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How far it is fro Notre-Dame de Paris to the famous teans, which Erostatus has ith, breadth, height, and structure"Histoire Gallicane, liv II Periode III fo 130, p 1
Notre-Dame is not, moreover, what can be called a coer a Romanesque church; nor is it a Gothic church This edifice is not a type Notre-Darave and lacial bareness, the majestic simplicity of the edifices which have the rounded arch for their progenitor It is not, like the Cathedral of Bourges, theefflorescent product of the pointed arch Impossible to class it in that ancient family of sombre, mysterious churches, low and crushed as it were by the round arch, allyphics, all sacerdotal, all syes and zigzags, than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than with men; the work of the architect less than of the bishop; first transformation of art, all i root in the Lower E with the time of William the Conqueror Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted s and sculpture; pointed in foreois as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second transforlyphic, iressive, and popular, which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first; nor of pure Arabian race, like the second
It is an edifice of the transition period The Saxon architect completed the erection of the first pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch, which dates from the Crusade, arrived and placed itself as a conqueror upon the large Romanesque capitals which should support only round arches The pointed arch, mistress since that time, constructed the rest of the church Nevertheless, tier, restrains itself, and dares no longer dart upwards in spires and lancet s, as it did later on, in so many marvellous cathedrals One would say that it were conscious of the vicinity of the heavy Romanesque pillars
However, these edifices of the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic, are no less precious for study than the pure types They express a shade of the art which would be lost without theraft of the pointed upon the round arch