Around 1225 the premises were cleared for the second building campaign. In the mean time the architectural norms and the financial means of the parish had changed considerably, so much so that the original plan was forgotten about and a new, larger scale project was launched. Only the elongation of the church nave agreed with the part already carried out, although the details were of a more recent nature.

Transept and choir got higher façades and roofs, but the main difference is to be found in the nave. The tribunes were eliminated, allowing for the arcades to be erected to such a height that the light could optimally penetrate the nave. The nave was vaulted from the very beginning and the shafts supporting the cross ribs rendered the inner wall a strong rhythm. The shafts ran over the capitals of the large columns from skilfully decorated canopies. Together with the consoles carried by plinths they formed niches for pillarists. The capitals, canopies and columns were all differently sculptured, a remainder of the alternation of supports in ancient churches. The choir was closed by flat walls : the nave after four, the aisles after three beams. The reduced form of the apsis is characteristic of Cistercian architecture and of some early gothic cathedrals, but is above all a regional tradition.

The decoration of the interior was entirely different of toady’s’. In the Middle Ages the world was perceived through the eyes of God and the raw building materials with which the pillars, walls and vaults were constructed were dematerialized by means of a polychrome finishing. Daylight was reduced to a sacred gloom through colourful and narrative stained-glass windows. The transcendent character of the new house of prayer reached a climax in the powerful lantern tower, stressing the ordering power of the cruciform transept by means of a height dimension and creating a divine opening to heaven. Here life was no longer a ramble without a cause but a definite quest for the Light brought to this world.

Above the tower’s astral vault was an open bell-chamber, in which the town guards stayed and the town bells were located before Ghent had its own belfry. The campanile of St Nicholas’s originally had a steep spire. Not only did it symbolize security and grace, it was also a sign of freedom and safety. The tribune was renovated in 1405. Busts with wide open eyes were to watch over the town. Naturally it were men of flesh and blood who did the job, but in the Middle Ages a symbol was always stronger than a bare fact.

The composition of the transept and the central tower is of an unparalleled pure beauty. Because of the system of double walls the twolight and threelight windows are situated alternatively in -and outside, hence creating a subtle system of interior and exterior passages and suggestive shadows. Each of the façades is flanked by a turret which unifies the successive levels and stresses the vertical zeal of the building itself. St Nicholas’s church is unquestionably one of the finest examples of Scheldt Gothic, the light and clear design of which was refined even more thanks to the sculptured details.

The flying buttresses of the main choir are unique to our region and indicate that the gothic system was completely mastered. The shift from a flat nave, separated

in four levels to a vaulted dynamically rising nave with the vertical measurements revealed the helping hand of a master builder from the north of France, who had perhaps been assigned by the prelate of St Peter’s Abbey, the ecclesiastical patron of the parish of St Nicholas.

Works were finished around 1270.