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
Toussaint had been founded in the XI century by a pious canon, as a
refuge for the poor and stricken, and the duty of its clergy was to
visit the sick and bury the dead. That every forlorn soul might feel
under the protection of his own chosen patron saint, the name All Saints
was chosen. The Revolution suppressed the asylum of charity and in 1815
Prussian cavalry were stabled in the neglected church. The roofless nave
now serves as an archæological museum. The vaults of the choir were made
early in the XVIII century on the same model as the nave's XIII-century
Plantagenet roof.
The fortress built by St. Louis on the Toussaint property was saved from
demolition by the seneschal of Anjou, who, when Henry III's orders came
to destroy the ramparts, had the tact to proceed in so leisurely a
fashion that after seven years, when he was able to get the order
revoked, little more was destroyed than the upper stories of the towers.
A kneeling image of that truly patriotic seneschal, Donadieu de
Puycharic, is now in the museum installed in the XII-century hospital of
St. Jean.
That hospital of St. Jean was begun by another enlightened seneschal of
Anjou, but before long (c. 1180) Henry Plantagenet undertook to finish
and endow it, some say to expiate the assassination of St. Thomas
Becket. The oldest parts of St. John's establishment are the granary and
the north and east corridors of the cloister; the latter's south gallery
was built (1538) by Angers' local architect, Jean de l'Espine. The
hospital hall was undertaken between 1174 and 1188, and at first was
roofed in wood.
Shortly after 1200 the Knights of St. John Hospitalier of Jerusalem were
put in charge of Angers hospital, and governed it till 1232. During
their occupancy the hall was covered by its twenty-four small cuplike
sections, each of which is carried on four slender ribs. The effect of
the three aisles of little _bombé_ vaults is alluring. The slender torus
usually distinguished the eight-branch Plantagenet type, and its use
here for simple diagonals is an exception. The chapel attached to the
hospital was also built in two campaigns; over part of it was employed
the eight-rib vault, while portions were roofed in the more complicated
Plantagenet way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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