ABSTRACT
The most distinguishing feature of Viollet-le-Duc's account of Gothic construction in Annales, in contrast to his later and more familiar exposition in the Dictionnaire raisonn de l'architecture, is the eagerness with which he wanted to reveal his newly discovered "secret". In Gothic buildings, claimed Viollet-le-Duc, "like in divine works, everything has its place and its role. Remove the smallest fragment, and one will have destroyed the whole". The Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine in Vzelay served as the key illustration of the emergence of that new system of construction. It was not just an example ready at hand: Vzelay, for Viollet-le-Duc, was the very site where the Gothic idea was born. Viollet-le-Duc quite loosely sketches out further refinements in Gothic construction, more and more frequently allowing himself to digress into polemics against Beaux-Arts conventions, to which he opposes the economy and common sense of Gothic builders.
