Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/43

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It will thus be seen that the full development of the Gothic system is brought out only where the plan of the building includes a central nave and side aisles. It was in such buildings that the system was evolved. The principle of the prop or brace, which the flying buttress embodies, as contrasted with the inert stay, which the solid Romanesque buttress embodies, is one of the most fecund principles of Gothic construction. By its use, in connection with that of the pointed arch in the ribs of the vault, is the Gothic attenuation of supports rendered possible. A single-aisled building, like the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, or the Chapel of St. Germer, may, indeed, be strictly Gothic as far as it goes. For it may, as these buildings do, consist of a completely functional skeleton, though not a highly organised one, upon which everything else depends. When the system was once developed in