Notre Dame, begun in 1163--Its exterior unsurpassed, the west façade a classic--Scholastic training of its bishop-builders--_Summa_ of the supreme scholastic, Aquinas, like a Gothic cathedral--Thirty thousand students then in Paris University--Bishop Maurice de Sully (1160-96) built Notre Dame--Bishop Eudes de Sully made the portals of the west façade--Bishop Pierre de Nemours died a crusader, before Damietta, 1219--Bishop Guillaume d'Auvergne finished the north tower (1228-49)--All the prelates building Paris Cathedral good and able men--Their sincerity lives in its stones--First architect unknown--Jean and Pierre de Chelles made the transept and apse chapels--Sculpture of Notre Dame masterly--Sainte-Chapelle built by St. Louis, 1246 to 1248--St. Julien-le-Pauvre a contemporary of Notre Dame's choir (c. 1180)--Same noble sculptured capitals--Three Benedictine abbey churches of Paris show early trials of Gothic vaulting--St. Germain-des-Prés, St. Martin-des-Champs, St. Pierre-de-Montmartre--St. Louis and his friend, Joinville--Louis IX illuminated his kingdom with fair churches--On his first crusade spent five years in the East, 1248 to 1259--From 1254 to 1270 worked for his people--Death of St. Louis on the crusade of 1270--His characteristics: justice, pity, other-worldliness--Inimitable charm of Joinville's _Histoire de St. Louis_--Describes his friendship with the king in Palestine--Joinville's old age and death in 1319. Mantes' collegiate of Notre Dame is Primary Gothic--A contemporary of Paris Cathedral--Perhaps by the same architect--Its chapel of Navarre one of the best works of Rayonnant Gothic. Meaux Cathedral, a difficult architectural page to decipher, owing to reconstruction--Begun in 1170, but rebuilt radically after 1270--Bossuet, its greatest bishop (1681 to 1704)--Meaux, the cathedral for the _Te Deum_ of victory--Battle of the Marne, 1914, waged at the city gates. V. ERA OF THE GREAT CATHEDRALS: CHARTRES, RHEIMS, AMIENS 169 Cathedral of Chartres--Bishop Fulbert's Romanesque Notre Dame burned in 1194--His vast crypt, of 1020, still exists--Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves built the tower of Chartres, called the most beautiful in the world (1145)--Making of the three western portals (c. 1155)--Gothic cathedral begun after the fire of 1194--Primary Gothic west façade escaped the fire--Jehan de Beauce crowned the northwest tower, 1506 to 1513--Sculpture of the transept portals and porches, 1220 to 1260--Chartres excels all cathedrals in the wealth of its stained glass, chiefly of the XII and XIII centuries. Cathedral of Rheims, begun by the crusader, Bishop Albéric de Humbert, 1211--Its architects recorded in the pavement labyrinth--Its west façade the culmination of Gothic art--Coronation of Charles VII in 1429, Jeanne d'Arc present--Astounding sculptural wealth of this "Cathedral of the Angels"--Martyrdom of Rheims in the World War.