THE LATE GOTHIC STYLE C. I25O-C. 1500

and radiating chapels in 1312. When these eastern parts were com-
plete, work for some reason stopped, and it was not until 1416 that
the then master-mason, Guillermo Boffiy, suggested the adding of a
new nave. His daring suggestion was a nave without aisles the width
of apse and ambulatory put together. There was opposition amongst

36. JUAN GIL DE HONTANON: SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL, BEGUN 1512. ON THB SIGHT
THE OLD CATHEDRAL.
the cathedral authorities, and so—a curiously modern idea—a
commission was appointed to decide. Its members were twelve
leading architects. Their answers have been preserved. Seven mem-
bers were in favour of continuing the basiHcan scheme westward,
but five were .taken with Boffiy's idea. In 1417, in fact, Boffiy was
committed to start on his scheme. It is a masterpiece of building
technique, with a clear span of 73 feet, one of the widest vaulted
rooms of mediaeval Europe (fig. 37). The weight of the vaults is in
the usual Spanish way carried by internal buttresses with chapels in
64