Rectangular Four-Part Ribbed Vaults in Churches without Side Aisles
Fig. 34.—Albi, Cathedral.
The use of rectangular four-part ribbed vaulting was not confined to churches with side aisles, but appears also in those with a single broad nave. It is the method employed in the Sainte Chapelle at Paris (fin. 1248), where there are simple salient buttresses, and there is a splendid example in the Cathedral of Albi (Tarn) (begun 1282) [(Fig. 34)], where the nave has a very wide span and is flanked by chapels in two stories between heavy pier buttresses which are thus enclosed in the church in a truly Byzantine manner. In the smaller church of Saint Nicholas at Toulouse these buttress chapels are in but one story and the bays are more nearly square in plan, a compromise between the square and rectangular systems which appears on an even larger scale in the cathedral of Saint Bertrand-des-Comminges (Haute-Garonne) (cir. 1304). As far as construction is concerned these vaults over a single broad nave offer no advance over those in churches with side aisles, not even requiring a scientific system of flying buttresses to offset their outward thrust. Their only importance lies in the very broad space sometimes covered by them.[221]