Fig. 305.—Cloister of the Abbey of Moissac, Guyenne. (Twelfth Century.)
It should be remarked that for a long while, in the north of France, the pointed arch had prevailed almost entirely over the round arch, at the time when, in the south, Norman tradition, blended with the Byzantine, still continued to inspire the builders. Nevertheless, the demarcation cannot be rigorously established, for, at the time when edifices of the purest Norman style showed themselves in our (French) northern counties (as, for example, the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés, and the apse of
DECORATION OF LA SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS.
Thirteenth Century.
St. Martin-des-Champs, Paris), we find, at Toulouse, at Carcassonne, at Montpellier, the most remarkable specimens of the Gothic style. At last Gothic architecture gained the day. “Its principle,” says M. Vitet, “is in emancipation, in liberty, in the spirit of association and commerce, in sentiments quite indigenous and quite national: it is homely, and more than that, it is French, English, Teutonic, &c. Norman architecture, on the contrary, is sacerdotal.”
And M. Vaudoyer adds: “The rounded arch is the determinate and invariable form; the pointed arch is the free and indefinite form which lends itself to unlimited modifications. If, then, the Pointed style has no longer the austerity of the Norman, it is because it belongs to that second phase of all civilisation, in which elegance and richness replace the strength and the severity of primordial types.”