ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

CH. xxvn] ENGLAND NORMAN PERIOD 213advance of the style towards greater delicacy and re- Canterfinement.Some of the colonnettes are twisted, someoctagonal, and others are enriched with diaper ornament.Some of the capitals are rudely carved, but most are ofthe cushion form though often relieved by fluting.The crypt (Plate CXLII), the finest in England and The cryptamong the finest in Europe, is vaulted with cross-groiningcarried on monocylindrical pillars with plain transverseribs between the bays.with fluted patterns, scaled,Manyof the shafts are enrichedzigzaged or twisted, and thecapitals are either plain cushions, or carved with rudeCorinthianizing foliage, or storied with grotesque beasts.On one a devilish goat plays the fiddle to another, whois riding on a fish and blowing a trumpet. This Normancrypt of about iioo extends under the smaller transept,and stops at the eastern apsidal end of Prior Conrad'schoir. The rest of the present crypt eastwards is of thelater building after the fire of 1 1 74.The great church at WINCHESTER had been re-builtwinforthe third time by Kynegils kingof Wessex on hisconversion in 635, and it became a cathedral shortlyafter when the see was transferred thither from Dorchesterin Oxfordshire, As usual various miraclesattended its erection. A mason named Godus fell fromtop to bottom of the structure, but no sooner touched theground than he rose unhurt, wondered how he got there,signed himself with the cross, mounted the scaffolding,and taking his trowel continued his work where he leftoff 1 . It is described in an elegiac poem of 330 lines by1Annalts de Wintonia, Rolls Series. These miracles are not peculiar toChristian legends. A workman on the Parthenon who fell from a height wascured by a medicine which Pallas revealed to Pericles in a dream, (Plutarch,Life of Perides.}