The story has a detailed and realistic setting in the tiny decaying cathedral city of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, at the foot of the Pyrenees in southern France.
Gundowald fled to Comminges and Guntram's army set down to besiege the citadel (now known as Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges).
Fearing a similar fate, Mathieu had his wife locked up a few months later in the castle of Bramevaque and governed Comminges alone.
The mediaeval scholar and ghost story writer M. R. James used Saint-Bertrand, and more particularly, its cathedral, as a setting for his classic tale of terror "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book", which can be found in the collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904).
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The English composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988) wrote a piano piece inspired by James's story entitled St. Bertrand de Comminges: "He was laughing in the tower" (1941).
Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges | Grand Prix du Comminges | Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges Cathedral | Comminges |
Amanieu d'Albret († 1520), became bishop of Pamiers, of Comminges and of Lescar, then cardinal
After World War II, the creation of Formula One saw the Grand Prix du Comminges modified to a Formula Two event but, with the top drivers no longer competing, economics dictated cancellation after the 1952 race.
His clients at the time included George I of Greece, Carnegie Museum, the embassy at Saint-Petersbourg, conseil municipal au Capitule de Toulouse, Musée des Ursulines de Mâcon, Palais des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (Petit Palais), Conseil Municipal de l'Hôtel de Ville (Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges), and Raymond Poincaré (president of France from 1913 to 1920).