ON THE MEDIEVAL ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE OF PARIS.
[second period.]
There is always this difficulty attendant on any endeavour to classify the medieval buildings of Paris, that they have been so much altered and added to at various periods, as often to make it a work of impossibility to range a given edifice within a distinct chronological class. The same edifice may contain examples of every different style of the middle ages, and therefore a strict classification in order of time is not to be expected in an account like the present. In noticing, however, the second period of French Medieval Architecture,— that period which corresponds to the age of the early and the complete pointed with us,—we come upon a building nearly perfect in itself, and less spoiled by additions of later times than any other in the capital. We allude to
La Sainte Chapelle. This beautiful building, which has always been considered a master-work of the middle ages, was built by Pierre de Montereau, under order of St. Louis, was finished A.D. 1245, and was dedicated A.D. 1248. Since that period it has had a wheel-window of the fifteenth century inserted in the western gable, and some trifling additions have been made at the west end and on the south side, but, with these exceptions, it still remains a glorious monument of the piety of its founder and the skill of its architect. It stands in the middle of what was once the principal residence of the kings of Prance, and which is still called the Palais, though now appropriated only to the Courts of Judicature. Here St. Louis determined to erect a suitable building to receive the relics which he had purchased on his first crusade,—part of the true cross, the sacred napkin, &c.—and the monarch seems to have spared no expense in effecting his object. The edifice, built on the foundations of one that dated from the reign of Louis le Gros (A. D. 1108—1137), consists of a lower and an upper chapel, each with four bays[1] on either side, with an octagonal eastern end, a roof of high pitch, and a lofty spire. On the northern side stood a chapter-house and vestry, on the
- ↑ The term "compartment" is perhaps more appropriate: for "bay" is more generally applicable to any curving portion of a building.
