This is, in effect, what Viollet-le-Duc says in his professional language, which is perhaps—­or sounds—­more reasonable to tourists, whose imaginations are hardly equal to the effort of fancying a real deity.  Perhaps, indeed, one might get so high as to imagine a real Bishop of Laon, who should have ordered his architect to build an enormous hall of religion, to rival the immense abbeys of the day, and to attract the people, as though it were a clubroom.  There they were to see all the great sights; church ceremonies; theatricals; political functions; there they were to do business, and frequent society.  They were to feel at home in their church because it was theirs, and did not belong to a priesthood or to Rome.  Jealousy of Rome was a leading motive of Gothic architecture, and Rome repaid it in full.  The Bishop of Laon conceded at least a transept to custom or tradition, but the Archbishop of Bourges abolished even the transept, and the great hall had no special religious expression except in the circular apse with its chapels which Laon had abandoned.  One can hardly decide whether Laon or Bourges is the more popular, industrial, political, or, in other words, the less religious; but the Parisians, as the plan of Viollet-le-Duc has shown, were quite as advanced as either, and only later altered their scheme into one that provided chapels for religious service.

[Illustration with caption:  Bourges]

[Illustration with caption:  Amiens]

Amiens and Beauvais have each seven chapels, but only one aisle, so that they do not belong in the same class with the apses of Paris, Bourges, and Chartres, though the plans are worth studying for comparison, since they show how many-sided the problem was, and how far from satisfied the architects were with their own schemes.  The most interesting of all, for comparison with Chartres, is Le Mans, where the apsidal chapels are carried to fanaticism, while the vaulting seems to be reasonable enough, and the double aisle successfully managed, if Viollet-le-Duc permits ignorant people to form an opinion on architectural dogma.  For our purposes, the architectural dogma may stand, and the Paris scheme may be taken for granted, as alone correct and orthodox; all that Viollet-le-Duc teaches is that the Chartres scheme is unorthodox, not to say heretical; and this is the point on which his words are most interesting.

[Illustration with caption:  Beauvais]

The church at Chartres belonged not to the people, not to the priesthood, and not even to Rome; it belonged to the Virgin.  “Here the religious influence appears wholly; three large chapels in the apse; four others less pronounced; double aisles of great width round the choir; vast transepts!  Here the church ceremonial could display all its pomp; the choir, more than at Paris, more than at Bourges, more than at Soissons, and especially more than at Laon, is the principal object; for it, the church is built.”