Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/80

Rh group. It will thus be seen that here in the choir the main and the intermediate groups of vaulting shafts differ according to their respective functional exigencies.

FIG. 22.

But in the nave, which was probably completed by 1196, the vaulting system exhibits no such differences. Here the vaulting shafts (which are of unprecedented slenderness, and are not engaged with the pier, but are detached, as in the section, Fig. 23) are all of the same magnitude, notwithstanding the unequal weights which they have to carry. They are not, as in the choir, built up in courses of small stones, but are each composed of several, in most cases five, lengths of strong cliquart. Each group has all of its capitals (A, B, Fig. 24) at the springing of the great ribs. This arrangement is perfectly adapted to quadripartite vaulting, but it is ill adapted to the six-celled vaults which are reared upon these capitals. For while in the