The martyrium had suffered less than the rest of the Cathedral, but it was thought necessary to place a large round column on the Gallo-Roman wall, in order to strengthen the vaulted roof. On this column you may descry the word Fulbert, cut not in modern days, nor yet at any great distance of time.
‘The circular part of our crypt,’ says l’Abbé Bulteau,[40] ‘with its vaulting, is to-day just as it was left then.’ But the floor was probably much lower if one may judge by the embrasures of the windows.
The convex wall of the martyrium was strengthened on the outside by a double thickness, for it had to support not only the thrust of the new vaulting, but also the weight of the upper church.
As to the rectilinear portions of the crypt, in spite of the alterations of the twelfth century, we may easily recognise the seal of the eleventh century in the piers and the _abaci_. To S. Fulbert we may also attribute the construction of two sacristies for Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre, that on the _south_ side now being the Chapel of S. Martin, that on the north the _Cave au Bois_, known formerly as the ‘Place of the Iron Chest.’
The upper church was built of the same dimensions as those of the former one, but the ground level of the whole was raised considerably, almost to the height of that of the choir.
The length of the church may be indicated by the excavations of 1849 at the centre of the labyrinth known as _La Lieue_, where fragments were discovered which are supposed to have been the _débris_ of the western façade. There was a double ambulatory round the choir and chapels corresponding to those of the crypt, and two sacristies may be reckoned to have been built above those of the Sous Terre.
A transept and two side-doors existed in the same place, but of less size than those of to-day.
The decoration of the Cathedral was left in great part to Fulbert’s successors.
Henry I., who came to the throne when death had surprised his father, Robert the Good, as he was copying a manuscript in the Church of Melun, owed his succession in some degree, as we have seen, to Fulbert.
He cancelled his debt in part by paying for the wooden roof[41] of the Cathedral--wooden, for the art of extensive vaulting in stone was not yet understood--whilst Henry’s doctor, Jean le Sourd, the Chartrain pupil of Fulbert and leader of the sect of Nominalists in the battle of the schools, was responsible for the construction of the south gate and many other details. Teudon, who had made the Sainte Chasse for the Veil, undertook the principal façade. A big bell weighing 5000 livres was also hung in one of Vulphard’s towers, which still stood.