Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/544

 512 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. ±*ART It CHAPTER VIL NORMANDY. CONTENTS. Triapsal churches — Churches at Caen — Interesting vaulting — Bayeux. WITH one or two slight exceptions, the whole history of the Round arched Norman Gothic is comprehended within a period of less than a century. No building in this style is known to have been even com- menced before the year 1050, and before 1150 the pointed style had superseded it in its native jjrovince. Indeed, practically speaking, all the great and typical examples are crowded into the last fifty years of the 11th century. This was a period of great excitement and pros- perity with the Northmen, who, having at last settled themselves in this fertile province, not only placed their dukes on an equality with any of the powers then existing in France, but by their conquest of England raised their chief to an importance and a rank superior to that of any other potentate in Europe, except the German emperors of that day, with whose people they were in fact, both by race and policy, more closely allied than they were with those among whom they had settled. There are two ex- ceptional churches in Nor m a n d y which should not be passed over in silence : one is a little triapsal oratory at St. Wandrille ; the other a similar but somewhat more important church at Querqueville, near Cherbourg, on the coast of Brittany. Both are rude and simple in their outline and ornaments ; they are built with that curious herring-bone or diagonal masonry indicative of great age, and differing in every essential respect from the works of the Normans when they came into possession of the 377. Triapsal Church at Querqueville. (From Dawson Turner's '" Normaiuly.")