ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

CH. xix] FRANCE AQUITAINE 43been roofed with wood, and when in 1130it was de- s.Hiiaire,termined to vault the nave the span was reduced tomore practicable dimensions by building an interiorarcade on each side which was connected with the olderside walls by flyingarches and small cross vaults. Butthe nave was covered with polygonal quasi-domes,irregular octagons, springing not from real pendentivesbut from "tromps" or squinch-arches thrown across theangles, like those we have seen above in the churches ofSyria. These of course are in no sense of the word realdomes, but so far as they go they are imitations of thetrue domes of P^rigueux and Cahors.LE PUY-EN-VELAY does not strictly belong to Aquitaine Le Puy-1 A 1 i en-Veiayso much as to Auvergne, but there was a strong connexionbetween the two districts, and the covering of the greatcathedral there affords another instance of the influence ofthe domical idea. This church was built in three instalments.The earliest part is the choir with the transepts,and two bays of the nave, which date possibly from theroth or early part of the nth century, but have been muchaltered in the i2th. The transepts are barrel vaultedand the nave was originally covered in the same manner.The next two bays were added in the i2th century,and have pointed arches instead of semi-circular. Thisbrought the facade to the verge of a sharp descent in therock, and indeed some way beyond, for the entrancedoors were in a storey below the church floor, and theapproach to the church was by an ascending flight of stepsfrom the central door, rising through a circular aperture inthe floor in the middle of the nave. As an old monkishchronicler has " it one entered the church of Notre Dameby the nostril, and left itby the ears," that isby the sidedoors of the transepts.The central door of this, the