Fig. 13.—Saint Benoît-sur-Loire, Abbey Church.
The School of Bourgogne
It is most unfortunate for a study of the school of Bourgogne that the mother church at Cluny (Saône-et-Loire) should have been almost totally destroyed in the French Revolution. This great church was begun in 1089 and must have been finished in 1125, for the nave vaults fell in that year and were rebuilt before the final consecration in IIVO. What its original vaulting system was is difficult to say. Reber[93] says that it was probably vaulted like the churches of Auvergne with inner aisles in two stories, but Rivoira[94] states that both the nave and aisles had tunnel vaults on transverse pointed arches. The exterior view,[95] and the model which fortunately remains, would correspond with either arrangement.[96] The important facts to note are that the nave had a clerestory, and that the nave vault was strengthened on the exterior by carrying up the clerestory walls to exert a downward pressure at its haunch, a most important structural advance over the exterior wall of Saint Benoît-sur-Loire.[97]