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.