Morienval, Saint-Denis
capitals in each phase

Choir and transepts with crossing arches where a change in stonework over arches of chapels is more or less in line with start of adjacent window.

Rationale for dating : Suggested by the remnants of the crossing capitals as before Oulchy and Gournay but after La Croix.

West tower II

Rationale for dating : Analysis "The Ark" 3:455;

nave aisle arcade and walls abut earlier crossing and westworks followed by the clerestory wall.

east towers I

East towers II

East towers III

east towers IV

Western tower level III

Rationale for dating : This could be after the crusade, as Headman and Olivier for 1100; Old Duke for 1112

Apse chapels added between older towers with ribs and cells built with walls and the high vault shafts that were added on the inside of the older walls where there used to have double shafts, as in west crossing.

Rationale for dating : Analysis in "The Ark" 3:461; The usually accepted date of the 1120s is based firstly on the unfounded belief/meme that the earliest rib vaults in the Paris Basin date from around this time. Secondly, it is based on a document concerning the transfer of relics that may or may not have had anything to do with the construction. Analysis has been no more precise than this, and cannot be relied on in the absence of other evidence. At some moment the choir was refurbished with three chapels, rib vaults and a raised central vessel. The capitals were restored/replaced a long time ago, more or less mimicking forms that we can date to this period. In one corner that are three capitals that are original, in the modes of Aviateur and Comet. For the former this would be one of his earliest, either immediately before ar just after the crusade. For Comet the 1110s is uncomfortably late as most of the work in this manner was in the 1090s. Both fit into a date just after or just before the crusade, and certainly not twenty years later. The replacement capitals offer an interesting picture, for some are remarkably like genuine carving in other buildings. Some were replaced in the C19th, and we know about them. The others do not have matches in any other church in the Paris Basin. They stand unique. Nowhere else do we find a group of some 50 capitals without visual connections to those in other churches. Having spent the past 40 years studying the capitals from this period, I would suggest that they were restored and/or re-carved to look a little like the originals. The general impression is that they may have been restored around 1700. In addition, some have designs or details like other carvings of around 1100, and together they indicate that we are dealing with simulacra. The possible carvers are are noted against each capital. The work of these carvers elsewhere confirms a date very close to the First Crusade, either just before or just after.

East clerestory wall, capitals and rib vaults

Completes the vault with the four boss-panels.

Rationale for dating : Banniere a possibility and could be for 1100 - or Oda the naive

North chapel.

Rationale for dating : One of the Strapper teams, called s6, though clearly from around 1160, but no more precision possible.