The new poetry and the ideal of chivalry and the service of woman were the first independent developments able to hold their own by the side of ecclesiastical culture. The rigid Latin was superseded; the soul of man sang in its own language of the return of spring, the beauty of woman, knighthood and adventure. Poetry became the most important source of secular education, and as each nation sang in its own tongue, national characteristics shone out through the individuality of the singer. Provençals, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians realised that they belonged to different races. This was particularly the case during the Crusades when, under the auspices of the Church, the nations of Europe had apparently undertaken a common task.
In Provence, in France and Germany, every poem was set to music, and thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved. J.B. Beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,—the music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,—says, "The poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a collection of songs which in their frequently amazing naïveté and melodiousness, their spontaneity and sound music, intimate congruity of melody and text and extraordinary originality, have been unparalleled to this day." All these songs are distinguished by graceful simplicity; but the ear of the non-musician can hardly perceive the originality on which Beck lays such stress. In any case, the music is inferior to the frequently perfect text. This same period saw the inception of our present system of musical notation.
The new poetry created a desire for "literature," thus giving impetus to the already existent art of illuminated manuscripts. Every prince kept a salaried army of copyists and illuminators, producing the manuscripts to-day preserved and studied in our museums. Studios where this work was carried on existed at various art centres, especially—as far as we are able to tell to-day—at the papal courts at Avignon—that meeting-ground of French and Italian artists—in Paris and at Rheims. These workshops were the birthplace of miniature painting, which reached perfection in the famous Burgundian "Livres d'Heures."
To-day the science of aesthetics is attempting to trace the influence which emanated from the French and even from the earlier English workshops, and spread over the whole continent. It is very probable that the French art of miniature painting of the first half of the thirteenth century was mother of the later North-European art of painting. It was in Northern Europe that, independently of Hellenic and Byzantine influence, a new art originated, of which Max Dvorak says: "It would hardly be possible to find an external cause for the quick and complete disappearance of the elements of the Neo-Latin art. The past was simply done with, and an absolutely new period was beginning. Thus the new art was almost without any tradition." Dvorak calls this complete change the most important in the history of painting since antiquity. George, Count Vitzthum, has proved that the famous Cologne school of painting modelled itself on Northern-French, Belgian, and a quite independent English school of illuminators. It is even suggested that the English style of miniature painting influenced Europe as far as the Upper Rhine. It is also very significant that the Dutch art of the brothers van Eyck, whose sudden appearance seemed so inexplicable, is now proved to have had its source in the North of France. On the other hand, we have drawings of three ecstatic nuns showing decided originality; Hildegarde of Bingen, already mentioned on a previous occasion, has herself ornamented her book, Scivias, with miniatures which, according to Haseloff, in spite of their primitive style, reveal a bizarre plastic talent, and are therefore closely related to her intuitions. Alfred Peltzer speaks of "fantastic figures surrounded by flames." The two other nuns were Elizabeth of Schönau, and Herrad of Landsberg; these two were entirely under the influence of the dawning mysticism.
I will here quote a few more passages from Dvorak, who, in dealing with the individual arts, does not lose sight of the whole. "Simultaneously with a new literature," he says, "we have a new art of illustration, new miniatures, no longer drawing inspiration from antiquity.... We meet the new style in its full perfection wherever it is a matter of a new technique (in the art of staining glass, for instance, or of illustrating profane literature)...." He speaks of a new decoration of manuscripts invented in Paris in the first half of the thirteenth century. Thus the close and causal connection between the new poetry and the illumination of books is clearly apparent, and it may be said without exaggeration that the Provençal lyric poetry and the North-French and Celtic cycles of romance led up to the new European style of painting which did not come to perfection until two centuries later. (Nothing positive can be said about the influence of France on Italian art; the monumental character and the art of Cimabue, Giotto and the Sienese does not, however, suggest that they were much influenced by the art of miniature painting, but rather hints that they drew inspiration from antique frescoes.)
I must add a few words on the subject of those miniatures which are not easily accessible to the layman, but reproductions of which are frequently met with in books on the history of art. In addition to religious subjects, the whole courtly company which lives and breathes in the legends of the Round Table, kings and knights, poets, minstrels, and fair damsels, hawking, jousting, banqueting and playing chess, everything which stirred the poet's imagination, is depicted. The spirit of the romances which in modern times enchanted the English Pre-Raphaelites, six centuries ago provided food and stimulus to the industrious illuminators whose names have long been forgotten.
If the art of miniature painting never rose—excepting in its wider consequences—to universal significance, mediaeval architecture stands before our eyes magnificent as on the first day. Until the middle of the twelfth century the monumental structures of Europe were directly influenced by the later Hellenic civilisation. The Byzantine basilica was slowly transformed into the Neo-Latin house, and thus, in this important domain also, Europe drew her inspirations from antiquity. But only the ground-plan of the Gothic cathedral, that is to say, the idea of a nave with side-aisles, was traditional and borrowed from Neo-Latin models. From this invisible ground-plan rose something absolutely original and autochthonic. This new, specifically Central-European style of architecture was developed on soil where there were no antique buildings to stem the new life with their overwhelming domination, and to bar the way of artistic inspiration with their ominous "I am perfection!" In every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, until at last the Renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an excellent fertiliser for the new art. The essence of the Gothic style is the dissolution of all that is heavy and material—the victory of spirit over matter. Walls were broken up into pillars and soaring arcades; monotonous facework was tolerated less and less, and every available inch was moulded into a living semblance. The result may be studied in the incomparable façades of many of the cathedrals in the North of France; and in tower-pieces almost vibrating with life and passion such as that of St. Stephen's in Vienna. The conflict between matter and pure form is settled—for the first and only time—in Gothic architecture. The Greek temple with its correct proportions possessed no more than perfection of form without spiritual admixture; it was perfect as marble statues, which are an end in themselves, and do not point the way to spiritual truths. Gothic architecture is probably unique in its blending of æsthetic perfection of form and infinite spiritual wealth; in the fusion of these two elements in a higher intuition. It is the balance of the two characteristics of genius, inexhaustible wealth and the striving for harmonious expression. It marked the first powerful working of the Teutonic spirit on the world; its metaphysical yearning together with a genuine love of nature, found in this art its own peculiar traditionless expression, just as it found expression in the newly-evolved mysticism which no longer re-echoed Aristotle and his commentators, but drew inspiration from its own intuition. For this reason Gothic architecture never became acclimatised in Italy. The soaring tower, more especially, never appealed to the Italian architect.
Ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters, whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration from nature. The forest trees of Central Europe became pillars; grouped together, apparently haphazard, they reflected a mystical nature pulsing with mysterious life. Spreading and ramifying, growing together in an impenetrable network of foliage, they bore buds, leaves and fruits. Every pinnacle became a sprig, even the pendant icicles reappeared in the gable-boards. But the assimilation of natural objects did not cease there; tiny animals, light as a feather, run over the tendrils, lizards, birds, even the gnomes of German mythology, find their way into the Gothic cathedral. Not the traditional Greek acanthus leaf, but the foliage of the North-European oak grows under the hands of the sculptor. Even the cross is twisted into a flower; the sacro-sanct symbol of the Christian religion is newly conceived, newly interpreted and moulded so that it may have a place. The Gothic cathedral with its soaring arches free from all heaviness is the perfect expression of that cosmic feeling that inspired Eckhart and reached its artistic perfection in Dante.
But the soul of the mystic in stone contains the same elements as the soul of Eckhart, who was also a schoolman. The confused and complex scholastic world of ideas which corresponded so well with the mediaeval temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from Paris, is closely akin to Gothic architecture. For the Gothic style and scholastic thought share the characteristics of the infinitely constructive and infinitely cleft, the infinitely subtle and ornamental—perhaps the last trace of the spirit of the north as compared with the simplicity of the south.
As if from fertile soil, a world of sculptured men and beasts sprang from the façades of the new cathedrals. The figures on the cathedrals of Naumburg, Strassburg, Rheims, Amiens and Chartres are far superior to the artistic achievements of the dawning renascence in Italy. They are real men, full of life and passion, no longer symbols of the transcendental glory of the world beyond the grave. "All rigidity had melted, everything which had been stiff and hard had become supple; the emotion of the soul flows through every curve and line; the set faces of the statues are illuminated by a smile which seems to come from within, the afterglow of inward bliss" (Worringer).