Meanwhile, as the gifts poured in, the building grew. From the great double gates,[81] Roman in style, and imitated, probably, from the Porte d'Arroux, at Autun, the land sloped downwards to the parvis, from the midst of which rose a great stone cross. Thence flights of balustraded steps, broken, at intervals, by terraced platforms, led down to the porch, flanked on each side by square towers, the Tour de la Justice, and Tour des Archives, each a hundred and forty feet high, and crowned with a pyramidal flêche. This porch, ornamented with statues of the saints and the Virgin, was surmounted, in the space between the towers, by a great rose, thirty feet in diameter, with the figure of a Benedictine monk above.
It opened into a magnificent church of five bays, one hundred and ten feet long, and one hundred and eighteen feet high, the narthex of the great basilica.[82] It was divided into a nave and two aisles, the whole supported by enormous square pillars, their sides decorated with fluted pilasters, which also helped to carry the pointed arches of the bays. From the capitals of the pilasters, clusters of four shafts rose to the level of a frieze, just above the tops of the arches, from which other columns carried the high vault. A cornice supported on consoles separated the clerestory from the triforium arcade of four round-headed arches, enclosed in pairs under a larger arch. Cornices, friezes, and capitals were decorated with flowers, birds, figures, and grotesque animals in the Clunisian style. Many a pilgrim visitor, standing in this great church, nearly as large as the Church of Notre Dame de Dijon, believed himself to be in the basilica itself, never dreaming that this was but the porch or ante-nave.
Many theories have been advanced as to the purpose of this narthex, which became a usual feature of Clunisian construction, from about the middle of the twelfth century. Some have suggested that it was for overflow congregations from the new church, or that it served for the servants of the Abbey, for the suites of noble visitors, for the peasants from the neighbouring towns, or for criminals seeking refuge, as they were wont to do, in the shadow of the porch. Others have supposed, perhaps rightly, that it was used for the reconciliation of the excommunicated, for rites of exorcism, or for the dispensation of justice; but the most probable solution is that the narthex was a temple, in which, at Easter and other seasons of the year, the crowds of penitents and pilgrims—too numerous to be admitted into the basilica, or to be left outside—might hear the Word of God at the very threshold of, but not within, the building reserved for the monks. The narthex was, in effect, a purgatory, a sojourning place between earth and Heaven; the natural development of a custom which had arisen, for the priest, by order of the bishop, to say mass as near as possible to the gates of church, for the benefit of the penitents in the porch.
There existed, until the 18th century, on the left of the door of the narthex, a stone table, which, perhaps, was formerly an altar, though made use of, at that time, only by mothers and nurses, who believed that they could hush their crying charges by depositing them thereon.
At the end of the vestibule was the original gate of the basilica, of which the impost was the stone that St. Hugues had miraculously raised. Twenty-three figures were carved upon it in relief, and in the tympanum above was seated the Heavenly Father, as Teacher, His right Hand raised in benediction, His left holding the Gospel. Beside Him the four Evangelists listened to His words, and cloud-borne angels held the medallions upon which were shown the Throne and Person of Christ.
The interior of the great basilica must have been of the most majestic and impressive character, with its two transepts[83] and double row of aisles on each side of the nave. The great pillars supporting the central vault were seven and a half feet in diameter, with pilasters on the side of the nave, and engaged columns on the other three sides, meeting the aisle vaults. At the transept, the columns, together with the pillars they surmounted, rising in unbroken lines, formed the ribs of the vaulting. Above each bay was a triforium of two rows of superposed, romanesque, round-headed, arcaded arches, in threes, the lower row separated by pilasters, and the upper by colonnettes. The arches of the bays and the transepts were pointed; a feature, which, though quite usual in Burgundian work of the period, was more or less accidental, and was necessitated, or rendered advisable, by practical considerations, rather than by a deliberate departure from an architectural style that was still of the purest Romanesque. The capitals everywhere were ornamented with characteristic sculpture, of extraordinary freedom and boldness, representing scriptural, and many other subjects.