How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
He died before his church was finished, but his nephew, Cardinal
Pantaleone Ancher, continued the edifice, which was completed in 1276.
Urban's successor, Clement IV, also a Frenchman, patronized the new
works at Troyes. While the choir and transept were done by one
generation, many a century was to pass before the westernmost bay and
façade were finished.
[Illustration: _St. Urbain at Troyes (1264-1276)_]
In archæological circles St. Urbain is noted, Viollet-le-Duc being the
first to discuss its ingenuity. As construction it is a small
masterpiece, a model of elasticity, perhaps the lightest and most
fragile of all Gothic edifices. To an economy in stone we owe this
structural feat. Were the principle of equilibrium pushed a step
farther, metal, not stone, would be required. Ground supports have been
lessened, and flying buttresses attenuated to the last limit. Despite
its science, St. Urbain is not doctrinaire, but immaterial and
seductive. On first entering it Montalembert exclaimed, "_Quelle
délicieuse église!_"
The architect, Jean Langlois, here created the most elegant form of
Rayonnant window tracery. At his porch appears the first French arch of
double curvature, the earliest interpenetration of archivolts. We know
his name because in 1267 a papal bull summoned him to account for sums
advanced on the edifice, and Jean was not forthcoming, because he had
disappeared in the East, crusading. The chief church at Famagusta, in
Cyprus, begun in 1300--the only completed French-Gothic cathedral of the
XIV century--shows such analogies with St. Urbain at Troyes that
apparently Langlois' architectural influence had spread in the Orient.
M. Lefèvre-Pontalis has called Troyes' lantern church inundated with
light one of the most original monuments of the Middle Ages. Ten feet
above the ground its walls change to opalescent glass. No grisaille is
more exquisitely decorated with natural foliage outlines; set in the
expanses of the opal-tinted white glass are colored medallions of
extreme beauty. The lower row of lights around the choir are of this
character. Above them, and almost a part of them, are the choir's upper
windows--big prophets and patriarchs with the Crucifixion in the
center--transition windows between legend-medallion glass, and the XIV
century's single figures in a vitrine architectural frame. The arms of
France, Champagne, and Navarre appear in the borders of the choir
windows.
The transeptal chapel to the north of the choir shows in its quatrefoils
some interesting heads of men, women, and children. From the windows of
the south transeptal chapel some panels were stolen, but St. Urbain's
curé, Abbé Jossier, a learned enthusiast, was able, by sending
photographs all over France, to trace his lost panels in a private
collection, and it is to be hoped they may be returned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account