Chapter 18

EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE.--_Continued._

IN GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN, AND SPAIN.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Hübsch and Reber. Bond, _Gothic Architecture in England_. Also Brandon, _Analysis of Gothic Architecture_. Boisserée, _Nieder Rhein_. Ditchfield, _The Cathedrals of England_. Hasak, _Die romanische und die gotische Baukunst_ (in _Handbuch d. Arch._). Lübke, _Die Mittelalterliche Kunst in Westfalen_. Möller, _Denkmäler der deutschen Baukunst_. Puttrich, _Baukunst des Mittelalters in Sachsen_. Rickman, _An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture_. Scott, _English Church Architecture_. Van Rensselaer, _English Cathedrals_.

+MEDIÆVAL GERMANY.+ Architecture developed less rapidly and symmetrically in Germany than in France, notwithstanding the strong centralized government of the empire. The early churches were of wood, and the substitution of stone for wood proceeded slowly. During the Carolingian epoch (800-919), however, a few important buildings were erected, embodying Byzantine and classic traditions. Among these the most notable was the +Minster+ or palatine chapel of Charlemagne at +Aix-la-Chapelle+, an obvious imitation of San Vitale at Ravenna. It consisted of an octagonal domed hall surrounded by a vaulted aisle in two stories, but without the eight niches of the Ravenna plan. It was preceded by a porch flanked by turrets. The Byzantine type thus introduced was repeated in later churches, as in the Nuns’ Choir at Essen (947) and at Ottmarsheim (1050). In the great monastery at Fulda a basilica with transepts and with an apsidal choir at either end was built in 803. These choirs were raised above the level of the nave, to admit of crypts beneath them, as in many Lombard churches; a practice which, with the reduplication of the choir and apse just mentioned, became very common in German Romanesque architecture.

+EARLY CHURCHES.+ It was in Saxony that this architecture first entered upon a truly national development. The early churches of this province and of Hildesheim (where architecture flourished under the favor of the bishops, as elsewhere under the royal influence) were of basilican plan and destitute of vaulting, except in the crypts. They were built with massive piers, sometimes rectangular, sometimes clustered, the two kinds often alternating in the same nave. Short columns were, however, sometimes used instead of piers, either alone, as at Paulinzelle and Limburg-on-the-Hardt (1024-39), or alternating with piers, as at Hecklingen, +Gernrode+ (958-1050), and +St. Godehard+ at Hildesheim (1133). A triple eastern apse, with apsidal chapels projecting eastward from the transepts, were common elements in the plans, and a second apse, choir, and crypt at the west end were not infrequent. Externally the most striking feature was the association of two, four, or even six square or circular towers with the mass of the church, and the elevation of square or polygonal turrets or cupolas over the crossing. These adjuncts gave a very picturesque aspect to edifices otherwise somewhat wanting in artistic interest.

+RHENISH CHURCHES.+ It was in the Rhine provinces that vaulting was first applied to the naves of German churches, nearly a half century after its general adoption in France. Cologne possesses an interesting trio of churches in which the Byzantine dome on squinches or on pendentives, with three apses or niches opening into the central area, was associated with a long three aisled nave (+St. Mary-in-the-Capitol+, begun in 9th century; +Great St. Martin’s+, 1150-70; +Apostles’ Church+, 1160-99: the naves vaulted later). The double chapel at +Schwarz-Rheindorf+, near Bonn (1151), also has the crossing covered by a dome on pendentives.

The vaulting of the nave itself was developed in another series of edifices of imposing size, the cathedrals of +Mayence+ (1036), +Spires+ (Speyer), and +Worms+, and the +Abbey of Laach+, all built in the 11th century and vaulted early in the 12th. In the first three the main vaulting is in square bays, each covering two bays of the nave, the piers of which are alternately lighter and heavier (Figs. 99, 100). At Laach the vaulting-bays are oblong, both in nave and aisles. There was no triforium gallery, and stability was secured only by excessive thickness in the piers and clearstory walls, and by bringing down the main vault as near to the side-aisle roofs as possible.

+RHENISH EXTERIORS.+ These great churches, together with those of +Bonn+ and +Limburg-on-the-Lahn+ and the cathedral of +Treves+ (Trier, 1047), are interesting, not only by their size and dignity of plan and the somewhat rude massiveness of their construction, but even more so by the picturesqueness of their external design (Fig. 101). Especially successful is the massing of the large and small turrets with the lofty nave-roof and with the apses at one or both ends. The systematic use of arcading to decorate the exterior walls, and the introduction of open arcaded dwarf galleries under the cornices of the apses, gables, and dome-turrets, gave to these Rhenish churches an external beauty hardly equalled in other contemporary edifices. This method of exterior design, and the system of vaulting in square bays over double bays of the nave, were probably derived from the Lombard churches of Northern Italy, with which the Hohenstauffen emperors had many political relations.

The Italian influence is also encountered in a number of circular churches of early date, as at Fulda (9th-11th century), Drügelte, Bonn (baptistery, demolished), and in façades like that at Rosheim, which is a copy in little of San Zeno at Verona.

Elsewhere in Germany architecture was in a backward state, especially in the southern provinces. Outside of Saxony, Franconia, and the Rhine provinces, very few works of importance were erected until the thirteenth century.

+SECULAR ARCHITECTURE.+ Little remains to us of the secular architecture of this period in Germany, if we except the great feudal castles, especially those of the Rhine, which were, after all, rather works of military engineering than of architectural art. The palace of Charlemagne at Aix (the chapel of which was mentioned on p. 172) is known to have been a vast and splendid group of buildings, partly, at least of marble; but hardly a vestige of it remains. Of the extensive +Palace of Henry III.+ at +Goslar+ there remain well-defined ruins of an imposing hall of assembly in two aisles with triple-arched windows. At Brunswick the east wing of the +Burg Dankwargerode+ displays, in spite of modern alterations, the arrangement of the chapel, great hall, two fortified towers, and part of the residence of Henry the Lion. The +Wartburg+ palace (Ludwig III., _cir._ 1150) is more generally known--a rectangular hall in three stories, with windows effectively grouped to form arcades; while at Gelnhausen and Münzenberg are ruins of somewhat similar buildings. A few of the Romanesque monasteries of Germany have left partial remains, as at +Maulbronn+, which was almost entirely rebuilt in the Gothic period, and isolated buildings in Cologne and elsewhere. There remain also in Cologne a number of Romanesque private houses with coupled windows and stepped gables.

+GREAT BRITAIN.+ Previous to the Norman conquest (1066) there was in the British Isles little or no architecture worthy of mention. The few extant remains of Saxon and Celtic buildings reveal a singular poverty of ideas and want of technical skill. These scanty remains are mostly of towers (those in Ireland nearly all round and tapering, with conical tops, their use and date being the subjects of much controversy) and crypts. The tower of Earl’s Barton is the most important and best preserved of those in England. With the Norman conquest, however, began an extraordinary activity in the building of churches and abbeys. William the Conqueror himself founded a number of these, and his Norman ecclesiastics endeavored to surpass on British soil the contemporary churches of Normandy. The new churches differed somewhat from their French prototypes; they were narrower and lower, but much longer, especially as to the choir and transepts. The cathedrals of +Durham+ (1096-1133) and +Norwich+ (same date) are important examples (Fig. 102). They also differed from the French churches in two important particulars externally; a huge tower rose usually over the crossing, and the western portals were small and insignificant. Lateral entrances near the west end were given greater importance and called _Galilees_. At Durham a Galilee chapel (not shown in the plan), takes the place of a porch at the west end, like the ante-churches of St. Benoît-sur-Loire and Vézelay.

+THE NORMAN STYLE.+ The Anglo-Norman builders employed the same general features as the Romanesque builders of Normandy, but with more of picturesqueness and less of refinement and technical elegance. Heavy walls, recessed arches, round mouldings, cubic cushion-caps, clustered piers, and in doorways a jamb-shaft for each stepping of the arch were common to both styles. But in England the Corinthian form of capital is rare, its place being taken by simpler forms.

+NORMAN INTERIORS.+ The interior design of the larger churches of this period shows a close general analogy to contemporaneous French Norman churches, as appears by comparing the nave of Waltham or Peterboro’ with that of Cérisy-la-Forêt, in Normandy. Although the massiveness of the Anglo-Norman piers and walls plainly suggests the intention of vaulting the nave, this intention seems never to have been carried out except in small churches and crypts. All the existing abbeys and cathedrals of this period had wooden ceilings or were, like Durham, Norwich, and Gloucester, vaulted at a later date. Completed as they were with wooden nave-roofs, the clearstory was, without danger, made quite lofty and furnished with windows of considerable size. These were placed near the outside of the thick wall, and a passage was left between them and a triple arch on the inner face of the wall--a device imitated from the abbeys at Caen. The vaulted side-aisles were low, with disproportionately wide pier-arches, above which was a high triforium gallery under the side-roofs. Thus a nearly equal height was assigned to each of the three stories of the bay, disregarding that subordination of minor to major parts which gives interest to an architectural composition. The piers were quite often round, as at Gloucester, Hereford, and Bristol. Sometimes round piers alternated with clustered piers, as at Durham and Waltham; and in some cases clustered piers alone were employed, as at Peterboro’ and in the transepts of Winchester (Fig. 103).

+FAÇADES AND DOORWAYS.+ All the details were of the simplest character, except in the doorways. These were richly adorned with clustered jamb-shafts and elaborately carved mouldings, but there was little variety in the details of this carving. The zigzag was the most common feature, though birds’ heads with the beaks pointing toward the centre of the arch were not uncommon. In the smaller churches (Fig. 104) the doorways were better proportioned to the whole façade than in the larger ones, in which they appear as relatively insignificant features. Very few examples remain of important Norman façades in their original form, nearly all of these having been altered after the round arch was displaced by the pointed arch in the latter part of the twelfth century. Iffley church (Fig. 104) is a good example of the style.

+SPAIN.+ During the Romanesque period a large part of Spain was under Moorish dominion. The capture of Toledo, in 1062, by the Christians, began the gradual emancipation of the country from Moslem rule, and in the northern provinces a number of important churches were erected under the influence of French Romanesque models. The use of domical pendentives (as in the +Panteon+ of +S. Isidoro+, at Leon, and in the _cimborio_ or dome over the choir at the intersection of nave and transepts in old Salamanca cathedral) was probably derived from the domical churches of Aquitania and Anjou. Elsewhere the northern Romanesque type prevailed under various modifications, with long nave and transepts, a short choir, and a complete _chevet_ with apsidal chapels. The church of +St. Iago+ at Compostella (1078) is the finest example of this class. These churches nearly all had groined vaulting over the side-aisles and barrel-vaults over the nave, the constructive system being substantially that of the churches of Auvergne and the Loire Valley (p. 165). They differed, however, in the treatment of the crossing of nave and transepts, over which was usually erected a dome or cupola or pendentives or squinches, covered externally by an imposing square lantern or tower, as in the +Old Cathedral+ at +Salamanca+, already mentioned (1120-78) and the +Collegiate Church+ at +Toro+. Occasional exceptions to these types are met with, as in the basilican wooden-roofed church of S. Millan at Segovia; in +S. Isidoro+ at Leon, with chapels and a later-added square eastern end, and the circular church of the Templars at Segovia.

The architectural details of these Spanish churches did not differ radically from contemporary French work. As in France and England, the doorways were the most ornate parts of the design, the mouldings being carved with extreme richness and the jambs frequently adorned with statues, as in +S. Vincente+ at Avila. There was no such logical and reasoned-out system of external design as in France, and there is consequently greater variety in the façades. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the architecture of this period is its apparent exemption from the influence of the Moorish monuments which abounded on every hand. This may be explained by the hatred which was felt by the Christians for the Moslems and all their works.

+MONUMENTS.+ GERMANY: Previous to 11th century: Circular churches of Holy Cross at Münster, and of Fulda; palace chapel of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, 804; St. Stephen, Mayence, 990; primitive nave and crypt of St. Gereon, Cologne, 10th century; Lorsch.--11th century: Churches of Gernrode, Goslar, and Merseburg in Saxony; cathedral of Bremen; first restoration of cathedral of Treves (Trier), 1010, west front, 1047; Limburg-on-Hardt, 1024; St. Willibrod, Echternach, 1031; east end of Mayence Cathedral, 1036; Church of Apostles and nave St. Mary-in-Capitol at Cologne, 1036; cathedral of Spires (Speyer) begun 1040; Cathedral Hildesheim, 1061; St. Joseph, Bamberg, 1073; Abbey of Laach, 1093-1156; round churches of Bonn, Drügelte, Nimeguen; cathedrals of Paderborn and Minden.--12th century: Churches of Klus, Paulinzelle, Hamersleben, 1100-1110; Johannisberg, 1130; St. Godehard. Hildesheim, 1133; Worms, the Minster, 1118-83; Jerichau, 1144-60; Schwarz-Rheindorf, 1151; St. Michael, Hildesheim, 1162; Cathedral Brunswick, 1172-94; Lubeck, 1172; also churches of Gaudersheim, Würzburg, St. Matthew at Treves, Limburg-on-Lahn, Sinzig, St. Castor at Coblentz, Diesdorf, Rosheim; round churches of Ottmarsheim and Rippen (Denmark); cathedral of Basle, cathedral and cloister of Zurich (Switzerland).

ENGLAND: Previous to 11th century: Scanty vestiges of Saxon church architecture, as tower of Earl’s Barton, round towers and small chapels in Ireland.--11th century: Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, 1070; chapel St. John in Tower of London, 1070; Winchester Cathedral, 1076-93 (nave and choir rebuilt later); Gloucester Cathedral nave, 1089-1100 (vaulted later); Rochester Cathedral nave, west front cloisters, and chapter-house, 1090-1130; Carlisle Cathedral nave, transepts, 1093-1130; Durham Cathedral, 1095-1133, vaulted 1233; Galilee and chapter-house, 1133-53; Norwich Cathedral, 1096, largely rebuilt 1118-93; Hereford Cathedral, nave and choir, 1099-1115.--12th century: Ely Cathedral, nave, 1107-33; St. Alban’s Abbey, 1116; Peterboro’ Cathedral, 1117-45; Waltham Abbey, early 12th century; Church of Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge, 1130-35; Worcester Cathedral chapter-house, 1140 (?); Oxford Cathedral (Christ Church), 1150-80; Bristol Cathedral chapter-house (square), 1155; Canterbury Cathedral, choir of present structure by William of Sens, 1175; Chichester Cathedral, 1180-1204; Romsey Abbey, late 12th century; St. Cross Hospital near Winchester, 1190 (?). Many more or less important parish churches in various parts of England.

SPAIN. For principal monuments of 9th-12th centuries, see text, latter part of this chapter.