CHAPTER II

TOWN-HALLS, BELFRIES, PALACES

The social evolution which resulted in the enfranchisement of the communes had its origin in the eleventh century, though the consummation of this great political change was of much later date.

Down to the fourteenth century the efforts of the communes to exercise the rights conferred on them in charters wrung from their feudal lords received incessant checks. The opposition they encountered is hardly to be wondered at, seeing that every concession in their favour tended to diminish the despotic authority of those from whom it had been won. No sooner, therefore, was a charter rescinded and a commune abolished than the instant demolition of the town-hall and belfry was demanded. Hence very few town-halls of earlier date than the fourteenth century have survived.

_Town-halls._--A few of the great Southern cities owned town-halls so early as the twelfth century, among them Bordeaux, where the building was of the Roman type, and Toulouse, whose town-hall was practically a fortalice.

But by far the greater number of the infant communes were sunk in poverty, and so overwhelmed with dues and taxes that they had no margin for communal buildings.

In the fourteenth century even the commune of Paris could boast only the most modest of town-halls. In 1357 Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants, bought from the collector of the salt-tax a small two-gabled building which adjoined several private dwellings. We may, therefore, conclude that down to this period the town-hall was in nowise distinguished from an ordinary habitation.

At the close of the century Caen possessed a town-hall of four stories.

During the thirteenth century many new towns and communes had been founded by the Crown, the nobles, and the clergy, the depositaries of power in the Middle Ages.

In the North, Villeneuve le Roi, Villeneuve le Comte, and Villeneuve l'Archevêque owed their existence, material and communal, to these powers respectively.

In the South the war of the Albigenses had devastated and even destroyed many cities. The authorities recognised the necessity of repeopling the districts so cruelly decimated. The great nobles, spiritual and temporal, reconcentrated the scattered population by grants of lands for the building of new towns, and sought to establish them permanently by apparently liberal concessions in the form of communal franchises.

According to Caumont and Anthyme St. Paul, these new towns or _bastides_ may be identified by their names, or by their regularity of plan, or by both combined.

Certain names indicate a royal foundation or dependency, as Réalville or Monréal; others point to privileges conferred on the town, as Bonneville, La Sauvetat, Sauveterre, Villefranche, or even La Bastide, and Villeneuve.

A third class borrow the names of French and occasionally of foreign provinces or towns. Anthyme St. Paul gives a list of such in the _Annuaire de l'archéologie française_,--Barcelone or Barcelonnette, Beauvais, Boulogne, Bruges, Cadix, Cordes (for Cordova), Fleurance (for Florence), Bretagne, Cologne, Valence, Miélan (for Milan), La Française and Francescas, Grenade, Libourne (for Leghorn), Modène, Pampelonne (for Pampeluna), etc.

A new town or _bastide_ is usually rectangular in plan, and measures some 750 by 580 feet. Sauveterre d'Aveyron is an example. In the centre is a square, into which a street debouches on each side, thus dividing the town into four parts. The square is surrounded by galleries or cloisters, of round or pointed arches, covered with a timber roof or vault, with or without transverse arches, whence the term _Place des Couverts_, still common in some Southern towns.

In the centre of the square stood the town-hall, the ground-floor of which was used as a public market. Montréjeau is one of the towns in which this regularity of construction is observed, also Montpazier, the streets of which are lined with wide arcades of pointed arches. Other examples are to be found at Eymet, Domme, and Beaumont, Libourne, Ste. Foy, and Sauveterre de Guyenne, Damazan, and Montflanquin, Rabastens, Mirande, Grenade, Isle d'Albi, and Réalmont, etc. Several _bastides_ in Guyenne were founded by the English. Finally, the lower town of Carcassonne, founded in 1247, and Aigues-Mortes, founded in 1248, also belong to the class of _bastides_ or new towns.[72]

[72] See Part III., "Military Architecture."

"The series of Southern _bastides_, inaugurated in 1222 by the foundation of Cordes-Albigeois, was brought to a close in 1344 by a petition of the town-councillors of Toulouse, in answer to which the king forbade any further settlements. Two hundred at least of the _bastides_ still exist in Guyenne, Gascony, Languedoc, and the neighbouring districts. Several of these were unprosperous, and are still small villages. In some cases their close proximity tended greatly to their mutual disadvantage."[73]

[73] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_.

It is worthy of remark that civil architecture had so greatly developed by the fifteenth century as to react in its turn upon the religious art to which it owed its birth. It gave to religious architecture certain new forms, such as the elliptic arch, adopted at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the following century, at which period civil architecture reached its apogee.

The Southern communes preserved their franchises till the sixteenth century, that disastrous era of religious warfare which involved the destruction of innumerable buildings.

The town-hall of St. Antonin (Tarn et Garonne) is perhaps the only surviving one of the period. With the exception of the belfry, it is an almost perfect type of the architecture of this class in the thirteenth century, to which date it may probably be assigned (Fig. 200).

The little town of St. Antonin, which had obtained its communal charter in 1136, suffered much for its fidelity to Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse. During the war of the Albigenses it was twice taken by Simon de Montfort, whose son, Guy de Montfort, sold it to St. Louis in 1226. It was at this period, no doubt, that the present building was erected. It has the characteristic feature of the civic monument, the _belfry_, which, in the Middle Ages, was the architectural expression of municipal authority and jurisdiction.

The building is a simple rectangular structure, over which the square tower rises to the right. The ground-floor is a market, communicating with an adjoining market-place, and with the narrow street which passes under the belfry. The _grande salle_ or municipal hall occupies the first story, together with a smaller apartment in the tower. The second story is divided in the same manner.

We have already called attention to the far-reaching influence of French art as manifested in religious architecture so early as the close of the twelfth century. Such influences were no less paramount in developments of civil architecture, and we find municipal buildings of the fourteenth century in Italy--at Pienza and other towns--in which not only analogies but points of identity with the thirteenth-century example of St. Antonin are distinctly traceable.

The municipal buildings of the North, the most perfect types of which are those of Germany and Belgium, are nearly uniform in plan. A belfry rises from the centre of the façade, flanked right and left on the first story by the great civic halls. The ground-floor is a market for the sale of merchandise.

The cloth-hall of Ypres (so named since the construction of a new town-hall in the seventeenth century) is one of the most beautiful of such examples. The building was begun in 1202, but was not completed till 1304. The façade measures 440 feet in length, and has a double row of pointed windows. It terminates at each angle in a very graceful pinnacle, and the centre is marked by a noble square belfry of vast size, the oldest portion of the building, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Baldwin IX. of Flanders in 1200.

The belfry of Bruges, which was begun at the close of the thirteenth century, and completed some hundred years later, is another most interesting example of the civic buildings of its period.

The structure consists of a market and the usual municipal halls, crowned by the lofty belfry, the original height of which was 350 feet.

The _hôtel de ville_ or town-hall of Bruges, which replaced an earlier municipal building in the _Place du Bourg_, dates from between 1376 to 1387. Its architectural character differs entirely from that of the belfry. Its elegant design and the richness of its ornamentation give it the appearance rather of a sumptuously decorated chapel than of a civic building.

We may close the list of Belgian town-halls of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with that of Louvain. The design and general scheme of elaborate decoration are akin to those of the hall of Bruges, and it bears the same ecclesiastical impress.

It was built between 1448 and 1463 by _Mathieu de Layens, master mason of the town and its outskirts_, and is a rectangular building of three stories. The gable ends are pierced with three rows of pointed windows, and adorned with a rich profusion of mouldings, statues, and sculptured ornament. The steep roof has four tiers of dormer-windows. The angles are flanked by graceful openwork turrets, with delicate pinnacles, and similar turrets receive the ridge of the roof at either end. The lateral façades are adorned with three rows of statues and allegorical sculptures, covering the whole with a wealth of exquisite tracery. Its lace-like delicacy has suffered considerably from the action of weather, and it was found necessary to renovate a considerable portion of the ornament in 1840.

_Belfries._--In the early days of the enfranchisement of the communes, it became customary to call the community together by means of bells, which at that period were confined to the church towers, and which it was unlawful to ring without the consent of the clergy. It may easily be conceived to what incessant broils the new order gave rise, the clergy as a body being strongly opposed to the separatist tendency of measures which attacked their feudal rights. The municipalities finally put an end to internecine warfare in this connection by hanging bells of their own over the town-gates, a custom which was superseded towards the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century by the erection of towers for the civic bells. Such was the origin of the _belfry_, the earliest material expression of communal independence.

The structure usually formed part of the town-hall, but was sometimes an isolated building. The isolated belfry was a great square tower of several stories, crowned by a timber roof protected either by slates or lead. The great bells hung in one story, and above them the little bells of the carillon.

A lodging, opening upon a surrounding gallery, was constructed in the upper story for the accommodation of the watchman, whose duty it was to warn the inhabitants of approaching danger and to give notice of fires. The bells rang at sunrise and curfew.

The chimes (_carillon_) marked the hours and their subdivisions, and at festival seasons mingled their joyous notes with the deep and solemn voice of the great bell.

The custom of tolling the great bell to give notice of a fire still obtains in many villages of the North, the greater number of which have preserved their belfries in spite of the modifications they have undergone at different periods.

The belfry tower usually contained a prison, a hall for the town-councillors, a muniment room, and a magazine for arms. It was long the only town-hall of a commune.

We shall find examples of these early municipal buildings among the isolated belfries of Belgium, such as that at Tournai, founded in 1187, and rebuilt in part at the close of the fourteenth century, and that of Ghent, the square tower of which dates from the end of the twelfth century. Its spire is a modern addition.

A few buildings of this particular class still exist in France. Such is the belfry of Calais, the square tower of which was built during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is crowned by an octagonal superstructure, begun at the close of the fifteenth century, and completed in the early years of the seventeenth. The belfry of Béthune, which dates from the fourteenth century, is another. It consists of a square tower reinforced at three of its angles by a hexagonal turret, corbelled out from the wall. The fourth turret is of the same shape, but here the projection is carried up from the ground-floor, and contains the spiral staircase which communicates with the various stories of the tower, and terminates on the embattled parapet above. The building is completed by a pyramidal spire of great elegance, crowned by the watchman's tower. The plan and details of this superstructure proclaim it the source whence the gable turrets of Louvain were derived. The great bells hang in the uppermost story, the smaller ones of the carillon in the story below. On each façade at the summit of the tower a great dial marks the hours, as was customary from the fourteenth century onwards, when town-clocks first came into general use.

The towns of Auxerre, Beaune, Amiens, Évreux, and Avignon still possess their belfries.

To the belfry of Amiens, which dates from the thirteenth century, a square dome was added some hundred years ago. But the great bell of the fourteenth century has been preserved.

The belfry of Évreux retains its fifteenth-century character almost in its entirety. That of Avignon, a monument of the close of the fifteenth century, was happily spared when the town-hall was replaced by a modern structure.

The gate-house of the _hôtel de ville_ at Bordeaux, known as the _grosse cloche_, is an example of the more ancient usage. Here we find the bell hung over the gateway, as already described. The belfry of Bordeaux, which appears to date from the fifteenth century, is very remarkable. It consists of two towers connected by a curtain through which is an arched passage. A second arch protects the great bell in the upper story, and the whole is surmounted by a central roof, flanked right and left by the conical crowns of the lateral turrets.

Markets, warehouses, and exchanges were often annexes of the town-halls. A few examples of such buildings have been preserved, but those of the third class are extremely rare. A specimen, remarkable both for construction and decoration, which recall the Spanish architecture of the fourteenth century, still exists at Perpignan. It is a house known as _La Loge_, built in 1396, which originally served as exchange to the cloth merchants of French Catalonia and Roussillon.

_Palaces._--In the Middle Ages the name palace was given to the dwelling of the sovereign. Its chief feature was the basilica or judgment-hall.

The great nobles followed the royal example and constructed palaces in the capitals of their feofs, as at Dijon, Troyes, and Poitiers, which are the most important of such examples.

The town-houses of archbishops and bishops were also called palaces.

The courts, parliaments, and tribunals of the executive were held in the palace of the suzerain or the bishop, where certain of the buildings were open to the public. The important feature, the great hall (_grand salle_), occupied a vast covered space in which the plenary courts were held, the vassals assembled, and banquets were given. It communicated with galleries or ambulatories. A chapel was always included in the plan of the palace, which consisted of the lodging of the lord and his followers; offices, often of great extent; rooms for the storing of archives; magazines, prisons, and innumerable auxiliary buildings, divided by courtyards, and in some cases by gardens.

In Paris the palace proper, which was in the Île de la Cité, consisted of buildings constructed from the time of St. Louis to the reign of Philip the Fair. From the reign of Charles V. it was specially devoted to the administration of justice.

The only remains of the buildings of St. Louis are the _Ste. Chapelle_, the two great towers with their intervening curtain on the _Quai de l'Horloge_, and the square clock tower at the angle of the quay.

The best examples of seignorial castles are: Troyes, which was built by the Counts of Champagne, and inhabited by them till they removed to Provins in the thirteenth century; and the palace of the Counts of Poitiers at Poitiers, one of the most interesting of such buildings; it was burnt by the English in 1346, and repaired or rebuilt at the close of the fourteenth century by the brother of Charles V., Jean, Duke of Berry, to whom we owe, among other architectural works, the curious fireplace of the great vestibule, called the _Salle des Pas Perdus_, in the _Palais de Justice_.

The bishops' palaces were differently planned. They usually adjoined the cathedrals, with which they communicated either on the north or the south, according to the facilities afforded by the site. The characteristic symbol of episcopal power which, in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, claimed jurisdiction both in spiritual and temporal matters, was the great hall, in later days the synod house and the council chamber of the executive. The bishop's palace in Paris, rebuilt by Maurice de Sully in 1160, preserved this mediæval feature, which is even more conspicuous at Sens, in the magnificent annexe known as the _salle synodale_ (synod house).

The canons' lodgings were also in close proximity to the cathedral, but on the side opposite to the bishop's palace. They were surrounded by an enclosure, the gates of which were fastened at night. It was the duty of the canons to aid the bishop in his ministrations. They lived together in annexes which communicated with the cathedral by means of galleries and cloisters.[74]

[74] See Part II., "Monastic Architecture," the cloisters of Puy-en-Velay and Elne in Roussillon.

The bishops' palaces were often remarkable for their elaborate construction. Fragments of the primitive buildings are still preserved in the palaces of Beauvais, Angers, Bayeux, and Auxerre.

The ancient episcopal palace of Laon[75] marks a development in thirteenth-century architecture. It is a good example of that system of construction by which the palace was connected with the city ramparts and formed a secondary line of defence.

[75] The episcopate was transferred to Soissons in 1809.

This system was also adopted at Narbonne. At the close of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century the palace was transformed into a fortress, the importance of which bore witness to the power of its bishops. After Avignon, it is perhaps the most imposing of episcopal dwellings.

From this time onward the bishops' palaces increased greatly in size, their dimensions extending proportionately with those of the great cathedrals of the period. The importance of the episcopal buildings and their dependencies was on a par with the wealth and power of their owners. Some idea of their magnificence may be gathered from the private chapel of the archbishop at Rheims, which dates from the middle of the thirteenth century.

The archbishop's palace at Albi has all the character of a feudal castle. Its buildings are protected by a keep, and encircled by walls and towers connected both with the ramparts of the city, and with that more important fortalice, the cathedral itself, the tower of which is, in fact, a formidable keep.[76]

[76] See Part I., Cathedral of Albi, Figs. 70-73.

The transformation of church and palace into fortresses by an elaborate system of defence was necessitated by the wars which ravaged the district, and from which Albi suffered more cruelly than any other town.

The palace of the popes at Avignon which Pope Benedict XII. began to build in the fourteenth century, and the bishop's palace at Narbonne, are among the finest specimens of ecclesiastical fortification in the Middle Ages.[77]

[77] For the Palace of the Popes, see Albert Lenoir and Viollet-le-Duc.

The Popes, having established themselves at Avignon in the fourteenth century, built a huge mansion on the rock known as the _Rocher des Doms_, which overlooks the Rhone. In 1336 Benedict XII., having destroyed his predecessor's palace, laid the foundations of the immense fortified pile now in existence. The plans were the work of the French architect, Pierre Obrier. The building was added to by the successors of Benedict XII., Popes Clement VI., Innocent VI., and Urban V., and was completed, or at any rate made efficient for defence, by 1398, when Pedro de Luna, who became pope under the title of Benedict XIII., sustained a memorable siege therein.

The whole building, which covers a very considerable area, was completed in less than sixty years. Its formidable mass was further strengthened by the fortified _enceinte_ of the town, some three miles in circumference.

In general conception, in the architectural skill of its construction, and in its tasteful decoration, the Palace of the Popes at Avignon bears away the palm from all contemporary buildings in Germany and Italy, where French influences were paramount.

This noble monument is absolutely and entirely French. No finer combination of religious, monastic, military, and civil types could be desired in illustration of the art we have agreed to term _Gothic Architecture_, but which might be more truly entitled: _Our National Architecture in the Middle Ages_.

Justice indeed demands this tardy homage. Our vast churches, our superb cathedrals, our mighty castles and palace fortresses, the masterpieces that fill our museums--manifestations of artistic power which should move us, not to servile imitation but to fruitful study,--all were the creations of _native_ architects.

That expansive force which made our national art the great civilising medium of the Middle Ages was derived from our own early architects, civil and religious. The principles and practice of monumental art were carried by French architects into all countries, though the results of their teaching are more conspicuous in Italy and Germany than elsewhere. Native builders and artists established the supremacy of French art throughout Western Europe, and even in the East. And though the foreign evolution, which marked the sixteenth century, did indeed exercise a transient influence in France, it must be remembered that the way had been prepared for this apparently novel movement by those French artists who have carried the fame of our beloved country throughout the civilised world.

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Transcriber's Notes:

1. All obvious spelling and punctuation errors have been corrected, also hyphenation and accentuation.

2. Text in italics is shown as _text_.

3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r.