That he added only the outer roof is plain from what we read of his successor Howel (Vet. An. 289). As Howel adorned the “cancellum” with a pavement and stained glass windows, he also added a painted ceiling;
“Cancellum quod ejus antecessor construxerat pavimento decoravit et cœlo, vitreas quoque per ipsum cancellum, per quod cruces circum quoque laudabili sed sumptuosa nimium artis varietate disponens.”
So again, p. 299;
“Cœpit … superiores partes ejusdem basilicæ diligenti sollicitudine laborare, oratorium scilicet quod chorum vocitant sedemque pontificalem, altaria congrua dimensione disponere, pavimenta substernere, columnas ac laquearia gratissima varietate depingere, parietes per circuitum dealbare.”
Howel also finished the transepts and towers of which Arnold had merely laid the foundations (Vet. An. 289);
“Fabricam novæ ecclesiæ … tanto studio aggressus est consummare ut cruces atque turres, quarum antecessor ipsius … jecerat fundamenta brevi tempore ad effectum perduxit.”
We see then what the work of Vulgrin and Arnold was. It touched the eastern part only; Aldric’s nave was left alone. The original church was a basilica, most likely with three apses, but without transepts. The new design was to rebuild the eastern part on a greater scale with transepts, transept towers (like Geneva and Exeter), and a choir ending in an apse with a surrounding aisle and chapels—as is shown by the mention of many altars. The arrangement was that of the two other great churches of Le Mans, La Couture and Saint Julian in the Meadow, with the single exception of the towers, which do not appear in either of those churches. Arnold built the choir, and began the transepts and towers; Howel adorned the choir and finished the transepts and towers. There is nothing to imply that either of them touched the nave. The arcades of Aldric’s basilica were therefore still standing when William the Great came in 1063 and again in 1073. The work of Vulgrin in the eastern part was doubtless going on at the earlier of those two dates, and that of Arnold at the later.
It must be plain to every one who has seen the building that the work of these bishops in the eastern part of the church has given way to the later choir and transepts. The choir was built between 1218 and 1254, and its great extension to the east involved, as at Lincoln, the destruction of part of the Roman wall. The transepts were built at several times from 1303 to 1424. They are among the very noblest works of the architecture of those centuries; but we may be allowed to rejoice that, as the works of Vulgrin and Arnold left Aldric’s nave standing, so the great works of the thirteenth century and later have left the nave which succeeded that of Aldric. With all its artistic loveliness, the work of the later day cannot share the historic interest of the works of the times of William and Howel, of Helias and Hildebert.
In the present nave it is plain at the first glance that there are two dates of Romanesque; a further examination may perhaps lead to the belief that there are more than two. It is easy to see outside that the aisles and the clerestory are of different dates. The masonry of the aisles is of that Roman type which, in places like Le Mans, where Roman models were abundant, remained in use far into the middle ages, and which in some places can hardly be said to have ever gone out of use at all. The masonry of the clerestory is ashlar. The difference is equally clear between the plain single windows of the aisles and the highly finished coupled windows of the clerestory. Inside, the eye soon sees that the design has undergone a singular change. Without the pulling down of any part, the church put on a new character. Columns supporting round arches after the manner of a basilica were changed into a series of alternate columns and square piers supporting obtusely pointed arches. Each pair of arches therefore forms a couplet, and answers to a single bay of the pointed vaulting and a single pair of windows in the clerestory. The object clearly was to give the building as nearly the air of an Angevin nave, like that of La Couture (see N. C. vol. v. p. 619), as could be given where there were real piers and arches. Now this reconstruction, one which brings in the pointed arch, cannot possibly be earlier than the episcopate of William of Passavant, Bishop from 1143 to 1187. He was a great builder; he translated the body of Saint Julian (Vet. An. 366); he celebrated a dedication of the church (Ib. 370), which my local book fixes, seemingly from manuscripts, to 1158, a date a little early perhaps for such advanced work, but not impossible. To William of Passavant then we must attribute the recasting of the nave, and whatever else seems to be of the same date. To this last head belongs the great south porch, and, I should be inclined to add, the lower part of the southern, the only remaining, tower, though some assign it to Hildebert. The question now comes, What was the nave which William of Passavant recast in this fashion, and whose work was it?
We have seen that we cannot attribute any work in the nave to any prelate earlier than Howel. He must have found the nave of the ninth century still standing. Did he do anything in that part of the church? He performed a ceremony of dedication in 1093 (Vet. An. 300); but that would be fully accounted for by his works in the eastern part. On the other hand, Hildebert celebrated in 1120 (Vet. An. 320) a specially solemn dedication, and the words used seem to imply that the church was now complete in all its parts. The words of Orderic (531 D) seem express. Howel began to build the church (“episcopalem basilicam … condere cœpit”); Hildebert finished it (“basilicam episcopii quam prædecessor ejus inchoaverat, consummavit, et cum ingenti populorum tripudio veneranter dedicavit”). It is doubtless not strictly true that Howel began the church, words which shut out the work of Vulgrin and Arnold; but the time when Orderic wrote makes him a better authority for Hildebert’s finishing than for Howel’s beginning, and the expression might easily be used if Howel began that particular work, namely the nave, which Hildebert finished. I do not think that we need infer from certain expressions of the Biographer that Hildebert left the nave, or any essential part of the building, unfinished. He says indeed (Vet. An. 320);