relative size of the three zones of the elevation, the master builder distinguishes the parish
church from the cathedral.
The choir of Rampillon is a single vessel illuminated by windows with oculi above.
The oldest part of the church is the bay in the south tower that supports a clock tower.
Work progressed from east to west with larger windows in the nave, which was
completed around the middle of the 13th century. The springing of the ribs from capitals
below the top of the triforium is markedly different from High Gothic cathedrals, where
the vaults spring from a point a third of the way up the clerestory.
The simple flank of Rampillon is animated by flying buttresses with a single flier and
by the earlier clock tower. The façade is simply composed; the width of the nave is
echoed in the central bay, with its splayed portal and large round-headed clerestory
window flanked by wall buttresses. The central bay is flanked by the flat terminations of
the aisles and on the northwest corner by the squat, circular tower. The portal, containing
the Last Judgment in its tympanum and twelve Apostles on the jambs, is clearly related to
the sculpture of Reims.
Rampillon is more than a country simplification and reduction of a cathedral. Features
derived from the High Gothic cathedrals, such as Reims, are combined with regional
traditions of transeptless plan (Paris area) and unusual handling of clerestory (Burgundy).
The homogeneity and clarity of statement and the imaginative transformation of High
Gothic ideas at Rampillon point up the universal quality of High Gothic, whether in the
great cathedrals or in a little church on the fertile plain of Brie.
Whitney S.Stoddard
Carlier, Achille. L’église de Rampillon. Paris: Privately printed, 1930.
Stoddard, Whitney S. Art and Architecture in Medieval France. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
RANSOMS
. Prisoners captured in medieval warfare were spoils. Roman law had established that
prisoners taken in a just war became slaves of the enemy. But canon law later altered this
to declare that Christians taken by other Christians were not to be slaves but were to be
freed on the payment of a ransom. During the Middle Ages, the capture of prisoners,
especially noble prisoners, became one of the most valuable gains of warfare.
In battle, if one man was captured by another, the prisoner had the right to purchase
his freedom with a ransom. A payment was agreed upon, depending on the wealth and
nobility of the prisoner, and the captor then kept the prisoner until this payment was
made. During this imprisonment, the captor could do whatever he needed to ensure due
payment of the agreed-upon sum, although he could not threaten the prisoner with death.
The prisoner then became a noncombatant, and his lands, from which the ransom
revenues must come, became technically immune from war.
The ransoming of prisoners was practiced in most military engagements of the Middle
Ages. In some battles, however, this course of action was seen as detrimental to an army,
as a large number of soldiers might choose to withdraw with their prisoners rather than
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