The Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais is a monument to the hubris of local church authorities and architects in the 13th and 16th centuries. It’s a good story.
In 1225 the local bishop and his chapter decided to build a Gothic replacement for their 10th-century Carolingian cathedral. What is left of that church, just the western end of the original nave, is shown in the last three photos. It is known as Notre Dame de la Basse-Oeuvre.
These guys didn’t plan a cathedral that was merely adequate for the needs of the community. They set out to build the greatest church in France, surpassing plans for the Amiens Cathedral that had already been under construction for five years. Like Icarus, they aimed for the sky.
They demolished the east end of the old cathedral and started building. By 1272 they had constructed a choir with the tallest Gothic vault in the world, a record that stands to this day. Just look at the height of those buttresses!
However . . . twelve years later, in 1284, part of the choir collapsed due to weaknesses in the structure. They rebuilt and, over the following 63 years, progressively added more pillars and other supports to help bear the weight. Further construction was interrupted by the Hundred Years War.
In 1500, the building of the cathedral resumed and continued until the transept was completed in 1548. The logical next step would have been building a nave, the main part of the church where the townsfolk would sit. They did not do that.
They chose to build a belltower and spire, arguably the most decorative and least useful part of any church. And not just any spire! They wrote, “We will construct a spire so high, that once finished, those who see it will think that we were crazy.” In six years they built a spire 153 meters (502 feet) tall, making their cathedral the tallest building in the world in 1569, surpassing the Basilica of Saint-Peter in Rome. The blurry engraving above shows what it looked like.
It lasted four years. In 1573 the spire and belltower collapsed all at once into the transept. The remaining construction funds were spent rebuilding the vaults of the transept instead of a nave. In 1600 they finally started building a nave, but they only finished the first arch. The cathedral was never completed. The old cathedral is still grafted onto the stub of the massive structure looming behind and above it.
The absence of a nave left the existing structure in a fragile state without the shouldering support needed to stabilize it. In the 1990s, wood and steel trusses were installed at varying heights in the transept along with a large brace that rises from the floor. You can see those in a later post.
Photos by Charles Reeza, October 2021
