Part 6

It is impossible to lay too much stress upon its importance, for it _changed the entire geometrical system_. Up to that time the construction of groining was wholly governed by the forms of the vaulting _surfaces_; the intersections being allowed to take their chance, and to present any irregularity of figure, while the wide surfaces of vaulting were apparently carried on mere _pins’ points_ at the springing--correct enough as a mathematical figure, but ill calculated for strength. Now, however, the _intersecting lines_ assumed the government of the construction, and the form of the _surface_ was made to accommodate itself to them. They were always in planes,[6] and always true figures--usually arcs of circles; but the _panels_ of vaulting became often irregular in their configuration, and could be twisted to meet contingent requirements without offending the eye; while the ribs, all meeting in a solid springer at the foot, brought down the pressure, and deposited it firmly upon the points of support.

It will be seen from the above that the pointed arch was not introduced into Mediæval structures from mere caprice--merely from seeing it elsewhere and taking a fancy to its form,--but from the necessities of construction, from its increased strength and diminished thrust. It was at first used for the main arch only of the greater vault. The same reason soon led to its introduction wherever great weight was to be carried, as under towers, etc.; but for all small arches the semicircle was long retained. I have alluded to the very beautiful theory that it was introduced for the side arches of oblong groins, simply as a means of obtaining arches of equal height with only half the span with those of the main vault. True it is, that, at a later date, it became most useful for this purpose. But a careful study of the monuments in which it is first systematically used clearly shows that its introduction was from _statical_, and neither geometrical nor merely æsthetical motives; for in the face of that theory we find the narrower arch or wall-rib remaining round long after the wider arch had become pointed (Fig. 11). Such is the case in nearly all the earlier of the French transitional churches, as at Noyon and at St. Germain des Pres, and we see the same at Canterbury. In most of these buildings the narrow arch is stilted and the crown of the cross vault raised up as before described, thus losing a part of the clerestory wall, a disadvantage obviated when the pointed arch became more frankly acknowledged.

Although, however, the pointed arch was _actually adopted_ from simple necessities of construction, its advantages in all points of view soon became apparent. In an essentially arcuated style it becomes necessary not only to have the command of a form of arch capable of carrying the greatest weights and of requiring the least abutment, but it is essential to have at command an arch of _variable_ proportions. It carries absurdity on the very face of it that, while able to give our piers a greater or a less degree of height at pleasure we should have no such power over the arch they sustain; not to mention the numerous cases in which we have to bring together arches of unequal span, and which nevertheless demand an equal height. The rules of harmony imperatively demand that the arch should be equally capable of modification in its proportions of height to width, with all other features of the architecture.

In the above outline of the history of vaulting I have, for the sake of simplicity, omitted two modes actually adopted to avoid the difficulty of oblong groining over naves. The first, which was common in German round-arched churches, was to make the vaulting of the nave simply to comprise _two_ bays of the aisles, thus bringing the main vault equally into squares with those of the aisles. The second was the use of what Dr. Whewell has entitled _sexpartite_ vaulting, and which is common both in France, Germany, and England (Fig. 12). It adopts the system last named, but subdivides the double bay by a triangular slip of vaulting (Figs. 13, 14). The real solution arose, however, from the free and simple use of the pointed arch, which gave the result which is seen at Westminster[7] and in nearly all the vaulted churches of the thirteenth century--the simple groined vault with arches of equal height, though the side arches are sometimes stilted, not from necessity, but merely to afford greater space for clerestory windows.

On this plain and practical result M. Viollet le Duc (of whose admirable essay on vaulting, together with those of Dr. Whewell and Professor Willis, I have made free use) makes the following striking remarks:--

“It had required fifty years for the architects of the end of the twelfth century to arrive, from the still Romanesque vaults of Autun and Vezelay, at this great result; and from this moment the entire construction of religious edifices was derived from the disposition of the vaults; the form and dimension of the pillars--their spacing; the window-openings--their width and height; the position and direction of the buttresses--the importance of their pinnacler; the strength, the number, and curvature of the arched buttresses; the disposing and the carrying off the rain water; the system of covering,--all proceed from the combination of the vaulting. The vaults govern the _ossature_ of the monument to a point to which it would be impossible to raise it otherwise than by commencing rigorously to plan them previously to laying the first courses of the structure. This rule is so well established that if we see a church of the thirteenth century destroyed to the level of the bases, and of which the plan alone remains, we can with certainty trace the plan of the vaults, and indicate the direction of all the arches and their thickness. At the end of the fourteenth century the rigour of the system is still more absolute; we can trace, in examining the base of an edifice, not only the number and direction of the arches of the vaults, and know their strength, but the number of their mouldings and even their profiles. In the fifteenth century it is the arches (mouldings) themselves which descend to the floor, and the pillars are only vertical _fasces_ formed of all the members of these arches. After this, we demand how is it that serious men have been able to repulse, and still do repulse, the study of the architecture of the Middle Ages as having been only produced by chance?”

It will be seen from what I have above stated that the order in which the pointed arch was successively adopted for different parts of a building, and the motives which led to its adoption, may be roughly classified under the heads of _Statical_, _Geometrical_, and _Æsthetical_, or positions in which it was demanded for soundness of construction, for the mathematical agreement of parts, and for harmony and beauty of effect.

The first head embraces all wide-spanned arches, especially those I have pointed out as the first in which it made its appearance: the transverse arches of wide vaulting, also arches carrying towers, and others bearing great weight on their crown, and all which are defective in abutment, or demand the addition of buttresses (for remember that, though buttresses were rendered sources of beauty, they originated in _necessity_, and the aim was to keep their projection within bounds, rather than unduly to increase it). The second, or geometrical class, includes, primarily, the narrower arches of oblong vaulting; for, even had the transverse section continued round, the pointed arch must soon have suggested itself for the narrow arches of the sides; and though for a time the idea did not occur, the necessity of it is only the more apparent in the want of harmony, the undue stilting, and the loss of clerestory space which arose from its neglect. Under the same head come all other cases of irregularly formed vaulting in which the sides differ in width, and arches of varied proportion are therefore needed. Of the same kind are many other cases in which arches of different widths are in the same range, and where--though the _statical_ view would demand that the widest span should have the strongest arch--_geometrical_ agreement suggests the contrary; as, for instance, in the choir of St. Germain des Pres, at Paris, and many others, where the side arches are all round; but those of the apse, being narrower, are pointed. These two pressing necessities having once established the use of the pointed arch in a large number of the most important positions, a natural feeling for harmony would come in to suggest its use in many others. First we may mention windows under the narrow compartments of groining--as in clerestories, apsidal chapels, etc.,--where, as soon as the pointed arch was used for the vaulting, the round-topped window would present a certain degree of discord, as we see at St. Cross,[8] and at St. Joseph’s Chapel[9] at Glastonbury. Then again, as windows became more elongated, the round arch became ill-proportioned to the jambs; and generally, as the architecture acquired a more aspiring tendency, the pointed arch was found more congenial with its spirit; so that, little by little, from being an exception, used from mere constructional expediency, it became the prevailing feature of the style; the semicircle being reserved for those positions only in which want of space forbade the more elevated form. Still, however, it was never abandoned, and in every period of Pointed architecture we find it occasionally making its appearance, used from motives of convenience alone, as the pointed arch had at first been by reason of its strength.

After this it will be seen of how little importance it is to inquire _whence_ the form is derived; for it was introduced _not_ as a matter of _taste_, but of _utility_--not as a change of style, but to meet the practical requirements of that already in use. The pointed arch was, in fact, as early (or thereabouts) in its invention as the round;--it is foreshadowed in the works of the Egyptians, the Pelasgi, and the Etrurians; it was used by the Romans, and, I believe, by the Byzantines and other Oriental Christians, and by the Sassanian Persians, and was from an early period the prevailing arch among the Saracens. It is absurd, then, to suppose it unknown to the inhabitants of Western Europe, who were in constant communication with the East; and the most natural thing to expect was that, as soon as they wanted it, they would make use of it; though there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that they were especially reminded of it, in consequence of the two circumstances of the Crusades and Norman Conquest of Sicily. In the case last named, indeed, the conquerors had at once adopted it, simply because it was the prevailing arch of the country, and, as Mr. Gally Knight remarks, “with no scientific object, and without any reference to the vertical principle.”

The wonder which has been expressed at the introduction of the pointed arch reminds me of a very homely tale, which I must apologise for repeating before so grave an assembly. An unimaginative individual, on visiting the Falls of Niagara, was greatly perplexed at the astonishment expressed by his companions; and on one of them exclaiming to him--“Is it not a most wonderful fall?”--replied, “Wonderful? no! I see nothing wonderful in it. Why, what’s to hinder the water from falling?” Much the same reply is applicable to the wondering inquiries after the source of the pointed arch. When the builders of the twelfth century found they wanted it; when they had seen its form in the first proposition of Euclid; when they had actually used it hundreds of times in their intersecting arcades; when they knew that it was constantly used in the East, with which they were connected by trade, science, pilgrimage, and war; and when they knew that their brethren had used it in Sicily, and their fellow-countrymen in Provence; we may well ask, with our unsentimental friend, “What was to hinder them from using it?”

Simple, however, and obvious as were the means, the result was _magical_! It is not the _materials_ of art to which its expression is due, but the sentiment--the heart--the soul of those who use it. This particular form of arch had long been used without one hint at such expression resulting from it. It had been highly conducive to beauty, but little, if at all, to elevation of sentiment: when, however, it came into use as an aid to the upward strivings of the architects of Northern Christendom, as an element placed in the hands of men who had been labouring for centuries, with all their energy, to render their architecture expressive of the ennobling sentiments of religion--it became, in their hands, a means of perfecting that solemnity of expression which the Romanesque buildings possessed in so wonderful a degree, and of adding the most exalted sublimity to its hitherto stern and rigid grandeur; just as the simple action of gravity gives to the Niagara Falls a sublime and overwhelming majesty; such as the same cause acting under different conditions has no tendency to produce.

I must apologise for having occupied so long a time on these merely preliminary and, perhaps, not very interesting topics. I hope in my next lecture to be able to give an outline of the transition as it showed itself in the different countries, and also to point out and illustrate the changes in the decorative and more purely artistic features of architecture by which it was accompanied.

LECTURE III.

The Transition.

Gradual refinement of Romanesque--French architects the earliest to systematise the pointed arch--The English before the Germans--The Italians from the Germans--Fully acknowledged in France 1140--Suger’s work at St. Denis--Carving in French churches--Corinthianesque outline of capitals--Distinctly Byzantine capitals--A route by which Byzantine foliage may have reached France--The importation indisputable--Its effects seen in Early English capitals--West front of Chartres--Fluting on basement of doorways--Cathedral of Noyon--St. Germain des Pres, Paris--Cathedral of Sens, prototype of the Choir and Trinity Chapel at Canterbury--Notre Dame, Paris--A new kind of foliage--The capital “à crochet”--English transition--Incipient specimens--Refined Norman--Pointed style, with reminiscences of Romanesque--William of Sens--William the Englishman--Influence of French work--Oakham Castle--Glastonbury Abbey--Cathedral of St. David’s--Temple Church, London--Chichester Cathedral--Tynemouth Abbey--Hexham Abbey--Unfoliated capitals--Round moulded capitals--Characteristics of English and French transition--The German transition--Practical lessons from studying these changes--Principles to which the transition was pioneer.

In my last lecture it was my endeavour to illustrate the _mechanical_ and _structural_ portion of the process by which the Romanesque, or round-arched Gothic, became changed into the _Pointed_ style--a change which I showed to have resulted primarily from causes purely constructional, and arising from the mere necessities of the case, though subsequently carried on into parts, in which the change in the form of arch, though not _statically_ necessary, was demanded from reasons of _geometrical_ and æsthetic harmony. I further showed that the change was not, by any means, that abrupt revolution which it is often described as having been; that a large proportion of the distinctive characteristics of Gothic architecture are common to its round-arched and pointed-arched varieties; that these two forms of architecture are hardly to be called two styles, but rather the grand divisions of one style--the latter being the natural and logical result of the progression ever going on in the former, during every moment of its prevalence, and in every country where it prevailed.

The portion of the subject, however, on which I then treated, was only the mechanical framework of the style--its mere ossature, to use M. Viollet le Duc’s expression, or--as a celebrated palæontologist, who did me the honour of being present, said--the “_backbone_” of the subject. My object this evening is to overlay this skeleton with the muscles and sinew, and with the external expressions of its inner life; to show that those dry bones lived; or, in other words, to show the changes in the decorative features of the architecture, and in the sculptural art which accompanied it. I have further to trace out the transition as exhibited in the structures of different countries--and especially of France, England, and Germany;[10] and in a general manner to inquire both into their peculiar characteristics and into the order of their chronological precedence.

The tendency I have so often mentioned to refine and to elevate the character of the Romanesque architecture is common to all the countries where it prevailed. In all we find the severe simplicity of its earlier productions gradually and steadily relaxing throughout the whole period of its history; the rudeness of its early decorations disappearing in favour of a more artistic treatment; its ponderous massiveness becoming lightened; its low proportions changed for more lofty ones; and the general asperity of its character becoming softened down; so that in its later stages it seems often to possess nearly every feature of the succeeding style, excepting the pointed arch and the elevation and lightness which followed its introduction, though it also possessed features which its successor speedily discarded. I especially refer to those systems of ornamentation--most of them of Oriental origin--by which the Romanesque buildings may usually, irrespective of their arches, be distinguished from those of the succeeding periods.

The pointed arch having, as I have before shown, been first introduced in the vaulting,[11] where its particular statical advantages were most required, it naturally follows that the change would commence earliest in those countries in which the builders set themselves most actively about the solution of the problem--the steps of which I somewhat at length traced out in my last lecture; I mean the conversion of the basilica, with its timber roofs, into a completely vaulted structure; and I think there can be no doubt that that country was France.

This, however, would not be the only condition on which the probable precedence among the different nations, in taking the step which was necessary to generating a perfect form of arcuated architecture, would depend. It seems necessary that it should _not_ be a country already so thoroughly provided with noble churches as to preclude the probability of a great architectural movement, nor one which had already made so determined an effort in perfecting its national style as to have become too much enamoured of its successes to be in a position to strike out boldly in a new line: indeed, it should be a people of so active a spirit, and with so strong a tendency to progress and to change, as to render it improbable that they should ever settle down in quiet contentment with their own attainments. The question as to where the great stride forward was to be expected would naturally lie between France and Germany--the dominions of the two great successors of Charlemagne in his _kingly_ and his _imperial_ capacities. Neither Italy nor England were so likely: the former, from her too great proximity to Classic monuments; while the latter--though her political power was equal to that of France, her continental possessions most extensive, and her architectural strivings most vigorous--had too newly risen from the position of a conquered country to take the first place in such a movement, and was also the less likely to do so from the fact of her builders having for the most part avoided the vaulted construction (on a large scale at least), from which the first advance was largely suggested.

The matter lay, then, between France (I mean the actual centre of the Frankish monarchy, of which Paris was the focus) and Germany. The latter, however, had already made her great architectural movement, and was (and not without cause) becoming selfsatisfied with her achievements. She had generated a glorious style, and covered her land with monuments of which she might well be proud; while the part of France immediately under the royal power had not yet been able to erect structures of a magnitude worthy of her position as the great representative state of Western Europe. The immense influence gained just at this time by the French monastic establishments, as well as their schools of learning and science, and still more the increase of the regal power under the wise government of Louis VI., and by the annexation of the southern provinces through the marriage of his successor, brought about the commencement of the great building period in France, a little before the middle of the twelfth century, and the active genius of the people decided the rest. The consequence was that, though the refinement and perfecting of the Romanesque architecture went on uniformly in all the countries I have named, and though its transition into the Pointed style is as distinctly national in England and Germany as in France, the precedence as to the _time_ at which the grand advance was made must be unhesitatingly awarded, I will not say to _France_ (for some parts of it were particularly tardy), but to that district of France round Paris, the focus of the royal power--that portion of it, in fact, which was immediately under regal government, as distinguished from that of the great vassals of the Crown. We must further in justice admit that, though each country had its own transition, founded directly upon its own national and even local variety of Romanesque, each was also in some degree tinged and influenced by the early developments arrived at in the royal domain of France.

I wish to be as specific as possible on this point, for the sake of steering between two exaggerated views. The one view is this: Seeing the transitional style of each country to be distinctly national--a logical and consistent transition from their own local Romanesque--to conclude from this that the result was absolutely independently arrived at, though a considerable chronological interval may have intervened. The other is the conclusion that, as the central French architects had been the earliest in systematising the pointed-arched developments, all other countries had simply followed in their wake, and done no more than follow the fashions set at Paris. The truth lies between these contradictory views. The communication ever going on throughout Europe caused each country to know pretty perfectly what was going on in others; their Romanesque in each was about on a par as to advancement, and in each the want of the pointed arch must have been nearly equally felt. Each, then, had its national and logical transition; but the French having outstripped the others as to _time_, many of their minor developments were adopted ready-made (if I may say so): so that though each transition is clearly national, and distinct from that of other countries, we nevertheless find, both in Germany and England, features which have as clearly been borrowed from the French.