CHAPTER IV
BUILDINGS VAULTED UPON INTERSECTING ARCHES
The new system derived from the domes upon pendentives, so brilliantly applied in Anjou and Maine in the first half of the twelfth century, was thenceforth the normal method of the religious architect. The admirable simplicity of the new method and its adaptability to every class of building, from the great abbey church to the modest chapel, sufficiently accounts for its rapid dissemination throughout Western Europe, where religious bodies had founded innumerable abbeys, large and small, of varying rules and orders, but all welded together by one mighty organisation.
A long array of churches on the Angevin model rose, not only in the neighbouring provinces—as Ste. Radegonde at Poitiers, Notre Dame de la Coulture and the nave of St. Julien at Mans,—but farther afield towards the south. To name only the most important—the charming Church of Thor, dedicated to Ste. Marie du Lac, between Avignon and the fountain of Vaucluse; that of St. Sauveur at St. Macaire, near Bordeaux; the nave of St. André at Bordeaux, begun in 1252 on the cupola plan, but modified and finally crowned with a groined and ribbed vault; St. Caprais at Agen, which shows the same modifications, and lastly, the immense brick nave of St. Étienne at Toulouse, which measures 64 feet—all demonstrate the progression of the new principles in the second half of the twelfth century.
18. PLAN OF THE NAVE, ST. MAURICE AT ANGERS
Towards the North the advance was no less general. Various buildings show to what excellent account contemporary architects had turned the system of vaults on intersecting arches, recognising its admirable adaptability to different climates, and to the most diverse materials. But it was reserved for Angers, the cradle of its birth, to give an added perfection to this ingenious system.
The Church of the Ste. Trinité, on the right bank of the Maine, built by the sons or pupils of those architects who had planned St. Maurice for the hill on the opposite shore, marks a fresh advance in the construction of these vaults. Like St. Maurice, it has but a single aisle, which is divided into three bays, each as nearly as possible square on plan. The system of vaulting takes on a greater elegance by the insertion of a transverse arch, with its supporting shafts, in the centre of each bay. This divides the bay into two equal parts, and, cutting the diagonal ribs at their intersection, supports them at the critical point.
[Fig. 19] gives the plan of these vaults, the system of which was eagerly seized upon by the Northern architects, and the great abbey church of Noyon
appears to have been the first-fruits of this new development of the Angevin idea.
19. PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT ANGERS