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Beauvais Cathedral from the South-East.
Photo: July 2005.
Author:James Mitchell
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0
(Wikimedia Commons)
The Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais (French: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais) is an incomplete Roman Catholic Cathedral located in Beauvais, Northern France. It is the seat of the Bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis. It is, in some respects, the most daring achievement of Gothic architecture and consists only of a Transept (16th-Century) and Choir, with Apse and seven polygonal Apsidal Chapels (13th-Century), which are reached by an Ambulatory.
The small Romanesque Church of the 10th-Century, known as the Basse Œuvre, much restored, still occupies the site destined for the Nave.
History
Work was begun in 1225, under Count-Bishop Miles de Nanteuil, immediately after the third in a series of fires in the old wooden-roofed Basilica, which had reconsecrated its Altar only three years before the fire; the Choir was completed in 1272, in two campaigns, with an interval (1232–38) owing to a funding crisis provoked by a struggle with Louis IX. The two campaigns are distinguishable by a slight shift in the axis of the work and by what Stephen Murray characterises as "changes in stylistic handwriting."
Under Bishop Guillaume de Grez, an extra 4.9 m was added to the height, to make it the highest-vaulted Cathedral in Europe. The vaulting, in the interior of the Choir, reaches 48 m in height, far surpassing the concurrently-constructed Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Amiens, with its 42 m (138 ft) Nave.
The work was interrupted in 1284 by the collapse of some of the vaulting of the recently-completed Choir. This collapse is often seen as a disaster that produced a failure of nerve among the French masons working in Gothic style; modern historians have reservations about this deterministic view. Stephen Murray notes that the collapse also "ushers in the age of smaller structures associated with demographic decline, the Hundred Years War, and of the 13th-Century."
The work was interrupted in 1284 by the collapse of some of the vaulting of the recently-completed Choir. This collapse is often seen as a disaster that produced a failure of nerve among the French masons working in Gothic style; modern historians have reservations about this deterministic view. Stephen Murray notes that the collapse also "ushers in the age of smaller structures associated with demographic decline, the Hundred Years War, and of the 13th-Century."
English: Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais, France.
Français : Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais, Oise, Picardie, France.
Photo: September 2008.
Source: Own work.
Author: Tango7174
(Wikimedia Commons)
The Choir has always been wholeheartedly admired: Eugène Viollet-le-Duc called the Beauvais Choir "the Parthenon of French Gothic."
Beauvais Cathedral, France.
This building is classé au titre des Monuments Historiques.
It is indexed in the Base Mérimée, a database of architectural heritage maintained by the French Ministry of Culture, under the reference PA00114502.
Photo: September 2011.
Source: Own work.
Author: PMRMaeyaert
(Wikimedia Commons)
During the Middle Ages, on 14 January, the Feast of Asses was annually celebrated in Beauvais Cathedral, in commemoration of the Flight into Egypt.
PART TWO FOLLOWS.
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