Chapter II: Part 2

But in spite of this advance in the beauty and ornamentation of their buildings, it was not until the close of the first quarter of the eleventh century that these famous architects really recovered the lost Roman secret of _vaulting_ large churches; hitherto they had, save in rare instances, confined themselves to covering small spaces, such as the apses and crypts of churches, with vaults.

* * * * *

Through those darkest of the early Middle Ages, the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, the Romanesque or round-arch style again slowly developed in Lombardy. It penetrated into Gaul, into Germany, and even to distant England.[8]

* * * * *

In England, the presence of Italian (Lombardic) influences, from a very early period, is undoubted; but the remains we possess of churches erected before the Conquest are, after all, but scanty.

Some writers maintain with great probability that the few churches built shortly after the arrival of Augustine’s mission (A.D. 597) in England were the work of Italian craftsmen. The first clearly dated churches erected in England under Italian (Lombardic) influence, however, belong to a somewhat later period. They are: _S. Peter, Monkwearmouth_, built in A.D. 675 by Benedict Biscop, first Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, as Bede tells us, “in the Roman style.”

_S. Paul’s, Jarrow_, by Benedict Biscop, A.D. 684.

Bishop Wilfred, the energetic Roman champion, erected the _Basilica of S. Andrew_, Hexham, between A.D. 672-678; a building which in his day was famous for its size and splendour, though no doubt the contemporary eulogies here were owing to the great poverty of ecclesiastical structures in England at this time.

_S. Peter’s, Ripon_, A.D. 671-678, was also the work of Wilfred; the Crypt of his church is still with us. _S. Andrew, Corbridge_, is also reputed to have been erected by Wilfred.

Direct Italian (Lombardic) influence, however, ceased when the Archbishop’s chair at Canterbury was no longer filled by foreign ecclesiastics; and at the close of the seventh century, and from the early years of the beginning of the eighth century, for a somewhat lengthened period architecture in England pursued its own course without external aid. But the round-arch Lombardic style still remained general, though the buildings were rough and somewhat uncouth. Brixworth Church--A.D. 654--is a fair example of the churches of this disturbed period.

We have little to guide us here until the days of Alfred, A.D. 871-891, when foreign influences again were dominant in the realm of the great Anglo-Saxon king. In the days of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, _circa_ A.D. 943-988, a strong current of foreign (Italian) influence passed over England. A similar current is notable in the reign of Ethelred II (the Unready), A.D. 978-1016. This current became stronger and stronger. Under Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1041-1066, the new style of architecture--the Lombardo-Norman--made its appearance in England. We shall dwell at considerable length on this important school which produced so many world-famous works.

No doubt before the coming of the Lombardo-Norman (Romanesque) style, many of the English churches were constructed of wood. This material was plentiful, as much of the country consisted of forest land. These have disappeared. We possess, however, one remarkable example of these Anglo-Saxon timber-constructed buildings in the interesting little chapel near Aungre (Chipping Ongar), built on the occasion of the translation of the relics of S. Edmund from London, _circa_ A.D. 1013.

The first great monument of the coming of Lombardo-Norman architecture into England is undoubtedly the Abbey Church of S. Peter, known as Westminster Abbey. This famous church was built, in part at least, by Edward the Confessor, _circa_ A.D. 1051-1065. Its completion was the work of William the Conqueror.

* * * * *

In Germany, until the period of Charlemagne, we have no proof that any considerable churches were built. This great conqueror and organiser erected, A.D. 796-804, at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) the famous Palace-chapel subsequently known as the cathedral, generally after the model of San Vitale at Ravenna; but it stands alone. It was not imitated, and his feeble successors, the Carolingian princes, did little to advance or to foster architecture in their broad dominions. This important building at Aachen remained, it must be confessed, as far as its influence was concerned, a solitary appearance in Germany. It is said that its great founder Charlemagne hoped this Palace-chapel at Aachen might have served as a model for other German churches, but it is clear that his influence in architecture was as ephemeral as the mighty Empire which he was unable to endow with permanent vitality.

The Sepulchral Chapel at Lorsch, A.D. 876; perhaps the Crypt and some of the remains at Quedlinburg, A.D. 936; the old Cathedral at Cologne, A.D. 781; the Church of S. Michael at Fulda, A.D. 818; the Church of Steinbach, A.D. 815; parts of the more important Church of Gernrode, S. Cyriacus, A.D. 968, are among the very few examples which can be cited of Romanesque work in Germany, until the rise of the Lombardo-Rhenish style in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Rivoira well characterises the Lombardo-Rhenish basilicas of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as the highest expression of German architecture. It was, he says, an outward and visible sign of the Imperial idea brought back to life among the Teutonic people by Otto the Great in the last half of the tenth century.

The erection of these great churches is synchronous with the mighty wave of church building which passed over Northern and Central Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. One great peculiarity in this style was the general adoption of flat ceilings (trabeated) over the wide spaces. It was not until the latter part of the twelfth century that cross vaulting over the naves and wide spaces began to be adopted in the great German churches.

In their general features, however, these imposing Rhenish churches of the eleventh and immediately following centuries, largely followed Lombardic models.

Among other notable piles, the undermentioned Lombardo-Rhenish churches rose in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In Cologne: _S. Maria im Capitol_, A.D. 1094. _S. Martin_ and the _Church of the Apostles_ and _S. Gereon_, eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cathedral of _Spires_, eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cathedral of _Mainz_, eleventh and twelfth centuries. _S. Castor_ of Coblenz, eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cathedral of _Worms_, eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Minster Church of _Bonn_, twelfth century.

* * * * *

But what of _Gaul_--the France of mediæval and modern days, the fairest, the richest, the most important of the provinces of the Roman rule--greater and more influential in wealth as in culture by far than any part of the dominions of the western world of Rome--equalled by none of the countries of the far or nearer East of the great Empire--second only to Italy, the mother-land of the Roman Empire?

What does this Gaul tell us of the rise and progress of Romanesque architecture? Strangely little, we reply, for many centuries. It is not by any means that this famous division of the mighty Empire was ever wanting in noble and sumptuous buildings, civil and ecclesiastical. To give a few notable historical examples as far back as the fifth and sixth centuries. Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont, gives us a vivid picture of a stately country house in the Auvergne of his day, one of many such lordly villa residences. Gregory of Tours describes at some length the Church of Clermont Ferrand, as it existed in the sixth century, and dwells on its forty-two windows, its seventy columns, on its walls decorated with mosaics and many coloured marbles. A still vaster and more famous ancient church was the venerable and far-famed Basilica of S. Martin at Tours, so eloquently pictured by the same historian, S. Gregory of Tours. Another stately church we know adorned the great city of Lyons. The Lyons church was erected before the period of the church building activities of Justinian which culminated in the superb S. Sophia at Constantinople--one of the wonders of the Roman world of the East. This Lyons church was a building contemporary with the noble Ravennese Basilicas of Honorius and Galla Placidia. But every vestige of all these, and of many others of later date, has disappeared. Quicherat strikingly asks, “Where are all the churches of France which were erected before the year of grace 1000?”

The most careful investigation of modern archæologists can only discover some four or five at most, poor reliquiæ of Merovingian and Carlovingian times, and these few scanty remains consist of a solitary crypt or two, or of a small and unimportant chapel, once evidently a part of some more considerable building now utterly vanished.

Something more than time, though measured by centuries, must have been at work here. Evidently a ruthless destroyer’s hand has passed over France and swept away all these monuments of religious zeal and devoted piety. Quicherat, Viollet le Duc, Guizot and Villemain, Sir James Stephen, Palgrave and other modern historians, in their picture of the story of France in the sixth and following centuries, tell us how all this havoc and destruction came about.

No country like France has suffered so deeply from hostile raids and disastrous invasions--from the seventh century onwards. As early as in the first years of the eighth century have the Saracens harried the southern districts of the fair Gallic province--the great Mediterranean Sea for a long season appeared destined to become a Moslem Lake, whose masters were Saracenic pirates. On land these Eastern depredators were even more destructive. Nothing daunted by the crushing defeat they suffered at the hands of Charles Martel near Tours, they persisted in treating Aquitaine and Provence as a country to which they had a positive claim, and they long continued to burn and plunder churches, monasteries and cities at their will.

As time went on, a yet more systematic course of destruction in middle and northern France, and even in the southern districts, must be chronicled in the _Gesta Romanorum_--the dread recital of the harryings of the North-folk, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Danes, the Frisians. These invasions began before the close of the eighth century--even in the days of Charlemagne--and when the strong hand of the mighty Emperor was removed, we come indeed upon a terrible catalogue of the woes and ruin wrought in Gaul by the Northern robbers all through the ninth and tenth centuries.

The sad catalogue of cities ruined, raided, devastated and partly burnt by these dread hordes of Northern pirates, includes well-known places such as Aix-la-Chapelle, Treves, Cologne, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Tournai, Rouen, Orleans, Auxerre, Troyes, Tours, Chartres, Poitiers, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Toulouse; besides many solitary monasteries.

Quicherat graphically speaks of the work of these savage raiders as a veritable _feu-de-joie_, and with great force points out how thoroughly they were able to carry out their fell work of destruction, especially in ecclesiastical buildings, owing to the abbeys and churches being universally covered with wooden roofs; the destructive work of these Northern pirates, bitter foes of Christianity, was thus rendered comparatively easy. The interior fittings of the church were first fired; quickly the flames reached the timber of the roofs, and very soon the entire building became a very furnace, and the whole pile was soon completely destroyed.

All this continuous burning and raiding, which went on for nigh two miserable centuries, accounts for the strange absence of any remains of the once sumptuous and in many cases stately Merovingian and Carlovingian churches and abbeys of the sixth and following centuries.

The great wealth, the many and opulent cities of Gaul, marked out this province of the Empire as presenting a specially attractive country for the invasions and raids of these hordes of sea-pirates. Gaul too was in the neighbourhood of the home of these Northern adventurers, and the navigable Gallic rivers which emptied themselves into the Northern Sea, the Channel which divided Gaul from Britain, and into the Atlantic Ocean which washed the long western sea-board, the Rivers Scheldt, Seine, Loire and Garonne; the Rhone, too, which flowed into the Mediterranean, where the ships of the Northmen were no uncommon sight--gave ample facilities for these formidable fleets with their dark sails to penetrate into the very heart of the great Gallic province.

Modern archæologists and historians, such as Quicherat, Rivoira, and Sir Thomas Jackson, comment sadly on this almost total absence of even a remnant of the ancient Gallic churches. Viollet le Duc, in his monumental _Dictionary_, well sums up the story of this sad gap in the architectural history of the past of France, by telling us that “we possess only very vague ideas of the primitive churches on the soil of France, and that it is only from the tenth century downwards that we can form a passably exact conception of what they were like.”

So terrible, so widespread, so constantly recurring were the depredations of these dreaded sea-pirates, that a new supplication was introduced into the Gallican liturgies--“A furore Normannorum libera nos.” The bitter hostility of these Northmen raiders to Christianity is well known; something more than a mere love of plunder influenced their method of treatment of churches and monasteries, and moved them especially to select churches as the first objects of their passion for burning and destroying.

The last years of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh, however, witnessed a new state of things. The raids of the Northern pirates grew fewer and gradually came to an end.

The more formidable bands of these sea-robbers settled finally in the northern part of Gaul, and there founded a new realm, called, after them, Normandy. These invaders quickly adapted themselves to the civilisation of the conquered provincials, and thus materially contributed to the general quietness which settled over the long-harassed Gallic province. Raoul Glanber, the Monk Chronicler of the Cluny Monks, in a famous and often-quoted passage, relates how “the world--_his_ world, started from its death-sleep and from the year 1000 put on its white robe of churches.”

There is no doubt but that an extraordinary reaction in Church life must be dated from this period. Various causes contributed to this remarkable renaissance of religion, the outward and visible sign of which was in the vast number of churches and abbeys which were built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The comparative “stillness” of Western Christendom was perhaps the dominant factor. But the enormous and ever-growing influence of Cluny and the vast number of its daughter Monastic Houses must not be overlooked.

In France, _all_ the existing Romanesque churches date from this period. We style them accurately as _Romanesque_--but it must be borne in mind that while they all possess the leading features of this great school of architecture--notably the “round arch”--in each of the provinces of France in details they differed very considerably.[9]

* * * * *

We will give a brief summary of these differences in the details.

_Aquitaine._--This great division of France included the south-western and west central districts--Poitou Limousin--Guienne--and later Gascony. Here the influence of Byzantine Art on the Romanesque School was very noticeable--the famous Church of S. Front at Périgueux is a well-known example, and had many imitators on a smaller scale. S. Front was evidently designed on the plan of the Byzantine Church of S. Mark’s at Venice.

_Aquitaine_ and the south and south-west of France during the early Middle Ages carried on extensive commercial dealings with the Levant, and especially with Venice, which largely traded with the near East.

The leading special feature in Aquitanian Romanesque was the _Dome_. It has been reckoned that in the province of Perigord some eighty domed churches once existed; of these about fifteen are still with us.

_Provence_ has a history of its own here. Its Romanesque of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was often inspired by memories of imperial Rome, not unnatural in a district so closely connected with the great Empire, and which is even still rich in mighty Roman remains. In this province we do not find the _Dome_ as in Aquitaine--the old Basilican plan is generally followed. The majority of all these French Romanesque churches are vaulted, at least in part, with solid masonry.

_Toulouse and Languedoc._ Here our examples of the ancient churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are sadly fewer. The terrible Albigensian wars of religion waged against presumed heretics, desolated the country, and many of the churches and ecclesiastical buildings were ruthlessly destroyed. The stately Church of S. Sernin at Toulouse is the most important of the Romanesque churches remaining in this division of France which we still possess. The domical feature, though not unknown here, is uncommon. The French feature of the “Chevet,” the garland of chapels round the ambulatory at the east end, is developed in these Romanesque Languedoc churches.

_Auvergne._ There are various local characteristics in the Auvergne Romanesque churches--perhaps one of the most conspicuous peculiar features is the polychrome masonry which ornaments them. There is abundance of black basaltic rock in the district, and this is frequently mixed with yellowish-white freestone laid in mosaic pattern on the exterior walls, on the aisle, the frieze, etc. The effect is curious and decidedly pleasing. Sir Thomas Jackson probably suggests that this various coloured ornamentation, which specially distinguishes the Auvergne Romanesque piles, suggests a partly oriental origin; for Mosaic was a favourite Byzantine art. This striking feature is absolutely peculiar to the Auvergne churches--only one other example of polychrome masonry can be quoted among the churches in France built in this period. The lovely cloisters at le Puy are an admirable instance of this varied coloured “Mosaic” masonry.

_Burgundy._ This important province in the north-east of France was the home of the remarkable revival of monasticism which played so great a part in the wonderful religious movement of the eleventh century; the world-renowned House of Cluny, and its famous daughter monastery Citeaux, whence sprung the vast Cistercian Order, being situated in the neighbourhood of Macon in Burgundy.[10]

It was in the workshops of Cluny that Romanesque architecture made a fresh start in France. The craft of masonry possessed a marked advantage here in the admirable stone which was quarried in Burgundy.

Among the characteristic features of Burgundian art, the splendid and remarkable porches of certain of its more provincial churches deserve mention.

A marked advance in the comparatively new feature of stone vaulting belongs to the churches of this province. At Vézelay the great nave was vaulted; hitherto this vaulting of great spaces had been generally confined to the lesser vaults of the aisles and the crypts.

The mighty church of Cluny was the vastest church in the west of Europe. Its nave was successfully vaulted with stone. At Citeaux, the Mother Church of the Cistercian Order, the example, followed certainly by the earlier churches of the famous order, was set of that extreme simplicity and restriction in the matter of decoration which characterises the numberless Cistercian churches which rapidly arose in so many of the countries of western Europe.

_The Royal Domain_--l’Ile de France. During the eleventh and first half of the twelfth centuries the “Royal Domain” was very confined, and virtually was comprised in the district at present included in the departments grouped round Paris. It was only enlarged at the expense of the territories of the great Feudatories in the second half of the twelfth century. It had long been terribly ravaged by the Northmen raiders, and the Romanesque remains in these parts round Paris are comparatively few and wanting in importance. But in the latter years of the twelfth century, under King Philip Augustus, the Royal Domain became greatly enlarged and included outlying provinces. It thus became the more fitting appanage of the Over-lord of France.

But in the later years of the twelfth century the vogue of Romanesque architecture was passing away and rapidly giving place to the new and striking architectural school known as Gothic.

These years and the earlier part of the thirteenth century--a great building age--saw the foundation of the mighty Gothic cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Bourges, Laon, Soissons, Meaux, Noyon, Amiens, Rouen, and others, mostly situated in the now enlarged Royal Domain:[11] these magnificent Gothic piles were for the most part completed before the end of the thirteenth century.

Indeed this “Domaine Royale,” in its enlarged form, has been with justice termed the cradle of French Gothic architecture.

NORMAN-ROMANESQUE

In the early years of the eleventh century, a new style of Romanesque arose in northern and north-western Gaul, which was soon known as “Norman-Romanesque”--a distinct and remarkable variety of the common Romanesque family.

It began thus. In the latter years of the tenth century, the great monastic community of the Benedictines of Cluny, in Burgundy, was at the height of its power and influence; it occupied a unique position among the religious houses of the west, owing its great position largely to the long series of distinguished men who for more than a century controlled its destinies, and directed its vast and far-reaching activities.

Among its monks, when Maieul, one of the most distinguished of the rulers of Cluny, reigned as Abbot, A.D. 948-999, was a young Italian known as William of Volpiano,[12] A.D. 961-1031. He attracted attention owing to his great learning, his devoted piety, and his rare skill as an architect. Under the Cluny influence, at a comparatively early age, he was appointed Abbot of the ancient foundation of S. Benignus of Dijon. That once famous church had fallen into decay, and was virtually a ruin.

As Abbot of S. Benignus of Dijon, William of Volpiano became known far and wide, as an earnest and successful reformer of monasteries, and, above all, as a great architect. Among other works he rebuilt S. Benignus at Dijon, and the new Abbey Church became famous as one of the most magnificent in France, and was dedicated afresh in A.D. 1018. It contained many of the characteristic features of the Lombardic school of the Comacine builders; but it also borrowed some of the features known as Byzantine; these probably he had become acquainted with from his knowledge of the churches of Aquitaine and southern France, into whose churches certain Byzantine features had been introduced. A portion of S. Benignus, for instance, was roofed with a dome. Beautiful and striking as the Dijon Abbey was, its great architect did not repeat it. It was too complicated a structure and too costly.

In the early years of the eleventh century Richard II (le Bon), surnamed “l’ami des moines,” was Duke of Normandy. Normandy, under this eminent ruler, occupied a prominent position of power and influence in Northern and Central France. Duke Richard II invited to his Court the famous Benedictine Abbot, the architect of the restored Abbey of S. Benignus, and with some difficulty induced William of Volpiano to make his home in the great Duchy, as Abbot of Fécamp. A number of Norman abbeys were built under the direction of Abbot William and his pupils, and these churches were the beginning of what is known as the Norman-Romanesque style.

We have a few of these churches with us still--some with later _additions_--others simply _ruins_; some, alas, desecrated by being applied to other uses. We would instance Jumiéges, Fécamp, S. Ouen (Rouen), Bernay, Mont S. Michel, Cerisy le Fôret, these originally being the work of William of Volpiano and the pupils of his school. We have cited only a few prominent examples, but in the first half of the eleventh century, some forty new churches, including abbatial churches, are recorded to have been built by this school of architects. As the eleventh century advanced Lanfranc (subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury) and his pupils further developed the Norman-Romanesque of William of Volpiano in such churches as S. Etienne and, somewhat later, the church of the Trinité at Caen, erected under the auspices of Duke William of Normandy the Conqueror of England, and his queen, Matilda.

All these Romanesque round-arched churches contain many characteristics of the Lombardic architecture, but they have, too, certain _distinctive_ features; they present generally the aspect of a rugged severe majesty; the proportions are noble, but most of them are poor in mouldings and carving;[13] they are remarkable, not for the elegance of their decorations or the grace of their forms, but the severe lines, the noble proportions and the grandeur of the whole effect especially distinguish the early Norman churches and abbeys of the Benedictine architect of Cluny, William of Volpiano, and his school.

The internal arrangement of these Norman churches is interesting; the form of the perfect Latin cross (crux immissa) was generally adopted, and then finally the type was fixed which, amid all the varieties of style, prevailed through the whole mediæval period.

* * * * *

But the glory of Norman-Romanesque only really appeared in England shortly after the conquest by Duke William of Normandy in A.D. 1066.

The style in England became rapidly a distinctive and even an independent development of the Lombardic round-arch architecture. The impetus which church building received, when once more stillness prevailed in conquered England, is marvellous; there was nothing comparable to it in any of the countries of northern Europe. It is computed that in the days of the Conqueror after A.D. 1070, some 45 new monastic or abbatial churches were erected in England; in the reign of William Rufus, his son and successor, 25; in the days of Stephen as many as 122; under Henry II, the first Plantagenet, 124; when his son, Cœur de Lion, was King, 44; under King John, 62.

And not only was England, in the days of the Conqueror and his immediate successors and kinsmen, covered with this enormous number of sacred buildings, but many of these piles were of vast size, far greater than any of those lately erected in Normandy and the adjacent countries, by the Lombardic school of William of Volpiano.

The question has often been put, Whence came the resources out of which these, in many cases, magnificent churches of vast size, were built in our island? The answer is--this mighty and strange impulse in church building in England arose from a feeling among the Norman conquerors that a terrible wrong had been inflicted by the Conquest upon the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and to atone for the awful sin, the Norman nobles and chiefs, their sons and heirs, who had forcibly entered into possession of the conquered people’s lands and property, in many cases erected these churches, abbeys, and monastic houses as _expiatory offerings_ to Almighty God; they were intended as an atonement for the grievous sin and wrong perpetrated in the Norman conquest of England.

This is no fanciful dream of an historian. The enormous confiscations of King William have been computed as amounting to an almost incredible number; 60,000 knights, it is said, received their fees, or rather their livings, from the Conqueror. These numbers are no doubt exaggerated, but it is certain that the race of Anglo-Danish and English (Saxon) nobility, the Earls and the greater Thegns disappeared. It is indisputable that there was an untold amount of bitter oppression and cruel wrong inflicted by the Norman kings on the great masses of Anglo-Saxon society, especially on its higher grades.

This was soon fully recognised. As early as A.D. 1072, a general penance was decreed by the Norman prelates and confirmed by the See of Rome, on all who had shared in the deeds which followed the establishment of Duke William on the English throne. The chroniclers Orderic,[14] Wace and Matthew Paris, with more or less detail, dwell on King William’s penitence when dying, for the cruel wrong he and his men-at-arms had done to conquered England.

The expression above used of these splendid piles in England is therefore strictly accurate. They were in good truth in most part “_Abbeys of Expiation_.”

To resume the story of Norman-Romanesque architecture: The following is a list of some few of the principal English cathedrals and abbatial churches erected in the very early years after the Norman occupation--

_Approximate date._ _By whom built._
A.D.
(Cathedral) Canterbury 1070-1077. Lanfranc, Prior of S. Etienne,
Caen.

(Abbey) St. Albans 1077-1088. Paul, Monk of S. Etienne,
Caen.

(Cathedral) Rochester 1077-1108. Gundulph, pupil of Lanfranc.

” Winchester 1079-1093. Walkelin, Monk of S.
Etienne, Caen.

” Ely 1083-1106. Simeon, Monk of S. Ouen,
Rouen.

(Abbey) Gloucester 1089-1100. Serlo, Monk of Mont S.
Michel, Normandy.

(Cathedral) Durham 1093-1183. William of S. Carileph,
formerly priest of Bayeux.

” Norwich 1096 Herbert of Losinga, Prior of
Fécamp.

(Abbey) Tewkesbury 1102-1123. (Probably copied from
Gloucester.)

” Southwell 1108. Guimond, Chaplain of Henry
I (Beauclerc).

” Oxford
(Christ Ch.) 1111.

” Peterborough } John, Abbot of Séez.
1114-1133-5-75. } Martin, Abbot of Bec.

The inspirer and leader of these Norman monk-architects of so many of the great English churches was Lanfranc of Pavia, a monk of Bec in Normandy, then Prior of S. Stephen, Caen, then Archbishop of Canterbury. He rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral, 1070-1077, subsequently much altered and in part rebuilt, but some of Lanfranc’s work still remains.

To recapitulate. We have very briefly and somewhat roughly traced the evolution of Romanesque from its beginnings in the first years of the fourth century, when we date the “Renaissance” of the pre-classical style which did away with the Entablature and the Greek features which obscured the old pre-classical round-arch architecture.

The glory of the Ravenna school, which best represented this “Renaissance” of the pre-classical style, came to an end when the Lombards descended upon Italy--and became masters of Northern and part of Central Italy.

But a remnant of the skill of the Ravenna and old Roman School of architects was preserved by the so-called Comacine Guild,[15] who, under the protection of the Lombard kings, again worked and built during the two hundred years, or rather less, of the Lombard sway in Italy.

Under Charlemagne, A.D. 774, a temporary and partial building impulse in Dalmatia, Germany, and in Italy must be chronicled. Then darkness, during about two hundred years, settled over Northern and Central Europe.

During these two disturbed centuries (ninth and tenth), however, the Comacine Guild, which had been employed by the Lombard sovereigns, continued to work and to develop their “round-arch” style of Lombardic architecture, at Milan and in other centres, of course more or less fitfully, whenever a ruler arose who had breathing time to devote himself to the fine arts, especially to architecture.

The Comacine Guild in this period addressed itself to the study of vaulting construction, and to the art of counterbalancing the thrust of the roof. The external buttress began to be more and more extensively used. But the progress of vaulting large spaces, such as the naves of important churches, was but slow.

In this dark and disturbed period one very notable feature, we might almost term it “invention,” appeared in the Comacine school of architecture. This was the addition of the Campanile or lofty Bell Tower, attached or closely adjacent to the main building of the church.

The earliest dated appearance of this novel and notable feature seems to have been at Milan about the middle of the ninth century, in the Churches of San Satiro, and in the so-called Monks’ Tower of Sant Ambrogio in Milan.

The Bell Tower, or Campanile, of San Satiro at Milan can fairly claim to have been the prototype of the Lombard Campanile, the virtual ancestor of the countless towers and steeples of the Middle Ages.

In the great Church revival of the third quarter of the tenth century, the famous Monastery of Cluny sent out one of its brotherhood, the Lombard Monk William of Volpiano, trained in the Lombard traditions of the Comacine school, who rebuilt, on a magnificent scale, the Abbey of S. Benignus at Dijon. Richard II, Duke of Normandy, sent for and employed this William of Volpiano, who, with his pupils, during the first half of the eleventh century, built a goodly number of churches in Normandy and developed the Romanesque round-arch style of Lombardy into Norman-Lombardic.

With the coming of Duke William the Conqueror, this Norman school of Romanesque passed into England, where, as we have seen, under peculiar circumstances of advantage, the Norman-Romanesque became a national and distinct style, a perfectly independent development; and a vast number of churches and abbeys, some of them of great size, arose in England during the last quarter of the eleventh century and all through most of the years of the twelfth.

The Norman-Romanesque in England, aided by almost inexhaustible resources, and in the hands of brilliant and skilful architects, in these years rose to the perfection of the Norman-Romanesque style, and when no further progress seemed possible, the Romanesque passed gradually into what is termed now--Gothic. Of this last evolution we shall presently speak.

* * * * *

In England, during the years of the rule of William the Conqueror and his sons and kinsmen, an almost innumerable number of Norman-Romanesque churches, abbeys and cathedrals were built, as we have stated, all in the round-arch Lombard style, many of them quite small village and town churches; others of vast size and of great importance. It was the old Lombard style, but it had grown imperceptibly into something new and independent. The more important buildings were, indeed, on a great scale, such as had not been dreamed of in the pioneer churches of Normandy, the work of William of Volpiano and his school, the size of which, with perhaps the solitary exception of the Abbey of Jumiéges, was not excessive.

The Lombardic round-arch style in England still held its own, but the variations were many: for example, the simple austere grandeur of St. Albans was quite different from the more elaborate work of Norwich and Lincoln. Winchester and Ely were purely Romanesque conceptions, but they were utterly different from those we have just quoted. The small and massive cylindrical piers of Malvern Abbey were again another departure, and were more or less copied in many other churches, some quite small, others greater, like Hereford Cathedral, and were reproduced in Gloucester and Tewkesbury Abbeys by cylindrical piers of enormous, almost of an exaggerated, height. The effect in these varieties of English or Norman Romanesque is remarkable and different.

Durham, perhaps, is the most striking example of English Romanesque; the result of William of S. Carileph’s design, this has been well described as “a Church all glorious within, Presbytery, Lantern and Nave unequalled in their stately and solemn majesty, the mighty channelled piers avoiding a mere massiveness which seems to grovel upon the earth, and avoiding, too, the attempt at an exaggerated soaring height, such as we see in Gloucester and in Tewkesbury. No Romanesque building in England, or beyond the sea, can compare with the matchless pile of Durham.” It was never surpassed, and the perfected Romanesque was not superseded by, but imperceptibly passed into “Gothic.”

That all the splendid network of Romanesque churches which rapidly covered England directly after the Norman Conquest came from Norman inspiration, a glance at the little list of notable English churches we have given above will show.

For most of the original buildings, with scarcely an exception, were designed and completed under the Norman kings by Norman ecclesiastics--by men who came from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, Fécamp, Séez, Mont S. Michel, Bec-Herlouin, etc., pupils of, and belonging to, the school founded by the Lombard-trained Monk of Cluny--William of Volpiano.

One important special feature of the great Norman-Romanesque churches of England must be referred to. In the planning of these buildings, at the east end generally, a spacious ambulatory, or circumambient aisle, was arranged.

This peculiar feature was not derived from Normandy, or from the Romanesque school of Lombardy--the direct ancestor of the Norman-Romanesque builders; but was derived from the original plan of the great Pilgrim Church of S. Martin of Tours, originally built in A.D. 472 by Bishop Perpetuus, and which was destroyed by fire in the last year of the tenth century, and then rebuilt generally on the old lines with great magnificence early in the eleventh century.

This comparatively novel feature of the Lombardo-Romanesque churches was designed for the accommodation of pilgrims, who were thus enabled to pass round the shrine of the saint, usually placed at the east end of the church, without retracing their steps, thus obviating the dangers attendant upon the excessive number of pilgrim visitors to the shrine of the popular saint.

THE COMACINE SYMBOL OF THE INTERLACED LINE POPULARLY KNOWN AS “SOLOMON’S KNOT”

“It would be difficult,” writes Leader Scott, in that curious and interesting work _The Cathedral Builders_,[16] “to find any church or sacred edifice, or even altar, of the Comacine work under the Lombards, which is not signed, as it were, by some curious interlaced knot formed of a singular tortuous line” (intreccio).

Now was this “endless knot,” which seems to have been the favourite symbol of the Comacine builders, the heritage of a far-back tradition dating from the days of the building the Temple of Jerusalem by King Solomon? This question cannot be exhaustively or satisfactorily answered; but the tradition is there, and is at least worthy of consideration.

The “knot” in question, popularly termed “Solomon’s knot,” is an unbroken line with neither end nor beginning, and which the Comacines, as the centuries passed, developed into wonderful intrecci (interlaced work). It was evidently a sign of the inscrutable and infinite ways of God, whose nature is unity. The mysterious “Solomon’s Knot” was an emblem of the manifold ways of the power of the one God, who has neither beginning nor end.

It was copied, was this famous Comacine symbol, by the Byzantine artists, but with this striking difference. In Byzantine work it was reproduced rather for effect--viz. to get a plain surface well and picturesquely covered. The Byzantine knots and scrolls are often beautifully finished and clearly cut, but the _line_ is not continuous. It is merely a pretty feature repeated over and over again, but it has no suggestion of meaning such as was evidently in the mind of the Comacine builders.

We can trace this strange knot of the Comacine builders back to the early Christian Collegia of Rome, as we see by the “plutei” in S. Clementi and S. Agnes, and on the door of a chapel in S. Prassede (Rome), and through these early Christian Collegia of builders it was transmitted to their successors, the Lombardic Comacine schools.

Leader Scott remarks that after the eleventh century the interlaced work, or Solomon’s Knot, generally ceased to be the sign of Comacine work, and the ancient sign or seal of the great Guild after this date was commonly replaced by the “Lion of the tribe of Judah.” There was scarcely a church after this date built by the Comacine Guild of Masons, in which this “Lion of Judah” was not prominent.

THE CAMPANILE OR BELL TOWER

It is to the Comacine builders of Lombardy that the Bell Towers, afterwards so great a church feature in the Middle Ages, are owing. Italy is rightly styled the birthplace of the Campaniles forming part of the structure of a church, or rising close beside it. So these Lombardic Campanile Towers were the ancestors, so to speak, of the innumerable Bell Towers and steeples of the West, erected in the Middle Ages.

The majestic Bell Tower, or Campanile of San Satiro at Milan, Rivoira considers to have been the oldest example of such a structure. The date of its erection was A.D. 876. The Campanile Towers of the ancient churches of Ravenna, such as the Towers of Sant Apollinare Nuovo, of Sant Apollinare in Classe, of San Giovanni Evangelista, must be ascribed to a date much later than the original churches themselves. The great Ravennese churches were built in the fifth and sixth centuries; their Campanile Towers were only erected in the ninth and tenth centuries.

The liturgical use of Bells can be traced as far back as the fifth century. For the first three hundred years of the Christian era the naturally secret and private exercise of the religion of Jesus of course forbade any outward and visible sign of Christian gatherings, such as the noise of bells. In Italy and the West the size and tone of church bells became gradually more and more marked. Hence the Lombardic invention, it may fairly be termed, of the important Bell Tower or Campanile as a distinct feature in church building. The ninth century, as we have stated, is probably the date of the first appearance of these remarkable Campaniles.

In the near East, the use of church bells at all seems to have been unknown before the ninth century; the first time we hear of them in the East was late in that century, when a present of bells was sent to the Emperor Basil in Constantinople by the Venetian Republic--and even then, for some time, they were but little used, for as late as A.D. 1200 the great Basilica of S. Sophia at Constantinople was without them. In Syria they were not introduced before the end of the eleventh century; they were no doubt brought into Eastern lands by the Crusaders after the fall of Jerusalem.

In the few examples of early churches which can be quoted as possessing one or two smaller towers, as was probably the case in certain of the important early Ravennese Basilicas, notably in San Vitale, such small towers were not intended for bells, but simply contained staircases.

Viollet le Duc in his long and exhaustive article on “Cloches” especially calls attention to the fact that in the eleventh century Normandy was remarkable for the number and dimensions of its church bells and bell towers; but the famous French writer and scholar does not seem aware of the reason for this marked feature in their churches. They were evidently part of the Lombardic tradition brought into Normandy by the great church builder William of Volpiano, the pupil of the Lombard Comacine architects, the story of whose coming into Normandy at the invitation of Duke Richard le Bon has been related in detail above.

Circa A.D. 526-547.]

ON BELLS

The Bell, however, was not unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but in those far-back times it seems to have been, comparatively speaking, of small dimensions.

Durandus, Bishop of Mende (Mimatensis), Languedoc, thirteenth century--the great liturgical writer of the Middle Ages--in his _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, has several pages devoted to the symbolism of bells, much of which is most curious and interesting, though, as usual with this learned writer, often not a little fanciful. For instance, he tells us how he looks on bells as symbols of preachers, who, after the manner of bells, are appointed to remind the faithful of the “Faith.” The clapper, he says, represents the preacher’s tongue, the wooden beam to which the bell is hung typifies the Cross of our Lord.

Durandus considers that the bell was first invented at Nola, a city of Campania, whence came the terms “Campanæ” for the larger bells, and “Nolæ” for the smaller. Various other writers have adopted this curious derivation, amongst others S. Anselm. But this must be considered fanciful.

During the first three centuries, naturally bells would be unused in Christian churches; as we have stated, quiet and privacy of worship being in the ages of persecution, for all assemblies for Christian worship, an indispensable condition.

They were, however, certainly used before the seventh century; there is a tradition that Pope Sabinianus, A.D. 604, directed that a bell shall be rung to give notice of the hours of the “offices.” Bells are alluded to in the Rule of S. Benedict. Bede mentions them in England in the eighth century.

But it was not until the period of the great revival of religion in the eleventh century that the bell began to assume the position of importance in the furniture of a church which we find it occupying in the Middle Ages. The size of the bell gradually increased, and the care bestowed on its casting became greater as the twelfth century advanced.

In the eleventh century we read, for instance, of a bell then remarkable for its size, being presented to the Church of S. Agnan at Orleans by King Robert of France. This bell, probably the largest then known, weighed as much as 2,600 pounds.

As the Middle Ages advanced, the vogue of bells in churches became more pronounced. There were few parish churches but possessed one or two bells, or even more, while the abbeys and cathedrals continued to erect towers to hang bells of various sizes and powers.

In the thirteenth century we find notices of bells of very considerable size and importance. It was not, however, until the fifteenth century that the bell attained to the vast dimensions we are accustomed to associate with the more considerable of these popular and well-loved instruments of music.

Gloucester Cathedral is singularly fortunate in the possession of some very ancient bells of rare sweetness and power; one of these, “Great Peter,” being of considerable size and importance.

This great mediæval bell has now bidden the citizens to prayer for several hundred years.

Various ornaments, usually of a sacred character, were engraved on the mediæval bells. More interesting, though, are the inscriptions, which not unfrequently run round the bell.

The size, however, of the famous Great Peter in Gloucester Cathedral is not comparable with other of the more celebrated bells now in use in various parts of the world--as will be seen from the following table setting forth the enormous weight of many of these great bells.

The largest of these--the Tsar Kolokol of Moscow--said to weigh 440,000 pounds, was never rung. It was broken apparently in the casting--and is now used as a chapel.

Moscow, however, still boasts what probably is the greatest bell in the world; its weight is 128 tons.

Of the other huge bells, we would enumerate--

_Weight._
The bell in the Kioto monastery in Japan 76 tons.
The Kaiser bell in the Cathedral of Cologne 25 ”
The chief bell in Notre Dame, Paris 17 ”
Big Ben in the Parliament Houses, London 13 ”
Amiens Cathedral--Its principal bell 11 ”
Great Tom, Oxford 7 ”

DATES

A few important approximate dates are given to illustrate this sketch of Romanesque Architecture: The round-arch style. At Ravenna--then among the Lombards--the Rise of the Lombardic-Norman school of Romanesque builders, and the evolution of Gothic architecture.

_circa_ A.D.
The {_Diocletian_--Palace at Spalatro 300-305
glory {_Honorius_--Emperor of the West 393-423
of {_Galla Placidia_--(half-sister of Honorius) 408-451
Ravenna {_Theodoric_--the Ostrogothic king of Italy 493-526
{_Justinian_--Emperor of the East 527-565

{_Alboin_--The Lombard Conqueror 568
Lombardy {_Rotharis_--The Lombard King. His code
{ referring to privileges of Comacine
{ builders. 636-652

_Charlemagne_--Emperor. His conquest of
Lombardy. His Palace-chapel of Aachen 796-804

Pupil of
Comacine {_William of Volpiano_--Monk of Cluny.
builders { Invited by Duke Richard to Normandy 961-1031

_Lanfranc of Bec_--First Norman archbishop
of Canterbury. His works in Normandy
and England 1086

Rise and Progress in England of the
_Norman-Lombardic_ style

Eleventh century (last part),
twelfth century.

The “Coming” and “Rise” of the _Gothic_
style

Roughly in the second part of
the twelfth century. Its rapid
and general adoption in the
thirteenth century.

PASSING OF ROMANESQUE

We only propose to give a very short summary here; all we shall do is to just sketch in a few memoranda which will throw light on the reasons for the extraordinarily rapid transition from Romanesque to Gothic. The early years of the twelfth century witnessed what we have termed the perfected Romanesque style; the closing years of the same twelfth century witnessed “the passing” of Romanesque (the round-arch mode) and the almost universal substitution of a new style, generally known as Gothic.

* * * * *

And first:--the term “Gothic,” now everywhere adopted as the expression for that school of architecture which prevailed throughout the countries of Northern Europe for some four centuries is a curious misnomer.

The term “Gothic,” which was used certainly before the seventeenth century, belongs to the Renaissance period, and was in the first instance, strangely enough, regarded as a term of opprobrium.

Those who invented it were quite clear as to what they intended by the expression. They meant it was something barbarous, because non-classical; some believed it was actually invented by the Goths who overthrew the Roman Empire. Evelyn, for instance, writes, that “the ancient Greek and Roman architecture answered all the perfections required in a faultless and accomplished building, and that the Goths and Vandals demolished these, and introduced in their stead a certain fantastical manner of building, congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy monkish piles, without any just proportion, use or beauty.”[17]

But in time, men came to recognise the glory of what the Renaissance devotees at first scoffed at; but the old term of opprobrium, “Gothic,” remained; and now is universally used to express that splendid school of mediæval architecture which arose out of Romanesque and prevailed for so long a period; the beauty and fitness of which, perhaps somewhat tardily, all the Northern nations have come to recognise with an ungrudging, at times possibly even with an exaggerated admiration.

After all, the leading writers on architecture have come to the conclusion that, different though the Gothic schools are to the Romanesque, they are but one style--_Gothic is simply perfected Romanesque_. “L’architecture Gothique n’est que la perfectionnement de celle qu’on appelle Romane,” wrote Enlart. Gothic, as Mr. Bond expresses it, “has not supplanted Romanesque, but is its supreme result, the last stage in its development, its apogee, consummation and accomplishment.” So, too, De Lasterie defines “Gothic.”

To sum up certain of the new principles of Gothic architecture. The walls of the Gothic buildings became much slighter--thinner; these walls no longer acted as the thrusts which counteracted the weight of the stone vaults which had become gradually more generally used even in Romanesque buildings, but the weight or thrusts of these stone vaults were stopped by buttresses. In other words, Gothic architecture has been with some justice defined as the art of erecting buttressed buildings.

The principal outward and visible sign of Gothic architecture, however, was the _pointed arch_. This novel feature, and much of the ornamentation which was rapidly introduced, no doubt came from the East, and must be referred largely to the influence of the _Crusades_; it was, no doubt, borrowed through acquaintance with Saracenic work in Egypt and Syria. These strange Crusading wars had opened a new world of Art to the Western nations.

The pointed arch was no new feature in the East. As early as A.D. 879 the great Mosque of Tulun had pointed arcades. The principal gateway of the palace of Ctesiphon (fifth century) is pointed. The pointed arch appears in the great aqueduct near Constantinople of the time of Justinian. In many districts in the East it had been for centuries as much the normal form as the round-arch in Europe.

But other outward and visible signs characterised Gothic architecture, which supplanted Romanesque.

Gothic windows became much larger; there was a desire to obtain more light in the churches than had been possible to obtain through the smaller Romanesque windows. These were necessarily small and comparatively inconspicuous for two reasons: the one was, the Romanesque builders trusted, as we have seen, to the vast thickness of their walls to counteract the weight or thrust of the roofs and the upper portions of the buildings, and dreaded any unnecessary weakening of these massive walls by the introduction of large windows.

The other main reason for the smallness of the Romanesque windows was the preciousness and cost of glass in the tenth, the eleventh, and preceding centuries. Glass in the second half of the twelfth century became a much cheaper and less costly material. Then, too, the rapid progress in the art of stained and painted glass in that same century demanded for the display of this new and beautiful art, larger and ever larger windows. The artists in glass painting were no longer content with the small and cramped Romanesque windows, and the general passion for painted glass at once compelled the builders to devise without delay larger spaces in the walls for the display and exercise of the art.

The new large Gothic windows became at once a conspicuous and distinctive feature in the new school. The general introduction of the buttress feature superseded the necessity of depending on the thickness and massiveness of the walls, thus permitting the larger openings that are required for the larger Gothic windows.

* * * * *

The pointed arch brought in its train many novel decorations as well as new constructive features. A new system of mouldings and other ornaments was gradually worked out in the last quarter of the twelfth and even in the earlier years of the thirteenth century.

The massive piers of Romanesque architecture were exchanged for clustered pillars, detached or banded, and crowned with elaborate capitals.

But perhaps one of the most conspicuous changes in the new style was, after all, the beautiful and elaborate tracery which supported and adorned the new windows, ever increasing in size and importance. The old Romanesque windows, small and inconspicuous, were supplanted by the great windows which soon distinguished the new Gothic school, and these windows soon became what is termed traceried windows. The necessary supports of these, known as transoms and mullions, were worked into new and beautiful forms, usually called “Decorated Tracery”; these were divided into geometrical, curvilinear, or flowing tracery, but we avoid in this very short sketch of “Gothic” such technical terms, and simply call attention to certain of the new important features here, which mark the substitution of Gothic for Romanesque form--and term them generally _traceried windows_.