The main tales in Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne cycle which deal with major sorcery are three: Holiness of Azédarac (supplemented with Doom), The Colossus of Ylourgne, and The Beast of Averoigne. I charted them out last week and found something of interest to future authors.
Beast reveals that time-traveling Azédarac, Bishop of Ximes in AD 1175 and sainted (in one timeline) as of 1230, had left a society of sorcery behind him. These sorcerers, of whom Luc called "Cauldron-Maker" is he whom we meet in Beast, weren't in league with Yog-Sothoth. They were, instead, able to resist the worst of the Lovecraftian aliens.
Meanwhile Colossus had let us in that Vyônes, too, hosted a circle of sorcerers in the thirteenth century. In AD 1275 a dwarf Nathaire infiltrated this circle; it was claimed that he came from outside Averoigne. Nathaire, obsessive, cared only for necro and I assume he didn't bother with other arcana.
We are not told that the one city had any relation with the other. But I can guess, and in this chart my thoughts are represented by the dotted-line.
The Archbishop in Vyônes already suspected (Holiness) that his man in Ximes was not a holy man. When word got out concerning Azédarac's miraculous ascension, his library got raided. I do not speculate on who burgled the place first: the Church, or Azédarac's apprentices. Either way, most of his tomes were saved... and kept from the rabble. The Averoignard Church hit upon a compromise: beatify Azédarac in public; tolerate sorcery in private, if it be used for the good of the province. Ximes further got a Benedictine convent featuring a grand wooden icon of Our Lady. (My "Cult", like CAS's Holiness, is unaware of this convent.)
That meant that Vyônes could not well resist when white-magi established a cabal over there too. Gaspard "of the North" translated parts of the Book Of Eibon (The Coming of the White Worm); either the ninth chapter therefrom, or the ninth pericope he had deemed of interest. I assume these pericopae had been dictated by the Oracle Of Sadoqua. Other Hyperborean tales in CAS's oeuvre may well derive from Gaspard's translation.
After the Colossus had been and gone, if the Bishop of Vyônes hadn't yet secured some of these fell texts for his collection, his minions assuredly had got some after they had conducted their own raid on the Ylourgne ruin. There was a need to cleanse the Champ de Nathaire (hat-tip here to James Chambers, "Unhallowed Ground, Unholy Flesh") outside the cathedral city, or at least to keep its necrosis from spreading.
UPDATE 11/11: Istarelle - if you think "Sorceress" belongs in the canon - had nothing to do with Nathaire's circle. If, further, you agree she was at the height of her power in 1315 AD then she was an infant in 1275.
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