It opened into a magnificent church of five bays, one hundred and ten feet long, and one hundred and eighteen feet high, the narthex of the great basilica.[82] It was divided into a nave and two aisles, the whole supported by enormous square pillars, their sides decorated with fluted pilasters, which also helped to carry the pointed arches of the bays. From the capitals of the pilasters, clusters of four shafts rose to the level of a frieze, just above the tops of the arches, from which other columns carried the high vault. A cornice supported on consoles separated the clerestory from the triforium arcade of four round-headed arches, enclosed in pairs under a larger arch. Cornices, friezes, and capitals were decorated with flowers, birds, figures, and grotesque animals in the Clunisian style. Many a pilgrim visitor, standing in this great church, nearly as large as the Church of Notre Dame de Dijon, believed himself to be in the basilica itself, never dreaming that this was but the porch or ante-nave. Many theories have been advanced as to the purpose of this narthex, which became a usual feature of Clunisian construction, from about the middle of the twelfth century. Some have suggested that it was for overflow congregations from the new church, or that it served for the servants of the Abbey, for the suites of noble visitors, for the peasants from the neighbouring towns, or for criminals seeking refuge, as they were wont to do, in the shadow of the porch. Others have supposed, perhaps rightly, that it was used for the reconciliation of the excommunicated, for rites of exorcism, or for the dispensation of justice; but the most probable solution is that the narthex was a temple, in which, at Easter and other seasons of the year, the crowds of penitents and pilgrims--too numerous to be admitted into the basilica, or to be left outside--might hear the Word of God at the very threshold of, but not within, the building reserved for the monks. The narthex was, in effect, a purgatory, a sojourning place between earth and Heaven; the natural development of a custom which had arisen, for the priest, by order of the bishop, to say mass as near as possible to the gates of church, for the benefit of the penitents in the porch. There existed, until the 18th century, on the left of the door of the narthex, a stone table, which, perhaps, was formerly an altar, though made use of, at that time, only by mothers and nurses, who believed that they could hush their crying charges by depositing them thereon.