THE CATHEDRALS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The Cathedral of Rheims, which was begun soon after the destruction of
the original building by the fire of 1211, is a supreme expression of
the fusion of the three systems--those of Aquitaine, of Anjou, and of
the Ile-de-France. It may be taken as the most perfect manifestation
of persistent efforts to establish a method of construction based on
equilibrium--the equilibrium, that is to say, of a building vaulted
on intersecting arches, the thrusts of which are received by exterior
flying buttresses.
The temerity, and even the dangers of such a system, are sufficiently
demonstrated in the wonderful works of the thirteenth-century
architects themselves. For, notwithstanding the skill and beauty of
their many admirable combinations, they were unable to reduce their
methods to scientific formulæ. The statical power of their structures
remained an uncertain quantity, determined by the durability of the
material and its exposure or non-exposure to the weather, the interior
skeleton being formed of the same material as the exterior.
[Illustration: 44. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. PLAN]
The perils inherent in such a system are more apparent at Rheims than
elsewhere, because of the colossal proportions of the building. The
arrangement of the flying buttresses, however, is more logical than
at Laon, Paris, Sens, and Bourges, by reason of the quadripartite
arrangement of the main vault. The thrusts being equally distributed
among the supporting piers, each flying buttress performs an identical
office; their equal strength and solidity is therefore perfectly
appropriate and logical. But though theoretically correct in its
disposition of flying buttresses of equal strength to meet thrusts of
equal strength, the method is vitiated by its inherent weakness as a
system of abutment. The fragility of the flying buttress exposed it
to two grave dangers, active and passive; active, taking into account
the constant strain upon it as an abutment; passive, in regard to the
gradual reduction of its solidity by exposure to weather. In support
of this statement, it is only necessary to refer to the restorations
which it has been found necessary to make within the last few years,
to preserve the nave. The flying buttresses have been strengthened
from below, a proceeding without which the collapse of the huge
building would have been inevitable.
But we shall find much to call for unqualified admiration at Rheims in
the grandiose conception of the work and in its powerful execution, in
the magnificent arrangement of its eastern façade, and in the perfect
harmony of the ornamentation, where sculpture, capitals, friezes,
crockets, and floriations are so many types of mediæval decorative art
at its best.
The Cathedral of Amiens, which dates from about 1220, and is one of
the largest as well as one of the most admired of Gothic masterpieces,
is directly founded upon that of Rheims. The plan is on the same
lines, with this exception, that at Amiens the choir is of greater
importance relatively to the nave, and that the piers and points of
support are weaker and much more lofty.
[Illustration: 45. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF THE NAVE]
[Illustration: 46. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. FLYING BUTTRESSES OF THE CHOIR]
The Rémois architects, while exercised by the problems of equilibrium
which their system involved, sought to minimise its dangers, which
they recognised no less fully than their predecessors, by prudently
avoiding all false bearings. It will be easily seen by a comparison
of the two sections (Figs. 45 and 48) that the builders of Amiens
were troubled by no such misgivings, or that they were at least more
venturesome if not more accomplished. They did not hesitate to base
the columns which received the crowns of the flying buttresses on a
corbel arrangement which had no solid bearing, as may be seen by
following the direction of the dotted line X in Fig. 48. The boldness,
or rather the imprudence of such an arrangement is patent, for the
failure of anyone of the courses, or the decay of any part of the pier
into which the corbels are keyed, would necessarily involve a rupture
in the flying buttresses, on which the stability of the main vault
depends. The disintegration of the whole building and its total ruin
could be the only result. The perils of such combinations, or rather
such _tours de force_ of equilibrium, are exemplified at Beauvais.
The architects who built the choir, about the year 1225, basing it on
that of Amiens, determined to raise a monument which should surpass,
both in plan and elevation, all the structures of their epoch. They
increased the breadth of the choir and of its bays, raising, in the
latter, intermediate piers on the crowns of the lower archivolts, thus
dividing the upper bays, and at the same time strengthening the vault
by auxiliary transverse arches. They exaggerated the height of the
archivolts and of the large windows, and diminished their thickness,
in order to give greater elegance and lightness, and the main vault
rose to a height of more than 160 feet above the ground level. This
tremendous elevation, the exaggeration of which in proportion to the
width of the nave is striking, necessitated a complicated system of
flying buttresses surpassing in boldness all that had gone before.
The section in Fig. 51 will give some idea of what has been justly
described as an architectural folly. It is astonishing that the
structure should have stood as it has done, taking into account the
false bearings of the intermediate piers, here again shown by the
dotted line X (Fig. 51).
[Illustration: 47. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. PLAN]
[Illustration: 48. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. SECTION THROUGH THE NAVE]
These rest for half of their thickness on off-sets from the piers,
which, proving unequal to the strain, have been temporarily stayed,
and must eventually be consolidated.
The choir, however, was finished about 1270, and stood for several
years. But dislocations then declared themselves. The forces so
elaborately balanced lost their equilibrium, and on the 29th November
1284 the vault fell, dragging down with it the flying buttresses, and
carrying havoc through the rest of the building. In the reconstruction
which followed it was thought imperative to double the points of
support in the arcades both of the main and side aisles, and to
reinforce the flying buttresses by iron chains.
[Illustration: 51. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. TRANSVERSE SECTION]
During the thirteenth century a number of cathedrals were raised all
over Europe on the model of the great buildings of Northern France,
and more especially of Amiens, which seems to have roused a great
enthusiasm; these were, however, of far more modest dimensions. They
had neither the exaggerated height nor the structural audacities
of their exemplars. Few of these churches and cathedrals, the
reconstruction of which on the new system generally began with the
choir, which was added to the primitive nave, were completed by
those who initiated their erection. The most highly favoured in this
respect were finished in the course of the fourteenth century; but in
the greater number of cases the work dragged slowly on, and reached
its end some two centuries after its inauguration. Reconstructive
undertakings were constantly impeded by wars or social convulsions,
which either hampered or entirely cut off the resources of bishops and
architects, their promoters. Such interruptions were of great service
to modern archæological study, offering as they do distinct evidence
of the various transformations which were successively accomplished
from the so-called Romanesque period to the Gothic.
[Illustration: 49. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. APSE]
[Illustration: 50. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. NORTH FRONT]
[Illustration: 51. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. TRANSVERSE SECTION]
[Illustration: 52. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL. ROSE WINDOW OF NORTH TRANSEPT]
The majority of these great buildings, which show traces of the
vicissitudes through which they passed, bear a strong likeness to
each other, and vary only in detail, according to the skill of their
constructors.
The peculiar interest of Chartres centres in its remarkable statuary;
it has, however, other features which command attention, such as
the rose window of the north, transept and the design of the flying
buttresses. These consist of three arches, one above the other, the
two lower ones being connected by colonnettes, radiating from a
centre, so that the lower arch is related to the upper, as the nave of
a wheel is to the felloes, the colonnettes forming the spokes.
At Mans the arrangement of the choir is so far more remarkable in that
it is extremely unusual, or indeed, in its way unique. The flying
buttresses are planned in the form of a Y (see A on the plan Fig. 53),
thus affording space for windows in the exterior wall, to light the
vast circular ambulatory, which at Mans is of unusual importance, and
surrounds the choir with a double aisle. The flying buttresses which
rise above the _arcs-doubleaux_, bi-furcated (B on the plan), are
over-attenuated in section; their exaggerated height and proportionate
slenderness threaten to make them spring, so that it has been found
necessary to bind them together by ties and iron chains. Such
expedients are a sufficient criticism of the ingenious but precarious
system adopted by the architects of Mans.
[Illustration: 53. MANS CATHEDRAL. PLAN]
[Illustration: 54. MANS CATHEDRAL. FLYING BUTTRESSES OF THE APSE]
[Illustration: 55. MANS CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF THE CHOIR]
The influence of the Ile-de-France in Normandy is manifest in the
arrangement of choirs and apsidal chapels in Norman cathedrals of
the thirteenth century. The Cathedral of Coutances, a monument
of the eleventh century, was rebuilt in the early years of the
thirteenth century under the impulse given by Northern France to the
architecture of the period. It is in the choir that we clearly trace
this influence, in the double columns of the apse, and the ingenious
disposition of its collateral vaults. But the façade is purely Norman,
not merely in general design, but in the details of the composition,
facsimiles of which may be found in England.
[Illustration: 56. COUTANCES CATHEDRAL. NORTH TOWER]
The Cathedral of Dol in Brittany, one of the great churches of the
thirteenth century, seems to have escaped the influences of the
Northern innovation. Its general plan, its square apse lighted by
large windows, the details of its architecture and ornamentation,
all proclaim its affinity to the great churches which rose
contemporaneously with it on either side of the Channel, in Normandy,
and in England. It is very probable that it was built by the same
architects or their immediate disciples, working on the more ancient
methods of the Norman schools founded by Lanfranc at Canterbury
towards the close of the eleventh century, on the model of those he
had established in France at the famous Abbaye du Bec.