[166] W. H. Goodyear, “Architectural Refinements in French Cathedrals,” in Architectural Record, 1904-05, vols. 16, 17; ibid., “Architectural Refinements, a reply to Mr. Bilson,” in Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3d series, 1907, vol. 15, p. 17; Anthyme Saint-Paul, “Les irrégularités de plan dans les églises,” in Bulletin Monumental, 1906, p. 135.
Professor Goodyear’s theory of intentional asymmetry in mediæval buildings—such irregularities as curves of alignment, vertical curves, want of parallelism in walls and piers, deflection of axis—has not found favor with various French and English archæologists, but much of what he has noted may some day be accepted as self-evident.
[167] In Le Mans are two Benedictine churches of archæological interest. De Cultura Dei is now Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture. When the church was rebuilt after a fire in 1180, big Plantagenet Gothic vaults, each section with eight ribs, were flung over the wide nave, which originally had possessed side aisles. Vestiges of a Carolingian church, built a decade before 1000, are in the crypt and the lower walls of choir and transept, where alternance of stone and brick work appears. The chevet is the oldest example now extant of an ambulatory and radiating chapel. In the XII century the upper choir was rebuilt, and again it was retouched during the XIII and XV centuries. The façade and the well-sculptured portal are late XIII century. A charming XVI-century Virgin, by Germain Pilon, on a pier opposite the pulpit, is to be classed with the prolongation of the Region-of-the-Loire school of sculpture whose center was Tours. Across the Sarthe lies the other Benedictine church, the former St. Julien-du-Pré, a Romanesque edifice of the XI and XII centuries, revaulted in the Flamboyant Gothic day.
[168] “O noble peuple d’artisans! Si grands, que les artistes d’aujourd’hui n’existent pas auprès de vous!”—Rodin, Les cathédrales de France.
[169] De la Tremblay, Dom Coutil, L’église abbatiale de Solesmes (Solesmes, Imprimerie St. Pierre, 1892), folio; Paul Vitry, Michel Colombe et la sculpture française de son temps (Paris, 1901); Dom Guépin, Description des deux églises abbatiales de Solesmes, and also his Solesmes et Dom Guéranger (Le Mans, 1876); Dom Guéranger, l’Année Liturgique (Paris, 1888), 12 vols., tr. Worcester, England, The Liturgical Year, and also his Études historiques de l’abbaye de Solesmes; Cagni et Mocquereau, Plain chant and Solesmes (tr. London, 1902).
Among those who have taken part in the discussion as to who made the sculptural groups at Solesmes are L. Palustre, Girardet, Charles and Louis de Grandmaison, Benj. Fillon, Célestin Port, Lambin de Lignin, E. Cartier, A. Salmon, and Abbé Bossebœuf.
[170] The church of St. Elizabeth, in Marburg, is one of the earliest Gothic monuments in Germany, 1235-83. The saint was linked with the new system of building. For the king of Hungary, Villard de Honnecourt built Kassovic church. Her aunt was the gentle Agnes of Méran, married to Philippe-Auguste. Her half sister, Yolande, wedded that other builder of churches, Jaime el Conquistador, from whom sprang Yolande of Aragon, King René’s mother, also a builder. St. Elizabeth’s niece, daughter of the king of Hungary, married Charles II d’Anjou, who began the best Gothic church in Provence, at St. Maximin.
[171] Amédée Boinet, Verdun et St. Mihiel (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens).
[172] Amédée Boinet, St. Quentin (Paris, H. Laurens); Ch. Gomart, “Notice sur l’église de St. Quentin,” in Bulletin Monumental, 1856, p. 226; and 1870, p. 201; Pierre Bénard, Monographie de l’église de St. Quentin (Paris, 1867), 8vo; also his studies in the publication of the Société Académique ... de Soissons, 1864, p. 260; and 1874, p. 300; Lecocq, Histoire de la ville de St. Quentin (St. Quentin, 1875); J. B. A. Lassus, éd., L’album de Villard de Honacort (Paris, 1858; and London, tr. by Willis, 1859); Jules Quicheral, Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire (1886), vol. 2, on Villard de Honnecourt’s album; Camille Enlart, Hôtels de ville et beffrois du nord de la France (Paris, H. Laurens, 1919); ibid. on Villard de Honnecourt, in Bibli. de l’École des chartes, 1895.
[173] Alfred Noyes, Collected Poems (London, Methuen; New York, Fred. A. Stokes Co.).