SPANISH ROMANESQUE
In Spain great impetus was given to cathedral building by the recapture of Toledo from the Moors in 1085. In architecture, as in painting, the Spaniards seem to have sought their artistic impulses from abroad, since the most important example of their early Romanesque style—the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostello—is a modified copy of S. Sernin, at Toulouse, Aquitaine. The plan is a Latin cross with aisles not only flanking the nave but also carried round the transepts and choir apse in the manner of the French chevêt. The aisles are groin-vaulted, while a lofty barrel vault covers the nave, and an octagonal lantern crowns the crossing.
A special feature of Spanish Romanesque, also derived apparently from Aquitaine, is the beauty of the dome, which covers the crossing, as in the old Cathedral of Salamanca, the Collegiate Church at Toro and the Cathedral of Zamora. They are circular in the interior and octagonal on the outside with large turrets in the angles of the octagon. The interior dome is carried upon pointed arches, between which and the spring of the vault, in the case of Salamanca, are two tiers of arcaded windows. For the admission of light the arrangement is excellent, while the general character of these domes, covered on the outside with a low, steeple-like roof of stone, is admirably monumental.
Another characteristic Spanish feature, met with in some churches, as for example, that of San Millan, Sagovia, is an open cloister, on the outside of the aisle, from which doors open into it.
Carved ornament was rather sparingly applied, and except in minute details suggests no Moorish influence.
BOOK V
GOTHIC PERIOD
CHAPTER I
LATE MEDIÆVAL CIVILISATION
The change in architectural style, known as the Gothic, which began in the twelfth century and reached its full development in the thirteenth, represents so wonderful an expression not only of constructive genius but also of spiritual aspiration that one would fain peer through the mist of the past to discover the kind of civilisation that produced it. The general conditions that shaped the civilisation we have already noticed in the chapter on Early Mediæval Civilisation. There we recognised the threefold influences of the power of the Church, the extension and growing importance of Commerce, and the results of the various Crusades. And these still continued to be the motive forces of the later and fuller civilisation.