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
From Champagne came the gracious arrangement of planting slender columns
and stilted arches at the entrance to radiating chapels. Champagne was
the first to use the pier composed of twin columns, first to employ a
passageway round the church at the level of the aisle windows, and to
place lancets side by side in each bay for the better lighting of the
edifice. The region was conservative in clinging to certain Romanesque
traits, such as apsidal chapels projecting from the eastern wall of the
transept. It employed, as did Normandy and Burgundy, a circulation
passage under the clearstory windows. Champagne's influence spread far
afield to Sens, Auxerre, St. Quentin, St. Denis, Metz, Toul, Ipres,
Tournai, Avila, León, and York.[151]
Lest these pages should become overloaded, we can merely touch on the
beautiful Champagne cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne, an old city which
is another treasure house of colored glass. The most interesting windows
are in the small church of St. Alpin, whose apse celebrates the
Eucharist, the souls in Purgatory, the Corpus Christi procession, lately
mocked by the Calvinists. Its Manna in the Desert window is a symbol of
the Eucharist. In St. Alpin are the most successful examples of that
distinguished phase of vitrine art called _camaïeu_--of cameo or
chiaroscuro effect, using brown-gray hues, the yellow of silver-stain, a
pale blue for the sky, and an occasional single touch of superb ruby
red. One of the windows of Raphaelesque design represents St. Alpin,
bishop of Châlons, meeting Attila the Hun; another, dated 1539, is a
rendering of the Vision of Augustus, a theme most popular then.
Peter the Venerable called Châlons "great and illustrious." Guillaume de
Champeaux, one of the most learned men of the age, whose schoolroom was
really the beginning of the University of Paris, was bishop of Châlons
in 1115 when a young Burgundian named Bernard came to be consecrated
abbot of Clairvaux. In the monk of twenty-five, unknown yet to fame, the
great teacher was swift to recognize a supreme spiritual genius. In 1147
St. Bernard preached at the dedication of the Romanesque cathedral of
Châlons before Pope Eugene III, who had been one of his own Cistercian
monks at Clairvaux. The present tower to the north of the choir belonged
to the church that Bernard knew. The south tower, its mate, is of the
XIII century. The placing of belfries on either side of the choir was a
Rhenish trait.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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