Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres . a few ofthe questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church-towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are evi-dently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they haveno fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has nofleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are finishedin full preparation for them? This double omission on the part of theFrench architect seems exceedingly strange, because his rival atChartres finished his fleche just when the architect of Paris andMantes was finishing his
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres . a few ofthe questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The church-towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are evi-dently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they haveno fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has nofleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are finishedin full preparation for them? This double omission on the part of theFrench architect seems exceedingly strange, because his rival atChartres finished his fleche just when the architect of Paris andMantes was finishing his towers (i 175-1200). The Frenchman wascertainly consumed by jealousy at the triumph never attained on any- A thing like the same scale by any architect of the He de France; and hewas actually engaged at the time on at least two fleches, close to Paris,one at Saint-Denis, another of Saint-Leu-dEsserent, which provedthe active interest he took in the difficulties conquered at Chartres,and his perfect competence to deal with CAEN: THE ABBAYE AUX DAMES THE NEW YOH*PUBLIC LIBKAKY ASTOK, LENOX AND TILliEN Kor\t)<TroNS K L NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE 59 Indeed, one is tempted to say that these twin churches, Paris andMantes, are the only French churches of the time (1200) which wereleft without a fleche. As we go from Mantes to Paris, we pass, abouthalf-w^ay, at Poissy, under the towers of a very ancient and interestingchurch which has the additional merit of having witnessed the bap-tism of Saint Louis in 1215. Parts of the church at Poissy go back tothe seventh and ninth centuries. The square base of the tower datesback before the time of Hugh Capet, to the Carolingian age, andbelongs, like the square tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres at Paris, tothe old defensive military architecture; but it has a later, stone flecheand it has, too, by exception a central octagonal clocher, with a timberfleche which dates from near 1100. Paris itself has not much to show,but in the imm
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmiddleages, bookyear1
