Burgundy’s Romanesque school was bolder. Groin and barrel vaultings covered side aisles and central vessel; and the transverse arches which braced the vaulting were often pointed, since it was found that such an arch exerted less side thrust. Some of Burgundy’s monastic churches were as lofty and spacious as the coming Gothic cathedrals. However, to obtain proper lighting by clearstory windows she sacrificed stability, and years later the Gothic builders had to add flying buttresses to prevent the collapse of the Romanesque churches. In this region where Gallo-Roman art had flourished, channeled pilasters were used. As was to be expected of the province where Cluny’s arts and crafts were centered, Burgundy was a leader in monumental sculpture, and such portals as Avallon, Autun, and Vézelay attest her skill.
Auvergne produced a distinctive Romanesque school. Her art sprang direct from the ancient Roman traditions in the province. More cautious than her neighbor Burgundy, she soon gave up trying to light her upper nave by clearstory windows, but obtained light indirectly from side aisles and from a central tower. A precocious use of the ambulatory and of apse chapels appeared in the region. The two most striking features of her churches were the octagonal central tower set on a barlong base, and the apse whose exterior walls were decorated by the volcanic polychrome stones of the district.
Poitou’s Romanesque school also developed early, and it, too, sacrificed spaciousness to solidity. The side aisles were made of almost equal height as the central vessel, and one roof covered all. The church interiors were often somber and cramped. The apse exterior was ornamented, and the boast of the region is its richly sculptured façades of which that of Notre-Dame-la-Grande at Poitiers is one of the best examples.
Languedoc built Romanesque churches of the first rank, such as St. Sernin at Toulouse, but the school had no definite uniformity. Sometimes it combined with the Romanesque of Poitou, sometimes with that of Auvergne, or of Burgundy. Because of Cluny affiliations, the Midi school was strong in sculpture—witness Beaulieu, Cahors, Moissac, and Toulouse.
Provence Romanesque covered a more limited area. Usually the churches were aisleless, with a simple apse. A flat stone roof was laid directly on the barrel vaulting, which had pointed transverse ribs like those of Burgundy. Provence also used the fluted pilasters of antiquity. The many remains of Gallo-Roman sculpture in the region served as models for the notable imaged portals at St. Gilles and Arles.
The Franco-Picard school had scarcely developed when it was supplanted by the nascent Gothic art. Besides these regional schools, two unique experiments in vaulting were essayed, though neither spread far afield. At Tournus, in the abbey church of St. Philibert was built a series of barrel vaults (carried on lintels) placed side by side transversely over the central vessel. And in Aquitaine, in the region of Périgueux and Angoulême, spreading in a line, north and south, arose a number of churches, each bay of which was covered by a cupola. Both these experiments were but partial solutions. While mediæval archæology was obscure, the pointed arch was looked on as the sine qua non of Gothic, and it was puzzling to find it in certain Romanesque churches, like those in Burgundy and Provence. The pointed arch was in use in Persia, in the VI century, and the Arabs early brought the form to Egypt, Sicily, and Spain. From the XI century it had appeared sporadically in Christian Europe. Such arches were not the first step in a new architecture, but were used either as a decorative feature or as an expedient to lessen the side thrust of a vault. From outside of France two schools of Romanesque art, the Lombard and the Rhenish, exerted considerable influences on their neighbor, but the forces paramount in each of the local French schools were the pre-Lombardic pre-Rhenish inheritances from Rome, blended with indigenous traditions.
[11] Rome had used some brick lines under the surface of certain of her groin vaults. They performed no separate function, but were embedded in the vaults’ concrete. The true Gothic vault has the ribs independent of the infilling. In their elasticity is their strength.
[12] G. T. Rivoira, Lombardic Architecture (London, Heinemann, 1910). Translated from Le origini dell’ architettura lombarda (Milano, 1908); Arthur Kingsley Porter, Lombard Architecture (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1917), 3 vols. and Atlas; ibid., The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1911).
[13] E. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1875), 11 vols.; Anthyme Saint-Paul, Viollet-le-Duc et son système archéologique (Tours, 1881). The masterly technical knowledge of M. Viollet-le-Duc did much to remove the stigma of caprice and extravagance which the neo-classic age had fixed on Gothic art. It is a pity that the pioneer who struck good blows for the rehabilitation of Gothic should have jeopardized the permanence of his work by giving free rein to his personal prejudices.
[14] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, “Le plan d’une monographie d’église et le vocabulaire archéologique,” in Revue de l’art chrétien, 1910, p. 379. He has written on the same subject in Bulletin Monumental, 1906, vol. 70, p. 453, and 1907, vol. 71, pp. 136, 351, 535.