Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/106

Rh less an abutment of some kind carried over its vaults to meet the pier at the springing of the high vaults. It may be added that this buttress system has proved effectual, the vaults having stood without yielding for more than six hundred years. As a minor improvement the back of the flying as well as the top of the upright buttress assumes the gabled form, and a small finial marks the first attempt to render pleasing by ornament this latter important functional member.

In the choir of Soissons, a monument but little subsequent in date to the time of the reconstruction of the buttress system of Noyon, still further improvements were made in the form of the flying buttress. Here two arches, one above the other, were established, and resistance to the thrusts of the vault was thus distributed vertically over a yet greater portion of the pier. The top of the inner half of the outer buttress is here carried up above the back of the flying buttress, helping by its weight to neutralise the vault pressures, and preparing the way for the pinnacle which was soon after introduced. The pier buttress assumes under each arch the form of an engaged shaft with base and capital. Shafts in this place had occurred earlier in the buttress systems of St. Remi of Reims and the choir of St. Germain des Prés, and they now became very frequent features.

The flying buttresses of Soissons were quickly followed by a beautiful variation on the same principle in those of the Cathedral of Chartres, where the superposed arches are united by an open shafted arcade. Henceforth the employ-