Note 23 — Chapter II · Abbot Suger and St. Denis-en-France

In each vault section of the ambulatory of St. Maclou, Pontoise, was inserted a fifth rib, which sprang from the keystone to the middle of each apse chapel’s rear wall, and which consolidated both chapel and procession path. The diagonals do not curve, as do those of Morienval. St. Maclou was entirely finished in the XII century, but it was reconstructed radically in the XV century: the present façade is 1450-70. Again in the XVI century the church was partly rebuilt, so that the double-aisled nave of to-day appears a beautiful example of Renaissance art. It was at Pontoise that St. Louis, in 1244, took the vow to go crusading. (See, Lefèvre-Pontalis, Monographie de l’église St. Maclou de Pontoise.)