Note 17

This general characterization does not, of course, fully apply to a thinker such as St. Bonaventure, just as a general characterization of the High Gothic style does not fully apply to a monument such as the Cathedral of Bourges. In both cases we are faced with monumental exceptions in which earlier, essentially anti-Scholastic— or, respectively, anti-Gothic—traditions and tendencies are developed within the framework of a High Scholastic —or, respectively, High-Gothic—style. As Augustinian mysticism (as cultivated in the twelfth century) survives in St. Bonaventure, so does the Early Christian concept of a transeptless or nearly transeptless basilica (as exemplified by Sens Cathedral, the contemplated nave of Suger’s St.-Denis, Mantes, and Notre-Dame-de-Paris) survive in the Cathedral of Bourges (cf. S. McK. Crosby, “New Excavations in the Abbey Church of Saint Denis,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th ser., XXVI, 1944, pp. 115 ff. and below, V, “The “final” solution of the general plan was reached,” ff.). Characteristically, both St. Bonaventure’s philosophy and Bourges Cathedral (which may be called an Augustinian church) remained without a following in some of their most significant aspects: even the Franciscans, however critical of Thomism, could not maintain St. Bonaventure’s persistence in an anti- Aristotelian attitude; even those architects who did not subscribe to the ideals of Reims and Amiens could not accept the Bourges master’s retention of sixpartite vaults.