Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) How France Built Her Cathedrals [Illustration] [Illustration: _Soissons Cathedral. The Transept's Southern Arm_ (_c. 1180_)] How France Built Her Cathedrals A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries _By_ ELIZABETH BOYLE O'REILLY Honorary Member of the _Société Française d'Archéologie_ _Author of_ "Heroic Spain" Etc. _Illustrated With Drawings By_ A. PAUL DE LESLIE [Illustration: colophon] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON HOW FRANCE BUILT HER CATHEDRALS Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America A-W Contents CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 I. WHAT IS GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE? 16 Gothic architecture the logical fulfillment of Romanesque--Origin of Romanesque architecture--Romanesque basilicas modified by the liturgy--Horrors of the IX and X centuries in France--Rebirth of the builders' energy after the year 1000--Cluny, the civilizing force of the X and XI centuries--Various regional Romanesque schools of France--Normandy, Burgundy, Auvergne, Poitou, Languedoc, Provence, and the Franco-Picard school--Birth of Gothic art--An undecided question where the first diagonal-crossing ribs were used--Germany's and Italy's claims--Claim of England--The Ile-de-France Picard region, the classic land of Gothic--Gothic architecture not a layman's revolt against monkish Romanesque--The architects of the Gothic cathedrals--No heretical tendencies in Gothic sculpture--Origin of the term Gothic--XVII- and XVIII-century scorn for Gothic architecture--Modern French school of mediæval archæology. II. ABBOT SUGER AND ST. DENIS-EN-FRANCE 43 Evolution from Romanesque to Gothic--St. Denis' abbatial, the first important Gothic monument--Some early-Gothic churches in the Ile-de-France--Morienval, the first Gothic-vaulted ambulatory extant (c. 1122)--Church of St. Étienne, at Beauvais (c. 1120)--St. Germer-en-Flay built from 1150 to 1175, yet less advanced than St. Denis--Poissy's church of St. Louis (c. 1135)--How Abbot Suger built his abbey church at St. Denis--St. Denis' school of glassmaking, the leader for fifty years--Dedication of St. Denis on June 11, 1144, consecrated the national art--Who Suger was and how St. Bernard converted him--What is left of the abbey church which Suger built--Reconstruction of St. Denis by St. Louis, 1231 to 1280--Pierre de Montereau, its architect--Tombs in St. Denis' abbatial--Deviation of the axis not symbolic--Some happenings in St. Denis during the XII and XIII centuries--Charles Péguy's verses, linking St. Denis, St. Geneviève, and Jeanne d'Arc.