Basilica of Saint-Sernin

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Around the year 250, Saturnin, the first bishop of Toulouse, refused to sacrifice to the gods and was tied to a bull and dragged through the streets until he died. Over his grave grew a sanctuary, and over that sanctuary the largest Romanesque church still standing in France, consecrated in 1096, its rose-pink brick and stone crowned by an octagonal bell tower that rises in tier after tier of arches. It was built for pilgrims: on the road to Compostela, its ambulatory and ring of chapels let crowds circle the relics without disturbing the monks at prayer. And what relics. Saint-Sernin keeps one of the richest treasuries of saints in Europe, more than a hundred reliquaries in its chapels and crypt, among them the remains of several apostles, and on today's feast above all Simon and Jude, whose relics tradition says came here as a gift of Charlemagne. So the two quiet apostles of this day share a roof with the first martyr of Toulouse, and pilgrims still walk the same ambulatory, touching the same stones, on their way south to Santiago.