Like the tenth century Church of S. Martin-au-Val, the choir was raised ten or twelve steps above the nave, and was surrounded by an ambulatory. There was a double transept: and it may be that we can trace it in the recesses which now form the Chapels of S. Savinian, S. Potentian and the Saints Forts on the one side, and the Chapel of S. Clement on the other.
As to the details and ornamentation of the church nothing remains, but we can say from our knowledge of the times, and from a comparison with what tenth century work there is in Chartres, what could and what could not have been, if not what was. There may, for instance, have been a belfry, and, seeing that the great square tower of the Abbey Church of S. Père was at that time being built, there probably was. Perhaps two such towers flanked the two extremities of the façade. They would have had no spires, but a four-sided, pyramidal roof. Squat columns or square pillars, one may suppose, carried the series of plain round arches of brick and stone which connected the aisles with the central nave. But the great ‘Triumphal Arch,’ as it was called, separating choir from nave, was richly adorned with sculpture and painting.
The capitals of the pillars and their bases would be in most instances romanesque, after the fashion of that which serves as a font in the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, whilst others would be decorated like those of S. Martin-au-Val with foliage and forms of real or fantastic animals, the mystic symbols of Mediæval Masonry, the language in which the Masters of the Living Stone were now beginning to speak. The walls may have been enriched with mosaics and paintings in accordance with the precepts of Charlemagne. Above the aisles may have run a triforium or gallery, set apart for the prayers of virgins and widows. If you look at the entrance of Vulphard’s crypt you will see that the doorways were simple, and they offer a striking contrast to the porches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with their wealth of sculpture, which records, as it were, in brief the history of Christianity, and serves as a preface to the book of the Cathedral. Without going into further detail, we may add, that as the complete art of vaulting was not yet known, though the small roof of the martyrium may have been vaulted, the large roof of the Cathedral can only have been a flat wooden ceiling.
The building of this church was completed before Vulphard’s death. But the decoration of it lagged under his successor. The skilled monks engaged for that purpose disappeared. The artists had retired to their cloister to await their last hour in prayer and fasting. For the end of the world was expected. The ancient and popular doctrine of the millennium possessed all minds. Every sign, it seemed, had been given.
Wars, famine and pestilence, and the ravages of the Normans and Saracens had produced a depression of spirit, which, combined with an erroneous interpretation of the Apocalypse, led men to think that the reign of Antichrist and the end of the world must surely be at hand. The beginning of the year 1000, it began to be believed, was the appointed date of this dread climax.
‘A long and unceasing series of signs,’ writes one in 985, when bequeathing his property to the Abbey of S. Père, ‘bears witness to the approaching end of the world, and of the passing of all things therein.’
Private wars and the revolt of the Norman peasantry, who had dared to utter the word ‘commune’ and had been ferociously crushed by the feudal barons, the breaking up of the Roman Empire, and Charlemagne’s after it, the plague of S. Anthony’s fire and the scourge of famine, these and a thousand others not less awful were surely signs enough to fill the world with terror and despair. And what should a man do but seek refuge in the house of God and prepare himself
