How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

These merchants had become wealthy by trading in the merchandise from the East and increased their wealth by distributing the merchandise throughout the West. Milan, therefore, speedily grew in importance because she commanded the roads leading over the passes of the Alps. Thence the chief stream of commerce led at first through Provence. Later, German cities like Augsburg and Nuremburg, became powerful and prosperous on the road to such northern ports as Lübeck and Hamburg, while the Rhine became the highway of commerce to Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels.

The gilds perpetuated what came to be called the “mystery” of their crafts by organisations which combined a system of apprenticeship with what we know to-day as a trade-union. One of these was the gild of masons from which Freemasonry derived. It included various grades from the ordinary worker of stone and marble, through the men skilled in carved work, up to the few who were capable of designing and supervising the construction. And although the tradition that these mason-gilds travelled from place to place has been discredited, it is still allowed that some of these master-masons or architects, as we call them to-day, must have acquired a fame which caused them to be engaged by other cities than their own.

Meanwhile, there was another great influence operating in the interests of social order—that of the Church. Many bishops occupied positions corresponding to that of a feudal lord and some even went to war at the head of their troops. The cathedrals, like the castles, became the nuclei of cities. Moreover, the Religious Orders were increasing in numbers and in influence, both spiritual and temporal. There had been a widely held expectation that the end of the world was to come in 1000 B.C. After the fateful date had passed, people breathed more freely with a fresh zest of life and thankfulness to Heaven; and the Church generally and, in particular, the Religious Orders, put themselves at the head of this great revival. They became the leaders of a great popular religious and civic enthusiasm that found expression especially in church and cathedral building.

The earliest Order, the Benedictine, had been founded by S. Benedict in the sixth century and spread through the west of Europe, obtaining firm hold in England. The Cluniac Order, with its headquarters in the Abbey of Cluny in the Department of Saone et Loire, France, was established in 909 and in 1080 S. Bruno founded the Carthusian Order, whose chief monastery in France was the Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble. A little later came the Cistercians, and the Augustinian Orders, while the twelfth century saw the founding of the Dominican Order of Preaching Friars and the following century the establishment of the mendicant order of Franciscans. Nor does this summary complete the list. The orders rivalled one another in the number and efficiency of their monasteries, which were the centres not only of religion but also of learning, art, and economic life, affording guest-houses for travellers and serving as hospitals, schools, and colleges.

The monastery was usually erected around a square enclosure still called in England a “close,” surrounded by cloisters. On one side of it adjoined the Church or Minster which, if it were cruciform, extended its transept along one side of the cloister, while the nave occupied another. Along the opposite side of the enclosure ran the refectory, or common feeding-room of the brotherhood, while the fourth side was occupied with dormitories. Grouped around this plan were the abbot’s lodging, guestrooms, school, and dispensary, the bake-house and granaries, fishponds, gardens, and orchards. And in some quiet room where the light was favourable, certain of the brothers plied the task of scribes and illuminators. Happy the monastery that could boast a master-miniaturist or one who was of surpassing merit as a master-mason. Down to the thirteenth century “Architecture was practised largely by the clergy and regarded as a sacred science.”

The influence of monkish architects may have had much to do with the change of the cathedral or church plan from basilica to cruciform, which is characteristic of this period. The clergy continued to be separated from the laity and the extra accommodation needed for the monks of a large monastery caused the apse to be replaced by a chancel, which was raised by several steps from the level of the nave. It contained the stalls for the monks and was divided from the nave by a screen (cancellus), which was surmounted by a gallery or loft, in which the rood (cross) stood.

This rood-loft could be utilised for sacred tableaux which were given for the edification of the people at certain festivals. At Christmas, for example, the choirboys, playing the part of angels, would sing from it the chant of Peace and Good Will, while a representation of the Manger and the Kneeling Shepherds was displayed upon the top of the chancel steps. For the Church recognised the power of drama to affect the imagination, and in time the tableaux developed into “Passion Plays” and “Mystery Plays.” In fact the nave of the church or cathedral was treated as the meeting place for the laity and was used for a variety of secular purposes in connection with the life of the community, while the towers could be used, if necessary, for watch towers and for the safe storing of treasure.

Further among the circumstances that made a more ordered and more human condition of society was the code of chivalry, demanding of all knights or “fully armoured and mounted men,” a high sense of honour, gallantry in battle and peace, and courtesy to women. Charlemagne had gathered round him twelve “paladins” or paragons of knightly virtue, and the fame of their example inspired to deeds not only of valour but of courtly grace. Thus, in Provence, Spain, and Northern Italy there flourished the graceful art of the Troubadour, which was paralleled in the Danube provinces by that of the Minnesingers. The troubadours, originally of noble birth, including princes in their ranks and one king, Richard the Lion-Hearted, invented and sang songs to music of their own composing, thus setting a model for the wandering troubadours and minstrels who later travelled professionally from castle to castle, not overlooking, we may be sure, audiences of people that might be gathered in the churches.

Chivalry was turned to shrewd account by the Church. It could not curb the instinct of fighting but could direct it and did so by enjoining upon knightly penitents a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Such expeditions grew in number and size, travelling armed for protection on the journey, and out of them came the Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Spots in Palestine from the Moslem. These were far from being unmixed blessings to the people, but at least they diverted for a time the turbulence and left the cities freer opportunity of growth. And many a noble on returning home, would build the church or chapel that he had vowed, determined, perhaps, that it should rival in beauty some example he had seen upon his wanderings.

In view even of the few particulars summarised above, how is it possible to relegate this period to “The Dark Ages” or even to dismiss it as negligible, summing it all up as part of the Middle Ages, between the fall of Rome and the revival of a knowledge of Classic learning and art in the fifteenth century? It is to the Italians of the Renaissance that we owe this distortion of history. Properly speaking there was no Renaissance or Rebirth; but at least from the time of Charlemagne onward a steady growth in civilisation, and how vigorous it was, notwithstanding the many setbacks, due to the continuing confusion, may be gathered from the architecture of the period.