flying buttresses substantially like those now existing—which probably date from the time of the reconstruction of the vaults in the thirteenth century—abutted against the main piers; and thus the Gothic constructive system was complete in its principal features here at Noyon soon after the middle of the twelfth century.
Though there are many minor puzzles presented by the respective peculiarities of these early buildings which, in the absence of clear documentary records, often prevent an exact determination of their chronological relationships, yet there can be little question that such constructions as the choir of St. Germain des Prés at Paris, the nave of St. Stephen's at Beauvais, the Churches of St. Leu d'Esserent, and St. Martin at Laon, besides many others, were nearly contemporaneous with Senlis and Noyon. Each of these buildings presents characteristics peculiar to itself, which show a degree of individual independence in the builders that is no less striking than their common allegiance to the leading idea which was, day by day, gaining distinctness, and was rapidly transforming the art of building. Some of these peculiarities we shall have occasion to refer to farther on, while we now pass to the consideration of the structural forms exhibited by some of the larger buildings of the second half of the twelfth, and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries—the vast Cathedrals of Paris, Laon, Chartres, Bourges, Reims, and others,—in which the highest perfections of the system were reached, and in which the astonishing rapidity of the Gothic development is shown.
But first it may be noticed in passing that the two modes of vaulting—the quadripartite and the sexpartite—go along together from the first, though in the earlier monuments the sexpartite form is the most common. Even in vaults so early as those of the Abbaye-aux-Dames of Caen, where a curious kind of sexpartite system [1] prevails, the
- ↑ The vaults of the Abbaye-aux-Dames are really quadripartite over square divisions embracing two bays each, with a dividing transverse arch carrying a vertical wall up to the crown of the vault. This might almost seem like an experiment tending toward the true sexpartite form, were it not pretty well ascertained that they were of later construction than the true sexpartite vaults of the neighbouring Church of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. The same form of vault occurs in several other Norman churches, as that of the Priory of St. Gabriel (Calvados), and that of Ouestreham, both of which are illustrated in M. Ruprich-Robert's Architecture Normande.
