Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/747

 GOTHIC

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GOTHIC

roof spaces filled in by curved surfaces of stone sup- ported on diagonal ribs meeting on the crown of each alternate transverse arch. In the first case would be indicated a fear to trust the stability of so large a quadripartite vault, until experiment proved its effi-

FAi"ADE, Notre-Dame, Paris

ciency; in the second, a stage in the evolution of the great Sant' Ambrogio vault, all local evidence of which has been lost. The vault of the Abbaye aux Hommes is one more stage in the development; here the vault surfaces are cur\'ed Ijoth from the transverse arch and from the intermediate arch, which so becomes, not an arch — as in the Abbaye aux Dames — but a true vault- ing rib. The result is a very strong vaulting system, particularly effective in its light and shade and its line composition, and it does not seem surprising that the Norman builders should have reverted to it from time to time, or that Abbot Suger himself should have bor- rowed it for his fine new abbey, choosing it for its strength or its beauty in place of the simpler and more open quadripartite vault.

In tlie meantime the second great structural prob- lem, that of the abutment of the vault thrusts, had been solved by the Normans. In Roman construction the thrust of barrel vaults had been neutralized by walls of great thickness, that of groin vaults either by the same clumsy expedient or by transverse walls; when the Lombards first threw their transverse arches across narrow aisles, they added shallow exterior pi- laster-strips at the point of contact, rather it would seem for decorative tlian for structural reasons, as the walls already were strong enough to take the slight thrust of the small arches. With the vaulting of the nave the problem became serious; in Sunt' Ambrogio they dared not raise the spring of the higli vault above the triforium floor, and the thrust of the vault was taken by two massive arches spanning the aisles, one below this floor, the other above, the latter being hidden under the wide, sloping roof of the nave which was continued unbroken to the aisle walls. This was, of course, but the transverse wall of the Romans, pierced by arched openings; the result was unbeautiful, and the task fell to the Normans of devising a better and more scientific method. At their hands the Lombard pilaster-strip became at once a functional buttress in-

stead of a decorative adjunct, while the successive steps in the evolution of the flying buttress remain on record and are peculiarly interesting. In the Abbaye aux Hommes, "the expedient was adopted of con- structing half-barrel vaults springing from the aisle walls and abutting against the vaults of the nave beneath the lean-to roof. These were in reality concealed flying livittresses, but they were flying but- tresses of had fiirm; for only a small part of their ac- tion met the concent rated act ion of the vaults that they were designed to stay, the greater part of it operating against the walls between the piers where no abut- ments were reciuired" (Moore, op. cit., I, 12, 13). In the Abbaye aux Dames these defects were remedied, for all the barrel vault was cut away except that nar- row part which abutted against the spring of the vault. The flying buttress hati been invented. .-Vs yet it was liidden under the triforium roof and did not declare itself to the eye, but functionally it was complete.

The fruit of the Cluniac reform working on Norman lilood had been the evolution of the main lines of the tlothie plan (barring the easterly termination, or clievet) together with the development of the Gothic system of vaulting and the Gothic principle of concen- trated thrusts met by pier buttresses and flying but- tresses. The true " Gothic system " is therefore the product of Normandy. In the meantime what had been done towards the working-out of the other half of the Gothic idea — the discovering anew of the under- lying principles of pure beauty, their analysis into the elements of form and composition, proportion, rela- tion and rhythm, line and colour, and chiaroscuro — and finally what had been accomplished in the direc- tion of evolving that new quality of form-expression which, differing as it does from any school of the past, gives to Gothic art its peculiar personality? — Nothing, so far as Normandy is concerned, except as regards certain large architectonic qualities first revealed in Jumieges, and, following this, in the Abbeys of Caen and St-Georges de Bocherville. The Abbaye aux Hommes is the norm of all French cathedrals; the .\b- baye aux Dames, of the English order; while Jumieges, the first in date, remains one of the most astonishing buildings in history. If it had antecedents, if it came as the culmination of a long and progressive series of experiments in the development of architectonic form, the evidence is forever lost, for, as it now stands, it is isolated, almost preternatural. So far as we

know, it had no precursors, and yet here are the ma- jestical ruins of a monastic church larger than any since the time of Constantine and far in advance, so far as design and development are concerned, of any contemporary structure. Montier en Der, an abbey of Haute-Marne, built by .\bbots .\dso and Berenger (900, 998), is the only recorded structure which bears