Perhaps even more surprising, because of its northern location, is Saint-Vorles at
Châtillon-sur-Seine, between Dijon and Troyes. The decorative vocabulary of southern
Early Romanesque was so pervasive that scholars often overlook its vital contribution to
the fully developed Romanesque structure, in particular, the vaulting of major spaces.
North of the Alps, in addition to the early Christian tradition of the unvaulted
structure, as at Old St. Peter’s or St. John Lateran, there is the indigenous tradition of
timber architecture. Although none of these great structures survive, they are described in
such sources as Beowulf and the writings of Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers. This tradition
of the great public building in wood facilitated the acceptance of the early Christian
wood-roofed basilica during the early-medieval, Carolingian, and Ottonian periods. The
great unvaulted basilicas of the Loire Valley from the end of the 10th century and
beginning of the 11th were in harmony with this tradition.
Two major innovations distinguish the emerging Romanesque basilica in the north: the
twin-towered façade, which replaced the Carolingian westwork, and the choir with
ambulatory and radiating chapels, which reflected new liturgical practices. These stylistic
characteristics are found only in the major cathedral and abbey churches of the first half
of the 11th century: Orléans cathedral, Saint-Aignan in Orléans, Saint-Martin in Tours,
Notre-Dame at Jumièges, and Bishop Fulbert’s cathedral in Chartres. These great
monuments are known to us in varying degrees through excavations, old drawings, and
significant surviving fragments. They were vast, unvaulted thin-wall structures, often
provided with tribunes or galleries over side aisles and with large, spacious transepts—
monuments that reflected the immense agricultural wealth of the Loire Valley,
Normandy, and the region to the south and east of Paris.
A fascinating example of the evolution of the twin-towered façade out of the
Carolingian westwork is still to be seen in the church of Notre-Dame at Jumièges.
Magnificent twin towers some 165 feet in height flank an atrophied westwork, which
projects slightly on the exterior in the Carolingian manner, as at Corvey in Germany.
Inside, a truncated platform remains, a downsizing of the elaborate Carolingian type, an
example of which is still extant at Corvey. The nave at Jumièges, covered as always in
large 11th-century buildings with a wooden roof, had galleries over the side aisles, in the
manner of the Loire examples at Orléans and Tours, and was rhythmically subdivided
into compartments by great transverse arches.
The nave and transept of the fine abbey church of Saint-Étienne at Caen, founded by
William the Conqueror and destined to be his resting place, is well known. It still boasts
its original though subsequently remodeled twin-towered façade, by which one enters this
great structure. Although the nave was vaulted in the 12th century, and underwent major
restoration subsequently, its original 1 1th-century form can be easily reconstructed: a
vast, thickwall structure with vaulted tribune galleries over the side aisles, surmounted by
a wall passage at the base of the clerestory windows. All three levels were lit by exterior
windows. The church of Saint-Remi at Reims followed the same general architectural
design in the first half of the 11th century: a thin-wall, wooden-roofed nave with galleries
over side aisles, intersecting a transept of equal width and height, also unvaulted.
Throughout the region to the north of the Loire this avant-garde building type prevailed.
As we would expect, smaller structures were more conservative in nature and did not
adhere to the format of the great monuments that were instrumental in the evolution of
the 12th-century, fully developed Romanesque style.
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