is roughly carved (13th century); in the apse there are remains of a 13th-century mosaic in which Jerusalem can still be discerned. The central portal is richly decorated; the portico has vaults with numerous carved panels. The present sacristy occupies the ancient Gothic chapel built by Bishop Étienne Genèves (d. 1470).
3 km. from St-P.-T.-C. lies the village of St-Restitut with a church of the end of the 12th century with a square tower, where the bishop St. Restitutus was buried, whom the legend points to as the first bishop of the diocese. The church has a single nave with an apse with small arches and Corinthian capitals; a characteristic carved frieze of the 12th century represents Jesus Christ, the Divine Lamb, the Magi, the signs of the zodiac, knights, hunting scenes, workmen, fantastic animals.
Also in the village of La-Baume-du-Transit there is a notable Romanesque church originally composed of four apses with small arches arranged around a quadrangle with a dome on the model of the baptistery of Venasque; the entrance portico and the bell tower are of the 14th century; in the 16th century the central apse was transformed into a nave.
Bibliography
Enrico Josi