Beauvais: Encyclopedia II - Beauvais - Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre

Beauvais - Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre

Main article: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais

Its cathedral of St Pierre, in some respects the most daring achievement of Gothic architecture, consists only of a transept and choir with apse and seven apse-chapels. The vaulting in the interior exceeds 150 ft. in height.

The small Romanesque church of the 10th century known as the Basse Oeuvre occupies the site destined for the nave. Begun in 1247, under Bishop Guillaume de Grez, an extra 16 feet were added to the height, to make it the tallest cathedral in Europe: the work was interrupted in 1284 by the collapse of the vaulting of the choir, a disaster that produced a temporary failure of nerve among the masons working in Gothic style. In 1573 the fall of a too-ambitious central tower stopped work again, after which little addition was made. The transept was built from 1500 to 1548.

Its façades, especially that on the south, exhibit all the richness of the late Gothic style. The carved wooden doors of both the north and the south portals are masterpieces respectively of Gothic and Renaissance workmanship. The church possesses an elaborate astronomical clock (1866) and tapestries of the 15th and 17th centuries; but its chief artistic treasures are stained glass windows of the 13th, 14th and 16th centuries, the most beautiful of them from the hand of the Renaissance artist, Engrand Le Prince, a native of Beauvais. To him also is due some of the stained glass in St. Etienne, the second church of the town, and an intetesting example of the transition stage between the Romanesque and Gothic styles.

During the Middle Ages, on January 14, the Feast of Asses was celebrated in the Beauvais Cathedral, in commemoration of the Flight into Egypt.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cathédrale de Saint-Pierre", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki