Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/589

 Bk. II. Ch. IX. COLLEGIATE CHURCHES. 557 form and play of light and shade here relieve it to a sufficient extent, and make it altogether, if not one of the most charming examples of its age, at least one of the most instructive, as showing how much effect can be obtained by ornamental arrangement with the smallest possible amount of ornament. In obedience to the rules of the Cister- cian order, it neither had towers nor painted glass, which last circum- stance, perhaps, adds to its beauty, as we now see it, for the windows being small, admit just light enough for effect without the painful dare that now streams through the laroe mullioned windows of the cathedral of Aiixerre. To the Englishman, Pontigny should be more than usually inter- estino;, as it was here that the three most celebrated archbishops of Canterbury — Becket, Langton, and Edmund — found an asylum when driven by the troubles of their native land to seek a refuge abroad, and the bones of the last-named sainted ])relate are said still to remain in the chaste, represented in the woodcut, and are now and have been for centuries the great object of worship here. About a century after the erection of these two early specimens we have two others, the dates of which are ascertained, and which exhibit the pointed style in its greatest degree of perfection. The first, the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, was commenced in 1241 and dedicated in 1244 ; 1 the other, the church of St. Urban at Troyes, was begun in 1262, and the choir and transept completed in 1266. Both are only frag- ments — choirs to which it was originally intended to add naves of considerable extent. The proportions of the Sainte Chapelle are in consequence somewhat too tall and short ; but the noble simplicity of its design, the majesty of its tall windows, and the beauty of all its details, render it one of the most perfect examples of the style at its culminating point in the reign of S'. Louis. Xow that the whole of the painted glass has been restored, and the walls repainted according to what may be assumed to have been the original design, we are enabled to juclge of the effect of such a building in the Middle Ages. It may be that our eyes are not educated up to the mark, or that the restorers have not quite grasped the ancient design ; but the effect as now seen is certainly not quite satisfactory. The ])ainted glass is glorious, but the effect would certainly have been more pleasing if all the structural parts of the architecture had be^en of one color. There is no repose about the interior — nothing to explain the construction. The flat parts may have been painted as they now are ; but surely the shafts and ribs could only have been treated as stone. The other Avas founded by Pope ITi-ban IV., a native of Troyes, and would have been completed as a large and magnificent church, 1 A plan of the Sainte Chapelle will he found in Book VI. Chap. II., when comparing it with St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster.