Abstract
The sexpartite vault is important as the nave vaulting of the early Gothic. As well as Viollet-le-Duc, Choisy, Lasteyrie, R. -Robert, Simpson, Jackson, Aubert, Salet and others tried to explain the genesis of the sexpartite vault mainly with structural logics. But the theories like this cannot satisfactorily explain the correspondence of the sexpartite vault to the obscure alternation of the piers of Normandy. I suppose that the sexpartite vault was devised in order to correspond to the intermediate shaft installed to the profoundry articulated surface of the Norman wall. In addition, Viollet-le-Duc, Choisy, Lasteyrie, Aubert, Enlart and others tried to establish the schema of the evolution that the sexpartite vault had been produced from the dome or square fourpartite vault, and then from the former the rectangular fourpartite vault had been derived. And they tried to explain this transition of the vault with structural and constructional logics. However, I make it clear that the schema as such never coincide with historical facts, and that the transition of the vault is irregular in Ile de France.
