But to the antiquarian the most interesting feature of the cathedral is that portion of its foundation which formed a part of the Roman basilica that stood on this site. It was transformed from a temple of Jupiter to a Christian church by St. Martial, a contemporary of the apostles, sent hither from Rome to preach the gospel to the Gentile Lemovices. St. Martial is honored to this day as the patron saint of Limoges. When he died some pious priests formed a brotherhood to preserve his tomb, and at that tomb have since knelt Popes Urban II. and Clement V., Edward of England, Blanche of Castile, Henry IV., Louis VII., XI. and XIII. of France, and many great lords and princes, who, it must be remembered, had to journey hither in days when no palace-coaches and lightning mail-trains were at their disposal. Railroads have put a heavy discount on the ancient pilgrimage business.
In the tenth century a terrible plague, known as the _mal des ardents_, swept off forty thousand Limousins in a few weeks. The survivors, hopeless save of divine intervention, prayed that St. Martial's remains might be brought from the tomb where they had been reposing for nearly a thousand years and exposed to public view. All the relics of other saints that could be collected in the neighborhood were brought into Limoges, as if to form a cortége of honor to the remains of the patron saint of Aquitaine. Upon a hill in the environs, now known as the Mont de la Joie, the sacred fossils of the departed just were held up that all might gaze upon them and be healed. By what particular process the manifestation of these osseous fragments of defunct ecclesiastics resulted in a banishment of the pestilence one finds it difficult to explain, save on general principles of faith and Professor Tyndall's prayer-test. Nevertheless, history records that the plague was stayed. A chapel was erected upon the hilltop, which is now tunnelled by a railroad, and from that day the public display of these saintly relics, at intervals of every seven years, has become an established ceremonial known as the Festival of the Ostension. It is celebrated on Thursday of Mid-Lent by a procession conducted with great pomp and ceremony. The flag of the brotherhood of St. Martial, an immense white banner with a red cross, is first blessed by the bishop, after which, followed by a numerous cortége, it is borne through the city to the sound of music and an incessant fusillade of musketry. It is then hoisted to the summit of the spire of St. Michael, which forms the repository of St. Martial's remains.