We have traced this modification in the Abbaye aux Dames at Caen.[7]
[7] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, 88, chap. xvii.
[Fig. 24] shows us an English example. It may be followed out in a number of other churches in England, at Pavia in Italy, at Zurich in Switzerland, and at Basle on the Rhine, to name but a few of the churches in which the modification of the vaults was long posterior to the construction of the building itself.
24. DURHAM CATHEDRAL. TRANSVERSE SECTIONS
In France we shall find no example more deeply interesting than Noyon, which at the date of its construction (the last quarter of the twelfth century) formed, as it were, an epitome of the advance so far made by the architects of the Ile-de-France. In this curious building we find a fusion of the antique tradition developed by the Normans in their triforiums, and of the Angevin methods, as manifested in the groined vaults derived from domes: methods further perfected by the example of La Ste. Trinité at Angers; in other words, by the adoption of intersecting arches planned on a square, the thrusts of all being received on the main piers, reinforced by an intermediate transverse arch. And we note the appearance of the detached semi-arch beneath the roofing of the inferior aisles merging at its springing into the lateral arc-doubleau, and so resisting the thrust of the intersecting arches and transverse arches of the nave.
25. ABBEY CHURCH AT NOYON. PLAN
26. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NOYON CHURCH