The sheer length of time designated to each suggests a great deal about the excess of resources, man-power and conceit which were reserved for the cite of worship, historical documentation, deference to the shared authority of the Crown and Church and, in the case of St. Denis, the interment of France's Kings. And embodied in this long process would be the incorporation of a host of aesthetic, spiritual and sociological impulses that would ultimately feed into the political and philosophical machinations of the renaissance. Thus, it may be that there is some elevated degree of credit to be given to the French Renaissance architects who ultimately completed these structures so unprecedented in their size.

It must be acknowledged that the construction of the Cathedral at Notre Dame would, in France, represent nothing less significant than the transition from a Roman tradition of building aesthetic values to a distinct manifestation of...
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