The Cathedral of Bayonne, a contemporary building, shared the fate of Meaux, Troyes, and Auxerre. It was completed, with one tower only, in the sixteenth century. In 1248 the foundations of Clermont Cathedral were laid. The plan provided for six or seven towers, but the choir was the only portion finished in the thirteenth century. The transept and four towers, together with a portion of the nave, were completed in the following century, and the work was then abandoned until the reign of Napoleon III., who caused it to be again taken up. The Cathedral of Limoges was begun in 1273, under the direct inspiration of Notre Dame at Amiens. Down to our own times it has had to content itself with a choir, a transept, and the suggestions of a nave, the last of which has lately been completed. At Rodez a greater perseverance was shown, and the work went steadily on from 1277 until the Renascence, at which period, however, the two western towers were left unfinished, notwithstanding a contemporary description of their magnificence, which, in a truly Gascon vein, compares them to the Egyptian pyramids, among other world-renowned marvels.
"In 1272 Toulouse and Narbonne entered the lists against Amiens, imitating its plan, and proposing to at least equal it in dimensions. Neither of these undertakings proved happy. Archbishop Maurice of Narbonne died the same year the works were begun; his successors took but a lukewarm interest in their progress. In 1320 the sea retreated, leaving the port on which the wealth of the inhabitants mainly depended high and dry. Fortunately the choir with its noble vault 130 feet high was already completed, but the transept walls were left to fall into ruins. At Toulouse Bishop Bertrand de l'Isle-Jourdain lived just long enough to carry the work above the triforium of the choir; it was then abandoned till the fifteenth century. His successors squandered the revenues of their vast diocese so shamelessly in pleasures and display that Popes Boniface VIII. and John XXII., scandalised at their disorders, dismembered their territory and subdivided it into four bishoprics, granting to the Bishop of Toulouse the title of archbishop by way of compensation. But this compensation was of small avail to future zealous prelates for the carrying out of Bertrand's projects, and the choir of Toulouse was never finished. It falls short of its predestined height of 130 feet by 90, and the transept was not even begun.
"The Cathedrals of Lyons, of St. Maurice at Vienne, and of St. Étienne at Toul have affinities more or less direct with the great architectural movement. At Bordeaux the building of a great cathedral was contemplated at the time of the English occupation; but the choir would never have been finished but for the liberality of King Edward I. and of Pope Clement V., who had formerly been archbishop of the town."[11]
[11] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France; Paris Hachette and Co., 1884.
The great cathedrals constructed in England in the thirteenth century bear witness to the expansion of French art on the lines already laid down in the preceding century by the teaching and achievements of the Norman monkish architects who had followed William the Conqueror to Great Britain.[12]
[12] This is a very summary way of dismissing the vexed question of French influence upon English architecture. The undeniable fact that wherever a French architect can be identified as the author of an English building—William of Sens at Canterbury, for instance—the work he did differs entirely in character from contemporary English work is enough to refute much of the claim made for France. The principles of Gothic architecture were the common property of the two countries, and by each were developed according to their lights.—Ed.
English builders assimilated the constructive principles of the architects of Anjou and of the Ile-de-France. In the numerous cathedrals they raised from the thirteenth to the close of the fifteenth century it is easy to trace the original characteristics of French art throughout all the transformations or adaptations by which its methods were modified in accordance with British usages and ideas.
This influence is very apparent in the Cathedrals of York, Ely, Wells, Salisbury, and Canterbury, the last of which was constructed from the plans of an architect or master-mason, known as William of Sens; in that of Lichfield, where the spires of the façade recall those of Coutances in Normandy, and above all, at Lincoln, one of the most beautiful of English cathedrals. Here we have perhaps the most strongly-marked instance of the steady and continuous filiation between the buildings of France and England during the so-called Gothic period. It is quite possible that they were the work of the same architects, as they certainly were carried out by pupils or disciples of the same master-builders.[13]
[13] It is difficult to believe that Mons. Corroyer is in earnest in comparing the spires of Lichfield to those of Coutances, or the central tower of Lincoln to that of the same French cathedral. Mons. Corroyer appears to be unacquainted with the line of filiation between English spires and towers, and so looks, as a matter of course, for a French mother to such as strike his fancy.—Ed.
Lincoln Cathedral, founded in the eleventh century, and finished in 1092, shared the fate of so many other timber-roofed buildings of the period. The greater part of it was destroyed by fire in 1124. It was rebuilt and enlarged by St. Hugh in accordance with the new ideas he had brought with him from France, a very natural consequence of his supervision, when we take into account that as mandatory of Pope Gregory VII. he had been Bishop of Grenoble. The church was again partly destroyed by an earthquake in 1185. It was then rebuilt, enlarged, and completed by Bishop Grossetête, an Englishman by birth, who had, however, been educated and brought up in France in the early part of the thirteenth century, and had carried over with him to his native land the essence of the grand and noble inspirations which marked that marvellous era.