From all this dissension from the Roman faith--though it came comparatively late in point of time--rose the apparent apathy for church-building which resulted in the rather inferior cathedral at Gap.
No account of this unimportant church edifice could possibly be justly coloured with enthusiasm. It is not wholly a mean structure, but it is unworthy of the great activities of the religious devotion of the past, and has no pretence to architectural worth, nor has it any of the splendid appointments which are usually associated with the seat of a bishop's throne.
Notre Dame de l'Assomption is a modern edifice in the style _Romano-Gothique_, and its construction, though elaborate both inside and out, is quite unappealing.
This is the more to be marvelled at, in that the history of the diocese is so full of incident; so far, in fact, in advance of what the tangible evidences would indicate.
Vence,--the ancient Roman city of Ventium,--with five other dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Embrun, was suppressed--as the seat of a bishop--in 1790. It had been a suffragan bishopric of Embrun since its foundation by Eusèbe in the fourth century.
The ancient cathedral of Notre Dame is supposed to show traces of workmanship of the sixth, tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries, but, excepting that of the latter era, it will be difficult for the casual observer to place the distinctions of style.
The whole ensemble is of grim appearance; so much so that one need not hesitate to place it well down in the ranks of the church-builder's art, and, either from poverty of purse or purpose, it is quite undistinguished.
In its interior there are a few features of unusual remark: an ancient sarcophagus, called that of St. Véran; a _retable_ of the sixteenth century; some rather good paintings, by artists apparently unknown; and a series of fifty-one fifteenth-century choir-stalls of quite notable excellence, and worth more as an expression of artistic feeling than all the other features combined.
The only distinction as to constructive features is the fact that there are no transepts, and that the aisles which surround the nave are doubled.
The small city of Sion, the capital of the Valais, looks not unlike the pictures one sees in sixteenth-century historical works.