and
open air, but through an arcade of three bold round arches, high above
the great closed western doors, into a somewhat broader and loftier
place than this, a reservoir of light, a veritable camera lucida. The
light is that which lies below the vault and within the tribunes of the
famous narthex (as they say), the vast fore-church or vestibule, into
which the nave is prolonged. A remarkable feature of many Cluniac
churches, the great western porch, on a scale which is approached in
England only at Peterborough, is found also in some of the churches of
the Cistercians. It is characteristic, in fact, rather of Burgundy
than of either of those religious orders especially.

[137] At Pontigny itself, for instance, there is a good one; and a very
early one at Paray-le-Monial. Saint-Pere-sous-Vezelay, daughter of the
great church, in the vale below, has a late Gothic example; Semur also,
with fantastic lodges above it. The cathedral of Autun, a secular
church in rivalry of the "religious," presents, by way of such western
porch or vestibule, two entire bays of the nave, unglazed, with the
vast western arch open to the air; the west front, with its rich
portals, being thrown back into the depths of the great fore-church
thus produced.

The narthex of Vezelay, the largest of these singular structures, is
glazed, and closed towards the west by what is now the facade. It is
itself in fact a great church, a nave of three magnificent bays, and of
three aisles, with a spacious triforium. With their fantastic
sculpture, sheltered thus from accident and weather, in all its
original freshness, the great portals of the primitive facade serve now
for doorways, as a second, solemn, door of entrance, to the church
proper within. The very structure of the place, and its relation to
the main edifice, indicate that it was for use on occasion, when, at
certain great feasts, that of the Magdalen especially, to whom the
church of Vezelay is dedicated, the monastery was swollen with
pilgrims, too poor, too numerous, to be lodged in the town, come hither
to worship before the [138] relics of the friend of Jesus, enshrined in
a low-vaulted crypt, the floor of which is the natural rocky surface of
the hill-top. It may be that the pilgrims were permitted to lie for
the night, not only on the pavement, but (if so favoured) in the high
and dry chamber formed by the spacious triforium over the north aisle,
awaiting an early Mass. The primit