Influential as were the French Gothic schools in all parts of what is now France, they could not entirely overpower local traditions in the general plan of the buildings, and it was only in details that construction and forms were adapted to the new system. Thus, even in the Roman esque period, a certain arrangement had gained importance in the South —that of a single spacious vaulted nave supported on both sides by but tresses which were enclosed within the structure. During the reign of St. Louis two churches were built at Carcassonne according to this system. The chapels reach only to half the height; so that the nave obtains direct lighting through large windows above them. Other churches in which the arrangement is similar are that at Monpezat, built at the end of the thirteenth century, and the cathedral at Alby, in the fourteenth century.
The Cathedral at Alby has a single spacious nave about 20 metres (65 it, feet) wide, with chapels on each side, between the buttresses. The nave obtains no direct light above the chapels, of which there are two series, an upper and a lower. The eastern end is a semi-decagon, adjoin ing which are polygonal chapels between buttresses. The exterior of this church is widely different from that of the cathedrals of Northern France: it is a veritable fortress. From immense wall-masses with comparatively small windows project shallow semicircular buttresses like flanking-towers, while at the western extremity a tower which might as well be the keep of a castle as the bell-tower of a Gothic cathedral rises defiantly above the edifice.
Carcassonne Peter de Rochefort erected in the of the fourteenth century a Gothic transept with an eastern side-aisle and square chapels, similar to the German Cistercian churches before mentioned, and also a polygonal apse without surrounding aisles or chapels, at the eastern end of the ancient Romanesque Cathedral of Carcas sonne. In these additions the changed tastes of the period may be traced without taking into account the increase in the dimensions of the struc ture. Many motifs of the still-existing Romanesque portion are repeated in the newer Gothic part, evidently without any intention to imitate; and thus there results a certain harmony between the older and the newer por tions, although the latter attain the most extreme elegance of form. Par ticularly charming is the tracery of the screens which separate the chapels from one another. The mouldings of the pillars at the intersection of
the nave and transepts have a certain Romanesque severity; furthermore, the transept is separated from the adjacent side-aisle by plain circular columns. The mouldings, so far as Romanesque reminiscences are not uppermost, are sharp and meagre. The circular pillars are continued above their capitals, and the mouldings of the arches merge into the round shaft. The mouldings of the small columns which form the front of the screens between the chapels are for the most part pear-shaped rolls. Thus the antique idea of the column which we find expressed in the round form of the shafts has been abandoned, and the pillar is treated as a unit the moulding of which has the purely-decorative purpose of diminishing its apparent size. These mouldings, having the same profile as the ribs of the vaulting, render still more manifest the unity of forms, which is continued from the ground to the summit of the groining.
We have already found occasion to indicate in a work of the thirteenth century—the Church of Notre Dame at Dijon—that by means of skilful construction all massiveness is removed from the interior and all the constructive functions are transferred to the buttresses on the exterior. In Carcassonne Cathedral the extreme development of this system is demonstrated, inasmuch as the entire design here aids in divesting of its constructive character such massiveness as still remains, and in build ing up entirely an ideal world of forms. Ideal still is the whole system. The forms are noble, pure, and appropriate, the tenuity which here and there makes itself felt is not disturbing, but the inward significance of the forms which a hundred years earlier were so clearly and sharply defined, and which gave completion to the works of the first half of the thirteenth century, is no longer contained in them.
The masters established for the school an ideal whose principle of beauty was artistic, and each new master who enjoyed some authority added new forms which found their justification in their harmony. Re garding construction, the idea was to diminish the actual masses as much as possible, since these masses were to disappear entirely by subdivision into mouldings. The eye was no longer to behold a skilfully-constructed stone edifice, but a system of forms which by correct geometrical propor tions is blended into harmonious unity like a diapason.