CHAPTER VIII
THE GOTHIC SCULPTORS AND THE RISE OF
ITALIAN SCULPTURE AT PISA.
(1000 a.d. TO 1350 a.d.)
The period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of communal life in the Netherlands, Normandy, and Lombardy, saw sculpture at a lower ebb than at any time for 1200 years. Such buildings as Santa Sophia in the Eastern Empire and the basilicas of Ravenna in the Western, stand to witness that the artistic sense itself was still alive. But no great political or social force called forth the craftsmanship of the sculptor. As the Dark Ages drew to a close, however, a change came about. Mankind once more sought to find expression for its deepest imaginations and beliefs through sculptured marble and bronze.
We may roughly fix the date of the rebirth of sculpture at 1000 a.d. Scientific accuracy would perhaps demand references to Charlemagne. The historian of art, however, seeks causes of the greatest magnitude. He must point to vast eruptions of human energy and emotion, not to brick upon brick erections of paltry feelings, if he is to really account for the creation of a great art. We are, therefore, safe in starting from the feverish anxiety with which Christendom awaited the advent of the year 1000 after our Lord. The Millennium had expired. Satan was to be loosed. Men knew not what to expect. He who made a will or executed a deed started with such a phrase as “Seeing that the end of the world is at hand.” The very indefiniteness of the fears only served to increase the terror. Month after month crept by. Nothing untoward happened. At last the mystic year passed. The revulsion of feeling was immense, the immediate result being an enormous devotional impulse, the evidence of which remains to-day in the great number of ecclesiastical buildings erected in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Let us not be misunderstood. The year 1000 a.d. was not the cause of the new spirit. It simply marks the time. To understand why the men of these centuries instinctively lavished wealth and labour upon the cathedrals and abbeys and their sculptured decorations, we must picture the social and political state of Western Europe at the time.
During the years following the break up of the Empire hordes of heathen invaders had poured into the Roman world. The torrent was not stayed until the age of Charles the Great. The first result of the beating of this human tide upon the rocks of the old civilization had been a fund of nervous energy unequalled since the struggle with Carthage had produced vital force sufficient to enable Rome to conquer and rule the Western world. But this fund of energy needed concentration and direction. Politically, Western Europe in the eleventh century was a heterogeneous collection of feudal states. It was soon evident that the only common interests were those aroused by the belief in a common religious creed. In the midst of a general social chaos, the only really organized community was the Catholic Church. What wonder then that, in search for some sure resting-place, Christendom submitted itself to Rome? By the time of Gregory VII. (1073 a.d.) the occupant of the Chair of St. Peter had become all-powerful. Hobbes’ picture of the Papacy—the ghost of the Empire sitting crowned on its own grave—had been realized to the full. As the Festival at Olympia had been the rallying-point for the Greek world, so the meeting at Clermont, where the First Crusade was inaugurated, witnessed to the only unity Christendom could then imagine. This is why the artistic energies of Western Europe after 1000 a.d. followed channels suggested by the Roman Church.
THE GOTHIC SCULPTORS
For one reason and another, the first country to drag itself from the intellectual torpor which had affected Western Europe for hundreds of years was France. The commercial classes, particularly in the north-west, shook themselves free from the dominion of the feudal lords earlier than their brethren, say, in Northern Italy. As material wealth increased, the French bourgeoisie naturally sought for a means of expressing its pride in the communal life which it had created. But in doing so, it could not rid itself of the memory of the even deeper emotions aroused by the realization of the co-ordinating power of the Catholic Church. The cry, “A cathedral for Amiens, a city church for Rouen,” made much the same appeal to the imaginations of these Frenchmen as the idea of a Parthenon had made to the Athenians 1500 years earlier.
Previously the religious buildings had mostly been abbeys, and the property of the religious orders. Now the laity desired to do what they could. The finest French cathedrals were built by the great lay guilds. Their foundations were planted in the very centre of social and communal life. In this respect, the great Gothic churches of France differ markedly from those of our own island. Nôtre Dame, Bayeux, Chartres, Bourges, Rheims, and the rest are to be contrasted with such a typical English Cathedral as Lichfield, which nestles among the trees and makes, with the Close, a little world entirely apart from the clatter and chatter of the market square. Just because a French cathedral was so direct an expression of popular emotion, it was as a rule a less balanced artistic creation. The builders of Salisbury were not driven by the pricking desire to out-top the topmost which impelled the French Gothic architects and masons. But the French cathedral voiced more truly the inner feelings of the people to whose heart-burnings and soul-aspirations it was due.