Page:Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 1.djvu/117

 Romance style and the ogival style (3); the trenchers of the capitals are varied from it, finely profiled, the archivolts are decorated with teeth of saw. Low blind arcades of



monuments of Normandy about this time are curiously worked, sometimes made up of a succession of small arcs semicircular arch which intersect and relate either to a row of posts, or on alternate posts and corbels; but it is particularly in England that the Norman style developed this kind of decoration in which some spirits more clever than enlightened wanted to see the origin of the warhead (“see:” WARHEAD).

The northern side of the chorus of the cathedral of Canterbury presents outside, between the windows of the crypt and those on the low sides, a blind arcade which we give here (fig. 3 (a)), with an embellished string course between the buttresses; this example dates from the last years of the XIIth century. In the lower stage of the Saint-Romain tower of the cathedral of Rouen, the posts of the blind arcades are coupled, already supporting small arcs in tierce point, although the semicircular arch persists a long time in these additional members of architecture, and until the first years of the XIIIth century; thus, the vaults of the chorus of the abbey church of Vézelay are papered under the supports of the windows,