The annals of the abbey of Saint-Nicaise report that on September 7, 1241, at the vigil of the feast of the nativity of the Virgin, the canons of Reims took possession of the newly rebuilt chevet of their cathedral. This metropolitan church, like so many others built in northern France in the first half of the thirteenth century, was constructed in the radical and innovative mode that modern scholars call Gothic and was bedecked with a multitude of sculptures carved in equally au courant styles. At the east end of Reims Cathedral, multiple tabernacles, each capped by steeply pitched gables, support elegant fliers and house figures of angels, while further sculptures of angels and a Christ figure adorn the buttresses that bolster the chevet's five radiating chapels (Figs. 18–19). On the north and the south façades of the cathedral, a rose window dominates the clerestory level while additional buttresses, tabernacles, ornament, and sculpture echo the system found at the building's eastern extreme (Figs. 20 and 41). At both of these façades, rows of seven male figures stand on platforms at the top of the clerestory level, while fourteen colossal sculptures of kings inhabit the buttress pinnacles. On the cathedral's north face, sculptures of Adam and Eve flank the central rose (Figs. 42–43). And in the cognate position, high up on either side of the south rose, on the portion of Reims Cathedral facing the archbishop's palace, appear the looming sculpted personifications of Church and Synagogue (Figs. 21–24).