It is impossible to place our cathedral in that
other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in stained glass and
sculpture; of pointed forms and daring attitudes; belonging to the
commoners and plain, citizens, as political symbols; free, capricious,
lawless, as works of art; the second transformation of architecture, no
longer hieroglyphic, unchangeable, sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive,
and popular, beginning with the close of the Crusades and ending with
Louis XI. Notre Dame at Paris is not of purely Roman race like the former,
nor of purely Arab breed like the latter.
It is a building of the transition period. The Saxon architect had just
reared the pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch, brought back from
the Crusades, planted itself as conqueror upon those broad Roman capitals
which were never meant to support anything but semicircular arches. The
pointed arch, thenceforth supreme, built the rest of the church. And
still, inexperienced and shy at first, it swelled, it widened, it
restrained itself, and dared not yet shoot up into spires and lancets, as
it did later on in so many marvelous cathedrals.
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