These rest for half of their thickness on off-sets from the piers, which, proving unequal to the strain, have been temporarily stayed, and must eventually be consolidated.
47. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. PLAN
48. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. SECTION THROUGH THE NAVE
The choir, however, was finished about 1270, and stood for several years. But dislocations then declared themselves. The forces so elaborately balanced lost their equilibrium, and on the 29th November 1284 the vault fell, dragging down with it the flying buttresses, and carrying havoc through the rest of the building. In the reconstruction which followed it was thought imperative to double the points of support in the arcades both of the main and side aisles, and to reinforce the flying buttresses by iron chains.
During the thirteenth century a number of cathedrals were raised all over Europe on the model of the great buildings of Northern France, and more especially of Amiens, which seems to have roused a great enthusiasm; these were, however, of far more modest dimensions. They had neither the exaggerated height nor the structural audacities of their exemplars. Few of these churches and cathedrals, the reconstruction of which on the new system generally began with the choir, which was
added to the primitive nave, were completed by those who initiated their erection. The most highly favoured in this respect were finished in the course of the fourteenth century; but in the greater number of cases the work dragged slowly on, and reached its end some two centuries after its inauguration. Reconstructive undertakings were constantly impeded by wars or social convulsions, which either hampered or entirely cut off the resources of bishops and architects, their promoters. Such interruptions were of great service to modern archæological study, offering as they do distinct evidence of the various transformations which were successively accomplished from the so-called Romanesque period to the Gothic.
49. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. APSE
