RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 631 



of the general propagation by those who have come under the influ- 

 ence of the instruction of Quicherat and of the methods of 1'Ecole 

 des Chartes. 



The influence of the successor and the chief disciple of Quicherat, 

 M. de Lasteyrie, is predominant among the present historians of 

 French art. He had many pupils, and the results of his teaching have 

 been more immediately felt than those of M. de Baudot, as the pub- 

 lication of books does not offer the same practical difficulties as the 

 construction of buildings. M. de Lasteyrie and his pupils, of whom I 

 have the honor to be one, give their attention as much to the careful 

 study of historical records as to that of architectural forms, and their 

 methods of research are equally rigorous in both. Thanks to their 

 efforts, the history of medieval architecture has achieved an extra- 

 ordinary precision as to dates and general conclusions. The desire to 

 be able to settle everything exactly has, however, sometimes tempted 

 some of us too far. By crediting certain vague texts with an accu- 

 racy which they do not possess, we have made serious blunders. In 

 his last work, M. de Lasteyrie gives a rather dangerous example, 

 when, having noticed with regard to the cathedral of Chartres that 

 introitur ccclcsie cannot possibly have reference to the doorway, he 

 affirms that the portal of Saint Gilles was completed in 1170 because 

 an act was passed in that year ante fores ecclesie. A similar case is 

 that in which he affirms that the southern tower of Chartres is more 

 ancient than the porch because a tower is a more necessary archi- 

 tectural feature than a porch. Some of the errors resulting from 

 the too eager scrutiny of the texts are not less dangerous than the 

 too absolute judgments of Yiollet-le-Duc. M. Lefevre Pontalis makes 

 an error of more than a quarter-century as to the date of the church 

 of Bellefontaine from having believed that a formal permission to 

 build in 1124 must have immediately been followed by actual con- 

 struction, and he has multiplied the error through assigning dates 

 to a number of other churches as the result of his conclusions as 

 to Bellefontaine. A disregard for historical accuracy threatens to 

 make very difficult the establishment of a geographical chart for 

 the Romanesque schools of architecture. For the last twenty years, 

 the pupils of M. de Lasteyrie have devoted themselves to the study 

 of these schools, taking as a framework the ecclesiastical boundary 

 lines, although, as indeed would be the case to-day, the influence 

 that held certain groups of artists within certain territories could not 

 have been other than political, the influence of vassalage. The 

 frontiers of the spiritual jurisdiction were entirely different. 



It was from 1'Ecoledes Chartes that there came an authority whose 

 too early death occurred only a few years ago, Louis Courajod. 

 He established a course on the history of French art at 1'Kcole 

 clu Louvre, for which a worthv successor has been found in the 



