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By the 12th century, in the cathedral of Chartres, and in Notre-Dame
in Paris, the next stage of this logical development was reached. The ca-
thedral of Reims, begun in the year 1212, is even freer and bolder in form.
(Note: Reims Cathedral was an important influence on American architec-

ture: see, for instance, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral NYC (1858-
88) by James Renwick, one of the greatest American architects of the 19th
century.) Finally, all the earlier tendencies were brought together in

Amiens cathedral, built in 1218-88, and the purest embodiment of the
Gothic style, which gave an example of the 'high Gothic' from which the
whole of Western Europe had much to learn.
Such pure forms are of great importance to the modern observer, who

only too easily forgets that whole generations worked at the building of the
medieval churches, most of which are Romanesque churches restored or
enlarged by Gothic builders. Thus, at Amiens, we see four-centred win-

dow-openings high up in the left-hand tower, and the great rose-window in
the centre bears the characteristic fish-bladder pattern of the flamboyant
style, as late Gothic was called in France from the beginning of the fif-

teenth century. A fine example of the high Gothic form of the rose-
window is in the transept of Notre-Dame. The classic age of 'High Gothic'
in France coincides approximately with the reign of Louis IX (1226-70). In

a very short time the country was covered with new cathedrals, built of
shining white sandstone. In the volatilization of architectural masses this
art reached the limits of the possible. For example, the Sainte-Chapelle, in
Paris, begun under Louis IX in 1243, is a church with a single nave super-

imposed on a church with three aisles; in its superstructure the wide quad-
ripartite windows have almost entirely replaced the wall.
By comparison with the magnificent new churches in Normandy and

the centre of France, those in the southern part of the country, as a result of
the proto-Renaissance there, were rather cold and unimpressive. Only in
Burgundy did a small group of churches adopt the Gothic style, and pass it
on to Geneva, and to Lausanne, where there is the finest Gothic cathedral

in Switzerland.
After the Gothic had reached its height in France, and had come to its
logical climax, there was a natural pause. In Normandy, the old lucid, but

rather sober spirit of the country made itself felt again; less in the construc-
tion of the great cathedrals, like that at Rouen, than in the new buildings at
Coutance and Bayeux, home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry (c.1075). The

Bourges cathedral followed the model of Notre-Dame of Paris; it goes
back to the year 1179, but was finished, after many delays, only in the

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