Mediterranean Trade and Architectural Production: The Church of S. Corrado in () ca. 1100-1300 CE

by

Joseph Chandler Williams

Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies Duke University

Date:______Approved:

______Caroline Bruzelius, Supervisor

______Glaire Anderson

______Annabel Wharton

______Sara Galletti

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University

2017

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ABSTRACT

Mediterranean Trade and Architectural Production: The Church of S. Corrado in Molfetta (Apulia) ca. 1100-1300 CE

by

Joseph Chandler Williams

Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies Duke University

Date:______Approved:

______Caroline Bruzelius, Supervisor

______Glaire Anderson

______Annabel Wharton

______Sara Galletti

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University

2017

i

v

Copyright by Joseph Chandler Williams 2017

Abstract

The 12th- and 13th-century cathedral of S. Corrado in Molfetta (Apulia) illuminates the effects of Mediterranean trade on architectural production. The town's engagement with long-distance commerce supported professional travel and prompted new institution-building strategies in ecclesiastical and lay society. In these ways trade reshaped the finances, building process, and specialized expertise of S. Corrado.

This study applies a combination of approaches to the written record and built fabric of the church. Documents are examined for their financial structures and symbolic ramifications. The building fund is found to have manifested the competitive relationships of many large institutions, producing a multiplicity of forms and functions in the cathedral. A new chronological analysis informed by construction archaeology

(detailed photography, on-site measurement, digital modeling, and diagrammatic visualization) suggests that the cathedral was designed in a series of flexible episodes, and not in accordance with an original plan. New technical comparisons suggest that the specialized knowledge of the work force of S. Corrado was transmitted from a range of contexts (including the northern Adriatic and southern France).

These dynamics can be related, more precisely than before, to specific conditions of the commercializing economy. Thus the findings of this study can inform the methods and frameworks of architectural history in the larger Mediterranean context.

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Dedication

To the kind and inspiring residents of Molfetta.

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Contents

Abstract ...... iv

List of Charts ...... viii

List of Illustrations ...... ix

Acknowledgements ...... xiv

Introduction: A Mediterranean Church Through the Lens of Production...... 1

The Building and the Questions It Poses ...... 12

The Post-Medieval Restorations of S. Corrado and the Writing of its History ...... 23

Organization of the Present Work ...... 41

1. Finances: Institutional Competition and Multifunctioning Architecture ...... 43

State of the Question: Institutional Explanations of Church Finances ...... 46

Evidence and Method ...... 56

Funding Strategies of the Episcopacy ...... 60

Funding Strategies of the Laity ...... 88

2. Process: Episodic Construction Strategies and their Advantages ...... 104

State of the Question: Toward a Strategic Explanation of Building Phases ...... 108

Evidence and Method ...... 115

Phase 1: Standalone Transept Crypt...... 118

Phase 2: Toward a Transept Basilica and a Nave Crypt ...... 125

Phase 3: Toward a Three-Dome Configuration ...... 136

Phases 4 and 5: Completion of the Nave and Domes ...... 146

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3. Expertise: Specialization and Networks of Knowledge ...... 157

State of the Question: Reconsidering the Geography of Architectural Techniques .. 161

Evidence and Method ...... 175

Expertise at the Quarry ...... 178

Expertise in Stone Cutting and Assembly ...... 190

Expertise in Planimetrics ...... 209

Conclusion: Implications for the Methods of Mediterranean Architectural History ...... 225

The Responsive Nature of Church Patronage...... 226

Comparisons on the Basis of Practice ...... 230

Symbolic Explanations for Regional Formal Affinities ...... 235

Charts...... 240

Illustrations ...... 254

Bibliography ...... 344

Biography ...... 359

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List of Charts

Chart 1. Numbered plan of S. Corrado in Molfetta...... 240

Chart 2. Map of the dual archbishopric of -Canosa and eligible suffragan sees as listed in papal bull 1025 CE...... 241

Chart 3. Diagrammatic representation of the use of Orthophotographs to analyze the evidence of masonry breaks...... 242

Chart 4. Diagram of proposed sequence of building phases at S. Corrado in Molfetta. Interior longitudinal elevation of north wall...... 243

Chart 5. Diagram of proposed sequence of building phases at S. Corrado in Molfetta. Interior longitudinal elevation of south wall...... 244

Chart 6. Diagram of proposed sequence of building phases at S. Corrado in Molfetta. Longitudinal section of middle and west dome...... 245

Chart 7. Table of churches featuring piers with mixed-construction shafts...... 246

Chart 8. Map of churches featuring piers with mixed-construction shafts...... 247

Chart 9. Table of churches featuring domes that combine pseudo-pendentives with horizontally coursed squinches...... 248

Chart 10. Map of churches featuring domes combining pseudo-pendentives with horizontally-coursed squinches...... 249

Chart 11. Table of churches featuring projecting transept using combination of rotating square method and 2:1 ratio for nave and side-aisle widths...... 250

Chart 12. Map of churches featuring projecting transept using combination of rotating square method and 2:1 ratio for nave and side-aisle widths...... 251

Chart 13. Table of churches featuring multiple square bays on central axis, combined with 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio and quadrant vaults over the side aisles...... 252

Chart 14. Map of churches featuring multiple square bays on central axis, combined with 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio and quadrant vaults over the side aisles...... 253

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Molfetta, S. Corrado. General view of north flank...... 254

Figure 2. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Interior view toward northeast...... 255

Figure 3. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Dome over east bay...... 256

Figure 4. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Dome over middle bay...... 257

Figure 5. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Dome over west bay...... 258

Figure 6. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 2PN (west and south)...... 259

Figure 7. Molfetta, S. Corrado. East facade...... 260

Figure 8. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Detail of east facade...... 261

Figure 9. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Detail of east facade with interlaced arches...... 262

Figure 10. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt arches on north interior wall of transept...... 263

Figure 11. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry break on interior wall of north side aisle...... 264

Figure 12. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry break on interior wall of south side aisle...... 265

Figure 13. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Drawings of capitals, ca. 1840...... 266

Figure 14. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Longitudinal section toward north, ca. 1840...... 267

Figure 15. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Drawing of nave, ca. 1903...... 268

Figure 16. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Exterior view showing massing around the north and west sides before restorations in the 1940s...... 269

Figure 17. Molfetta. S. Corrado. West facade as presently configured...... 270

Figure 18. Bari, Cathedral. Drawing of east facade prior to 1860...... 271

Figure 19. , Cathedral. East facade...... 272

Figure 20. Molfetta, S. Corrado. North flank...... 273

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Figure 21. , S. Francesco (originally SS. Trinità). North flank...... 274

Figure 22. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Corbel and fragmentary shaft supporting interlaced arches...... 275

Figure 23. Molfetta, S. Corrado. East face of chapel of S. Giuliano...... 276

Figure 24. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt wall arch on north wall of transept, interrupted by supporting masonry of Respond 2RN...... 277

Figure 25. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt wall arch on south wall of transept...... 278

Figure 26. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt wall arch on supporting masonry of Respond 2RS (east face)...... 279

Figure 27. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Fragmentary crypt wall arch on supporting masonry of Pier 2PS (east face)...... 280

Figure 28. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Lacerated springer of crypt groin vault in southeast corner of the transept...... 281

Figure 29. Giovinazzo, Cathedral. Plan of crypt...... 282

Figure 30. Urban plan of Molfetta, showing the massing of the cathedral (upper left) in relation to surrounding structures...... 283

Figure 31. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Northeast interior corner of transept...... 284

Figure 32. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Supporting masonry of Respond 2RN (east face)...... 285

Figure 33. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Supporting masonry of Respond 2RN (west face)...... 286

Figure 34. Molfetta, S. Corrado. View of southwest exterior corner of transept...... 287

Figure 35. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Detail of north interior transept wall, showing lacerated pilaster foundations...... 288

Figure 36. Giovinazzo, Cathedral. Windows in south interior wall of transept...... 289

Figure 37. Bari, Cathedral. Blind arches in northwest interior corner of transept...... 290

Figure 38. , Cathedral. Plan...... 291

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Figure 39. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RS and Pier 2PS (view to east)...... 292

Figure 40. Conversano, Cathedral. Longitudinal section...... 293

Figure 41. Trani Cathedral. Plan, showing hypothetical reconstruction of the earlier church of S. Maria superimposed...... 294

Figure 42. Trani, Cathedral. Longitudinal section, showing crypt and upper church. ... 295

Figure 43. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RS (view to southwest)...... 296

Figure 44. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Quadrant vault over middle bay of south side aisle. ... 297

Figure 45. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Supporting masonry of respond 2RN (southwest corner)...... 298

Figure 46. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Trapezoidal stone terminating fragmentary blind arch on north side-aisle wall...... 299

Figure 47. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Horizontally coursed terminus of fragmentary blind arch on south side-aisle wall...... 300

Figure 48. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RN and Pier 2PN (view to east)...... 301

Figure 49. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Impost molding of Pier 2PS...... 302

Figure 50. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Impost molding of pilaster on north interior wall of transept...... 303

Figure 51. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Corbel 1CN...... 304

Figure 52. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 2PS (east, north)...... 305

Figure 53. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capital of Respond 2RS...... 306

Figure 54. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Medallion relief on southwest exterior corner of transept...... 307

Figure 55. Trani, S. Francesco (originally SS. Trinità). Plan...... 308

Figure 56. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Scarped plinths of Pier 2PS...... 309

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Figure 57. Trani, S. Francesco (originally, SS. Trinità). Blind arch on south interior side- aisle wall...... 310

Figure 58. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plinth escarpment of Pier 2PS...... 311

Figure 59. Valenzano, SS. Ognissanti. Remains of monumental west porch...... 312

Figure 60. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 1PN (south and east)...... 313

Figure 61. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 1PS (north and west)...... 314

Figure 62. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plinths of Pier 1PN...... 315

Figure 63. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plinths of Pier 1PS...... 316

Figure 64. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Scarped plinth of Respond 0RN...... 317

Figure 65. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Corbel 1CS...... 318

Figure 66. Bari, Cathedral. Squinches of crossing dome...... 319

Figure 67. Map showing main areas of extraction of pietra di Trani and pietra Apricena...... 320

Figure 68. Map showing calcareous deposits in Apulia...... 321

Figure 69. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry of lower interior wall of east bay...... 322

Figure 70. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry of interior wall of west bays...... 323

Figure 71. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Mason marks on exterior wall by the south entrance. . 324

Figure 72. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry of quadrant vault in east bay...... 325

Figure 73. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Pier 2PS...... 326

Figure 74. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Pier 1PN. Note aligned coursing of the short drum in lower part of the image...... 327

Figure 75. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RN...... 328

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Figure 76. Bari, Cathedral. Pier with mixed-construction shaft; coursing not aligned to adjacent shaft...... 329

Figure 77. S. Leonardo (near Siponto). Pier with mixed-construction shaft; coursing aligned to adjacent shaft...... 330

Figure 78. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Central window of east facade...... 331

Figure 79. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capital 2PN (south)...... 332

Figure 80. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Approximated base molding diagram: Pier 2PN (south)...... 333

Figure 81. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Transverse arch leading from western bays into east bay; constructed with an arco lunato widening arch...... 334

Figure 82. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Incised arch with radiating lines...... 335

Figure 83. S. Maria di Ronzano (near Castel Castagna). Elevation drawing of east facade...... 336

Figure 84. Teramo, Cathedral. Dome...... 337

Figure 85. S. Maria di Portonovo (near Ancona). Dome...... 338

Figure 86. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plan, showing rotated square method of determining the proportions of the transept and the appropriate siting of the crossing piers...... 339

Figure 87. S. Maria di Ronzano (near Castel Castagna). Plan...... 340

Figure 88. Garde-Adhémar, S. Michel. Plan...... 341

Figure 89. Valenzano, Church of SS. Ognissanti. Oculi in south side aisle...... 342

Figure 90. Canosa Cathedral. Plan...... 343

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Acknowledgements

During this project I have accumulated many debts of gratitude. I would therefore like to acknowledge the many individuals whose efforts, care, and inspiration made this dissertation possible.

A profound debt is due to my advisor. Dr. Bruzelius guided me to the knowledge, methods, tools, and questions that make up this project, while also instilling in me an understanding of scholarship as a system of values. Tirelessly committed to historical rigor and to the vivid elucidation of complexity, she inspires the core aims of the present project.

A similar debt is due to the members of my dissertation committee. I thank Dr.

Glaire Anderson for enriching my contextualization of architecture by questioning the traditional categories in which historic buildings are studied. Dr. Annabel Wharton trained me not to take what I see for granted, but to unpack the concealed meanings and effects of architecture. Dr. Sara Galletti opened my eyes to the value of interpreting architectural practice on its own terms rather than as a product of theory. Dr. John

Martin not only kindled my interest in the approaches of early social historians of the

Mediterranean, but also revealed how great writing sharpened their interpretive powers.

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I gained my command of the history of Apulian Romanesque architecture through intensive reading and training under Dr. Pina Belli D'Elia and Dr. Luisa Derosa at the Università di Bari. Their constant support and advice helped me see the church of

S. Corrado from vantage points other than its surface appearance: as a problem of art historical classification, as a product of extensive modern restoration, as an encyclopedia of workmanship, and as a puzzle of construction chronology. I also thank Dr. Angelo

Ambrosi, whose conversations with me about building and carving techniques in medieval Apulia have proved essential.

In addition to historians of Apulian architecture, I am indebted to numerous scholars from related specializations and fields for their contributions to this project. Dr.

Stefano Riccioni provided commentary on my presentation about the circulation of building techniques in the Adriatic, offering the important advice to reconsider the scope of my data collection. I also benefitted from meetings with Dr. Amedeo Feniello,

Dr. Jean-Marie Martin, and Dr. Vera von Falkenhausen, who explained essential aspects of medieval social, political, and legal structures, while also pointing out the particular idiosyncrasies of the Apulian context. I thank Dr. Lila Yawn for drawing my attention to affinities between patterns of production in medieval architecture and those of other art forms in medieval South .

I am grateful to many other scholars for discussing thematic questions and reading drafts, including Dr. Kimberly Bowes, Dr. Lindsay Harris, John Landsdowne,

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Dr. Jessica Marglin, Dr. Francesco Gangemi, Dr. Matthew Woodworth, Dr. Alexandra

Dodson, and Dr. Maria Rosaria Rinaldi. Dr. Edward Triplett and Yasmin Vobis helped me learn and hone the skill of 3D photogrammetry, while also providing critical insights about how to use this tool meaningfully and responsibly. I thank Peter Rockwell for walking me through the carving of a limestone block and for his invaluable observations about medieval stonecutting.

A major debt of gratitude is due to the clergy and laity responsible for the care and custodianship of S. Corrado in Molfetta. Don Vito Bufi was exceptionally generous in meeting with me and granting me access to the church after visiting hours. I also thank the rest of the staff for their graciousness, encouragement, and assistance while I conducted fieldwork inside the church.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of a Phyllis

W. G. Gordan/Lily Auchincloss/Samuel H. Kress Foundation pre-doctoral Rome Prize, a

Graduate Student Travel Grant from the International Center of Medieval Art, and a summer research grant from the Gene L. and Alice Stroude Winegardner endowment at

Duke University. I extend my deepest thanks for these opportunities to conduct focused research on site and to engage with scholars in Italy.

Conversations with my close family helped me articulate many of the arguments in this dissertation. Finally, a great debt is due to my partner, for her critical role as a colleague, a mentor, a companion, and an unending font of encouragement.

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Introduction: A Mediterranean Church Through the Lens of Production

Did the social and economic changes of the medieval Mediterranean affect the conditions of architectural production? This is the problem posed by the old cathedral of

S. Corrado in Molfetta. Built over the course of the 12th and 13th centuries and located on the Adriatic coast of Apulia (in Southeast Italy), S. Corrado evokes a time of expanding trade and communications.1 The church, situated against the water's edge and presenting an unmistakable profile of twin towers and three domes, once hailed incoming merchants from distant locales (fig. 1). The cosmopolitan character of the harbor was echoed in the architecture of the cathedral, which is interpreted to have incorporated a variety of models.2 The three axially aligned domes have been related to

1 S. Corrado, also known as the "Duomo vecchio" (old Cathedral), is not to be confused with the current cathedral of Molfetta. The former held episcopal status, with a dedication to S. Maria Assunta, until 1785, when it surrendered this rank to the present cathedral. I. Pansini, "Il Duomo di Molfetta: alla ricerca di un palinsesto," Luce & Vita: Documentazione (2005/1): 223-67. See 223. 2 Key contributions to the study of this monument are D. Ferdinando Ughelli, Italia Sacra sive de Episcopis Italiae, et Insularum adjacentium, rebusque ab iis praeclare gestis, deducta ferie ad nostram usque aetatem. Opus Singulare. Provinciis XX. Distinctum, In quo Ecclesiarum origines, Urbium conditiones, Principum donationes, recondita monumenta in lucem proferuntur, ed. Nicola Coleti, 9 vols (, 1717; originally written 1643-62, reprinted in Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1970), I, 916-20; H. W. Schulz, Denkmaeler der Kunst des Mittelalters in Unteritalien, ed. F. von Quast, 5 vols (Dresden, 1860), I, 64-71; D. Salazaro, Mezziogiorno medievale (Monumenti, artisti, personaggi), ed. A. Ventura (, 2003; originally published 1871-75 as Studi sui Monumenti dell’Italia meridionale dal IV al XIII secolo), 191; É. Bertaux, L'Art dans l'Italie Méridionale, 3 vols (Paris, 1968; originally published 1903), I, 382-84; F. Carabellese, "Le cattedrali di Molfetta e di Troia," L'Arte 8 (1905): I, 43-46; G. Valente, La chiesa vecchia, antico duomo di Molfetta: quel che fu, quel che è, quel che dovrebb'essere (Bari, 1909; originally published 1909 as a series of articles in Rassegna tecnica pugliese 8); G. Ionescu, Le

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Apulia's early links with Byzantium, the stately facade towers to the impulse of Norman lords, and the interlaced arches to Islamic influence. The overall impression is that of a site loosening its ties to terra firma and engaging with diverse idioms throughout the sea.

This evocative picture has proved difficult to ground in conditions of production: specific economic, legal, and logistical mechanisms that encouraged eclecticism and fragmentation in sites such as S. Corrado. The formal diversity of this church is a consistent trait in the architecture of the port cities that boomed in the Mediterranean of the central Middle Ages, and many authors have linked patterns of artistic influence to the growth of long-distance trade during this time.3 Apulia's historical position as a crossroads of political conquest (by Byzantine Emperors, Lombard gastalds, Aghlabid emirs, and the Norman, Swabian, and Angevin kings of Sicily) is also held to have

chiese pugliesi a tre cupole, in Ephemeris dacoromana, VI (Rome, 1935); A. Fontana, La chiesa vecchia di Molfetta e la sua cripta (Molfetta, 1936); F. Samarelli, Il vecchio duomo di Molfetta (Molfetta, 1962); R. Pane, “Melphicta parva sed elegans: I-II” Napoli nobilissima 6 (1967): 81-88, 153-169; V. M. Valente, Il duomo di Molfetta. Esame storico-stilistico (Molfetta, 1978); A. Venditti, “Architettura a cupola in Puglia: I-IV,” Napoli Nobilissima 6 (1967): 108-22, 191-203, Napoli Nobilissima 7 (1968): 94-115, and Napoli Nobilissima 8 (1969) 51-65, especially III; M. Ludes, Die romanischen Kuppelkirchen Apuliens (Ph.D. Dissertation, Munich, 1985); P. Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica (Milan, 2003), 199-211; K. Kappel, S. Nicola in Bari und seine architektonische Nachfolge: Ein Bautypus des 11.-17. Jahrhunderts in Unteritalien und Dalmatien (Worms am Rhein, 1996), 266-75; E. Leonardis, Architettura romanica pugliese: Il progetto e la costruzione in pietra portante dell'edificio per il culto (Rome, 2013), especially 22-23; G. A. G. Panunzio, Il Duomo di Molfetta: una chiesa fra Oriente e Occidente (Bari, 2012); and Pansini, "Duomo di Molfetta." 3 See R. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (Cambridge, 1976; originally published 1971), especially 70-79 for specific innovations that supported the commercial revolution.

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exposed the local culture to an array of artistic forms and tastes.4 Even as these regimes successively relinquished control in the region, the emergence of long-distance maritime trade stood to maintain or re-establish ties with them.

These kinds of interpretations, however, have posed a rather nonspecific connection between economic and artistic exchange: trade stimulated a base level of contact between regions and political territories, and thus predisposed separate cultures to adopt one another's artistic traditions. The social mechanisms undergirding such exchanges remain unclear. Did commerce support the travel of professional artists and builders over long distances, and if so, how? What economic and institutional developments nourished a demand for buildings featuring eclectic visual repertoires?

Architectural historians of the past two decades, opposing the field's old preoccupations with the national origins of artistic ideas, have engaged the

Mediterranean context more methodically than before.5 The new scholarship has

4 See, for example, V. von Falkenhausen, La dominazione bizantina nell'Italia meridionale dal IX all'XI secolo (Bari, 1978) on the in South Italy; B. M. Kreutz, Before the Normans: in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1991) on the ; G. Musca, L'emirato di Bari, 847 - 871 (Bari, 1967) on the Aghlabid emirate; F. Chalandon, Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile (New York, 1960; originally published 1907) on the Normans; N. Kamp, Kirche und Monarchie im staufischen Königreich Sizilien, 4 vols. (Munich, 1973- 82) on the Swabian period; and F. Sabatini, Napoli angioina: cultura e società (Naples, 1975) for the Angevin Kings of Naples. 5 See M. Rosser-Owen, "Mediterraneanism: How to incorporate Islamic art into an emerging field," Journal of Art Historiography no. 6 (2012): 1-33. See 3: "there was a tendency for scholars to study in depth isolated pockets around the Mediterranean coastlands, rather than the interaction

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revealed the role of the sea in staging international transmissions of formal and iconographic concepts, especially in the circles of royal courts, merchants and nobles, and religious elites. Tronzo's study on the Norman palace chapel in Palermo, famous for its Islamic muqarnas (honeycomb) ceiling, has proposed that a royal iconography of multicultural syncretism drove the adoption of this form in a Western court context.6

Caskey's discussions of the architecture patronized by merchants in and Ravello have revealed the emergence of new social values stemming from the interests of traders in foreign styles and cultural pursuits.7 Grossman has argued that monastic communities relocating from France to the Morea during the used sophisticated memorization tools to carry architectural forms over long distances while retaining their symbolic associations.8 The recent Companion to Islamic Architecture, edited by Flood and Necipoğlu, has emphasized the fragmentation and

between them [...] In the past, Spanish scholars have exclusively studied Iberia, Italian scholars Italy [...]". 6 W. Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton, 1997). 7 J. Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (Cambridge, 2011). 8 H. Grossman, Architecture and Interaction in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean: Building Identity in the Medieval Morea (Burlington, 2015); and "On Memory, Transmission and the Practice of Building in the Crusader Mediterranean," in Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean, ca. 1000-1500, ed. H. E. Grossman and A. Walker (Leiden, 2013), 183-219.

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interconnectivity of architectural practice in the Mediterranean, eroding the concept of styles defined by regions, nations, or geo-cultural monoliths (such as the 'Muslim world').9

These authors have collectively demonstrated the advantages of a Mediterranean framework for the study of historic architecture: not to shift our classification schema from smaller geographical categories to a larger one, but to embrace a new interpretive position that accounts for the role of communications, travel, and exchange in the development of architectural ideas. Formal innovations, along with their meanings, were produced through networks of human movement and interaction, and did not simply emerge from territorial roots.10 Braudel and contemporary Annalistes outlined a similar approach in Mediterranean social history, arguing that the sea "has no unity but that created by the movements of men, the relationships they imply, and the routes they follow."11 For today's architectural historians, this shift in stance is manifest in the preference for comparative approaches over hyper-specialization on a particular region.

9 F. Barry Flood and G. Necipoğlu, eds., A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture (Hoboken, 2017). 10 See discussion by F. Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu- Muslim" Encounter, (Princeton, 2009), 8, discussing art objects through the frameworks of "routes" and "networks" instead of "roots" and "territories." 11 F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. S. Reynolds (New York, 1972; originally published 1949 as La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéan à l'Epoque de Philippe II), 276.

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To date, Mediterranean-oriented architectural historians, have, with some notable exceptions, focused primarily on patronage, leaving aside issues of the economy and architectural production.12 The elite frames of reference commanded by kings, nobles, and prelates are understood to have determined architectural choices. The emphasis on patrons, and on the meanings and tastes they introduced to art and architecture, has favored a methodological lean toward iconography and style. As a result, much has been learned about the intellectual milieu of Mediterranean patrons, and why they tended to value a diversity of forms, ornament, and messages. On the other hand, themes such as the structures of architectural finance, the logistics of execution, and the specialization of the workforce remain underdeveloped in this discursive turn.

The church of S. Corrado in Molfetta was a complex building endeavor, and raises challenging questions about the productive systems underlying its creation. These systems were not stable and constant. The intricate funding structure, which represented a matrix of institutional relationships and prerogatives, causes us to ask whether the building followed one syncretic vision or expressed many aggregated functions. The chronology of construction--characterized by revisions, about-faces, and cosmetic

12 See Grossman, "Memory, Transmission," 483, discussing the importance of "re-inscribing the masons" into the discussion of architectural transmission.

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corrections--warrants consideration of how the supervisors of the work strategically adapted the sequence of building phases to an evolving charge. The diversity of the architectural repertoire, finding far-flung comparisons for its structural and technical solutions, and not only for its formal choices, prompts investigation into the division of labor and sharing of specialized knowledge across geographic space.

A three-part inquiry into the production of S. Corrado, focusing on its finances, the process of its design, and its repertoire of technical expertise can deepen our understanding of the appearance and meaning of the church. It is not necessarily intuitive that problems of production should have had a significant role in form and iconography. These themes are segregated from those of production by a set of epistemological dichotomies: iconography/industry; idea/execution; form/technique.

The financial structures of church building are often believed to have affected architecture only in terms of scale and decorative richness, and are thus discussed separate from the intellectual and iconographic contributions of the patron. When authors have acknowledged the episodic chronologies of many medieval sites, they have done so parenthetically, tending to interpret each building as a cohesive whole in which an original vision guided the succession of phases. Studies of construction technique have mainly associated this kind of expertise with regional schools and the affordances of local materials. Meanwhile form, in contrast to technique, is held to relate more

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closely to the creative milieu of patrons and high clergy, whose visual and spatial vocabulary is understood to have transcended local technical variations.13

Conditions of production have thus been compartmentalized as a relatively fixed and reliable base of architectural practice: an economic and industrial foundation upon which lay a more dynamic superstructure of intellectual activity. The two parts of the structure are imagined to have related differently to geography. Production, rooted in the geology of building materials as well as the demographic context of local populations, is discussed in terms of homogeneous and unchanging zones and regions.

Formal and iconographic concepts, by contrast, are understood to have flowed between productive zones.

Medievalists specializing in architectural production have posed important challenges to these kinds of assumptions. Scholars such as Warnke, Kimpel, Bruzelius, and Olson have demonstrated that the sphere of creative possibilities in architecture did not exist independent of the matrix of financial conditions, approaches to construction process and design, and the techniques of the lodge.14 Studies by these authors have

13 For an influential formulation of the distinction between the creative agency of the patron and that of the builder, see G. Bandmann, Early Medieval Architecture as a Bearer of Meaning, trans. K. Wallis (New York, 2005; originally published 1951 as Mittelalterliche Architektur als Bedeutungsträger), especially 48. 14 M. Warnke, Bau und Überbau (Frankfurt am Main, 1979); D. Kimpel, "La développement de la taille en série dans l'architecture médiévale et son rôle dans l'histoire économique," Bulletin monumentale 135/3 (1977): 195-222; Kimpel, "Ökonomie, Technik und Form in der hochgotischen

8

revealed that form, iconography, finances, process, and technique were deeply interdependent in medieval modes of construction. Warnke showed that the design of medieval French cathedrals was connected to a democratization of the patronage structure, in which the concerns of various institutions came to be represented. Bruzelius has discovered that mendicant churches were constructed in temporal sequences fitted to the financial strategies of the friars. Kimpel has argued that the allocation of tasks between quarry and site enabled innovative approaches in the process of wall construction.

These types of analyses have tended to focus on individual buildings, regional clusters, or, increasingly, interregional comparisons.15 By zeroing in on case examples, studies of architectural production have expanded our understanding of the larger

Architekture," in Bauwerk und Bildwerk in Hochmittelalter: Anschauliche Beiträge zur Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte, ed. K. Clausberg et al. (Geißen, 1981), 103-25; C. Bruzelius, "The Construction of Notre-Dame in Paris," The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 540-69; Bruzelius, "Project and Process in Medieval Construction," in Ex Quadris Lapidibus: La pierre et sa mise en oeuvre dans l'art médiéval. Mélanges d'Histoire de l'art offerts à Éliane Vergnolle, ed. Y. Gallet (Turnhout, 2011), 113-23; Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, and Burying: Friars in the Medieval City (New Haven, 2014); V. Olson, "The Whole is the Sum of its Parts: Standardizing Medieval Stone Production," in Working with Limestone: The Science, Technology and Art of Medieval Limestone Monuments, ed. V. Olson (Farnham, 2011), 189-207. 15 See, for example, the proceedings of two symposia at the University of Pennsylvania: R. Ousterhout, R. Holod, and L. Haselberger, eds., Masons at Work (Philadephia, 2012); and Ousterhout, D. Borbonus, and Elisha Dumser, eds., Against Gravity: Building Practices in the Pre- Industrial World (Philadelphia, 2016).

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context, relating the medieval building boom to a set of systemic changes in European society: especially the growth of cities, the establishment of bureaucratic networks by the reformed Latin Church, and the commercializing economy, which filled episcopal coffers with ample, fungible revenue streams.

If the deep currents of the European longue durée have provided a central context for earlier scholarship on architectural production, the social patterns of the larger

Mediterranean system supply this kind of context for the present study. In recent decades, historians have offered groundbreaking insights about all forms of

Mediterranean production. In particular, Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell have challenged the impression of large, homogeneous zones, supplying a new model which considers the ancient and medieval Mediterranean as a remarkably heterogeneous productive environment.16 Production, consumption, and innovation depended on a large and dense network of movement and exchange among microecologies (highly localized sites of economic activity). Can a similar phenomenon be observed in the productive patterns of medieval architecture?

This question is brought to the fore by Molfetta Cathedral, a building supported by new types of revenue sources, property interests, monetary instruments, and legal

16 P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Malden, MA, 2000).

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relationships. These transformations were closely related to the engagement of Molfetta in long-distance commerce between the 12th and 13th centuries. During this time, the promise of the town's burgeoning olive oil industry attracted the interest of medium- and long-distance institutional networks, including an interurban web of noble families, the archdiocesan network of Bari, the extensive monastic chains of Cava and Monte

Sacro, and various military and mendicant orders. The competition over property and status between these groups extended to the arena of church building, leading to a pluralized and episodic funding structure for the church of S. Corrado. Meanwhile,

Molfetta and contemporary towns in the Adriatic, eager to form trade partnerships with major republics such as Ragusa (), relaxed restrictions that had previously barred citizens of a given town from relocating to others. These intercity legal agreements, along with the new bureaucratic networks of the Church, forged fresh pathways of professional travel for the technical specialists and clergy closest to the execution of buildings.

This project combines two separate lenses--the interpretation of buildings in a

Mediterranean framework and the study of the conditions of architectural production-- in the examination of one church. The finances, construction process, and technical repertoire of Molfetta Cathedral are compared to those of contemporary sites and interpreted in relation to specific economic and institutional transformations that

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Molfetta experienced through its engagement with Mediterranean trade. A case-study approach offers the granular detail necessary to probe the themes of funding, process, and specialization, as well as the holistic coverage of the object required to expound the interrelationships of these themes. There are obvious limitations to the monographic approach. It would be wrong to use the particular case to generalize about larger categories, such as the unwieldy notion of 'Mediterranean architecture,' nor is this the present purpose. My goals are twofold: to discover affirmations and surprises about what was possible in the production of buildings closely linked to medieval maritime commerce, and to hone the methods of studying such sites accordingly.

The Building and the Questions It Poses

The finances, construction process, and technical expertise of S. Corrado were governed by multiplicity, fragmentation, and uncertainty. A brief overview of the building and its history shows that traditional axioms maintaining the unity and linearity of the medieval construction effort can be replaced by new questions, to be considered in turn in the chapters of the present work:

1. What were the financial structures of S. Corrado, and how were they navigated by different supporting institutions to steer construction and appearance?

The documents for the finances of S. Corrado present a complicated situation.

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Begun no later than 1184 and completed no earlier than 1285, the building effort was long and sporadic, cobbling together funds from sporadic property rights, tithes, and private bequests.17 A tangle of interpersonal entitlements and evolving institutional relationships took the place of a guiding vision from any one bishop or donor. The resulting edifice expressed a patchwork of diverse spatial functions, accrued and combined through a series of episodic expansions. These spaces are found to have represented the public-facing role of the cathedral as an institution of pastoral care. The shifting relationship of the clergy to different ecclesiastical institutions and lay patrons led to a continuous expansion and reformulation of this role.

The functional multiplicity of S. Corrado can be appreciated through an initial overview of the building, which betrays a series of attempts to impose a surface aesthetic unity on an episodic construction history. The church, not especially large among the medieval cathedrals of the Terra di Bari,18 is nonetheless one of the most ostentatious, featuring a high density of distinctive volumes (such as domes), structural detailing, and sculptural ornament on both the interior and exterior. The interior layout-

-three longitudinal bays divided into three aisles, the middle aisle wider than the side aisles, and terminating in an apse flanked by apsidioles--awkwardly inhabits the

17 See discussion in Chapter 1. 18 For example, the transept ridge of S. Nicola in Bari reaches a height of about 32 m., in contrast to S. Corrado in Molfetta, whose middle dome only is only about 23 m. tall. Kappel, S. Nicola, 122, 269.

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footprint of a T-shaped transept basilica (Chart 1). Although the lateral bays of the transept extend beyond the limits of the side aisles to the west, the two spaces are linked visually by symmetrical quadrant vaults over the north and south aisles, contradicting the perpendicular relationship of the transept and the nave (fig. 2).

Drawing attention upward and away from the incongruities of the floor plan are the three domes covering the bays of the center aisle (figs. 3-5). The lofty middle dome, rising to twice the elevation of the main arcade, focalizes the viewer's experience. The surfaces of the domes and their corner supports--which are alternately pendentives (in the east dome) and semicircular squinches (in the two west domes)--are all curved, resonating with the quadrant vaults and high arches that frame the view of the ceiling.

Supporting the arches are four piers, six responds, and two corbels. The semi-circular half-shafts belonging to the responds and piers compliment the rounded aesthetic of the roofing system. The rich capital sculpture is curvilinear as well, teeming with vines and vegetation flowing coextensively with the faces of grotesques (fig. 6). Containing a bare minimum of flat surfaces, the interior masks the geometry of its foundations and axes, whose gross misalignments go undetected.

Whereas the disjointed quality of the building is skillfully concealed on the interior, it is strikingly noticeable on the exterior. A rectangular wall encapsulates the east bay, terminating in a rectilinear facade connecting the twin towers (fig. 7).

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Interlaced blind arch recesses enwrap the perimeter of the rectangle and are elegantly broken by a high window at the center of the east facade. The harmony of this program is interrupted, however, by the three-dome roofing system, the insertion of which

(occurring partway through construction, I will argue) forced the facade to be truncated so as not to obscure the windows of the east dome (fig. 8). As a result, the towers are disproportionately tall. The connection between the external walls of the transept and those of the nave is similarly problematic (fig. 1). The interlaced arcade of the east end is jarringly terminated by the corner pilaster at the northwest corner of the transept, which doubles the rhythm established by the pilasters to the west as if the arcade was originally intended to extend farther. The arches do not resume on the exterior walls of the nave aisles, emphasizing a sharp break between the nave and the transept. Equally striking is the fact that the two domes over the nave bays rise above the height of the east dome as a result of their different support system (using squinches instead of pendentives). The fact that the middle dome exceeds both of its neighbors only mildly mitigates this asymmetry, which is exacerbated by a discrepancy in the roofline and the different shapes of the dome roofs: a square pyramid over the east dome and octagons to the west. The aggregated quality of the church is further seen in the accumulation of ancillary chapels around the perimeter, which obscure entrances and invade spaces that may have originally served as key liturgical foci.

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Such incongruities also characterize the decorative details of the church. The interlaced arches on the east, north, and south exterior walls appear to have been added as an afterthought, inserted by way of corbels and ad hoc fragmentary engaged shafts into a scheme that may have originally called for simple blind arches (fig. 9). On the interior, the ornament of the two westerly domes was enhanced by the insertion of cuffie

(semi-circular niches), as is apparent from anomalies in the fabric (fig. 4).19

These idiosyncrasies reveal a building effort of episodic revisions. New additions were not selflessly subordinated to an original plan. Rather, each intervention updated pre-existing fabric to the most recent configuration of goals, whether this entailed retaining or expanding upon the functions and features of earlier spaces or introducing new schemes. As a result, no one message shines through on behalf of a leading cleric or client. The church was an arena in which various statements accrued over time and sparred for attention, embellishing, superceding, and one-upping one another.

This situation causes reflection, in the first place, on the long-term structures of funding, including interpersonal legal obligations, canonical subdivisions of donations, and rhythms of disbursement. Chapter 1 analyzes the financial structures of S. Corrado in order to understand how they were navigated by various individuals and institutions seeking influence over the functions and appearance of the church.

19 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2.

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2. How did the design and execution of S. Corrado unfold over time?

The work force of S. Corrado, faced with the diverse and shifting needs of the donor base and administration, appears to have applied a particular approach to the sequence of design and construction. While scholars have long understood that the church was executed in a series of phases, they have remained faithful to the notion of an original, unchanging design concept. Certain indications in the built fabric, however, warrant reconsideration of the planning process and its operative realities.20 It appears that each phase of construction, far from following a single pre-determined goal, was conceived in accordance with its own incremental milestone. These episodes dramatically revised the character of the inherited structure and often left future construction open-ended.

Traces of arches in the lower walls of the east end define a lost crypt, which appears to have been modified and ultimately destroyed over a series of phases in order to accommodate successive building phases (fig. 10).21 Had the planners of the crypt intended to continue the building as a typical transept basilica-cum-crypt, similar to other cathedrals in the region, the projected edifice would not have been able to fit inside the sea-bound urban perimeter. The building phase associated with the crypt

20 See especially M. Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time: from Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (New Haven, 2010), on the temporality of architecture: how builders responded strategically to the unfolding of time and the complications it introduced to a long-term construction effort. 21 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2.

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might thus be reassessed not as an intermediate stage of a whole design, but as a flexible strategy, intended to prompt future, unspecified construction.

A similar development appears to have characterized later building phases. A pair of vertical masonry breaks on the aisle walls and vaults of the middle bay neatly divide the eastern from the western parts of the church, symmetrically curtailing the rhythm of interior blind arches on the north and south walls (figs. 11, 12). The break seems to show a sharply interrupted construction effort, followed by a hiatus and the eventual completion of the western parts. This impression of a synchronized break, however, is misleading, for the construction leading up to the breaks on the north and south walls appears to have unfolded according to different layouts and elevations.22

This raises the possibility that the north and south walls each reached a similar stage of incompletion in two respective phases, one concerned with the partial completion of the north aisle and the other with the commencement of the south aisle. The impression of a harmonious program that had progressed evenly to the beginnings of the nave may be a sleight of hand accomplished by the later of the two phases. In other words, the design and execution of this phase followed a rhetorical strategy, motivated equally by past circumstances, present opportunities, and future prospects.

22 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2.

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The ad hoc fixes and smoothing efforts that characterized the design of S. Corrado can be understood more completely by looking beyond the final product and studying its formation over time. The second chapter of this study combines the tools of construction archaeology and comparative analysis to examine the episodic and flexible design process of this church in more detail than before. It is thereby possible to consider the advantages of an adaptable design mode and better understand the response of S.

Corrado's administration to an unpredictable funding structure.

3. How was specialized architectural knowledge transmitted to S. Corrado through geographic space?

As has long been understood, the great variety of architectural forms observed in

S. Corrado betrays a taste for formal ideas from distant locales. Less studied is the strong likelihood that specialized techniques, in addition to formal concepts, were conveyed to

Molfetta Cathedral over long distances. While some technical practices, such as the designs of pier blocks, compare best with local examples, other constructive choices find a mix of local, mid-range, and long-distance comparisons. These include stonecutting and assembly concepts, such as the support systems of vaults, as well as inventions in the geometry of plans and elevations.

The unusual middle and westerly domes at S. Corrado combine a variety of geometric, stone-assembly, and structural practices that are traditionally associated with

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separate geographical 'zones' of dome construction (figs. 4, 5). The spatial layout, consisting of a longitudinal series of square nave bays half the width of the overall span of the aisles, follows a particular planimetric technique intended to accommodate domes and quadrant vaults.23 This solution was used contemporaneously in clusters of examples between Apulia and Provence. At the same time, the two westerly domes, conceived to exceed the height of the east dome, employ squinches constructed with non-stereotomic (not custom-fitted) stones in horizontal courses.24 This particular technique obeyed its own geographic range, sporadically occurring in churches between the Terra di Bari, inland northern Apulia, and Abruzzo, and was applicable to majority- limestone construction as well as to mixed construction of limestone and brick. In addition, the volumetric structure of the domes, taking the form of cuffia squinches

(semicircular niches), finds numerous comparisons in Aghlabid and Zirid Tunisia,

Fatimid Egypt, and Norman Sicily.25 Although these examples are structurally similar to

23 See discussion in Chapter 3. 24 See further discussion of the practice of stereotomy in Chapter 3. 25 See, for example, the mihrab domes at the Great Mosque of Kairouan and the al-Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis, as well as the crossing dome of S. Maria Maddalena in Palermo. F. Mahfoudh, "La Grande Mosquée de Kairouan: textes et contexte archéologique," in The Aghlabids and their Neighbours, ed. G. D. Anderson, C. Fenwick, and M. Rosser-Owen (Leiden, forthcoming); A. Daoulatli, "La Grande Mosquée Zitouna: un authentique monument aghlabide (milieu du IXe siècle)," in The Aghlabids and their Neighbours; S. Lamine, "The Zaytuna: The Mosque of a Rebellious City," in The Aghlabids and their Neighbours; L. A. Kapitaikin, "Sicily and the Staging of Multiculturalism," in A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, ed. F. Barry Flood and G.

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the domes of S. Corrado, they are produced using more sophisicated coursing patterns, and some, such as S. Maria Maddalena in Palermo, even employ custom-fashioned stereotomic voussoirs, though this may be the result of modern restorations. The domes of Molfetta Cathedral thus lay at the intersection of typically French, Adriatic, and

Islamic technical practice, suggesting that these zones, far from constituting closed systems, interpenetrated each other through networks of knowledge exchange.

The unexpected distribution patterns of comparanda for the constructive solutions at S. Corrado imply a more sophisticated relationship between techniques and geography than hitherto supposed. The third chapter of this study considers how the bearers of this specialized knowledge communicated it across variable distances; what social opportunities encouraged the circulation of these techniques (such as new opportunities for professional relocation); and which environmental factors limited their use at different locations (such as geological zones of extraction).

The diverse technical repertoire of S. Corrado would have been vital to the revisionary character of its architecture. The regular flow of technical innovations can be understood to have enabled the creation of new formal typologies--in opposition to the

Necipoğlu (Hoboken, 2017), 378-404, especially 391-92; and G. Bellafiore, Architettura in Sicilia nelle età islamica e normanna (827-1194) (Palermo, 1990), especially 132-33.

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notion that patrons designed buildings and imposed formal models on technicians, who then executed these models imperfectly according to their own skill sets.26 Indeed, a new appreciation of the range of technical practices at S. Corrado can help to call into question a strict dichotomy between concept and execution. By expanding the array of formal choices possible, technical experts could have shaped the options of symbolic expression available to clergy and patrons.

Engaging each of the three questions outlined above--concerning the structures of finance, the temporal strategies of design, and the transmission of expertise--requires specific methods and frameworks. The previous literature on S. Corrado has engaged these themes to varying degrees, and thus constitutes a valuable source of approaches.

Although each discourse will be engaged in later chapters, it is important at the outset to contextualize the historical foundation of the study of Molfetta Cathedral. This foundation consists not only of art historical works, but also of structural restorations, which substantially transformed the character of the building in step with emerging scholarly arguments.

26 On the ability of technical knowledge to enable formal innovation, see D. Summers, "Intentions in the History of Art," New Literary History 17, no. 2 (1986): 305-21, especially 314: "[...] the fact that you paint on canvas enables you to paint a painting at all. Such conditions [...] are restricting rather than enabling only if we imagine that we are somehow always inventing paintings or achieving some absolute painting when we paint, or that we ought to be doing that."

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The Post-Medieval Restorations of S. Corrado and the Writing of its History

A comprehensive discussion of the history of restorations at S. Corrado is outside the scope of the current study. The present attempt nonetheless depends upon an awareness of the modern and early modern transformations, and they are noted throughout the dissertation, especially insofar as they inform the theme of construction chronology (see Chapter 2). The historiography of S. Corrado is also relevant throughout this work, and is also engaged in more detail in later chapters. The goal at present is to explore the foundations of current assumptions and frameworks in the study of S.

Corrado by zeroing in on the space of overlap between restorations and modern historiography. After the end of our period of interest (the completion of the main volumes of the edifice around 1300), the church was reshaped multiple times, sometimes conspicuously and sometimes subtly. More recently, historians of the building have worked--often alongside architects and restorers--to present the edifice in close approximation to an 'original state.' The reciprocal interaction and collaboration between these two professions gave rise to a particular concept of S. Corrado emphasizing three traits: a unified vision, an instantaneous conception, and an artistic character rooted in the local.

S. Corrado was subject to significant transformations between the end of the 13th century and 1785, when the cathedral relinquished its episcopal status to the former

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Jesuit church.27 The changes during these five centuries met the needs of a living institution, including maintenance, repairs, and the updating of functions for a growing community. Significant additions occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries with the construction of the sacristy, the addition of ancillary private chapels around the perimeter of the church, and the refurnishing of the choir.28 In 1488, the south portal was embellished with a classicizing facade, which came to bear inscriptions honoring major bishops of Molfetta between the 15th and 17th centuries.29

27 The transfer of status was carried out in stages between 1776 and 1785. See documents from Archivio di Stato di Bari, Sezione di Trani, Notaio Sergio ; transcribed in M. G. Di Capua, La nuova Cattedrale di Molfetta. Fonti e documenti (Molfetta, 1988), 289-343. 28 For discussion of the sacristy, see Venditti, “Architettura a cupola," III, 100. On the chapels, which include S. Mara "ad Nives" (1401); Santa Caterina (1405); S. Giuliano (1418); S. Antonio (before 1505); S. Corrado (before 1608; originally located in the area of the central portal of the west facade, but now destroyed), see Kappel, S. Nicola, 266; citing Samarelli, Vecchio duomo, 25-41. See Kappel, S. Nicola, 266; and Valente, Antico duomo, 50, on a set of choir stalls (now housed in the diocesan museum), dated prior to 1473 on stylistic grounds and on the basis of the Bishop Andrea de Rocca's tenure. For discussion of the ciborium, which bears an inscription dating the work to 1429, see Kappel, S. Nicola, 266; citing F. Carabellese, "Opere d'arte a Molfetta" L'Arte 6 (1903), 218ff; and Carabellese, "Molfetta e ... Troia," 45. The original location of the ciborium is not secure: it existed in the south aisle of the cathedral until 1544 and was found in a courtyard outside S. Maria dei Martiri in 1900. 29 Named in the inscription are Pope Innocent VIII (Bishop G. B. Cibo of Molfetta from 1471- 1484), A. de Lacertis (along with the year 1488), Cardinal F. Ponzetti (1517), and Bishop G. Petronius (1636). Kappel, S. Nicola, 266; citing Schulz, Denkmaeler, I, 66; A. Salvemini, Saggio storico della città di Molfetta, 2 parts (Bologna, 1991; originally published 1872): I, 114; G. De Luca, Seguito alla storia di Molfetta, 2 parts (Giovinazzo, 1884-85), I, 13; and Cronotassi, iconografia ed araldica dell'episcopato pugliese (Bari, 1986), 229.

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In 1529 French troops set fire to much of the old city.30 An inscription, dated

January 7, 1616 and found in the upper stories of the east towers, credits Bishop Bovio

(served 1607-1622) with a major restoration of the towers, which had reportedly suffered damage from the fire as well as earthquakes and lightning strikes.31 Subsequent repairs carried out by Bishop Pinelli between 1648 and 1650 are memorialized by a plaque in the north aisle of the nave.32 In 1699, a wall was built outside the north flank to protect this entrance from the incursions of water and driftwood, forming part of a larger project to selectively beautify and restore the entire episcopal complex (carried out between the

17th and 18th centuries).33

30 Pansini, "Duomo di Molfetta," 233; citing Salvemini, Saggio storico, II, 119. Pansini notes that according to a plaque, a restoration of the chapel of S. Maria della Carità was permitted at this time, suggesting that it had been damaged during the combat. 31 D. O. M. VIRG(INI) M(ARIAE) ET CON(RADO) PAT(RONO) / FR(ATRI) ANT(ONIO) BOVIO EPISC(OPO) AUTORI / TURRES SACRAS ANTE ANNOS CENTUM / CAELI BELLIQ(UE) FULMINE QUASSATAS; A. D. M D C X V I / MELPHITEN(SIS) RESP(UBLICA) RESTITUIT JO(HANNE) LEONARDO PASSARO U(TRIUSQUE) I(URIS) D(OCTORE). / ET VIRG(ILIO) RUSSO OPERI PRAEFE(CTIS). Transcribed by Kappel, S. Nicola, 266-67; citing E. Bernich, "La vecchia Cattedrale di Molfetta," Apulia I (1898): 28-30, 29. See also original transcription by Schulz, Denkmaeler, I, 69, advancing "P[RESB]YTER" instead of "[RESP]UBLICA." 32 ECCLESIA(M) HANC MAIOREM / VETUSTATE COLLAPSAM / REPARANDUM CURAVIT ET CONSECRAVIT IOANNES / THOMAS PINELLUS CLE / RIC(US) REGUL(ARIS) EP(ISCOP)US MELPHI / TEN(SIS) A. D. M. D. C. L. DIE XXIII / OCTOB(RIS) PRAESUL(ATUS) EI(US) / A(N)NO III. Transcribed by Kappel, S. Nicola, 267; correcting original transcription by Schulz, Denkmaeler, I, 69. Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 203, suggests that these repairs were necessary because of a series of earthquakes. 33 Pansini, "Duomo di Molfetta," 241; referring to Archivio diocesano di Molfetta, Curia Vescovile, Visite Pastorali e Sinodi Diocesani, cart. 1, Visita pastorale di Mons. De Bellis-Sarnelli 1699, f. 78-115.

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The early modern transformations of S. Corrado, in sum, intended to restore or improve upon the building by adding individual features or repairing damaged structures. Symbols and liturgical spaces, often honoring well-to-do donors and prelates, accrued gradually. The steady reinvestment in works meant that major sections of the medieval fabric were continually replaced (especially the east-end towers, main entrances, and liturgical features of the presbytery). Like the medieval period of construction, these changes were incremental and additive in character. In this regard, the demotion of the church from cathedral status in 1785 constituted a major rupture.

After this date, S. Corrado, no longer supporting a wide array of religious functions, fell into disrepair, decaying from leaking roofs, mold, and vegetation.34 Serious restoration efforts would not resume until a century later, and would follow a very different mode.

It was during the hiatus between S. Corrado's institutional demotion and its earliest modern restorations (at the end of the 19th century) that the pioneering historians of South Italian art first analyzed this site in detail. Between the 1830s and

1840s, Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz, a German art historian who had traveled and taught in various parts of Europe (including Copenhagen and Rome), journeyed to the South in

On the revisions to the episcopal palace complex, see E. G. Finocchiaro, "La fabbrica di Palazzo Dogana, sede dell'antico seminario di Molfetta," Archivio Storico Pugliese 42 (1989): 135-52. 34 Schulz reports that S. Corrado had been abandoned by its clergy because of water leaks. Kappel, S. Nicola, 267; Schulz, Denkmaeler, I, 65.

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order to document its medieval monuments through written records, inscriptions, and illustrations (including general views as well as details).35 For scholars such as Schulz,

South Italy was a laboratory in which the methods of the emerging discipline of art history could be created and tested. His synthetic mode of art historical research, using empirical evidence from a range of historic materials, has been attributed in part to an influential correspondence with Karl Von Rumohr.36 Furthermore Schulz, in seeing the monuments of Southern Italy as a link to the medieval past, might have been inspired by the conditions of the buildings he encountered. Derelict and institutionally divested, sites such as Molfetta Cathedral appeared to be suffering a decline from an older, nobler stature. As a result, Schulz's drawings modified what was visible in each building to reflect an idealized, original state. This is exemplified by his illustrations of S. Corrado, which include capitals and an interior wall elevation among other details (figs. 13, 14).

Despite the fact that Molfetta Cathedral is known to have been plastered and whitewashed prior to Schulz's volume, his interior elevation articulates the masonry joints supposedly existing beneath the plaster, especially on the longitudinal arches.37

35 See Schulz, Denkmaeler. The scholar's observations and images remain useful, as many of them recorded the appearances of sites that were subsequently changed or destroyed. 36 See L. Zingarelli, “La biblioteca del viaggiatore: materiali per una biografia intellettuale di Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz (1808 - 1855),” in Tempi e forme dell'arte, ed. L. Derosa and C. Gelao (Foggia, 2011), 403-9. 37 The plastering and whitewashing had occurred in 1805. Kappel, S. Nicola, 267; citing V. M. Valente, La scultura romanico-pugliese nel duomo vecchio di Molfetta (Bari, 1954), 7.

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Conceptualizing the monuments of South Italy as essentially medieval, with their later transformations amounting to a decline, served the goal of rediscovering a lost artistic patrimony. Schulz was determined to identify in historic architecture the intersections of various peoples and "nations" in the art of the South, and thereby elevate the status of these monuments.38 This approach depended on the author's ability to approximate, as closely as possible, the appearance of each building in its original configuration. These hypothetical reconstructions facilitated typological analysis (the study of formal variations of particular details) as well as comparisons between buildings. Ferdinand Von Quast, the scholar who ultimately completed and published

Schulz's work in 1860 after the latter's death, expanded on the comparisons of Schulz.

For example, Von Quast argued that the typological traits of the domes in S. Corrado were related to the workmanship of Crusaders traveling to Apulia from Aquitaine.39

The Italian art historian Demetrio Salazaro built on the contributions of Schulz and Von Quast but oriented their observations, along with his own, towards a new narrative. His Studi sui monumenti dell’Italia meridionale dal IV al XIII secolo, released as a

38 Schulz, Denkmaeler, I, especially 2: "[...] zuerst die Deutschen zu einer Anschauung der inneren Gesetzmässigkeit derselben und einer ruhigeren Erwägung des Einflusses der verschiedenen Nationalitäten fort" and 3: [...] scheinte es erforderlich, überall die Bedingungen der einzelnen Erscheinungen durch Natur- und Völkerverhältnisse genauer zu begründen und kleinere Gruppen zusammenzustellen." 39 Schulz, Denkmaeler, 70-71. See further discussion of this theory in Chapter 3 of the present volume.

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serial publication between 1871 and 1875, can be understood in the light of the events of

Italian Unification that had dominated the interval after Schulz's volume. Salazaro was intensely involved in this cause and was diverted from his study of architecture by an influential correspondence with Daniele Manin, leader of the Società Nazionale Italiana.

In 1871, Salazaro served for a brief time in national offices, including as consigliere comunale in Naples and as director of the Museo Nazionale napoletano.40

Salazaro's Studi presented a deeply politicized narrative. Salazaro attempted to recognize in the art of medieval South Italy the existence of an Italian protonation. He proposed that the Italians, after the fall of the Roman Empire, maintained solidarity throughout waves of foreign conquests (by the Goths, for example), developing an internal predisposition for creative pursuits.41 In opposition to Schulz, Salazaro downplayed the international qualities of Italian art brought by various political regimes, and emphasized the stylistic continuity of each region in the face of historic vicissitudes.42 The author rejected the notion that foreign impulses drove the creation of

Italian art. For example, he did not engage Von Quast's argument that northern masons

40 See Antonio Ventura's introduction to Salazaro, Mezzogiorno medievale. 41 Salazaro, Mezzogiorno medievale, 16: "[Gli italiani] trovando nella religione cristiana e nel suo capo i soli vincoli di unione sociale e il mezzo per poter costituire una nuova nazione, posero ogni loro sforzo per dar vita ad una famiglia ideale, alla cui formazione servirono mirabilmente le lettere e le arti, che conservaronsi sotto l’influenza immediata del cristianesimo." 42 Salazaro, Mezzogiorno medievale, 16.

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were responsible for the domes of Molfetta Cathedral.43 While often recognizing foreign influences in South Italian art--such as Byzantine style in the domes of Molfetta--

Salazaro applied a new framework to this problem. The author argued that Italian craftsmanship was syncretic, excelling at the selection of various visual choices, including styles borrowed from other cultures. Italians creatively adapted foreign forms in new arrangements, elevating these "industrial" arts to the level of fine art (exemplified by the use of Islamic intarsia decoration in the cathedrals of medieval Sicily).44 In other words, Salazaro ordered the artistic culture of South Italy according to a hierarchy of creative value, affording a minor status to the art forms of foreigners.

The important surveys by Schulz and Salazaro marked a new interest in the rediscovery of a patrimony of medieval buildings, which, by the time of Salazaro's effort, had become a national patrimony. In the case of S. Corrado in Molfetta, a building in an evocative state of physical decline after its loss of institutional status, there was a particular urge to reclaim the medieval edifice hidden beneath its modern state. The

19th-century emergence of a historicist interest in reviving the medieval state of this building profoundly affected the restoration efforts at the end of this century.

43 Salazaro, Mezzogiorno medievale, 191. 44 See, for example, Salazaro, Mezzogiorno medievale, 265, applying this framework to the use of Islamic elements in Sicilian buildings.

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Following Unification, national restoration efforts commenced in earnest.

Collaborative efforts between government officials and provincial experts led to the selection of sites of historic importance. S. Corrado was deemed to be of interest in the category of smaller-town (cittadina) monuments.45 Meetings of the Genio Civile in 1876 in

1888 decided upon restoring a number of buildings, mentioning S. Corrado and the church of S. Francesco in Trani together.46 The pairing of these two typologically similar monuments (both featuring three domes on axis and a middle dome higher than the adjacent domes) implies an interest in the early comparisons advanced by scholars such as Schulz.

Guiding the Genio Civile was the famous restorer Giuseppe Fiorelli.47 Fiorelli's

1882 ministerial decree entitled Sui restauri degli edifici monumentali had instructed restorers on the importance of preparatory research, of distinguishing the historic qualities of the edifice from altered parts, of approximating original building materials, and of learning and applying original construction techniques.48 The approach of

Fiorelli's team to S. Corrado showcased many of these methods. Fiorelli, perhaps

45 A. Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia: il restauro del patrimonio architettonico in terra di Bari tra Ottocento e Novecento (Rome, 2007), 22. 46 Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia, 30, 39n, 51. 47 Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia, 53. 48 See G. Fiorelli, Decreto Ministeriale 21 Luglio 1882. Sui Restauri degli Edifici Monumentali. The process decreed by Fiorelli echoes contemporary restoration philosophies, such as those of Viollet-le-Duc.

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inspired by Schulz's drawings (as Guarnieri suggests), hypothesized that the plaster and lime coating the interior was masking neat courses of Romanesque ashlar. In 1884, the restorer ordered a preparatory trial calling for the removal of a few sections of plaster in such a way that would not harm the surface of the stone.49 A correspondence from

Raffaele Cintio, the chief engineer, disclosed the results of the test. Unfortunately, the stones underneath the plaster were far from uniform, but often incorporated rubble and other local stones; meanwhile, moldings and capital sculpture contained significant portions of stucco and cement. On the basis of this information, Fiorelli directed the removal of lime from the capitals in a good state of preservation, and this characterized the early 20th-century state of the cathedral (fig. 15).50 The lime was to be carefully removed with oxalic acid and the surfaces to be painted in a way that ensured consistency with the earlier building. Unfortunately, Francesco Sarlo, entrusted with the restoration, encountered an unforeseen fluke.51 His color samples, transformed by the saline maritime air, caused him to choose the wrong paints, leading to a striking bleaching of the capitals. The calamity gave Fiorelli an opportunity to impress upon contemporary restorers the importance of rigor in one's preparatory studies.

49 Archivio di Stato di Bari, Sezione Monumenti e Scavi di Antichità, b. 7. Molfetta 19.03.1884, f. 168; transcribed in Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia, 185. 50 Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia, 55. 51 See Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia, 41 for Sarlo's professional background.

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This early period of restoration overlapped in its goals with the empiricism of the preceding art historical forays. Restorers worked from the conviction that a cohesive original building was disguised beneath a surface layer of modern transformations. The original edifice was strictly identified as a physical entity of medieval material and workmanship. Only when the original carved stones could not be uncovered beneath the modern additions, as occurred at S. Corrado, was it deemed preferable to leave the later surfaces in place. The strategy of empirical discovery through the revelation of original fabric was thus mitigated by an underlying impulse for coherence and uniformity. In this way, the late 19th-century restoration efforts were no longer incremental and additive like the early modern efforts, but totalizing and subtractive, working towards the construction of an integral medieval building through the removal or concealment of superfluity and complexity.

The progress made by early restorers in uncovering lost fabric and studying building techniques had a clear impact on subsequent histories of South Italian art. The expanded field of data supplied by the restorations--and by an accompanying surge in local archival research--allowed art historians to develop new narratives.52 Émile

Bertaux, in his magisterial L'Art dans L'Italie Méridionale (1903), refined the typological

52 The archival publications most relevant to the medieval history of Molfetta were those of Francesco Carabellese, including Le Carte di Molfetta (1912), a compilation of various sources across South Italy in lieu of a surviving episcopal archive. Codice diplomatico Barese VII: Le Carte di Molfetta (1076-1309), ed. F. Carabellese (Bari, 1912).

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and comparative schemes of Schulz, treating them over a series of thematic chapters instead of the purely geographic ones used before. Bertaux's investigations into monastic networks, pilgrimage, and the municipal wealth of coastal Apulia connected

Molfetta Cathedral to historical phenomena specific to the region at particular moments in time. Benefitting greatly from the revelations of recent restorers, the author introduced an interest in the analysis of construction technique, drawn from the French intellectual traditions of medieval archaeology. By leveraging a closer attention to variations in workmanship, Bertaux advanced radical new arguments, proposing, for example, the autochthonous (purely local) development of Apulia's medieval domed churches from ancient traditions such as trulli.53 Though many of Bertaux's conclusions have later been found to rest on faulty evidence, his narratives, situated in historical geography, established the enduring discursive threads in the study of art from this region and period. This is attested by the re-edition of L'Art dans L'Italie Méridionale in

1968 and the influential Aggiornamento dell'opera di Émile Bertaux (1978), which corrected and expanded upon Bertaux's references and updated his key arguments.54

The new narratives introduced by Bertaux challenged subsequent scholarship in the early 20th century to develop and test new kinds of hypotheses, as well as to clarify

53 Bertaux, L'Art, 398-99. 54 A. Prandi, ed., L'Art dans l'Italie Méridionale: Aggiornamento dell'opera di Émile Bertaux sotto la direzione di Adriano Prandi (Rome, 1978).

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the particular historic importance of each site. This period saw an intensification of local research efforts. In Molfetta, scholars worked towards a more informed understanding of the history of S. Corrado in order to justify a major restoration. In the face of complicated findings, however, these authors struggled to reach consensus about the original design, the chronology of construction, and the origins of the technical repertoire. Their discoveries, much like the miscellaneous wall construction found beneath the plaster in 1884, tended to raise more questions than they answered.

Bertaux first proposed the possibility of a disjointed chronology of construction, and findings by archivists such as Carabellese likewise indicated that the building was financed in a series of widely separated installments rather than all at once.55 Gaetano

Valente attempted to incorporate these findings into his monograph La Chiesa Vecchia, antico duomo di Molfetta: quel che fu, quel che è, quel che dovrebb'essere (1909). Valente's goal was explicit: to mobilize historical and visual evidence in order to secure funding for a total restoration of the medieval building.56 The book contained visual reconstructions of a cohesive edifice believed to have existed at a particular moment in time. Aware of

Carabellese's conclusions that the edifice was built in phases rather than continuously,

Valente was nevertheless unable to identify the volumes of the building with a set of

55 See Carabellese, "Molfetta e ... Troia." 56 Valente, Antico duomo, 6.

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episodes. Instead he focused his efforts on discovering the configuration of the church at the completion of all medieval interventions. Thus a conceptual box was drawn demarcating a medieval period of construction, within which the final product was understood to mirror the original program.

In opposition to the unified medieval design proposed by Valente, evidence for discontinuity continued to emerge in studies of the cathedral. Fontana conducted soundings in the east end and discovered a problem concerning the crypt (now lost), which was, until then, theorized to have been completed as part of the medieval church.57 Fontana found that the floor level of the east end shifted at various stages of construction, suggesting that the crypt may have been partially completed during the medieval period and then interrupted. Such problems were dismissed, however, in a monograph by Francesco Samarelli, a cleric and historian of Molfetta. Samarelli reverted to the untenable conclusion that the crypt was built and retained throughout the entire medieval building campaign and was only destroyed in the late 14th century. This author also supported a 12th-century date for the entire cathedral, reinterpreting the

13th-century construction donations discovered by Carabellese as references to maintenance.58

57 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2. 58 Samarelli, Vecchio duomo, 16-17.

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This uneasy and contradictory set of scholarly hypotheses framed the definitive restoration campaign, which was carried out between 1941 and 1945 (prolonged by the outbreak of the Second World War) and followed smaller restorations in 1925-26 and

1932-33.59 By this time, restorers faced a predicament. The lack of definitive scholarly conclusions rendered the planning of restorations problematic; however, scholars could not progress in their research without the investigations and excavations occasioned by further restoration. This may explain the character of the restorations, which followed ever more scrupulously Fiorelli's preparatory method of selective and meticulous archaeological analysis of wall surfaces.

In 1939 a research team helmed by Bishop Achille Salvucci (also including

Samarelli and Fontana) consulted with famous restorer Alfredo Barbacci for an inspection and restoration plan.60 Barbacci's observations justified a series of restorations between 1941 and 1945. The interior walls, vaults, and supports were subjected to stonacamento (the removal of plaster and the replacement of damaged stone blocks); stairs were excavated in the apse to serve scholars in studying the crypt; and, following

59 Between 1925 and 1926 major repairs were carried out on the apse and towers of the church. Between 1932 and 1933 an ancillary building were demolished and plaster was removed from the interior surfaces of the church. Pansini, Duomo di Molfetta, 265. A voissoir in the interlaced arches of the north exterior wall of the east end and the keystone of the apse arch are marked with the restoration date 1926. 60 See Samarelli, Vecchio duomo, 9. Barbacci had previously directed restorations in Modena, Pienza and Trani. Guarnieri, Pietre di Puglia, 173n.

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the discovery of previously unknown portal thresholds and fragmentary jambs at the entrances of the three chapels appended to the west end, the entrances were reconstructed and the massing of the high middle chapel of San Corrado destroyed (figs.

16, 17).61 According to the restoration report, the removal of this chapel was necessary for the reconstitution of an earlier scheme, in which the middle and side portals were not chapel entrances but facade portals, in keeping with a "Southern Italian portal arrangement type".62 Though the thresholds and jambs were an enlightening discovery, the interpretation of a three-portal facade was somewhat arbitrary (for example, it appears highly plausible that the west front originally featured a monumental porch).63

The restorations of the 1940s presented the cathedral as a unified creative vision pertaining to a single period. Motivated by an attempt to consolidate the historical identity of the building and to relate it more easily to expected models and classification schemes, restorers conflated a complex chronology into one conceptual layer and trimmed others away. This move supported the notion, held by scholars and builders alike, of the integrity of the medieval edifice, existing in its purest form only at the

61 Archivio parrocchia S. Corrado Molfetta, cart. 3, fasc. 2, Notiziario circa i lavori di restauro alla Chiesa Vecchia, f. 7-8; transcribed by Pansini, Duomo di Molfetta, 256-57. 62 "[...] Le tre porte furono aperte sul motivo architettonico del portale di mezzogiorno, e il bastione di terra e pietra che circuiva la facciata di ponente è oggidì raso al suolo." 63 See Pansini, "Duomo di Molfetta," 256, noting that the excavated thresholds and jambs could have originally formed part of the chapels. See Chapter 2 of the present volume for discussion of the possibility of a monumental porch.

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conclusion of its initial period of construction. This moment marked the culmination of a harmonious original plan, and after this unity was achieved, it became gradually dismantled. To modern scholars and restorers, the church also represented, in addition to a unified and instantaneous conception, a territorial monument. Writers and builders repeatedly assessed the importance of S. Corrado in relation to the city of Molfetta, regional typologies, and the Italian patrimony.

Many important works have been written on S. Corrado since the middle of the

20th century, and several of them constitute vital forays into the themes at the center of the present study. These authors' conclusions about the finance, design, and technical expertise of Molfetta Cathedral will be addressed separately in later chapters. It is nonetheless worth considering how the early historiography and modern restorations have framed each of these discursive threads.

Scholars have become increasingly aware of the connections of S. Corrado to a multi-institutional structure of finance: different groups contributed to the symbolic and visual program in a piecemeal manner over time. The idea that the medieval cathedral was an integral whole reflecting a single vision has, nevertheless, proved resilient, militating against a more subtle interpretation of its multiple functions and meanings.

While scholars have continued to elucidate the complex building chronology of S.

Corrado, many have accepted the notion of its instantaneous design, arguing that the

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succession of building phases unfolded more or less in accordance with an original plan.

Consequently these phases have not been considered as time-specific responses to changing agendas and conditions. Finally, the predominantly regional context for the study of Apulian building techniques, inaugurated by scholars such as Bertaux, has continued to inform current scholarship. These regional classification systems discourage comparisons from a broader geography.

These discursive positions result from centuries of observation and insight, and thus remain fundamental to the study of a large number of buildings. The particular example of S. Corrado, however, demands a versatile framework capable of capturing institutional multiplicity, tracking change over time, and incorporating a larger geographical context. The remarkable efforts of early art historians and restorers to promote the study and preservation of the building have had the unintended side effect of narrowing approaches. In the attempt to discover a unified medieval monument, scholars and architects have subjected the building to idealizing formulae, in particular, the powerful enabling assumption of formalism that in a work of art the part should always relate to the whole. At S. Corrado in Molfetta, this whole was a mirage.

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Organization of the Present Work

The thematic questions of finance, process, and expertise occupy the three chapters of this study respectively. Each chapter critically engages the previous literature on its question, including studies on Molfetta Cathedral as well as related discourse on other contexts. My critical response to the literature produces a set of sub- questions to guide the analysis of each chapter. Following the list of questions is a brief summary of the empirical evidence that the chapter will engage (including documentary sources as well as monuments) and a description of the method employed in that chapter. These methods include the analysis of variations in architectural technique and building sequence (using the approaches of construction archaeology--the observation, measurement, and graphic representation of the built fabric) and comparison on the basis of technical variations. Digital technologies were used for both research and representation of data. I have employed the tool of digital photogrammetry (the modeling of three-dimensional objects using multiple photographs and the inferred relational geometry of their color data), which has assisted in the analysis of construction process and of building techniques. This study also utilizes a Geographic

Information System (GIS) (a database of geo-coordinated information capable of producing map-based graphs), which contextualizes my data in historical geography.

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The final sections of each chapter are dedicated to the analysis of the material, which is subdivided in different ways depending on the theme of the chapter. Chapter 1 divides the theme of finances into episcopal and lay funding strategies; Chapter 2 divides the chronology of construction into discreet phases; and Chapter 3 divides building techniques into distinct areas of expertise. The Conclusion recapitulates the findings of all three chapters, relating these results to historical processes and considering their implications for the future study of medieval architecture in a

Mediterranean framework.

The purpose of this project is to present a new set of questions and approaches that scholars of Mediterranean architecture can apply to problems of production, including the economics of building, the temporality of construction, and the geography of knowledge transmission. These questions have not preceded observation, but are the product of a sustained practical dialogue with the architecture of a complex church.

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1. Finances: Institutional Competition and Multifunctioning Architecture

Although S. Corrado in Molfetta was not the largest cathedral erected in Apulia during the 12th and 13th centuries, its construction represented an unprecedented investment by the city, depending on support from a network of laymen and ecclesiastics. The funding structures of Molfetta Cathedral encouraged, and sometimes obligated, support from a variety of prelates and donors, offering an opportunity for each benefactor to contribute his or her own tastes and messages. The goals of these individuals, however, were not simply personal, but extended from the long-term interests of various large organizations, such as the secular and monastic branches of the

Latin Church and networks of lay families seeking positions of urban governance. These institutions, many of which were wealthier and better connected than the bishopric itself, expected the cathedral to serve an array of spiritual and symbolic functions on their behalf. The long-term accumulation of numerous institutional agendas, some pursued by the episcopacy and some imposed from outside, became expressed in the diverse and labile forms and spaces of the church.

Primary documents for the establishment of the diocese and the funding of construction reveal a striking level of complexity. Funding flowed from jurisdictional rights established by the archbishop of Bari, from fractions of profitable monastic tithes,

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from the takeover of other churches' pastoral activities, and from private donations by various lay families. As a result, diocesan assets were diverse and multilayered.

Resources for the construction fund came in different forms, and were of varying liquidity (gold, tithes, agricultural properties or their usufruct). They were furthermore subject to contingent uses, stemming both from legal strictures around tributes and tithes as well as from advantages that different administrators and donors hoped to realize on behalf of their ecclesiastical or family networks. Some contingencies favored the construction of particular architectural features, while others constrained the timeline of disbursement. These complexities, coupled with the unexpected expansions and contractions of the overall income stream, led to consistent uncertainty about how the works should progress.

The intricate subdivision of S. Corrado's finances can be related to specific social and economic trends in the society of 12th-century Molfetta and the Terra di Bari, especially the maturation of the olive industry in response to the region's increased engagement in Mediterranean trade during the 12th and 13th centuries.1 Rapid change

1 On the commercialization and monetization of the economy of South Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries, see especially P. Toubert, "Paysages ruraux et techniques de production," in Potere, società e popolo nell'età dei due Guglielmi: atti delle quarte giornate normanno-sveve (Bari - , 8-10 ottobre 1979) (Bari, 1981), 201-30; A. Guillou, "Production and Profits in the Byzantine Province of Italy (Tenth to Eleventh Centuries): An Expanding Society," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 (1974): 89-109; and G. Loud, "Coinage, Wealth and Plunder in the Age of Robert Guiscard," The English Historical Review 114, no. 458 (Sep., 1999): 815-43.

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in local agriculture and commerce gave rise to an environment of competition among various ecclesiastical and lay institutions with long-distance economic and political interests. These included noble families, who spread themselves out among multiple cities in the Terra di Bari to become civic officials and judges (iudices); the archbishop of

Bari, who commanded a chain of suffragans ranging from upper Basilicata to modern- day Montenegro; and monastic houses from such as Monte Sacro (the Gargano peninsula) and Cava (), whose estates extended throughout South Italy. Thus while S. Corrado's resources may have come from within the diocese, the players engaged in its economic structure moved on a larger stage. Even though the official purpose of this funding was to contribute to pastoral care for the local community, the definition of this function was distended by farflung relationships.

How did the visual language of architecture meet the challenge of expressing multiple and changing functions? The varied finances of S. Corrado had a particular effect on the rhythm of construction and on the organization of space. The flow of the building fund was characterized by continuity and rupture at the same time. Although the clergy pooled the endowed funds and spent them in strategic ways, periodic lay donations and ecclesiastical court settlements often caused the construction effort to speed up, to become redirected toward upgrading the ornament of a particular area, or to prioritize the creation of new liturgical spaces. Various symbolic and ritual functions

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coopted, overlapped, replaced, and upstaged one another, causing friction in the overall design. Embodying the thinking of modern architect Robert Venturi, functional multiplicity was manifest in form.2

If the clergy and donors who provided for S. Corrado made choices that shaped its appearance, their creative role should not be overestimated. As subsequent chapters show, construction administrators and ateliers, equipped with a certain technical arsenal, developed design ideas adapted to the financial constraints and symbolic requirements imposed by the patrons and high clergy. Bishops, archdeacons, and donors may have selected formal and spatial variations from a set of options, but they did not create these options. Their patterns of choice stood to encourage certain design trends over others, or to gradually imprint the inventions of the workshops with new signifieds. In this way, a multiplicity of institutional agendas found representation in a diversity of architectural signs.

State of the Question: Institutional Explanations of Church Finances

From the early 20th century to the present, a number of scholars of S. Corrado, as well as historians of Apulian architecture more generally, have associated patterns in

2 R. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York, 1977; original edition 1966), 23-33. See especially 26, discussing early modern opera houses.

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architectural appearance with the motivations of particular institutions, especially the episcopal and monastic networks of the Latin Church. Many of these authors have followed a biographical approach, focusing on specific bishops or abbots. In this framework, a prelate's associations with a particular branch of the Church can be invoked to explain the choice of one formal typology over another. Authors adopting this approach have mainly used primary documents to fix or estimate dates of construction, helping them draw connections to the tenures of known protagonists.

Some scholars, however, have furnished a larger interpretive repertoire.

Specialists of Southern Italian architecture and history have combed financial records not only for their (often spurious) chronological implications, but also for what they divulge about the legal framework governing donations, the multiple beneficiaries and audiences of each intervention, and the way finances affected liturgical imperatives.

Ignoring any of these aspects would flatten the complexity of Molfetta Cathedral's finances. To identify the influence of specific funding initiatives on the form of the building requires unraveling a complex web of conditions and obligations. Different ecclesiastical and lay institutions navigated this matrix according to their own changing positions within it. It is thus critical for the purposes of this chapter to build a mixed approach that combines the merits of different frameworks, including the legal, liturgical, audience-oriented, and (when possible) biographical considerations of earlier

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authors, as well as other dimensions of church finances that have been overlooked, especially the temporal rhythm and responsive function of funding.

Although the modern study of major South Italian buildings like S. Corrado began in the 19th century,3 Bertaux, whose groundbreaking tome was published in 1903, was the first scholar to recognize the larger institutional trends that drove patterns of artistic form and iconography. As underlined by chapter headings such as "L'Art

Monastique: Basiliens et Bénédictins," the author's key contribution was to reorient the field away from purely political categories--Byzantine, Lombard, or Norman--and toward a new focus on religious communities, the institutions most directly involved with shaping the functions and meanings of art and architecture. Bertaux suggested that the Byzantine re-conquest of much of South Italy in the 9th century, which brought an influx of new Basilian monasteries as well as new metropolitan bishoprics allied with

Constantinople, left an artistic legacy devoted to the liturgical needs of these religious institutions.4 The author argued that this art did not simply import its formal and iconographic vocabulary from the East, but mobilized a rich base of pre-existing Early

Christian imagery already present in South Italy toward a new, Byzantine sign system.5

3 See especially Schulz, Denkmaeler. 4 Bertaux, L'Art, 117-18. 5 Bertaux, L'Art, 118: "C'est pendant les deux siècles où la moitié de l'Italie méridionale fut réunie de fait à l'Empire d'Orient que l'art byzantin sut monnayer le trésor des traditions artistiques

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Overlapping with this development was the growth of numerous Latin monastic houses, whose spread was bolstered by two important late 11th-century developments: the growing preeminence of the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino and its dependencies as well as the migration of French monastic communities to the South with the Norman conquest.6

Bertaux incorporated a degree of interpretive flexibility into his method.7 Visual models developed for one kind of community could be adopted by another, as seen in

Bertaux's comparison of the Basilian monastery of S. Maria della Roccella in Squillace

(Calabria) to major Latin abbeys and cathedrals in Sicily, such as Monreale Cathedral.8

For the art historian, these kinds of borrowings affirmed that different, competing institutions occupied a single stage, and often used art and architecture to serve symbolic functions that were shared across institutional boundaries. This principle

accumulées depuis les origines du christianisme, et constitua les types qui devaient avoir cours pendant une longue suite de générations." 6 Bertaux, L'Art, 154-308 and 318-39. See especially 334, relating a set of ambulatory basilicas churches traditionally known as "Norman" (SS. Trinità in Venosa and the cathedrals of Aversa and Acerenza) to Benedictine monasteries in Burgundy such as Cluny and Citeaux; and 338, suggesting that pilgrimage routes allowed the builders of S. Nicola in Bari to indirectly borrow a form of gallery opening from Norman Benedictine abbeys such as Jumièges. 7 See Bertaux, L'Art, xi. 8 Bertaux, L'Art, 126-28. For debates over the chronology of S. Maria della Roccella, see G. Lavermicocca, "Aggiornamenti," in L'Art dans l'Italie Méridionale: Aggiornamento dell'opera di Émile Bertaux sotto la direzione di Adriano Prandi, ed. A. Prandi (Rome, 1978), IV, 321-22.

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seems to have informed a key observation about S. Corrado in Molfetta. Bertaux described the building as a fusion of two discreet types borrowed from earlier buildings in separate institutional contexts: the chevet of the cathedral of Bari and the nave of S.

Francesco of Trani (originally the Benedictine church of SS. Trinità, a dependency of the major abbey of SS. Trinità in Cava).9 Bertaux was the first author to find this combination of forms from episcopal and monastic backgrounds worthy of comment, though he did not offer a specific explanation.

In relating artistic patterns to the larger networks of the institutional Church,

Bertaux provided a foundation for much subsequent scholarship in the 20th century.

Kingsley Porter, for example, argued that the great pilgrimage routes connecting

Campostela to Jerusalem channeled artistic influences from northern European churches to Bari and vice versa.10 Jamison posited that a series of papal councils in Troia helped disseminate a Pisan style to Troia Cathedral and to several other buildings located along the ancient Via Traiana between Benevento and Siponto.11 Other scholars related the ecclesiastical structures of southern Italy to secular politics. Krönig argued that the

Norman counts and kings of Sicily and South Italy masterminded the importation of a

9 Bertaux, L'Art, 382-83. 10 A. Kingsley Porter, “Compostela, Bari and Romanesque Architecture,” Art Studies, I (Princeton, 1923): 7-21. 11 E. M. Jamison, "'Pisan churches' on the Via Traiana," Journal of the British Archaeological Association 35 (1930): 163-88.

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transalpine architecture in service of a new model of authority.12 Venditti, taking a more moderate position, argued that in Apulia, traditionally Byzantine ideas became

"Latinized" to suit the northern tastes of Crusaders traveling to the Holy Land, as these groups depended on churches and hospices in this region for pastoral care.13 This argument drew upon a previous suggestion by Von Quast, but modified it to credit the northerners only with establishing a new set of visual tastes rather than a vocabulary of building techniques.14 While the narratives of Krönig and Venditti adopted Bertaux's interest in institutional networks, they abandoned the flexible interpretations that had enabled the earlier scholar to move beyond the notion of monolithic styles corresponding to political units. An emphasis on stylistic categories had further distanced scholars from interpreting architectural iconography.

Guillou, in a 1978 essay, revived and expanded upon Bertaux's impulse to relate artistic trends to the religious functions of different ecclesiastical communities, introducing a new methodology based on outlining the structures of funding.15

Considering small churches in zones of Basilian monasticism, the author analyzed

12 W. Krönig, "La Francia e l'architettura romanica nell'Italia meridionale," Napoli Nobilissima 2 (1962): 202-15. 13 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," III, 105-7. 14 See discussion of Von Quast's theory in Chapter 3. 15 A. Guillou, "L'Art des 'Moines Basiliens' dans les Pays Grecs et Latins de l'Italie Méridionale," in L'Art dans l'Italie Méridionale: Aggiornamento dell'opera di Émile Bertaux sotto la direzione di Adriano Prandi, ed. A. Prandi (Rome, 1978), IV, 293-301.

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inscriptions in order to identify patterns in the structure of finances. He observed a three-pronged division common to many donations, consisting of the donor, the ecclesiastic lord (such as a Latin bishop), and the magister (the artist or chief cleric in charge of construction and decoration). According to Guillou, this system allowed local

Greek populations to preserve an artistic culture expressing Orthodox social ideals even when their churches were absorbed by new Latin dioceses and monastic lordships.16

Additional examples expounded by Safran in her study of medieval art in the Salento showed the preservation of a Byzantine style in spaces that introduced new Latin texts and iconography.17 Despite the fact that Molfetta Cathedral was positioned in an area outside the influence of Basilian monasticism, the approaches of Guillou and Safran provide a useful model for analyzing S. Corrado. The hierarchical relations between various institutions and individuals in the composition of finances were central to the meaning of a given church.

Several architectural historians studying Apulia have productively interpreted built spaces in relation to liturgy. In a 2008 article, Belli D'Elia addressed the effects of ecclesiastical politics on liturgical space, discussing transformations carried out by

Abbot Eustasius--a proponent of papal reforms--on the interior structures and

16 Guillou, "L'Art des 'Moines Basiliens,'" 295. 17 L. Safran, The Medieval Salento: Art and Identity in Southern Italy (Philadelphia, 2014), 115.

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furnishings of S. Nicola in Bari during the first half of the 12th century.18 Other scholars have reflected on the institutional meanings communicated by the overall appearance of monuments, as well as the legibility of such meanings to particular viewers at particular times. As Wharton emphasized in her work on Apulian architecture in the Byzantine period, the meanings of architectural forms were always produced in relation to the knowledge and expectations of specific audience(s).19 In a later article, she discussed the example of multi-domed Apulian churches, including Molfetta Cathedral, proposing that these churches followed the model of Canosa Cathedral, a building type imbued with apostolic significance in the eyes of Apulian lay patrons and high ecclesiastics between the late 11th and late 12th centuries.20 Kappel, following a similar method, examined the choice, seen in multiple churches on the Apulian coastline, to employ conspicuous elements from the church of S. Nicola in Bari, such as the twin eastern towers connected by a facade with passageway. These borrowings, he suggested, echoed the image of the basilica of S. Nicola in order to articulate the pilgrimage routes leading

18 P. Belli D'Elia, "Liturgie del potere: i segni visivo-oggettuali," in Nascita di un regno. Poteri signorili, istituzioni feudali e strutture sociali nel Mezzogiorno normanno (1130-1194): atti delle diciasettesime giornate normanno-sveve (Bari, 10-13 ottobre 2006), ed. R. Licinio and F. Violante (Bari, 2008), 367-94. See 378-80. 19 A. J. Wharton, Art of Empire: painting and architecture of the Byzantine periphery; a comparative study of four provinces (London, 1988), 10-11. 20 A. Wharton Epstein, "The Date and Significance of the Cathedral of Canosa in Apulia, South Italy," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983): 79-90. See 88.

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to this famous shrine.21 The interpretations of Wharton and Kappel are grounded in a discourse of architectural iconography established by scholars such as Krautheimer,

Bandmann, and, most recently, Kunst.22 The latter proposes that in the Middle Ages, an architectural quotation--the formal referencing of one building by another--was addressed specifically to ecclesiastical elites, expressed the belonging of a church to certain institutional groups, and could remain a durable part of the building's visual charge throughout ruptures in the construction process or changes in personnel.23 For example, Reims Cathedral borrowed forms from the nearby abbey of S. Remi to highlight the longstanding participation of the monks of S. Remi in the royal coronation ceremony held in the cathedral.

These various approaches to the institutional meanings of architecture--to consider finances for construction in relation to institutional functions, to examine the hierarchical structures of funding, and to interpret form and liturgical space for their associative meanings--have developed separate from each other. Used in combination,

21 Kappel, S. Nicola, 94. 22 R. Krautheimer, "Introduction to an 'Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture,'" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1-33; and Krautheimer, "The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture," The Art Bulletin 24, no. 1 (1942): 1-38; Bandmann, Bearer of Meaning; and H.-J. Kunst, "Freiheit und Zitat in der Architektur des 13. Jh.: die Kathedrale von Reims," in Bauwerk und Bildwerk in Hochmittelalter: Anschauliche Beiträge zur Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte, ed. K. Clausberg, D. Kimpel, and H.-J. Kunst (Geißen, 1981), 87-102. 23 Kunst, "Freiheit und Zitat," 98.

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they stand to address the complex roles of various institutions in the finances of the construction of S. Corrado.

To fully comprehend the financial strategies of this church also requires attending, more carefully than before, to the element of time. Different kinds of funds-- endowed revenues, tributes, and private gifts--unfolded according to different tempos, such that each financial intervention derived its efficacy in large part from its timing and rhythm. "To abolish the interval is also to abolish strategy," wrote Pierre Bourdieu.24 The sociologist identified different ways of taking advantage of the temporal structures of social obligations:25

We know [...] how much advantage the holder of a transmissible power can derive from the art of delaying transmission and keeping others in the dark as to his ultimate intentions. Then there are all the strategies intended simply to neutralize the action of time and ensure the continuity of interpersonal relations, drawing the continuous out of the discontinuous [...] through infinite multiplication of the infinitely small, in the form, for example of the 'little presents' said to 'keep friendship going.'

Such strategies were easily adapted to S. Corrado's financial model, much of which depended upon gift giving. The fact that Molfetta Cathedral was supported not by an undifferentiated flow of income, but by different kinds of gifts--some large and immediate, others small and incremental--created intervals in which institutions could

24 P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977; originally published 1972 as Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d'ethnologie kabyle), 6. 25 Bourdieu, Outline, 7.

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maneuver for position and status. The motivations behind each intervention are to be found in diachronic mechanisms such as contingency, reciprocation, debt, obligation, and one-upmanship. Ignoring the temporal aspect is to risk overlooking this principal content.

In sum, a new set of questions can unravel the institutional goals embedded in the finances of Molfetta Cathedral:

1. What different kinds of financial resources contributed to the funding of S. Corrado?

2. What financial structures and agreements permitted or obliged various kinds of income to be directed toward construction?

3. How did various supporting institutions act upon the rhythm of disbursement, through the timing, tempo, and contingencies of various gifts?

4. What functions, liturgical or symbolic, did different supporting institutions expect the cathedral to serve, and how could they hope to find these functions expressed through discreet visual signs legible to the appropriate audience(s)?

Evidence and Method

The documents analyzed in this chapter mainly date between 1025 (the first mention of Molfetta's candidacy for episcopal status) and 1313 (the approximate date of the acquisition of the relics of San Corrado, an event that seems to have brought a close

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to the principal building activity at this church). After this point, there are no references to works on S. Corrado until a later period, when construction mainly involved ancillary additions and restorations. Of the surviving medieval records, I have considered relevant not only those that bear directly on construction, such as donations by the laity and dues collected from churches in Molfetta's patrimony, but also those related to institutional promotion, which increased potential sources of building funds.

The extant documentary record is fragmentary, and the survival of some relevant texts and disappearance of others result from uneven circumstances. The medieval episcopal archive of Molfetta does not survive. It was burned in a French invasion in

1529, and the parts of the archive that were saved (transcribed in the city's Libro Rosso, a book of the city's privileges kept by the Università) date only as far back as the late 14th century.26 Carabellese, compiling Le Carte di Molfetta (1912), drew from a variety of sources to collect material relevant to the early history of the city. The majority of records from Le Carte are from the rich archive of Cava de' Tirreni, a Benedictine monastery that controlled considerable financial interests in Molfetta through its dependency of S. Martino (and later through SS. Trinità in Trani). Most of the published documents are therefore transactions that concerned both Cava and the cathedral of

26 See Codice diplomatico Barese VII, iii. On the invasion of Molfetta in 1529, see Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," III, 97, citing L. A. Muratori, Annali d'Italia X (Milan, 1749), 227.

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Molfetta. Other relevant documents published in Le Carte were generated by smaller monasteries, including a number of now-defunct houses whose archives were consolidated in the Naples State Archives under the Pergamene de Monasteri soppressi. Le

Carte also includes relevant texts from the Angevin Registers, which are especially informative about the fundraising efforts of the bishops of Molfetta in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Finally, other volumes in the Codice Diplomatico Barese series contain diocesan archives from other Apulian cities, and are sometimes relevant to the finances of Molfetta Cathedral.27

Despite the thoroughness of the early work by archivists such as Carabellese, it is almost certain that key documents are missing beyond those lost with the destruction of the episcopal archive. Given that many of the donations to S. Corrado are published simply because they attended gifts to other well-known foundations, such as Cava, and were thus recorded in these famous archives, it is likely that other donations were produced by smaller institutions and are now lost or undiscovered.28

Given the inconsistency of the written record, it is important to be cautious about the conclusions we can draw. The fragmentary record of donations, for example, does

27 See, for example, Codice diplomatico Barese I: Le pergamene del Duomo di Bari (952-1264), eds. G. B. Nitto de Rossi and F. Nitti (Bari, 1897); and Codice diplomatico Barese III: Le pergamene della Cattedrale di (971-1300), ed. F. Carabellese (Bari, 1899). 28 For example, the abbey of SS. Trinità of Montesacro (in the Gargano) was almost as active as Cava in securing agricultural properties in Molfetta, and it is sometimes included, alongside Cava, as a beneficiary of the aforementioned wills to Molfetta Cathedral.

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not necessarily indicate construction activity. Although the documents occasionally offer a terminus post quem or ante quem around which to frame a chronological analysis, they usually concern only the gradual accumulation of revenues for a building process that followed its own calendar. We must wait to address the complex problem of chronology in full until the next chapter, which marshals the more useful evidence of stratigraphy

(sequential layers in the built fabric), which can then be considered in relation to the written sources. For present purposes, however, the records help to understand the variety and structure of finances, their availability for construction purposes, and the rhythms and fluctuations of their disbursement on behalf of different institutions.

The various documents disclose different kinds of information, such as:

• type of revenue source (eg. coinage, agricultural plot, usufruct, liturgical

offering, precious object).

• fungibility and liquidity (how funds could be converted to cash and tapped for

construction purposes).

• legal classification (eg. tithe, tribute, donation pro anima).

• institutional association (which lay or ecclesiastical networks had their interests

represented).

• contingencies (stipulated use of funds within a certain timeframe or for a

specific purpose).

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I consider the texts over two sections. The first is an overview of the financial opportunities and fundraising strategies of the clergy of Molfetta Cathedral and their broader ecclesiastical support network. This section considers a wide range of documents, of varying structure and content. I contextualize these records through reference to similar examples in the region and to councils and decrees that illustrate larger institutional transformations affecting Southern Italian cities. The second section, by contrast, deals with a particular type of document--lay testamentary donations. These records are similar enough in structure and content to permit meaningful comparisons among the four examples without substantial recourse to outside documents.

Each section begins with an overview of all of the relevant financial records, gleaning information about the type of revenue sources they describe, the structures of disbursement they underline, and the institutional commitments they reveal. This is followed by interpretations of the financial strategies of the church administration and patron base, as well as their possible impact on the appearance of the building.

Funding Strategies of the Episcopacy

The building of a large cathedral depended in the first place on the creation of a diocese. Written records from the 11th to the early 14th century concerning the establishment and upkeep of the see of Molfetta indicate some of the possessions to

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which the bishopric was entitled. They also reveal shifts in the institutional connections of the episcopacy, while also tracing adjustments to the fundraising strategies of the bishop and chapter as they attempted to complete their church.

The earliest document that refers to the city of Molfetta is dated 925 CE and simply described it as a civitas (city).29 It is around this time that Molfetta was probably first fortified, as there is no material or written evidence proving the presence of an ancient city on the site.30 As Martin and Noyé have argued, the late 9th and early 10th century saw a wave of Byzantine new towns in Apulia (possibly including ,

Polignano, Molfetta, and Giovinazzo) whose cumulative purpose was to establish a western limes to guard the Empire's Italian possessions from mainland foes such as the

Lombards.31 The establishment of Molfetta may have been attended by the founding of a parish church to provide pastoral care, and it is possible that the cathedral was later

29 Document is transcribed in Codex diplomaticus Cavensis I: Italia meridionale 792-960, ed. M. Schiani, M. Morcaldi, and S. De Stefano (Naples, 1873), Doc. 143, pp. 182-83. See F. Carabellese, La città di Molfetta, dai primi anni del secolo X ai primi del XIV (Trani, 1899), 5, for a description of the document. Carabellese argues that the usage "Melfi" refers to Molfetta, from the Terra di Bari, and not the city of Melfi in Basilicata, given that the reference is found alongside references to other properties in Bari and Giovinazzo, towns close to Molfetta. 30 See Carabellese, Città, 3, rejecting earlier hypoetheses identifying Molfetta with sites mentioned in ancient travel itineraries, such as "Respa." See, alternatively, Pane, "Melphicta," 82, suggesting that a small Roman settlement may have occupied the peninsula of the old town of Molfetta. 31 J-M. Martin and G. Noyé, “Les façades maritimes de l'Italie du Sud: défense et mise en valeur (IVe-XIII siècle),” in Zones côtières littorales dans le monde méditerranéen au Moyen Âge; mise en valeur: actes du colloque international organisé par l'École française de Rome [et al.], Rome, 23-26 octobre 1996 (Rome, 2001), 467-512. See 491-92, noting that these coastal cities tend to have more substantial ramparts on their inland sides, the direction from which the Byzantines were threatened.

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built on the site of such a church. Interestingly, the location of S. Corrado, next to the perimeter of the urbs, echoes that of the cathedrals of contemporary towns Monopoli and Giovinazzo.

The 10th century did not, however, see the construction of the main volumes of the present building, which feature the monumentality, fine ashlar, and decorative vocabulary of the Apulian building boom of the late 11th and 12th centuries. Indeed, the edifice appears to have been built only after the promotion of Molfetta to an episcopal see. The city was first mentioned as a candidate for episcopal rank in 1025. In this year

Pope John XIX issued the pallium to the archbishopric of Bari (originally the dual see of

Canosa-Bari), conferring investment powers on the archbishop and allowing him to promote twelve towns or settlements in Apulia and its surrounding regions as suffragan bishoprics (Chart 2).32 The bull listed a number of eligible sites, including a set of coastal cities in Apulia (Bari, Molfetta, Giovinazzo, Trani, Salpi, and Polignano), a chain of

32 [...] confirmaremus cunctis diebus vitae tuae praefatum archiepiscopatum cum omnibus sibi adjacentiis vel pertinentiis, videlicet duodecim episcopatus quemadmodum abolita tempora, scilicet nostris antecessoribus sanctae memoriae, decreverant ut archiepiscopus duodecim sub se ordinaret episcopos. Unde nunc juste precantium votis favemus ut et vobis praenominato Bisantio Angelico archiepiscopo consecrarem in praefatae ecclesiae Canusinae cum universis civitatibus, et castellis, hoc scilicet Canusinae, Bari, Meduneo, Juvenacio, Melficta, Rubo, Trane, Canni, Minerbino, Aquatecta, Monte Melioris, Labellotatum, Cisternae, Bitalbae, Salpi, Cupersano, Puliniano simul et Catera, et aliarum civitatum atque castrorum sibi adjacentium, vel longe lateque ibi positae, donec impleatur duodecimus episcopus. Document is transcribed in Codice diplomatico Barese I, Doc. 13, pp. 21-23. Subsequent confirmations of the same privileges, sometimes listing different suffragans, were made in 1063, 1089, 1151, 1172, and occasionally thereafter. See Codice diplomatico Barese I, Doc. 25, pp. 42-44; Doc. 33, pp. 61-63; Doc. 49, pp. 94-95; and Doc. 52, pp. 99-101.

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towns inland from and parallel to the coast (Canosa, Canne, Ruvo, Modugno,

Conversano, and Cisternino), several cities reaching westward toward Basilicata

(Minervino, Acquatetta, Lavello, Montemilone, and Vitalba), and one outpost on the

Dalmatian Coast (Kotor, in Montenegro). The widespread group, presumably a mix of bishoprics previously under the leadership of Canosa and new ones that stood to gain episcopal status for the first time, illustrates that the papacy was expanding its reach into areas traditionally tied to other patriarchs, such as that of Constantinople.

The selection of suffragans appears to have been geared toward economic profits in addition to political control. The 1025 bull, similar to successive ones issued to Bari in

1063, 1089, 1151, 1172, and thereafter, described the suffragans' jurisdictional privileges over revenue-producing lands and properties, hinting at some of the forms of wealth to which a bishopric like Molfetta was believed to be entitled if promoted.33 The suffragans were to hold, on behalf of the archbishop, legal jurisdiction over their territories' farms and houses, with all pertaining cottages, vineyards, and workers; villages along with their mills; shores with their ports; mountains, hills, and meadows with their

33 Itaque confirmamus vobis omnes fundos et casales una cum casis et vineis, servos et ancillas, una cum massis et massariciis atque molleundinis, littora cum portu, montibus et collibus, atque planitiis et pratis, simulque plebubus, sive ecclesiis cum omnibus titulis, sive capellis suis. Verum etiam monasteria vivorum seu puellarum, tam Graeca quam Latina, cum universis ordinibus ecclesiasticis, diaconis, subdiaconis, lectoribus, presbyteris, et omnia, et universa praedia, et possessiones, cultum, vel incultum, atque cum omnibus quae dici et nominari rura solent generaliter, et integro pertinentibus, constitutis a termino Apuliae.

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inhabitants; churches with all their entitlements and dependencies; and even monastic houses (male or female, Greek or Latin) with all of their clergy, estates, possessions, and land, both cultivated and uncultivated. The diocese of Molfetta would have encompassed a number of such features. Not only was the city located on an important road--the coastal corollary of the via Traiana--it was also distinguished by its popular port, and an 1148 political accord with Ragusa (Dubrovnik) reveals that docking and market dues (plazam and scalaticum) were among the fiscal revenues of Molfetta (though the agreement also illustrates that these taxes could be relaxed to encourage traders from specific 'partner cities').34 In addition, the hinterland of Molfetta may have included sporadic mills and houses, and several parish churches are known to have existed within and outside the urbs.

On the other hand, we should not assume that these income streams flowed to the cathedral of Molfetta. There is reason to doubt that the legal jurisdiction promised by the papal bull would have automatically led to the collection of a general tithe on the various commercial activities of the diocese. In theory, the bishop's control over tithes within his territory was absolute. Episcopal jurisdiction over tithes and first fruits was supported by canon law, and by the late 11th century, under the reforms of Pope

34 Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae II, ed. I. Kukuljević Sakcinski (Zagreb, 1874), Doc. 63, p. 62.

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Gregory VII and Urban II, tithes were officially not to be held by the laity, while monasteries could retain tithes only with episcopal consent.35 A bishop could theoretically levy tithes on almost any kind of agricultural or commercial activity, toll, or site of manufacture, such as mills and olive presses.36 In medieval Apulia, however, bishops rarely commanded general diocesan tithes in practice. As demonstrated by Jean-

Marie Martin, Apulia was not under a centralized feudal system (such as that ultimately created after 1130 in the royal domains of Sicily), but was instead populated by multiple seigneuries established by independent-minded counts.37 Lords such as the Norman

Counts of Conversano (of the house of Basunville), who controlled Molfetta during much of the 12th century, posed an obstacle to general tithes: instead they often opted to support churches and monasteries through private gifts and exemptions that sometimes included specific tithes. Thus the diocese of Molfetta, like many others in the South

Italian context (especially newer ones), probably possessed a small patrimony of scattered properties and income streams, and would have depended in large part on

35 G. Constable, Monastic Tithes From Their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1964), 89-91. 36 Constable, Monastic Tithes, 103. 37 J.-M. Martin, "Les seigneuries monastiques," in Nascita di un regno. Poteri signorili, istituzioni feudali e strutture sociali nel Mezzogiorno normanno (1130-1194): atti delle diciasettesime giornate normanno-sveve (Bari, 10-13 ottobre 2006), ed. R. Licinio and F. Violante (Bari, 2008), 188-91; and Martin, La Pouille du VIe au XIIe siècle (Rome, 1993), 280. The research of Ramseyer on religious houses in the Principality of Salerno is consistent with the findings of Martin. V. Ramseyer, The Transformation of a Religious Landscape: Medieval Southern Italy, 850-1150 (Ithaca, 2006), 143.

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outside beneficence throughout the medieval period.38

Molfetta nonetheless would have secured a larger range of rights and financial opportunities as a result of its promotion to a bishopric, which occurred by 1071 (in this year, Leo of Ostia listed an unnamed bishop Melfittensis among prelates present at the consecration of the new abbey church of Montecassino).39 Two documents in 1136 begin to reveal more about the episcopacy's properties and rights.40 The records jointly concern

Count Robert of Conversano's gift of the church of S. Martino in Molfetta, along with 200 olive trees, to the Abbey of SS. Trinità in Cava (in Campania).41 Passing reference is made to a clausura sancte marie episcopii nostre prefate civitatis (an "enclosure" [probably demarcating agricultural properties] belonging to the bishop's church of Molfetta).42 The

38 See G. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (Cambridge, 2007), 391-92 for the bishopric of Aquino (lower Lazio), an example of a small bishopric in the . 39 Transcribed in H. Hoffman, ed., Die Chronik von Montecassino (Hannover, 1980), 398-99. The city name, alternately transcribed as Melfittensis and Melphiatensis, almost certainly refers to Molfetta, and not Melfi, given that a bishop of Melfi is mentioned previously on the list and that the bishop of Molfetta is listed between those of neighboring cities Vigiliensis (Biscéglie) and Juvinazensis (Giovinazzo). See L. Michele de Palma, Le sede episcopale di Molfetta nei secc. XI-XIII (Molfetta, 1983), 22 for discussion. De Palma corrects the scholarly confusion that led to the proposed names of "Balduinus" and "Iohannes" for this bishop. 40 Archivio della Badia di Cava, Arm. G. 19, A and Arm. G. 20; transcribed by C. A. Garufi, "I diplomi purpurei della cancelleria normanna ed Elvira prima moglie di Re Ruggero (117? - 6 Febbraio 1135)," Atti della Reale Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Palermo, ser. 3, vol. 7 (1904): 1- 31. See 26-28 for documents. 41 The trees may have already been entrusted to S. Martino according to the old model of Eigenkirchen (proprietary churches). 42 [...] que ecclesia [S. Martino] est in territoriis civitatis nostre Melfitte in loco qui dicitur terris Forcata. Nec non et unam peciam de terra cum triginta duobus arboribus olibarum, non longe a

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notice indicates that a cathedral had been founded by this time, if not necessarily constructed, as it carried a dedication to the Virgin (the cathedral's sole dedication until the beginning of the 14th century). Confirming the transaction was Bishop Iohannes of

Molfetta (served ca. 1136 - ?), who released S. Martino from episcopal jurisdiction while reserving the right to a small annual tribute: a pound of olive-derived incense and a pound of wax that the abbey was to pay to the cathedral on the feast of St. Martin.43

These texts describe in more detail the types of possessions that Molfetta held from the early years of the episcopacy. One type of asset was cordoned-off agricultural property, implied by clausura ("enclosure"). Subsequent documents make frequent reference to agricultural plots and enclosures (1143, 1148, 1159 (x2), 1167, 1170, 1174,

1176, 1177, 1180, 1181, 1184, and continuing thereafter).44 These properties were almost invariably olive plots, although this may be a result of the specific types of records that

loco ubi dicitur Garzanti. que continetur per hos fines. primus a medio limite est clausura sancte marie episcopii nostre prefate civitatis [...] Archivio della Badia di Cava, Arm. G. 19, A, pp. 26-27. Elsewhere in the document, the term "clausura" is used to indicate the enclosure of an olive plot: "[...] unam clasuriam [sic] obilarum in loco Lama petruni, ubi sunt eentum et quadraginta septem arbores olibarum". 43 Quam confirmationem uice ipsius monasterii [...] amodo perpetuis temporibus libere et absolute ab omni Iure episcopalj prenotatam ecclesiam possideant. rebusque omnibus supradictis fruantur. sine nostra nostrorumque successorum contrarietate aut requisitione. tantum annualiter dent nostro episcopio in festo sancti martini. unam libram incensi oliuani. et unam libram cere [...] Archivio della Badia di Cava, Arm. G. 20, pp. 27-28. 44 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 14, pp. 24-25; Doc. 17, pp. 31-32; Doc. 30, pp. 45-46; Doc. 31, pp. 46-47; Doc. 44, pp. 59-60; Doc. 48, p. 63; Doc. 54, pp. 69-70; Doc. 58, pp. 74-75; Doc. 59, p. 76; Doc. 64, pp. 81-82; Doc. 65, pp. 82-83; and Doc. 68, pp. 86-87.

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survive (the documents constitute a selective slice, all pertaining to Cava's olive plots and other plots in the vicinity). It is nonetheless clear that olive properties made up a significant portion of the cathedral's assets from the early 12th century. It is possible that the church received some of them as private gifts before its elevation as an episcopal see.

The cathedral's stake in oliculture was further enlarged by lay donations in 1184,

1236, 1252, and 1256.45 The motivations of the laity will be examined more closely in the next section, but the documents are also useful for what they reveal about the ecclesiastical uses of agricultural property. Each patron assigned a portion of the donated assets explicitly to the fabricis episcopis (cathedral works). The fabrica was a dedicated construction fund, probably managed by part of the chapter.46 This fund formed, along with funds for the clergy and for the poor, part of the traditional subdivision of tithes.47 In the Apulian context, the institution of the fabrica existed by the early 1100s and played a major role in the contemporaneous building boom.48 In the case

45 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 70, pp. 89-92; Codice diplomatico Barese III, Doc. 233, pp. 253ff.; Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 101, pp. 129-32; Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 109, pp. 140-41. See discussion in section on lay funding strategies below. 46 In 1245, for example, Angelus de Cicorea was referred to as the prior fabrice barensis matris ecclesie (prior of works at Bari Cathedral). See Kappel, S. Nicola, 70. On the general practice of canons managing the fabrica in medieval cathedrals, see G. Coppola, L'edilizia nel Medioevo (Rome, 2015), 31-34. 47 See Constable, Monastic Tithes, 20-21. 48 For example, the cathedral of was supported by revenue "pro fabricis" in rights described by Pope Gelasius II (served 1118-19). See Kappel, S. Nicola, 63; citing F. Jacobs, Die

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of Molfetta Cathedral, the strategies by which the fabrica subdivided the construction project in time (the focus of the next chapter) proved crucial in accommodating the shifting motives and desires of higher clergy and patrons.

The lay donations to the fabrica of Molfetta Cathedral consisted mainly of olive- related assets: usually plots given to the church and/or usufruct rights over their produce. Often the usufruct rights over a donated property were retained by the original owner and inherited by his or her heirs, who continued to work the land. The tenants paid periodic tributes to the bishop until the usufruct rights could no longer pass to a legitimate heir, at which time the cathedral gained full rights over the property and its usufruct. By 1286, whole olive plots were associated specifically with the fabrica of

Molfetta Cathedral.49

Olive properties, trees, and usufruct rights were logical gifts for construction purposes, as these shares in the olive industry had precisely known market value, and were thus easily exchanged for gold and coinage, without which the builders could not be paid.50 The liquidity of olive assets was related to the commercialization of the crop at

Kathedrale S. Maria Icona Vetere in Foggia. Studien zur Architektur und Plastik des 11.-13. Jahrhunderts in Süditalien, 2 vols (Ph.D. Dissertation, Hamburg, 1968), I, 266ff. 49 "[...] iuxta olivas fabrice episcopii." Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 154, pp. 204-5. 50 On the monetization of South Italy's economy, and on the importance of cash for building purposes, see Loud, "Coinage, Wealth," 829, 836.

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the time. Since the 10th century, Apulia had developed innovative techniques in olicultural engineering, involving, for example, the methods of pruning and rooting stems.51 By the 12th century, farmers, manufacturers, and merchants in the Terra di Bari had begun transforming and marketing the olive for an overseas clientele. Institutions that held gold and coinage were willing to buy various forms of olive-related income, or, because the industry was appreciating in value, to accept rights over olive properties as credit.52 These investors included merchant families from Tyrrhenian coastal cities such as Amalfi and Ravello as well as major monasteries, such as the Benedictine Abbey of

Cava, know to have been deeply engaged in Mediterranean trade.53

A second major form of revenue evident throughout the documented era of the episcopacy was that of tributes received from subordinate churches by virtue of ius episcopale, along with other funds exacted from the parishes, such as compensation for unpaid tributes. As we saw before, the Cava dependency of S. Martino owed an annual tribute of wax and incense to the cathedral, even though it was otherwise exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. Similarly, when the Benedictine monastery of S. Maria de Gualdo

(in Umbria) gained control of the church of S. Margherita in Molfetta in 1214, the

51 R. Iorio, “Olivi e olio in Terra di Bari in età normanno-sveva” in Olivi e olio nel medioevo italiano, ed. A. Brugnoli and G. M. Varanini (Bologna, 2005), 291-314. See 303. 52 See Toubert, "Paysages ruraux," 215, on the development of Apulia's olive industry toward international trade, and the viability of olive assets for sale and credit. 53 See Loud, "Coinage, Wealth," 836 and 839, for the cash holdings of major monasteries and lay families.

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cathedral was entitled to a portion of the tithes of S. Marghertia, to be paid in two pounds of wax and one pound of incense.54 This kind of tax on monastic possessions was common, and served to symbolize the juridical authority of small dioceses over their parishes in the face of major monastic networks.55

Relations were sometimes amiable between the episcopacy of Molfetta and the monastic houses in its territory. In 1165, for example, Rogerius, the archdeacon of

Molfetta, made a nepotistic land grant to Cava in a show of appreciation to Abbot

Marinus for accepting the former's nephew into the ranks of the Cava monks of S.

Martino.56 In other periods, the cathedral needed to assert its authority with legal action.

Bishop Angelus of Molfetta (1280-1287) of the prestigious Saracenus family (famous for producing multiple papal legates and an archbishop of Bari), began enforcing claims over tributes owed by monastic houses.57 In 1282, Angelus reminded a priest of S.

Martino, the dependency of Cava, of the dues in wax and incense that were owed to the bishop.58 In 1285, the bishop collected its tribute due from S. Margherita, invoking an understanding dating back to bishop Risandus (1222-71) that the tribute could be

54 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 82, pp. 106-8. 55 See Loud, Latin Church, 392, for tithes claimed by ius episcopale; and Constable, Monastic Tithes, 87-88, on the practice of confirming monastic possession of tithes if the monastery could prove their holding of the tithe for "thirty or forty years." 56 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 38, p. 53. 57 See discussion by De Palma, Sede episcopale, 55-57. 58 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 140, pp. 180-81.

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rendered in its equivalent in gold because the tithe was over shared property and by nature indivisible.59 The money, moreover, was urgently needed pro construenda frabica

[sic] nostre maioris ecclesie melfictensis (for the construction of the cathedral). In 1286, the bishop invoked episcopal rights and political connections in order to leverage a customary tribute for a more substantial settlement. Angelus litigated against the abbey of Monte Sacro over a failure of its Molfetta-based dependency S. Giacomo to pay its tribute, and now demanded a fine of 150 ounces of gold.60 The fundraising initiatives of

Bishop Angelus seem to suggest a desire to pool resources and receive them in liquid form in support of a major push for construction.

Later bishops sought further tributes and settlements from Molfetta's increasingly powerful subordinate churches, while also continuing to assert the ius episcopale to raise funds. Bishop Paulus (1294-1307) was particularly aggressive.61 In 1297, he unsuccessfully claimed 100 ounces of gold from the Teutonic Knights in punishment

59 Cumque expediret nobis magis habere nobis pecuniam pro construenda frabica nostre maioris ecclesie melfictensis quam decimam partem in rebus predictis, maxime quia non curat fieri comoda divisio decime partis predictarum rerum et habere res in comuni non expediebat nobis nec nostre ecclesie quia consuevit necligi quod comuniter possedetur et dum se nichil habere cum totum non habeat arbitretur et partem suam perire patitur dum invidet aliene. Idcirco ex causa conventionis habite et trattate inter nos ex una parte et dopnum Stephanum monachum monasterii predicte ecclesie sancte Margarite monasterii sancte Marie de Gualdo ex altera, idem frater Stephanus dedit et assignavit nobis pro iure decime partis predictarum rerum competentis nobis in ipsis rebus secundum conventionem quondam predicti domini Risandi melfictensis episcopi uncias auri tres, quas statim dedimus et solvimus ad opus predicte frabice nostre ecclesie melfictensis. Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 144, pp. 184-86. 60 Codice diplomatico Barlettano, ed. S. Santeramo (, 1924-62), I, 125-29. 61 See De Palma, Sede episcopale, 62-63 for discussion of the following.

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for establishing a house in Molfettese territory and not paying the customary tribute, while also demanding payment of the fourth part of all private donations received by the Knights.62 In the same year, Paulus requested payment from S. Martino for a fourth part of their Molfetta-based holdings, but was reprimanded by bishop Rao of Ariano (an apostolic bishop, or special representative of the See of Rome) for forgetting that this Cava dependency was exempt from episcopal jurisdiction.63 In 1304, the Franciscans of

Molfetta sent a missive to Pope Benedict XI, complaining that bishop Paulus, himself formerly a Franciscan friar, had declared an episcopal monopoly over urban burials, a function upon which the friars depended for support.64 The service of intra-urban burial attracted testamentary donations.65 Lay wills supporting the cathedral had largely ceased during the second half of the 13th century, probably in large part as a result of the arrival of the Franciscans and Dominicans. Paulus probably sought to restore the cathedral's advantage in the arena of lay wills.

The bishop's de iure authority was a pretext for still other forms of disenfranchisement and expropriation. Through an unclear sequence of events in the

62 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Docs. 165 and 166, pp. 215-18. 63 Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 167, p. 219. 64 Le Registre de Benoit XI, ed. C. Grandjean (Paris, 1905), 587-88; Documenti vaticani relativi alla Puglia, ed. D. Vendola, 2 vols (1940-63), II, 76-77, n. 62. See discussion by De Palma, Sede episcopale, 63. 65 See C. Bruzelius, "The Dead Come to Town: Preaching, Burying, and Building in the Mendicant Orders," in The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture, ed. A. Gajewski and Z. Opačić (Turnhout, 2007), 203-24; and Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, and Burying.

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first and second decades of the 14th century, the cathedral obtained the relics of San

Corrado from the Cistercian monastery S. Maria ad Gryptam in Modugno, which had held the saint's bones until it was suppressed by King Robert of Anjou around 1313.66

Although there is no clear involvement of the Angevins in securing these relics for

Molfetta, the bishop was otherwise a frequent beneficiary of royal intervention in the

Terra di Bari during this period (for example, the royal justiciar in Bari had allied with the bishop of Molfetta to quell Ghibelline Rebellions, and in 1308, when Molfetta faced one such revolt, Charles II of Anjou's royal forces helped suppress it).67 The acquisition of the bones of San Corrado would have enhanced the cathedral's status as a waypoint on the coastal pilgrimage route that connected to the more important shrines of St.

Nicholas in Bari and St. Michael the Archangel in Monte Sant'Angelo. A modest amount of income could have been derived from pilgrims to the relics of San Corrado; however, the heightened status of the church stood to attract more significant contributions from major prelates and donors.

The income of the bishop and chapter, in sum, flowed through many different channels, varying in quantity, kind, and tempo. The liquidity of olive-related assets made the management of the construction fund less difficult, affording the fabrica a

66 See De Palma, Sede episcopale, 63. 67 Carabellese, Città, 37.

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degree of flexibility in holding and disbursing cash at strategic moments. On the other hand, the scope and character of the building may have been complicated by the cathedral's shifting relationship with its supporting institutions, such as the archbishopric of Bari and the various monastic, mendicant, and military orders that controlled dependencies in Molfetta. The episcopacy was thus required to balance long- term and short-term agendas when selecting its spaces and forms and deciding when to erect them.

We have seen that at the beginning of construction (which appears to have occurred after the elevation of the bishopric in the late 11th century), the church would have needed to proclaim its cathedral status as well as its links to the archbishopric of

Bari. Because the bishopric of Molfetta was not particularly wealthy, the clergy were faced with the challenge of conveying the episcopal stature of the church while using as little expense as possible. This may explain why a large number of fundamental liturgical functions and symbolic features are consolidated into one area of the church: the transept, associated by most scholars with the earliest phases of construction.68 This compact rectangular volume served an array of purposes. The interior, once it was furnished with an altar at center and appointed with its apse, served as a stage, perpendicular to the axis of prayer, where sacraments could be offered. The east vessel

68 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2.

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was also originally intended to contain a hall crypt beneath the transept. The crypt may have been intended to eventually hold relics, similar to the crypts of S. Nicola in Bari and the cathedral of S. Nicola Pellegrino in Trani (though unlike these buildings, Molfetta

Cathedral did not obtain its relics until the beginning of the 14th century, by which time the crypt had been suppressed).69

The principal exterior facade is also located in the east end--an atypical arrangement in Romanesque architecture outside the Apulian context (fig. 7). The main face of the building was thus oriented in the direction of the old marketplace, the center of urban life in medieval Molfetta, and would have been highly visible from this space despite not linking directly with it.70 The public-facing quality of the cathedral was a major factor in the selection and organization of exterior forms. Although the facade contains no portals, it features a prominent central window with elaborate sculptural decoration. This opening may have functioned for occasional episcopal blessings and sermons, or even for (prospective) relic ostentations, as its passageway was connected via stairwells to the sanctuary and to the crypt. The high twin towers also served

69 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2. 70 B. Ficele and P. Pisani, "Molfetta: il borgo antico," Monumenta Apuliae ac Japygiae 4 (1984): 63-75. See 70-72, arguing on the basis of 15th- and 16th-century documents for the existence of an elliptical piazza, longer on its north-south axis, that originally extended from the church of S. Andrea (at the center of the old town) and the Porta della Terra (located where the old town meets Via Dante). The eastern extent of this space would have approached the east facade of S. Corrado near the south side.

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important pastoral functions for the urban community: early modern records suggest that the south tower was traditionally used to house the bell, while the other was a defensive watchtower, accessible from the city walls.71 The adoption of a transept type that packaged a host of pastoral functions into a small space was shrewd: the administration was able to functionally and symbolically upgrade the church to cathedral status within a small fraction of the overall period of construction.

The east end type adopted by Molfetta did not merely announce the establishment of a new bishopric. By quoting the forms of other cathedrals in the region, it appears to have expressed, in particular, the bishop's post as a suffragan under the archbishop of Bari. Bari Cathedral and many of its suffragans (Giovinazzo, Molfetta,

Bitonto, and Conversano) share the typology of a towered transept with a rectilinear east end featuring a prominent, ornamented window (figs. 18, 19). As Belli D'Elia has suggested, these common qualities may have had the collective effect of forging a mental association between the cathedrals and thus of outlining the archdiocesan network.72 To be sure, the form is not exclusive to Bari's suffragan cathedrals; for example, the cathedral of Biscéglie features a similar east facade, but was aligned with

71 See the 1704 visitation report of Monsignor degli Effeti. Kappel, S. Nicola, 267. Transcribed in L. Mongiello, Chiese di Puglia: Il fenomeno delle chiese a cupola (Bari, 1888), 292; citing Archivio diocesano di Molfetta, Curia Vescovile, Visite Pastorali e Sinodi Diocesani. Santa Visita di Mons. degli Effetti, 1704. 72 See Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 202, who also argued that this iconography, when used at Molfetta Cathedral, carried chiefly episcopal associations.

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the bishopric of Trani (which oscillated between independent metropolitan status and subordination to Bari).73 A more significant outlier is the monastic foundation of S.

Nicola in Bari, probably the watershed monument in Apulia for the combination of a rectilinear east end and a facade featuring a passageway and central opening. As Kappel has compellingly argued, the churches that borrowed formal choices from S. Nicola may have done so to signify association with this important pilgrimage shrine.74 As Kappel also pointed out, this meaning was not necessarily opposed to the archiepiscopal significance. The use of the form by Bari Cathedral, and its salient repetition by suffragans, could have appropriated the prestige of the shrine of St. Nicholas while simultaneously asserting archiepiscopal authority over the pilgrimage route.

Interestingly, this facade typology seems only to characterize the cathedrals on or near the coastal border of the archdiocese. The fortified appearance of this form may have further contributed to the conceptual impression of a 'frontier.' Each facade is a non-gabled wall framed by two towers, evoking a decontextualized section of a rampart.

The repeated selection of this type by the suffragans of Bari may have created a composite impression of churches standing guard over the archdiocese's maritime front, even if this type of facade was not originally created for such a purpose. Prelates such as

73 See Kappel, S. Nicola, 200-2 for the institutional chronology of Biscéglie Cathedral. 74 Kappel, S. Nicola, 94.

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the archbishop of Bari and those connected to him, regularly traveling among the cities in question, may well have been privy to such a meaning, which would have resonated with the particular role of the archbishop in the larger politics of the Latin Church. The papal consecration of Canosa-Bari in 1025 (while Apulia was still under Byzantine control), had severed the metropolitan's old ties to the patriarchate of Constantinople, and can be understood as part of the ongoing papal strategy to defy his fellow patriarchs by undermining their temporal jurisdiction over western domains. The duty of the archbishop of Bari was to protect the new 'border,' as articulated by a missive in 1035 from Pope John XIX, referring to the archbishop as fundator s. eccl. Barensis et cunctae urbis custos ac defensor atque terribilis et sine metu contra omnes Grecos ("founder of the holy church of Bari and guard and defender of the whole city, terrifying to, and fearless of, all

Greeks").75 The Pope's vitriol was probably not directed toward the Byzantine Emperor

(the ruler of the territory), toward Basilian monasticism (which was allowed to exist under the jurisdiction of the Latin Church), or toward Greek-speaking populations (who continued to live and worship in the region according to their traditional customs).

Rather, the papacy specifically intended to counter the threat of a separate temporal

75 H. W. Klewitz, Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters (Aaelen, 1971), 372.

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church hierarchy posed by the Constantinopolitan patriarch and his allied bishoprics.76

Emerging against this backdrop, Molfetta Cathedral enlisted itself under Bari as a protector of the temporal domains of the Latin Church, conveying this meaning through the symbolic associations of its dramatic and highly visible east end. Such a message would have been enhanced by the way construction unfolded in time. The consolidation of features in the transept vessel allowed them to be established more quickly, bestowing a sense of immediacy on the episcopal promotion of Molfetta; meanwhile, the fortress-like massing of the facade with towers asserted the permanence of the event.

The main visual features of the east facade were retained during substantial later revisions to this area of the church. Even while the interior was adopting a new roofing system antithetical to the spatial logic of a transept basilica--that of domes over the central axis and quadrant vaults over the side aisles--the east facade continued to follow the original vision of a towered face with a central window, if compressed to accommodate the low dome over the presbytery. In other words, the facade program had a durable symbolic importance that needed to be maintained in later phases.

The new three-dome roofing system, however, dramatically transformed other aspects of the spatial configuration, imposing new features that would, like the facade,

76 See historical discussion by Wharton Epstein, "Cathedral of Canosa," 79-81.

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be honored in later transformations. As the chronological analysis of the next chapter strongly suggests, the three-dome scheme, possibly initiated in the east end as early as the mid 1100s (but probably closer to the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century), introduced a new spatial logic, which was subsequently carried forward until the completion of the principal volumes of the church (ca. 1300) (fig. 20).77 Over a succession of episodic changes, the new elevation was grafted onto the previous outline of a transept basilica, bringing Molfetta Cathedral into closer accord with a set of

Apulian Benedictine churches, all lacking transepts (especially SS. Ognissanti in

Valenzano; S. Bendetto in Conversano; and S. Francesco (originally SS. Trinità) in Trani

(fig. 20)).78 The installation of quadrant vaults over the side aisles forged a continuation of the nave into the transept, contesting the transverse axis of the earlier interior; the hall crypt in the east end was destroyed, establishing a unified floor level; portals were opened in the middles of the north and south flanks, creating a new transverse axis accented by the lofty dome over the center bay; and a monumental porch may have been introduced in the west, creating a new principal entrance.79 The way the fabrica ordered these phases sequentially is discussed in more detail in the next chapter. The present

77 1162 marks the date of the foundation of S. Maria dei Martiri in Molfetta, which originally featured at least two axial domes over the nave. The document for the foundation is transcribed in De Palma, Sede episcopale, 69-70; citing Molfetta, Capitolo Cattedrale. See Chapter 2 for further chronological discussion of the adoption of the three-dome plan. 78 On this group of churches, see Ionescu, Le chiese pugliesi. 79 See Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 204.

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section focuses on the functions and meanings of this profound revision of liturgical space, as well as the particular financial or institutional shifts that might have precipitated it.

Though the Benedictine associations of this typology are often emphasized, it is worth pointing out that it was not entirely unprecedented in the episcopal context in

Apulia. A close comparison is supplied by the ruined cathedral of Montecorvino, which features three axial square bays and a nave-to-side aisle ratio of 2:1, suggesting that it may have followed the same arrangement of domes and quadrant vaults featured by the aforementioned Benedictine abbeys in Valenzano, Conversano, and Trani.80 Rather than interpret the Benedictine group as normative and the cathedrals as anomalous, it is worth considering how a single typology met a particular set of liturgical and symbolic functions that appealed to two different kinds of ecclesiastical orders: the monastic and the secular Church.

The three-dome scheme contains a number of features geared toward pastoral outreach. In terms of liturgical layout, the west facade porch (seen partially standing at

SS. Ognissanti in Valenzano and possibly also intended for S. Corrado in Molfetta), may

80 See J.-M. Martin and G. Noyé, "La cité de Montecorvino en Capitanate et sa cathédrale," Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome 94 (1982): 513-49.

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indicate the opening of these buildings to the local laity for services.81 This is especially significant given that the churches in question tend to be urban, and that in Apulia,

Benedictine monks are known to have encroached on apostolic sacraments in urban communities, offering baptism, communion, confession, blessings, and funerals.82

The most prominent visual aspect of this typology, its set of axially aligned domes, reaches out to the community in a different way. The arrangement appears to have been adapted from a few early examples in Apulia, established during Byzantine dominion or even earlier. An especially precocious example is the Chiesetta di

Seppannibale (ca. late 8th - 9th century), featuring two axially aligned nave domes and quadrant vaults over the side aisles.83 Axial domes such as those seen in Seppannibale accommodated a taste for the richly decorated ceilings and open layouts of Middle

Byzantine architecture. Such buildings recall the long period of Byzantine hegemony in

Apulia before the arrival of the Normans in the 11th century. Thus the choice by

Benedictine and cathedral communities to employ a spatial arrangement derived from the region, rather than one imposed from the outside, may express a desire to fit to the

81 See discussion by Constable, Monastic Tithes, 235. 82 See G. Lunardi, “L’ideale monastico e l’organizzazione interna dei monasteri,” in L’esperienza Monastica benedettina e la Puglia: atti del convegno di studio organizzato in occasione del XV centenario della nascita di San Benedetto, Bari ... 6-10 ottobre 1980, ed. C. D. Fonseca, 2 vols (Galatina, 1983- 1984), I, 137-68. See 150. 83 See G. Bertelli et al., Puglia preromanica dal V secolo agli inizi del'XI (Milan, 2004), 137, dating this building to the late 8th or early 9th century on the grounds that it relates closely to architectural typologies and building techniques found in Lombard Benevento during this era.

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local laity's traditional habits of worship. The practice of catering to local liturgy was pronounced in medieval South Italy and can be traced back to the time of family-owned proprietary churches.84

The need to accommodate local modes of prayer may explain the adoption of the three-dome church typology by cathedrals and monasteries alike, given that both groups competed over pastoral functions. At the same time, liturgical and spatial ideas could have flowed between the two different types of communities by virtue of the fact that numerous cathedrals in 11th- to 13th-century Apulia were staffed from the ranks of monasteries. The most famous example was Abbot Elias of Bari, who, after presiding over the construction of S. Nicola in the 1080s, became archbishop of Bari.85 In 1205, the canonry of the cathedral of Bari and the monks of S. Nicola were so intertwined that archbishop Doferius prohibited clergy from serving as cathedral canons and as S. Nicola monks simultaneously.86 As noted earlier, Molfetta Cathedral's archdeacon groomed his nephew for acceptance into the Cava-dependent abbey of S. Martino in 1165. The use of the three-dome layout at Molfetta Cathedral as well as at nearby abbeys such as SS.

84 See Ramseyer, Transformation of a Religious Landscape, 82, discussing medieval rector contracts in Southern Italy, which stipulated that services should be traditional and fitting for the character of the local community. The parishioners were often described in generalizing terms, such as "peasants" or "Greeks." 85 See discussion in Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 127-28. 86 Codice diplomatico Barese I, Doc. 73, pp. 141-43; discussed by De Palma, Sede episcopale, 35. An exception to this rule was made for one Iohannes de Agralisto.

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Trinità in Trani (a dependency of Cava by 1176), if reframed in the light of frequent personnel changes and fluid movement between cathedrals and monasteries, thus appears less anomalous than before.87 It is significant that the three-dome layout seems to have been introduced at S. Corrado when work was about to commence on the nave.

The prospect of opening the space to lay worship (probably only on major feast days, such as Easter and the other feasts of Holy Week) was thus immanent, and the bishop and canons of the time may have taken the occasion to reconsider the interior space of the cathedral in accordance with their own pastoral training. On the other hand, other factors may have played a role in the adoption of this type, including a possible shortage of wood. S. Corrado's three-dome typology required almost no timber (even the dome roofs were appointed with stone chiancarelle rather than shingles in other material), and thus was probably less expensive to supply than large wooden-roof basilicas such as S.

Nicola in Bari.

Molfetta Cathedral accrued other institutional messages and functions in addition to those bestowed by its east end and its three-dome layout. The creation of ancillary chapels (starting in the 15th century) attests to the success of the cathedral in obtaining donations from lay donors who required burial in private chapels. Molfetta

87 Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 272-74. SS. Trinità in Trani was consecrated in 1184, suggesting it was sufficiently complete to begin holding services.

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Cathedral had declared exclusive rights to such burials around 1304. The ancillary chapel was a function-fitting space that emerged especially in the churches of new religious orders, such as the Franciscan and Dominican friars. The particular symbolism that the chapels held for donors will be addressed in more detail in the next section on lay funding strategies. Of particular relevance here is the fact the episcopacy, in taking control of the important pastoral function of lay burial, added to the liturgical and symbolic imperatives of the cathedral at the same time that it raised important revenue for construction.

The episcopal absorption of new liturgical functions can also be observed in later events. When, around 1313, the abbey of S. Maria ad Gryptam in Modugno relinquished the relics of San Corrado to Molfetta Cathedral, the latter also appears to have appropriated something of the original spatial environment of the relics. Although the cathedral probably originally featured a crypt intended for relics, this solution was renounced partway through the construction of the church in order to create a more unified interior space.88 Elsewhere in Europe between the late 12th and 13th centuries, crypts were increasingly rejected in favor of consolidated, open liturgical settings.89 In the case of Molfetta, the initial failure to secure relics may have precipitated the

88 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2. 89 See for example, the creation of retrochoirs in English churches. P. Draper, "The Retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral," Architectural History, 21 (1978): 1-17, 97-103.

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suppression of the crypt. Thus when the body of S. Corrado was finally obtained, a new shrine was needed. The remains were ultimately placed in a small chamber behind the altar.90 Archaeological investigations have shown that this arrangement was consistent with the earlier display of the relics in the cave church of Modugno, where they lay in a crevice receding from the altar area.91 Retaining the character of the original environment of the saint's bones would have met the expectations of pilgrims accustomed to visiting the earlier shrine. Pilgrimage traffic could thereby be diverted from the inland path to the increasingly popular coastal approach passing through

Molfetta.

The funding strategies of the episcopacy ultimately motivated a number of visual choices in S. Corrado. As the construction of the cathedral depended increasingly on revenue streams that it received or extracted from the other major church institutions in its environs, various symbolic and liturgical functions accumulated in the fabric of the edifice. Architectural features expressed the cathedral's attempt to gain control over the many pastoral duties required in the burgeoning city: the east facade could have enabled public addresses to community; the three-dome interior may have been devised to fit the traditional modes of worship of the local lay congregation; the crypt and altar zone were

90 De Palma, San Corrado, 129, citing the 1668 visitation report of Monsignor Francesco Marini in the Archivio diocesano di Molfetta, Curia Vescovile, Visite Pastorali e Sinodi Diocesani. 91 A low crevice receding behind the altar formed a chamber for San Corrado's relics. De Palma, San Corrado, 127n.

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repeatedly reconfigured based on the cathedral's shifting prospects of obtaining relics; and chapels for family burial and private masses (a function originally served by other institutions in the community) spawned around the perimeter of the building.

The architecture, as a result of successively incorporating new functional spaces, became characterized by diversity and contradiction. Differing ideas were not always brought together in a seamless synthesis. The myriad forms and features were sustained or rejected by the church administration in accordance with the cathedral's changing relations to larger institutions in the secular and monastic Church. As relationships shifted, and as the clergy adjusted their priorities, old parts were destroyed, or combined with new parts, in order to satisfy the most recent combination of goals. At the same time, an additional challenge confronted the clergy: that of accommodating the unpredictable agendas of lay donors.

Funding Strategies of the Laity

Between the late 12th and mid 13th century, lay elites made a series of wills assigning funds toward construction purposes. Though addressed briefly before, these donations can now be reconsidered in more detail for what they reveal about the goals of each donor and his or her own private or institutional obligations.

In 1184, Griso di Sifando, a judge of Molfetta, made a will alienating various

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properties and rights to the episcopacy in exchange for daily prayers at the altar for the perpetual health of his soul.92 According to the will, three ounces of gold--in the form of

Sicilian tari--were to be used for the purchase of a silver chalice and a turribulum

(censer), while a fourth ounce was to be disbursed by a sub-deacon toward the cathedral clergy and the poor.93 The last part of the donation seems to have followed the normal practice of assigning a fourth of episcopal proceeds to clerical income and charity.94 In addition, half of one of Griso's olive plots, along with several other heritable olive plots owned by his family members, were to be given in name to the cathedral. When the plots could no longer pass to legitimate heirs they would become available to the bishop, who would then receive the usufruct of these properties and attend to their perpetual renewal. In addition, these olive revenues were to be spent specifically for fabrice episcopii (episcopal works). The will assigned similar assets to family members and other ecclesiastical institutions, including Cava, Monte Sacro, S. Salvatore near Molfetta, and

92 Ordino etiam ut epitropi mei ex predictis duodecim unciis auri emant unum calicem argenteum et unum turribulum argenteum pro tribus unciis auri et ipsum calicem et turribulum dent nostro episcopio ut ex ipsis cotidie serviatur altare pro salute anime mee [...] Et si ipsa sine descendentibus obierit vel cum descendentibus et ipsi descendentes sine legitimis descendentibus decesserint et sic usque ad infinitum medietas ipsarum olivarum deveniat in potestate et dominio Monasterii Cavarum. Altera vero medietas detineatur et refrudietur ad beneficium fabrice episcopii nostri. Quo episcopio expleto ipsam medietatem olivarum teneant et refrudientur tres presbiteri ipsius episcopii pro remedio anime mee et parentum meorum usque in sempiternum. Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 70, pp. 89-92. 93 These documents divulge that Apulian assessed the value of coinage by weight, allowing for the coexistence of multiple coinage systems. 94 See Constable, Monastic Tithes, 89.

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the church of S. Maria de Principe in Molfetta. The fact that Griso owned a large amount of Sicilian currency attests to the access of noble family networks to coinage during this time.

Another testament, dated 1236, was made by an inhabitant of Terlizzi named

Gaydelgrima, daughter of one Luca from Molfetta.95 As before, this donation released several olive plots to the cathedral of Molfetta, as well as to other heirs and one church--

SS. Angeli in Terlizzi--although this gift included a few inritam (barren) plots in addition to productive ones. The plots due to the cathedral were again attended by the contingency that the property should be tapped for the benefit of the fabrica. In addition,

Gaydelgrima left half an ounce of gold to the chapter, to spend as needed to support the bishop in renewing and using the properties.

In 1252, a judge of Molfetta named Grifo made a will bequeathing certain properties--including a large number of olive trees pertaining to the church of S. Lucia in

Bitonto--to the cathedral of Molfetta and to the monastery of Monte Sacro, though they were to be held as heritable property by Grifo's descendants in a sharecropping

95 Lego etiam episcopo ecclesie melfictensis unam vineam meam olivarum et aliam vineam olivarum et aliam vineam olivarum inritam ei, relinquo fabrice ipsius ecclesie [...] Volo etiam quod epitropi mei qui subter nominavero dent eidem capitulo ecclesie melfictensis mediam unciam auri, iudico etiam et dispono ut dominus Risandus episcopus predictus teneat et refrudiet predictas olivas, quas iudicavi ecclesie melfictensi et fabrice omnibus diebus vite sue, et post mortem eius deveniat predictis episcopio et fabrice. Codice diplomatico Barese III, Doc. 233, pp. 253-54.

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agreement (similar to the one made in 1184).96 Meanwhile, an ounce of gold was alienated to the bishop of Molfetta and half an ounce to the episcopal works, with other donations flowing to various clergy in Bitonto.

A final donation followed shortly after Grifo's gift, when, in 1256, a noble named

Curileone gave half an ounce of gold to the bishop and clergy of Molfetta and half an ounce to the construction of the church cum in ea laborabitur (when underway), with an eighth of an ounce supporting imponenda campana magna (the purchase and mounting of the great bell).97 Curileone also alienated revenues to the Dominicans of Trani, the

Franciscans of Biscéglie, and the clergy of the church of S. Marco in Molfetta.

A number of patterns recur among these donations. The valuable gold coinage and agricultural properties held by lay families allowed them to make contributions to the construction effort through one-time gifts as well as ongoing endowments. In exchange, the cathedral offered specific symbolic benefits to lay families, helping them

96 In primus itaque instituo mihi heredes episcopium civitatis Melficte et venerabile monasterium Montis sacri. Petro filio Drobicze liberto atque nutrito meo pro remedio anime mee relinque unam terram in pertinenziis Sancte Lucie cum omnibus arboribus olivarum [...] fabrice episcopii melfictensis mediam unciam auri pro anima mea relinquo [...] Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 101, pp. 129-32. 97 Dimitto quoque pro anima mea uncias de auro quinque sic distribuendas [...] mediam unciam auri clericis et episcopo Melficte et mediam unciam auri frabice ipsius episcopii cum in ea laborabitur. Item mediam quartam uncie auri pro imponenda campana magna nostri episcopii [...] Codice diplomatico Barese VII, Doc. 109, pp. 140-41.

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gain economic security, spiritual health, and civic status. To what extent could these benefits affect the meanings and forms of the cathedral?

There was, first of all, an important symbolic value in the tributary quality of the donations, which forged an interpersonal contract between the lay donor and the bishop. When permanent revenue-producing land was given to the fabrica (in 1184, 1236, and 1252), it secured protections for the donor, enlisting the legal authority of the bishop as well as other members of the institutional hierarchy supporting Molfetta, such as the archbishop of Bari. In exchange, the donor would have owed tributes to the cathedral, in the form of liturgical instruments or furnishings needed for service, exemplified by the chalice and censer financed by Griso in 1184 and the bell promised in Curileone's 1256 donation. Such acts supported the construction of the church. In the first place, they aided cash flow: liturgical objects were a compulsory expense offset by these donations.

In other instances, if circumstances were more desparate, these objects could be sold for coinage (or even melted down). In addition to assisting in the purchase of objects, several donors assigned profits from agricultural revenue to the cathedral, stipulating that a portion of these proceeds should be used for building purposes. This kind of donation served a function similar to the purchase of liturgical instruments. In both cases, the donation was qualified by its use for specific causes, thus elevating it from a simple financial transaction to a more meaningful form of exchange: a gift.

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Marc Bloch concisely explained the special value of the medieval gift as a seemly alternative to pure cash:98

When it was a question of a gift [...] or of a genuine sale, the agreement of the near relatives was obtained by means of payments in kind, more often than not valued in terms of money [...] An object, even a modest one, could be more easily presented and accepted, in the same way that nowadays a person who would not accept a tip does not refuse a small present.

The added symbolic value of the gift had importance for the benefactor as well as the beneficiary. A rich theoretical discourse has illuminated the multilayered meanings of gifts. Marcel Mauss argued that the gift acts on behalf of its giver, holding an ineluctable power over the actions of the new owner.99 Other anthropologists, rather than locating the effects of the gift in the thing itself, have interpreted gifts in relation to socially constructed systems of reciprocity (Lévi-Strauss) or strategic opportunities offered by the temporal interval between the gift and its reciprocation (Bourdieu).100 In the case of

S. Corrado, the various social and symbolic systems that attended the ecclesiastical gift-- including personal goals, interpersonal obligations, and temporal strategies--became imprinted on the physical forms of the building under construction.

98 M. Bloch, "Natural economy or money economy: a pseudo-dilemma," in M. Bloch, Land and Work in medieval Europe, Selected Papers, trans. J. E. Anderson (Berkeley, 1967), 230-45. See 237. 99 M. Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. I. Cunnison (London, 1966; originally published 1950 as Essai sur le Don in Sociologie et Anthropologie). 100 C. Lévi-Strauss, "Introduction à l'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss," in Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, 1950); and Bourdieu, "Outline," 4-8, especially 4-5 for a critical discussion of the interpretations by Mauss and Lévi-Strauss.

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Donors received important symbolic gains through their role in church finances.

A central benefit was prayer pro anima (on behalf of the donor's soul). The terms of a pro anima donation entailed that the individual and his or her family would be remembered daily at private masses by the clergy.101 The performance of the daily masses created an audience for the perpetuation of the original gift, and thus provided an incentive for the donor to make his or her intervention as conspicuous as possible in liturgical space, while also engaging families in multi-generational commitments to the cathedral. The clergy, through their participation in daily services, could associate particular vessels, furnishings, or architectural features with the patrons who had alienated them.

Patrons tended to donate elements that featured conspicuously in church services. The censer given by Griso would have had an olfactory as well as visual presence, while the bell financed by Curileone marked the cathedral offices sonically, placing the personal stamp of this noble on the functions of pastoral care that linked the cathedral to the urban community. Furthermore, Curileone may have implicitly manipulated the sequence of building. Because his contribution was locked by a double contingency (that it be spent on a bell and only when construction was underway), he may have put pressure on the erection of the towers, possibly causing them to be

101 On donatio pro anima, see E. Magnani, "Almsgiving, Donatio Pro Anima and Eucharistic Offering in the Early Middle Ages of Western Europe (4th-9th century)," in M. Frenkel and Y. Lev, eds., Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions (Berlin, 2009), 111-21.

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prioritized over other spaces. A donation could thus be associated with a phase of construction, and not only with small objects or furnishings. The impressive south tower, looming over the market square, was not only the visible extension of the bell's liturgical functions, but also, in turn, of Curileone's charity. Each conspicuous addition, furthermore, might have stimulated greater interest in this form of offering. Competition between donors was stoked by this "demonstration effect," reflecting Richard

Goldthwaite's interpretation of the patronage of panel paintings in late medieval Italian churches.102

The donor's engagement in church patronage can be read as an extension of civil service in addition to his or her obligations to God and the Church. Two of the donors were iudices (judges) of Molfetta (Griso in 1184, Grifo in 1252). In the cities of 12th- century Apulia, iudices tended to be nobles who often collaborated with the episcopal courts to settle the city's various legal conflicts (the majority of which concerned private property rights).103 Cementing one's place in the matrix of ecclesiastical and lay juridical authority through church patronage was a key way for major land-holding families to compete in the space of urban government. For a patron who held a governing role in the city, alienating a part of his or her earthly possessions to the cathedral, where it was

102 R. A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300-1600 (Baltimore, 1995; originally published 1993), 134-35. 103 P. Oldfield, Urban Society and Communal Independence in Twelfth-Century Southern Italy (Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Leeds, September 2006), 114-20.

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to be subdivided as charity for the poor, the clergy, and cathedral works, was necessary for good moral standing. This preserved the image of the donor's family as notable and upstanding civil servants and made it possible for future family members to attain important posts. The families that supported Molfetta Cathedral were also eager to spread their charity among multiple ecclesiastical communities in numerous cities in the

Terra di Bari, variously donating to churches in Terlizzi, Bitonto, Biscéglie, and Trani alongside their gifts to Molfetta. This suggests that nobles needed to atone for increasingly inter-urban commercial exploits. Many leading families had spread their potentially usurious operations--including lending and exchange services--across multiple cities (exemplified by Gaydelgrima, who lived in Terlizzi but had family ties in

Molfetta).

Seen in this light, a donation for construction, if ostentatiously expressed in the building, could have played a role in competition over status between families. By pressuring the advancement or redirection of construction by way of the contingent gift, a donor might outshine the contribution of his or her predecessor. This impulse can be felt in the approach of the fabrica to the process of construction, which is characterized by the spontaneous augmentation of specific parts.104 Decoration and structural details were often introduced to embellish features already underway. For example, the blind

104 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2.

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arches on the exterior of the east end were transformed into interlaced arches by the insertion of corbels to create intermediate supports. Two corbels in the east end support fragmentary half-shafts, strongly implying that this choice was an afterthought (fig. 22).

Adding interlaced arches would have resonated with the use of the same form in the east end of nearby Giovinazzo Cathedral (fig. 19), and it is possible that the donor whose contribution aided in the building of this area of the church wished to express homage to the major family of lords that had long promoted the Giovinazzo see: none other than the Norman house of Hauteville, rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily until the final years of the 12th century.105

Similarly, the squinches supporting the two western domes appear to have been revised partway through construction, transformed into cuffie (semi-circular niches supporting the corners of the dome) (fig. 5).106 The effort to build the domes may have been spontaneously halted, or even redirected toward other parts, causing a hiatus before the domes were completed by a different team of masons in the final stages of construction.

105 See Kappel, S. Nicola, 252-53, for a timeline of donations and privileges to Giovinazzo Cathedral, including several from the Hauteville family: in 1113 (from Constance, wife of Prince Bohemond), 1134 (from King Roger II); 1172 (from King William II); and 1190 (from King Tancred). 106 See chronological discussion in Chapter 2.

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Coinciding with the completion of the roofing system was the choice to include a high middle dome, which had the particular effect of centralizing the spatial organization. This may have been a symbolic choice imposed by lay elites. The three- domed churches in the Terra di Bari have sometimes been understood to combine the idea of a centralized church with that of a basilican footprint. The examples featuring a high middle dome, specifically Molfetta Cathedral and SS. Trinità in Trani, closely approach the concept of a cross-in-square design, a major typology in Byzantine architecture. Other attempts to transform the cross-in-square idea into a vessel of Latin liturgy are also found in Apulia, and have been compellingly associated with the political ambitions of Crusader patrons traveling to Byzantine realms in the Holy Land, including the burial chapel of Bohemond, King of Antioch at Canosa Cathedral (a somewhat eccentric adaptation of a cross-in-square plan).107 The western Adriatic coastline was the principle launch site for the Jerusalem pilgrimage and Crusader traffic, and thus featured many churches of the military orders as well as pilgrimage shrines important to Crusaders (especially the shrine of S. Michele in Monte Sant'Angelo).108

107 Wharton Epstein, “Cathedral of Canosa," 85-88. For further discussion of cross-in-square churches in medieval Southern Italy, see R. P. Bergman, "Byzantine Influence and Private Patronage in a Newly Discovered Medieval Church in Amalfi: S. Michele Arcangelo in Pogerola," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, no. 4 (1991): 421-45. 108 See M. D'Arenzio, "Il pellegrinaggio al Gargano tra XI e XVI secolo," in Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident: les trois monts dédiés à l'archange, ed. P. Bouet, G. Otranto, and A. Vauchez (Rome, 2003), 219-44; and J. Richardson, "Between the Limousin and the Holy Land: Prisoners,

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These churches needed to place their lay patrons in the power idiom of the East while also adopting a familiar Latin liturgy for the Apulian clergy.

This architecture of individual ambition and inter-family competition eventually found a more extreme manifestation in the beginning of the 15th century, in the form of ancillary chapels, mentioned briefly in the last section (Chart 1).109 Each chapel typically featured a subsidiary dedication and altar, and it could be used for the burial of family members and for private prayers on their behalf. These spaces possessed their own independent architectural programs that clashed with the formal logic of the cathedral.

The three-dome liturgical layout was not particularly suited to ancillary chapels, as it did not contain a long nave with ample flanks. The chapels were therefore accommodated at the disruption of liturgically significant zones and thresholds. The massing in the west facade appears to have been modified from a monumental entrance porch to incorporate the chapels of S. Antonio (before 1505) and S. Maria della Carità

(built before 1529), as well as the now-destroyed chapel of S. Corrado (built before 1608).

Meanwhile, the chapel of S. Giuliano (1418) swallowed one portal of the double entrance

Performance, and the Portal of San Leonardo at Siponto," Gesta 54, no. 2 (2015): 165-94, especially 166. 109 See Introduction for full chronological discussion and references concerning the chapels.

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that once existed on the north flank of the church, and confronted this path of ingress with its own ornamented facade (fig. 23).110

The funding strategies of lay donors, like those of the clergy, attempted to align-- rather than subordinate--private interests to public ends. In contrast to the bishop and chapter, the patrons, unable to establish continuous liturgical designs that would be honored in successive transformations of the cathedral, instead employed the temporal device of the rupture, providing windfalls of cash or profitable land that would make immediate, conspicuous impacts. Donations that in theory served as humble contributions to a communal effort often functioned instead as interruptions and about- faces, emphasizing competition and plurality.

Taken as a whole, the structure of finances endowed the cathedral of Molfetta with various kinds of revenue streams, with differing possibilities of liquidation and use for construction purposes. These resources were controlled by different institutions, both clerical and lay, who occupied separate social positions, both within and outside the cathedral as well as in relation to other major institutions in the region. The clergy and lay donors had different access to resources, with the former receiving endowed

110 Other ancillary chapels may also occupy and reformulate previous spaces, including the Chapel of S. Maria ad Nives (1401), which invades the space of the bishop's chapel; the Chapel of S. Caterina (1405) and S. Antonio di Padova (before 1505), which may have been inserted into two now-truncated west towers, and the now-destroyed chapel of S. Corrado (1608), which possibly occupied the volumes of a monumental arched porch (see discussion in Ch. 2).

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income, tributes, and legal settlements through ius episcopale and the latter controlling gold, coinage, and agricultural usufruct. Both sides managed their financial interventions using different kinds of temporal strategies, employing the devices of continuity and rupture in various ways. These strategies had significant effects on the edifice, affecting the overall combination of liturgical and symbolic features as well the rhythm of construction.

The features and forms of the cathedral came to express, all at once, meanings such as the solidarity of Bari's suffragan bishoprics and their dominance over pilgrimage routes, the cathedral's control over pastoral care and its dedication to local piety, the spiritual rectitude of various lay families, and the individual associations of donors with other families and lords. Responding to this complex visual charge would have required flexibility in the application of formal and spatial schemes, exemplified by the compression of the east facade to accommodate the three-dome scheme and by the modification of the north portal to make room for an ancillary chapel.

The uncertainties and ruptures imposed by the financial structures of S. Corrado would have been acutely felt by laborers in lower rungs of the chain of production. The workforce would have constantly faced new exigencies, such as the revision of the interior liturgical space for the canonry, the completion of the south tower to house a newly bequeathed bell, and the spontaneous enhancement of ornament desired by

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various patrons. The clergy of the fabrica were challenged to find a rhythm of construction that responded to these uncertainties while also issuing coherent briefs to the ateliers. As the next two chapters show, the fabrica and the builders responded gracefully, making a multilayered and evolving program feasible.

The multiplicity of institutional interests and the sporadic quality of finances were two closely interconnected dynamics. They were both related, moreover, to the economic and social situation that characterized Molfetta and other Apulian port cities of the 12th century, locations where intensive agriculture and maritime commerce intersected. These kinds of sites were absorbed into institution-driven strategies of long- distance trade, or "high commerce" (discussed by Horden and Purcell as a politico- economic phenomenon more pronounced in some historical periods than in others).111

The city of Molfetta, attracting large institutions with significant cash holdings and commercial prospects, became populated by social elites whose wealth and influence may have outweighed that of the bishop.

This provides an interesting contrast to the findings of Warnke, who has considered the problem of multi-institutional finances in French Gothic Cathedrals.112

The support base for these churches incorporated several institutions, but was typically

111 Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 365-77. 112 Warnke, Bau und Überbau.

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dominated by the episcopacy, who in the case of France tended to receive more comprehensive diocesan tithes than in Southern Italy. Whereas Warnke concluded that the subdivision of finances among different institutions engendered a subordination of self-interest to a communal project serving God, the situation in Molfetta exemplifies the opposite.113 The appearance of S. Corrado was drawn in multiple directions to serve a matrix of interests and imperatives, even if those interests took the form of public-facing, charitable, and communal functions. This may have been related to the fact that, in contrast to major French cathedrals, S. Corrado was not chiefly supported by natural financial opportunities within the diocese, but from the arrival in Molfetta of large institutional networks that reached across cities and regions. The result was a kaleidoscopic charge, challenging the administration and the lodge to devise new modes of design and construction.

113 See Warnke, Bau und Überbau, 29-60, especially 29: "Die starke Aufmerksamkeit, die die mittelalterlichen Quellen dem Wechselspiel zwischen Eigen- und Fremdmitteln widmen, gilt einer Entwicklung, in der sich ein ausgeweitetes Gesamtinteresse gegen ein partikular eingeengtes Interesse durchzusetzen sucht."

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2. Process: Episodic Construction Strategies and their Advantages

The discussions of the last chapter culminated in a problem. The construction of

S. Corrado depended on the support of many patrons and administrators connected to a diversity of institutions. Affluent lay families sought financial security, social status, and spiritual health; meanwhile the cathedral clergy continuously renegotiated their position in relation to various hierarchies in the Latin Church. As a result, the episcopal fabrica, the entity charged with managing the disbursement of funds, drew upon heterogeneous assets with differing constraints on use. While the ongoing income streams of diocesan tributes could be accumulated and spent on the building effort in a pragmatic fashion, this income was often spontaneously enlarged by episcopal efforts to absorb pastoral functions (often entailing the construction of new liturgical spaces), as well as sudden monetary donations and land grants from the laity (whose specific contingencies stood to periodically reorient the project). The resources of the fabrica thus oscillated between steady flows and unpredictable flashes, between open-endedness and specificity. The fabrica faced the continuous challenge of devising a process of construction that balanced economic vicissitudes with the exigencies of a coherent design.

What relationship existed between the fabrica and the task of design? The verb form of design has the following definition in the Oxford English Dictionary: "Decide

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upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), by making a detailed drawing of it." In the case of Molfetta Cathedral, this definition requires a twofold qualification. First, the appearance of the building was not decided upon all at once by a single mind, but was determined through the coordinated efforts of numerous agents, from quarrymen to patrons. Within this matrix, the personnel of the fabrica had an important role as executors of the design, even if many aspects of the architecture

(especially iconographic statements or technical and structural solutions) fell outside their expertise. Acting as accountants and possibly supervisors of the work, the fabrica mediated between the architectural solutions of the workshop and the symbolic demands of patrons and higher clergy.

The second qualification concerns the phrase " [...] making a detailed drawing."

The construction of S. Corrado, despite having a certain relationship with the act of drawing, should not be reduced to the making of drawings, in the modern sense of preparatory models that determined the official course of the project. Architectural historians such as Turnbull have cast doubt on the notion that medieval builders typically worked from preparatory drawings similar to those of early modern and modern architects.1 Instead, drawing was only one of a number of approaches that

1 See especially D. Turnbull, "The Ad Hoc Collective Work of Building Gothic Cathedrals with Templates, String, and Geometry," Science, Technology, & Human Values 18/3 (1993): 315-40.

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assisted builders in aligning their efforts toward a common end. Planar drawings may not always have been needed in order to set out the footprint of a building: this could be accomplished using relational geometry and modular spaces generated by rope lengths

(for example, a rope could be stretched across the diagonal of a bay, then pivoted to create a new length obeying the multiple √2). Builders tended to use linear representations for purposes other than planning, often incising arch curvatures and molding templates on walls and floors to serve as common references for a collective effort. Drawing was not conceived in the same terms as Alberti's disegno: an integral and detailed formal system preceding the work.2 The design of a building such as Molfetta

Cathedral is better understood as a process that responded to the ongoing challenges of execution.

In this light, the fabrica, by virtue of their involvement in directing the execution of the project, had an important influence on design. Rather than accept that design simply preceded execution, I explore the extent to which the fabrica helped determine the design through execution, which was an indeterminate procedure continuously responding to many variable conditions.

2 Leon Battista Alberti: On the Art of Bulding in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert, N. Leach, and R. Tavenor, 10 vols (Cambridge, 1995; originally printed 1452 as De re aedificatoria), especially I. See M. Trachtenberg, "Building outside time in Alberti's De re aedificatoria," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 48 (Autumn, 2005): 123-34, especially 124, discussing the novelty of Alberti's conception of architectural design as a detailed and comprehensive guide to the entire work.

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The findings of this chapter indicate that the fabrica introduced the key principle of flexibility into the design of S. Corrado. The building unfolded over a sporadic succession of episodes, each of which represented a cohesive strategy specific to the moment of its execution. In the context of this study, an episode can be defined as a discreet building phase. A phase can be distinguished from other phases if it followed a hiatus in construction, was completed by a new set of workmen, or accorded with a significant change in visual and spatial goals. On the basis of a new chronological interpretation of S. Corrado--supported both by analysis of the sequential layers in the built fabric and by comparisons to contemporary buildings--I argue that the overall design did not follow a predetermined plan, but was repeatedly recalibrated.

Embracing a fluid design process offered key advantages. The fabrica leveraged the flexibility of the episode in accomodating the changing demands of prelates and donors. The symbolic strategies of the patrons were folded into the appearance of the building at each stage of its piecemeal completion. Each episode constituted its own, ephemeral visual program juxtaposing old and new fabric. A newly completed phase could represent a fresh beginning, a purposeful suspension of completion, an augmentation, a conspicuous erasure, or even a major transformation disguised as a continuation. Each set of interventions also responded to the physical conditions of inherited fabric, often profoundly transforming the character of these structures in

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service of the new scheme. S. Corrado is thus a remarkable example in which to explore the positive uses of an ad hoc, evolving building process, and permits consideration of how this mode of construction was particularly suited to the challenges of a complex financial situation.

State of the Question: Toward a Strategic Explanation of Building Phases

Previous scholars of S. Corrado have offered various interpretations for its episodic construction; however, most have emphasized the formal continuity between phases and, as a result, have not engaged closely with the theme of change over time. A few arguments, however, have broached the problems of S. Corrado's evolving program, furnishing points of departure for relating the building to dynamics such as changing economic fortunes and the flexibility of ateliers. Architectural historians specializing on other material can also be consulted for the interpretation of buildings with fluid and open-ended construction histories.

A number of authors have pointed out the strong difference in ornament between the east end of S. Corrado--featuring blind arches on the interior and exterior, figurated entablatures (fig. 3), and large, sophisticated capitals--and the two westerly bays completed later--lacking blind arches and featuring more plain and modest

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architectonic sculpture. For Fontana, this change indicated a decrease in fortunes, and not simply a change in stylistic preferences.3 Taking into account the highly variable financial conditions discussed in the last chapter, it is possible to revisit the effects of economic conditions on the scope of construction, and to consider how the fabrica cut costs in the design process.

The visual evidence of S. Corrado has repeatedly challenged scholars to explain a building characterized by revision. Over the course of the last century, evidence gradually came to light that a crypt was originally projected for the transept of S.

Corrado, but was subsequently either modified, destroyed, or left incomplete during the medieval period of construction. Meanwhile studies of the formal typologies in Apulian churches revealed that S. Corrado uniquely combined two different layouts common in the region (a transept basilica of the kind normally covered by a wooden roof, and a three-aisle, three-bay interior covered by axial domes and quadrant vaults). In addition, the striking structural differences exhibited by the domes (employing pendentive- as well as squinch-based structural systems) were found to be authentic when the plaster was completely removed from the interior walls in the first half of the 20th century. The various on-site evidence and chronological arguments supporting these discoveries

(especially those offered by Fontana, Belli D'Elia, and Kappel) will be addressed in more

3 Fontana, Chiesa vecchia, 12.

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detail as part of the chronological analyses of this chapter. More important at present are the set of shared scholarly approaches to these kinds of problems.

The signs of discontinuity discovered by art historians and archaeologists conflicted with an old scholarly consensus about the unity of the medieval edifice. More recently, Pane, Venditti, and Leonardis have steered a middle course between interpretations based on continuity and those based on rupture. For these authors, the discrepancies in the fabric indicated variations and experiments carried out by lodge, which nonetheless did not disturb the general framework of an original total-church design. Pane posited that such variations did not harm the "immediacy of vision" in S.

Corrado, but accorded with a medieval concept of unity based on multiplicity and particularity.4 Venditti similarly argued that flexibility in execution existed alongside an overarching plan: he interpreted the building as a succession of spaces, each one constructed according to its own logic in addition to a unifying formal outline established at the beginning of the project.5 The author further attributed the ideosyncrasies of the cathedral to a "medieval Southern Italian Weltanschauung," in

4 Pane, "Melphicta," 161: "Tuttavia l'unità della chiesa di Molfetta è raggiunta attraverso perplessità e variazioni particulari che però non tolgono nulla al valore espressivo dell'opera, anzi lo esaltano, attribuendogli un accento avventuroso e patetico che lo accuma a quello delle maggiori composizioni dell'età romanica." 5 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," III, 94.

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which artisanal intuition took the place of "pure geometry."6 Leonardis recently proposed that the planners or masons worked from a mental model of the building, which preceded execution and was compromised in a controlled way when actualized in the process of construction.7 The types of methods offered by Leonardis represent a powerful approach for the study of workshop practice and applied geometric systems.

Despite the merits of pointing out the flexibility and adaptability of medieval architectural praxis, the continued recourse of many authors to the idea of an original, cohesive design has imposed a teleological oneness on the complex chronology of S.

Corrado. As a result, the crypt has primarily been discussed in binary fashion: whether or not it ever existed and whether or not it was part of the 'original plan.' The crypt has not been considered on its own terms as a meaningful milestone in the building process.

The combination of a transept basilica and a three-dome church has also been discussed predominantly in relation to the notion of a primary design, with most interpretations treating S. Corrado as a hybrid typology. An alternative possibility, that the two concepts were introduced in two different building phases, has not been developed in

6 "In sostanza, per quanto la lentezza dell'esecuzione non può essere del tutto esclusa, va d'altro canto posto l'accento sulla Waltanschauung medievale del Mezzogiorno d'Italia, così lontana dal rigore strutturale nordico, bensì pregna di pittoresca manualità artigiana, determinata da un impulso intuitivo inconciliabile con la pura geometria." 7 Leonardis, "Architettura romanica," 22.

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detail.8 The Romantic emphasis placed by Pane and Venditti on an overall 'unity in multiplicity' has flattened the interpretation of strikingly diverse features such as the domes. By relating this multiplicity, once again, to an original (if flexible) vision, these authors have missed an opportunity to interpret the rhetorical and structural strategies applied with each revision.

There is, to be sure, much to be gained by considering the extent to which each successive phase borrowed from the one before it. Early phases often contributed foundations, wall fabric, and formal ideas to later ones. But it is equally important to take into account the opposite phenomenon: the capacity of each episode to subordinate earlier construction to its own, entirely new goals. Both points are useful in reorienting the discussion away from choices made at the level of the whole work and toward those concerning each episode.

Assessing the unique circumstances confronted by each building phase avoids a diachronic variant of the formalist model by which the end product governs its phases in a rule-based model, much as a whole governs its parts. In his discussions of the study of practice, Bourdieu admonished,9

[...] Practice, in its most specific aspect, [...] is annihilated when the scheme is identified with the model: retrospective necessity becomes prospective necessity, the product a

8 See further discussion below. 9 Bourdieu, Outline, 8-9.

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project; and things which have happened, and can no longer not happen, become the irresistible future of the acts which made them happen.

As explained by the sociologist, models and rule-based explanations of action tend to flatten a series of choices into a single, circumscribable phenomenon, and thus strip away the moment-to-moment content that characterizes the subject's predicament and guides his practice. Bourdieu suggested "substituting strategy for rule, [which] reintroduces time, with its rhythm, its orientation, its irreversibility" [emphasis original].10 In other words, by considering the building phase outside a parts-to-whole relationship and instead as a singular, strategic response to time-specific circumstances, we can begin to discover the positive uses and specific logic of each episode.

Architectural historians such as Trachtenberg and Bruzelius have pioneered the consideration of the temporal strategies of medieval construction. Trachtenberg has argued that medieval builders, working under a pre-Albertian architectural regime, accepted and embraced fluidity and change, following principles such as

"retrosynthesis," whereby each new intervention introduced its own coherent logic to which earlier fabric was subordinated.11 Trachtenberg's discussions can help us reinterpret the impression of visual and spatial harmony at S. Corrado in terms of later

10 Bourdieu, Outline, 9. 11 See Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time, 142: "Retrosynthesis required that planning always be synoptic [...] a form of overall unity must always obtain--a unity imposed retroactively."

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interventions rather than an original design. Bruzelius has suggested that some buildings did not conform to total-church designs in the first place, and has pioneered the interpretation of each construction phase for its own practical, aesthetic, symbolic, and political goals.12 Of particular relevance to the example of S. Corrado is the idea of

"programmed phases of incompletion," a phenomenon which Bruzelius has noted in mendicant churches.13

Applying these methods, I construct something of an ekphrasis of each episodic revision: a rhetorical description that finds meaning in the attempts of each intervention to build upon, appropriate, and reorder the structures and spaces that preceded it. In building my interpretations, I consider both the visual and symbolic effects instantiated by each phase, as well as the way each episode adapted to the constraints imposed, and opportunities afforded, by factors such as finances, the physical environment, and the solutions of workshops (who were also challenged to evolve their repertoires to meet demand).14 These various factors can be elucidated through a set of questions:

1. What is the relative chronology of the volumes and structures found in the present building, and what are their approximate dates, as deduced by a mixed method of

12 See Bruzelius, "Project and Process," 114: "Few churches reflect a single 'vision' and many, perhaps most, are instead the result of a sequence of ideas that modify, or even transform, the earlier structure or original program." 13 Bruzelius, "Project and Process," 115. 14 On the mutual interdependence of the choices of clients and artists, see M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention. On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven, 1985), 47-50.

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stratigraphic and comparative analysis (see below)?

2. What was the scope of each phase, defined as the state of the building resulting from the creation, revision, and/or destruction carried out within an episode?

3. How did supervisors and administrators adapt each episode to the particular financial circumstances of the time, as well as to the fabric inherited from earlier phases?

4. To what extent did each phase strategy require flexibility in its execution by the lodge?

5. How did each episode respond strategically to the variable of time (either by progressing construction to a certain milestone, eliminating previous choices, or embellishing finished areas at the neglect of unfinished ones)?

Evidence and Method

I approach the construction chronology of S. Corrado using the methods of stratigraphic and comparative analysis. The goal of stratigraphy is to comprehend relative chronology (the sequential ordering of building phases). By comparing the physical elements associated with each phase of S. Corrado to comparable sites, and by considering the documents discussed in the last chapter, it is possible to align the relative chronology with approximate dates.

Stratigraphic analysis is a method of studying diachronic phenomena through

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the recognition of temporal 'layers' of cohesive and/or contemporaneous construction, as well as the divisions between these layers.15 Layers can be inferred from the following signs in the built fabric:

1. Masonry breaks, signs of disjuncture in the wall that suggest an interruption in the sequence of work. Breaks often imply, by their shape and position, the sequential primacy of construction on one side of the break. Vertical breaks are typically betrayed by a misalignment between the horizontal mortar joints of two adjacent sections of wall.

Horizontal breaks are often indicated by a row of stones razed to a narrow coursing, a shift in the horizontal alignment of the joints, or the termination of a nearby vertical break. When a zone of masonry is delineated in part by a horizontal break, it usually means that the area above the break was emplaced after the area below. A planar surface exhibiting lacerations can also represent a masonry break. In this study, diagrams of masonry breaks were made using orthophotographs of wall elevations (produced using the digital Photogrammetry software Agisoft PhotoScan), permitting the attribution of particular zones to particular phases (Charts 3-6). The use of a photogrammetric model also assisted in the undistorted assessment of proportions and approximate measurements.

15 See especially E. C. Harris, Principles of archaeological stratigraphy (London, 1997; originally published 1979); and G. P. Brogiolo and A. Cagnana, eds., Archeologia dell'architettura: metodi e interpretazioni (Florence, 2012), especially 9-19, for a historic overview of methods of construction archaeology and stratigraphy.

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2. Units of reference, variations in the built fabric indicating a shift in the technical repertoire of the builders. The units of reference found to be most relevant include:

• bay lengths.

• alignments of walls.

• dimensions of pier and respond elements (including supporting masonry,

plinths, bases, shafts, capitals, and imposts).

• the profiles of plinths (scarped or not scarped).

• base and impost molding sequences (the order of elements such as the fillet,

fascia, scotia, torus, etc.).

• window shape and construction.

Zones of continuously constructed masonry and closely related units of reference are hypothetically assigned to the same phase. These phase divisions are not to be considered a comprehensive list: there is always the possibility of discovering additional phase divisions and expanding the number of phases (for example, some scholars study breaks between work days). My method has allowed me to identify five hypothetical episodes between about 1100 and 1300, each with a sufficiently cohesive set of characteristics to permit analysis and interpretation.

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Phase 1: Standalone Transept Crypt

Scholars have often noted a series of signs in the fabric of S. Corrado suggesting that a crypt was originally planned or built in the area of the transept. A number of hypotheses have been offered about the form of the crypt, the chronology of its execution, and its ultimate fate. It has been suggested that the crypt was built as part of the medieval edifice, then destroyed later (Bertaux; G. Valente; Samarelli);16 that it was planned and begun but never completed (Fontana; Pane; Venditti; Ludes; Leonardis);17 or that it was constructed and reconfigured on a smaller scale before its ultimate suppression (Kappel).18 Complications may have been introduced by a change in the overall plan that made the crypt obsolete (Belli D'Elia);19 or by more practical circumstances, such as encounters with uneven bedrock (Kappel)20 and/or earlier structures on the site (Belli D'Elia).21 My analysis favors a scenario that accords with a combination of suggestions by Kappel, Jacobs, Belli D'Elia, and Venditti: the crypt was

16 See Bertaux, L'Art, 384; G. Valente, Duomo antico, 47-49; and Samarelli, Vecchio duomo 17-18, who argued that the crypt could have been destroyed in 1386, a year in which the chapter reported an expansion to twenty-four members. 17 Fontana, Chiesa vecchia, 24; Pane, "Melphicta," Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," III, 99-100; Ludes, Romanischen Kuppelkirchen; Leonardis, Architettura romanica, 23. 18 Kappel, S. Nicola, 268-69. 19 Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 208. 20 Kappel, S. Nicola, 268. 21 Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 208.

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originally planned as a standalone entity, then was modified and destroyed in successive phases of the medieval building effort.

The construction episode concerned with the establishment of the crypt in its original formation ("Phase 1") appears to have resulted in a crypt vessel five bays wide

(north-to-south) and at least three bays deep, featuring an additional longitudinal bay for square tower basements and a semicircular apse. These volumes were enclosed by a rectangular wall, establishing the foundations and lower parts of the current east end.

The interior of the crypt appears to have been divided by small columns supporting groin vaults.

Several fragments belonging to the lost crypt are visible in the present building.

These include interior pilasters with their imposts--some hidden below the current pavement and some exposed by the 20th-century stairwells leading to the basements of the east towers (figs. 24-25)--as well as fragmentary wall arches on the east side of respond 2RS (fig. 26), on the east side of pier 2PS (fig. 27), and on the south end of the east wall. Lacerated springers belonging to the lost groin vaults can be seen in the northeast, southeast (fig. 28), and southwest corners of the transept.

These features can be distinguished from later construction by masonry breaks

(Charts 4, 5). Especially striking is a vertical division between the west edge of the north transept wall and the lower masonry of respond 2RN, which interrupts the crypt arcade

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in the middle of its third longitudinal bay (fig. 24).22 An analogous break between the south crypt arcade and the supporting masonry of respond 2RS can also be inferred (fig.

26). Here, the transverse respond is located at the bay division at the end of the second longitudinal bay of the crypt, rather than in the middle of the third bay. The transverse wall arch that springs from this juncture may not have originally been part of a wall, but rather an open transverse arch leading into the third crypt bay, and was later transformed by the addition of masonry above and below the arch. Horizontal breaks separate the crypt-level wall arches of the east end from the upper walls of the transept, which were completed later. The pilasters on the north and south upper transept walls were inserted into the spandrels of the crypt arches after the first phase. Additional breaks suggest that the projecting masonry supporting responds 3RN and 3RS and the east shafts of piers 2PN and 2PS were not built as part of Phase 1.

The elements belonging to the first building phase are further related to each other in terms of dimensions and workmanship. The bay lengths projected by all of the arch fragments are approximately equal (about 3.7 m); the molding profiles belonging to the imposts of the north and south crypt-level pilasters are identical (a stack, from bottom to top, of torus, fillet, echinus, fillet, and fascia); and the north and south crypt

22 Kappel, S. Nicola, 268 also observed this.

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walls feature the same unusual type of window, with its upper extent bounded by the intrados of a wall arch (fig. 25).

The fragments associated with Phase 1 outline a typical regional scheme. A 3 x 5- bay hall crypt in the area of the transept, featuring a single semicircular apse, along with square east towers connected by a rectilinear wall, is a typology shared with a few churches in the region, in particular the cathedrals of Giovinazzo (fig. 29) and Biscéglie, towns neighboring Molfetta on the Apulian littoral. The crypt of Giovinazzo is particularly similar to that of Molfetta, featuring square crypt bays, a crypt-level apsidal window bounded by walls that interrupt an east passageway between the tower basements, and the aforementioned feature of windows enclosed by wall arches.23

Although the construction of the crypts at Giovinazzo and Molfetta are difficult to date with precision, both crypts were probably underway prior to donations in the 1170s and

1180s, and could have existed in the early or mid 12th century, or even by the late 11th.24

23 See Kappel, S. Nicola, 273, for this comparison. 24 See Chapter 1 for the documentation Molfetta, S. Corrado: the church was first mentioned early in the 12th century (1136), was supported by donations at the end of the same century (1184), and was apparently still underway until the end of the 13th century, with new funds for construction being sought as late as 1285. The history of Giovinazzo Cathedral is not dissimilar. S. Maria in Giovinazzo was mentioned in 1103, but the first known donation for construction was an 1172 privilege, allowing the bishop to take on affidati (serfs transferred from another property) to aid in the construction effort. The dedication of the medieval church did not occur until 1283. See E. Cillis, "La cattedrale di Giovinazzo, restauri e rinvenimenti," Cultura e societá in Puglia in etá sveva e angioina: atti del convegno di studi, Bitonto, 11-12-13 dicembre 1987 (Bitonto, 1989): 327-64; and Kappel, S. Nicola, 252-53.

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The strategy of erecting a transept hall crypt as a standalone entity prior to subsequent construction had a precedent in the nearby church of S. Nicola in Bari. The crypt of S. Nicola was consecrated in 1089, but work on the rest of the church only resumed after a five-year hiatus.25 Consecrating the crypt marked an institutional as well as an architectural milestone. At S. Nicola and other local sites, the transept crypt served as a repository for relics: for example, the basilica in Bari had famously obtained the coveted remains of Saint Nicholas of Myra in 1087.26 The completion of the hall crypt in such an edifice served for keeping relics, holding services, and accommodating pilgrims.

In the case of Molfetta, obtaining relics like those of Bari would have been a lofty aspiration; it was not until the 14th century that the cathedral acquired the relics of San

Corrado. The 12th-century administration of Molfetta Cathedral may nonetheless have ordered the construction of a transept hall crypt in order to either spur future investment in relics or forge an association with nearby shrines on the coastal Apulian pilgrimage route. The standalone crypt would furthermore have conveyed the symbolic content of the incomplete building it projected. A five-bay-wide vessel covered by groin vaults and filled with monolithic columns, probably of reused Roman spolia, the crypt would have promised a lavish transept basilica on a large scale. The transept was a

25 At S. Nicola in Bari, the crypt was consecrated in 1089 before work resumed toward completing the rest of the church five years later (see Kappel, S. Nicola, 101-2). 26 See also Kappel, S. Nicola, 19. See also Kappel, S. Nicola, 303, for the translation of the relics of another saint, Nicholas the Pilgrim, to the crypt of Trani Cathedral in 1142.

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prestigious form featured by major churches in the region, especially cathedrals. It thus may have been imperative for the cathedral of Molfetta (elevated as a bishopric by 1071) to prioritize the construction of such an institutionally significant space, even if resources were not available to complete the upper church.27

There was a certain degree of regularization in the implementation of hall crypts in the Terra di Bari. Aside from a few exceptions, churches that feature a transept crypt in this region either conform to the 3 x 5 plan (Molfetta Cathedral, Giovinazzo

Cathedral, and Biscéglie Cathedral) or to the much more ambitious 4 x 9 plan (eg. S.

Nicola in Bari, Bitonto Cathedral, Trani Cathedral). The examples featuring the 3 x 5 crypt sacrifice the strongly projecting transept arms of the larger basilicas. The smaller transepts either match the outer extents of the side aisles of the nave or project slightly beyond them. The administration of Molfetta, neither as wealthy nor as ancient as major sees like Bari or Trani, may have opted for the smaller option in order to enjoy a discount on material. The 3 x 5 arrangement, by forfeiting the wide transept of the 4 x 9 plan, would have required only 8-10 columns instead of 28-30.

The emergence of two predominant spatial layouts for transept crypts, one with

15 bays and the other with 36, provided an opportunity for ateliers in the Terra di Bari to fulfill multiple contracts while using a finite vocabulary of proportional schemes, and

27 See discussion in Chapter 1.

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thus offered an economic advantage over a highly customized, artisanal model of production. At the same time, a degree of flexibility was afforded to church administrations, who could select from among different sizes when applying the strategy of a standalone crypt, depending on their particular circumstances and resources.

There was additional flexibility in the deployment of transept crypts in Apulia, as the planimetric geometry used to produce them did not require right angles. The adjustable alignments of walls at Molfetta Cathedral and S. Nicola in Bari allowed these crypts to be adapted to the variable constraints of the urban environment. At Molfetta, the north and south walls of the transept were set out perpendicular to the slight curve of the city block, causing these walls to separate toward the west. Another cause for this discrepancy might have been the existence of an earlier building on the grounds: a congregational parish church for the community may have been needed from the time of the city's initial fortification, which seems to have taken place in the late 9th or early 10th century.28 Whatever earlier configuration was encountered by the foundation planners at

S. Corrado, the use of flexible alignments could address any problems posed by earlier structures. On the other hand, these misalignments introduced complexity into the

28 See Chapter 1 for discussion of the original fortification of Molfetta. See Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 208, suggesting the existence of an earlier church on the site of S. Corrado.

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charge of the stonecutters, who were required to vary the lengths and curvatures of the crypt arches.

There was an additional degree of versatility in limiting the intervention to the crypt alone. If construction had resumed on a full transept basilica following the scale of the 3 x 5 hall crypt established in Phase 1, the builders would have encountered an impasse. A nave of sufficient size may not have been able to fit between such a transept and the shore, which, prior to a 20th-century land reclamation, bordered the cathedral immediately to the west of its current footprint (fig. 30). If, however, the crypt is reinterpreted not as a waypoint to a larger plan, but as a strategic episode with a more immediate, short-term agenda, it easier to understand this kind of development. There was no pressing need for the builders of the original crypt to solve the problem of the construction of the nave. As far as the goals of Phase 1 were concerned, the nave and the upper transept were a desired future rather than an imminent present. Even though the crypt was probably altered later, and ultimately suppressed, it performed its original function of encouraging later construction.

Phase 2: Toward a Transept Basilica and a Nave Crypt

The original structure of the transept crypt appears to have been adjusted by a number of revisions in the upper parts of the east end and in the lower walls of the nave

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and aisles. These changes both altered the original crypt and initiated a scheme very different from the current configuration of the cathedral. I propose that "Phase 2" resulted in the establishment of new walls and foundations according to the frame of a wooden-roof transept basilica.

Other than Jacobs, who pointed out that the upper parts of the transept were probably executed over at least two different phases, scholars have not proposed an episodic construction for this area of the church.29 My analysis suggests that Phase 2 saw the reduction of the western extent of the transept crypt, the construction of parts of the aisles in preparation for a basilican nave with a small intercolumniation, and a planned extension of the crypt into the western parts of the church. Such an intervention would not have called for transverse arches in the nave or longitudinal arches in the transept, and thus would have included fewer capitals and other sculptural decorations than ultimately featured.

The areas to be attributed to this phase are marked out by several masonry breaks (Charts 4, 5). Above the horizontal break delimiting the tops of the crypt-level transept arches is a large area linked by continuous masonry, including the interior east wall of the transept (fig. 31) (excluding responds 3RN and 3RS, the masonry supporting

29 Jacobs suggested that the transept of S. Corrado did not originally call for interior blind arches, on the basis of the masonry break between the crypt arch on the west face of pier 2PS and the projecting foundation for the easterly support. Jacobs, S. Maria Icona Vetere. See discussion in Kappel, S. Nicola, 269.

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these responds, and the upper-most parts of the apse); the upper parts of the exterior blind arcade (including the corbels and fragmentary shafts inserted to support interlaced arches);30 the upper parts of the interior north and south transept walls up to the imposts and corbels supporting the blind arches; the supporting masonry of respond 2RN

(bearing fragments of wall arches that may have supported the new vaults in the transept crypt and nave crypt) (figs. 32, 33);31 the plinth, base, shaft, capital, and impost of respond 2RN; and the masonry to the east of the vertical masonry break in the north aisle wall of the nave, including the partial blind arch and its superstructure up to the corbel table supporting the quadrant vault, as well as the arch-shaped palimpsests at the base of the wall, which enclose masonry replaced in a later phase. Other homogeneous zones appear to belong to Phase 2. The area of the south transept wall belonging to

Phase 2 may have originally connected to the (largely restored) supporting masonry of respond 2RS and the crypt-level construction in the lower parts of the south aisle wall of the nave. Masonry breaks separate this entire zone from the rest of respond 2RS and the upper parts of the south aisle wall of the nave, which should be attributed to a later episode. The possibility that respond 2RS was almost entirely replaced after Phase 2 is

30 See discussion in Chapter 1. 31 The arch on the west face of the lower wall of respond 2RN projects slightly in order to support a vault, while the arch on the east face of this wall was probably constructed similarly, with the projecting section lacerated back in a later phase to create the rubble surface currently visible. The east-facing arch may have supported a new vault in the transept crypt.

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supported by the existence of exterior breaks on the southeast corner of the transept corresponding to the breaks on the interior: only the masonry on the lowest part of this exterior corner, below the cavetto molding, is continuous with the exterior wall of the south aisle of the nave, and thus might be associated with Phase 2 (fig. 34).

A number of matching elements support the unity of the areas assigned to Phase

2, while also suggesting that several other elements, dispersed in the current arrangement, may be attributed to this phase. The east wall includes matching entrances to the towers at the original floor level of the transept (now elevated above the current level), apsidioles, and similarly constructed round-headed windows above the apsidioles (fig. 31). The two pilasters in the north and south transept walls once included plinths and bases at the original floor level (as deduced from the lacerated outlines still observed in the wall (fig. 35)), and the pilasters are positioned in the north and south transept walls to create equal intercolumniations. Because the new western extent of the transept crypt was located in the middle of the third bay, the pilaster on the upper north transept wall was positioned slightly to the left of the crypt-level bay division below.

The supporting masonry of responds 2RN and 2RS can be grouped together on the basis of their similar widths (1.2-1.3 m). The lower walls of piers 2PN and 2PS (not including the masonry supporting the eastern members of these piers) align with these responds, implying that they formed part of a new crypt-level wall that curtailed the

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western extent of the transept crypt.

Many of the plinths, bases, half-shafts sections, capitals, and imposts that compose the piers and responds of the east end were probably originally fashioned for

Phase 2, though most of them probably did not match their current configuration. The conversion of the church from the transept-basilica arrangement of Phase 2 to the current formation would have entailed an adjustment to the relative heights of the supports. For example, in a normal basilican elevation, the west-facing members of the two crossing piers would have been required to match the heights of the supports facing into the side aisles, rather than echo the supports facing across the central aisle as they do currently. This transformation would have caused, in turn, a rearrangement of the variously sized capital blocks, as the heights of adjacent capitals at the same level were expected to match.

Given the likelihood of a major reorganization of pier elements after Phase 2, it is difficult to specify which elements belonged to this episode, or determine where they were originally positioned. If respond 2RN was emplaced in its entirety according to its current configuration during Phase 2 (as the stratigraphic evidence suggests), it may be possible to associate the execution of plinths, bases, shaft sections, and capital blocks currently making up responds 3RN and 3RS with the same phase, as they closely match the dimensions of respond 2RN. There are also idiosyncrasies in three capitals whose

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ultimate emplacement occurred in "Phase 3,"32 suggesting that they were originally carved and emplaced in Phase 2 and were subsequently repositioned. Furthermore, the shafts of responds 2RN, 3RN, and 3RS, and pier 2PN might be associated with each other on the grounds that they all conform to a semicircular plan, rather than the horse- shoe plan employed in later phases.

Altogether, the modifications of Phase 2 included the shortening of the transept crypt to the west and the establishment of the fragmentary lines of a transept basilica with a hall crypt, a nave crypt, and a sparsely decorated upper church interior suited for a wooden roof, with the nave left unfinished. Technical comparisons can be made to a small number of churches in the region. Choices in structural detailing accord with

Giovinazzo Cathedral (both churches feature the interlaced arches unknown elsewhere in the Apulian context, as well as round-headed windows in parts of their transept walls) (fig. 36) and with Bari Cathedral (where blind arches survive on parts of the interior transept walls) (fig. 37).33 The proportions of the floor plan outlined by Phase 2 at Molfetta, on the other hand, are not those employed at Giovinazzo or Bari, but follow more closely the scheme employed by Conversano Cathedral (fig. 38) and

Cathedral. These buildings are distinguished by a slight differential between the width

32 See discussion below. 33 See also the transept walls of Cathedral, reconstructed in its principal volumes between the end of the 11th century and the middle of the 12th. See Kappel, S. Nicola, 345.

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of the transept and that of the side aisles of the nave--as we shall see, this may have been the product of planners employing a rotating-square method to plot out the proportional relationships between bays.34 The height of respond 2RN at Molfetta

Cathedral, like similar responds at Conversano Cathedral, creates a 2:1 ratio between the height and width of the side aisle (figs. 39, 40). At Molfetta, furthermore, respond 2RN does not accord well with the elevation of the current three-dome scheme. Because the respond was incorporated into this later elevation but failed to meet the appropriate height (as represented by the corresponding respond 2RS--firmly associated with "Phase

3"), an awkward area of unarticulated wall now separates the apex of the transverse arch

2RN-2PN and the curve of the quadrant vault above.

The medieval documents for the cathedrals of Giovinazzo, Conversano, and

Bitetto do not offer strong absolute dates.35 A better reference for the approximate date of Phase 2 at Molfetta Cathedral comes from its own written record: in 1184, a lay donation was made in support of the "completion" of S. Corrado, in return for which prayers on the donor's behalf were expected at the high altar.36 This seems to suggest

34 See discussion in Chapter 3. 35 For Giovinazzo Cathedral, see above. See Kappel, S. Nicola, 242, for the documentation of Conversano Cathedral during the Romaneque period of its construction. For documents pertaining to Bitetto Cathedral, see Kappel, S. Nicola, 213; who cites Schulz, Denkmaeler, I, 78, for the undocumented claim that the town and cathedral of Bitetto were destroyed by King William I in 1164. 36 See discussion in Chapter 1.

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that the upper church of the transept, where the altar was housed, was probably at least underway by 1184.

Another comparison for the nave crypt employed at Molfetta is Trani Cathedral, featuring a narrow crypt, three bays wide, with its outer walls corresponding to the side aisles of the nave (figs. 41-42). The nave crypt at Trani is flanked by vestibule spaces communicating with the transept crypt and with stairwells into the nave. The existence of such vestibules in Molfetta Cathedral is implied by the arch fragment on the west face of the supporting masonry of respond 2RN (fig. 33). Thus the nave crypt of Molfetta

Cathedral may have been configured similarly to that of Trani Cathedral: possibly three bays wide and bounded by lateral walls corresponding to the side aisles in the nave above.

The transept basilica of Phase 2 followed a streamlined aesthetic sensibility different than the current domed scheme. The transept, lacking longitudinal arches in the crossing--and therefore only featuring shafts and capitals in the transverse direction-

-was formally separate from the nave, which would have lacked transverse arches along with the accompanying supports and decoration. In addition, the crypt-level construction in the apse and nave constituted another self-contained area.

The juxtaposition of volumes and streamlined formal articulation would have accentuated a liturgical subdivision of the interior, meeting the institutional goal of

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showcasing a variety of sacred functions in the east end. The upper church of the transept would have served as a proper sanctuary space in which to house masses and prayers on behalf of donors, as is suggested in the language of Griso's 1184 pro anima donation.37 The nave crypt, featuring entrances to the transept crypt while continuing its groin vaulting system, may have functioned to provide additional space to accommodate prospective pilgrimage traffic (though the relics of San Corrado had almost certainly not been obtained by the time this space was built). In partially setting out the upper church of the nave, the fabrica appears to have promised a future space for the lay congregation.

The choice to implement a transept basilica featuring a nave crypt was flexibly adapted to the various Apulian churches that employed it. In the first place, this strategy was used in churches of varying scale. Trani Cathedral, for example, applied this approach despite possessing a much larger footprint, organized around a large, 4 x 9 hall crypt. Furthermore, the strategy was used when different configurations of earlier fabric were inhereted. In the case of Trani, the current edifice featuring a transept crypt and hall crypt was built between the end of the 11th and the late 12th century in place of an earlier church on the site: a three-aisle basilica with a single apse (fig. 41).38 According

37 See discussion in Chapter 1. 38 Kappel, S. Nicola, 302-4; 307.

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to Kappel's convincing interpretation, around 1094 the administration began to expand the earlier church to the east by building the current transept crypt, then translated the relics of St. Nicholas the Pilgrim to the crypt in 1142. At this point, work could have continued on the upper church of the transept, as well as on the crypt and upper church of the nave, an effort that unfolded in stages and appears to have involved destroying the piers of the earlier basilica and reusing the pier foundations.39 Whereas at Trani

Cathedral the nave of the earlier church was inherited and modified (opened and expanded to the east, and later destroyed), the builders of Molfetta Cathedral inherited and transformed a pre-existing transept crypt rather than a nave. Both administrations achieved similar results by using versatile construction strategies. In both cases, a wall was inserted to establish the new dividing line between the transept crypt and the nave crypt; meanwhile earlier features were destroyed (at Trani the old apse was demolished, while at Molfetta a bay of the transept crypt was eliminated). In each building, the new fabric was erected adjacent to the dividing wall, making it possible, both at Trani and

Molfetta, to achieve the same desired height differential (about 1 m.) between the floor level of the nave and that of the transept.

39 See discussion by Kappel, S. Nicola, 308. A construction donation in 1163 suggests that the building of the upper church was underway at this time. Many aspects of the upper church of the nave have, however, been associated with the early 13th century on stylistic grounds, suggesting an interrupted chronology.

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Phase 2 at Molfetta, like Phase 1, also gained flexibility by compromising the alignments of walls and axes. The lower wall of the south aisle of the nave appears to have been aligned to incorporate the walls belonging to the episcopal palace to the south of the nave. Because this phase of construction did not anticipate the use of nave domes or its accompanying transverse arches, the varying axial alignments would not have been aesthetically or structurally problematic. By aligning them to incorporate earlier structures, the fabrica minimized the need to build new walls.

The temporal strategy of Phase 2 was to establish, more comprehensively than before, the outline of the entire church. In contrast to Phase 1, which employed a transept crypt that projected an overall edifice too large for the site, the efforts of Phase 2 addressed the challenge of anticipating the total footprint. To this end the western extent of the transept was trimmed back to make space for a nave between the transept and the shore to the west. By positioning the easterly parts of the nave to link up with surrounding structures, such as the bishop's palace, the administration was further able to project the westerly parts of the nave. The blocking out of the entire work would have conveyed to patrons more immediately than before how construction might unfold with continued investment in the future.

Although Phase 2 projected an all-encompassing layout, it was executed in parts corresponding to its liturgical subdivisions. The sequence of construction within Phase 2

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is revealed by the apparent abandonment of work partway through construction, before the completion of respond 2RS and the upper south wall of the nave. This spontaneous interruption shows that construction had probably commenced on the nave crypt before the upper church of the transept was completed. Following the initiation of the nave crypt, the construction of the upper church may have started from the first bay of the north side aisle of the nave, then proceeded clockwise to the north, east, and south walls of the transept. This possible sequence carries striking implications about the prioritization of construction. While the continuation of work on the nave crypt following the completion of the transept crypt would have been logical--especially if both spaces served a shared function such as accommodating pilgrims--the construction of a single side-aisle bay of the nave prior to the completion of the transept underlines a more complex strategy. The fabrica, despite prioritizing the completion of the transept over that of the nave, appears to have placed importance on at least commencing the nave, as if to assure viewers that this important congregational space had not been neglected.

Phase 3: Toward a Three-Dome Configuration

The concept of a wooden-roof transept basilica projected in Phase 2 was dramatically transformed by the next set of interventions. "Phase 3" refocused attention

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on the transept and its adjacent spaces, transforming them into the eastern parts of a typical Apulian scheme of three domes on axis with quadrant vaults over the side aisles.

This phase also seems to have occasioned the demolition of the crypt, an event which would have unified the interior liturgical space. The presence of a three-axial-dome scheme in a major cathedral is unusual in Apulia and has captured the attention of scholars. In opposition to previous authors, who have argued that the three-dome scheme was creatively hybridized with that of a transept basilica, my analysis suggests that the introduction of a support system for domes postdated the establishment of the transept and the crypt, while also profoundly restructuring these spaces, constituting more of a rupture than a hybrid.

Attributable to Phase 3 are several sections of the transept and nave walls, all of which appear to have been added to pre-existing fabric that did not anticipate them

(Charts 4, 5). The two semicircular blind arches on pilasters on the south interior transept wall, the partial arch on the interior wall of the south side aisle of the nave, and the upper parts of respond 2RS (including its plinth, base, shaft, capital and impost), are coursed continuously with each other and are separate from the Phase 2 masonry below.

The corresponding arches on the north wall of the transept also make up a cohesive area and may be attributed to Phase 3. The presence of corbels supporting the east and west springers of the blind arches in the north transept, along with the one supporting the

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east springing of the blind arches on the south wall, suggest that these arches were reappointed during Phase 3, probably in a lower position than before. The narrow pilaster strip supporting the west springing of the south transept wall arcade was probably built as part of the newly constructed middle and upper parts of respond 2RS

(fig. 43). The superstructure above the blind arches allowed for the installation of a corbel table and quadrant vaults in the east bay and the easterly parts of the nave aisles

(fig. 44). Also identifiable with Phase 3 is the upper part of the apse, which is proportionally correct in relation to the height of the quadrant vaults in the transept and accommodates the lower extent of the east dome--most likely also introduced during this construction episode.

The destruction of the crypt in the transept and nave also appears to have occurred during Phase 3. The work to remove the crypt-level groin vaults in the nave and transept left behind rubble surfaces or replacement stones on the north and south walls of the easterly part of the nave; on the southeast corner of the masonry supporting respond 2RN (fig. 45); on the east face of the masonry supporting respond 2RS; and on the north, east, and south walls of the transept. The new responds 3RN and 3RS and the east supports of piers 2PN and 2PS, along with their underlying masonry, are also separated from the construction of Phase 2 by breaks, suggesting that they were added during Phase 3 and not earlier.

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The masonry of Phase 3 is bounded by the often-noted vertical breaks on the walls of both side aisles of the nave (figs. 11, 12). These breaks start from the floor (on the north wall) and from just above the upper extent of the lost nave crypt (on the south wall) and continue into the quadrant vaults of both side aisles, terminating the partial blind arches on the north and south walls. There are several indications that the elements bordering these breaks to the east were probably put in place at different times.

Crypt-level walls on the north and south aisle walls may have already been established during Phase 2, along with the upper masonry of the easterly part of the north wall, including the partial blind arch and its superstructure up to the corbel table, but work had not yet commenced on the south nave wall above crypt level. The builders of Phase

3 thus encountered different situations in the north and south nave walls. Before adding quadrant vaults over the north side aisle, they would have needed to curtail the western parts of the blind arch on the north wall in order to lower the height of its apex. This may explain why the arch is terminated at the precise point in its curvature where it meets the corbel table (fig. 46). The trapezoidal block at the end of the curvature of this arch may also have been inserted during this phase, as it does not match the construction of the arch termination on the south wall (attributed to "Phase 4") (fig. 47).

Meanwhile the south wall, where only the crypt level masonry in the first bay appears to have been established prior to Phase 3, could be built to accord more closely with the

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new plan. The partial blind arch thus springs below the impost of respond 2RS and projects an apex comfortably below the corbel table.

These areas contain several features differing in dimensions and workmanship from those of Phase 1 or Phase 2. The new blind arch commencing on the south wall, had it been completed, would have obeyed a larger radius of curvature than that of the partial arch on the north wall. The south-wall arch would thus have accorded with the more spread-out intercolumniation imposed by the 3-dome scheme (assuming the same rhythm of two blind arches per bay established in the east end).

The construction of the new responds 3RN and 3RS and new supports appended to piers 2PN and 2PS, along with the completion of respond 2RS, called for the creation and renovation of various pier elements. Responds 3RN and 3RS stand on new supporting masonry of similar width (about 1.35 m). The supporting masonry of piers

2PN and 2PS were truncated to a level below those of the responds in the east end (figs.

39, 48). These piers thus adopt an intermediate height to soften the discrepancy between the new floor level sans crypt and the lower extents of responds 2RN and 2RS.

The five supports belonging to respond 2RS and all members of pier 2PS can be associated with each other on the basis of their equal-size horse-shoe plans as well as the scarped profile of their plinths. The impost moldings of these supports match those crowning the pilasters of the blind arches on the north and south walls (a stack, from

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bottom to top, of torus, fillet, cavetto, fillet, fascia) (figs. 49, 50). Corbel 1CN in the north aisle of the nave, an area of the church completed later, also features an impost with this molding, suggesting that it may have been reused from a capital or impost in Phase 3

(fig. 51).

It appears that the builders of Phase 3 reused numerous pier elements from the structures of Phase 2, fitting the east and north capitals of pier 2PS (fig. 52) and the east and west capitals of pier 2PN with astragals slightly offset from the lower extents of the decorated blocks in order to adapt these capitals to their new arrangements, which required an even height for the east, north, and west capitals of this pier (about 98 cm. tall including the atragals and abaci). The highly individualized capital of respond 2RS, on the other hand, is likely to have been carved anew for the completion of this respond.

This elaborate crocket capital with human faces has a maximum width greater than any of the other capitals (about 100 cm. measured at the abacus) (fig. 53).

As a result of the new construction in Phase 3, the completed piers of the east end achieved their current configuration featuring twelve capitals in all. Further attesting to the unity of Phase 3 are the group of medallion reliefs seen in the keystone voussoirs of the arches over the crossing, in the blind arches on the interior transept walls, and in the partial blind arch on the southwest exterior corner of the transept (fig.

54).

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The revisions of Phase 3 reformulated the eastern spaces introduced in Phase 2 according to a new interior roofing system following the Apulian typology of three domes on axis (see discussion in Chapter 1). A particularly close technical comparison can be found in S. Francesco (originally SS. Trinità) in Trani (fig. 55). Several elements introduced in Phase 3 of Molfetta are also found at SS. Trinità, including scarped plinths

(in pier 2PS and respond 2RS of S. Corrado) (fig. 56), interior blind arches that spring below their adjacent capitals (fig. 57), and a new proportional relationship in which the heights of the side aisle transverse arches almost reach those of the central aisle. SS.

Trinità was likely under construction in the second half of the 12th century and was consecrated in 1184.40 It is thus conceivable that the period of construction spurred by lay donations to Molfetta Cathedral after 1184 brought about the works of Phase 3.

Phase 3 had the formal effect of revising both the roofing system and the spatial proportions of the inherited parts of the earlier transept-basilica layout according to a completely different formula. A new 3 x 3 grid was imposed through the use of quadrant vaults linking the side aisles of the nave into the transept arms. This all but annihilated the impression in the interior of a transverse vessel intersecting the nave to

40 See Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 272-74; and Belli D'Elia, "Restauri e scoperte in S. Francesco in Trani," in Studi in onore di Giosuè Musca, ed. C. D. Fonseca (Bari, 2000), 21-51. See 25-26. The church probably existed in the early part of the twelfth century, but fell under the control of the Benedictines of S. Trinità di Cava as early as 1168, bringing an increase in their fortunes as well as autonomy from local jurisdiction. The church was consecrated in 1184.

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the east. The choice to eliminate the crypt also abolished the distinction between an upper and a lower church space. The new scheme established a unified interior, no longer compartmentalized by separate axes and floor levels. Central to this goal was the introduction of a dome over the east transept along with the initiation of a floor plan accommodating domes in the west (these domes could be placed over the square nave bays that the new rhythm of blind arches in the south aisle of the nave projected). The equal heights of the transverse and longitudinal arches leading into the nave would have disrupted the axial hierarchies of the transept basilica, conferring a centralized quality on the space. The previously orthogonal and streamlined interior decoration was populated with rounded surfaces and significantly more architectonic sculpture, exemplified by the sculpted corbel table framing the east dome.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the adoption of a three-domed plan served a certain set of liturgical and symbolic ends. These related, for one, to the immanent need to build a nave for the congregation in a form that matched local traditions of worship, as well as, perhaps, the political ambitions of lay donors connected with the

Crusades.

While other examples of three-dome churches in Apulia seem to have been conceived in this way from the beginning of construction, or were built on top of the razed remains of earlier structures (as at SS. Ognissanti in Valenzano), Phase 3 of

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Molfetta implemented the concept while retaining a surprising amount of the structure established in Phase 2. The builders used earlier foundations and walls as an envelope, only rebuilding them in areas that required new engaged supports, arches, and vaults.

The rest of the work entailed combining new and pre-existing decorative features in a new arrangement and covering the space with quadrant vaults and the east dome. This shows that the form of the three-dome plan was, like the spaces built in previous phases, adaptable to different kinds of on-site conditions and flexible in the nature of its deployment.

Adapting the design of Phase 3 to the structures of Phase 2 entailed sophisticated construction techniques. Stone-cutters using capitals and bases inherited from earlier construction may have needed to adjust their molding templates depending on the dimensions of the new fabric for which these parts were destined. For example, pier 2PS was fitted with a customized, softly sloping escarpment to transition from the wide supporting masonry to the small base (fig. 58). The partial arch on the interior north side aisle wall of the nave and the carved voussoir used to close the interlaced arch on the exterior southwest corner of the transept were also specialized forms conceived to solve specific problems. The masons employed at Molfetta Cathedral appear to have conditioned their process of stone shaping to tolerate the variable demands conveyed by the fabrica.

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Interestingly, the interventions of Phase 3 did not extend beyond the zone already set out in Phase 2. What motivated a revision of this previously constructed space instead of an even continuation of the entire edifice? In addition to new liturgical or symbolic needs that might have been introduced during this period, there was also something to be gained in repeatedly prioritizing the embellishment of an incomplete building over the completion of a modest one. At Molfetta, where numerous lay donors contributed to the finances, there was a particular demand for conspicuous transformations that called attention to individual beneficence. These changes, despite espousing the theoretical goal of contributing to the overall project, may also have constituted delays. Thus Phase 3 repeated the strategy used in Phase 2 of prioritizing the spaces of the sanctuary while showcasing a conspicuously incomplete nave. The key space of the nave was again presented as a future promise. Now, however, its completion seemed especially urgent. With the dismantling of the old spatial subdivisions of the transept basilica, the new, unified interior projected by Phase 3 appeared to suffer more acutely from its suspended state of formation, perhaps to the benefit of the fund-seeking administration.

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Phases 4 and 5: Completion of the Nave and Domes

The final phases of the medieval construction effort saw the completion of the nave according to the three-dome scheme set out in Phase 3. Phases 4 and 5, despite following the outline of the revisions of Phase 3, appear to have been undertaken by different building teams and with different symbolic and aesthetic priorities in mind.

The masonry to be associated with Phase 4 includes the walls, piers, responds, arches, and quadrant vaults to the west of the vertical masonry breaks on the north and south walls (not including the ancillary chapels that were later opened in the lower walls) (Charts 4-6).41 Whereas the partial arch on the north wall is interrupted by a trapezoidal termination stone belonging to Phase 3, the arch on the south wall appears to have been cut back to its present state in Phase 4, given that its terminus is fashioned with several horizontally coursed stones (fig. 47).

Belli D'Elia has discussed the possibility that the west wall of the nave was originally intended to open onto a monumental entrance porch flanked by towers, similar to the ruined or unfinished entrance of SS. Ognissanti in Valenzano (fig. 59).42

Supporting this theory are the thick walls of the west chapels, which suggest that they are indeed curtailed towers (fig. 17). If a marine entrance porch stood between the

41 See discussion in Chapter 1. 42 Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 204.

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towers, it may have outlined the massing of the tall chapel of San Corrado later incorporated into the center of the west facade. Because the chapel is destroyed, our archaeological understanding of this problem is necessarily limited.43

The two west domes appear to have been built over a series of at least two phases (figs. 4, 5). The masonry of the squinches of the middle dome up to the moldings of the cuffie (semicircular niches) is continuous with Phase 4 masonry below. All four squinches of the middle dome consist of horizontal coursing shaped to a slightly pitched rounded right-angle corner, and the two westerly squinches each feature two small corbels to the sides. This system was apparently rejected after an interruption in the works or a change of personnel. The subsequent interventions of Phase 5 revisited the middle dome, both inserting semi-circular entablatures at the base of the cuffie above the small corbels left over from the previous phase and, in the case of the southerly squinches of the middle dome, simply removing old corbels. The squinches of the west dome appear to have been entirely constructed in Phase 5, given a lack of the horizontal coursing seen in the lower parts of the squinches in the middle dome. Small corbels, probably borrowed from the reconstructed middle dome, were sporadically incorporated into the squinches of the west bay as spolia. By building the west dome and revising the middle dome, Phase 5 completed the current roofing system of the nave.

43 See discussion in Introduction.

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The unity of the fourth phase is attested by the homogeneity of numerous features. Many elements of piers 1PN and 1PS and responds 0RN and 0RS match, including the shafts (all horse-shoe-shaped and featuring a common circumference of

88-89 cm); the capitals (all of roughly similar dimensions and carving technique) (figs.

60, 61); and bases--although these appear to have been adapted to plinths of various sizes and forms. The plinths of pier 1PN feature double-order dosserets (fig. 62), whereas those of pier 1PS do not (fig. 63); meanwhile, the plinths of responds 0RN and

0RS are scarped (fig. 64). The plinths were probably originally fashioned earlier (perhaps for the nave piers of Phase 2 and/or Phase 3), and then incorporated into Phase 4.

Also belonging to Phase 4 are the two corbels 1CN and 1CS, which match each other in form and iconography (an animal head sprouting banana leaves) (figs. 51, 65).

The impost of 1CS is similar to that seen on the east, north and west capitals of pier 1PS

(a stack, from bottom to top, of thumb, fillet, cavetto, fillet, ovolo, fascia) (fig. 61), suggesting that it is borrowed from Phase 3.

An important comparison for Phase 4 of S. Corrado is the cathedral of Bari, which employs the same method of squinch construction found in the lower parts of the middle dome at Molfetta, as well as the small corbels to the sides of the squinch (fig. 66).

Bari Cathedral was rebuilt around 1177, after the destruction of this city by King William

I of Sicily, though subsequent references to construction continued throughout the 13th

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century.44 The upper parts of the two westerly domes at Molfetta Cathedral (associated with Phase 5) compare with the oval domes of a number of sites in the Terra di Bari, which often also feature octagonal exteriors.45 These sites, many of which are rural, are difficult to date with precision. The western parts of S. Corrado probably date between the early-to-mid 13th century and the fundraising push of the last decades of the 13th century.46 This date range easily accommodates the phase's terminus ante quem of 1418, the year of the construction of S. Giuliano, which partly obscured the earlier double portal.47

The new spaces appear to have accommodated new liturgical and symbolic motivations as well as demands inherited from before. The high middle dome manifested a shift in the formal layout to a 'centralized' concept, which may have been the result of a liturgical transformation or the symbolic motives of a lay donor.48 Light fills the interior from the multi-tiered windows of the middle dome, whose soaring verticality and sparseness contrast with the lower and more richly decorated east dome.

44 Kappel, S. Nicola, 158-60. 45 See R. de Cadilhac, A. Guarnieri, and Gabriele Rossi, "Orizzontamenti," in L'arte della costruzione in pietra: chiese di Puglia con cupole in asse dal secolo XI al XVI, ed. R. de Cadilhac (Rome, 2008); for examples, including S. Apollinare in (pp. 200-1); SS. Ognissanti in Biscéglie (pp. 208-9); S. Spirito in Giovinazzo (pp. 212-13); S. Felice in Balsignano (pp. 214-15); S. Valentino in Bitonto (pp. 218-19); and S. Antonio Abate in Trani (pp. 220-21). 46 See discussion in Chapter 1. 47 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," III, 100. 48 See discussion in Chapter 1.

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While the basic organization of space according to a three-dome scheme continued between Phases 3, 4, and 5, the later two episodes executed the projected spaces with much-reduced decoration. The new architectonic sculpture in this phase is smaller, and the pier supports more attenuated. The interventions appear to have followed a cost- cutting approach, in which it was more important to complete the main volumes of the church than to embellish earlier parts.

Both phases were versatile in their implementation. Phase 4 reused a few older elements in order to avoid the expense of carving new plinths and foundations for piers and responds. This approach benefitted from flexibility on the part of the lodge. The masons were able to adapt the highly standardized sets of shafts and capitals (which may have arrived from the quarry in more-or-less prefabricated form) to older plinths by virtue of a flexible approach to the base moldings (discussed in more detail in the next chapter), allowing them to achieve matching circumferences. To complete the domes in Phase 5, the builders employed stone-assembly methods that were applicable to a wide range of domed spaces.49 Adaptive coursing was used to reconcile the cuffie with pseudo-pendentives inherited from the previous support system of Phase 4. The squinches, furthermore, were not constructed on 90° corners, but needed to be adapted to acute and obtuse angles caused by the axial misalignments of earlier phases.

49 See regional comparisons above.

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While Phase 4 was characterized by a desire to complete the interior spaces of the church in an even and expeditious manner, the interventions of Phase 5 adopted a more sophisticated temporal strategy. Through the revision of the middle dome and the construction of the west dome using sporadic spolia from the earlier system, Phase 5 conspicuously supplanted the interventions of Phase 4. The reuse of the corbels from the previous configuration of the dome would have signified supercession and improvement within the frame of reference of the single building, a form of architectural quotation discussed by Kunst.50

Ultimately the uneven completion of the nave seems to have responded to the funding dynamics discussed in the last chapter. The spaces of the nave and domes may have been supported by a series of funding bursts (possibly a result of lay donations or legal settlements obtained from parish churches). In the first burst (Phase 4), the priority was to enclose the spaces of the nave as swiftly as possible. With the final burst (Phase

5), it became possible not only to finish the remaining work, but also to double back and revise earlier systems. Successive transformations of the middle dome left conspicuous marks of beneficence on the focal area of the church. The planners of Phase 5, by renovating this central feature (possibly already completed in Phase 4), reappropriated it on behalf of the current clergy and donors. In the middle and west domes of S. Corrado,

50 See Kunst, "Freiheit und Zitat," 88.

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the communal and long-term goal of completing the church mixed with personal and time-specific ends.

Building by phase was evidently a reality faced by the builders of S. Corrado in

Molfetta. How could the strategies of an episodic construction model be used to particular benefit? Did the construction of the entire work by incremental schemes, each with its own time-contingent priorities and strategies, help the fabrica reconcile a demand for architectural diversity with the finite structural and geometric knowledge possessed by building teams in the region? This question enlightens the larger one of how the efforts of the builders and planners of S. Corrado were shaped by the particular character of church finances in the commercializing economy of Apulia: defined by change over time and a mix of short- and long-term income sources.

The episodic model afforded the fabrica a high level of flexibility in responding to the sporadic finances and evolving symbolic needs imposed by clergy and patrons. In the first place, it meted out the project into separate liturgical spaces. The construction of each space--the crypt, the transept, and the nave--enabled the service of its respective liturgical function, and could therefore be viewed as a conspicuous milestone. By subdividing construction in this way, the fabrica could furthermore prioritize volumes according to the importance of their liturgical functions. Thus the building phases were executed in a sequence corresponding, more or less, to an order of high- and low-

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priority liturgical milestones: the completion of the crypt (Phase 1), the completion of the transept (Phases 2 and 3), and the completion of the nave (Phases 4 and 5). In some cases, the fabrica extended the promise that spaces of secondary priority would be completed in due course, exemplified by Phases 2 and 3, which both contributed to the beginnings of the nave despite prioritizing the construction and revision of the transept.

The diachronic subdivision of the project also allowed the fabrica to periodically introduce a formal system without committing to a continuation of the works in the same idiom. The standalone crypt of Phase 1, which projected an edifice too large for the location, is a case in point. The selection of a large plan for the crypt did not simply amount to a lack of foresight: it met the milestone of completing this area of the church while also promising a monument of sufficient grandiosity for a suffragan cathedral in the archdiocese of Bari. Even when an episode prescribed the shape of future construction in more exact terms (exemplified by the initiation of the nave in Phase 2), it was often rejected. Phase 3 represented the opposite of what Phase 2 forecasted. Instead of continuing the nave in the mold of the transept basilica set out earlier, Phase 3 progressed no further in the completion of the interior, instead correcting the east end so that future construction on the nave would match the new configuration of a three-dome church with a unified interior.

This cycle of commencement and rejection not only allowed the fabrica to

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repeatedly update the spatial program, it also proved cost-effective. Inherited fabric from the urban topography and earlier phases was frequently reused rather than abolished. Phase 1 and Phase 4 may have coopted the exterior walls of surrounding buildings. Phase 2 modified the crypt from Phase 1 and incorporated it into a new proportional system. The interventions of Phase 3, despite profoundly transforming the character of the building, largely reused and rearranged earlier walls, supports, and decorative elements. Phase 5 revised the middle dome but reused the basis of its support structure. This phase also employed reuse for symbolic ends, appropriating and rearranging the small corbels introduced during the intial construction of the middle dome in Phase 4. The disguising and manipulation of earlier fabric served the goal of each phase to signify a substantial contribution, despite the fact that it often introduced a minimum of new masonry.

The ability to deploy particular spatial and formal systems in spite of variable conditions of the site depended upon flexibility in the workshop. We have begun to see, through comparisons to other examples in the region, that ateliers in the orbit of

Molfetta offered a finite set of formal solutions, technical concepts, and proportional systems. As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, Apulian workshops balanced an impulse to regularize their practice (in order to systematize approaches to the construction of a large number of limestone edifices) against the variable

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circumstances of each site. Phase 1 of S. Corrado compares closely to the crypt of

Giovinazzo Cathedral, but the builders of the former rejected the latter's right angles and parallel wall alignments, possibly to adapt to the urban topography of Molfetta. To accomplish this, the workshop needed to be capable of assessing the lengths of each crypt bay and vary the curvature of each longitudinal and transverse arch accordingly.

The proportional system used in setting out the upper church in Phase 2 of S. Corrado was precedented in other churches that did not feature crypts, such as Conversano. The builders at Molfetta gracefully combined this solution with the concept of an entire- church crypt, seen at Trani Cathedral, and thereby expanded the range of application of both approaches. Phase 3 of S. Corrado introduced the same proportional geometry of plan and elevation as churches such as SS. Ognissanti in Valenzano and S. Francesco (SS.

Trinità) in Trani, but produced it by juxtaposing new pieces with elements inherited from Phase 2, requiring the workshop to adapt old capitals and bases to their new settings. In Phase 4, base moldings were fashioned in a way that transitioned between old plinths and new parts. The west dome of Phase 5 approximated the support structure of the squinches in Phase 4 with transitional courses consisting of stones customized to their specific emplacement. These intricate operations expanded the versatility of the visual solutions offered by the lodge, allowing the fabrica to more easily mix and match diverse schemes.

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The episodic model of design at S. Corrado thus played an important mediating role in the structures of production. It allowed a diversity of demand to coexist with the impulse of workshops to develop a regularized (if flexible) set of approaches. The revisionary possibilities of each construction episode addressed the peculiar rhythms of finance that characterized Molfetta during a period of increasing engagement with

Mediterranean commerce. The episodic model broke each unique building down into more regularized design units. As a result, masons were not constrained by a highly customized and artisanal mode of production, but were allowed to apply a common set of approaches to various commissions. The episodic strategies of the fabrica can thus be understood as catalysts of interconnectivity among ateliers. Even if design strategies were predominantly shared over short ranges, these transmissions stood to forge longer paths. Much like the Mediterranean trade system of the time, connections between nearby workshops could concatenate to form a larger network, a web of cabotage supporting the flow of knowledge over a range of expanses.

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3. Expertise: Specialization and Networks of Knowledge

The ateliers responsible for the construction of S. Corrado marshaled highly eclectic technical repertoires. As we have begun to see in the last chapter, these techniques were more than rote forms copied from other buildings. The work force of

Molfetta Cathedral--composed of masons, foundation-layers, and quarriers--possessed generative schemes, capable of producing new forms through the application of regularized conventions to a range of conditions.1 These conditions included the diversity of scale, spatial organization, and features imposed by clergy and patrons, the charge of combining new and old fabric, and the variety of technical conventions within the workshop, which, as we shall see, was probably spontaneously composed in each phase of different kinds of specialists, each with their own patterns of travel and spheres of awareness (reflecting other kinds of artistic production in medieval South Italy).2

These circumstances presented a clear need for robust, versatile skill sets. How was the large array of specialized knowledge employed at S. Corrado mobilized across short, medium, and long spans of geographic space?

1 See Grossman, "Memory, Transmission," 485, interpreting the transmission of architectural practice by applying the concept of mneme: "memory as a phenomenon that allows one to think through a problem or incident, rather than simply reproduce or mimic experience or form." 2 See, for example, L. Yawn, "Italian Giant Bibles, Lay Patronage, and Professional Workmanship (11th-12th Centuries," in Les usages sociaux de la Bible, XIe-XVe siècles. Cahiers électroniques d'histoire textuelle, 3 (Paris, 2010), 161-255.

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This chapter analyzes the construction techniques of S. Corrado in order to contextualize them in historical geography. I define construction techniques as heuristic, geometric, and/or instructional devices applied within different fields of expertise.

Fields of expertise are understood to correspond to stages of production and a division of labor: they include the expertise of quarrymen, masons, and foundation-planners.

Experts in each field could select and combine techniques from their own repertoire to create specific effects or solve particular structural or aesthetic problems in a building project.

In order to contextualize the construction techniques of S. Corrado, this chapter works from an important enabling convention. In the study of medieval architecture, it is often possible to identify, in multiple buildings built around the same time and in close geographic proximity, the repeated use of the same, uncommon combination of techniques to address similar problems. I assume that such a combination indicates a conscious choice, and that the knowledge of this particular choice was probably shared among the specialists employed at these sites. The specialists were not merely aware of the particular set of techniques, they also understood the particular purpose of combining them.

The study of variations in building technique among S. Corrado and a set of comparanda provides insight into the transmission of technical knowledge in geographic

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space. To be sure, coincidence may explain the spontaneous occurrence of a rare technical combination at multiple sites. Alternatively, different workshops may have developed the same solutions independent of one another by applying the same basic knowledge to similar structural or aesthetic problems. The present study nonetheless works from a conviction that the distribution patterns of specialized techniques were not, on the whole, random, and that they responded in most cases to patterns of human mobility, communication, or demand for particular forms and structures.

On the basis of new comparisons for the construction techniques of S. Corrado, I propose that different forms of knowledge circulated over different networks. Each field of expertise--extraction, stone-assembly, and foundation-planning--was served by its own physical, social, and institutional pathways of human mobility or knowledge transmission (for example, the knowledge required to extract and shape a certain kind of limestone depended on the properties of local geology; whereas the geometric knowledge used to plan out foundations could be conveyed over larger institutional networks). These fields of expertise, though separate, were also coordinated, bringing one another's varying needs and affordances to bear so that specialists in each field could devise technical solutions with wide applicability. Linking together like interlocking rings, the different fields of expertise formed a network that maximized the flow of diverse knowledge to sites like Molfetta Cathedral while also ensuring a degree

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of structural and aesthetic soundness at the level of the individual project.

A network-oriented explanation of techniques nuances a view of the division of labor, implicit in much of the study of construction practice in medieval architecture, whereby building techniques are understood to have evolved within a very different geography from that of ideas and design. According to this model, technique was local and largely determined by the properties of material; while design was international and communicated among intellectuals. Techniques are discussed in the frame of fixed zones, while design ideas are understood in terms of a larger network. I work from the counter-assumption that in a complex building endeavor such as S. Corrado, all fields of knowledge were mobilized resources. The different vectors of movement, however long and short their arcs of travel, produced, reproduced, and transformed architectural practice through their trajectories and intersections.3 Different specialists generated their technical concepts through interaction with the other workmen in addressing the particular exigencies of the project.

In addition to allowing exploration of the interaction between different fields of expertise, a network-based approach exposes the deep engagement of quarriers, masons, and foundation-planners with problems of design. S. Corrado exemplified a highly technical form of architecture, in which new formal and spatial possibilities emerged

3 See Flood, Objects of Translation, 8, on a network-based approach to objects and art.

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directly from innovations in the lodge. Networks of technical expertise were thus integral to the creation of a range of visual possibilities for the use of the building administration and for lay and clerical elites.

State of the Question: Reconsidering the Geography of Architectural Techniques

Scholarship on the construction techniques of medieval Apulia constitutes a rich discourse, benefitting from contributions by art historians, medieval archaeologists, architects, and restorers alike. Over the course of a century and a half, some of the basic categories of this discourse have shifted with the different axioms and assumptions of these fields. Particularly mutable has been the perceived relationship between technical knowledge and geographical space. This relationship has been reimagined according to changing views over the very definition of an architectural technique, while also responding to the evolving methods of various disciplines. By exposing some of the traditional assumptions, it is possible to find a new set of questions geared toward the question of how specialized knowledge was transmitted through space.

From early sources on Apulian architecture, the executive side of construction-- technique and training--has been defined in opposition to the design idea. Von Quast, in his 1860 additions to Schulz's foundational text, argued that Molfetta Cathedral's basilica

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plan with axial domes originated from general Byzantine formal concepts ("Bauformen") but was executed according to training ("Ausbildung") by French Crusaders from

Aquitaine, whom the author suggested could have brought their techniques with them to Apulia on their way to the Holy Land.4 The author borrowed the notion of a conceptual architectural model traveling between different zones of execution from Félix de Verneilh, citing the eminent French scholar's L'architecture byzantine en France: Saint-

Front de Périgueux et les églises à coupoles de l'Aquitaine (1851) for his examples of

'Byzantinizing' churches in southern France.5 In identifying aspects of design and those of execution, Von Quast worked only from formal criteria. Design was to be found in general features, such as the choice to include domes in a basilical arrangement, while execution was correlated to more specific formal elements such as the use of semi- spherical domes with a certain number of windows and a cornice, as well as the compositional decision of varying the heights of the domes.

Von Quast's dichotomy between execution and concept was accompanied by a few clear presuppositions about the geography of architectural practice. Design choices were understood to have flowed through deep-rooted cultural contacts between East

4 Schulz, Denkmaeler, 70-71. 5 F. de Verneilh, L'architecture byzantine en France: Saint-Front de Périgueux et les églises à coupoles de l'Aquitaine (Paris, 1851). See also G. Enlart, L'art gothique et la Renaissance en Chypre (Paris, 1899), who suggested the Cypriot prototypes accessed by French pilgrims. It is important to note that many of these were examples were built after Latin domination of Cyprus. See Bertaux, L'Art, 397.

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and West, meanwhile executive knowledge was not transmitted between these two realms. The author implied, however, that techniques could be imparted from the top down through political channels such as Crusade routes.

Bertaux, in his 1904 tome, firmly opposed Von Quast's model. He rejected the argument that Apulia's domed architecture borrowed either from Byzantine conceptual models or from northern training, and argued instead for the autochthonous (purely local) development of Apulian domed church types.6 Bertaux disputed Von Quast's comparisons to Aquitaine by bringing a more archaeological approach to the study of techniques, based in close study of structure and wall construction. He cited as the basis for this approach contemporaneous French scholarship on Romanesque churches of

Aquitaine.7 By this time, De Verneilh's theory of Byzantine models inspiring the domed churches of Aquitaine was considered controversial (even anti-nationalist) in French circles. Medieval archaeologists such as Brutails and Spiers had replaced Verneilh's model with one that stressed the wholly local origins of these churches, setting the template for Bertaux's explanation of the origins of Apulian dome techniques.

Bertaux proposed a new relationship between architectural knowledge and geography. Believing the domes of churches such as S. Corrado to have been

6 Bertaux, L'Art, 396-99. 7 See especially M. Brutails, "La Question du Saint-Front," Bulletin monumental, 6/10 (1895): 87-137; and R. P. Spiers, "Saint-Front de Périgueux et les églises à coupoles du Périgord et de l'Angoumois," Bulletin monumental, 7/1 (1897): 175-231.

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constructed entirely with corbelling, he saw common ancestry with the dry stone construction of Apulian trulli, which were understood at the time to be an ancient

Apulian building type.8 Bertaux further argued that this kind of construction was related to the great quantity and quality of limestone in the region and relative dearth of timber.

Thus Apulian domical architecture, rooted in quotidian local traditions and even the pre-human conditions of local geology, found its context 'outside of time.' The art historian wrote,9

En tous cas, l'exemple irrécusable des églises à coupoles de l'Apulie aura montré aux chercheurs le parti que l'histoire de l'art peut tirer de la connaissance des architectures populaires et la nécessité de faire intervenir de loin en loin, dans la suite des monuments, les traditions sans date, dont l'étude formera le folk-lore des pierres.

The phrase "folk-lore of stones" suggested not only a connection between workmen and material, but also a near co-extensiveness.

Ionescu's 1935 essay concerning four churches belonging to the Apulian 'three- axial-domes' typology built upon Bertaux's attempt to reform the study of architecture along structural and technical lines.10 This author turned, once again, to French

8 Bertaux, L'Art, 398-99. Trulli are not proven to have pre-modern ancestors in Apulia. See A. Ambrosi, "L'architettura in pietra a secco: costruzione, progetto, tipologie (con riferimento alla Puglia)," in A. Ambrosi, E. Degano, and C. A. Zaccaria, eds., Architettura in pietra a secco: atti del primo seminario internazionale "Architettura in pietra a secco" -, 27-30 Settembre 1987 (Fasano, 1990), 12-84. See p. 70 for one of the earliest datable trulli. Located in the hinterland of , it dates either to 1552 or 1592. 9 Bertaux, L'Art, 399. 10 Ionescu, Le chiese pugliesi.

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scholarship on the Aquitaine Romanesque, citing Raymond Rey's La Cathédrale de Cahors et les origines de l'architecture à coupoles d'Aquitaine (1925).11 Ionescu borrowed Rey's definition of an architectural typology as an integrated whole made up of both visual and structural aspects, such as the plan, structure of supports, fenestration, decoration, and facades.12 Like Bertaux, this author supported the notion of an indigenous evolution of the Apulian domed churches, but revisited the idea of a general model inspired by contacts with Byzantium, citing the church of San Lazzaro near Larnaca, in Cyprus.

Ionescu argued that a traveling Apulian mason might have become aware of such a church, and then combined his memory of the building with local executive knowledge to produce the local typology. The scholar maintained, as Von Quast before him, that design concepts could be apprehended on a general level and transmitted as mental models, while execution was grounded in particularities and embodied through training.

Venditti's 1967-'69 article revisiting the theme of Apulian domed architecture introduced an important break in this discourse. In further developing Ionescu's typology of the three-domed churches, he emphasized, more than any of the preceding authors, the aspect of visual design inherent to the structural solutions of Apulian

11 The author cites R. Rey, La Cathédrale de Cahors et les origines de l'architecture à coupoles d'Aquitaine (Cahors, 1925), 18. 12 Ionescu, Le chiese pugliesi, 50.

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masons.13 For example, Venditti interpreted the quadrant vaults covering the side aisles of the three-domed group as an aesthetic as well as structural system, as it maximizes the interior volume of the church and the distribution of natural light within it.14

According to Venditti, the masons of Apulia deployed a northern Romanesque language of forms within a more local spatial syntax inspired by long-standing cultural contact with the Mediterranean, including the Islamic world as well as Byzantium. The author argued that Apulian builders did not merely work from a general awareness of Eastern models, but preserved close links to Eastern cultural praxis bestowed by earlier

Byzantine political regimes.15 The author's characterization of Apulian artistic culture included a number of generalizations about the differing worldviews of West and East, or more specifically of northern Europe and the Mediterranean. For example, he interpreted the axial misalignments of Molfetta Cathedral in relation to the 'intuitive,' as opposed to rational, mentality of southern Italian artisans.16

Venditti's proposals about the attention paid by technical experts to space and the visual realm have proved influential. These suggestions have been developed on one side by architectural historians and on the other by construction archaeologists and architects. Architectural historians such as Mongiello and Belli D'Elia have expanded on

13 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola." 14 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," I, 109-10. 15 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," I, 108. 16 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," III, 94.

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the idea that Apulian workshops were bound in an interconnected web of production and shared a common repertoire of technical, structural, and visual-spatial techniques.17

Belli D'Elia saw the spatial concerns of builders as key to understanding their interaction with influences from other regions and cultures. She posited that Apulian building techniques evolved in response to new general design concepts brought by patrons and ecclesiastics, both from the north and from the east. The local craftsmen worked within the general frame of the spatial concept, all the while conducting technical experiments that grappled with with the properties of local stone.18

Meanwhile construction archaeologists such as Ambrosi, De Cadilhac, and

Leonardis have investigated in more detail the fabric of Apulian churches, in order to better grasp the combined structural and visual goals of architectural workshops.19 In addition to offering new methods of construction analysis (many of which are key to the present study), these authors have identified striking instances of the visual and spatial content imparted by technical and structural innovations: such as the illusionistic enlargement of interior spaces in some Apulian churches through strategic plan proportions and intercolumniation.20 On the other hand, the increasing richness with

17 Mongiello, Chiese a cupola, 12; and Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, especially 11-22. 18 Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 14-15. 19 A. Ambrosi, Visualità dello spazio architettonico medioevale (Bari, 1979); De Cadilhac, ed., L'arte della costruzione; and Leonardis, Architettura romanica pugliese. 20 Ambrosi, Visualità dello spazio architettonico medioevale.

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which we understand Apulian construction techniques has led to a somewhat myopic regional contextualization. Cases of closely comparable buildings in different regions are understood to indicate a builder's general awareness of foreign models, and not an exchange of technical expertise.

Throughout the evolution of the discourse on construction technique, there has been a consistent conviction that general conceptual models (eg. a towered facade, the choice to include domes, a three-aisle basilica, a transept) could be transmitted over long distances, while the technical execution of those models, and subsequent development into more specific formal and visual types (three domes arranged on axis, geometric layouts, the structure of vaults), were the province of local workshops. Long abandoned is Von Quast's attempt to situate the training and craftsmanship of Apulian architecture in a non-local culture: as scholarship on techniques has become more archaeological, it has placed more of an emphasis on the material aspects of construction technique, and thus on the properties of local stone. Also rejected is Bertaux's theory of the local typology drawn only from popular architecture and not at all guided by foreign visual models. Krautheimer's model of the iconographic "copy" has instead held sway.21 This concept of a general visual model shared across long distances with little correlation to variations in manufacture has served scholars in relating Apulian construction to foreign

21 See Krautheimer, "An Introduction."

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influences without challenging the purely local evolution of techniques.

The previous scholarship has adopted a somewhat simplistic dichotomy between the 'internal' design idea and its 'external' manifestation through technique. As Summers has argued, techniques do not merely aspire to pre-conceived images in the mind, but can enable visual ideas.22 In the case of S. Corrado in Molfetta, there is reason to doubt the idea of a unified, primary design driving construction. Rather, as the last chapter has revealed, the building was both conceived and produced through a series of transformations, each one reacting to a different constellation of conditions in patronage, surviving fabric, and workshop expertise. Indeed, there was no fully formed ideal whole pre-existing its diachronic parts.

If there was not an original idea guiding the construction of S. Corrado, was there at least a guiding force orchestrating each phase? The potential role of the fabrica and other administrators in managing and supervising the work has been discussed.

These individuals influenced design in an important way by deciding on how to subdivide the project into a sequence of interventions. On the other hand, we should not assume that these agents commanded the technical knowledge needed to guide the fashioning and assembly of stone volumes. Although certain experts, such as master masons, may have played a leading role in the development of technical solutions on

22 See Summers, "Intentions," 314.

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site, they probably did not direct the innovations of foundation-layers, quarrymen, and sculptors. Rather, it is worth considering the possibility that the technical solutions at S.

Corrado were the product of self-coordination amongst various kinds of experts, without the help of a central mastermind.23 These kinds of relationships can be teased out through a closer consideration of the division of labor at S. Corrado: by identifying the various constructive tasks and associating them, to the extent possible, with official position titles disclosed by relevant texts from the period.

Kimpel and Olson, scholars of architectural production in medieval France, have made important progress in understanding how architectural tasks were allocated among the work force.24 Both authors have recognized, in the architecture of specific buildings, signs of a sophisticated division of labor that allowed the overall effort to be distributed along an efficient production line. Ateliers, by using expedients such as standardizing the dimensions of stone at the quarry, separating the construction of parts of the elevation that were structurally independent from one another, and subdividing the different lodge-based carving tasks--such as roughing out, etching, and fine-carving-

-across an assembly line of different specialists, moved away from costly and

23 See Bourdieu, Outline, 80: "[A] conductorless orchestration [...] gives regularity, unity, and systematicity to the practices of a group [...], and this even in the absence of any spontaneous or externally imposed organization of individual projects." 24 See Kimpel, "La développement de la taille en série"; Kimpel, "Ökonomie, Technik und Form"; and Olson, "Sum of its Parts."

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idiosyncratic 'artisanal' creations to a paradigm more closely resembling "mass production." Though Kimpel stipulated, as preconditions for his model, a more-or-less uninterrupted construction effort and the existence of a strong hierarchy of labor,25

Olson observed a more horizontal production process in which different stages of creative production could be separated from one another: for example, en-delit shafts could be serialized in pre-production at the quarry and then used in flexible ways at building sites.26 This system would have required different laborers to match their product to adjacent links in the productive chain, but it also permitted specialists within each stage of the cycle to develop their expertise with a degree of independence from the other stages.

Considering the division of architectural labor can elucidate the relationship between different fields of technical expertise and the social opportunities that allowed various professional builders to travel. In this regard, it is important to situate S.

Corrado in relation to a Mediterranean--rather than purely European--context of professional mobility. Before the Norman conquest of Apulia (punctuated by Robert

Guiscard's takeover of Bari in 1071), Apulia may have experienced an important building boom under the Aghlabid emirate of Bari (847 - 871)--possibly including the

25 Kimpel, "Ökonomie, Technik und Form," 106. 26 Olson, "Sum of its Parts," 193-95.

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construction of a congregational mosque in Bari--and under the Byzantine Empire, ruling immediately prior to Norman control.27 The laws governing the professional status and mobility of builders in the 12th and 13th centuries may have retained some of the earlier positions and titles.28 In addition, master masons and sculptors undertook a significant level of pan-Adriatic travel during the 1100s and 1200s, which stood to bring the typical divisions of specialized labor on both coastlines into closer accord with each other.29 On the other hand, the arrival of Norman court officials and monastic orders

27 On the administration and architecture of the emirate of Bari, see Musca, L'emirato di Bari; and L. Bondioli, "Islamic Bari between the Aghlabids and the Two Empires," in The Aghlabids and their Neighbours, ed. G. D. Anderson, C. Fenwick, and M. Rosser-Owen (Leiden, forthcoming). On the administrative structures of Byzantine Apulia, see especially Von Falkenhausen, Dominazione bizantina. 28 For important work on the professions of builders in Byzantine and Islamic contexts between the 9th and 11th centuries, see R. Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium (Philadelphia, 2008); M. Milwright, Islamic Arts and Crafts: an Anthology of Sources (Edinburgh, 2017); and M. Meinecke, Patterns of Stylistic Changes in Islamic Architecture: Local Traditions Versus Migrating Artists (New York, 1996); especially 55-63, discussing professional architects who served the Artuqids in 12th- century Anatolia. 29 See discussion of specific documents below. See S. Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans: From Diocletian to Süleyman the Magnificent (New Haven, 2010) for the subject of architecture and master masons in the east Adriatic. For connections between the medieval architecture and sculpture of the Apulian and Dalmatian coasts, see C. Fisković, “Fragments du style roman à Dubrovnik,” Archeologia jugoslavica, I (Beograd, 1954), 117-30; Fisković, “Sui contatti della Dalmazia con l’Italia gotica,” Le plaisir de l’art du Moyen Âge: commande, production et reception de l’oeuvre d’art; mélanges en homage à Xavier Barral i Altet (Picard, 2012), 258-64; V. P. Goss, “The romanesque sculpture in the Eastern Adriatic, Between the West and Byzantium,” in Romanico padano, romanico europeo, Atti del Convegno internazionale, Modena and Parma, 1977 (Parma, 1982), 175-92; M. Stella Calò Mariani, “Scultura pugliese del XII secolo. Protomagistri tranesi nei cantieri di Barletta, Trani, Bari e Ragusa,” in Studi di storia dell’arte in memoria di Mario Rotili (Naples, 1984), 177-91. and P. Belli D’Elia, “Presenze pugliesi nel cantiere della cattedrale di Traù. Problemi e proposte,” Vetera Christianorum 28 (Bari, 1991), 387-421.

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from across the Alps may have sumperimposed new organizational structures, while also presenting new opportunities for professional travel.30 Islamic, Byzantine, Southern

Italian, and northern European sources can be invoked to provide a helpful range of references informing some of the possible social realities faced by medieval Apulian builders.

The geography of architectural techniques was shaped not only by pathways of human mobility, but also by other modes of knowledge transmission. Historians of

Mediterranean architecture such as Grossman and Necipoğlu have considered how different forms of knowledge could be transported (eg. in the memory, in drawings, or through hands-on experience).31 Grossman argued that Crusader architecture in the medieval Morea benefitted from two different forms of knowledge that circulated via separate modes of transmission: 'cultural' memory (for example the decorative forms memorized by French monastic communities on Crusade), and practical memory

(technical training, which the author found to have circulated locally). Necipoğlu

30 See G. Occhiato, "Robert de Grandmesnil, un abate 'architetto' operante in Calabria nell'XI secolo," Studi medievali, ser. 3, 28, no. 2 (1987): 609-66; and Occhiato, "Rapporti culturali e rispondenze architettoniche tra Calabria e Francia in età romantica: l'abbazia normanna di Sant'Eufemia," Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 93, no. 2 (1981): 565-603. 31 Grossman, "Memory, Transmission;" and G. Necipoğlu, "Connectivity, Mobility, and Mediterranean 'Portable Archaeology': Pashas from the Dalmatian Hinterland as Cultural Mediators," in A. Payne, ed., Dalmatia and the Mediterranean: Portable Archaeology and the Poetics of Influence (Leiden, 2014), 313-81.

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observed that the mobility of architectural ideas through various modes of transmission could correspond to the structures of secular or religious institutions, such as the diplomatic networks of Mediterranean states.32

A combined consideration of technical variation, the division of labor, the social contexts of professional mobility, and modes of knowledge transmission can elucidate a a new set of questions about the geography of construction practice at S. Corrado:

1. What were the discreet fields of constructive expertise, understood as sets of skills applied in different stages of the productive cycle by different professionals?

2. What purposeful combinations of techniques were developed within each area of expertise to address specific structural problems or to create certain visual effects?

3. How were the technical combinations within each expertise adapted to variability within the other expertises?

4. What are the patterns of distribution of the various technical concepts in geographic space, and what do these patterns suggest about the circulation of different forms of knowledge?

5. What physical, social, and institutional pathways might account for the circulation of knowledge in each field of expertise?

32 Necipoğlu, "Connectivity, Mobility," especially pp. 313-14: "Besides the agency of partiular individuals, it was the infrastructural networks of geo-spatial connectivity within the Ottoman transnational space that facilitated [...] circulation and reuse."

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Evidence and Method

Identifying and contextualizing the technical variations at S. Corrado requires drawing on a variety of evidence, both textual and visual.

In spite of their scarcity in medieval Apulia, a few documents for the professional titles of workmen provide an important institutional context for the division of labor I will propose. Apulian sources tend not to describe the duties of different professionals; however, the Latin title of an individual often implies something of his or her role. In other cases, sources from the broader European orbit can contextualize the Apulian text. In addition to informing the division of labor, textual sources have been used by social historians to construct the travel pathways and communication networks that linked Apulia to the greater Mediterranean.

Architectural comparisons on the basis of close visual analysis of built fabric proves especially central to my analysis of the division of labor at S. Corrado and of the circulation of specialized knowledge. Invoking comparanda from a broader geography than in previous chapters, I identify sets of buildings that share technical units with S.

Corrado in Molfetta.33 I define a UT (unit of technique) as a combination of technical

33 The expansion of my geographic range of comparanda entailed concessions in terms of comprehensiveness. I consulted regional architectural surveys, in particular the Patrimonio Artistico Italiano series (for Italy) and the Nuit des temps series (for France). These surveys provide a somewhat more cursory and specialized sample than my awareness of Apulian architecture, which may create unevenness in the volume of examples identified in this region vs. others.

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variations employed within a single field of expertise and during a single building phase. This chapter attempts to identify UTs which appear across a group of comparanda, and are found to serve a similar purpose in each example, as these instances suggest a sharing of technical knowledge.

The individual technical variations that make up a UT are revealed by URs (units of reference): signs of variation in the built fabric. The particular units of reference found to be relevant to UTs are:

• evenness and width of masonry joints (indicating variations in quality of ashlar

finishing).

• alignment of coursing between walls and supports (indicating variations in the

method of assembly).

• basic dimensions of stone (indicating variations in rough-shaping at the quarry).

• moldings and preparatory geometry of the capitals (indicating variations in the

templates and assembly methods applied on site).

• style of decoration of capitals (indicating variations in the conventions of final-

carving).

• relationship of inner and outer curvatures of arches (indicating variations in the

methods of stone-cutting and assembly).

• shape and direction of coursing in vaults (indicating variations in the methods of

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stone-cutting and assembly).

• location of entablatures (indicating variations in the method of assembly).

• proportions and relationships in floor plan and elevation (indicating variations in

the methods of foundation-planning).

My comparisons are enhanced by the analysis of data maps produced in a

Geographic Information System (GIS). The maps work from an underlying database of architectural sites and their corresponding attribute information: including their geographic coordinates, and applicable units of reference and technical units. In addition to the data set of buildings are other layers of data, some plotted in geography for the first time, some translated into GIS data from pre-existing maps (eg. the locations of pietra di Trani quarries),34 and some already existing as GIS data sets (eg. Roman roads, which continued to be in use during the Middle Ages).35 Different data sets have been juxtaposed as layers to test hypotheses and draw correlations. The maps contained here represent only the final product of numerous trials made possible by this efficient technology.

34 See B. Radina, "La Pietra di Trani," Geotecnica, no. 5 (Milan, 1956), 207, fig. 1; citing A. Jatta, "Appunti sulla geologia e paleontologia della Provincia di Bari," Rassegna pugliese di scienze, lettere, ed arti, 1, 2 (Trani, 1887). 35 See M. McCormick et al., "Roman Road Network," in Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (Harvard University), https://darmc.harvard.edu; citing R. J. A. Talbert, ed., Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000).

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It is worth emphasizing that neither the geo-referenced data set nor my analytical method should be considered quantitative. As noted by Gregory and Geddes, historical GIS is useful not only in mapping statistically significant data, but also in identifying trends in the geographic distribution of smaller sets of evidence.36 This can provide leads and sharpen the author's qualitative characterizations of historical developments. I arrived at my own qualitative inferences through an iterative process that triangulated between the definition of fields of expertise, the identification of technical units, and the recognition of meaningful architectural and social trends in geographic space.

Expertise at the Quarry

The church of S. Corrado features a number of discreet choices that can be correlated to quarry-based practice: the extraction and rough-shaping of stone blocks to serialized shapes and dimensions before delivery to work sites. The consistent combination of certain quarrying and stone-preparation techniques at S. Corrado and its comparanda form purposeful systems, such as sets of specialized stone parts that make up a certain type of pier. The technical combinations in the field of quarrying are further

36 I. N. Gregory and A. Geddes, eds., Toward Spatial Humanities: Historical GIS and Spatial History (Bloomington, 2014).

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found to be present in buildings that vary in other areas of specialization, such as planimetrics and complex stone assembly. The distribution of quarrying techniques is shown to follow the Apulian littoral between the Gargano peninsula and Bari, suggesting that these concepts were developed in accordance with certain advantageous constructive properties common to the region's many varieties of limestone. I argue that this adaptation to shared characteristics of a regional geology, rather than to the stone of specific quarries, helped quarrymen exploit the basic structural benefits of the stone while also making their innovations relevant to a larger geography. These extractive choices were made with clear structural and visual effects in mind, and were thus not only informed by the properties of limestone but also by a certain range of spatial, visual, and structural needs prescribed by masons on site.

A few documents suggest that in medieval and early modern Apulia, the tasks of removal of stone from the quarry and its rough shaping to specific forms were, generally speaking, divided between different quarry personnel: cavamonti were strictly involved with extraction, while petraruli ordered the quarried stones in groups and shaped them for later use by ateliers at building sites.37 Written sources do not disclose the extent to which quarrying teams traveled between different quarries. The bulk of the physical labor was probably unskilled and hired locally; meanwhile masters or supervisors of the

37 Guarnieri, "Materiali lapidei," in L'arte della costruzione, 93-115, especially 111.

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quarry-based teams could have traveled and communicated their ideas over short distances between sites, depending on how applicable their approaches were to the differing rock types.

The stone used at Molfetta Cathedral is probably pietra di Trani or another of the several types of hard, light grey limestone found in the Terra di Bari and in the Murge

(fig. 67).38 These limestones are the product of a chain of Mesozoic calcareous deposits occurring sporadically throughout the Apulian littoral (fig. 68).39 Despite some basic similarities, these rock types are not homogeneous, and naturally some zones are better suited to extraction and construction than others. The choice by building teams in medieval Apulia to consolidate their overall extraction efforts to a few zones could have played a role in the interconnectivity of their knowledge. This selectivity meant that all of the region's quarried stone could meet certain standards, providing the opportunity for quarry masters to optimize the applicability and range of their specialized expertise.

Such a development would have required finding basic properties shared by the different kinds of limestone and producing from this a repertoire of structural elements

38 See B. Radina; "Pietra di Trani"; F. Zezza "Pietre da costruzione e ornamentali della Puglia caratteristiche sedimentologico-petrografiche, proprietà fisico-meccaniche e problemi geologico- tecnici relativi all'attività estrattiva," Rassegna tecnica pugliese 8, no. 3-4 (1974): 3-51; and Guarnieri, "Materiali lapidei," 94-96. 39 Zezza, "Pietre da costruzione e ornamentali," 4, fig. 1.

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that could suit the different structural and aesthetic requirements of the buildings being served.

A fundamental property of any constructive limestone is its combination of great resistance to compression with ease of carving (relative to metamorphic rock such as marble). The central and northern Apulian limestones consistently offer very high levels of resistance to compression and are relatively compact, making them labor-intensive to carve but ideal for the lofty construction of Apulian Romanesque.40 The church of S.

Corrado, like its contemporaries, possesses high walls of ashlar blocks thickened by a rubble core. The blocks are flat and smooth on each side and held together with minimal mortar beds (fig. 69). They are arranged in horizontal courses, with each course obeying a consistent height, though the height of each course varies. The well-squared masonry allows the loads of the superstructure to be conveyed vertically as compressive forces to the foundations. The joints become finer in later phases of construction, culminating in the refined masonry of the west end (fig. 70).

Were the wall blocks at S. Corrado finished to ashlar at the quarry or on site? The existence of mason marks in some of the ashlars belonging to Phase 4 (fig. 71) does not in itself prove the locus of ashlar production; however, it may suggest a productive cycle that needed to account for different sites of stone-cutting, with some stones finished at

40 Zezza, "Pietre da costruzione e ornamentali," 13-23; and Guarnieri, "Materiali lapidei," 95.

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the quarry and some at the building.41 Given the variability of the wall blocks, it is difficult to imagine that they were serialized pieces fully prepared at the quarries. They were probably shipped in their rough shape and then dressed on site according to their specific emplacement.42 Supporting this is the fact that a number of rural Apulian churches employ masonry in undressed limestone (eg. Torre S. Eustachio, near

Giovinazzo).43 Even if quarry-based petraruli did not finish the wall blocks, their role in rough-shaping the stones would have allowed them to establish a certain range of dimensions constrained by limits of structural integrity and extractive efficiency (larger stones made for sounder structures but would have been more labor-intensive to move and manipulate).

Stones used for the curvilinear coursing of the half-barrel vaults and domes of S.

Corrado, executed through a combination of vertical corbelling and radial assembly, seem to have been extracted to specialized dimensions. The courses of the quadrant vaults are not as tall as those of the basic wall blocks (fig. 72), and the stones of the

41 A. Ambrosi and Enrico Degano, "Les marques de tailleurs de Pierre au moyen-âge dans le pouilles," Actas del Coloquio Internacional de Gliptografia de Pontevedra, julio, 1986 (Pontevedra, 1988), II, 497-507. See 500-1, discussing a 1273 about mason marks in the walls of Lucera, constructed by the two protomagistri P. D'Agincourt and R. da Foggia at Lucera. The masters were required to mark the walls to prove that their funding by the Curia of Naples accorded with their progress on the work. Ambrosi argues that marks helped accountants understand whether a stone was completed at the quarry or at the site, or whether the laborer's wages were accounted daily or per block. 42 Olson, "Sum of its Parts," 192; citing Kimpel, "La développement de la taille en série." 43 De Cadilhac, Guarnieri, and Rossi, "Orizzontamenti," in L'arte della costruzione, 206-7.

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domes and their supporting elements (pendentives, pseudo-pendentives, and squinches) tend to be trapezoids of approximately equal height and width (fig. 3). This function- driven specialization of the stones would have saved effort and reduced wasted material at the work site. In some Apulian domed churches, different quarries appear to have supplied stones for separate structural functions in the dome, though it is difficult to detect whether this was the case at S. Corrado, given the partial restoration of its domes in the 1930s.44

Certain stones would have needed even more distinctive treatment at the extractive and rough-shaping stages before their arrival to the work site. The middle phases I have identified in the construction of S. Corrado (Phases 2, 3, and 4, ca. late

12th- to mid-13th century) all employ piers and responds with engaged half-shafts attached to backing dosserets (figs. 73, 74). Each support required a set of various stones of specialized dimensions: plinths, blocks from which to carve bases, blocks from which to carve capitals and imposts, shaft drums coursed with dosserets, and tall, single-piece half cylinders, inserted amongst the drums to complete the shaft. This system would have entailed quarrying and roughing out the drums and half-cylinders to matching circumferences. Piers in the east end, which I have argued belong to Phases 2 and 3, use shaft sections and coursed-in drums of regular diameter and circumference but variable

44 De Cadilhac, Guarnieri, and Rossi, "Orizzontamenti," in L'arte della costruzione, 160-62.

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height. This means they were conceived and constructed as 'attachments' to the wall or pier with no correspondence to adjacent masonry. By contrast, in the (much-restored) piers of Phase 4, there is evidence of aligned coursing of adjacent dosseret-and-shaft groups in the original masonry (eg. the west elements of Pier 1PN) (fig. 74).

The different piers at Molfetta Cathedral seem to form a few regularized sets of matching dimensions and shape, suggesting that their component parts were rough- shaped at the quarry, as it would have been wasteful of energy and material to convey large pieces, such as the half-cylinders, to the work site for extensive further reduction.45

The responds were furthermore constructed independent of the main walls. This is clear from the consistent misalignment of coursing when the supports are engaged to the walls--especially noticeable in respond 2RN (fig. 75). The independence of the ordinary wall from the structure of supports matches a development noticed by Kimpel in late

12th- and early 13th-century churches in France.46 The author notes two advantages to this approach. First, it allowed a certain degree of prefabrication at the quarry, contributing to a division of labor and an assembly-line approach that improved efficiency as well as economy. Second, quarriers, whose specialized knowledge included

45 There are mason marks evident on some of the monolithic half-shafts, which could imply dressing either at the quarry or on site. 46 Also observed in late 12th-and early 13th-century French architecture by Kimpel, "Ökonomie, Technik und Form," 107-8.

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the particular affordances of material, were given more agency in developing sophisticated structural components.

Several comparisons can be found to contextualize piers of this type (Chart 7).

Most of them match the variation found in the earlier stages of the building of S.

Corrado (Phases 2 and 3), in which drums and partial half-shafts were combined to form piers but not aligned with the coursing of adjacent masonry. These comparanda include

Bari Cathedral (fig. 76) and a few other Bariot churches (S. Gregorio; S. Maria del

Buonconsiglio), Trani Cathedral and other churches in this city (SS. Ognissanti; S.

Francesco (SS. Trinità)), the cathedrals of , Ruvo, and Bitetto, and the church of

S. Maria Maggiore in Barletta. At least some of the piers in question were probably the product of a period in which several churches in Bari, including the cathedral (ca. 1177),

S. Gregorio, and S. Maria del Buonconsiglio, appear to have been rebuilt after the city's devastation by King William I ("the bad") of Sicily.47 The abbey church of S. Nicola in

Bari, which is said to have been spared during William's march (by virtue of the abbey's jurisdictional independence from the bishopric of Bari and its importance to the

47 On William I's military campaign, see Hugo Falcandus, Liber de Regno Sicilie, ch. 8, trans. G. A. Loud and T. Wiedemann, The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by ‘Hugo Falcandus’ 1154-69 (Manchester, 1998), 73-74. See Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica 127-29; 283 and Kappel, S. Nicola, 166; 324-25; 326 for chronologies of the three Bari churches.

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Hauteville family), still features an old type of pier constructed only of coursed drums and lacking inserted half cylinders.48

A structural and aesthetic flexibility can be seen in the use of the first type of pier construction at S. Corrado. In the context of Apulia, it was used in almost any kind of interior space that required piers, including churches with three domes on axis (such as

S. Corrado in Molfetta and S. Francesco in Trani, where it was adopted for cross-shaped piers), as well as wooden-roof basilicas (including the aforementioned Bari examples as well as Trani Cathedral, Biscéglie Cathedral, and S. Maria Maggiore in Barletta, where they served as T-shaped piers or two-part rectangular piers with shafts facing in the longitudinal directions). This kind of pier, by including large sections of inserted half cylinders, may have been intended to capture something of the materiality of monolithic columns. Bari Cathedral, Trani Cathedral, and Barletta Cathedral employ this kind of pier in juxtaposition with reused marble columns in their nave arcades, allowing the all- limestone crossing piers and responds to communicate with the marbles. The Cathedral of Otranto exhibits a similar impulse, featuring true marble half-columns engaged to the crossing piers.

Three examples contain the variation of mixed piers found in Phase 4 of S.

Corrado in Molfetta, where the coursed-in drums and partial shafts are of more

48 Kappel, S. Nicola, 100-5.

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regularized height to allow the matching of courses throughout a compound pier. These examples include S. Leonardo near Siponto (fig. 77) and S. Sepolcro in Barletta. None of the interventions that led to the construction of the piers can be safely dated to before the end of the 12th century, and may date as late as the end of the subsequent century.49

In all three cases, the idea seems to have been introduced after substantial renovation of the building, leading to unwieldy coursing heights to accommodate the continuous horizontality of the half cylinders as well as those of the drums.

In terms of geographic distribution, the two variations of piers that combine half cylinders with coursed drums seem to cluster in the Terra di Bari, particularly in the coastal towns between Barletta and Bari and on the parallel inland road that formed part of the ancient Via Traiana, with an additional example located in the Gargano (S.

Leonardo near Siponto) (Chart 8). If the first variation was indeed an earlier development than the second, it suggests an interesting shift in the geography of circulation. Examples of the first type (lacking continuous coursing throughout a pier) are clustered between Bari and Barletta, while the second type (featuring continuous coursing throughout a pier) features the outlier of S. Leonardo near Siponto, in the

Gargano. Interestingly, this example shows the flow of the concept across 'quarry sheds,'

49 The nave of S. Sepolcro in Barletta has recently been dated to the late 12th or 13th century. It would have connected the transept to west end, both built earlier at least in their lower parts. See Kappel, S. Nicola, 329.

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circulating between an area typically associated with the extraction of pietra di Trani and one known for pietra Apricena. The localized building boom spurred in large part by

William I's destruction of cities may have set out the pathways for the initial circulation of the idea, giving rise to multiple construction efforts in the Terra di Bari. Thus the expertise of the quarrymen was applied in a small area of concentrated demand. Later, the networks of demand may have reached beyond the original zone of extraction, possibly resulting in the transportation of the technical solution to the Gargano peninsula.

A final element of construction using specialized quarried stone is the sculptural ensemble of the east facade window, which includes animal sculptures, arch voussoirs, entablatures, and miniature colonnettes with small capitals (fig. 78). This combination of elements for use in windows and portals was widespread in the Southern Italian context. This may attest to the existence of lodges that supplied highly standardized, pre-carved parts from off-site, not unlike the activities of the 12th- and 13th-century

Cosmati workshops in Rome. Because the concept was so ubiquitous, it would be difficult to conduct a meaningful inquiry into its precise geography of transmission.

How, in sum, was the expertise of quarrying outlined as a set of tasks, and how could its forms of knowledge have circulated through geographic space? We have seen that quarrymen developed concepts that optimized the properties of a range of

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limestone for particular structural needs. Quarries varied the dimensions of the stone depending on the structural function of their destined location in the building. These concepts pushed the structural limits of the stones they used in order to achieve desired visual effects, as seen in the use of monolithic half-cylinder sections in compound piers.

Though informed by the properties of limestone, these practices were applicable to different varieties of this stone, allowing for a region-wide range of use. As a result, quarrymen were not hemmed in by variable quarry zones such as those in the Murge or in the Gargano. Rather, they could move, and communicate their expertise, between these zones. Interconnectivity at the regional level would have permitted the creation of regularized parts, and possibly even their stockpiling for multiple projects at once, a phenomenon observed by Olson in French Romanesque building efforts.50

Supporting the possibility that quarry masters traveled between multiple quarries is the fact that extractive knowledge was embodied as well as visual. This kind of practice concerned the preparation of stones to sophisticated shapes that were ultimately altered during on-site finishing. In other words, this form of knowledge could not be conveyed merely through sight and memory, but required personal training and passed-on experience. At the same time, visual encounters with multiple buildings

50 Olson, "Sum of its Parts," 193.

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helped quarrymen develop new structural-aesthetic systems for the sites in their spheres of activity.

Expertise in Stone Cutting and Assembly

A second stage of labor was needed to reduce quarried stones for their particular emplacement in the building. The experts involved in this step almost certainly worked on site, using geometric methods to reduce the stones and adapt them to the particular structural and aesthetic needs posed by the desired layout and elevation (both of which appear to have been stipulated by yet another group of experts, possibly foundation planners).51 The stonecutters and stonelayers at S. Corrado were thus challenged to create structures capable of resolving the different solutions developed in other fields of expertise. For example, if a patron or planner desired a dome over a bay of certain dimensions, stonelayers would be expected to devise the exact volumes, surfaces, and coursing patterns of the dome's supporting pendentives or squinches. At the same time, stonelayers mediated between desired visual features and the geometric limitations of quarried material.

The variations in stone assembly practice found at S. Corrado produce a new set of comparisons, and thus bear consideration as a separate field of expertise. These

51 See discussion of planimetrics below.

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techniques are further found to have obeyed broader and more sporadic geographical distribution patterns than the solutions of quarrymen, and thus serve as an important index for professional mobility.

Written and circumstantial evidence suggest that the heads of medieval stonecutting and stonelaying teams at the work site were typically called magistri

("masters").52 The important status held by magistri in Apulia can be inferred from the existence of inscriptions crediting them with the completion of important parts of buildings, as well as from the fact that they often traveled from one town to another.53

When a protomagister (leading master) is indicated, the inscription usually adorns sophisticated sculptural-architectural ensembles such as portals and campaniles.

Protomagistri are known to have often traveled considerable distances, more than once across the Adriatic.54 In 1199, Eustasius, a protomagister and son of Bernaldus of Trani, was employed to supervise works at the cathedral of Ragusa (Dubrovnik).55 The text

52 See Kappel, S. Nicola, 70-71; and Mariani, "Protomagistri tranesi," for consolidated examples. 53 See, for example magistri Madus de Pretiotis and Blasius at S. Nicola in Bari, Lillus from Barletta (present at Bitetto Cathedral), and Master Bartolomeo d'Amendolara, from the surroundings of (present at the 'city church' of Modugno). 54 In addition, Simiacca is "protomagister fabrice ecclesie Sancte Marie" for Barletta Cathedral, accompanied by his son "magister Lucas." See Mariani, "Protomagistri tranesi," 184; citing Codice diplomatico Barese VIII: Le Pergamene di Barletta. Archivio Capitolare (897-1285), ed. F. Nitti di Vito (Bari, 1914), doc. 93, pp. 132-33. "protomagister Eustasius" (family connection to Trani) was at Dubrovnik Cathedral; "Nicolaus sacerdos et protomagister" was at Trani Cathedral. See Guarnieri, "Materiali lapidei," 111, for scalpellini. 55 Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae II, Doc. 301, pp. 320-21.

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further discloses that it was common for a foreign protomagister to command the workshop of Ragusa. In addition, Eustasius claimed that it was customary for the protomagister to receive not only a monetary payment for his work, but also rights to a tract of land and other priveleges.56 In other words, a system existed at the cathedral of

Ragusa to regularly hire master masons from abroad and accommodate their long-term relocation.

In most cases, protomagistri appear to have concentrated their efforts at the building itself, where they could communicate and coordinate efforts with clerical administrators (such as the fabrica) in order to determine a course of action. This would accord with the long-held supposition that magister and protomagister were titles held by master masons or master sculptors: the individuals who led stonecutters and scalpellini

56 Ego Eustasius protomagister filius Bernaldi protomagistri cunctis tam presentibus quam subsequentibus testibus voluntate … dedi Simeoni filio Lamprigi Ursi comiti Ragusii, ut apridie et Ragusium aplicuero ad unum annum finitum labore(m) in matrici ecclesia eiusdem Ragusii, exercendum officium protomagistri cumanici. Nec ab eodem labore usque in predictum constitutum finem licet comiti ipsius Ragusii recedere, dato mihi pro labore a me in eadem matrici ecclesia faciendo septuaginta eorundem perpororum, de quibus in continenti viginti perperos mihi dedit. Dato etiam mihi demum in circa habite et partem piscium, sicut alii protomagistri solent habere, et in nativitate domini unum porcum et in pascha Christi unum arietem. Insuper tactis sacrosanctis evangeliis eidem Simeoni regales aureos plene compleui, et ego atribui ei licentiam sui capituli. Que scriverit Mathias notaries qui tunc fuit. Signum notarii. In addition to Eustasius, other foreign protomagistri would continue to gain employment at the cathedral of Ragusa while construction progressed well into the 13th century. In 1255, a foreign builder was granted citizenship for his work on the cathedral. Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans, 451.

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(fine-cutters) in devising the more virtuosic and distinctive architectonic ensembles of the building.

The site-based team of stonecutters at Molfetta possessed a certain range of specialized knowledge. They would have been required to finish the dressing and/or ornamentation of stones provided by the quarry in preparation for their exact emplacement. For the piers of Phases 2, 3, and 4, the finishing on site of coursed drums, half cylinders, capitals, and bases required fewer or more stages of manufacture depending on what the part was. The pier drums and shafts could presumably have been finished by reducing the stones to orthogonal volumes and then smoothing the angles. They could then be mixed and matched to create supports of ideal height for the particular elevation that was being assembled (or re-assembled) in a particular phase.

The shaping of capital blocks and bases involved additional stages of reduction, constituting something of an assembly line.57 Variations in capital blocks suggest that there were at least three steps involved in their carving: roughing out at the quarry, blocking out for emplacement at the work site, and final carving on site. A distinction between the first two stages is deduced from capitals such as 2PS (east) and 2PS (north), which are carved from capital blocks of different dimensions but blocked out in the

57 See Olson, "Sum of its Parts," 195-203 for a similar discussion in the case of en-delit shafts ornamented prior to emplacement.

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same way: conforming to the basic form of a block capital on a cylinder (fig. 52). The pieces were evidently delivered to the site in different dimensions (a result of basic variation in the shipped stones or possibly of delivery for different phases), but blocked out to matching heights and to matching column-circumferences on site.58 Both capitals use a collarless cube-in-sphere approach, and the center of the molding in 2PS (east) is slightly offset to account for the different width of the original block.

A second subdivision in labor, between blocking out for emplacement and final cutting, can be deduced from the same two capitals, which appear to have been left to different scalpellini for finishing. Capital 2PS (east) finds a clear match for its creeping- vine decoration in 2PN (south) (fig. 79), despite the latter being blocked out with a

'collared basket' approach. Meanwhile capital 2PS (north) is different from 2PS (east) in its finishing, featuring cut away corners and a compartmentalized decoration suited to this orthogonal framework.

The three-stage assembly-line system for capitals could have allowed a supervisor or protomagister to intervene minimally. He could adapt the individual piece to the needs of assembly simply by guiding workers responsible for the middle stage-- the blocking out. It was in this stage, after all, that the key dimension of the

58 See D. Valin Johnson, "The Analysis of Romanesque Architectural Sculpture: Verifying the Steps of a Methodology," Gesta 28/1 (1989): 11-20, on capital preparation.

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circumference of the base of the capital would have been introduced, allowing the capital to be fitted to the right shaft. This system not only saved time, it meant that the master mason could carry out his structural effects in spite of variability in the quarried stone pieces (resulting from a fraught building chronology) and in the styles of the individual scalpellini.

The base moldings are evidence of a similar procedure. These pieces were also used to transition between parts that were not always ideally fitted to each other (as a result of vicissitudes in the construction process). The dimensions of the upper section of a pier base were required to match the diameter of its shaft (determined at the quarry), meanwhile the lower circumference of the base needed to fit the amount of space afforded to the pier on site, which could not have been predicted at the quarry. As variations at S. Corrado show, the carving of the vertical molding of the base provided an opportunity for the on-site team to mediate between these two constraints. In some instances, a single vertical molding scheme was used on different bases with only a slight modification. The moldings of Pier 2PN (north) and 2PN (south) adorn shafts of the same circumference, and were probably fashioned during the same building phase

(possibly Phase 2). But because Pier 2PN (north) originally featured a larger plinth than that of 2PN (south), its molding projected farther than its neighbor. The two different moldings feature matching arch circumferences for their upper toruses and nearly

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matching heights for their fillets, scotias, and lower toruses; but 2PN (north) adopts a more gradual slope for its upper fillet, increasing the horizontal extents of the scotia and the lower torus (fig. 80). The two moldings were thus produced using almost exactly the same generative geometry, only differing in the slope of the main diagonal of reference

(medieval archaeologists recognize the slope of this diagonal as the first line marked in the reduction of a base molding).59 The diagonal of reference for the base of 2PN (south) rises at an angle of 67.8° from the base, while that of 2PN (north) rises at approximately

65°.

In the four piers and responds in the west of the church (Phase 4), the lower toruses of the base moldings project at varying rates within the context of each base.

Each molding begins to separate from the perimeter of the shaft as it approaches the middle of its curvature. Producing this effect may have required a gradual adjustment of the slope of reference during the blocking out of the molding (fig. 62). This versatility was vital in adapting new bases to plinths that may have been fashioned in earlier phases.

The flexibility of the slopes of reference in the various base moldings of S.

Corrado created an opportunity for the master mason to intervene minimally in order to

59 See J.-C. Bessac, "Glossaire des termes techniques: Carrières antiques de la Gaule. Une recherche polymorphe" Gallia 59 (2002): 189-94.

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adapt the product of the workshop to the requirements of the building. As in the case of the capital blocks, the mason merely needed to indicate a small difference to the stonecutters involved in blocking out the base moldings on site. The carvers of the capital blocks and base moldings worked from a repertoire of problem-solving techniques that allowed them to gloss over an uneven construction process.

Other elements of on-site stonecutting appear to have contributed more directly to the creation of structural and visual ensembles in the building. Surviving from every building phase of S. Corrado are widening arches, or archi lunati (fig. 81). These arches were produced in a particular way. As Ambrosi has described, archi lunati in their most basic form could be produced by arranging voussoirs in accordance with an extrados

(outer arc) and intrados (inner arc) of equal radius, rather than using the proportioned radii of a more common rounded arch.60 A separation of the extrados from the intrados was achieved by offsetting the two arcs vertically. Trapezoidal voussoirs were used to compose the arch, which gradually widens towards its apex.

Like the intermediate stages of capital blocks and base moldings, the stone- cutting and assembly of voussoirs for archi lunati needed to be closely coordinated: each stone had a different shape depending on its position in the arch. The process for this

60 Ambrosi, "Testimonianze sul tracciamento degli archi medievali in Terra di Bari e Capitanata," 79-96, especially 92 discussing drawings from the 'lodge-book' of Villard D'Honnecourt.

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depended on assembly guides, one of which is incised into the south facade of S.

Corrado (fig. 82). This guide is a gradual arch from which several lines radiate roughly perpendicular to the curve. As Ambrosi has compellingly argued, this was probably not strictly a template (an outline upon which stones were fashioned to ensure homogeneity), but a reference conveying critical information for stonecutters whose task was to create heterogeneous but coordinated voussoirs.61 The incision at S. Corrado communicated the size of the inner curvature and the alignments of the radiating stones, which were not to lie exactly perpendicular to the inner curvature, but to gradually shift in accordance with the extrados. As Ambrosi points out, stonecutters probably cut voussoirs on the ground in continuation of the curvature of adjacent voussoirs--using tools and heuristic methods similar to those described in the exceptional diagrams of Villard

D'Honnecourt--then checked their work against the guide before finishing the angles and sides to ashlar. While it is possible that master masons used assembly guides to train stonecutters in a specialized method, they may also have employed them for the more ordinary function of creating a common curvature for the reference of stonecutters who were already familiar with the technique.

61 See Ambrosi, "Testimonianze sul tracciamento," 92, discussing drawings from the 'lodge book' of Villard D'Honnecourt.

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Although archi lunati were used throughout the cathedral of Molfetta, in most cases they simply contributed a consistent decorative language to the arches and did not dramatically change what was possible in the visual or structural design of the building.

An exception can be observed in the exterior east facade, where this kind of arch was used for the interlaced colossal-order blind arches and for the elaborately sculpted window at the center of the design (attributed to Phase 2) (fig. 78).

The necessity of archi lunati to the design scheme of an east facade with blind arches and an interrupting window at center is evident from several comparanda

(Giovinazzo Cathedral; Bari, S. Nicola; Bari Cathedral (figs. 18, 19); Bitonto Cathedral; and S. Maria di Ronzano, near Castel Castagna (fig. 83)). The use of archi lunati is consistent despite other kinds of variations, such as the composition of the arches

(regular blind arches, interlaced arches, or pairs of arches contained by larger arches), the proportions of the facade, and the decision of whether or not to include towers. As we shall see in a later section, the archi lunati were indispensable for a particular planimetric scheme at S. Corrado. At present, the archi lunati are relevant for their structural system of relieving arches, which served to consolidate vertical loads toward thick supports. This allowed the kind of blind archi lunati seen in the east facade of

Molfetta to be used in other locations of limited limestone supply. For example, S. Maria di Ronzano (in Abruzzo) employed this system with a mix of brick masonry and

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limestone ashlars (fig. 83). The limestone was used for the relieving arches and pilasters, while the brick was used for the superstructure and the arch reliefs. The 'skeletal' quality of the stone-assembly concept leveraged the stronger construction stone to convey the greatest compressive forces, such that workshops with limited access to limestone could optimize their use of it.

More sophisticated structural uses of limestone can be seen in the construction of the domes of S. Corrado. The vaults of S. Corrado did not, strictly speaking, involve stereotomy, defined as the use of the geometry of solids to subdivide complex stone vaults into carefully fitted and pleasingly arranged components (voussoirs). According to the precise usage described by Galletti, a stereotomic vault must consist of voussoirs that fit together with near seamlessness both on the surface and in the thickness of the masonry without the help of variable mortar beds; it must maintain a standard, relatively large block size and neat coursing pattern on its visible surfaces so that the undecorated vault does not contradict the appearance of more regular masonry in the surrounding arches and walls; and it must be a vault of adequate complexity to require geometric approaches beyond a simple two-dimensional projection.62 Although this art

62 S. Galletti, "Stereotomy and the Mediterranean: Notes Toward an Architectural History," Mediterranea. International journal for the transfer of knowledge 2 (2017): 73-120. See also M. R. Nobile, ed., La stereotomia in Sicilia e nel Mediterraneo (Palermo, 2013); C. D'Amato and G. Fallacara, "Tradizione e innovazione nella progettazione/ costruzione dell'architettura: ruolo del 'modello' e attualità della sterotomia," in L'arte della stereotomia. Les Compagnons du Devoir e le

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was first theorized in geometric treatises by 16th- and 17th-century architects such as

Philibert de l'Orme, Alonso de Vandelvira, and Jacques Curabelle (the latter defining it as a theoretical geometry preceding the act of stonecutting), it was applied in practice much earlier, and can be found in numerous, sporadic classical and medieval sites throughout the Mediterranean, including several Romanesque Apulian churches.63 It is clear, however, that the knowledge and application of this technology was uneven in the region.

The domes of S. Corrado, their size and structural sophistication nothwithstanding, do not exhibit an understanding of stereotomy. While complex geometric problems are posed by the pendentives and squinches of the domes at

Molfetta, the masons did not solve them by creating custom-fitted blocks of large and even proportions. Rather, they broke down the stones into smaller ones and arranged them in courses of varying width, much like brickwork (as we shall see, the coursing of

meraviglie della costruzione in pietra, ed. G. D'Amato and G. Fallacara (Paris, 2005), 54; and F. Defilippis, Architettura e stereotomia: caratteri dell'architettura in pietra da taglio in area mediterranea (Bari, 2010), 45-48, who emphasizes the 'expressive' function of stereotomy, which indeed highlights the craft of masonry itself as part of the visual program of the edifice. These studies expand the modern discourse on stereotomy pioneered by J.-M. Pérouse de Montclos, L'architecture à la française: du milieu du XVe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1982) beyond this author's tight focus on Early Modern France. 63 P. de L'Orme, Premier tome de l'architecture (Paris, 1567); El tratado de arquitectura de Alonso de Vandelvira, ed. G. Barbé-Coquelin de Lisle (Madrid, 1977; originally published ca. 1585 as Libro de trazas de cortes de piedras); J. Curabelle, Examen des oeuvres du Sr. Desargues (Paris, 1644).

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the squinches in the middle and westerly domes has a strong relationship with contemporary examples executed in brick). The gentle curvatures of the courses in the domes at S. Corrado could have been accomplished with the help of mortar beds in the thickness of the vault rather than with painstakingly crafted voussoirs. In this way, the pendentives in the east dome of S. Corrado (associated with Phase 3) (fig. 3), contrast with the handsome stereotomic pendentives in SS. Ognissanti in Valenzano, a structure that potentially dates as early as the late 11th century.64

An exceptional combination of geometric skills was nevertheless applied to the construction of the vaults in S. Corrado, in particular the middle and western domes

(completed in Phases 4 and 5) (figs. 4, 5). As discussed in the last chapter, the squinches for these domes were probably executed in two stages, starting with the middle dome, begun in Phase 4. During this phase, the squinches featured pseudo-pendentives in their lower parts: rounded right-angle corners composed of stacked horizontal courses

(imitating the effect of pendentives without using their radial emplacement). This first system can be seen in the masonry up to the semicircular entablatures of the cuffia squinches (belonging to Phase 5), and includes the small corbel blocks remaining in some of the squinches. The squinches in the crossing dome of Bari Cathedral provide a close comparison for this first structural solution, and we might surmise that the dome

64 Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 145.

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at Bari best represents what the builders at Molfetta originally had in mind for the upper parts of the squinches (fig. 66). In each of Bari's squinches, horizontal courses rise to a ridge. The courses making up the squinches recede perpendicular to their voussoirs, squeezing the higher courses in order to maintain their horizontality.

The combination of pseudo-pendentives with horizontally-coursed squinches is not common in the local context, only found in Molfetta and Bari (S. Nicola; Bari

Cathedral) (Charts 9, 10). It is also found in northeastern Apulia, near the border with

Campania (S. Angelo in Orsara) and also well to the north, in Abruzzo (Teramo,

Cathedral (fig. 84)). Among the group, there is no clear reference to a date earlier than the Bari examples (Bari Cathedral was being rebuilt in the 1170s, meanwhile S. Nicola was still receiving revenues for construction during this time).

The two non-local examples, in which the squinches are constructed of both brick

(for the inner surfaces) and limestone (for the arches), reveal a structural system. The masons incorporated an awareness of the properties of limestone (knowledge that may have been passed on from quarrymen) and the approach of consolidating forces to allow minimal use of the stone, much like the archi lunati found at S. Maria di Ronzano.

There are other patterns among the comparanda that hint at the full purpose of the squinch domes at S. Corrado. Like many squinch dome systems, this one is typically used over bays that are not exactly square. While square bays could be vaulted with

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pendentive domes, such an approach would create unwieldy ellipses when attempted for rectangular bays or for the irregular quadrilaterals found in the western bays at S.

Corrado in Molfetta. The ability to place a dome atop a non-square bay was, in other words, enabled by squinch technology. At Molfetta, the attachment of a three-dome scheme to an earlier transept-basilica plan (Phase 3)--a choice that had produced asymmetrical alignments--was feasible because of squinches. At the same time, the concept of pseudo-pendentives allowed the squinch domes not to disrupt the curvilinear aesthetic of the pendentive dome in the east of the church.

The geographic distribution of this construction technique is more sporadic than those discussed to this point. There are, farther afield, other examples of squinch domes using horizontal coursing rising to a ridge, but not employing pseudo-pendentives (eg.

Pisa Cathedral; Ascoli Piceno, S. Maria inter vineas and S. Tommaso; Genoa, S. Donato and S. Stefano; Tarquinia, S. Giacomo; and S. Maria di Portonovo (near Ancona)). In all of these cases, the squinch is called upon to solve the problem of vaulting a rectangular bay with a dome. Interestingly, these examples, like those of Bari and Molfetta, seem to cluster in coastal areas and near major ports, possibly suggesting that the stonelaying technology of the squinch was passed back and forth over seaborne lanes of communication and travel. Meanwhile, the absence of the pseudo-pendentives in these examples suggests that this variation was a specific development of the lower Adriatic.

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Partway through the construction of the squinch domes at Molfetta, a completely different aesthetic system was introduced. Cuffie (niches with semicircular bases) were inserted into the frame of the squinches. This was accomplished by adding small sections of curvilinear masonry to each corner (creating a semicircular rather than rounded-corner base for the squinch), then adorning the squinch base with a semicircular entablature. Each squinch was then constructed using horizontal courses conforming to the shape of a sphere, rather than receding toward an ascending ridge as at Bari Cathedral. The completion of the squinches in the middle and west bays of S.

Corrado (Phase 5) resulted in octagonal platforms upon which to place each dome. The transition from the octagon to the circular base of the dome was carried out using small zones of radial coursing, or mini-pendentives. The domes are remarkable, combining squinch technology with that of true pendentives to combine the high elevation of the former with the curvilinear aesthetic of the latter. The ovoid and semispherical forms of the two domes, along with the quarter-spherical shapes of the squinches, are accented by circular and semicircular entablatures, serving to mask a complicated surface and a fundamentally orthogonal system of supports.

There are some precedents for cuffia squinches in Italy, especially in areas of sustained contact with Islamic building traditions such as Sicily (eg. S. Maria Maddalena in Palermo), where the squinches are ingeniously produced using radiating coursing

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from the back, as in Aghlabid mosques found in north Africa (eg. the Great Mosque of

Kairouan and the Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis). The comparisons for cuffia squinches using horizontal coursing are few and disparate: they include churches such as S. Maria di

Portonovo (near Ancona) (fig. 85), and S. Maria de Tridetti, in Brancaleone (Calabria)). In all of these cases, the squinches rise from square corners, rather than from the pseudo- pendentives known in Apulia and Abruzzo. The cuffia is probably best understood as a visual idea that could be combined with different kinds of structural systems, and could thus be supported by a range of stonelaying concepts. For example, inserting cuffie into the support system of squinches at Molfetta Cathedral did not alter the fundamental structure of these domes.

How do the distribution patterns of the specialized stone-assembly techniques seen at S. Corrado accord with what we know about the mobility and communication pathways of master masons? As noted earlier, protomagisters such as Eustasius of Trani

(active at the cathedral of Ragusa (Dubrovnik)) were capable of traveling great distances to fulfill contracts. This often entailed not merely visiting, but relocating for a long period of time, as Eustasius is known to have done.

Relocations of artisans between cities, especially ones close to the coast, can be put in relation to the larger context of changing citizenship restrictions in Mediterranean towns. Starting in the middle of the 12th century, maritime cities in the Adriatic began

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making trade pacts amongst themselves, beginning with an 1148 accord between

Molfetta and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) (the two cities later renewed their agreement when it was set to expire in 1208).65 The pact confirmed exemptions from market duties such as plazam, scalaticum, and ancoraticum (harbor, market, and docking taxes) for citizens of either city doing business in the other. The pact articulated that because of the two cities’ consanguineitas, citizens from Molfetta traveling to Ragusa, and vice-versa, were to enjoy the same privileges as they would in their place of birth. The exemptions given here

(and also in other 12th- to early 13th-century partnerships between Ragusa and Bari,

Ragusa and Ancona, Ancona and Pisa, etc.), overruled a traditional distinction between the tax rights of locals and foreigners. An item in Trani's 13th-century consuetudines, confirmed by Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, stating that foreigners coming to

Trani to live were entitled to the same privileges and protections as Trani citizens, and thus should not be removed from the city against their will, should be seen in the same light.66 These kinds of protections were not only significant for the boost they gave to an

65 See Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae II, for the trade pacts, especially Doc. 63, p. 62 for the 1148 accord between Molfetta and Ragusa (Dubrovnik). On commerce between the eastern and western Adriatic coastlines, see G. Yver, Le commerce et les marchands dans l’Italie méridionale au XIIIe et XIVe siècle (Paris, 1902); and N. Cilento, “I rapporti del ‘ Pugliese’ con le città delle due sponde adriatiche negli studi di Francesco Carabellese,” Archivio storico pugliese 34 (1981): 41-53. 66 J.-L.-A. Huillard-Bréholles, ed., Historia Diplomatica Frederici Secundi, Vol. I, Part II (Paris, 1852), 375-76. Cited by P. Oldfield, “Citizenship and Community in Southern Italy C. 1100-c.1220,”

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already blossoming trade economy, but also for the new status they afforded to all kinds of professional travelers. The long-distance relocations of protomagisters such as

Eustasius depended on such incentives.

The vaulting solution used in the west domes of Molfetta Cathedral seems to have been made possible by this kind of professional mobility. This scheme was enabled by the presence of widespread circulation patterns for stonelaying concepts, including the highly structural idea of the horizontally coursed squinch as well as the more decorative choice of using cuffie for the form of the webbing and entablature. The experts of stone assembly developed structural schemes that mediated between the affordances of quarrying schemes, which obeyed regional circulation patterns, and specific desired visual effects in the elevation, which could be very widespread. Magistri and protomagistri could have negotiated the two different geographies by making a network of occasional middle-range movements, by sea as well as by land.

Papers of the British School at Rome 74 (2006): 323-38. See 327. See also Oldfield, Urban Society, 193, for discussion of outsiders coming to Bari to become long-term citizens.

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Expertise in Planimetrics

Also discernable in the construction of Molfetta Cathedral is a third field of expertise whose variations consistently coincide independent of variations in quarrying and stone assembly, and which therefore seems to have commanded its own integral body of knowledge and practice. This field is known today as planimetrics, and can be defined as the generative geometry of floor plans. It becomes evident in the case of

Molfetta that masters with planimetric knowledge were not responsible for deciding upon the basic features and general layout of the space, such as facade towers or domed crossings; rather, they responded to this kind of general charge, finding ways to produce it through proportional geometry that took into account the affordances of available quarrying and stonelaying concepts. The geographic network of planimetric schemes is found to be characterized by widely separated clusters, raising the possibility that the personnel who bore this knowledge were either part of, or closely tied to, the professional networks of cathedral chapters and monasteries, and that their mobility allowed expanding ecclesiastical institutions to maintain their liturgical and spatial solidarity at widely separated building sites.

A number of early medieval texts underline the importance of foundations for

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the design of the rest of the building, even calling foundation planners 'architects.'67

Thus it is not surprising that in a few cases the leader of the church--its bishop or abbot-- is said to have determined the floor plans of churches; though it is not clear whether this was the rule or the exception.68 Even in cases of highly involved rectors, at important sites such as Worchester Cathedral (in the second half of the 10th c.) and the Abbey of

Cluny (in the late 11th c.), another set of specialists was required to carry out the rector's ideal floor plan according to planimetric schemes, such as the 3 x 4 x 5 right triangle or heuristic devices such as rotating lengths of rope.69 Relatedly, there are a handful of references in the Romanesque period to caementarii setting out floor plans according to geometric concepts.70

As we have seen, canons were probably in charge of the institution of the fabrica

(fund for construction purposes).71 They thus often had 'building' job titles such as the prior fabrice of Bari Cathedral (mentioned in a document of 1245).72 But if, at a site like

Molfetta, clergy might have been involved in 'planning' the church, it may only have been in the capacity of determining a conceptual outline of spaces and features in addition to deciding upon a sequence of construction. Meanwhile, the geometric

67 Coppola, L'edilizia, 85-86; citing Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, XIX, 8-9. 68 Occhiato, "Robert de Grandmesnil," especially 623-26. 69 Coppola, L'edilizia, 86. 70 Coppola, L'edilizia, 65. 71 Coppola, L'edilizia, 31-34. 72 Kappel, S. Nicola, 159.

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knowledge of experts such as caementarii may have been needed to execute the layout, and even bring proper dimension to it by offering a cohesive design scheme. Foundation planners are known, from the few relevant medieval documents that exist, to have traveled long distances: for example the "magister caementarius" Eudes de Montreuil

(possibly the son of Pierre de Montreuil (d. 1267), who may have laid out foundations for a castle in Jaffa);73 the caementarii of the late 11th-century Troina Cathedral in Sicily, who traveled with the clergy relocating from northern France; and fifteen workers named as al-haffarin ("foundation diggers"), whom Spanish Umayyad caliph Abd-al

Rahman III sent to assist in the construction of an early 10th-century castle in Morocco.74

In these instances, the task of determining the proportions of the layout stood at the fulcrum between the particular capabilities of the building team and the spatial needs of the employing institution.

In the last chapter, we noted that the lost crypt at S. Corrado (Phase 1) was probably intended to be a hall crypt three bays deep and five bays wide, and to feature tower bases flanking the apse. This situates the church in relation to a small group of

73 "Montreuil, Pierre de" in Oxford University Press, A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (2 ed.) (Oxford, 2006). 74 Occhiato, "Rapporti culturali," 568; citing G. Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius, ed. E Pontieri, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, V (Bologna, 1927): III, ch. 19, ch. 32; and C. G. Canale, La cattedrale di Troina (Palermo, 1951), 11. J. A. Souto Lasala, “La práctica y la profesión del artista en el Islam: arquitectos y constructores en Al- Andalus omeya,” Espacio, tiempo y forma. Serie VII, Historia del arte 10 (1997): 11-34.

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buildings with the same number and juxtaposition of bays and features (Giovinazzo

Cathedral (fig. 29); Biscéglie Cathedral; and S. Maria della Porta at Palo del Colle). There is a clear divergence between the variations concerning general features of the layout and those concerning the geometry of floorplans. At Molfetta the crypt layout would have been achieved with all square bays (as deduced from the position of the wall arches). This choice does not always apply to the above group: Biscéglie Cathedral employs rectangular bays wider than they are long. The simple planimetric choice of square crypt bays, furthermore, finds a larger application than the 3 x 5 crypts. It is used in a number of other Apulian hall crypts, some of which are not flanked by facade towers (Trani Cathedral), or have various bay ratios, including 3 x 7 (Acquaviva

Cathedral), 4 x 9 (S. Nicola in Bari; Bitonto Cathedral; Trani Cathedral), and 5 x 9

(Otranto Cathedral). Meanwhile, other buildings closely comparable to the above group feature rectangular bays wider than they are long (Biscéglie Cathedral; Bari Cathedral; and S. Lucia in Brindisi). The towered east end hall crypt so peculiar to the major churches of Apulia, in other words, was produced using various planimetric techniques.

The choice of which technique to use may have been related to the period of construction and changing fashions, or to different preferences for the overall proportions of the transept vessel.

The same phenomenon is observed in other planning choices at Molfetta. The

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initial floor plan of the upper church (Phase 2), as set out by the transept and the intersection with the outer walls of the nave, achieved a basic spatial concept common to many buildings in the region: east towers and a transept projecting beyond the aisles

(Chart 1). But Molfetta Cathedral finds a more specific set of comparanda for the particular combination of planimetric devices used to accomplish this idea. Unlike some of the larger examples for this layout, such as S. Nicola in Bari or Bitonto Cathedral, the planners at Molfetta adopted a transept vessel with a transverse span of √2 (about 1.41) times as great as its length. This multiple is the natural result of taking the diagonal of a square and rotating it to produce the greater length. It appears that the planners of

Molfetta Cathedral produced its transept proportions in this way: the diagonal of the initial square, connecting the easterly outer corner of one of the towers to the far crossing pier, was rotated to produce the full width of the transept (fig. 86). This fixed the span of the triumphal arch and hence the width of the nave. The width of the outer walls of the side aisles were then set apart at a distance of double the width of the central vessel, such that each side aisle was half the width of the main aisle. This resulted in a slight differential between the lateral extents of the transept and those of the aisles.

Three other churches can be identified that share the planimetric scheme of a projecting transept produced using a rotated square combined with a nave-to-aisle

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width ratio of 2:1 (Chart 11). Two are in Apulia (Conversano Cathedral and Bitetto

Cathedral), while another is in Abruzzo (S. Maria di Ronzano, near Castel Castagna (fig.

87)).75 The planning geometry is consistent among this group in spite of differences in other features of the layout, such as the number of bays and the choice of whether or not to include facade towers. Some variations are shared among several but not all of the churches. At least three of the four churches originally featured a rectilinear east end with an interior passageway and elevated window (Molfetta Cathedral; S. Maria di

Ronzano; Conversano Cathedral; Bitetto Cathedral unknown), and at least two examples feature exterior blind arches employing the stone-assembly method of archi lunati

(Molfetta Cathedral; S. Maria di Ronzano; Bitetto Cathedral unknown).

Certain planimetric strategies could satisfy a particular range of desired layouts.

Juxtaposing two different schemes for the proportions of the transept and the aisles-- rotating the diagonal of a square and doubling the length of a side--met the challenge of creating a stately edifice whose transept vessel exceeded the width of the nave aisles, while doing so at a smaller scale, and thus at less expense, than edifices such as S. Nicola in Bari, Bari Cathedral, and Bitonto Cathedral. Thus it is not surprising, from the point of view of the overall scheme, to see the similar decorative feature of blind arches in the

75 The main volumes of S. Maria di Ronzano are dated to around 1171 on the basis of an inscription. P. Favole, Abruzzo e Molise (Milan, 1990), 66. Kappel, S. Nicola, 341-44 also draws attention to the close comparison of S. Maria di Ronzano with the Apulian churches.

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smaller and larger buildings: this kind of articulation was desired by patrons along with the layout feature of the transept with rectilinear facade.

This planimetric scheme was enabled by the presence of masons possessing particular stonelaying knowledge. All of the churches in the above group feature archi lunati, with some of them (S. Corrado in Molfetta and S. Maria di Ronzano) even putting such arches to work in the specific scheme of the east facade with blind arches and a central, elevated ornamented window. Archi lunati are much better suited to this scheme than ordinary rounded arches, as they widen from very narrow springers, allowing the arches to be bunched together while retaining some heft in their middle sections. The arcade is therefore appropriately substantial when viewing the facade in its fullness at a bit of a distance, despite the fact that it adorns pilasters with a small intercolumniation.

The geographic distribution of comparisons for this scheme seems to parallel that of Molfetta's stone assembly concepts, reaching beyond Apulia and connecting with

Abruzzo, farther north (Chart 12). This overlap in the geography of distribution between stonelaying and planimetric knowledge may indicate the fluidity of roles and responsibilities of various workshop masters,76 or possibly an intersection in the travel pathways of these different specialists.

76 C. Bruzelius, Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266-1343 (New Haven, 2004), 204.

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As discussed in the last chapter, Phase 3 of Molfetta Cathedral transformed the general layout as well as the geometry of floor plan and elevation. A spatial composition of three domes over the nave and quadrant vaults over the side aisles was fitted over a floor plan better suited to a typical transept basilica. The revision of the nave during this phase involved the introduction of a new planimetric concept. The central vessel remained half the width of the combined span of the aisles, but the middle bays were transformed into crude squares.

The planimetric scheme here--axially aligned square bays flanked by side aisles half the width of the central vessel--was used to support a specific range of roofing solutions and features of the elevation (Chart 13). Scholars have often noted the set of churches clustered in the Terra di Bari that apply a 2:1 ratio of nave width-to-side aisle width to the charge of a 3 x 3 basilica plan with domes over the nave axis and quadrant vaults over the aisles (Conversano, S. Benedetto; Valenzano, SS. Ognissanti; Trani, S.

Francesco (fig. 55)). Relaxing some of the categories that make up this strict group

(identified by Ionescu), the basic planimetric scheme appears to have been used over a much larger geographic range, including both Apulia and Provence.

Several examples, despite not possessing the feature of three axial domes, still feature a 3 x 3 plan with square middle bays, at least one dome, side aisles half the width of the main aisle, and the peculiar feature of quadrant vaults over the side aisles (S.

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Leonardo, near Siponto; and Garde-Adhémar, S. Michel (fig. 88)).77 The same combination of features also seems to hold when fewer or more longitudinal bays are desired. To this group belongs the early example of the small church of Seppannibale, near Fasano.78 Later examples have more than three axial bays and employ axial domes over some of the bays (S. Domenico in Bitonto); meanwhile others have varying numbers of bays in the nave and only a single dome in the presbytery or crossing (S.

Maria di Càlena; Troia, S. Basilio; Notre Dame in Saint-Étienne-du-Grès; and Notre

Dame in Savasse).

In all of these churches there is a shared logic that leads to the application of the planimetric scheme. Square bays over the nave are a useful standard when at least one dome is desired, as it is generally more straightforward to put a dome over a square bay than a rectangular one. When side aisles are needed, a 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio is a harmonious accompaniment. The proportional relationship is well articulated by the choice of quadrant vaults over the side aisles, especially when these 'half vaults' occur alongside nave bays covered by a pointed barrel vault (Garde-Adhémar, S. Michel; S.

Leonardo near Siponto; Troia, S. Basilio).

77 Venditti, "Architettura a cupola," I, 110, noted examples in France and the Marché, not citing any of the latter. 78 See Chapter 1 discussing the dating of the church of Seppannibale. See Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 256-57, for S. Maria di Càlena: the church first documented in 1023 when it passed under S. Maria dei Tremiti. The church came under the control of the Cistercians in 1237.

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The planning scheme also seems to have predetermined the general proportions of the elevation in all of the examples: side-aisle arches of nearly the same height as the nave arches. The planimetric idea appears to have been accompanied by other stipulations for the elevation that, much like the east facade type discussed earlier, fitted the inventions of stonecutters to the features of elevation desired by patrons. Hence many churches with the combination of square nave bays and a 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio feature a particular form of fenestration: oculi in the east and west facades and in the quadrant diaphragm arches (SS. Ognissanti, Valenzano (fig. 89); S. Leonardo near

Siponto; Garde-Adhémar, S. Michel). This form is clearly fitted to the planar-roofing concept of axial square bays flanked by aisles with quadrant vaults. The oculi substitute for high lateral aisle windows--made impossible by the quadrant vaults--and channel light through the space by breaking up flat wall surfaces. Their apt circular shape resonates with the rounded surfaces of the vaults.

It is striking to find the examples of this planimetric concept clustered in two geographic regions: Apulia and Provence (Chart 14). Between the two clusters, there is one major difference in the salient use of the concept. Exclusive to Apulia is the choice of including multiple axial domes with this scheme. It appears that this discrepancy has less to do with a difference in the planimetric knowledge applied in either zone, and relates instead to the general features that Apulian patrons desired of their churches.

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The particular desire for axial domes in Apulia exists in several older buildings that do not feature this planimetric scheme: for example, the old metropolitan cathedral of

Canosa (fig. 90). As discussed in Chapter 1, this demand for multi-domed churches may also be attributed to Crusader patrons seeking to imitate the Byzantine typologies of the

Levantine realms toward which they strove.79 It is possible that the expanding networks of the Church--serving a variety of travel toward the Holy Land--informed the mobility of the foundation planners trained in planimetrics. If caementarii acted as mediators between church officials and workshops (and for this reason are known to have sometimes been transported along with ecclesiastic communities), this may account in part for the communication of their specialized knowledge between Provence and

Apulia. The distribution patterns of such planimetric techniques, existing in separated clusters, suggest that this form of knowledge was capable of vaulting over a great expanse, following the pathways of deployment of so many transplanted communities and individuals from French chapters and monasteries during this era.80

The construction of S. Corrado in Molfetta appears to have benefitted from three discreet areas of expertise. Quarrying, stone assembly, and planimetrics constituted separate bodies of knowledge applicable to different stages of production. At the same

79 See discussion in Chapter 1. 80 See discussion in Chapter 1.

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time, each field developed flexible solutions to adapt to variations in the other two fields. There was thus a cycle of interdependence, with each field offering a range of opportunities to the next. This helped the different bodies of knowledge circulate within the largest possible geographical extents.

The specialized knowledge of quarrymen seems to have been transported over short distances, creating chains of interconnectivity throughout zones in which the quarried stone was similar in its most fundamental properties. For example, the combination of quarrying practice that created the mixed-construction pier at Molfetta

Cathedral ranged along the littoral of middle and northern Apulia, connecting the extractive zones known for pietra di Trani and pietra Apricena. There was also a clear boundary to the circulation of this concept, in areas where limestone was scarcer, and thus where the cost of material probably did not justify the use of the scheme.

Meanwhile stonelaying and planimetric techniques had a wider range of transmission. Although the variations in the two fields of expertise produce different comparanda--suggesting that they were different bodies of knowledge and corresponded to different stages of production--they nonetheless overlapped in their respective geographies of circulation. For example, the stonelaying concept of combining pseudo-pendentives with squinches followed a similar trajectory to that of the planimetric combination of a rotated-square transept and 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio. On

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the other hand, at least one planimetric scheme is shown to have circulated in a much larger orbit. The combination of axially aligned square bays with a 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio appears to have been shared by Provence and Apulia. It is possible that this practice was transmitted by caementarii over large ecclesiastical networks. Just as stone-assembly experts developed their concepts according to a certain range of possibility offered by different regional quarrying practices, the experts of planimetrics could have responded to the opportunities and affordances of a large range of stonelaying techniques.

Although the precise technical comparisons addressed here imply especially strong networks of specialized knowledge between certain zones--especially Apulia,

Abruzzo, and Provence--they also begin to explain a larger range of more general formal and structural comparisons. For example, the interlaced-arch structural detailing at S.

Corrado is rare in Apulia, seen only in the nearby cathedral of Giovinazzo. This general form, however, had a remarkably wide distribution between the 10th and 13th centuries, especially in Islamic territories (eg. the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Mosque of Bab

Mardum in Toledo), as well as in Sicily (the cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale),

Campania (Casertavecchia Cathedral), (S. Salvatore Arbanensis in Rubik), and

East Anglia (Cluniac Priory of Castle Acre).81 Likewise, the volumetric form of cuffia

81 See discussions of this form by J. Dodds, M. R. Menocal, and A. K. Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven, 2010), 118-19;

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squinches at S. Corrado is unique in the local context: the closest example is S. Maria di

Portonovo, near Ancona (Marche).82 A number of 9th-to-12th-century precedents nonetheless existed throughout the greater Mediterranean, once again predominantly in

Islamic zones but also farther afield. Cuffia squinches are found in Ifriqiya (Great

Mosque of Kairouan and al-Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis), Palermo (S. Maria Maddalena), and southeastern France (Le-Puy-en-Velay Cathedral).83 The formal affinities within both sets of examples are not attended by close technical similarities. Although both structural forms consistently carry the same aesthetic logic and three-dimensional shape, they are executed according to an array of stonecutting and stonelaying methods. Only in Apulia are interlaced arches constructed of archi lunati, and only in Molfetta and

Ancona are cuffia squinches executed with horizontal courses.

The possibility of a disaggregated network of technical expertise helps to explain this kind of phenomenon. Stonecutters and stonelayers could have developed certain volumetric solutions upon which other experts, such as foundation planners, came to rely (for example, the structural form of the squinch enabled planners to employ

Bellafiore, Architettura in Sicilia, 108-17; M. D’Onofrio, La cattedrale di Vecchia (Rome, 1974), 201-2; and A. Meksi, Arkitektura e kishave të Shqipërisë (shekujt VII-XV) (Tirana, 2004), 102-3. 82 See discussion below. 83 See discussions of this form by Mahfoudh, "La Grande Mosquée de Kairouan;" Daoulatli, "La Grande Mosquée Zitouna;" Lamine, "Zaytuna;" Kapitaikin, "Staging of Multiculturalism," 391-92; and Bellafiore, Architettura in Sicilia, 132-33.

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rectangular bays for domes). Then, when the stone-assembly and planimetric experts dispersed, finding work within their own separate professional networks, the foundation planners, employed alongside new stonelayers in their next commission, might have required the latter to execute the volumetric forms of past projects, prompting the stonecutters to find new solutions to old forms (such as a new assembly method for squinches). The capacity of formal knowledge to become transmuted across fields of expertise in this way may account for the indirect relationship of S. Corrado to

Islamic architecture, as well as to other Mediterranean idioms (such as the squinch domes of Armenian architecture, cited by scholars such as Panunzio).84

It becomes clear in the case of S. Corrado that a dichotomy between 'conceptual' design ideas and 'embodied' execution techniques would be false. Each choice in the building project satisfied, by virtue of the cycle of separate but interdependent networks, the affordances of the material, the possibilities of quarrying and stonelaying techniques, the harmonious systems of planimetrics, and the symbolic and spatial requirements of patrons and administrators. Various experts, traveling and communicating in different networks, coordinated their efforts on site, applying flexible techniques that could be adapted to function alongside each other. The web could be pulled and deformed by

84 Panunzio, Duomo di Molfetta.

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patrons and institutions, but it also shifted every time a new building team was assembled.

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Conclusion: Implications for the Methods of Mediterranean Architectural History

The construction of S. Corrado in Molfetta was shaped by the city's interactions with the sea. Emerging institutional formations created an environment of competition in the port town, producing a heterogeneous and evolving edifice. Meanwhile, new pathways of professional mobility connected the building to the formal and technical possibilities of many regions and coastlines. Molfetta Cathedral is thus a material document for the effects of medieval commerce on architectural production. The example of this building stimulates reflection on the methods by which Mediterranean sites can be analyzed and interpreted.

The principal findings of this study can be summarized as follows:

1. The finance of the cathedral responded to the episcopacy's shifting relationship with multiple long-distance institutions in the Latin Church and lay society (groups that converged in Molfetta in response to its commercialized agriculture). This development fostered a multiplicity of symbolic and liturgical functions, which accumulated over time and were manifest in architectural space.

2. The building chronology was marked by a strategic and flexible use of episodic expansions. By periodically revising the overall program, the administration was able to reconcile the current intersection of institutional needs, material resources, and

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professional expertise.

3. The specialized construction techniques employed at S. Corrado were transmitted over a variety of short-, medium-, and long-distance networks, depending on the particular field of expertise in which a given technique was developed. The circulation patterns of technical knowledge were affected by conditions such as the geographic range of limestone extraction; the relaxation of restrictions on travel and relocation in

Adriatic cities; and possibly even the transplantation of ecclesiastic communities between northern Europe and the Apulian coast.

Through these dynamics, the commercializing economy of the sea in the 12th and 13th centuries affected the production of Molfetta Cathedral and other churches built in similar environments. The vicissitudes of production created new possibilities of signification that took advantage of multiplicity and change. The conditions underlying this multi-institutional, episodic, and network-driven site also provide an opportunity to expand interpretive methodologies.

The Responsive Nature of Church Patronage

Molfetta was characterized by an evolving relationship with multiple powerful institutions--both ecclesiastical and lay--as they arrived in Molfetta during the critical

12th and 13th centuries. The various, and often competing, demands of these groups

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produced a diversity of ritual uses and symbolic imperatives in the church. As a result, the construction effort was subdivided into piecemeal installments, each one providing an opportunity for the many supporting institutions to reconfigure their goals and relationships. The interpretation of each intervention as a pragmatic and symbolic response to preceding circumstances is opposed to a traditional approach in which buildings are treated as monolithic programs to be associated with the agenda a single individual or group.

The internal division of finances at S. Corrado was not an anomaly. It can be related to the convergence of large institutions in port cities--an acute trend in the 11th- and 13th-century Mediterranean. The cathedral clergy contended with the interests of major networks such as the archbishopric of Bari, the monastery of Cava and its dependencies, mendicant friars and military orders, and noble families operating throughout the region. As a result, the episcopacy of Molfetta, probably controlling only a small fraction of diocesan tithes, was a comparatively minor financial player in the city and could not sustain the building effort using chiefly its own resources (at least not until a wave of litigation under the enterprising bishops of the late 13th century).

The presence of far-flung institutions in Molfetta was closely related to the booming profits of oliculture. This dynamic local industry stemmed all at once from the ample agricultural opportunities of Molfetta's hinterland, from the international clientele

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that increasingly frequented its maritime marketplace, and from Apulia's access to

Mediterranean coinage (such as Amalfitan and Sicilian tari).1 The advanced monetary economy provided opportunities to liquidate assets, borrow cash, develop credit, and hold property through increasingly sophisticated ownership mechanisms. The intense specialization of the local economy of Molfetta, moreover, echoed a salient trend in

Mediterranean commerce toward dispersed assets controlled by large institutional networks. As Horden and Purcell have pointed out, this kind of development stood to privilege homogenization of local production over diversification, to the profit of long- distance property-holders and at the risk of local populations.2

For groups such as elite lay families, the archiepiscopal network of Bari, and major monastic or mendicant houses, the realization of large-scale institutional agendas depended on investment in church building. Nobles from major families contributed liturgical vessels, furnishings, and architectural features to urban churches throughout the region in order to ensure good spiritual and moral standing, and thereby enhance their families' political prospects. The archbishopric of Bari may have achieved, through the visual affinities between Molfetta Cathedral and its other coastal suffragans, a symbolic expression of its territorial frontier. The firm hold of the monastery of Cava

1 See discussion in Chapter 1. 2 Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 375-77.

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over the agricultural wealth of Molfetta may have allowed Cava monks to infiltrate the spiritual duties of the cathedral (as exemplified by the archdeacon grooming his nephew for acceptance into a Cava community). The Franciscan friars, who emerged in a large number of Italian cities during the 13th century, were both the inspiration for, and victim of, the cathedral's strategy to monopolize intramural burial in Molfetta. Thus the multifunctionality of S. Corrado fit a pattern of competition between a growing number of institutions with long-distance horizons.

Scholars have often studied the growth of institutional competition in Italian cities through specific types of buildings founded by each group, including noble towers, mendicant convents, and bishops' palaces. Maureen Miller's groundbreaking study of episcopal palaces in northern Italian cities elucidated some of the same recurrent themes of the present work, especially the bishop's constant challenge to proclaim his authority while other institutions were assuming more wealth, status, and powers of governance.3

The church of S. Corrado, however, did not operate as a monolithic symbol, but was populated, gradually, by the goals and strategies of many different institutions.

These interventions were not conceived upon a blank slate, but in confrontation with a matrix of forms and iconography established in earlier building periods. Taking into

3 M. Miller, The Bishop's Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, 2000).

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account the responsive nature of church finances allows us to understand how the symbolic strategies of institutions grappled with time. The sequence of construction of different liturgical spaces imposed a hierarchical order on the institutional functions served by each space. Structures such as the crypt, transept, towers, chapels, and nave could be prioritized over each other, postponed to a later intervention, promised and then delayed, or rendered obsolete by a new program. Identifying patterns in the temporal strategies of particular institutions--such as the tendency of Bari's suffragan bishops to prioritize the construction of the transept, or of patrons to impose contingencies on the disbursement of the building fund--can deepen our understanding of institutional competition in an environment of high commerce, while also illuminating the layered political effects of buildings.

Comparisons on the Basis of Practice

Comparative methodologies define Mediterranean architectural history, and comparisons have proved vital to the present effort. In much of the previous literature, architectural comparisons have followed formal classification systems. These categories are built up from discreet ornamental elements, such as capitals, moldings, or facade composition. Such schema, because they are concerned with the conspicuous qualities of the visual experience of buildings, have proved useful for iconographic analyses (as

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exemplified by Kappel's interpretation of the iconographic significance of S. Nicola in

Bari as a formal model for the bishops and lay donors of other sites).4 But while surface formal characteristics may indicate the contributions of patrons and prelates, the less visible proxies of applied techniques prove crucial in uncovering patterns of knowledge exchange among architectural workshops.

My study of the fabric of S. Corrado has revealed certain difficulties in the process of making technique-based comparisons. In the first place, the study of technical variations relies on careful attention to the division of tasks within a building project.

The division of labor is rarely discussed in primary documents, and is often more easily inferred through comparison between buildings. This is a profoundly iterative process of discovery. The division of labor informs comparisons, and it is through comparison that the division of labor becomes apparent.

In addition, visual clues supporting technical comparisons can be difficult to recognize because the comparanda often do not duplicate of each other in purely formal terms. For example, S. Corrado in Molfetta uses exactly the same combination of planimetric concepts as S. Maria in Ronzano (in Abruzzo) to create a basilica with slightly-projecting transept arms, but the two churches vary in other kinds of choices: such as what material to use in the superstructure of the east facade, whether or not to

4 Kappel, S. Nicola.

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include twin towers in the east end, and how many nave bays to employ. It is important to remember that these are proxies of different kinds of choice and expertise.

To infer shared technique from formal affinity, or to dismiss technical comparisons on the grounds of insufficient visual resemblance, is to forget the creative and improvisational abilities of the builders. A typology of practice should be understood as a generative logic capable of creating a range of forms. Bourdieu, in a brief address to art historians, warned that the modus operandi must not be simplified as the opus operatum, a move which "represses the question of artistic production under the concept of the 'objective intention' of the work."5 Consideration of practice-based typologies allows the architectural historian to peer beyond the surface impression of the end product, and thereby read the layers of inherited conditions and applied knowledge that produced it.6

Each technical concept employed at S. Corrado was adapted to a combination of conditions: the inherited fabric, the features desired by the patron base and the administration, and the techniques used by experts in other fields of expertise. It has proved vital, in the current effort, to seek clues of shared practice that could be

5 Bourdieu, Outline, 1. 6 See Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, 42-48, distinguishing between the artist's charge (the general task of his profession) and his brief (defined by the multiple external conditions and social mentalities informing the particular work).

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compared between sites in spite of the surface visual differences imposed by such variable circumstances.

Comparisons based on the technical variations at S. Corrado in Molfetta have indicated a complex geography of architectural practice. In contrast to earlier theories that linked technical expertise to local extraction and associated formal and iconographic ideas with the intellectual milieu of patrons and high prelates, the evidence of S.

Corrado suggests that technical concepts were transmitted over long as well as short distances, depending on the particular expertise in question. Technical experts solved design problems through their attempt to adapt their applied knowledge to variations developed by other fields of expertise, allowing different experts to maximize the geographic range in which their particular mastery was applicable. For example, quarrymen appear to have communicated their knowledge between various zones of limestone extraction, creating regularized sets of parts that incorporated the common structural affordances of this large class of stones. Masters of stone assembly developed techniques that depended on the material properties of limestone but could be employed outside zones that were rich in this material. The strategy of these specialists was to devise structural systems that channeled and consolidated loads and stresses, such that a skeletal structure of limestone could be filled in with other kinds of local stone or brick. The stonelaying and stonecutting practices seen in Molfetta were thus

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able to travel beyond the Apulian coast (occurring, for example, in northwest Apulia and Abruzzo). Finally, foundation planners were able to match their ideas to a particularly widespread geographic network. These experts of planimetrics (the geometry of planning) appear to have communicated specific combinations of ideas between the widely separated regions as Apulia, Abruzzo, and Provence. A single planimetric concept could be applied to meet a range of needs issued by the patrons and clergy, who demanded certain combinations of conspicuous visual features. Each planimetric idea could furthermore support the execution of those features using a range of stonelaying concepts and quarried stone. Innovations at all levels of production were bound in an intricate web that maximized the possibilities of innovation and institutional expression at far-flung sites.

Technical comparison allows us to explore in more detail the infrastructural networks that allowed builders to travel, and ideas to circulate, over a variety of distances. These networks included, in the first place, road systems, trade routes, and pilgrimage pathways, which supplied the waypoints, vessels, and traveling protections needed for a base level of human mobility. Moreover, a new matrix of economic and political opportunities, emerging in the Adriatic region in the 12th and 13th centuries, provided social incentives for long-term relocation--a key factor in the ability of builders to fill contracts in multiple places. Different kinds of experts relocated with the help of

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different pathways of professional mobility. Master masons are known to have used civic protections to support their long-term relocations across the Adriatic. Meanwhile, experts such as caementarii (foundation planners) could have been imported by ecclesiastical communities, as is known to have occurred in Norman Sicily.7 Long- distance institutional groups involved in major building booms, such as French

Benedictine monasteries and Norman bishoprics, benefitted from the importation of geometric systems, which brought similitude to the appearance of these sites while also ensuring the structural stability of these large abbeys and cathedrals. To analyze the networks of technical expertise is thus also to study the networks of human mobility, institutional change, and political conquest.

Symbolic Explanations for Regional Formal Affinities

Questions of architectural production often seem unnecessary when the goal is strictly iconographical (to interpret the meanings and sign systems of the viewer's experience of a building). In the case of S. Corrado in Molfetta, however, the conditions of production shaped the options through which patrons and ecclesiastics expressed institutional roles and status, providing the formal and spatial vocabulary needed to create iconographies of association and difference. For example, my analysis has

7 See discussion in Chapter 3.

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supported the supposition of Kappel and other authors that the typology of the towered east facade was purposefully combined and reused according to the institutional politics of the archbishopric of Bari, while also showing that this typology depended on a certain range of planimetric and stone-assembly concepts.8 The solutions of craftsmen furnished the vocabulary of formal expression.

On the other hand, the regional clustering of some formal typologies, such as the towered facade of the Terra di Bari cathedrals, was not simply a product of 'local schools' of artisans. As we have seen, the forms of technical expertise observed at sites such as S. Corrado were distributed along networks of production and not merely within small territorial ranges. Thus technical solutions were distributed unevenly within territories, echoing the microecologies observed by Horden and Purcell in other types of production.9 Techniques, the rudiments of form and iconography, were drawn not from static and bound geographical units, but from disaggregated flows that tended to shift into new configurations.

Given that sites such as Molfetta Cathedral depended on networks, and not territories, of architectural production, patterns of regional affinity may be interpreted as choices imposed by patrons and administrators. As we have seen, even the most

8 See discussion in Chapter 1. 9 Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 80, defining the microecology as "a set of available productive opportunities and the particular interplay of human responses to them found in a given period."

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distinctive formal typologies were accomplished using ranges of technical variations (as seen in the planimetric layouts of the transept basilicas featuring towered east facades).

An impression of formal homogeneity masked an underlying heterogeneity of local techniques.

Certain agendas could have motivated the repetition of such formal typologies.10

In the case of Molfetta, the choice to include a towered east facade may have linked the cathedral to the archbishopric of Bari. In addition, the collective use of this form by the coastal suffragans of Bari may have outlined a conceptual territorial border. Other meanings could have been constructed in a similar way. As discussed in Chapter 1, a variety of monastic and cathedral communities in Apulia adopted a church typology featuring three axial domes with side aisles covered by quadrant vaults and (often) a monumental west porch. While this typology has been interpreted as an exemplar of regional craftsmanship, its technical combinations are found to have been distributed across a much larger geography, such as its planimetric concept, which bears close comparison to examples in Provence. Only the iconographic choice to incorporate axial nave domes within this planimetric concept is exclusive to the region (meanwhile the stone-assembly systems of these domes were subject to great variation).

10 See Kunst, "Freiheit und Zitat."

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The repeated selection of the three-axial-dome type within a relatively small geographic context may have nonetheless bestowed a 'regional' signified, possibly supporting the ideals of local pastoral outreach valued by monastic and secular clergy alike in Apulia. These institutions were often not headquartered in the region, instead connected to hierarchies based in Rome, Campania, Lazio, and elsewhere. The regional associations of this typology could have been constructed through its patterned adoption by specific kinds of institutions, whose shared needs were accented by the formal choices inherent to the typology, including a preference for liturgical axes, points of ingress, and ceiling types befitting 'local' modes of worship.

The patrons and clergy of Molfetta Cathedral overcame the sporadic distribution patterns of architectural practice in the region, using their powers of selection to make meaningful series. Technical and formal variations became coherent and meaningful at an institutional level through their transformation into "territorial marks," to borrow a formulation of Deleuze and Guattari.11 A deeper understanding of the transregional quality of architectural expertise thus allows us to understand 'regional typologies' as meaningful signs rather than natural products of the environment.

11 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi (Minneapolis, 1987; originally published 1980 as Mille Plateaux, volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizophrénie), 315: "[A quality] becomes expressive [...] when it acquires a temporal constancy and a spatial range that make it a territorial, or rather territorializing, mark: a signature."

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During the trade boom of the 11th and 13th centuries, Molfetta and other port towns began to build churches of a new kind. Masons participated in a network of specialized knowledge that linked different parts of the Mediterranean world. They synthesized their diverse repertoires at each site, where building administrations employed them in short, episodic bursts. This served a revisionary construction process suited to the incremental and unexpected character of finances. The eclectic vocabulary of techniques and versatile design process could adapt to a plural and changing set of institutional goals advanced by various clergy and donors. New horizons of demand thus evolved alongside new opportunities in architectural production. These spheres were reciprocally related. Transformations in the exchange of technical knowledge and in the process of construction responded to such factors as the emergence of large institutions with dispersed commercial wealth, as well as urban governments willing to support the long-distance relocations of builders. Meanwhile, institutions reshaped their agendas to take advantage of the new opportunities of symbolic expression offered in the sphere of church building. The sophistication of architectural production in cities such as medieval Molfetta was unimaginable without a growing need for layered edifices. The reverse is also true: churches such as S. Corrado were inconceivable without the emergence of a revolutionary new way of a building.

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Charts

Chart 1. Numbered plan of S. Corrado in Molfetta (diagram produced from plan in Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 276).

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Chart 2. Map of the dual archbishopric of Bari-Canosa and eligible suffragan sees as listed in papal bull 1025 CE, showing Roman roads and medieval trade routes. 241

Chart 3. Diagrammatic representation of the use of Orthophotographs (parallel projections produced in a 3D photogrammetric model) to analyze the evidence of masonry breaks. Breaks were plotted as lines on the surfaces of the 3D model; then the marked model was processed as an orthographic projection. Sections of wall were then associated with building phases on the basis of continuous wall construction and matching variations in construction technique. 242

Chart 4. Diagram of proposed sequence of building phases at S. Corrado in Molfetta. Interior longitudinal elevation of north wall (Phase 1: blue; Phase 2: green; Phase 3: yellow; Phase 4: red. Uncolored areas represent zones of substantial reconstruction after 1400 CE). 243

Chart 5. Diagram of proposed sequence of building phases at S. Corrado in Molfetta. Interior longitudinal elevation of south wall (Phase 1: blue; Phase 2: green; Phase 3: yellow; Phase 4; red. Uncolored areas represent zones of substantial reconstruction after 1400 CE). 244

Chart 6. Diagram of proposed sequence of building phases at S. Corrado in Molfetta. Longitudinal section of middle and west dome, view to north (Phase 3: yellow; Phase 4: red; Phase 5: purple). 245

Chart 7. Table of churches featuring piers with mixed-construction shafts (combining monolithic half-cylinders with coursed drums). The presence of particular variations is indicated with "Y" (Yes), "N" (No), or "?" (impossible to judge because evidence is hidden or no longer exists).

Site Piers with mixed-construction shafts Coursing aligned with adjacent elements Molfetta, S. Corrado Y Y Trani, S. Francesco Y ? Siponto, S. Leonardo Y Y Bari, Cathedral Y N Bari, S. Nicola Y N Trani, SS. Ognissanti Y N Ruvo, Cathedral Y N 246 Barletta, S. Sepolcro Y Y

Barletta, Cathedral Y N

Bisceglie, Cathedral Y N Bitetto, Cathedral Y N Trani, Cathedral Y N Bari, S. M. del Buonconsiglio Y N Bari, S. Gregorio Y N

Chart 8. Map of churches featuring piers with mixed-construction shafts. Sites with coursing aligned to adjacent elements are shaded. Also showing Roman roads, Venetian and Genoese trade routes, and zones of extraction of pietra di Trani (+). 247

Chart 9. Table of churches featuring domes that combine pseudo-pendentives with horizontally coursed squinches. The presence of particular variations is indicated with "Y" (Yes), "N" (No), or "?" (impossible to judge because evidence is hidden or no longer exists).

Site Pseudo pendentives with horizontally Covering rectangular or irregular coursed squinches quadrilateral bay Molfetta, S. Corrado Y Y Bari, Cathedral Y Y Bari, S. Nicola Y Y Teramo, Cathedral Y Y S. Angelo in Orsara Y Y

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Chart 10. Map of churches featuring domes combining pseudo-pendentives with horizontally-coursed squinches. Also showing Roman roads, Venetian and Genoese trade routes. 249

Chart 11. Table of churches featuring projecting transept using combination of rotating square method and 2:1 ratio for nave and side-aisle widths. The presence of particular variations is indicated with "Y" (Yes), "N" (No), or "?" (impossible to judge because evidence is hidden or no longer exists).

Site Projecting transept using Rectilinear east facade with East facade with blind rotated square and 2:1 nave- passageway and elevated colossal order arches using to-aisle ratio central window archi lunati Molfetta, S. Corrado Y Y Y Bitetto, Cathedral Y ? ? Conversano, Cathedral Y Y N S. Maria di Ronzano Y Y Y

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Chart 12. Map of churches featuring projecting transept using combination of rotating square method and 2:1 ratio for nave and side-aisle widths. Sites featuring a rectilinear east facade with a passageway and elevated central window are shaded. Sites featuring colossal-order blind arcades using archi lunati are double-circled. Also showing Roman roads, Venetian and Genoese trade routes. 251

Chart 13. Table of churches featuring multiple square bays on central axis, combined with 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio and quadrant vaults over the side aisles. The presence of particular variations is indicated with "Y" (Yes), "N" (No), or "?" (impossible to judge because evidence is hidden or no longer exists).

Site Multiple square bays on central axis, Three longitudinal Multiple domes over 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio, quadrant vaults bays central axis Molfetta, S. Corrado Y Y Y Trani, S. Francesco Y Y Y Siponto, S. Leonardo Y Y Y Valenzano, SS. Ognissanti Y Y Y Fasano, Church of Y N Y Seppannibale 252 Brindisi, S. Benedetto Y N N

Conversano, S. Benedetto Y Y Y Troia, S. Basilio Y N N Trani, St.Antonio Abate Y Y Y Bitonto, S. Domenico Y N Y S. Étienne-du-Grès, N. D. Y N N du Château Savasse, Notre-Dame la Y N N Blanche Garde-Adhémar, S. Michel Y Y N

Chart 14. Map of churches featuring multiple square bays on central axis, combined with 2:1 nave-to-aisle ratio and quadrant vaults over the side aisles. Sites featuring exactly three longitudinal bays are shaded. Sites featuring multiple domes on axis over the central aisle double-circled. Also showing Roman roads, Venetian and Genoese trade routes. 253

Illustrations

Figure 1. Molfetta, S. Corrado. General view of north flank.

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Figure 2. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Interior view toward northeast.

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Figure 3. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Dome over east bay.

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Figure 4. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Dome over middle bay.

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Figure 5. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Dome over west bay.

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Figure 6. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 2PN (west and south).

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Figure 7. Molfetta, S. Corrado. East facade.

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Figure 8. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Detail of east facade.

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Figure 9. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Detail of east facade with interlaced arches.

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Figure 10. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt arches on north interior wall of transept.

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Figure 11. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry break on interior wall of north side aisle.

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Figure 12. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry break on interior wall of south side aisle.

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Figure 13. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Drawings of capitals, ca. 1840 (from Schulz, Denkmaeler, Taf. XII).

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Figure 14. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Longitudinal section toward north, ca. 1840 (from Schulz, Denkmaeler, Taf. XII).

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Figure 15. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Drawing of nave, ca. 1903 (from Bertaux, L'Art, I, 385, fig. 166).

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Figure 16. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Exterior view showing massing around the north and west sides before restorations in the 1940s (from Archivio fotografico museo civico, Comune di Bari, Assessorato alla cultura, Fondo liborio Antonelli Matteucci).

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Figure 17. Molfetta. S. Corrado. West facade as presently configured.

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Figure 18. Bari, Cathedral. Drawing of east facade prior to 1860 (from Schulz, Denkmäler, Nr. 1).

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Figure 19. Giovinazzo, Cathedral. East facade.

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Figure 20. Molfetta, S. Corrado. North flank.

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Figure 21. Trani, S. Francesco (originally SS. Trinità). North flank.

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Figure 22. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Corbel and fragmentary shaft supporting interlaced arches.

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Figure 23. Molfetta, S. Corrado. East face of chapel of S. Giuliano.

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Figure 24. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt wall arch on north wall of transept, interrupted by supporting masonry of Respond 2RN.

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Figure 25. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt wall arch on south wall of transept.

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Figure 26. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Crypt wall arch on supporting masonry of Respond 2RS (east face).

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Figure 27. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Fragmentary crypt wall arch on supporting masonry of Pier 2PS (east face).

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Figure 28. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Lacerated springer of crypt groin vault in southeast corner of the transept.

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Figure 29. Giovinazzo, Cathedral. Plan of crypt. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 254.

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Figure 30. Urban plan of Molfetta, showing the massing of the cathedral (upper left) in relation to surrounding structures. From Pane, "Melphicta," 85, fig. 5.

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Figure 31. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Northeast interior corner of transept.

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Figure 32. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Supporting masonry of Respond 2RN (east face).

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Figure 33. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Supporting masonry of Respond 2RN (west face).

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Figure 34. Molfetta, S. Corrado. View of southwest exterior corner of transept.

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Figure 35. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Detail of north interior transept wall, showing lacerated pilaster foundations. Note outline of lost plinth and base.

288

Figure 36. Giovinazzo, Cathedral. Windows in south interior wall of transept.

289

Figure 37. Bari, Cathedral. Blind arches in northwest interior corner of transept.

290

Figure 38. Conversano, Cathedral. Plan. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 241.

291

Figure 39. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RS and Pier 2PS (view to east).

292

Figure 40. Conversano, Cathedral. Longitudinal section. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 243.

293

Figure 41. Trani Cathedral. Plan, showing hypothetical reconstruction of the earlier church of S. Maria superimposed. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 342.

294

Figure 42. Trani, Cathedral. Longitudinal section, showing crypt and upper church. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 353.

295

Figure 43. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RS (view to southwest).

296

Figure 44. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Quadrant vault over middle bay of south side aisle.

297

Figure 45. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Supporting masonry of respond 2RN (southwest corner).

298

Figure 46. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Trapezoidal stone terminating fragmentary blind arch on north side-aisle wall.

299

Figure 47. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Horizontally coursed terminus of fragmentary blind arch on south side-aisle wall.

300

Figure 48. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RN and Pier 2PN (view to east).

301

Figure 49. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Impost molding of Pier 2PS.

302

Figure 50. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Impost molding of pilaster on north interior wall of transept.

303

Figure 51. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Corbel 1CN.

304

Figure 52. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 2PS (east, north).

305

Figure 53. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capital of Respond 2RS.

306

Figure 54. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Medallion relief on southwest exterior corner of transept.

307

Figure 55. Trani, S. Francesco (originally SS. Trinità). Plan. From Belli D'Elia, Puglia Romanica, 273, fig. 278.

308

Figure 56. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Scarped plinths of Pier 2PS.

309

Figure 57. Trani, S. Francesco (originally, SS. Trinità). Blind arch on south interior side-aisle wall.

310

Figure 58. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plinth escarpment of Pier 2PS.

311

Figure 59. Valenzano, SS. Ognissanti. Remains of monumental west porch.

312

Figure 60. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 1PN (south and east).

313

Figure 61. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capitals of Pier 1PS (north and west).

314

Figure 62. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plinths of Pier 1PN.

315

Figure 63. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plinths of Pier 1PS.

316

Figure 64. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Scarped plinth of Respond 0RN.

317

Figure 65. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Corbel 1CS.

318

Figure 66. Bari, Cathedral. Squinches of crossing dome.

319

Figure 67. Map showing main areas of extraction of pietra di Trani and pietra Apricena. From Zezza, "Pietre da costruzione," 4, fig. 1.

320

Figure 68. Map showing calcareous deposits in Apulia. From Zezza, "Pietre da costruzione," 33, fig. 6.

321

Figure 69. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry of lower interior wall of east bay.

322

Figure 70. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry of interior wall of west bays.

323

Figure 71. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Mason marks on exterior wall by the south entrance.

324

Figure 72. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Masonry of quadrant vault in east bay.

325

Figure 73. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Pier 2PS.

326

Figure 74. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Pier 1PN. Note aligned coursing of the short drum in lower part of the image.

327

Figure 75. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Respond 2RN.

328

Figure 76. Bari, Cathedral. Pier with mixed-construction shaft; coursing not aligned to adjacent shaft.

329

Figure 77. S. Leonardo (near Siponto). Pier with mixed-construction shaft; coursing aligned to adjacent shaft.

330

Figure 78. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Central window of east facade.

331

Figure 79. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Capital 2PN (south).

332

Figure 80. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Approximated base molding diagram: Pier 2PN (south), showing diagonal of reference.

333

Figure 81. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Transverse arch leading from western bays into east bay; constructed with an arco lunato widening arch. View to east.

334

Figure 82. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Incised arch with radiating lines; possibly used as an assembly guide for stonecutters.

335

Figure 83. S. Maria di Ronzano (near Castel Castagna). Elevation drawing of east facade. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 419.

336

Figure 84. Teramo, Cathedral. Dome.

337

Figure 85. S. Maria di Portonovo (near Ancona). Dome.

338

Figure 86. Molfetta, S. Corrado. Plan, showing rotated square method of determining the proportions of the transept and the appropriate siting of the crossing piers.

339

Figure 87. S. Maria di Ronzano (near Castel Castagna). Plan. From Kappel, S. Nicola, fig. 417.

340

Figure 88. Garde-Adhémar, S. Michel. Plan. From Rouquette, Provence Romane, 62.

341

Figure 89. Valenzano, Church of SS. Ognissanti. Oculi in south side aisle.

342

Figure 90. Canosa Cathedral. Plan. From Wharton Epstein, "Cathedral of Canosa," fig. 5.15.

343

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Biography

Joseph Chandler Williams was born on July 20, 1987 in Washington, DC. In 2009, he completed his undergraduate education at Bates College, in Maine, where he majored in art history and was advised by Dr. Rebecca Corrie, completing an honors thesis. In

2010 Williams completed a Master's in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in

London, working under Professor Paul Crossley and specializing in Gothic architecture.

He received a distinction on his thesis, which considered the importance of Cistercian administrators on the construction of Siena Cathedral.

In 2011, Williams entered the Ph.D. program in art, art history, and visual studies at Duke University. Under the guidance of his advisor, Dr. Caroline Bruzelius, Williams has specialized in the medieval architecture of southern Italy and the Mediterranean, while also gaining a mastery of Islamic architecture, Mediterranean cities, spatial theory, and the history the architectural profession. Engaging with the Wired! lab in the role of

Project Manager of the Kingdom of Sicily Image Database, Williams learned and applied several digital humanities tools to the study of architecture. Williams won a Summer

Research Grant from the Gene. L. and Alice Stroude Winegardner Endowment (with departmental nomination) in 2014, a Graduate Student Travel Grant from the

International Center of Medieval Art in 2015, and a 2-year pre-doctoral Rome Prize from the Phyllis W. G. Gordan, Lilly Auchincloss, and Samuel H. Kress foundation in 2016-18.

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