Ecclesiastical and Monastic Associations 41secting ribbed arches that support the vault like a kind of armature
based at the tops of the supports.
In the art of building, this feature constitutes the great discovery of
the system of active stability resulting from the use of paired
vaults, like that inaugurated by the Romans, as opposed to the sys-
tem of inert stability, which emerged from the use of heavy mate-
rials and monolithic beds without the lateral thrusts used by the
Greeks and Egyptians. The discovery of this miraculous artifice
was not at all the result of luck; it could have emerged only from
profound causes, a kind of imperious necessity, and a series of tri-
als and errors.^5In actuality there is an art of transition characteristic of that period
of time marking the passage from the Roman and Romanesque groined
vault to the vault constructed from the crossed ribs and broken arches
associated with flying buttress. This transition occurred only in France,
the country where Gothic architecture was born. In the other schools
during this intermediary period there were only blends—"Romano-
Gothic" monuments.
It is an error to regard the broken arch or tiers-point as a charac-
teristic innovation of the Gothic style, however. Ancient Persia, the
Orient (mainly Armenia), and Muslim Spain knew it before the West
did. The pilgrims of the end of the ninth century, the Crusaders of 1099,
or those who had fought against the Moors of Cordoba in the Iberian
peninsula were able to propagate it on their return. "It was accepted by
Roman architects not as a thing of beauty but as a necessity. The bro-
ken-arch vault in fact had a weaker thrust than the groined vault."^6
Because there was technically no opposition of Gothic art and
Romanesque art, there was no opposition of Gothic artists and
Romanesque artists.
The antitheses, in their seductive clarity, are a danger of erudition,
which they compromise in seeking to overly simplify everything.
Few of these are more subject to caution than the double antitheses
creating an absolute opposition, an incompatibility, and antagonism