Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ! White Horsemen who ride on white horses, the Knights of God! They, for their Lord and their Lover have sacrificed All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod! These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night, Swept, and they wake in white places at morningtide.... Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go; White Horsemen who ride on white horses, oh, fair to see! They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow, White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: forever He! --LIONEL JOHNSON, _Te Martyrum Candidatus_.[101]
To decipher Meaux Cathedral has been a student's _tour-de-force_, so early and unceasing have been its rebuildings. With Troyes and Séez, it was the only Gothic cathedral that had a flaw in its structure. Begun with the choir, in the last decades of the XII century, it still retained the Romanesque idea of deep galleries over the side aisles. Whether poor foundations were laid or whether the tribune vaults were made too cumbersome, the edifice gave signals of insecurity from the start.
As the XIII century opened, the transept and that part of the nave near it were building with the tribunes still, although by that time such galleries had fallen into disuse. Repeated restorations delayed the works. Cracks continued to show until, about 1270, when the collapse of the whole church was threatened, a complete reconstruction was undertaken by Bishop Jean de Poincy.
Already, in 1220, the choir had been redone and two more chapels added, making five apsidioles in all. In 1270 they demolished throughout the church the tribunes over the side aisles, and thus the aisles became twice their intended height. In the first three bays of the choir were retained the arches of the tribune, so that now certain bays of the choir aisles open on the central vessel by pier arcades surmounted by false-tribune arches. Striking effect is made in the nave by some giant cylinder piers whose height is double what was originally planned and whose capitals are gems of interpretative sculpture, vine leaf and fern. Much mechanical dexterity was shown in the recutting of piers and the elimination of the tribunes, but even now a few of the shorter columns are to be found embedded in the newer parts, and a few sections of the triforium show their primitive plan.