rebuilt Saint-Étienne, which again was destroyed by fire in 968. The third church, built
968–82, survived until it was torn down to give way to the present Gothic cathedral.
This building was undertaken by Archbishop Henri Sanglier (r. 1122–42) ca. 1140.
The south chapel was in use by 1151, and Pope Alexander II dedicated the altar of Peter
and Paul in the completed chevet on April 19, 1164. The burning of the city in 1184 must
have damaged the new façade, although most of the work postdates the fire.
The building history is complicated by the collapse of the south tower of the façade in
1268, which necessitated rebuilding it, the vault between the towers, and the first bay of
the nave and several aisle vaults. This occurred after the construction of a new axial
chapel and the enlargement of the clerestory windows in the east end of the building,
1230–40. Chapels were added between the buttresses of the nave in the late 13th and
early 14th centuries, but the most profound changes occurred after 1490, when Martin
Chambiges began construction of the south-transept arm. The new arm was vaulted in
1498 and the north-transept arm constructed in 1500–17.
The original plan of Sens belonged to that small series of medieval buildings without
transepts, which in part accounts for the axial regularity and for the commanding sense of
continuous space. The chevet had an ambulatory with a single rectangular chapel. Two
side chapels beyond resulting space is on a grand scale. That sense of scale is the
ambulatory complete the chevet plan. The main vessel is extremely wide (49 feet) and
tall (nearly 80 feet). The reinforced by the huge domical six-part main vaults erected over
double nave bays.
The elevation consisted of three stories, two of which, arcades and triforium, remain.
The second story consisted of double units of subdivided arcading opening into the roof
space. In the 19th century, a back wall was erected in each bay, although there is no
communication between bays. The clerestory was enlarged in the 13th century.
Construction of the present building started with the erection of the chapel of Saint-
Jean on the north side, followed by the outer wall of the ambulatory. Construction
proceeded at a regular pace up to the level of the windows, where there are several visible
changes in the design, largely a matter of an increase in first the width and then the height
of the windows. The north ambulatory wall preserves evidence of two, probably three,
such enlargements. The lower tails of groin vaults can still be seen in several bays. This
lowest course, on the same block as the transverse-arch capital, had already been
prepared when the decision to incorporate rib vaults was made. The late addition of rib
vaults explains the little corbels stuck in to take the ribs. The masks and grotesques on the
corbels, together with the capitals, confirm the presence of workers brought to Sens from
the abbey of Saint-Denis, which also explains the changes in window sizes and the
decision to use rib vaults. The accompanying change in attitude toward the architectural
space makes Sens the first Gothic cathedral.
The abbey of Saint-Jean, of which only the chevet of the church remains, was founded
in 500. The chevet was nearing completion when Abbot Simon Galtier died in 1245. The
church was heavily damaged in the Hundred Years’ War and again by the Calvinists in
- The ruined chevet was restored and completed by the Maurists between 1672 and
1684 in a manner harmonious with the surviving ambulatory. The 13th-century church,
inspired both by Sens cathedral and by Auxerre cathedral, is a fine example of
Burgundian Gothic.
William W.Clark
The Encyclopedia 1651