THE ROMANESQUE STYLE C. IOOO-C. I2OO
The church was supposed to possess the relics of the Magdalen; they
made it a favourite goal of pilgrimages. It lies majestically on a hill
over-shadowing the houses of the minute town. The main entrance
is through an aisled narthex or galilee of three bays (a Cluniac motif,
for Vezelay was Cluniac too), and on through one of the wildest of
Romanesque figure portals. The nave has nothing of that violence.
With its later and lighter choir in the far distance, its length of about
200 ft. between narthex and crossing, its unusually high nave vaults,
its arches of alternating grey and white courses and its inexhaustible
profusion of capitals with sacred stories, it possesses a quick and
lively rhythm and a proud magnificence without being less robust
than Durham.
One more school must be mentioned, with a system quite apart
from all the others: the school of Aquitainc, with AngoulSmc and
P6rigueux as its centres. They preferred aisleless churches—only
occasionally are there aisles of nave height—consisting of several
domed bays, with or without transept. Their simplicity and grave
majesty are unparalleled (pi. xv). The centralising tendency which
is apparent wherever domes are used, culminates at St. Front in
P6rigueux (pi. xvi), where during the second quarter of the I2th
century the decision was taken to create a purely central building—
a great rarity in the Middle Ages—by leaving without the western
bay of its nave an Aquitanian aisleless church which had already its
transepts. Thus a Greek cross resulted, with a square for the centre
and four squares for the arms. Each square has in its turn again short
arms and is covered by a vast dome. The interior (for die exterior
is badly restored) is the classic expression of Romanesque clarity
and determination.1 There is no sculptural decoration anywhere
except for some arcading along the walls. The system is copied
from S. Mark's in Venice, begun in 1063. There, however, where
it stands in the centre of the most oriental and most romantic of
European cities, as an outpost of Byzantine architecture, it has all
the magic of the East, mosaics, luxuriant capitals, arcades to separate
centres from arms and concealed spatial relations in the sense which
we have seen at Ravenna. At P£rigueux it is stripped of all that
x The term classic is used throughout in this book with a meaning different
from classical Classical applies to anything inspired by, or copied from, the style
of Antiquity, classic to tne short moments of perfect balance achieved by many
styles. When we say of a work of literature or art that it is a classic, we mean some-
thing similar, namely that it is perfect of its kind, and universally accepted as such.
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