How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

the Apostles, Cologne (1220-1250). It offers a varied application of the same features in a singularly perfect design. The transepts and choir present a cluster of three apses round a low, octagonal lantern. The nave is short, twice the width of the side aisles and has western transepts and a square western tower. Especially fine are the exterior embellishments of the apses, consisting of two stories of blind arcading, surmounted by open arcades beneath the roof, while a corresponding sense of proportional dignity characterises the grouping of the eastern towers and lantern and the solitary distinction of the western tower. Here, as in three other examples of triapsal churches in Cologne—S. Maria-in-Capitol, S. Martin, and S. Cunibert—the domical vaulting is supported by squinches or pendentives.

The earliest example of nave vaulting is found in the Cathedral of Mayence, closely followed in the Cathedrals of Spires and Worms and the abbey church at Laach.

SPANISH ROMANESQUE

In Spain great impetus was given to cathedral building by the recapture of Toledo from the Moors in 1085. In architecture, as in painting, the Spaniards seem to have sought their artistic impulses from abroad, since the most important example of their early Romanesque style—the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostello—is a modified copy of S. Sernin, at Toulouse, Aquitaine. The plan is a Latin cross with aisles not only flanking the nave but also carried round the transepts and choir apse in the manner of the French chevêt. The aisles are groin-vaulted, while a lofty barrel vault covers the nave, and an octagonal lantern crowns the crossing.

A special feature of Spanish Romanesque, also derived apparently from Aquitaine, is the beauty of the dome, which covers the crossing, as in the old Cathedral of Salamanca, the Collegiate Church at Toro and the Cathedral of Zamora. They are circular in the interior and octagonal on the outside with large turrets in the angles of the octagon. The interior dome is carried upon pointed arches, between which and the spring of the vault, in the case of Salamanca, are two tiers of arcaded windows. For the admission of light the arrangement is excellent, while the general character of these domes, covered on the outside with a low, steeple-like roof of stone, is admirably monumental.

Another characteristic Spanish feature, met with in some churches, as for example, that of San Millan, Sagovia, is an open cloister, on the outside of the aisle, from which doors open into it.

Carved ornament was rather sparingly applied, and except in minute details suggests no Moorish influence.

BOOK V

GOTHIC PERIOD

 

 

CHAPTER I

LATE MEDIÆVAL CIVILISATION

The change in architectural style, known as the Gothic, which began in the twelfth century and reached its full development in the thirteenth, represents so wonderful an expression not only of constructive genius but also of spiritual aspiration that one would fain peer through the mist of the past to discover the kind of civilisation that produced it. The general conditions that shaped the civilisation we have already noticed in the chapter on Early Mediæval Civilisation. There we recognised the threefold influences of the power of the Church, the extension and growing importance of Commerce, and the results of the various Crusades. And these still continued to be the motive forces of the later and fuller civilisation.

Prominent among the causes of the confused conditions in Western Europe was the multiplicity of rival authorities; which it had been Charlemagne’s dream to subordinate to a centralised authority, emulating that of the Roman Empire. But, while his attempt at temporal domination failed, the more spiritual dominion exercised by the Church proved to be a unifying agency. Through the influence which she exerted over conscience and consequently over the actions of men through the Sacraments of Confession and Penitence, she was able in considerable measure to curb the license of feudalism. Furthermore, by allying herself with the growing power of the burgher classes in cities and standing as the champion of the defencelessness of the lower classes in cities and country, she became the great adjuster of the fearful social inequalities of the period.

Her policy was one of checks and counter-checks. She could not subdue the forces that made for disorder; but could and did restrain them. Thus her support of the burghers built up a new force in the community that, through trade and commerce, made for stability and set up the constructive arts of peace as a make-weight against the destructive conditions that the internecine strife of the nobility engendered. And these last she further checked by utilising the enthusiasm for Crusades, which had been first stirred by the missionary zeal of Peter the Hermit in 1096. This first expedition, under Godfrey de Bouillon, resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from the Arabs and the establishment of a Christian Kingdom in Palestine. The six other Crusades, terminating with the second expedition of Louis IX (St. Louis) of France in 1270, failed to recover Jerusalem which had been recaptured by the Arabs. But in the course of them a Latin kingdom had been established in Constantinople under Count Baldwin of Flanders and a kingdom also had been formed in Cyprus. It is unnecessary to attempt to follow these various expeditions in detail, the more so that they represented only incidents in what had become a perpetual progression of movement toward the East. It is the effect of this that really concerns us here.

The effect may be studied in relation to the spirit that was stimulated, and to the economic and educational influence involved. The Church originally favoured the Crusades as a means both of diverting the savagery of the fighting class from internecine strife to distant warfare and of intensifying religious faith and feeling. While it was not strong enough to crush the fighting spirit, it could consecrate it to some kind of an ideal, and thereby succeeded in tempering the stupid savagery of feudalism with the finer spirit of chivalry. An idealism of knighthood was encouraged that reverenced women, protected the weak, redressed the wrongs of the oppressed, and wedded to the courtesies of life a fervour of religious faith. Amidst the ugliness of the times there sprang up the blue flower of an ideal of beauty that affected in some measure both the spiritual and the social life. How real and intense was the spirituality of the times may be gathered from its excesses, as evidenced in the cruelties of the Crusade against the Albigenses for their heresies, and in the pathetic tragedies of the Children’s Crusades. In 1212 a French shepherd boy, named Stephen, induced thousands of boys to follow him to Marseilles, promising to lead them dry-shod through the sea to Palestine, and a boy of Cologne, named Nicolas, led an army of twenty thousand children toward Italy. Such of the French children as reached Marseilles were kidnapped and sold to slavery in Egypt, while the German host perished from privations, leaving only a memory that is preserved in the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

In the wake of military expeditions to the East there followed the adventurers of commerce. Trade routes were opened up, the earliest of which and for a long time the most important was by way of Venice, over the Brunner Pass and up the Rhine to Bruges. And commercial relations meant the continual passing backward and forward of persons in the pursuits of peace and, in consequence, a growing intercourse between the members of different nationalities. The old isolation of the western and northern nations was gradually removed, and the individual’s narrow horizon became broadened by travel, his restricted ideas of life enlarged and enlightened by contact with the alien and superior culture of the East. For it was in Constantinople and among the Arabs in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt that secular learning at this period flourished.

Accordingly, as a result of the Crusades, Western Europe indulged a taste for foreign travel, which stimulated a prodigious adventurousness that operated in the things of the spirit and the intellect as well as in the material conduct of life. Geography, for example, began to arouse a practical interest. It changed the attitude of men’s minds to the outside world, opening up new paths of travel by land and sea and, equally, new conceptions of the possibilities of the world and of life. The interest also in Crusades aroused the desire to record them and an impetus was given to historical writings, which, partaking largely of romance, led to a renewed interest in such old romances as those of the Knights of the Round Table of the Arthurian Legend and of Charlemagne’s Paladins.

A most significant testimony to the character of the civilisation of the thirteenth century is afforded by the voluminous writings of Vincent of Beauvais, who held the post of “reader” in the monastery of Royaumont, on the Oise near Paris, which was founded by Louis IX. His work, written in Latin and entitled the “Speculum Universale” or “Universal Mirror,” is an encyclopædia of the knowledge of the Middle Ages; a mirror, in fact, of the mind of the age of great cathedral building. It is divided into three parts: the Speculum, respectively, Naturale, Doctrinale, and Historiale; to which a Speculum Morale was added by another hand, being mainly a compilation from the works of Thomas Aquinas and other contemporary writers.

The “Speculum Naturale” has been described as a gigantic commentary on the first chapter of Genesis. It opens with an account of the Trinity, and of the attributes and orders of angels; proceeds to discuss our own world, light, colour, the four elements, and Lucifer and his fallen angels. Then it proceeds to the phenomena of time, the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the wonders of the sky in thunder, dew, rain, and so forth. Thence it treats of dry land, seas, and rivers, agricultural operations, precious stones, plants, fruits, not omitting their use in medicine. Other chapters discuss birds, fishes; another domesticated and wild animals, serpents, bees, and insects, the seasons, and the calendar. Then man is dealt with, his anatomy, his organs, and five senses, and the phenomena of sleep, dreams, ecstasy, memory, reason, and so forth.

The “Speculum Doctrinale,” intended as a practical manual of knowledge, covers the subjects of grammar, logic, rhetoric, including a Latin vocabulary of some six thousand words; discusses the virtues and gives, under the head of “economic art,” directions for building, gardening, and agriculture, while under the head of “mechanical art,” it describes the work of weavers, smiths, armourers, merchants, hunters, sailors, and generals. Then, after prescribing rules for the preservation of health, it proceeds to mathematics, under which it includes music, geometry, astronomy, astrology, and weights and measures. And here it is noteworthy that the author displays an acquaintance with the Arabic numerals.

The “Speculum Historiale” begins with the creation of the world and continues a sacred and secular narrative down to the conversion of Constantine to Christianity. The “origines” of Britain are discussed and the story carried on to Mahomet and Charlemagne, after which comes a history of the First Crusade, a dissertation on the Tartars, and, finally, a short narrative of the earlier Crusade of St. Louis. One chapter is devoted to miracles. The history is largely composed of quotations from a variety of available sources, sacred and secular, which include Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic writers—known to the author through popular Latin versions—Eusebius, Seneca, Cicero, Ovid, Julius Cæsar, the Early Fathers of the Church, and the Mediæval writers, Sigebert de Gembloux, a Belgian Chronicler (1030-1112), and William of Malmesbury (1095-1142). The last named, an English monk of the Abbey of Malmesbury, wrote “De Gestibus Regum Anglorum,” a history of the English Kings, and a continuation, entitled “Historia Novella,” bringing the story down to 1142—works which have formed the basis of subsequent histories of England.

Mirrored in this compendium is