Architectural most earnest school of architecture was occupied in the construction of great cathedrals, but activity was mani fested in an extensive series of works. Not merely smaller churches, but the royal palaces at Paris, a series of royal palaces and castles in the country, convents for the peaceful life of the monks, the fortification of cities, the residences of citizens, and public buildings, gave opportunities for the execution of monumental architecture.
is true that many structures for secular purposes were still built of wood; yet we must now mention the majestic cloisters of Vontifroid, Laon, Noyon, Elne, St. Lizier, Semnr-en-Auxois, St. Jean des Vignes, Soissons, Toul, Langres, Rouen, etc., as well as the refec tories of St. Martin des Champs, of the Abbey of Ste. Genevieve, and of St. Germain des Pres at Paris, as brilliant examples of the convents of the period.
Private and Public appropriate illustrations of the archi tectural splendor which pervaded all the provinces, we may instance the dwellings at Cordes, St. Antonin, St. Yrieux, Montpazier, Toulouse, Canssade, etc.; the hospitals at Chartres and Angers; the cities of the thirteenth century, laid out with great unity of plan; the bridge over the Charente at Saintes; the Calender-bridge at Cahors (1251); bridges at Rouen, Lyons, etc. ; episcopal palaces at Paris, Rheims, Meaux, Soissons, Rotten, Laon, Narbonne, Sens, etc.; and the castles at Coney and Mon targis.
Sainte surpassing importance was the royal palace at Paris, and particularly its chapel, Sainte Chapelle, the work of Pierre de Montereau, and one of the most complete works of the Gothic style ; it is now restored to its pristine brilliancy. It was erected 1242-1247, and consists of a basement-storey of no great height and a lofty up per chapel, the latter a single hall consisting of four oblong groined bays and a polygonal apse. There are no walls. Traceried windows stretch from buttress to buttress, and the parapet below them is deco rated with an arcade. Every mass apparent in the interior is lost in the richest detail, and the whole is gilded and adorned with color which is in full harmony with the stained glass of the grand windows; so that the interior produces the richest imaginable impression and seems rather the work of a goldsmith than that of a stone-mason. It is a reliquary upon a
grand scale, by which the goldsmiths of the period excite our wonder, for the king had it built to contain relics which he esteemed as his greatest treasures—namely, Christ's crown of thorns and a piece of the true cross. Pierre de Montereau built a similar chapel in the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres. The castle-chapel of St. Germain-en-Lave was built some years before that at Paris, and that at the Castle of Vincennes a few years after it.
The Cathedral of Tours was built about the middle of the thirteenth century, and copied the arrangement of the great cathedrals with some, what smaller dimensions. Notwithstanding its smallness, it was not entirely completed, and the facade belongs to the sixteenth century. The Cathe dral of Troyes is also an example of the normal arrangement of French churches. It has a five-aisled nave intersected by a transept of one aisle and continued by a five-aisled choir to a wreath of chapels ranged round the polygonal end of the choir and its aisle. The nave was erected in the fourteenth century; the west front, in the fifteenth.
Conz.enlual highly peculiar group of buildings was erected on Mont St. Michel. There rises on a cliff by the seashore a group of edifices—half-castle, half-convent, or properly both together— dominated by a great cathedral-like church which crowns the summit of the rock. The erection was commenced early in the thirteenth century, and was completed in 126o.. Every day the sea flows over the entire sandy circuit of the rock, which seems to have been destined by nature for one of the most important points in the fortification of the coast, but which bore for many centuries a convent of the Benedictine order, to which King Philip Augustus contributed the means to construct the buildings not only for the comfort of the monks, but also for the defence of this important point. The church, almost Romanesque, belongs to the commencement of the thirteenth century; the secular structure, to the course of the same century. The whole displays the realization of that ideal which the author of "Parzival" describes as Schloss iliontsalvatsch.