The Law of Civilization and Decay: An Essay on History

by Brooks Adams

As the world disintegrated, and the imagination everywhere acquired power, and with power wealth and the means of expression, an entirely new architecture sprang up in the East, whose growth closely followed upon the barbarian invasions and the progressive failure of the Roman blood. The system of construction was Asiatic modified by Greek influences,[395] and with this new construction came an equally new decoration, a decoration which once more served as a language.

Mosaics of stone had long been used, but mosaics of glass, which give such an incomparable lustre to the dome, were the invention of Levantine Christians, and seem to have come into general use toward the beginning of the fifth century. But the fifth century was the period of the great invasions of Alaric, Attila, and Theoderic, and during this period the population of Italy, Macedonia, and Thrace must have undergone profound changes. In Italy the whole fabric of consolidated society crumbled; south of the Danube it survived, but survived in a modified form, a form on which the recent migrations left an unmistakable imprint. Galla Placidia, the first great patron of the pure Byzantine school, died in 450, after an eventful life largely passed among the barbarians, one of whom she married. She began to embellish Ravenna, and a comparison of these remains with those of France and Italy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, exposes the difference in the forces which moulded these three civilizations.

With all its grace and refinement the characteristic of Ravenna was not religious ecstasy, but rather an absence of fear of the unknown, and a respect for wealth. There is nothing mysterious or terrible about these charming buildings, which are manifestly rather a glorification of the Empire on the Bosphorus, than of the Kingdom of Heaven.

At San Vitale it is Justinian, with an aureole about his head and surrounded by his courtiers, carrying a gift to the shrine; or Theodora, blazing with jewels, and followed by the magnificent ladies of her household. At San Apollinare the long procession of saints are richly clad and bear crowns, while the Virgin herself, seated on a throne and revered as a sovereign, is as far removed from the vulgar as Theodora herself. “Byzantine etiquette no longer permits her to be approached directly; four angels surround her and separate her from humanity.”[396] The terrifying was scrupulously avoided. “By a most significant scruple, the artist, in reproducing various episodes of the Passion, avoided the most painful, the Crucifixion.”[397]

Saint Sophia offers every indication of having been expressly contrived to provide the large light spaces needful for such functions as those depicted in San Vitale, and the account given by Procopius of its erection sustains this supposition. According to Procopius, Saint Sophia was a hobby of Justinian, who not only selected the architect Anthemius because he was the most ingenious mechanic of his age, but who also supplied the funds and “assisted it by the labour and powers of his mind.”[398] The dome, “from the lightness of the building ... does not appear to rest upon a solid foundation, but to cover the place beneath as though it were suspended from heaven by the fabled golden chain”; and the interior “is singularly full of light and of sunshine; you would declare that the place is not lighted by the sun from without, but that the rays are produced within itself, such an abundance of light is poured into this church.”[399] Of the decorations it is impossible to speak with certainty, since it is probable that the mosaics which now exist were of a later period.

Perhaps, however, the most significant phenomenon about the church is its loneliness; nothing like it was built elsewhere, and the reason seems plain. There was but one imperial court which needed so superb a setting, and but one emperor who could pay for it. Herein lies the radical divergence between the East and West; the great tabernacle of Constantinople stood alone because it represented the wealth, the pomp, and the imagination of the barbarian shepherd who had been raised by fortune to be the chief of police of the city where the world’s wealth had centralized. In France every diocese had a temple magnificent according to its means, some of which exceeded in majesty that of Paris; and the cause was that, in France, the artistic and imaginative caste formed a theocracy, who were not hired by king or emperor, but who were themselves the strongest force in all the land. In the East, the imaginative inroad was not strong enough to cause disintegration, and the artists always remained wage-earners. In the West, society fell back a thousand years, and consolidation began afresh. Six centuries intervened between the death of Galla Placidia and the famous dream of the monk Gauzon which contained the revelation of the plan of the Abbey of Cluny, and yet six hundred years by no means represented the gap between the Franks and the Burgundians, and the Eastern Empire, even when it sank lowest under Heraclius. To Justinian the building of Saint Sophia was a matter of time and money; to Saint Hugh the church of Cluny was a miracle.

In France the churches long were miracles; the chronicles are filled with the revelations vouchsafed the monks; and none can cross the threshold of one of these noble monuments and fail to grasp its meaning. They are the most vigorous of all expressions of fear of the unseen. The Gothic architect heeded no living potentate; he held kings in contempt, and oftener represented them thrust down into hell than seated on their thrones. With the enemy who lurked in darkness none but the saints could cope, and them he idealized. No sculpture is more terrible than the demons on the walls of Rheims, none more majestic and pathetic than that over the door of the Virgin at Paris, while no colour ever equalled the windows of Saint Denis and Chartres.

With the thirteenth century came the influx of the Eastern trade and the rise of the communes. Immediately the glory of the Gothic began to fade; by the reign of Saint Louis it had passed its prime, and under Philip the Fair it fell in full decline. The men who put dead cats in shrines were not likely to be inspired in religious sculpture. The decay, and the reasons for it, can be readily traced in colour.

The monks who conceived the twelfth century windows, or painted the pictures of the saints, only sought to render an emotion by a conventional symbol which should rouse a response. Consequently they used marvellous combinations of colours, in which blue was apt to predominate, and they harmonized their colours with gold. Viollet-le-Duc has elaborately explained how this was done.[400] But such a system was not pretentious, and was incompatible with perspective. The mediæval burgher, like the Roman, was rich, and wanted to appear so. He demanded more for his money than a solemn portrait of a saint. He craved a picture of himself, or of his guild, and above all he insisted on display. The fourteenth century was the period when the reds and yellows superseded the blues, and when the sense of harmony began to fail. Furthermore, the burgher was realistic and required a representation of the world he saw about him. Hence came perspective, the abandonment of gold, and the final degradation of colour, which sank into a lost art. For hundreds of years it has been impossible to imitate the work of the monks of Saint Denis. In Italy, the economic phenomena were yet more striking; for Italy, even in the Middle Ages, was always a commercial community, which looked on art with the economic eye. One example will suffice,—the treatment of the dome.

Placed between the masterpieces of the East and West, and having little imagination of his own, the Florentine banker conceived the idea of combining the two systems and embellishing them in a cheap and showy manner. Accordingly on Gothic arches he placed an Eastern dome, and instead of adorning his dome with mosaics, which are costly, he had his interior painted at about one-quarter of the price. The substitution of the fresco for the mosaic is one of the most typical devices of modern times.