donations from Louis VI, such as the foundation in 1112 of Saint-Victor with William of
Champeaux, one of the great teachers of his day, as its head, and the refoundation of
Saint-Pierre de Montmartre as a house for nuns in 1134. Saint-Victor is destroyed; but
Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, dedicated in 1147, survives in part.
Traditionally the site of at least one large non-Christian temple, Montmartre is also
associated with the spot where St. Denis suffered martyrdom. A chapel dedicated to St.
Denis no doubt existed on Montmartre by the 6th century. The property passed to Louis
VI and his queen, Adelaide of Maurienne, in 1133 and was refounded as a community for
nuns the following year. The nave was completed after the church’s dedication in 1147,
and the main apse was rebuilt ca. 1170, perhaps to increase the space around the burial
site of Queen Adelaide, who had retired to the community in 1153 and was buried there
in 1154. In 1435, the nuns were forced to abandon the convent, ruined by the Hundred
Years’ War.
The original plan of Saint-Pierre consisted of a fourbay nave, flanked by aisles, a
slightly projecting transept, and a three-apse east end with a tower constructed above the
bay preceding the apse on the north side. Despite the damages, rebuildings, and
restorations, the original threestory elevation, including main arcades, subdivided and
articulated openings into the roof space over the aisle vaults, and low clerestory windows,
can still be seen in the eastern bays. Rib vaults were used in the transept and main-apse
bays. The capitals of the church are of particular interest, beginning with the reused
Merovingian marble columns and capitals against the west façade and in the main apse
flanking the altar.
The oldest surviving part of the abbey church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs is the
tower on the south side of the chevet, which dates probably from shortly after the abbey
was given to Cluny in 1079, while the chevet itself is generally dated to the abbacy of
Hugues I (1130–42). The plan of the chevet, the only surviving ambulatory and chapel
scheme in Paris earlier than the chevet of Saint-Denis, is very complex and highly
irregular, because the two rows of supports appear to have been aligned with each other
without regard for the peripheral wall. This would also explain the extreme irregularity of
the vaults. Many of the capitals appear to have been recut in the 19th century and are now
noticeably smaller than the piers on which they sit. In style, these capitals have few
counterparts in Parisian 12th-century sculpture, other than the second-story capitals in the
chevet of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which are much closer in date to 1150. The elevation
of the hemicycle is only two-storied, with small but deeply splayed windows above the
richly molded arcades. The broad woodroofed nave of Saint-Martin is probably
contemporary to the only surviving monastic building on the site, the beautiful mid-13th-
century refectory that now serves as the library for the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.
The peace and prosperity resulting from the efforts of Louis VI led to an increase in
the number of monks at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which in turn meant the need for a
larger liturgical area. Coupled with the desire to remind the king of their illustrious
history as a royal necropolis and recipient of royal patronage, especially in the face of the
efforts of Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis, the monks commissioned the rebuilding of their
chevet on a new and much larger plan with four straight bays and a hemicycle surrounded
by aisles and ambulatory and a series of five radiating and four rectangular chapels. One
of the most interesting features of the original design is the way that it highlighted the
Merovingian marble shafts set in the center of each opening in the second story. This
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