Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, Clermont-Ferrand, France
Around 450 Bishop Namatius (Saint Namace) had a first cathedral built atop the hill. He dedicates it to the martyred saints Agricol and Vital, from whom he brings the relics of Bologna. It is described by Gregory of Tours in the History of the Franks (42 windows, 70 columns, 8 doors, cross-shaped with a round apse with walls decorated with marble mosaics.)
In 761 it is destroyed during a raid of Pépin le Bref against the Duke of Aquitaine and rebuilt (it seems that there was reconstruction by Bishop Haldebert in 768?).
June 2, 946, according to tradition, the bishop Etienne II dedicates a new cathedral dedicated to the Virgin. He installed a statue-reliquary of the Virgin in majesty dressed in gold venerated until the Revolution. Archaeologists have highlighted a crypt excavated towards the year 1000 (filled in the thirteenth century, it will be refitted in the nineteenth) and the construction of a Romanesque chevron and radiant chapels around the choir (first half of the twelfth century) .
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