Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Leaving the Saracenic Romanesque to return by Sicily and Spain into southern France, and thence to ascend the height of mediæval culmination, let us proceed in the grand central track of Teutonic art.

The Rhine is the great channel of modern civilization, and near its banks are the clearest indications of progressive art. The original cathedral at Treves was built by the pious mother of Constantine, and seems, like the cotemporary church at Jerusalem, to have consisted of two distinct edifices, one circular, the other square. These two forms entered into diversified combinations thenceforth, and ever constituted the peculiarity of German architecture. The tenth and eleventh centuries afford many curious specimens which are important in the history of art. Such are the cathedrals of Spire, Worms, Mayence, and others yet extant, and which attest extraordinary solidity and magnificence. The western apse of the cathedral at Mayence is perhaps the only example in Germany where a triapsal arrangement has been attempted with polygonal instead of circular forms. Surely a new type of art is near. At this point, too, we have witnessed enough of progressive spire-growth in Germany to believe that the origin of that aspiring member lies amid the towers which cluster so copiously on the churches by the Rhine, and especially the beautiful group of indigenous art at Cologne.

The Norman Romanesque was produced in no one instance before the year 1050, and before 1150 it was entirely superseded. Indeed, all the great typical examples were executed during the last half of the eleventh century. The arrangements of these are more like the Rhenish basilicas than any others, and yet do they differ from them by many degrees of superiority. They formed the last stage in the progress toward consummate invention; and the western façade of Saint Stephens, at Caen, for example, may be regarded as the prototype of all the Gothic cathedrals which immediately succeeded. All this was produced in the fitting order of time and place. For eight centuries the Northmen continued to press toward lower latitudes, everywhere disseminating their hardy habits, pure ethics, deep sentiments of freedom, and superior impress of art. Lombards redeemed Italy, Goths ennobled Spain, Franks cultivated Gaul, and, at the needful moment, William the Conqueror was made ready to transfer all the glorious accumulation of civilizing elements to Saxon England.

Ecclesiastical architecture especially reflected one pervading dominant sentiment of the Norman mind—perpetuity. They excelled all nations in the use and ornamentation of the circular arch. Centuries before Christ this had existed, and was by the dull Roman subordinated to mechanical necessities, when he would support his stupendous works; but hitherto it had been applied to base purposes only. That line which the sun and stars trace in their course, the holy shape of the majestic vault of heaven, the Teuton found debased to ignoble purposes, and, rescuing it from the fosse, the aqueduct, and the sudarium, he bent it in consecrated granite above his reverent head, a copy of the arch under which his fathers prayed—the sky. And this rugged Christian art which, with the brain and heart of grand Norman prelates, passes into England, is the introduction of a new principle altogether from the florid Byzantine element at the same time approaching from the opposite point. The one is the product of a mind whose dominant faculties were reason and faith; the other projected by a fervid imagination, bearing in its shape internal evidence of its birthplace, the South; beautiful indeed, but earthly in its beauty, and in the effect it produces on the soul, according well with the dreamy habits of the Saracen, but inappropriate for the uses of that religion which "casteth down imaginations."

Thus Lombardy, Germany, and Normandy, took great successive strides in architectural progress, but neither of them attained to Gothic art of the true Christian type, according to the popular designation. There can now be no doubt but that the Pointed style was invented by the Franks. As on the western edge of continental Europe Romanesque architecture was perfected, and then directly passed to England; so in western France, the aspiring Gothic broke into consummate freedom and beauty, and was thence diffused over the world. It was introduced into Germany, Italy, and the remoter regions, north and south, with innumerable modifications, but without a single improvement east of the meridian of its origin. On the contrary, in passing directly westward over the narrow field of England, it took three distinct forms of improved development, and then perished forever.

Down to a late period, the round Gothic style was executed by the Franks, in examples quite insignificant compared with those produced in Normandy. Even in Paris the great church of St. Germain des Près, the burial-place of the earlier kings, and most splendid edifice of the capital, was not more than fifty feet in width, by two hundred in length, before the rebuilding of its chevet in the pointed style. But in the reign of Louis le Gros, 1108-1136, under whom the monarchy of France began to revive, architecture put on new vigor. The culminating point was reached under the reign of Louis le Jeune, and through the transcendent abilities of the Abbé Suger. He began building the Abbey of St. Denis in the pointed manner, 1144, which was still further elaborated with the erection of the Sante Chapelle by St. Louis, 1244, and which received its consummate finish at the completion of the choir of St. Owen at Rouen, by Mark d'Argent, in 1339. St. Denis, therefore, though certainly not the earliest, must be taken as the typical example of primary Gothic of France and of the world. It terminated the era of transition, and fixed the epoch when the northern pointed style became supreme. In due course arose the beautiful and stupendous works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which filled all Europe with the grandest monuments. Thus was completed a perfect cycle of the art, tracing it from its origin back to the place of its birth, Italy, which was also that of its earliest decline, and where it was smothered under Renaissant trash.

In England we may say that there was no ante Norman style whatever; at least all her alleged Saxon remains present nothing which could stand for a moment against a style that might lay claim to the slightest portion of artistic merit. At the beginning of the twelfth century the foreign style had become to a great extent naturalized, and assumed a separate existence. This is well exemplified in what remains of Lanfranc's building at Canterbury, and that of Walkelyn at Winchester. In these, and in the work of Gundulph at Rochester, there is scarcely any difference from the continental Norman except what may be ascribed to the inexperience of the workmen employed. Half a century earlier, the Germans fell under French influence and remained copyists to the end. The English, on the contrary, soon gained sufficient familiarity with the style to enable them to assert their independence, and become inventors of new and original forms of the finest architecture of that or any other age. The pointed arch was introduced at the rebuilding of the cathedral at Canterbury after the fire of 1174, by the architect William of Sens. But for a long time afterward the innovation was resisted by the English, and even down to the year 1200 the round arch was currently employed in conjunction with the pointed. But it then gave way, and for three centuries subsequently was entirely banished from both sacred and civil architecture.

The first great cathedral built in the new style throughout was Salisbury, begun in 1220 and finished essentially in 1258. When complete, its internal effect must have been extremely beautiful; far more so than that of its cotemporary and great rival at Amiens. Westminster Abbey was commenced twenty-five years later, and is evidently more imitative of the French style. Lincoln was finished about the year 1282, and is a beautiful specimen of the true Edwardian style of perfected English art. These are chiefly of the earliest period, or lancet style. The great storehouse of the second type, or decorated architecture is Exeter cathedral finished in the year 1330. Of the third period, or perpendicular, the nave of Winchester is the source and model of all. It was invented by the archbishop William of Wykeham, who with the vigor and strength of the grandest Norman architecture combined all the elegant symmetry of the purest pointed style. This was consummated in the year 1400. Now what is worthy of special notice is the fact that the three masterpieces of their respective types, the only ones that ever existed, or perhaps ever will, are in the three most western counties of England. From the tenth to the fifteenth century, there was a continuous series of buildings, one succeeding the other in the outgrowth of the same principle, and the last containing not only all the improvements previously introduced, but contributing something new itself toward perfecting a style which occupied the serious attention of all exalted minds, and an immense variety of operatives who carried out with masterly practical skill what their superiors in science designed. Thus the massive Norman pier was gradually lightened into the clustered shaft of elegant Gothic; the low wagon-vault expanded into the fairy roof of tracery, and the small window of primitive churches, became "a transparent wall of gorgeous hues" in the sublimest cathedrals, and, despite shameful neglect or abuse, still remain as the most wonderful miracles of art. No buildings on earth are more interesting than the cathedrals of Europe, and especially of England, since each one stands the built-up chronicle of national architecture, on which, from crypt to spire, are recorded in significant language, the wonders of inventive genius and constructive-skill.

In tracing the hand of Providence in monumental art, it is important to observe that all original invention in architecture comes from Greece through Rome, and that the coloring thereof is also derived from the East. The Doric and Corinthian orders are the formative molds of all subsequent forms, the one of all Romanesque buildings, Byzantine, Lombard, and Norman; and the other of all Gothic, French, German, and English. Says Ruskin, in his Stones of Venice, "Those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the framework and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japhet: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ishmael, Abraham, and Shem."

With the new style of building, were derived from the Romans the habit of consecrating ground so as entirely to withdraw it from secular purposes; the sprinkling of holy water; the burning of tapers at the altar; offerings to propitiate the Deity; the worship of divers saints and martyrs; and even the insignia and dress of the bishops and priests. Many of the pagan symbols also were adopted in the decoration of the new churches; a different signification being attached to them. For example, the palm-branch of Bacchus, the corn of Ceres, dove of Venus, Diana's stag, Juno's peacock, Jupiter's eagle, Cybele's lion, and Cupids changed into cherubs, were so copied from the ancients, and made emblematic of Christian doctrines. Orientation, or the elevation of a church with particular reference to the cardinal points was never regarded in Italy; but in moving westward the special law was increasingly observed, until arriving in England where every great mediæval front looks full at the setting sun. The eastern style of that age is doubtless related to Greek antiquity, but in the same way as the Latin Christian rhymes of the same period are to be classed with ancient literature. To refer all the wonders of Teutonic art to that primal origin is as unreasonable as it would be to consider the verses of Leoine latinists the source of the highest poetry from Dantè to Shakspeare. The simple fact is that from Carnac to Winchester there was perpetual development of increasing excellence; each remove being a monument of augmented good, and the last always the best.