THE EARLY AND CLASSIC GOTHIC STYLE C. II5O-C.
St. Denis. With rounded arches the mason who is dealing with a
narrow rectangular bay has to stilt some of his arches or depress some
to achieve level heights. Now all this could be adjusted by varying
the degree of pointing. Ribs we have met as early as about noo at
Durham. But the discovery how by means of ribs stone vaults can
be reduced to a few strong supporting lines holding each other in
position, with light thin panels of masonry between, belongs to the
Gothic style. Flying buttresses were invented to transfer the vertical
thrust from the vault on to the more distant buttresses of the aisles
instead of leaving it to press downwards vertically on the clerestory
walls and the arcades of the nave beneath. As such they had already
been used, though hidden by aisle roofs at Durham, in the Auvcrgne
and elsewhere. But only the Gothic style realised that thanks to
buttresses—a device to strengthen walls at regular intervals already
known to the Romans and carried on, though in a somewhat weakly
way, through the Early Christian and Romanesque centuries—
and flyiijg buttresses, piers could be made taller and slimmer and
walls could be built more lightly than ever before.
The whole Gothic system is more logical and ingenious, more
scientific and abstract than any constructional device of antiquity.
Yet it was not created for technical reasons. It is wrong to say that
the Gothic style is the outcome of such material innovations. On
the contrary, it has been pointed out that the understanding of the
material advantages came later than the spiritual desire for a new
kind of expression. Architects wished to enliven inert masses of
masonry and to quicken spatial motion. For these and no other
reasons they introduced shafts to articulate walls and ribs to articulate
vaults.
It is only at St. Denis (pi. xxrv) that Gothic construction and
Gothic motifs are linked up with each other to form a Gothic system.
The consequence is at once obvious. Rib-vaults cover the varying
shapes of bays, buttresses replace the massive walls between the radiat-
ing chapels which now fo^m a continuous wavy fringe to the ambula-
tory. Their side walls have disappeared entirely. If it were not for
the five-ribbed vaults, one would feel like walking through a second,
outer ambulatory, with exceedingly shallow chapels. The effect
inside the church is one of lightness, of air circulating freely, of
supple curves and energetic concentration. No longer is part de-
monstratively separated from part. The transept, recent excavations
have shown, was not intended to project beyond the nave and
32