Part 5

About the same time the development of a distinctive style was promoted in the North by an apparently adverse cause. The Northmen, under Rollo, having ravaged and possessed themselves of an extensive province in the north of France, and having soon afterwards joined the Christian Church, set themselves vigorously about the task of repairing the sacrilege which, in the days of their ignorance, they had committed: nearly every ecclesiastical edifice in their new dominions had been destroyed, and never, perhaps, had a new and vigorous people a more perfect _carte blanche_ for generating a new phase of architecture. We accordingly find that they soon covered their land with edifices; at first, it is true, rude and simple,[5] but subsequently possessing elements of dignity and massive grandeur of a very high order.

Of the central district of the Frankish monarchy at this period we have few architectural relics. The weakness of the Carlovingian monarchs, and the almost entire dismemberment of their dominions, left them, probably, little able to carry out great works; yet it cannot be doubted that the active genius of the race--surrounded as they were by the Romanesque developments of Lombardy, Provence, Rhineland, and Normandy--could not have failed to have produced works fully proportioned in merit to those of their neighbours, though during the period of subsequent greatness they were not deemed worthy to be retained.

We now arrive at the period at which the real subject of which I have undertaken to treat commences; and it may here be well to give a few moments’ consideration to the intrinsic nature of the art at this time being generated.

The early architecture of Rome,--locally occupying a position between the Greek colonies to the south and the Etruscan cities to the north,--partook, as it would seem probable, of the characteristics of both, and was more especially marked by the union of the Greek orders and their trabeated structure with the arched construction shadowed forth by the buildings of Etruria. The whole history of Roman architecture seems to evince a competition ever going on between these rival systems. It was at first an unequal contest, for the arcuated system had never, when first taken up by the Romans, had the advantage of being treated as the vehicle for architectural decoration--it was as yet _mere construction_; while the trabeated system had passed through a refining process of two thousand years’ duration, and had been brought by the Greeks to the highest pitch of beauty and perfection. The Roman structures display every step in this contest, some of their greatest structures being purely arcuated and merely constructive, others as purely trabeated--mere imitations of Grecian architecture; but the majority uniting both in different proportions, the Grecian element being very commonly little more than a decorative overlaying of the arched reality. As time moved on, the arched construction steadily gained ground: not only were openings arched over, but wide spaces vaulted both with domes, continuous cylindrical vaults, and those of the groined or intersecting form.

During the later ages of Pagan Rome, though architecture as a decorative art was on the wane, the triumph of arched construction became more and more complete. Columns hitherto used to support horizontal entablatures were employed directly to carry arches, the architrave being bent into a semicircle instead of lying horizontally upon the column; while spaces of gigantic span were covered with groined vaulting, some reaching to a width never since attempted.

In the Eastern empire the dome became subsequently the favourite form of vault, though, in each division of the empire, the arching over entire buildings in all its branches was practised with the greatest skill and success.

During the dark interval which followed the Gothic invasions, though constructive skill was immensely reduced, the preponderance of arcuated over trabeated architecture became yet more complete. The Greek element having during the later Roman period become merely decorative, and therefore no more than an artificial adjunct, it was natural that the overthrow of the ancient civilisation should at once sweep it away as a useless luxury, and that the real and useful portions of architecture should alone survive, though the actual skill in using them would be reduced. We find, accordingly, that during this interval architecture became purely arcuated, though in Western Europe the more difficult forms of arcuation, such as the vaulting over of large spaces, were usually avoided. This art, however, was never forgotten nor lost, but simply disused from diminution of skill, and the grand characteristic of the reawakening of architecture was the revival of these more difficult systems of construction; so much so, indeed, that nearly every structural change which we trace from the tenth to the thirteenth century arose, more or less, from the endeavour first to revive and then to carry on to higher and higher perfection the construction of arches and vaulting, and to elevate it from _mere_ construction into the highest place among the means of producing beauty of decoration and sublimity of effect.

In the south of Italy the architecture continued all along to follow, in the main, the character of the Roman Basilica; and for a long period, it is probable, as I have before stated, that most of the Northern churches were rude imitations of this type; but gradually, in the countries north of the Po, a new form came over the architecture, which ever after distinguished _Northern_ from _Southern_ buildings, and which may be designated by the family name of GOTHIC, not only as being the progenitor of the style which has generally received that title, but as being actually in a great degree the style of the nations of Gothic extraction as distinguished from those of Roman parentage. This style has generally received the name of Romanesque, or Romane, to distinguish it from the pointed-arched style which succeeded it, but is by Mr. Fergusson more philosophically termed the _round_-arched _Gothic_, while he transfers the term Romanesque to the Christianised Roman or Basilican style. This is far more correct than the usual nomenclature; but as the latter is established by custom I shall not depart from it, but shall, for convenience, designate this round-arched Gothic style--as distinguished from the Christian Roman and from the Pointed style--by the customary name of _Romanesque_.

Of this style the following may be enumerated as the leading characteristics:--

1. Subordination of the arches.

2. Subdivision of piers to meet the subordination of arches.

3. Introduction of systems of moulding and decoration proper to subdivided arches.

4. The use of shafts or colonettes as means of decoration and accentuation.

5. The entire relinquishment of Classic proportions in the columns, which are henceforth proportioned in thickness to their _load_, irrespective of their _height_.

6. A system of decoration of its own, founded on Roman and Byzantine, but worked up into a new character, more or less independent of the original type, according to the locality, and to its removal from or proximity to antique monuments.

7. Great thickness of walls to resist the thrust of vaulting, aided by flat, pilaster-like buttresses in the principal planes of pressure.

8. In many cases--indeed, as a general rule--an air of gigantic massiveness in the entire construction.

9. The vaulting at first exactly accords with that of Roman buildings, embracing the barrel vault, the groined vault, and the dome, in nearly all the hitherto attained varieties. The arches always either semicircular or segmental.

The above characteristics are chiefly of a mechanical nature. The style possesses, however, sentiments of an infinitely nobler kind than anything which these mere material elements could impart. It possesses a sternness and dignity almost unearthly--a majestic severity of sentiment which seems, as it were, as if intended to rebuke the unpitying barbarity of the age, and to awe its rude and lawless spirits into obedience to the precepts of the Divine law. Its aspect is religious to the utmost extreme; but it expresses the stern uncompromising _severity_ of religion rather than its more winning and elevating attributes--the asceticism of St. John the Baptist, the rebuker of sin and the preacher of repentance and of righteousness, rather than the spirituality of St. John the Evangelist, the preacher of Christian love, devotion, and praise. The sentiment they would express seems not so much “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” as “Fear before Him, all the earth;” and the task they prescribe to their ministers to be rather to proclaim “the day of vengeance” than “the acceptable year of the Lord”--less to “bind up the broken-hearted and comfort all that mourn,” than to “lift up their voice like a trumpet, and show the people their transgressions.”

This stern simplicity is not, however, universal, for from the first the Romanesque architects _occasionally_ indulged in even rich ornamentation, and, at a later date, often carried it to profusion; yet, even in the richest decorations, they continued grave and severe--their lines were hard and precise, their foliage strong and harsh, and their figure sculpture (unless intended to be grotesque) was the very image of sternness--rude in art, but often of great dignity of expression; and though in an age like ours, of technical perfection and flippant criticism, it often provokes a smile, it was, in its own simple and untechnical age, well calculated to produce wholesome and solemnizing impressions.

This is the style of which we should first treat when attempting to trace the history of Mediæval architecture. It is a mistake to imagine Pointed architecture to be severed by a great gulf from the Romanesque--the Pointed Gothic from the Round: it is its legitimate offspring, or rather _itself_ in a more advanced stage of its development. The change from the round-arched to the pointed-arched Gothic is no change of essential principles; it is but the carrying on to their inevitable results of the principles of refinement, purification, elevation, the perfecting of the construction, and the softening down of the asperity of expression, which were going on during the whole of the Romanesque period. Nearly every characteristic of Pointed architecture finds its type, or its perfected model, in the Romanesque. They are not _two_ styles, but _one_--the earlier and the later phases of the _same_ architecture; the latter being only the carrying on to perfection of the progression which had, during every moment of its dominion, and in every province of its empire, been uniformly going on in the former.

Though the refining process went unceasingly on during the whole history of Romanesque architecture and affected all its features, it would appear that the constant endeavours to bring to perfection its various systems of _vaulting_ were among the greatest causes of the change from the Round to the Pointed style, I will, therefore, endeavour to give a concise outline of the changes in this branch of construction during the period under consideration.

The churches of Western Europe up to this time, like the early basilicas, were for the most part covered with timber roofs; and the task which the Romanesque builders proposed to themselves was to convert them into _vaulted_ churches.

The most normal and readily invented vault is that of the continuous barrel or demi-cylindrical form, covering an oblong building from end to end, and the most readily conceived idea, where the building has to be roofed over such a vault, is to fill in the space between the arch and the triangle of the roof solid, and make it at once the ceiling of the room and the support of the roof covering. Such a vault, however, has considerable outward thrust, and, being heavily loaded at the crown, would require walls of great thickness to stand against it. Let us suppose it applied to the nave of a basilica in place of the timber roof, and it is obvious that, being balanced on two ranges of columns, it could not stand for a moment without some very effective contrivance in the construction of the aisles to buttress up the walls and pillars on which this barrel vault is to rest.

In the Baths of Diocletian, the Basilica of Maxentius, and other great Roman halls, this was met by cross walls pierced only by small archways, and placed at intervals, dividing the aisles into chambers, each of which was covered by a short barrel vault at right angles to that over the central space (Fig. 1). This, however, would be inconsistent with the uses of a church, and, indeed, applies to a _groined_ rather than a barrel vault, though a very similar expedient was sometimes used by the Romanesque builders, by covering the aisles with cross barrel vaults, as those above described, supported by arches across the aisles, instead of by cross walls (Fig. 2). Another system was to cover the aisles by a half or little more than a half longitudinal barrel roof, forming a continuous arched buttress to the continuous central vault (Fig. 3). This gave them a perfectly vaulted building of trustworthy construction, provided only that the aisle walls were of sufficient strength. The barrel vaults were often both strengthened and their monotony relieved by arched ribs added to their thickness over each pillar of the nave, and _repeated_ over the aisles, while these planes of extra strength were carried through to the exterior in the form of buttresses of small projection against the aisle walls (Fig. 4).

The builders of such churches were not, however, ignorant of the principles of the _groined_ or _intersecting_ vault formed by the inter-penetration of two demi-cylinders, and so largely used by the Romans. They did not use them in such buildings, because their main vault rising into the roof, they could not, under the same roof-plane, introduce the intersecting vaults,--though this had been effected in Roman structures by a series of cross gables over the _cross_ vaults. In churches of the same kind, however, we find the groined vault used to carry a gallery in the aisles, all the rest remaining as before (Fig. 5).

It would appear that the obvious mechanical advantages it offered led at an early period, in the south of France, to the substitution of the _pointed_ for the round arch in the great vault of churches of this construction; but I will suppose for the present the semicircle to be strictly adhered to. The great defect in such a church as I am supposing would be want of light in the nave from the absence of clerestory windows; and as such windows had been in use from the days of the earliest basilicas, this loss would be fully appreciated.

The first idea for obviating it was to lower the springing of the vault for the sake of bringing the thrust to bear upon a portion of the wall more capable of resisting it, and, by raising the nave relatively to its aisles, to obtain space for a range of small windows between the roof of the aisle and the springing of the main vault (Fig. 6). This, however, was a most unsatisfactory arrangement--it compromised the security of the structure, and gained but a very miserable range of lights.

This difficulty led to the somewhat unpalatable measure of lowering the springing of the main vault so much as to bring its crown below the level of the walls, and to convert it from a barrel into a groined vault. The springing being then level with the impinging line of the aisle roofs, a good abutment was obtained, while the cross vaults afforded ample space for clerestory windows (Fig. 7). I called this an unpalatable expedient for two reasons:--1st, Because it involved the loss of the entire height of the roof as a part of the interior; and, secondly, because it led to the relinquishment of the incombustible construction, by rendering it impossible to make the vaulting to form the actual roof, and the consequent necessity for a timber roof above it. In a Northern climate, however, this was not an unmitigated loss, for a vault immediately under the roof-covering is always damp, and extremely difficult of repair; and we shall see that the loss of height was soon compensated for by a subsequent invention, while the substitution of a groined for a barrel vault not only introduced a beautiful in place of a comparatively dull form, but did away with the illogical characteristic of a _continuous_ vault supported by _detached_ pillars; the load being now collected together into points immediately over its supports. The same cause would naturally lead to the abandonment of the half-barrel vaulting of the aisles, the need of abutment being now not continuous, but in detached points. The aisles were consequently covered with groined vaults, a cross wall being raised upon their transverse arches, or _arcs-doubleaux_, which served as buttresses to the main vault, or would even carry external buttresses against the clerestory wall. The blank wall in the nave, caused by the space between the groining and roof of the aisles, was subsequently occupied by a gallery, so well known as the “_triforium_.”

A difficulty here presented itself, which I must state before proceeding further, as much stress had been laid upon it, and it unquestionably exercised a strong influence upon the subsequent arrangements. It is this: the simple groined vault being formed by the intersection of demi-cylinders, demanded that the space covered by it should be divided into perfect _squares_. Now, the aisles of a church being usually about half the width of the nave, it follows that the groining of both cannot be _square_. If those of the aisles are so, those of the main vault must be about twice as wide as they are long (Fig. 8); while if these are made square, those of the aisles will be twice as long as they are wide (Fig. 9). The first alternative was that most usually adopted north of the Alps, though the second was more frequent in Italy. The difficulty was how to groin these oblong bays. It was not, however, a _new_ difficulty; it had occurred in Roman structures, where it was met by the simple expedient of raising the springing of the narrower vault so high, that its crown was level with that of the wider one. This answered the purpose, but it produced a most unpleasant line of intersection, reducing the vault, in fact, for a portion of its height, to a mere strip of the _arc-doubleau_, and giving a _winding_ intersection for the remainder of the height, as two cylinders of unequal diameter do not intersect in a _plane_. The mathematical solution of the problem would have been to make the section of the narrower vault, an upright _semi-ellipse_; but this does not appear to have been at any period adopted, or, if at all, in exceptional cases only. The pointed arch would have been an approximate expedient, and its introduction has been very ingeniously attributed to this difficulty,--a theory to which I shall have again to allude.

Another solution of it would be to make all the arches semi-circles, but to raise up the crown of the vaults of a smaller diameter in a curve to meet the others, thus making it (roughly speaking) a portion of an _annulus_ instead of a _cylinder_.

This had one great disadvantage: that it cut off a considerable portion of the space for the clerestory windows; or, if the level of the main vault was raised to obviate this, it became impossible to have a tiebeam to the roof. The system actually adopted in most instances would appear to have been a union of that last named with the Roman mode of stilting the narrow vaults, the difference of height being made up _partly_ by raising its springing, and _partly_ by elevating the crown (Fig. 10).

While these perplexities, however, were under consideration, several others arose, every one of which led to the introduction of features essential to the perfecting both of the style and construction. The first was the desire to elevate the central vault to a higher level, both for the sake of compensating for the loss sustained when it was brought down below the roof, and also to obtain a greater space for the clerestory windows. This involved, again, the difficulty as to abutment, through its raising the springing of the vault above the roof of the aisles. We have seen that, where reduced to a similar difficulty with the _barrel_ vault, the architects of the south of France had at an earlier period resorted to the _pointed_ vault as having less outward thrust: the same expedient was now had recourse to for _groined_ vaulting, the main arches of which were now--towards the middle of the twelfth century--changed from the _semicircle_ to the _pointed arch_. When the elevation of the clerestory above the aisles was but moderate, this was often found sufficient; but the construction was precarious, and in many instances failed, and a more perfect mode of meeting the case was required.

What was demanded was the power to elevate the clerestory with the main vault to any reasonable height above the aisle, without endangering the stability of the structure.

Here the recollection of an earlier expedient came to the rescue. It will be remembered that the early barrel vaults were buttressed by _half_ barrel vaults over the aisles, thus doing away with the clerestory. A continuous vault demanded a continuous abutment; but, now that the pressure was concentrated into detached planes, it became sufficient that the abutment also should be in those planes; and though the continuous semi-_vault_ would do away with clerestory windows, detached semi-_arches_ would have no such effect. The thought accordingly occurred of erecting the _arc-doubleau_ of the old semi-vault in open air as a buttress to the main vault of the groined church; and hence that much-admired, and, of course, also much-depreciated feature--_the flying buttress_. The pressure being concentrated upon points, it became also necessary to fortify those points by attached buttresses of considerable projection, such as we henceforth find to have become a leading external characteristic of Mediæval structures. The wall, in fact (where the system was carried to its extreme limits), became a mere _curtain_, needed rather for enclosure than for strength, and capable of being pierced with windows to any required extent; a liberty which the contemporaneous development of stained glass caused to be unhesitatingly taken advantage of.

I must, however, return to the vaulting, having overstepped my chronology by not yet noticing another most important invention. I mean the introduction of _groin-ribs_--those narrow arches erected under the lines of intersection of the vaults. The early groins had no ribs excepting the transverse ones, or _arcs-doubleaux_; the edges at which the vaults cut one another were left _bare_, and were the weakest parts of the construction; often but faintly marked, and not necessarily lying in _planes_. In more complicated vaults, such as now became necessary, this system could scarcely be continued; and the introduction of a stone rib, under every intersection, may be viewed as the crowning fact in the development of vaulting.