continuous group of vaulting shafts rising from the pavement; but this pier is not compact and well developed—its main body being merely a strip of flat wall. In fact, the nave may be considered as separated from the aisles by plain walls, pierced on the grounds-tory by a row of wide pointed arched openings, and in the clerestory by narrow ones. There are no openings in the triforium, and externally, though there are pier buttresses of considerable projection, there are no flying buttresses. The Gothic system is thus by no means carried out in this building, though in date it is nearly contemporaneous with the Cathedral of Amiens.
The nave of the Cathedral of Limburg| on the Lahn, which was consecrated in 1235, has much more structural Gothic character than either of the preceding buildings. It too, however, exhibits some inconsistencies, and retains many of the peculiarities of the German-Romanesque. The interior of this building, in the disposition of its piers, the mode of its vaulting, and the divisions of its stories, bears such strong likeness to that of the nave of Noyon as to justify the inference that its designer was directly influenced by that building. Like Noyon it has a vaulted triforium gallery and a second triforium consisting of an open-shafted arcade. All the lower openings have the pointed arch, but, as at Noyon, the clerestory openings are round arched. A peculiarity of the sexpartite vaulting of this building is that the springing of the intermediate transverse rib is situated at a higher level than that of the main ribs. This rib and the branches of the longitudinal ribs which are grouped with it are carried on three short and slender shafts, which are supported by a single shaft rising from the triforium ledge (Fig. 95). This raising of the point of springing is a logical arrangement, since the doming of the vaults brings the crowns of the intermediate ribs much higher than those of the main ribs;[1] but the single shaft, stopping on the triforium ledge, is not so logical, as I have already remarked in connection with its frequent use in England. With this exception, however, this nave is very largely Gothic in character, especially since the main pier is reinforced by
- ↑ In France the same result is sometimes reached, as at Paris, by stilting the intermediate rib; but it is more common to employ a more acutely pointed arch, as at Laon.
