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.
[6] I give the dates assumed by M. V. Mortet and later writers as well as those affixed by M. Viollet-le-Duc. It will be noticed that the differences between them are not material.
A glance at the ground-plan of Notre Dame shows us how widely it differs from that of our own great churches. First of all we notice that not merely the nave, but the choir, possesses double aisles—a feature which is lacking in English churches[7] on so vast a scale as Canterbury, York, Ely or Peterborough. The magnificence which the system of double aisles lends to a great church need hardly be insisted upon. For a French church the nave of Paris is long, consisting of ten bays. The smaller Norman nave of Norwich possesses, however, no less than fourteen bays. At Paris one is struck by the slight projection of the transepts. In nearly all the greater churches of England the transepts are of large proportions, and frequently (as at Canterbury and Lincoln) we find two pairs of transepts. The transepts at Notre Dame are without aisles, and are so shallow that the church is only just cruciform. Speaking of these transepts Professor Roger Smith observes: “They do not project beyond the line of the side walls, so that, although fairly well marked in the exterior and interior of the building, they add nothing to its floor-space.”
[7] Chichester, which is an early church, has double aisles; it is, however, comparatively small, and can in no sense be compared with so immense a building as Notre Dame.
Photo
[Ed. Hautecœur, Paris.
NORTH AISLES OF THE NAVE.
The east end of Notre Dame takes the form of a magnificent semicircular apse,—a form assuredly the most appropriate to a Gothic church. The square eastern termination, so common in England, is rare amongst the larger churches of the best period of French Gothic. “A more beautiful eastern termination than the Gothic apse,” says Mr. Charles Herbert Moore,[8] “could hardly be conceived. No part of the edifice does more honour to the Gothic builders. The low Romanesque apse, covered with the primitive semi-dome, and enclosed with its simple wall, presented no constructive difficulties, and produced no imposing effect. But the soaring French chevet, with its many-celled vault, its arcaded stories, its circling aisles and its radial chapels, taxed the utmost inventive power, and entranced the eye of the beholder.” It seems to me that throughout his study of Gothic Mr. Moore is a little less than fair to the Romanesque builders. The Gothic apse, which he so justly admires, is, after all, evolved from the Romanesque apse, which he holds in such light esteem. While we may admit the superiority of the Gothic apse, it is going too far to assert that the Romanesque apse “produces no imposing effect.” The apse of Norwich or Peterborough, or of St. Bartholomew’s (London) is assuredly imposing in a very high degree.