Part 4

As time went on, a yet more systematic course of destruction in middle and northern France, and even in the southern districts, must be chronicled in the _Gesta Romanorum_--the dread recital of the harryings of the North-folk, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Danes, the Frisians. These invasions began before the close of the eighth century--even in the days of Charlemagne--and when the strong hand of the mighty Emperor was removed, we come indeed upon a terrible catalogue of the woes and ruin wrought in Gaul by the Northern robbers all through the ninth and tenth centuries.

The sad catalogue of cities ruined, raided, devastated and partly burnt by these dread hordes of Northern pirates, includes well-known places such as Aix-la-Chapelle, Treves, Cologne, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Tournai, Rouen, Orleans, Auxerre, Troyes, Tours, Chartres, Poitiers, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Toulouse; besides many solitary monasteries.

Quicherat graphically speaks of the work of these savage raiders as a veritable _feu-de-joie_, and with great force points out how thoroughly they were able to carry out their fell work of destruction, especially in ecclesiastical buildings, owing to the abbeys and churches being universally covered with wooden roofs; the destructive work of these Northern pirates, bitter foes of Christianity, was thus rendered comparatively easy. The interior fittings of the church were first fired; quickly the flames reached the timber of the roofs, and very soon the entire building became a very furnace, and the whole pile was soon completely destroyed.

All this continuous burning and raiding, which went on for nigh two miserable centuries, accounts for the strange absence of any remains of the once sumptuous and in many cases stately Merovingian and Carlovingian churches and abbeys of the sixth and following centuries.

The great wealth, the many and opulent cities of Gaul, marked out this province of the Empire as presenting a specially attractive country for the invasions and raids of these hordes of sea-pirates. Gaul too was in the neighbourhood of the home of these Northern adventurers, and the navigable Gallic rivers which emptied themselves into the Northern Sea, the Channel which divided Gaul from Britain, and into the Atlantic Ocean which washed the long western sea-board, the Rivers Scheldt, Seine, Loire and Garonne; the Rhone, too, which flowed into the Mediterranean, where the ships of the Northmen were no uncommon sight--gave ample facilities for these formidable fleets with their dark sails to penetrate into the very heart of the great Gallic province.

Modern archæologists and historians, such as Quicherat, Rivoira, and Sir Thomas Jackson, comment sadly on this almost total absence of even a remnant of the ancient Gallic churches. Viollet le Duc, in his monumental _Dictionary_, well sums up the story of this sad gap in the architectural history of the past of France, by telling us that “we possess only very vague ideas of the primitive churches on the soil of France, and that it is only from the tenth century downwards that we can form a passably exact conception of what they were like.”

So terrible, so widespread, so constantly recurring were the depredations of these dreaded sea-pirates, that a new supplication was introduced into the Gallican liturgies--“A furore Normannorum libera nos.” The bitter hostility of these Northmen raiders to Christianity is well known; something more than a mere love of plunder influenced their method of treatment of churches and monasteries, and moved them especially to select churches as the first objects of their passion for burning and destroying.

The last years of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh, however, witnessed a new state of things. The raids of the Northern pirates grew fewer and gradually came to an end.

The more formidable bands of these sea-robbers settled finally in the northern part of Gaul, and there founded a new realm, called, after them, Normandy. These invaders quickly adapted themselves to the civilisation of the conquered provincials, and thus materially contributed to the general quietness which settled over the long-harassed Gallic province. Raoul Glanber, the Monk Chronicler of the Cluny Monks, in a famous and often-quoted passage, relates how “the world--_his_ world, started from its death-sleep and from the year 1000 put on its white robe of churches.”

There is no doubt but that an extraordinary reaction in Church life must be dated from this period. Various causes contributed to this remarkable renaissance of religion, the outward and visible sign of which was in the vast number of churches and abbeys which were built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The comparative “stillness” of Western Christendom was perhaps the dominant factor. But the enormous and ever-growing influence of Cluny and the vast number of its daughter Monastic Houses must not be overlooked.

In France, _all_ the existing Romanesque churches date from this period. We style them accurately as _Romanesque_--but it must be borne in mind that while they all possess the leading features of this great school of architecture--notably the “round arch”--in each of the provinces of France in details they differed very considerably.[9]

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We will give a brief summary of these differences in the details.

_Aquitaine._--This great division of France included the south-western and west central districts--Poitou Limousin--Guienne--and later Gascony. Here the influence of Byzantine Art on the Romanesque School was very noticeable--the famous Church of S. Front at Périgueux is a well-known example, and had many imitators on a smaller scale. S. Front was evidently designed on the plan of the Byzantine Church of S. Mark’s at Venice.

_Aquitaine_ and the south and south-west of France during the early Middle Ages carried on extensive commercial dealings with the Levant, and especially with Venice, which largely traded with the near East.

The leading special feature in Aquitanian Romanesque was the _Dome_. It has been reckoned that in the province of Perigord some eighty domed churches once existed; of these about fifteen are still with us.

_Provence_ has a history of its own here. Its Romanesque of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was often inspired by memories of imperial Rome, not unnatural in a district so closely connected with the great Empire, and which is even still rich in mighty Roman remains. In this province we do not find the _Dome_ as in Aquitaine--the old Basilican plan is generally followed. The majority of all these French Romanesque churches are vaulted, at least in part, with solid masonry.

_Toulouse and Languedoc._ Here our examples of the ancient churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are sadly fewer. The terrible Albigensian wars of religion waged against presumed heretics, desolated the country, and many of the churches and ecclesiastical buildings were ruthlessly destroyed. The stately Church of S. Sernin at Toulouse is the most important of the Romanesque churches remaining in this division of France which we still possess. The domical feature, though not unknown here, is uncommon. The French feature of the “Chevet,” the garland of chapels round the ambulatory at the east end, is developed in these Romanesque Languedoc churches.

_Auvergne._ There are various local characteristics in the Auvergne Romanesque churches--perhaps one of the most conspicuous peculiar features is the polychrome masonry which ornaments them. There is abundance of black basaltic rock in the district, and this is frequently mixed with yellowish-white freestone laid in mosaic pattern on the exterior walls, on the aisle, the frieze, etc. The effect is curious and decidedly pleasing. Sir Thomas Jackson probably suggests that this various coloured ornamentation, which specially distinguishes the Auvergne Romanesque piles, suggests a partly oriental origin; for Mosaic was a favourite Byzantine art. This striking feature is absolutely peculiar to the Auvergne churches--only one other example of polychrome masonry can be quoted among the churches in France built in this period. The lovely cloisters at le Puy are an admirable instance of this varied coloured “Mosaic” masonry.

_Burgundy._ This important province in the north-east of France was the home of the remarkable revival of monasticism which played so great a part in the wonderful religious movement of the eleventh century; the world-renowned House of Cluny, and its famous daughter monastery Citeaux, whence sprung the vast Cistercian Order, being situated in the neighbourhood of Macon in Burgundy.[10]

It was in the workshops of Cluny that Romanesque architecture made a fresh start in France. The craft of masonry possessed a marked advantage here in the admirable stone which was quarried in Burgundy.

Among the characteristic features of Burgundian art, the splendid and remarkable porches of certain of its more provincial churches deserve mention.

A marked advance in the comparatively new feature of stone vaulting belongs to the churches of this province. At Vézelay the great nave was vaulted; hitherto this vaulting of great spaces had been generally confined to the lesser vaults of the aisles and the crypts.

The mighty church of Cluny was the vastest church in the west of Europe. Its nave was successfully vaulted with stone. At Citeaux, the Mother Church of the Cistercian Order, the example, followed certainly by the earlier churches of the famous order, was set of that extreme simplicity and restriction in the matter of decoration which characterises the numberless Cistercian churches which rapidly arose in so many of the countries of western Europe.

_The Royal Domain_--l’Ile de France. During the eleventh and first half of the twelfth centuries the “Royal Domain” was very confined, and virtually was comprised in the district at present included in the departments grouped round Paris. It was only enlarged at the expense of the territories of the great Feudatories in the second half of the twelfth century. It had long been terribly ravaged by the Northmen raiders, and the Romanesque remains in these parts round Paris are comparatively few and wanting in importance. But in the latter years of the twelfth century, under King Philip Augustus, the Royal Domain became greatly enlarged and included outlying provinces. It thus became the more fitting appanage of the Over-lord of France.

But in the later years of the twelfth century the vogue of Romanesque architecture was passing away and rapidly giving place to the new and striking architectural school known as Gothic.

These years and the earlier part of the thirteenth century--a great building age--saw the foundation of the mighty Gothic cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Bourges, Laon, Soissons, Meaux, Noyon, Amiens, Rouen, and others, mostly situated in the now enlarged Royal Domain:[11] these magnificent Gothic piles were for the most part completed before the end of the thirteenth century.

Indeed this “Domaine Royale,” in its enlarged form, has been with justice termed the cradle of French Gothic architecture.

NORMAN-ROMANESQUE

In the early years of the eleventh century, a new style of Romanesque arose in northern and north-western Gaul, which was soon known as “Norman-Romanesque”--a distinct and remarkable variety of the common Romanesque family.

It began thus. In the latter years of the tenth century, the great monastic community of the Benedictines of Cluny, in Burgundy, was at the height of its power and influence; it occupied a unique position among the religious houses of the west, owing its great position largely to the long series of distinguished men who for more than a century controlled its destinies, and directed its vast and far-reaching activities.

Among its monks, when Maieul, one of the most distinguished of the rulers of Cluny, reigned as Abbot, A.D. 948-999, was a young Italian known as William of Volpiano,[12] A.D. 961-1031. He attracted attention owing to his great learning, his devoted piety, and his rare skill as an architect. Under the Cluny influence, at a comparatively early age, he was appointed Abbot of the ancient foundation of S. Benignus of Dijon. That once famous church had fallen into decay, and was virtually a ruin.

As Abbot of S. Benignus of Dijon, William of Volpiano became known far and wide, as an earnest and successful reformer of monasteries, and, above all, as a great architect. Among other works he rebuilt S. Benignus at Dijon, and the new Abbey Church became famous as one of the most magnificent in France, and was dedicated afresh in A.D. 1018. It contained many of the characteristic features of the Lombardic school of the Comacine builders; but it also borrowed some of the features known as Byzantine; these probably he had become acquainted with from his knowledge of the churches of Aquitaine and southern France, into whose churches certain Byzantine features had been introduced. A portion of S. Benignus, for instance, was roofed with a dome. Beautiful and striking as the Dijon Abbey was, its great architect did not repeat it. It was too complicated a structure and too costly.

In the early years of the eleventh century Richard II (le Bon), surnamed “l’ami des moines,” was Duke of Normandy. Normandy, under this eminent ruler, occupied a prominent position of power and influence in Northern and Central France. Duke Richard II invited to his Court the famous Benedictine Abbot, the architect of the restored Abbey of S. Benignus, and with some difficulty induced William of Volpiano to make his home in the great Duchy, as Abbot of Fécamp. A number of Norman abbeys were built under the direction of Abbot William and his pupils, and these churches were the beginning of what is known as the Norman-Romanesque style.

We have a few of these churches with us still--some with later _additions_--others simply _ruins_; some, alas, desecrated by being applied to other uses. We would instance Jumiéges, Fécamp, S. Ouen (Rouen), Bernay, Mont S. Michel, Cerisy le Fôret, these originally being the work of William of Volpiano and the pupils of his school. We have cited only a few prominent examples, but in the first half of the eleventh century, some forty new churches, including abbatial churches, are recorded to have been built by this school of architects. As the eleventh century advanced Lanfranc (subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury) and his pupils further developed the Norman-Romanesque of William of Volpiano in such churches as S. Etienne and, somewhat later, the church of the Trinité at Caen, erected under the auspices of Duke William of Normandy the Conqueror of England, and his queen, Matilda.

All these Romanesque round-arched churches contain many characteristics of the Lombardic architecture, but they have, too, certain _distinctive_ features; they present generally the aspect of a rugged severe majesty; the proportions are noble, but most of them are poor in mouldings and carving;[13] they are remarkable, not for the elegance of their decorations or the grace of their forms, but the severe lines, the noble proportions and the grandeur of the whole effect especially distinguish the early Norman churches and abbeys of the Benedictine architect of Cluny, William of Volpiano, and his school.

The internal arrangement of these Norman churches is interesting; the form of the perfect Latin cross (crux immissa) was generally adopted, and then finally the type was fixed which, amid all the varieties of style, prevailed through the whole mediæval period.

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But the glory of Norman-Romanesque only really appeared in England shortly after the conquest by Duke William of Normandy in A.D. 1066.

The style in England became rapidly a distinctive and even an independent development of the Lombardic round-arch architecture. The impetus which church building received, when once more stillness prevailed in conquered England, is marvellous; there was nothing comparable to it in any of the countries of northern Europe. It is computed that in the days of the Conqueror after A.D. 1070, some 45 new monastic or abbatial churches were erected in England; in the reign of William Rufus, his son and successor, 25; in the days of Stephen as many as 122; under Henry II, the first Plantagenet, 124; when his son, Cœur de Lion, was King, 44; under King John, 62.

And not only was England, in the days of the Conqueror and his immediate successors and kinsmen, covered with this enormous number of sacred buildings, but many of these piles were of vast size, far greater than any of those lately erected in Normandy and the adjacent countries, by the Lombardic school of William of Volpiano.

The question has often been put, Whence came the resources out of which these, in many cases, magnificent churches of vast size, were built in our island? The answer is--this mighty and strange impulse in church building in England arose from a feeling among the Norman conquerors that a terrible wrong had been inflicted by the Conquest upon the Anglo-Saxon peoples, and to atone for the awful sin, the Norman nobles and chiefs, their sons and heirs, who had forcibly entered into possession of the conquered people’s lands and property, in many cases erected these churches, abbeys, and monastic houses as _expiatory offerings_ to Almighty God; they were intended as an atonement for the grievous sin and wrong perpetrated in the Norman conquest of England.

This is no fanciful dream of an historian. The enormous confiscations of King William have been computed as amounting to an almost incredible number; 60,000 knights, it is said, received their fees, or rather their livings, from the Conqueror. These numbers are no doubt exaggerated, but it is certain that the race of Anglo-Danish and English (Saxon) nobility, the Earls and the greater Thegns disappeared. It is indisputable that there was an untold amount of bitter oppression and cruel wrong inflicted by the Norman kings on the great masses of Anglo-Saxon society, especially on its higher grades.

This was soon fully recognised. As early as A.D. 1072, a general penance was decreed by the Norman prelates and confirmed by the See of Rome, on all who had shared in the deeds which followed the establishment of Duke William on the English throne. The chroniclers Orderic,[14] Wace and Matthew Paris, with more or less detail, dwell on King William’s penitence when dying, for the cruel wrong he and his men-at-arms had done to conquered England.

The expression above used of these splendid piles in England is therefore strictly accurate. They were in good truth in most part “_Abbeys of Expiation_.”

To resume the story of Norman-Romanesque architecture: The following is a list of some few of the principal English cathedrals and abbatial churches erected in the very early years after the Norman occupation--

_Approximate date._ _By whom built._ A.D. (Cathedral) Canterbury 1070-1077. Lanfranc, Prior of S. Etienne, Caen.

(Abbey) St. Albans 1077-1088. Paul, Monk of S. Etienne, Caen.

(Cathedral) Rochester 1077-1108. Gundulph, pupil of Lanfranc.

” Winchester 1079-1093. Walkelin, Monk of S. Etienne, Caen.

” Ely 1083-1106. Simeon, Monk of S. Ouen, Rouen.

(Abbey) Gloucester 1089-1100. Serlo, Monk of Mont S. Michel, Normandy.

(Cathedral) Durham 1093-1183. William of S. Carileph, formerly priest of Bayeux.

” Norwich 1096 Herbert of Losinga, Prior of Fécamp.

(Abbey) Tewkesbury 1102-1123. (Probably copied from Gloucester.)

” Southwell 1108. Guimond, Chaplain of Henry I (Beauclerc).

” Oxford (Christ Ch.) 1111.

” Peterborough } John, Abbot of Séez. 1114-1133-5-75. } Martin, Abbot of Bec.

The inspirer and leader of these Norman monk-architects of so many of the great English churches was Lanfranc of Pavia, a monk of Bec in Normandy, then Prior of S. Stephen, Caen, then Archbishop of Canterbury. He rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral, 1070-1077, subsequently much altered and in part rebuilt, but some of Lanfranc’s work still remains.

To recapitulate. We have very briefly and somewhat roughly traced the evolution of Romanesque from its beginnings in the first years of the fourth century, when we date the “Renaissance” of the pre-classical style which did away with the Entablature and the Greek features which obscured the old pre-classical round-arch architecture.

The glory of the Ravenna school, which best represented this “Renaissance” of the pre-classical style, came to an end when the Lombards descended upon Italy--and became masters of Northern and part of Central Italy.

But a remnant of the skill of the Ravenna and old Roman School of architects was preserved by the so-called Comacine Guild,[15] who, under the protection of the Lombard kings, again worked and built during the two hundred years, or rather less, of the Lombard sway in Italy.

Under Charlemagne, A.D. 774, a temporary and partial building impulse in Dalmatia, Germany, and in Italy must be chronicled. Then darkness, during about two hundred years, settled over Northern and Central Europe.

During these two disturbed centuries (ninth and tenth), however, the Comacine Guild, which had been employed by the Lombard sovereigns, continued to work and to develop their “round-arch” style of Lombardic architecture, at Milan and in other centres, of course more or less fitfully, whenever a ruler arose who had breathing time to devote himself to the fine arts, especially to architecture.

The Comacine Guild in this period addressed itself to the study of vaulting construction, and to the art of counterbalancing the thrust of the roof. The external buttress began to be more and more extensively used. But the progress of vaulting large spaces, such as the naves of important churches, was but slow.

In this dark and disturbed period one very notable feature, we might almost term it “invention,” appeared in the Comacine school of architecture. This was the addition of the Campanile or lofty Bell Tower, attached or closely adjacent to the main building of the church.

The earliest dated appearance of this novel and notable feature seems to have been at Milan about the middle of the ninth century, in the Churches of San Satiro, and in the so-called Monks’ Tower of Sant Ambrogio in Milan.

The Bell Tower, or Campanile, of San Satiro at Milan can fairly claim to have been the prototype of the Lombard Campanile, the virtual ancestor of the countless towers and steeples of the Middle Ages.

In the great Church revival of the third quarter of the tenth century, the famous Monastery of Cluny sent out one of its brotherhood, the Lombard Monk William of Volpiano, trained in the Lombard traditions of the Comacine school, who rebuilt, on a magnificent scale, the Abbey of S. Benignus at Dijon. Richard II, Duke of Normandy, sent for and employed this William of Volpiano, who, with his pupils, during the first half of the eleventh century, built a goodly number of churches in Normandy and developed the Romanesque round-arch style of Lombardy into Norman-Lombardic.