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AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL ART XXIII: BOURGES CATHEDRAL, OR THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

In the course of rebuilding Chartres Cathedral after the disastrous fire of 1194, the master masons devised solutions for several of the major structural and aesthetic problems that had hampered the development of the Gothic style in the previous half-century. These included the logical articulation of the bay system; the correlation of the bay system to the sexpartite groin vaults; and the extensive use of external flying buttresses. The latter obviated the need for a gallery level above the aisles, thereby simplifying the elevation by reducing it to three stories, which made possible the dramatically larger windows of the clerestory level. Although Chartres Cathedral was never completed (it was to have 7 towers), the design was widely-admired and the “Chartres solution” was used, with local adaptations, in most of the major rebuilding campaigns of the first half of the 13th-century, including Soissons, Reims, Amiens, Beauvais and the nave at Saint Denis.

The was, however, an alternative model, in many ways more refined, unified, and structurally daring than Chartres. The cathedral of St Etienne at Bourges, the capital of the duchy of Berry, was rebuilt almost exactly at the same time (work began at Bourges in 1195) and at the same breakneck pace, as Chartres. By the early 1220s, both churches were in use. The building campaign at Bourges was funded by Henri de Sully, brother of Eudes de Sully, the bishop of Paris. The Bourges ground-plan, featuring double ambulatories and aisles and a non-projecting transept, is clearly modeled after Nôtre Dame, Paris.

The architect of Bourges also looked closely at the Chartres nave as it went up, identifying problems, observing how they were resolved by the Chartrain masons, and then incorporating those findings in his own original plans for Bourges. The final design of Bourges is, inter alia, is a meditation on, but not a replica of, Chartres.

One of the problem encountered by the Chartres masons, concerning the relatively heavy forms of the flying buttresses and the last-minute addition of a third tier of buttressing at the clerestory level, was the result of a miscalculation of the outward thrusts created by the weight of the stone vaulting. At Bourges, the two aisles and ambulatories differ in height. The advantage of that seemingly aesthetic decision, manifests itself on the exterior, where the flying buttresses, longer and leaner than those at Chartres, step up from the lower, outer aisle to the taller, inner aisle and terminate at the springing point of the vaults; the load is carried back down them in a more efficient, unbroken manner, along members the scale of which rehabs consistent over the entire length.

The double-aisled plan meant that the Bourges nave arcades had to be the same height as the aisle vaults. Because there are two aisles, however, the arcades had be be much taller than the were at Chartres, which a visual nesting effect as one views the outer aisle through the inner aisle from the nave. This arrangement makes for a stunning optical experience: working from inwards to outwards, the diminution of height corresponds to a recession into space. The suppression of the transept allows for an unbroken view of the three graduated volumes, which unifies the various components and clearly expresses the ordering principle of the building’s interior spaces.

The Bourges system had a major drawback, however. In order for it to work properly, the plan had to be followed precisely from the very first course of stone through completion The system did not allow for the last-minute fixes or corrections, as did the Chartres solution, nor could subsequent master masons alter the original plan without ruining the entire project. The Bourges solution was therefore like a technically-demanding stunt that the mason had to perform correctly the first time, or fail completely. Evidently few others were up for the challenge because no subsequent Gothic building campaigns adopted the Bourges solution. That the later masons did not so much as reject the Bourges solution, as they declined to compete with its master mason, is a testimonial to the latter's greatness as an architect.