A HISTORY of ARCHITECTURE Settings and Rituals

A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE Settings and Rituals

SPIRO 'KOSTOF

Original Drawings by Richard Tobias

New York Oxford 'WI! OXFORD UNI\'''- I Y PRESS ~ 1985 Chartrf's Cathedral, 1194-'1260; d til il o f flying buttresses , THE FRENCH MAN NER

Romanesque and Opus Modernum

cu~tliest thing should serve, first and foremost , Gothic. They started from opposite im Oairvaux addressed a scathing indictment ior the administration of th e Huly Eucharist. pulses- from plainness and glitter-and Cluny, the powerful monastic or The detractors alsu object that a ,aintly mind, il reached a common truth: that fundamen pure heart, a faithful intention uught to suffice der that held sway over Christian Europe. tal~ of architecture such as light , propor for this sacred fun ction: and we too explicitly and IPrnard was the leader of a new reformist tion , and the handling of building mate especially aifirm th,lt it is these that princi pally , the Cistercians. Its aim was to step rials ca n suggest an otherworldly setting as matter. [But I Wt' profess th<1t we must uo hom from the worldly success monasticism age also through .. outward ornaments. movingly and convincingly as does the ap garnered since the subsidence of post with all inner purity .1nd with all outward sp len plied content of figurative art and surface disorders and to recover the dor. decoration. idealism of St. Benedict's Rul e. by the fabulous rebuilding of the Suger was not a Cluniac. His defense was The Cistercian Challenge mother house (Fig. 14: '), with a not in support of the form and trappings of To understand the Cistercian revolution , we that was to prove the largest ever the kind of Romanes que church that in must highlight the regal ambience of Cluny stand on French soil and the largest oj censed Bernard. St.-Denis was not in fact a in its latest guise. Romanesque per,iod anywhere, Ber Romanesque structure at all, but a venera The phenomenal prosperity of the mon lashed out at ble Carolingian foundation. Suger trans astery can be explained in part by its loca Immense height uf your churches, th ei r im formed this aging building, for the first time tion, which was subject neither to the em te length , their su perfluous breadth, th e in three centuries, and did so in a manner pire nor to the French monarchy. The total s decoration and strange images that knowingly different from current usage. To allegiance of the order to the pope re the worsh ippers ' gaze and hinder th eir him there was an ineffableness to God leased it from more immediate feudal ion.. . 0 vanity oi vanities, yet no marc head that might be conveyed in this mate press ures. In less than two hundred years, than in sa ne. Th e church is resplendent in rial world through ri chly refractive, light under shrewd abbots like Odo, Hugh of ~ a lls, but its poor go in want ; she clothes her filled effects- through precious stones, Semur, and Peter the Venerable, the small in guld, and leaves her ~o ns naked; the stained glass , and an architecture that re installation of the C'arly tenth century in the man 's eye is ied at the expense of th e indi- duced matter as much as possible and made vall ey of the Grosne in the heart of Bur the walls transparent. gundy gre\·v into a small town . It amassed A short while later another prominent Each in his own way, therefore, both of a prodigious wealth in real property. It t, Suger of St.-Denis, undertook a ma these two French prelates were challeng subjected hundreds of once-independent renovation of his church and proudly ing the tenets of the Romanesque church abbeys in every part of Europe, demoting the praises of this lavish work in a at its Cluniac apogee: one by stripping it of th em to priories governed by the mother I account of his years in office. He its art and furnishings and its pretentious house. Its inmates, some five hundred led lovingly on the treasures and or- monumentality, the other by substituting for strong, left the care of their lands and herds s of the sanctuary (Fig. 14.2) and in it a seductive new architecture of the ut to a lower class of monks, the cOflllcrsi, to the qualms of critics like Be r most tenuousness and a jewellike quality. while they themselves supervised the justified his actions with these words: In the end, the purist ethic of Bernard and ceaseless amplification of their horne and me, I confess, one thing has always seemed Suger's translucent inventions set in mo the affairs of their monastic federation. The i ntly fitting: that ev ery costiLer and tion the development of a style we call remaining time was occupied by long

323 MEASURING UP

drawn-out services that left littl room for meditation, and none for physical labor. There was no pretense to promote the balanced life prescribed by the Benedic tine 'Rule, with the days divided to accom modate the celebration of the liturgy, the study of the Scriptures, and manual work. In its wealth and world-oriented magnifi cence, Cluny had also buried the primary monkish urges of withdrawal, poverty, and an existence of humble wants. Cluniacs were not the monks who, in the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, " have cut ourselves off from the people ... left all the pre cious and beautifu'l' things of the world for the sake of Christ ... and in order that we may obtain Christ, considered but dung everything that is fair to see or soothing to hear, sweet to smel" delightful to taste or pleasant to touch." The transformation of a pious community into a socioeconomic in strument of state had already been achieved under Charlemagne. Now the monastery had gone on to become an affluent state unto itself. The layout of Cluny obeyed, after a fash ion, the Benedictine scheme worked out in the councils of Charlemagne. (Fig. 14: 1) But some telling points of difference emerge when we compare Cluny with the St. Gall Fig. 14.1 Cluny (France), principal abbey of the right, and the infirmary buildings are in the plan for the ideal Carolingian monastery. C1uniac order, third construction phase, 1095 and foreground, with the cloister area immediately (Fig. '12 : 18) Units assigned to farming activ following; reconstruction view from the south beyond. east, as it appeared in 1157. The church is on the ities on the St. Gall plan have been elimi nated. Cluny farmed through tenants. A wing for the conversi, apart from the claus tral area, reflects the segregation of menial tasks. The brothers' chief occupation is ap parent from the staggering size of the elements of the later medieval monastery ends of the westernmost transept and Ihe church whose relation to its predecessors and will receive special care, especially in facade. There was some stained glass in IfIt. on the site can easily be gauged by the two England. windows. The choir capitals featured per· ends of the old church, the choir, and the But the glory of Cluny does not reside in sonifications of the nine tones of Grego entrance vestibule, incorporated into the its planning. Contemporaries marveled at rian chant. A few of these capitals survive. latest cloister. Next to the spared choir is its appointments, its exquisite art, the psal Their superb quality tells us how much we the chapter house-a novelty. The reading mody in the main church, the size of the have lost when the angry crowds of the of the house Rule, a ritual formerly per whole which could handle "1,200 monks and French Revolution turned their long sim· formed in the arm of the cloister adjacent conversi in its dormitories and dining halls, mering hatred of churchly privilege against to the church, has now been given its own thousands in the church, and forty noble what remained of the legendary abbey building. The place was ·in fact a council men and forty noblewomen in twin pal which Emile Male, the distinguished French room for the administrative deliberations of aces. There were twelve bathhouses and a scholar, has called "the greatest creation oi the chapter. The building communicated number of fountains, all fed by running the MiddJe Ages." with a small church of its own, the Lady water from concealed conduits. The model The church can now be called to memo Chapel (so-called because of its dedication for such installations was surely Muslim ory only in the painstaking reconstructions to the Virgin Mary), which also served the Spain. The church had two transepts and of Kenneth Conant. The marble cloister and large infirmary behind it. Both the chapter fifteen extruding chapels. Both crossings its carved and painted capitals-a bound house and Lady Chapel will become stock were marked with towers, and so were the less array of Old and New Testament .-----324 THE FRENCH MANNER

n nes, the miracles and martyrdoms of !lints, along with creatures of fantasy 'ght be glimpsed in derivative cloisters at Moissac, Aries , and Toulouse that have me through. (fig. 14.3) ,I n these you can II see "that marvellous and deformed that comely deformity," that lernard recoiled from :

unclean apes, those iierce Ilions, those nstrous centaurs, those half-men ... those ling knights, those hunters winding their ... For God's sake, if men are not of these follies, why at least do they not from the expense?

The architect of the church at Cluny was ,a cleric known principally as a mu Indeed, he was probably thought Iy qualified to be an architect be he was a musician. 51. Augustine had centuries earlier that music was

14.2 The chalice of Abbot Suger, mid-twelfth originally at St.-Denis. (National Gallery Washington D.C.) Suger describes it in his Fig_ 14.3 Moissac (France), Cluniac priory; view of as being made "out of one solid sar the cloister, ca. 1100. ~ ... in which ... the sard's red hue, by II/Iingits property, so keenly vies with the black IllS of the onyx that one property seems to be linton trespassing upon the other."

"the science of good modulation," and ~hat lure should follow in its structure and the nature of the science was mathemati composition a firm regimen of geometry. cal. It was based on a sy stem of ratios of Professor Conant has found ample proof for which the most important were that of the use of "musical" numbers in the pro equality-i.e., '1:1-and then the perfect portions of the church at Cluny, along with consonances of an octave, fifth, and a modular unit of five Roman feet (about 1.5 fourth-1 :2,2:3, and 3:4. These same prin meters). ciples, according to Augustine, applied to Bernard was , of course, right. Th e inor the visual arts, architecture included. For the dinate, dizzying height of the nave accom later medieval mind, "musical" numbers modated nothing practical, any more than were fundamental to the order and stabil it did in Hagia Sophia. Stretched beyond ity of the universe. Proportional schemes are belief. the nave piers would have dis of course a function of geometry, and ge gusted a Greek and astounded a Roman. ometry was, like music, an "anagogical" This ,is not a question of size alone: Roman activity-that is , it had the ability to lead th e imperial buildings are not inferior in that. mind from the world of appearances to the It is rather that Romanesque interiors like contemplation of the divine order. It is not that of Cluny, or the extant SI.-Sernin at surprising that so much attention should be Toulouse that resembles it, are single paid to geometric proportions in later me minded in their spatial celebration of ver dieval architecture, and that even in its ticality. (fig. '14.4) Rome worked with both wildest expressive fury Romanesque scu'lp dimensions. It was the spilling of space into

325 MEASURING UP

a piling up of curved forms at the two ends This then was Cluny. And the Cistercian and the swooping lateral arch curtains. way was the harsh antithesis. "None of our In the Romanesque interior the supports monasteries is to be constructed in towns, shoot up from the floor to the vaults and castles or villages," the First Chapteroithe down to the floor again on the other side, order's Institutes reads, "but in places re sometimes in a single line, sometimes mote from human intercourse." And also staggered into storeys. The capita1 when from the human jurisdiction of a bishop or present is too small, too unpronounced; its lay lord, we might add. From the mother load too linear for it to appear as a free house in the marshes of Citeaux, teams oi noteworthy agent. No distinction is made twelve monks under an abbot set out in between lower and upper space; the su search of out-of-the-way wildernesses in the perstructure is not sufficiently differen opening years of the twelfth century. And tiated as in the Roman building, nor hier from this fi rst generation of abbeys ne" archically focused as in Hagia Sophia. The offshoots reached out, with the determi· forward drive toward the altar is obsessive, nation to touch every corner of the Chris· at least until the crossing, and so is the llP tian world. There were 742 Cistercian mono ward pull. The whole is tensile and tense, asteries at the end of the Middle Ages, from not particularly peaceful. The worshipper Ireland to Greece and the Holy Land, and was always a bit on edge, one imagines; the an equal number of nunneries. senses heightened; the experience excit The sites lay commonly by a stream in a ing rather than serene. forlorn valley. To tame a bit of wild nature

Fig. 14.4 Cluny III, abbey church, 1095-1130; re construction of the nave, looking east.

,Fig. 14.5 Fontenay (France), Cistercian abbey, ample lateral rooms in buildings like the 1139-47; the forge and mill building. basilica of Maxentius that produced a bal ~ ance of height and width . (Fig. 11 .10) Also, .... the vertical supports remained free of the '~':t vaults, and it was for the vaults to billow !'; upward from points of concentration as though puffed up by a purposeful wind, free " -~ Ir . ~:~ .~ to establish their own reservoirs of space ... different from that of the hall below. In short, the bays were few and big; the great arches were lateral rather than transverse; and the vertical support was stil·1 a column, with a base to stand on, a ilorid head to wear. Two hundred years later, the architects of Hagia Soph·ia had obscured side spaces by column screens. (Fig. 11.28) They had also carried to extremes the distinction be tween structure and appearance, you will recall, a distinction already present in Ro man building where the giant columns seem to do all the work of carrying the vaults, but do not really do so. The purpose in Justi nian's masterpiece was a floating dome, toward which the building aspired through

326 THE FRENCH MANNER

relentless toil was the basic drive; rejected any scholarly or artistic spur to premises to operate machinery for crush p of conversi never absolved the create. It scorned knowledge, literature, and ing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth, tan of working the land and raising ani the production of art works. And the ar ning, and probably also for the bellows that . The order became expert in agron chitecture it could not do without was se kept fires alive under the beer vats. Dams .' stockbreeding, and forestry. And in verely restricted in what it could invent or barred the water flow for the more effi process they grew rich, managing express. cient activation of mills. Hundreds of oak that included mills, mines, farms, Cistercians took full advantage of the piles were rammed into the riverbed to form even villages. But that was not the mo machine-oriented technology of the later a series of parallel palisades. The space be of this ascetic, fanatical movement. It Middle Ages and advanced it diligently. tween them was then filled with earth, for self-sacrifice and hard work, and They understood water power well. They gravel, and boulders to make the dam wa display or distraction of any sort. It used the stream that passed through their tertight. Cistercian factories, of which some survive, a'iso deserve attention. Every mon astery had one, often as large as the church and built just alongside it. (Fig. 14.5) Here

.."'....: L'o.t .~/ 4;...-.', i~( l >-~ ',:~ .J 'x..,) ,~ 'I \",? ~) .' .) iron from nearby mines would be forged t:-) "1 ...... • 1 ...~ ..;; ~;;~ ~ ~. t';) ~ ~::. &.~~ ~~ Q , L=: . , into clamps, rods, locks, and nails . The formula for the monastery grounds never changed. (Fig. 14.6) The church was on the north side, with the cloister imme diately to its south. The refectory further south stood at right angles to the cloister ~ G ;.~~ ":'. b- ~) walk, to allow for a kitchen between it and ~-:;.o C> ::, C) C the refectory of the conversi to the west. Chapter house, common room, and a small room for novices were lined along the east side, and stairs led up to the dormitory that . - .. ~ . ~ ...... ~ . ~ "': ~ . extended over the whole range. This .. .. ~ . ,,'" .. # ., . 4 ~ .. .. ., . grouping produced impressive rectangular buildings cadenced externally by ground storey buttresses. There was no bath house, and no separate abbot's residence. Everything was built of pale, smooth-hewn stones. Even latrines and corridors had stone vaults. Columns, pillars, and win dows all rested on one continuous base. Plastering was not allowed, since it was the first step to mural decoration. And for that there was no tolerance whatever : "We for bid there to be any statues or pictures in our churches or in any other rooms of a monastery of ours, because, when atten tion is paid to such things, the advantages of sound meditation and training in reli gious gravity are often neglected." The church conformed to the strict over all rectangularity of the composition. The .-.. ~- sanctuary was square. A series of square I. Church Proper 6 . Fountain II. Refectory of Conversi chapels were created along the eastern side 2. Lych Gate 7. Chapter Hause 12 . Novices' Room of the transept by means of partitions per 3. Rood Screen 8. Common Room 13. Latrines pendicu lar to the transept wall. A door in 4 Choir of Conversi 9. Kitchen 14. Guest House 5. Cloister 10. Refectory 15. Forge F OK) 50 100 150 , , Fig. 14.6 Ideal Cistercian monastery ; ground , ,. I , plan. M 0 5 10 25 50

327 M URING lW

the north transept arm , the 50- ailed Iych gate, w as used when bodie: we r ca rri ed to the graveyard aft r th iuneral servi ce. In the south arm, a -tairea e c mm uni ea ting with the dormitory wa f r night use. A rood sc reen se parated th m nks' half o f the church from that of the con vcrsi, who arrived through a o rrido r that ran bet\veen th e claustral bUildings and th ei r own. There was no monumental faead ,and no towers could accentuate th e out r mass. The windows w ere to have lear an s. The attraction of the then fashionable stained glass brought a stern warning from the General Chapter of l 'IR2: "Stai n d glas windows are to be replaced within the spa e of two yea rs; otherwise th e abbot, prior and cell arer are henceforward all to fast o n bread and wate r every sixth day until th y are replaced ." What then was left for the architect ? hat kept th e church from looking like th forge or th e dormitories? Intellectualized envi ronmen ts of faith, conducive to introsp c tive, abstract spirituality, are not 'asy to bring off. To make certain they do not look secular or boring or both, one has to rely on bea utiful construction w ith p rf t , lu cid d etai ling, a special f I for light, and a sense for architectural proportion hich i infallible. Vague words all : beautiful , spe cial, infallible. There is always an el ment of vagueness in discussi ng buildings tha t move us. It is never sheer size that is im pressive but the quality of si ze; never the nature of the materials but th ir handling. One has rules, of course, and they ensure competent, satisfying buildings. But th ey alone do not account for the m aking of el oquent places. Cistercian architecture had its rules too . SI. Augustine'S " perfect" ratio of 1:2 con trols the elevation and ground plan; for exa mple, the relations of the total length of the church to the width of th e transept, the Fig. 14.7 Fontenay, abbey church; interior, look width of the transept to its depth , th w idth ing east. of the nave to th at of the side ais! s. The bays of the aisles are of equal length and width, and the same dimensio n is marked off vertically by a string-cours on the nave wall; so we have files of spatial cubes o n both sides of the nave. The numb r, iz, and loca tion of \'vindows may have b en determined more intuitively than a eord-

328 THE FRENCH MANNER

ng to precise theory. (Fig. 14.7) The gen with a citadel on the right bank and an un We should also expect that when the ' raj alue is muted . Soft spots or tracts of defended settlement on the left. At Reims kings came to have the upper hand, they ~li t are made t fall o n inky shadows that nearby, the kings were crowned and would seek an architectural idiom of their ail. oj e the crisp right angles f the ma anointed; at St.-Denis, they were buried. In own. The Gothic style was launched in an nd f course the acoustical prop terms of religious architecture the region abbey, but a royal abbey. Suger rose, like i terClan churches are well at was unadventurous. The Romanesque had Bernard, from the cloister; but he served h l~ cI to. We ca nnot hope to appreciate the been nurtured by later Benedictine mon the French kings first. He busily mediated devotIOnal exp ri nee of these stripped, asticism and its most influential order, a nationaJ reconciliation between church la rk churches w itho u t the limpid echoes Cluny. The unswerving loyalty of the Clu and crown in the struggle against the feu n/ anllphun I sOllg that filled their space for niacs, and in time the Cistercians, to the dal nobility on the one hand, and the in mmany hours of the day. throne of St. Peter made them as much a ternational ambitions of the empire on th e threat to the nationalist aims of the royal other. From St.-Denis the new style, which Th e Go thi Challenge house as the powerful nobles who had set contemporary sources would soon baptize The abbey of St.-Denis is a stone's throw claim to most of the land. It should not the French or modern style (opus Franci fro m Paris. (Fig . 14.8) In the twelfth century surprise us that an architectural style born genum, opus modernum), pushed outward tn lS re gio n was at Ih center of the royal to serve monasticism and feudalism would in direct relation to the widening of the dom ai n. Pa ris w as the Capetian capital-two not thrive in the ile-de-France, the territory king's jurisdiction and influence. Its first, .ldndy isl and s in the Seine enclosed within within a 160-kilometer (100-mile) radius from full-blown creations were cathedrals in rew walls in th e first part of the century, Paris which was held by the crown. the cities of the royal domain-Chartres, Amiens, Reims, Bourges. In this respect, too, the Gothic is an affirmation of a na tional surge, as it came to supersede the style that had primarily catered to an an tiurban patronage of monks and lords. These cathedrals, in their financing and / iconography, will be the exquisite stage for the political and social contests that will be waged among kings, prelates, noble houses, and merchants and artisans of the aroused cities. There was of course nothing overtly royal about the Gothic form: the identification was associative. Religion contained all in the Middle Ages. No ruler could hope to gain by opposing it openly or by neglecting its outward adornment. In his writings Suger assesses the novelty of his architectural work in theological terms; the work was after all a new choir and fa ca de for a ca nonica l Christian building. What imparts the political message is the context of the building, its unique relationship to the kings of France. St.-Denis, the apostle of France, was clearly perfect as the national saint. His church aroused patriotic as well as reli gious sentiments. It was here that Pepin and Charlemagne had been consecrated kings; here that Pepin and Charles the Bald had '\ 1 ' __. , " '"

'\ ~ , .' Cluny Fig. 14.8 Map: Ile-de-France, with the main sites '- ,- of Gothic churches.

329 MEASURING UP

been buried. When the emperor, in a dis ings of a fifth-century Eastern mystic, Denis thinking, which we saw at work both ' pute with the pope threatened to invade the Pseudo-Areopagite. In these writings, Cluniac and Cistercian circles, and whi( France in 1124, King Louis VI was able to Neoplatonic phi losophy blends with Chris went back to St. Augustine's interpretatio rally the country through an emotional tian theology, especially the gospel ac of the passage from the Wisdom of Sol homage to the saint's banner that became cording to St. John which espouses the mon, "Thou hast ordered all things i from then on the official standard of the doctrine of Christ as the true Light illumi measure and number and weight." Th royal arms. The king called the abbey "the nating the world. Suger shared with a cosmos, in the minds of those at th capital of the realm," and indeed St.-Denis number of his illustrious contemporaries a Chartres school, was a work of architec now became the first true religious center fascination in the intricate symbolism of ture designed by God in accordance with of France, and the symbol of the partner light. At the famous cathedral school of system of mathematical proportions. T ship between the royal house and the na Chartres most notabty, light was discussed Thomas Aquinas and Hugh of St. Victor i tional church. Louis granted the abbey ju as the noblest of natu ral phenomena, the the next century, beauty has two mai risdiction over the fair held on the feast day least material, the closest approximation to characteristics: consonance of parts, 0 of St.-Denis. He also deposited the crown pure form. This aspect of Neoplatonic proportion, and luminosity. of his father Philip I in the saint's treasury. metaphysics also embroidered into the The new emphasis on light is what di Prior to the departure of the king's succes symbolism a rational, mathematical way of tinguishes Gothic architecture, aestheti sor, Louis VII, on the Second Crusade, the Royal Assembly chose Suger to be regent of France. Details of the undertaking, and Suger's own words, leave little doubt that he thought of the rebuilding of St.-Denis as the mystical celebration of a resurgent French monarchy, and of the design as a model for the religious architecture of the realm. To the educated medieval mind things were "" """ ••• ,'," <> :;-] more than they seemed. Clusters of mean ...... J ing clung to the bare built forms as they did o to banners, odd occurrences, or geometr,ic configurations. These meanings the privi leged could expound with erudition, and the common people could intuit vaguely. Perhaps we shou~d not single out the Mid dle Ages. All public architecture, and we o b o have seen this continually in this story, has -.p significance beyond its mere utility. The user '0 o brings to it, and therefore takes from it, i / much more than the material frame war .. //0 o rants. In the fully developed Gothic cathe d j -···".(Y' - 0 i O dral this web of meanings was perhaps more o d ...... -...... -... ~ .. ~ ! o richly spun than for any other building type o we have so far considered. And to begin to o 0 unravel it, we must heed Suger's view of what it was he thought he had achieved. St.-Denis was really two different histor ical people who had been mistakenly fused'. The third-century missionary who had con verted France thus appropriated the writ-

Fig. 14.9 St.-Denis (France), abbey church, Sug er's choir, begun 1144; ground plan. The plan of the new choir is superimposed on that of the F 0 10 50 100 eighth-century Carolingian transept and ninth ~~!L-~~~__~__~I______-d! century apse extension. I ! I M 0 10 25 30

330

. ------THE FRENCH MANNER

cally and theologically, from the Roman esque. For both periods the church stood as an image of Heaven, as the city of God. There are two basic texts that describe what this city is like: the Book of Tobias and the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine. Both fir. 14.10 St.·Denis, abbey church; interior view stress the terrible, cataclysmic events that III Suger's choir. will occur before one can enter the city of God, and this is what the Romanesque chose to elucidate in its art. But the de scriptive passages invoke a gem-encrusted, translucent, shining vision : "And the building of the wall thereof was jasper and the city pure gold like unto clear glass. " That is what the Gothic cathed rals of the ile-de France will set out to celebrate. And where this crystalline architecture begins is Sug er's new choir for St.-Denis. Look at the plan and compare it to the choir plan of Cluny or Ste.-Foy at Conques. (Figs. '14.9, 13 : 10) We have a double am bulatory at St.-Denis from which radiate nine chapels. But the outer ambulatory and the chapels actually merge, and the radial alignment of the piers and columns from a single center within the apse makes it pos sible to bring exterior light to the apse unobstructed. In fact, the curves of the chapels are opened almost in their entirety to the outside. They swing between wedge shaped piers reinforced by buttresses that continue the radial lines of the columns of the apse and the first ambulatory. Each chapel curve has one more slim pier in the middle-and that is all the solid matter of the choir's exterior outline. (Fig . 14.10) The rest is light, or more accurately many pieces of stained glass that are fitted together into religious paintings. "The entire sanctuary," Suger writes ecstatically, " is thus pervaded by a wonderful and continuous light enter Ing through the most sacred windows. " This is the first point we should remem ber about the Gothic cathedral. We talk of it as a luminous, light-filled environment and contrast it to the gloomy interiors of Romanesque churches. But, in reality, Gothic interiors were not at all bright. The thick, colored panes of the stained glass glowed only under direct sunlight, and even then it was a muted, chromatic illumina tion they engendered. It was precisely that rich, deep, encrusted transparency that re called the bejeweled structure of heavenly

331 MEASURING UP

Jerusalem: " And I saw the holy city, new immense stone buildings be displaced by that matter is stained glass. It is importanl Jerusalem , coming down out of heaven fragile expanses of glass? This is the epic of to emphasize this point, because all too from God. . having the glory of God: her Gothic technology that has absorbed his often the Gothic cathedral has been lauded light was like unto a stone more precious, torians and amazed generations of modern as the triumph of structural logic-the en as it were a jasper stone...." visitors. result of a series of experiments in the pur This then was no ordinary light. It sifted At the center of the discussion stand three suit of reduced matter and its elastic distri through sac red pictures and was trans structural expedients: the pointed arch, the bution. The technology required of such a muted into som ething new, the new light, vault rib, and the flying buttress. None is sprightly armature already existed in pieCe! lux nova, which is how Suger refers to the invention of Gothic builders. Nor for in the Romanesque period. But tech nolo Christ. We can understand his love of sumptuous treasures in the sanctuary, his belief that the costliest materials were the only o nes b efitting the holy ritual of Mass. Sensual experience was the elementary step. Our mind rises to the truth with the aid of material things. But rise it must. from the material to the immaterial (de materi + 'I- + alibus ad immaterialia, in his words) , and the diaphanous cage of the church , like the + precious fittings of the sanctuary, will re + lease us to this transcendence. A a How, then, is this diaphanous aura to be b c d contrived? How can the walls that must be there to hold up the lofty vaults of these

Fig. 14.11 Medieval vaUlting; diagrams. The top row (A) shows arch elevations in relation to a unit n rr fA bay represented by the uniform bar. The bay can be spanned using a round-headed arch (a), or with a pointed arch struck from two centers that lie outside the bay width (c). To span a bay that is , wider than the unit, arch (a) must be struck from three centers, which flattens and weakens it con siderably (b); whereas arch (c), struck from cen ters which now fall within the arch span, remains ) structurally sound (d). These principles are applied here in the dia B C grams, which show the vaulting of actual three-di mensional bays . A standard square bay (D) can take a groin vault generated by four equal round arches . A rectangular bay (8) needs round arches of two different widths, in order to reach a com mon crown line; the arch spanning the broader dimension of the bay, flattened as in (A-b) above, will thus be weak. By using pointed arches on a rectangular bay, the architect can eliminate this strudural weakness (e). The two sketches at the bottom right (E) con trast the thrust of a barrel vault (top), which is con tinuous along two sides , and a groin vault, whose thrust is concentrated at the four corners of the bay. Therefore, buttressing must be done along theentire length of the barrel vault, but only at the o E four supports of the groin vault.

332

------=--- ~------_. - -- - THE FRENCH MANNER

avision to become a style; you must device of Gothic construction, the vault rib. colored gems has called me away from external to say something with it before it is They used ·it to reinforce the ridges of groin cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to I i Roman concrete, long in pedes vaults, and did so over large span, of the reflect, transferring that which is material to that use, was lifted to expressive eloqu nave. Norman vaults are made of rubble and which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sa cred virtues: then it seems to me that t see my by the heady venture of a young em are very heavy. This system of reinforce self dwelling, as it were, in some strange region Gothic architects put together the ment distributed this weight more effi of the universe which neither exists entirely in of the pointed arch, the vault rib, ciently. The diagonal ribs spanned two of the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity flying buttress, marrying these ra the oblong bays at a time, which together of Heaven; and that, by the grace of Cod, I ca n links to stained glass, in response to made a square. The issue of holding to a be transported from this inferior to that hight'r exu ltant mysticism of light and the coin uniform crown line in the sequence of ob world in an anagogical manner. rejuvenation of France under the long bays was thus circumvented. These vigor of her kings. "vo-bay rib vaults are called sexpartite, from The pointed arch, which is an arch struck the fact that the three transverse and two Chartres two adjacent centers, has a double diagonal ribs subdivide the valliit into six . (Fig. 14.11) It tends to disperse curved triangles. The success of Suger's work wa, immedi more effectively than its round-headed The Gothic advance on this score was to ate in the ile-de-France. Before he had a , as Muslim architects appreciated see the potential of the rib as an indepen chance to extend the new manner of the from the start; and it is better suited dent cross-element that could facilitate the choir and the west front to the rest of this the cross-vaulting of an oblong bay. This construction of the vault by allowing the Carolingian church, several neighboring fact is so, because you can easily triangles to be built one by one like web cities raced to capitalize on the structural the degrees of pointing and come up bing, and with minimal centering that would and aesthetic lessons of St.-Denis and the the same crown line despite the un be moved from one triangle to the next. The political prestige that attended the under equal width of the bay sides. With round rib cage was therefore no longer bonded taking. Sens Cathedrall was probably first; arches defining the four sides of an into the masonry of the vault , but rather Paris, Noyon, Senlis, and Laon followed in oblong bay, the crown line can be held even preceded it. But once freed of the masonry short order. In 1174, thirty years after the by depressing one pair of arches, bulk it is supposed to strengthen, and with glittering dedication ceremonies at St. thich in turn would make them more prone the pointed arch there to negotiate varying Denis, an architect named William from the racollapse. And why would you want to widths, the rib could span bays of any workshop at Sens was invited to Canter ClOss-vault a bay? A barrel vault exerts uni shape, turn corners, proliferate like the bury to advise on the building of the ca rorm pressu re on its walls. By crossi ng two branches of a tree. thedra'i choir that had just been destroyed barrels at right angles you can conduct the Look again at Suger's choir from this in a f'ire. The international career of the \'Ielght of the vault along the groins and perspective, and you can forgive him his Gothic style was thus inaugurated. For the concentrate it in four points at the corners excitement, his unmonkish boastfulness: next three hundred years the premises 01 or the bay. These points of maximum thrust single columns launching graceful shoots th e architectural revolution that started at ran then be buttressed individually with of masonry; tau\, thin vaults distended be St.-Denis will be tested , improved on, em half-arches at right angles to them, which tween them; an even gauze of light hang bellished , pushed to the limits of construc is what a flying buttress really is. This is ing softly under this delicate but brisk can tional sanity-and then beyond. dearly more economical than having to opy. Remember, too , that he saw things Chartres Cathedral, the noblest and best meet the outward push of a barrel vault symbolically, anagogicaliy, that he under loved of Gothic churches, epitomizes the through some extensive construction along stood edification to mean both the manual classic harvest of early Cothic design. The the flan ks. labor of construction and the spiritual pro several campaigns of building from 1no to In Cluniac Burgundy, these structural as cess of instruction. Columns were apostles the middle oj the thirteenth century bring ets were seized on to enliven Roman and prophets; jesus, "the keystone that together in one frame several climactic esque statics. Groin-vaulted aisles were joins one wall to another." He believed also, moments in the biography of this opus common, although their bays were likely to along with his learned contemporaries at Francigenum, this most consummatciy be square. At places like Autun, the trans Chartres and elsewhere, in the analogical French oj architectural styles. verse relieving arches of the nave barrels nature of beauty, that it partakes of a mys Chartres possessed the tunic the Virgin were slightly pointed. Gunzo's church at tical prototype. See it all through his eyes. Mary had worn at the Nativity. It was a gift Cluny had buttressing arches that were vis Then his words will seem not ,fancy spin of Charles the Hald, who had obtained it Ible above the aisle roofs, even if they were nings of a man of letters, but an earnest at from Constantinople, and it began the as being used with a typical Romanesque 'bar tempt to explain what to him was a palpa sociation of the royal house of France with rel vault. Norman architects at sites like ble experience. this little town on the fringes of the Heauce. (aen in northwest France, or Durham just The popularity of the sacred garment wa s south of the Scottish border, experi When- out of my delight in the beauty of the such that Chartres had ib'come by 1100 ,the mented precociously with the third telltale house of Cod-the lov('line~s of th e many- center of ,\;\ariolatry in rance, a lult that

333 MEASURING UP

swept the I'ater Middle Ages. At the famous Fig. 14.13 Chartres Cathedral; ground ca th ed ral school of Chartres, she was ex section. The small plan shows the elf"~@nl"- tolled as the Seat of Wisdom , the Christian tury Romanesque church of Bishop co unterpart of the wise virgin of Classical was in ca. 1100. The present cathedral antiquity, Athena. To the people she was the 1194 to 1260, but thewest front is earlier sweet intercessor, gentle and compassion In our plan we omit the chapel that was ate, a feminine blend of love and suffering. the east of the choir in the fourteenth On her feast days, four times a year, great urban context is derived from a nrf'-motl.'m crowds converged upon this hill-town in the midst of its rich grain fields to revere the tunic and take part in lively faLrs. (Fig. '14.12) In the eleventh century a wood-roofed Romanes que church had replaced the original basilica which had burned down and been rebuilt several times since Early Christian times. (Fig. 14.13) Most of the foundation vvork under the nave of the present ca thedral goes back to this church , and so does the basi c scheme of the choir with its three radiating chapels . The older chu rch may also have set the proportions of the plan, especially the bays of the aisles and nave and their relative widths. Then, in the '1BOs, a ca mpaign of extension and mode rnization was launched. The money ca me from the grain trade, the silver mines of the bishops of Chartres and the real property of the chapter, and the city's own revenues from the manufacture of textiles, weapons, and harnesses. A new twin-tower facade was started some distance from the western limit of the Romanesque church as the first step toward extending the nave. The sculpture for this facade was being completed in the very years during which Suger was busy refashioning his church 90 kilometers (55 miles) away. These Royal Portals, as they are ca lled, represent for the figurative program of the W es tern church the same shift from the Romanesque that the choir of St.-Denis marks for architecture. The quiet, noble subjects may well be a response to Ber nard's condemnation of the lu rid repertory of Romanesque sculptors. What is pre sented is a rational and full commentary on the manifestation of the divine, free of the obsessive Doomsday fears of the Roman esque portals. The emphasis is on the wholeness of the religious experience, on

Fig. 14.12 Chartres (France). the cathedral seen across a grain field.

334 335 Fig. 14.14 Chartres Cathedral; west fa ade, Royal Portal, ca. 1145. Compare this with he Roman· esque portal sculpture at Conques, Fig. 1 .12 .

336

-~- ....~ -- TH E FRENCH MANNER

knowledge as a prerequisite of salvation. On the righ t po rtal, with diagrammatic clarity, sc n s rei ting to the Incarnation of Christ re displayed; the critical episodes of His childhood culminate in the tympanum, with Cathedral ; view of the nave a large im age of the enthroned Virgin with the great rose window from holding th hild, surrounded by the seven th century. liberal rts in the framing arches. It is the w orld of the intellect, with Christ as the ul timate object of all learning. On the left po rtal the main subject is the Ascension, framed by the signs of the zodiac and the occupations of each month. Christ here is the I rd o( heaven and earth, of time and its ac tivitie . The stress is on menial work, on the ternal cycl of nature and life. In th en tr I portal w e see Christ in majesty. (Fig . M. 14) Below him are the apostles; and further down, the columns of the stag gered tymp num arches hold in (rant of them attenuated, columnlike statues of per o nages from the Old Testament and king and queens of France in biblical guise. he architectural idea for these statue column , w hich extend to the side portals, b rro wed from Suger's facade at St. Deni of se veral years before. The theme is fully in sympathy with his royalist aims-the tran lalio n into tone of a prayer that had been part of th coronation rites since Car olingian times, when th e Lord was en treated to be tow virtues of Old Testament ki ngs on the anointed rulers of France. Su ppo rted by th ese regal figures of re mo te and re ent times, and encompassed by apostle , angel , and the twenty-four Ider o f th e Apocalypse who witness His r turn, Ch rist sits in an aureole of glory. Hera ldiCcl tJy di p layed around it are the ymboli beasts of the four evangelists that "rest not day and night, saying, 'Holy, holy, hal" Lord d Almighty, which was, and is, nd is to come.' " Nothing is intimated o f the punishm n ts and rewards to be meted o ut at the -econd Coming. The wo rshipp r know of these in their hearts. Tlw culp! rs choose to celebrate the event itse lf, g ravely and with dignity, to show Ch ri st a the humane Judge from Whom mercy and c mp s ion arc to be expected. In a way this re lis the change in ancient Gree (rom the Archaic ethos to the Clas sic I; here, too, w e are at a turning point wh r f ar is brushed aside by awareness. MEASURING UP

To know is its own serious burden. To know one's place in the scheme of things is to act with self-respect, to anticipate intelligently, to endure nobly. The new facade was half complete when disaster struck. The two towers had been raised to a height of three storeys. Be tween them, corresponding to the Royal Portals, were three lancet windows of stained glass. The lancets lighted a stone vaulted vestibule that was linked with the Romanesque cathedral beyond. Then, on the night of '10 June 1"194, a fire swept through a large part of the town , sparing nothing in its path. The cathedral all but perished and, with it, the gathering crowds tearfully acknowledged, the sacred tunic of the Virgin Mary, the cornerstone oi their existence. But the Romanesque choir and the new facade with its vestibule, vaulted in stone as they were, had withstood the flames. In the crypt, below the choir, the priests found the tunic unharmed and brought it out to the despairing townspeople. The miracle, it was explained to them, could only mean that Mary wished to be reinstalled in greater splendor. Almost immediately building commenced among the charred anchors of the choir and facade. By 1220 Our Lady of Chartres was ready for consecration. And to the brimming congregations of that first year, it must have been apparent that their new cathedral, in the latest style oi the re gion, was itself something of a miracle. Mary "gave Vulcan leave to ravage the church," as the poet Guillaume Ie Breton put it; and out of its ashes she had made to rise one of the most beautiful churches of Christen dom. The new nave had to remain relatively short. Since the site is intersected by a fault to the east, the choir could not push out ward. Instead, an outer ambulatory in the manner of St.-Denis reduced the depth of the Romanesque radiating chapels, making Fig. 14.16 Chartres Cathedral; exterior of south them less obtrusive, more Gothic. The transept. The porch was probably begun in 1224. western limit was fixed by the facade with the Royal Portals. But what the new church could not excel in length, it made up for in height. To account for the disparity in height between the towering nave and the facade of an older day, the architect installed a large rose window above the three lancets already there. (Fig. "14.15) This, too, was an invention of Suger for his facade at St.

338 THE FRENCH MANNER

Fig. 14.18 Chartres Cathedral; flying buttresses on the south side. Fig. 14.17 Chartres Cathedral; detail, stained glass window, early thirteenth century, showing the signature scene of the carpenters' guild. - -

ing the merchant class to join in this part nership. This he did by draw,ing leaders of Denis . It was both the sun and the rose, a sculptors, glassmakers and metalworkers, the trading community into the cathedral two-pronged symbol of Christ as the new carpenters and roofe rs , labored at fever family as honorary members of the chap sun and of Mary as the "rose without pitch for thirty years. The architect, whose ter, and by supporting their attempts 10 thorns," in the words of the litany of Lor name we do not know, was sensitive to the form associations of those crafts and eto. The transept arms were also capped by latest subtleties of the developing Gothic profess ions not incorporated into the guilds. magnificent roses. Indeed, these arms were language, using it gracefully and advancing These groups had begun to organize reli now conceived as monumental units that it to paradigmatic heights. The stone was the gious brotherhoods, with the church's were terminated by facades with porches handsome, shell'-bearing limestone of the blessing. They now emerged as a respect and triple portals. (Fig. 14.16) They w e re an nearby Bercheres quarries. The clients, le able party of the social contract, to partici irresistible invitation for sculpture, and gally speaking, were the bishop and the pate in the building of their cathedral. much was made of the chance. The main cathedral chapter. But it was as much the The windows of Chartres are the most scenes explore Christ's relationship to His city's building, with a wider patronage still. tangible proof of the broad spectrum of mother and to the Church which is His It came into being through the alliance of community involvement in the construc bride. Hundreds of single figures fit into the many elements of French society. tion of this new ca thedral. King Philip Au archivolts and the jambs honoring saints and The king and his family had blood ties gustus is there , and his daughter-in-law prophets, martyrs and confessors. The jamb with the county. The Count of Chartres, a Queen Blanche of Castile, the mother of ligures, still attached to columns, relax their member of the still powerful and rich feu Louis IX , who paid for the entire facade of lance, shift th eir bodies within full, loosely dal nobility of France, was actively in the north transept with its great rose win fi lling garments, and incline their heads volved . The monument, in fact , was clearly dow, lancets, and portal sculpture, all ex toward us or toward one another. The aus making a social statement. The rapproche alting Mary and her biblical ancestors. Pe terity of the Royal Portals is softened, hu ment of church and crown was eroding the ter of Dreux, Duke of Brittany, sponsored manized . power of the landed gentry and its feudal the windows of the south transept. The The bustling workshop of masons and institutions, and the bishop was encourag- noble houses of the jle-de-France-the

339 MEASURING UP

l\t\ontforts, Courtenays , and Montmoren cys-w ere all represented, their coa ts of arms emblazoned in stained glass beneath th e sacred pictures they had chosen to contribute. The guilds signed with sce nes of th ei r professional activities-the joiners and wheelwrights, the coopers, ca rpen ters , armorers, and masons, th e butchers, the bakers, the wine merchants. (Fig. 14: 17) All this competitive self-advert isement tended to confound th e clarity of th e over all program, and to work agai nst the kind of disciplined, coherent iconography of the Royal Portab drawn up under the 'lea rn ed direction of the ca thedral sc hoo l. But th e jostle acknowledged an important social reality. Cothic ca thedrals were community centers as much as they w ere halls of faith . We hea r repeatedly of their being used for town meetings, courts of law, thea trical and musica l p resentations. Th e bishop's church, at leas t in Fran ce , no longer trumpeted his feudal prerogatives. It was now bo th a na tional monument and th e focus of its city, whose prosperity and pride it anno unced. This generous sponso rship o f th e win dow s at Chartres tells us something about the architecture of this new ca thedral. The transparency of Suge r's choir had taken over the entire church . The plan alone should indicate th e situation at ground level. The heavy lines of maso nry along the perimeter are the fl yi ng buttresses. You ca n see these in th e photograph of the exterior : stag gered maso nry spurs that ris e solid until ai~ \e'l • ~et~{mdi.c.u\'i\{ \0 tne COUt 0\ the wall , and beyond this point bridge the space above the aisles by arched fliers. (Fig. 14 .18 ) These meet the clerestory wall at the springing o f th e nave vault, and then again at roof level (a later precaution). Th e plane of th e main fli er is cut into by small ar cades th at become daintier in the later bays, and thus disp lace more of the masonry. In the spaces between this unexampled ca ra pace, the wall has disa ppeared for the most part. In its p lace are large aisle windows at ground level, and an ample clerestory that reache clear up to the vault. Seen from the insicf , the wall elevation shows that the nave arcades and cleres tory are of about equal height, with a narrow trifo rium ga l Fig. 14.19 Beauvai s (France). cathedral of St . lery in the middle which , being blind, runs Pierre, begun ca. 1225 ; interior view looking up a band of shadow between the two ta ll but into choir vaults. sheer bands of glass.

340

------THE FRENCH MANNER

is free to stand tall, unrestrained as it now is by tribunes above. We look along their height, neatly marked at various levels to respect the horizontal articulation of the wall plane, but are not distracted from their straight course into the clerestory: here our eyes rest on the deep-hued, blue and red carpet of the storied windows. Unseen by us, nimble arches spring over the aisle roofs to stiffen the piers, and to conduct the thrust of the ribbed canopy safely and ele gantly down to the ground. Inside and out, all is active energy, seeking and finding its equilibrium.

Gothic Abroad

Reims, Amiens, Beauvais, Bourges-these are the fou r great sites of the ile-de-France that witness the apogee of the Gothic ca thedral beyond Chartres. The critical de cades are 1220 to 1270, and a kind of upper F ~ . ~~_5LP______OO~. ______2~90______3~90 limit to High Gothic daringness is signaled M 6 by the collapse of the choir at Beauvais ca thedral in 1284. These overwhelming struc fig. 14.20 Bourges (france), cathedral of St. tures pushed their competition with _ .,,,...,,noA 1195-<:a. 1250; ground plan. Chartres and with one another in a num ber of ways. Height, surely. The nave vault at Amiens soars to almost 42 meters (138 feet), as opposed to Chartres' 38. The ar chitect of Beauvais strained for more than To put side by side the interior views of still with crowning roses. Its fight with 45 meters and made it, even if only for ten and Ste.-Foy, Cluny, or St.-Sernin gravity is a delicate balancing act. It can hold years. (Fig. 14.19) But this was not, of Toulouse is to awaken to the profound up better because it has less to hold up. course, a challenge in the abstract. The ."""'rI",rt> of their vision. (Figs. 13.13, 14.4, There is no separation at all between struc Pantheon, after all, is as high; Hagia So 15) The time gap is less than one hundred ture and appearance. Every visible member phia higher. The audacity of Jean d'Orbais, years. The general appearance of these does a job and serves also as the linear Robert de Luzarches, Bernard de Soissons, monuments is certainly comparable-they graph of that job. Hugh Libergier-that new breed of hero exhibit tall stone-vaulted naves, "ayered The ribs criss-crossing at prodigious architects who signed their buildings with ...It>v" ht1 ns, and a series of rectangular bays heights steady themselves over the nave and pride and were prominently buried fixed by clustered piers. But where the Ro let stand lightly upon them thin mem therein-was to reach ever upward at the manesque church makes much of these branes of masonry. This taut awning uses same time that they continued to reduce the I compartments and their heavy march the nave piers to gain its footing. They are built mass below the vaults. In the end we toward the choir, Chartres avows unity. elegant bundles of shafts every one of which can hardly speak of walls at aiL The skele Where one builds massively and relies on conducts a rib down through the clere ton of clustered piers, rib vaults, and flying ornament to avoid looking oppres story, the triforium, and some of the buttresses is really all there is of sub ive, the other delights in denying the wall ground-storey arcade, before it comes to stance-that and the finespun tracery for the its bulk. Where one forgoes clerestory rest on graceful piers that are composed of glass. lighting because of the tribune galleries, or four slender colonettes attached to an al In the plan, the trend is toward an ever else keeps it modest under the mighty bar ternately cylindrical and octagonal core. more unified space . (Fig. 14.20) Transepts rel vault of the nave so as not to tempt Toward the apse these piers are spaced are less pronounced, and they break the gravity, Chartres glazes each bay with two wider apart to forestall perspective distor body of the church into two almost equal full windows and reaches for light upward tion. We look between them at the aisle that parts: a much enlarged choir area and a

341 MEASURING UP

short nave. Bourges has no transept at all. The crypt is gone. In time, the space be tween flying buttresses tends to be glazed and turned into chapels. Naturalistic orna ment blooms on cornices and capitals. It is as if the intellect, long nourished on sym bols, were turning to simple observation again. " How great is even the humblest beauty of this world," marvels Vincent de Beauvais; and Thomas Aquinas says he can enjoy natural beauty wholeheartedly even as God Himself rejoices "in all things, be cause everything is in actual agreement with His being." As an affirmation of this pantheism, the exterior of the cathedral teems with sculp ture of all kinds, biblical as well as mun dane. (Fig. 14.21) At its most elaborate, this fertile decoration that fills the portals of the west facade and transepts and spills out onto buttresses, towers, gables, and spe cial niches is an encyclopedic view of knowledge. The desire to be exhaustive is a thirteenth-century trait. Aquinas' Summa Theologicae embraced the whole of Chris tian doctrine; Jacob of Voragine' s Golden Legend, the lives of saints and Christian festivals. More germane to the reading of cathedral sculpture like the program of Amiens was the Speculum Maju5 by Vin cent de Beauvais, a compendium of uni versal knowledge in eighty books begin ning with the natural world, and covering the menial and intellectual arts, virtues and vices, and culminating in the history of hu manity from Abel, the first just man, to the modern kings of France. By mid-century the Gothic style was making inroads in France beyond the crown lands. Le Mans and Coutances gave their cathedrals choirs of the Bourges type; a conservative Burgundian species surfaced at Dijon and Auxerre; and the cathedral of Bayeux in Normandy modernized its Ro manesque nave with immense Gothic win dows. Chartres spawned Tours and Troyes. But by then the French manner had already been exported widely.

Fig. 14.21 Amiens (France), cathedral of Notre Dame, begun 1220; view of the west facade.

342 TH E FRENCH MANNER

ceded to them and founding a handful of favored building material. Here the nation new ones of very modest proportions. alist res istance to the French manner, s' It was traveling architects who carried the genial a tool for the royal house of Francl full style of the lle-de-France beyond the and its growing claims to European lead French-speaking territories. William of Sens ership, was compounded by the mismatd was at Canterbury in 'ID4; Master Henri at of brick construction, which is compact anI Leon, Spain, in '1209; and Eti enne de 80n extensive, with the skeletal lightness 0 neuil in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1287. The Gothic. The Cistercian influx set aside, it wa buildings themselves speak for the undoc close to one hundred years from the tim, umented visits. The cathedral at Toledo of St.-Denis until high-style Gothic foun« belongs to the Bourges family; Cologne acceptance in the German lands-and thel Cathedral, not completed until the nine only conditionally. teenth century, mirrors Amiens. Cologne is The exteriors remained, by and large, fre less interesting than Toledo, because it re of sculptural programs, except in direc produces its model so ably and wholly. This French imports like the Cologne and Stra~ is the rare exception. More commonly the bourg cathedrals. Large gabled facades il French manner retouched older churches the brick Gothic of Bavaria and the Balti to make them fashionable. And when cities repudiated carved decoration alto Gothic was applied consistently in total re gether. Sculpture moved indoors, ont. building or new foundations, it was stamped choir screens and as independent statue by local preference, construed idiosyncrat against the piers. The solidity of the wa l ically, and in this way appropriated. Away mass continued to be respected, and bul from the lle-de-France, the French manner tresses were cast as single compact block became a license to invent. of unadorned masonry. Interior elevations Fig. 14.22 Win chester (England), cathedral; inte To' us this is not news. We saw what Si long loyal to the memory of Carolingian anI rior view of north transept, ca. 1080-90. cilian towns did with the Greek temple, how Oltonian precedent, were often visually a the provinces acknowledged the Roman odds with the vaulting system, at least in th. vaulted style, and what became of the Ro beginning. Plans varied. The architects anI manesque style south of the Alps. And we patrons did not abandon centralized churd came to take for granted the free spirit of schemes; and there is at least one superl deflection, to see the irrelevance of judg specimen, the Liebfrauenkirche at Trier, tha The Cistercians proved the most effec ing buildings by their fidelity to " pure" gives us a Gothic update of Charlemagne' tive disseminators. Very early in the game models. Reworking fads is an act of imagi chapel at Aachen . St. Elizabeth at Marburg they took for thei r own a stripped down nation. And in any case an architectural begun in 1235, has a trefoil choir. It is aisl version of Gothic, without towers, stained paradigm is for the designer only one of a hall church-that is, the aisle and nav , glass, and sculpture. Thereafter ribbed several diverse factors that condition the vaults are the same height. There were iso vaults sprouted wherever they went as a work at hand. Some of the strangest and lated instances of the hall church in Franc. matter of course. In England, Germany, most memorable bui'ldings are gifts of im both in the Romanesque and Gothic pe Spain , and Portugal entire monasteries, from purities and mistakes. To look for Chartres riods. In Germany it was a favorite. the church to the kitchen and fountain in Limburg or Assisi is to miss the joy of two The inspiration for the hall church ma ' house, proved the versatility of Suger's unique contemporaries, have come from monastic refectories, ant brainchild. Today the most impressive of it is probably to orders like 'the Cistercian the early brood include Poblet Abbey in Ca Germany that we should credit this deritualizing 0 talonia, Eberbach in the Rheingau, and the In examining the Gothic abroad, our first church layouts. The church to them was, haunting ruins of Rievaulx and Fountains in consideration should be the native idiom to place of prayer, an oratorium; it did no England. In France itself, at places like which the new stVle was grafted. Germany, pretend to be the model of heavenly Jeru Ourscamp and Royaumont, the order was unlike the lle-de-France, had a vigorous salem or the house of God. And when late seduced into coveting the richer effects of home-grown RomanesqLc that had steered generations of Cistercians belied this sim Gothic cathedrals with an abandon that official architecture since the Oltos. The pie communion witn God and opted for th< would have sent Bernard into a rage. In churches combined Carolingian massing tall radiant choirs of Gothic cathedralls , th< Greece, on the other hand, opened up to with -the Lombard bands of the Fi rst Ro mood was captured by the mendica nt or the latin church by the Fourth Crusade manesque and the elegant planar design of ders of the early thirteenth century, tht which captured and occupied Constanti Ottonian interiors like SI. l'vlichael's at Hil followers of St. Dominic and SI. Francis 0 nople in 1204, they were content with re desheim. In northern Germany and th e Assisi. For the Dominicans and Franciscan ! modeling Byzantine monasteries that were colonized regions fu rther out, brick was the the liturgical pageantry of the choir mean

343 MEASURING UP

less than the pulpit and the confessional. The high point of services was the long sermon. Gathering about the pulpit to see and hear the speaker mattered enor mously. For this, the hall church worked much better than the standard hierarchy of aisles and nave. (Fig . 16.7) The mendicant orders were especially popular in Germany. Their success natu rally left its mark on religious architecture. Transepts, ambulatories, and radiating chapels lost their allure. Even vaults, ex cept in the choir, seemed superfluous to the friars for the pu rposes of a teach i ng order. They pretered wood ceilings, and even when the naves were vaulted, the effect was low and broad .

England England's is a different story. The European Romanesqu e corresponds here with two eras set apart by th e Norman Conquest of 1066. We do not have much from the Anglo Saxon environment prior to the arrival of William th e Conqueror. Odd relics like Earl's Barton, th e tenth or early eleventh-centu ry tower in Northamptonshire, have a rustic, elemental look. Norman architecture across the channel was incomparably more so phisticated . The school of Normandy was in fact one of the most advanced of Ro manesque regional styles. Its far-sighted experiments included the twin-tower fa cade and the rib vault. (Fig. 13.15) The Norman Conquest turned England into a frontier that supported this architec tural agili,ty. Stark, massive keeps and churches, some using the imported buff and Fig. 14.23 Salisbury (England), cathedral, 1220--58; white limestone of Caen in Normandy, went aerial view. up within a very short time . Th e churches have been updated at intervals, but there is enough around to convey their original strength, their virile beauty: SI. A,lbans ab bey built of flint and reused Roman bricks Gervase of Canterbury describes him-was Five years after work began, William was from nearby ancient Verulamium, the tran one of the several architects, French and hurt in a fall from th e scaffoldi ng and went sept of Winchester Cathedral (Fig. 14.22), English, invited in 1174 to inspect the dam home to die. An English su ccesso r, also and of course Durham Cathedral whose age of the bu rned choi r at Canterbu ry. He called William , was named. 50 [nglish ponderous rib vaults are possibly the ear advised tearing it down for something new: Goth ic, wh ich began with a French design liest anywhere in Europe. and Fren ch materi als, was soon natural Dismissing the rest they chose him for the un It was in one of these Norman churches, ized . Thereafter, it b came the chi f rival dertaking .... Attention was given to procu re of jlle-de-France Gothic, just as English Canterbury Cathedral begun a year after the stones from abroad. He made the most ingen lh conquest and consecrated in 1130, that ious machines for loading and unloading ships, th rone was th e rival of the Fr en h royal Gothic made its English debut. William of and for drawing the mortar and stones. He de ho use. And after 1250, when Fra nce seemed Sens-"a man of great abilities and a mos t livered also to the masons models in wood for to have exhausted its powers of invention ingenious workman in wood and stone," as cu tting the stones. and became absorbed w ith the b elaborin g

344

. ------~-~------ THE FRENCH MANNER

r "urlace ornament, it was England th t triumph of Ilc-de-France-at Canterbury, cathedral has a cloister and chapter house ook th -lead or the ne t cenlury. rh is is Winchester, Ely, Salisbury, and Ex eter. attached to it, as if it were a monastery. Ihe lime of the cathedrals at Wells and Let us look at one of these, the Cathe Salisbury has never had monks; it has al ;Ic,uct's ter, War ester and York. But the dral of St. Mary, Salisbury, built in the first ways been administered by a brotherhood ind pendence of English architects is al half of the thirteenth century. (Fig. 14.23) of canons under the presidency of its dean. r".ld" quife plain in the decades of the ne peculiarity of the overall site is that the But these monastic adjuncts attest to a strange English practice. In ten of the sev enteen dioceses of the country, the bishop resided in a monastery and his cathedral was at the same time a monastery church. Can terbury, Winchester, Ely, and Durham were frg. t4.24 Salisbury (England) . chapter house of al h dra l, 1263-84 ; view mto the vau lt. all cathedral monasteries until Henry VIII's dissolution of monasteries about 1535, at which time the monks were replaced by canons and th e prior by a dean. I n most cases the monasteries were there first, and the bishops materialized when the com munity grew large enough to amount to a town. All this accounts for the characteristic settings of English cathedrals. They are not intimately involved with the town, in the way that Chartres closes in on its cathe dral. English cathedrals have ample breath ing space. The cloister is on the south side, and other remnants (the gatehouses, for example) sometimes still trace the walled enclosu re of the monasteries that origi nally set them ofi from the town. The octagonal chapter house is also an English specialty. (Fig. '14.24) Worcester's was first; the one at Salisbury dates from 1263-84. The design is always the same. A central pier fans out into an umbrellalike vault; the ribs are then gathered again at the corners of the octagon. Except for a low blind arcade just above the benches of the chapter, the walls are glazed with pointed windows of a moderate height. They are comfortable, well-lighted rooms, devoid of the strenuous lift of French Gothic. Since the bishop had his own palace in which to hold court, the chapter house may well have propped up the dignity of the second in command, the prior or the dean. These men had more daily contact with the cathedral community than did its bishop who, as an important political figure, was often busy with affairs of state. The bish op's primacy in the cathedral was beyond dispute. But his right to preside over the chapter did not always go unchallenged. There is , then, the edge of a power strug gle evident in these graceful meeting halls. The church plan is also quite remarkable

345 MEASURING UP

for a contemporary of Amiens Cathedral . The squared off choir looks early Cister cian; the double transept, Cluniac. In deed, in eschewing the spatial unity of French Gothic, the cathedral at Salisbury (and this is true of all its peers) builds itself with distinct compartments in the manner of Romanesque design. This is evident in the massing that spreads out placidly, low and generous, with only the somewhat oversized crossing tower for a vertical ac cent. The west towers are modest. (Fig. 14.25) They are set beside the facade on in dividual bases, as if they did not quite be long to it. Together they make a richly dec orative frontispiece which, despite the three portals that correspond to aisles and nave, has its own life, independent of interior ar rangements. The sculptural program is it self meager by French standards. Staying clear of the portals, it layers the facade uniformly all the way to the top. Inside, we have the same layered effect. (Fig. 14.26) The nave piers carry only thei r arcades, and the widespread tirforium has its own system of supports. And what to a French architect would have appeared most illogical, the vault ribs take off from brack ets shaped into human heads halfway down the triforium band without ever being properly grounded. Color would have stressed the autonomy of the storeys and the vault canopy. The main material is Portland limestone .from the quarries at Chilmark 15 kilometers (about 10 miles) west, a fine white stone that weathers to become a light grey. The slender shafts of the nave and the triforium piers are of dark Purbeck "marble." The contrast is tame now, but in the initial design the wall area was decorated with black scroll work on a Fig. 14.25 Salisbury Cathedral; west facade. red ground, capitals and moldings were gilded and painted, and only the vault was left white. The ribs here describe normal four-part bays. In the early Gothic cathedrals of Eng land, at Lincoln for example, the ribs do We have said enough here to call atten vention, but the English architects, like Elias not even conform to the bay system. (Fig. tion to the uniqueness of early Gothic in de Dereham and Nicholas of Ely at Salis· 14.27) A ridge r,ib runs all along the center England or, more to the point perhaps, to bury Cathedral, knew how to harness it to of the vault and additional ribs, called tier its independence from France. The cathe native purposes. And that, after all , is the cerons, intervene between the transverse drals of the thi rteenth centu ry were a man " English-ness" of English architecture, the and diagonal ribs of the standard four-part ifesto of a new national consciousness, just " German-ness" of German architecture. bay. The result is a parade of star-shaped as much as Simon de Montfort's revolt The major historical styles have been few. designs. This rejection of French rational againt the authority of King Henry III and To originate one is no more important in ism for the sake of decorative flare is per the establishment 0'£ the English Parlia the long run than the gift of being able to haps the most English trait of all. ment. Gothic may have been a French in- m ake it one's own .

346 THE FREN CH MA NN ER

Fig. 14.27 lincoln (England), cathedral ; navel vaults, ca . 1233.