Romanesque, the interior of this church is Gothic of the Transition; but
most of the capitals of the pier-columns have a plain Romanesque outline.
There is no clerestory, the light being admitted from small round-headed
windows in the aisle walls. Much of the building dates from the foundation
of the abbey of Cadouin, in the early part of the twelfth century; but the
existing cloisters, which are what is most remarkable here, date from
the fifteenth century, and owe much of their interest to the partial
transformation of their style which they afterwards underwent when the
spirit of the Renaissance set in. The Gothic tracery of the arches that
face the quadrangle unites the strength of stone with the delicacy of
pencil drawing. In the late Gothic and Renaissance part, the ceilings
are richly and floridly groined, angelic and other figures forming the
termination of the low-reaching bosses, the groins converging in fan-like
order towards elaborately-carved canopies against the wall. At one end
of this wing is a doorway, the jambs and lintels of which are heavily
over-worked with carvings very typical of the exuberant fancy of the early
French Renaissance.

[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE ABBEY OF CADOUIN.]

For centuries Cadouin was a famous place of pilgrimage, in consequence
of the claim laid by the abbey to the possession of the Holy Shroud. The
following is the history of the celebrated relic, according to Jean Tarde:

'In the year 1100 Hugh, surnamed the Great, brother of the King of France,
and Bishop of Le Puy, in Auvergne, having gone on a voyage beyond the seas
with Godefrey de Bouillon, found means, after the taking of Jerusalem, to
recover this holy relic, and, dying in Palestine, he left it in charge of a
priest, his chaplain. The priest falling ill on board ship, and perceiving
that his end was drawing near, gave the shroud into the hands of a clerk, a