Part 5

With the coming of Duke William the Conqueror, this Norman school of Romanesque passed into England, where, as we have seen, under peculiar circumstances of advantage, the Norman-Romanesque became a national and distinct style, a perfectly independent development; and a vast number of churches and abbeys, some of them of great size, arose in England during the last quarter of the eleventh century and all through most of the years of the twelfth.

The Norman-Romanesque in England, aided by almost inexhaustible resources, and in the hands of brilliant and skilful architects, in these years rose to the perfection of the Norman-Romanesque style, and when no further progress seemed possible, the Romanesque passed gradually into what is termed now--Gothic. Of this last evolution we shall presently speak.

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In England, during the years of the rule of William the Conqueror and his sons and kinsmen, an almost innumerable number of Norman-Romanesque churches, abbeys and cathedrals were built, as we have stated, all in the round-arch Lombard style, many of them quite small village and town churches; others of vast size and of great importance. It was the old Lombard style, but it had grown imperceptibly into something new and independent. The more important buildings were, indeed, on a great scale, such as had not been dreamed of in the pioneer churches of Normandy, the work of William of Volpiano and his school, the size of which, with perhaps the solitary exception of the Abbey of Jumiéges, was not excessive.

The Lombardic round-arch style in England still held its own, but the variations were many: for example, the simple austere grandeur of St. Albans was quite different from the more elaborate work of Norwich and Lincoln. Winchester and Ely were purely Romanesque conceptions, but they were utterly different from those we have just quoted. The small and massive cylindrical piers of Malvern Abbey were again another departure, and were more or less copied in many other churches, some quite small, others greater, like Hereford Cathedral, and were reproduced in Gloucester and Tewkesbury Abbeys by cylindrical piers of enormous, almost of an exaggerated, height. The effect in these varieties of English or Norman Romanesque is remarkable and different.

Durham, perhaps, is the most striking example of English Romanesque; the result of William of S. Carileph’s design, this has been well described as “a Church all glorious within, Presbytery, Lantern and Nave unequalled in their stately and solemn majesty, the mighty channelled piers avoiding a mere massiveness which seems to grovel upon the earth, and avoiding, too, the attempt at an exaggerated soaring height, such as we see in Gloucester and in Tewkesbury. No Romanesque building in England, or beyond the sea, can compare with the matchless pile of Durham.” It was never surpassed, and the perfected Romanesque was not superseded by, but imperceptibly passed into “Gothic.”

That all the splendid network of Romanesque churches which rapidly covered England directly after the Norman Conquest came from Norman inspiration, a glance at the little list of notable English churches we have given above will show.

For most of the original buildings, with scarcely an exception, were designed and completed under the Norman kings by Norman ecclesiastics--by men who came from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, Fécamp, Séez, Mont S. Michel, Bec-Herlouin, etc., pupils of, and belonging to, the school founded by the Lombard-trained Monk of Cluny--William of Volpiano.

One important special feature of the great Norman-Romanesque churches of England must be referred to. In the planning of these buildings, at the east end generally, a spacious ambulatory, or circumambient aisle, was arranged.

This peculiar feature was not derived from Normandy, or from the Romanesque school of Lombardy--the direct ancestor of the Norman-Romanesque builders; but was derived from the original plan of the great Pilgrim Church of S. Martin of Tours, originally built in A.D. 472 by Bishop Perpetuus, and which was destroyed by fire in the last year of the tenth century, and then rebuilt generally on the old lines with great magnificence early in the eleventh century.

This comparatively novel feature of the Lombardo-Romanesque churches was designed for the accommodation of pilgrims, who were thus enabled to pass round the shrine of the saint, usually placed at the east end of the church, without retracing their steps, thus obviating the dangers attendant upon the excessive number of pilgrim visitors to the shrine of the popular saint.

THE COMACINE SYMBOL OF THE INTERLACED LINE POPULARLY KNOWN AS “SOLOMON’S KNOT”

“It would be difficult,” writes Leader Scott, in that curious and interesting work _The Cathedral Builders_,[16] “to find any church or sacred edifice, or even altar, of the Comacine work under the Lombards, which is not signed, as it were, by some curious interlaced knot formed of a singular tortuous line” (intreccio).

Now was this “endless knot,” which seems to have been the favourite symbol of the Comacine builders, the heritage of a far-back tradition dating from the days of the building the Temple of Jerusalem by King Solomon? This question cannot be exhaustively or satisfactorily answered; but the tradition is there, and is at least worthy of consideration.

The “knot” in question, popularly termed “Solomon’s knot,” is an unbroken line with neither end nor beginning, and which the Comacines, as the centuries passed, developed into wonderful intrecci (interlaced work). It was evidently a sign of the inscrutable and infinite ways of God, whose nature is unity. The mysterious “Solomon’s Knot” was an emblem of the manifold ways of the power of the one God, who has neither beginning nor end.

It was copied, was this famous Comacine symbol, by the Byzantine artists, but with this striking difference. In Byzantine work it was reproduced rather for effect--viz. to get a plain surface well and picturesquely covered. The Byzantine knots and scrolls are often beautifully finished and clearly cut, but the _line_ is not continuous. It is merely a pretty feature repeated over and over again, but it has no suggestion of meaning such as was evidently in the mind of the Comacine builders.

We can trace this strange knot of the Comacine builders back to the early Christian Collegia of Rome, as we see by the “plutei” in S. Clementi and S. Agnes, and on the door of a chapel in S. Prassede (Rome), and through these early Christian Collegia of builders it was transmitted to their successors, the Lombardic Comacine schools.

Leader Scott remarks that after the eleventh century the interlaced work, or Solomon’s Knot, generally ceased to be the sign of Comacine work, and the ancient sign or seal of the great Guild after this date was commonly replaced by the “Lion of the tribe of Judah.” There was scarcely a church after this date built by the Comacine Guild of Masons, in which this “Lion of Judah” was not prominent.

THE CAMPANILE OR BELL TOWER

It is to the Comacine builders of Lombardy that the Bell Towers, afterwards so great a church feature in the Middle Ages, are owing. Italy is rightly styled the birthplace of the Campaniles forming part of the structure of a church, or rising close beside it. So these Lombardic Campanile Towers were the ancestors, so to speak, of the innumerable Bell Towers and steeples of the West, erected in the Middle Ages.

The majestic Bell Tower, or Campanile of San Satiro at Milan, Rivoira considers to have been the oldest example of such a structure. The date of its erection was A.D. 876. The Campanile Towers of the ancient churches of Ravenna, such as the Towers of Sant Apollinare Nuovo, of Sant Apollinare in Classe, of San Giovanni Evangelista, must be ascribed to a date much later than the original churches themselves. The great Ravennese churches were built in the fifth and sixth centuries; their Campanile Towers were only erected in the ninth and tenth centuries.

The liturgical use of Bells can be traced as far back as the fifth century. For the first three hundred years of the Christian era the naturally secret and private exercise of the religion of Jesus of course forbade any outward and visible sign of Christian gatherings, such as the noise of bells. In Italy and the West the size and tone of church bells became gradually more and more marked. Hence the Lombardic invention, it may fairly be termed, of the important Bell Tower or Campanile as a distinct feature in church building. The ninth century, as we have stated, is probably the date of the first appearance of these remarkable Campaniles.

In the near East, the use of church bells at all seems to have been unknown before the ninth century; the first time we hear of them in the East was late in that century, when a present of bells was sent to the Emperor Basil in Constantinople by the Venetian Republic--and even then, for some time, they were but little used, for as late as A.D. 1200 the great Basilica of S. Sophia at Constantinople was without them. In Syria they were not introduced before the end of the eleventh century; they were no doubt brought into Eastern lands by the Crusaders after the fall of Jerusalem.

In the few examples of early churches which can be quoted as possessing one or two smaller towers, as was probably the case in certain of the important early Ravennese Basilicas, notably in San Vitale, such small towers were not intended for bells, but simply contained staircases.

Viollet le Duc in his long and exhaustive article on “Cloches” especially calls attention to the fact that in the eleventh century Normandy was remarkable for the number and dimensions of its church bells and bell towers; but the famous French writer and scholar does not seem aware of the reason for this marked feature in their churches. They were evidently part of the Lombardic tradition brought into Normandy by the great church builder William of Volpiano, the pupil of the Lombard Comacine architects, the story of whose coming into Normandy at the invitation of Duke Richard le Bon has been related in detail above.

ON BELLS

The Bell, however, was not unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but in those far-back times it seems to have been, comparatively speaking, of small dimensions.

Durandus, Bishop of Mende (Mimatensis), Languedoc, thirteenth century--the great liturgical writer of the Middle Ages--in his _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, has several pages devoted to the symbolism of bells, much of which is most curious and interesting, though, as usual with this learned writer, often not a little fanciful. For instance, he tells us how he looks on bells as symbols of preachers, who, after the manner of bells, are appointed to remind the faithful of the “Faith.” The clapper, he says, represents the preacher’s tongue, the wooden beam to which the bell is hung typifies the Cross of our Lord.

Durandus considers that the bell was first invented at Nola, a city of Campania, whence came the terms “Campanæ” for the larger bells, and “Nolæ” for the smaller. Various other writers have adopted this curious derivation, amongst others S. Anselm. But this must be considered fanciful.

During the first three centuries, naturally bells would be unused in Christian churches; as we have stated, quiet and privacy of worship being in the ages of persecution, for all assemblies for Christian worship, an indispensable condition.

They were, however, certainly used before the seventh century; there is a tradition that Pope Sabinianus, A.D. 604, directed that a bell shall be rung to give notice of the hours of the “offices.” Bells are alluded to in the Rule of S. Benedict. Bede mentions them in England in the eighth century.

But it was not until the period of the great revival of religion in the eleventh century that the bell began to assume the position of importance in the furniture of a church which we find it occupying in the Middle Ages. The size of the bell gradually increased, and the care bestowed on its casting became greater as the twelfth century advanced.

In the eleventh century we read, for instance, of a bell then remarkable for its size, being presented to the Church of S. Agnan at Orleans by King Robert of France. This bell, probably the largest then known, weighed as much as 2,600 pounds.

As the Middle Ages advanced, the vogue of bells in churches became more pronounced. There were few parish churches but possessed one or two bells, or even more, while the abbeys and cathedrals continued to erect towers to hang bells of various sizes and powers.

In the thirteenth century we find notices of bells of very considerable size and importance. It was not, however, until the fifteenth century that the bell attained to the vast dimensions we are accustomed to associate with the more considerable of these popular and well-loved instruments of music.

Gloucester Cathedral is singularly fortunate in the possession of some very ancient bells of rare sweetness and power; one of these, “Great Peter,” being of considerable size and importance.

This great mediæval bell has now bidden the citizens to prayer for several hundred years.

Various ornaments, usually of a sacred character, were engraved on the mediæval bells. More interesting, though, are the inscriptions, which not unfrequently run round the bell.

The size, however, of the famous Great Peter in Gloucester Cathedral is not comparable with other of the more celebrated bells now in use in various parts of the world--as will be seen from the following table setting forth the enormous weight of many of these great bells.

The largest of these--the Tsar Kolokol of Moscow--said to weigh 440,000 pounds, was never rung. It was broken apparently in the casting--and is now used as a chapel.

Moscow, however, still boasts what probably is the greatest bell in the world; its weight is 128 tons.

Of the other huge bells, we would enumerate--

_Weight._ The bell in the Kioto monastery in Japan 76 tons. The Kaiser bell in the Cathedral of Cologne 25 ” The chief bell in Notre Dame, Paris 17 ” Big Ben in the Parliament Houses, London 13 ” Amiens Cathedral--Its principal bell 11 ” Great Tom, Oxford 7 ”

DATES

A few important approximate dates are given to illustrate this sketch of Romanesque Architecture: The round-arch style. At Ravenna--then among the Lombards--the Rise of the Lombardic-Norman school of Romanesque builders, and the evolution of Gothic architecture.

_circa_ A.D. The {_Diocletian_--Palace at Spalatro 300-305 glory {_Honorius_--Emperor of the West 393-423 of {_Galla Placidia_--(half-sister of Honorius) 408-451 Ravenna {_Theodoric_--the Ostrogothic king of Italy 493-526 {_Justinian_--Emperor of the East 527-565

{_Alboin_--The Lombard Conqueror 568 Lombardy {_Rotharis_--The Lombard King. His code { referring to privileges of Comacine { builders. 636-652

_Charlemagne_--Emperor. His conquest of Lombardy. His Palace-chapel of Aachen 796-804

Pupil of Comacine {_William of Volpiano_--Monk of Cluny. builders { Invited by Duke Richard to Normandy 961-1031

_Lanfranc of Bec_--First Norman archbishop of Canterbury. His works in Normandy and England 1086

Rise and Progress in England of the _Norman-Lombardic_ style

Eleventh century (last part), twelfth century.

The “Coming” and “Rise” of the _Gothic_ style

Roughly in the second part of the twelfth century. Its rapid and general adoption in the thirteenth century.

PASSING OF ROMANESQUE

We only propose to give a very short summary here; all we shall do is to just sketch in a few memoranda which will throw light on the reasons for the extraordinarily rapid transition from Romanesque to Gothic. The early years of the twelfth century witnessed what we have termed the perfected Romanesque style; the closing years of the same twelfth century witnessed “the passing” of Romanesque (the round-arch mode) and the almost universal substitution of a new style, generally known as Gothic.

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And first:--the term “Gothic,” now everywhere adopted as the expression for that school of architecture which prevailed throughout the countries of Northern Europe for some four centuries is a curious misnomer.

The term “Gothic,” which was used certainly before the seventeenth century, belongs to the Renaissance period, and was in the first instance, strangely enough, regarded as a term of opprobrium.

Those who invented it were quite clear as to what they intended by the expression. They meant it was something barbarous, because non-classical; some believed it was actually invented by the Goths who overthrew the Roman Empire. Evelyn, for instance, writes, that “the ancient Greek and Roman architecture answered all the perfections required in a faultless and accomplished building, and that the Goths and Vandals demolished these, and introduced in their stead a certain fantastical manner of building, congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy monkish piles, without any just proportion, use or beauty.”[17]

But in time, men came to recognise the glory of what the Renaissance devotees at first scoffed at; but the old term of opprobrium, “Gothic,” remained; and now is universally used to express that splendid school of mediæval architecture which arose out of Romanesque and prevailed for so long a period; the beauty and fitness of which, perhaps somewhat tardily, all the Northern nations have come to recognise with an ungrudging, at times possibly even with an exaggerated admiration.

After all, the leading writers on architecture have come to the conclusion that, different though the Gothic schools are to the Romanesque, they are but one style--_Gothic is simply perfected Romanesque_. “L’architecture Gothique n’est que la perfectionnement de celle qu’on appelle Romane,” wrote Enlart. Gothic, as Mr. Bond expresses it, “has not supplanted Romanesque, but is its supreme result, the last stage in its development, its apogee, consummation and accomplishment.” So, too, De Lasterie defines “Gothic.”

To sum up certain of the new principles of Gothic architecture. The walls of the Gothic buildings became much slighter--thinner; these walls no longer acted as the thrusts which counteracted the weight of the stone vaults which had become gradually more generally used even in Romanesque buildings, but the weight or thrusts of these stone vaults were stopped by buttresses. In other words, Gothic architecture has been with some justice defined as the art of erecting buttressed buildings.

The principal outward and visible sign of Gothic architecture, however, was the _pointed arch_. This novel feature, and much of the ornamentation which was rapidly introduced, no doubt came from the East, and must be referred largely to the influence of the _Crusades_; it was, no doubt, borrowed through acquaintance with Saracenic work in Egypt and Syria. These strange Crusading wars had opened a new world of Art to the Western nations.

The pointed arch was no new feature in the East. As early as A.D. 879 the great Mosque of Tulun had pointed arcades. The principal gateway of the palace of Ctesiphon (fifth century) is pointed. The pointed arch appears in the great aqueduct near Constantinople of the time of Justinian. In many districts in the East it had been for centuries as much the normal form as the round-arch in Europe.

But other outward and visible signs characterised Gothic architecture, which supplanted Romanesque.

Gothic windows became much larger; there was a desire to obtain more light in the churches than had been possible to obtain through the smaller Romanesque windows. These were necessarily small and comparatively inconspicuous for two reasons: the one was, the Romanesque builders trusted, as we have seen, to the vast thickness of their walls to counteract the weight or thrust of the roofs and the upper portions of the buildings, and dreaded any unnecessary weakening of these massive walls by the introduction of large windows.

The other main reason for the smallness of the Romanesque windows was the preciousness and cost of glass in the tenth, the eleventh, and preceding centuries. Glass in the second half of the twelfth century became a much cheaper and less costly material. Then, too, the rapid progress in the art of stained and painted glass in that same century demanded for the display of this new and beautiful art, larger and ever larger windows. The artists in glass painting were no longer content with the small and cramped Romanesque windows, and the general passion for painted glass at once compelled the builders to devise without delay larger spaces in the walls for the display and exercise of the art.

The new large Gothic windows became at once a conspicuous and distinctive feature in the new school. The general introduction of the buttress feature superseded the necessity of depending on the thickness and massiveness of the walls, thus permitting the larger openings that are required for the larger Gothic windows.

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The pointed arch brought in its train many novel decorations as well as new constructive features. A new system of mouldings and other ornaments was gradually worked out in the last quarter of the twelfth and even in the earlier years of the thirteenth century.

The massive piers of Romanesque architecture were exchanged for clustered pillars, detached or banded, and crowned with elaborate capitals.

But perhaps one of the most conspicuous changes in the new style was, after all, the beautiful and elaborate tracery which supported and adorned the new windows, ever increasing in size and importance. The old Romanesque windows, small and inconspicuous, were supplanted by the great windows which soon distinguished the new Gothic school, and these windows soon became what is termed traceried windows. The necessary supports of these, known as transoms and mullions, were worked into new and beautiful forms, usually called “Decorated Tracery”; these were divided into geometrical, curvilinear, or flowing tracery, but we avoid in this very short sketch of “Gothic” such technical terms, and simply call attention to certain of the new important features here, which mark the substitution of Gothic for Romanesque form--and term them generally _traceried windows_.

Later, in England, the more elaborate earlier window tracery was abandoned, and the simpler rectilinear tracery was generally adopted, and a new style of Gothic, known as the “Perpendicular,” became the vogue in our Island.

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On reading over the above brief notes on Gothic Architecture, the writer, while conscious that the few details above given were, as far as they went, strictly accurate--felt that something more was wanting--if only a few words--which might suggest that there was a deep inner meaning in Gothic architecture. To express this, some reference must be made to France and the great French church builders; for France--especially the “Domaine Royale”--l’Ile de France--was the native country, the original home of the Gothic school.