Anjou Ridge Ribs
Fig. 19.—Angers, Cathedral.
Since the Anjou churches possessed naves of wide span, it is not surprising to find that their builders soon added ridge ribs beneath the vault. That these were not mere cover-joints to conceal an irregular intersection of the masonry, as Choisy suggests,[162] would seem to be proved by the fact that the courses meet in a straight line at the ridge in by far the greater number of Anjou churches in which they are employed,—for example in La Couture at Le Mans [(Fig. 20)], Airaines,[163] and numerous churches with small torus ribs, as well as by the fact that such ridge ribs are sometimes omitted even when the masonry is laid up in courses of equal width and therefore interpenetrating at the ridge, as in Avesnières (Mayenne)[164] near Laval. If not, however, primarily a cover-joint, these ribs did at least possess both a structural and decorative quality. In the first place they helped to keep the keystone of the diagonals rigidly fixed during the building process, and furthermore, they gave an absolutely straight line to the vault crown which was always difficult to adjust, particularly in a vault of large size. One of the best and earliest examples of the employment of such ribs appears in the nave of Notre Dame-de-la-Couture at Le Mans [(Fig. 20)] which dates from about 1200, and a later example is afforded by the church of Saint-Avit-Sénieur (Dordogne),[165] where the vaults are of the thirteenth century and replace an original series of domes on pendentives of true Perigord type.
Fig. 20.—LeMans, Notre Dame-de-la-Couture.
In all of the Anjou vaults thus far discussed, the ribs are of comparatively heavy section and placed entirely beneath the vault surface, but there was to be a decided change in the thirteenth century. It has already been noted that domed up vaults could be erected almost without centering and exerted little if any pressure upon the ribs beneath them. Realizing this, the builders of Anjou soon began to reduce the size of the ribs until they became little more than torus mouldings running along the groin and ridge of the vault. As an actual fact, however, these torus mouldings were carved upon a sunken rib flush with the surface of the panel, which, if it no longer furnished a support for the vault, at least formed a sort of permanent centering dividing the surface to be vaulted into distinct severies and marking the line of their intersection in an absolutely correct curve. Such vaults are closely allied to those of groined type, the ribs playing practically the same part as those of brick in Roman concrete vaulting. Since, however, in the Anjou system the ribs always were merely a permanent centering which could easily be removed without destroying the vault, a sunken centering was quite as efficient in serving the purpose of vault division while the torus afforded a certain amount of surface decoration.
Of this typical Anjou construction, there are numerous examples. At Poitiers, in the church of Sainte Radegonde the ribs are of reduced size but not quite flush with the vault surface and the same is true at Saint-Hilaire—Saint-Florent near Saumur (Marne-et-Loire),[166] while the choir and transept of Angers cathedral [(Fig. 19)], and the later bays of the cathedral of Poitiers furnish examples of the standard type. After a short period of experiment, the builders of Anjou became very skillful in the construction of these ribs and vaults and frequently employed them over bays of unusual plan and elevation as, for example, in the chapel north of the choir aisle in Saint Serge at Angers [(Fig. 21)].
An instance of the influence of Anjou construction upon the neighboring territory, as well as of the relationship between this Gothic style and the Romanesque school of Perigord, may perhaps be seen in the Old Cathedral of Salamanca in Spain.[167] Here the three western bays of the nave are covered with ordinary domes but with diagonal ribs beneath them, while the two remaining bays have regular domed up Anjou vaults. The date of this cathedral, cir. 1120-1178, may, perhaps, explain this peculiar combination as being due to an Anjou-Gothic influence displacing one of Perigord-Romanesque, in much the same manner as such an influence displaced the Perigord-Romanesque architecture of western France.