[Footnote 4: French Gothic is here generally intended to convey the Gothic of the Ile-de-France. The contemporary architecture of Normandy has a character of its own, probably not less valuable than that of the Ile-de-France. But it is different, and its differences have been dealt with in other handbooks of this series.] [Footnote 5: The difficulty of attributing mediæval work in any countries to particular designers is generally recognised. I do not wish to imply, in the passage to which this note has reference, that the mechanic and the artist were of necessity separate people. Most often the plan was arranged by a master-builder who himself superintended the scheme of decoration.] It is not at Paris that we can trace the first attempt to break away from the principles of Romanesque: the first step in the distinctly Gothic development of French architecture, according to some recent authorities, is to be found in the apse of the church of Morienval. Morienval is a Romanesque church, but it has ribbed vaulting, of which there is no earlier instance in France. At St. Germer-de-Fly we find the first truly Gothic apse on a large scale ever constructed. It belongs to the second quarter of the twelfth century. The same church possesses a vaulted triforium which may fairly be considered the forerunner of the far grander one at Paris. Again, the now suburban church of St. Denis has double aisles, which clearly foreshadow the noble arrangement which exists at Paris, Amiens, and elsewhere. Many writers are agreed in regarding St. Denis as the starting-point of French Gothic. [Illustration: SECTION OF NAVE AND DOUBLE AISLE, AND A PLAN OF ONE BAY. SCALE 1 INCH = 29 FEET. (_From Viollet-le-Duc._)] Notre Dame was the first of the greater French cathedrals in which Gothic principles of construction were logically carried out. The choir was begun, according to M. V. Mortet in his _Etude Historique et Archéologique sur la Cathédrale de Paris_, in the year 1163.[6] The nave (with the exception of the extreme west end) was completed about the year 1195. The west façade was built in the early part of the thirteenth century. Notre Dame is thus older than the cathedral of Amiens, with which one naturally compares it. Amiens was built between the years 1220 and 1288, except the lower stages of the west front, which were only completed towards the end of the fourteenth century. The towers are a “debased” addition. In England the work being done while the older parts of Notre Dame were in course of erection was transitional; the new style had by no means been fully understood and put into practice. Perhaps we do not overstate the case when we say that the _science_ (as well as the art) of Gothic found its first real expression on a large scale in the Cathedral of Paris.