So long as bishops, priests, elders, deacons and laymen, were occupied in trying to shape the new spirit into words, art appeared to slumber. A too strong storm-wind of dissension on metaphysical niceties, of mystic and dogmatic hair-splittings, hindered a plastic treatment of Christianity. Gnostics, Nestorians, Manichæans, Donatists, Arians, and Athanasians, &c., wasted the energies of the early Christian artists, with their wild distinctions, their incomprehensible differences. Quarrels as to whether a blessing was more efficacious when bestowed with three or only with two uplifted fingers; whether crosses of equal parts, or crosses in which one division was smaller than the other, were more powerful, did not promote the productive ability of artists. When, under Constantine, Christianity was elevated to the rank of a State religion, churches were built in honour of the new faith. In the West the Roman Basilicæ were given up to the religious worship of the Christians, and in time, mixed with Teuton forms, produced the Romanesque style. In the East a lively revival of Asiatic forms, of Indian, Assyrian, and Babylonian patterns, took place, and from these combinations we have the so-called Byzantine style.
The general characteristics of the early Christian style, in which the form of the Roman basilica predominated, were the following:—The apsis, the seat of the bishop and clergy, was semicircular. Between the apsis and the nave stood the altar, or rather the common table, canopied by a baldachin supported by columns. The walls were covered with figures of Christ. The main body consisted of a broad and lofty central nave, on the two sides of which there were two lower passages, divided by rows of columns, supporting the upper wall of the nave either by a common architrave, or by strong circular arches. The upper wall was provided with large broad windows, some being also placed in the low walls of the side-aisles. The apsis was kept in mystic darkness.
The threefold division of the Indian, Egyptian, and Hebrew temples was carefully kept up. The priests assembled in the apsis; the worshippers in the hall or the galleries; and the penitents or sinners stopped at the entrance. Of this period, we have the Basilica of Reparatus, in Tingitanum (now Orléansville) in Algeria, and another in El Hayz, on a small oasis, in the Libyan desert. In the former the pillars were probably square, and the apsis is not marked outside. The latter is furnished with vaulted aisles, adorned with pilasters and niches in the Romano-Egyptian style.
Under Constantine, Christian churches of larger dimensions were constructed; marble decorations and a profusion of columns were common. The five aisles still predominated, the Athanasians not having yet succeeded in establishing the Trinitarian doctrine. St. Peter’s at Rome (rebuilt in the 16th century); Sta. Croce at Jerusalem, and the Church of Sta. Maria at Bethlehem, built by Helena, the wife of Constantine, were splendid specimens of the pure early Christian style. The transept before the raised apsis was an innovation. The central aisle (the nave) rises in independent loftiness. The galleries are dispensed with, as the dimensions of the building are considerably increased. Light is admitted through windows in the lofty central aisle. The lines all tend towards the altar, and the high tribune. The nave is separated from the transept by a lofty arch supported by pillars. The transept is provided with broad windows, throwing the greatest amount of light on the altar, by which means a sublime effect is attained. St. Peter’s at Rome, and Sta. Maria at Bethlehem, are provided with cross-beams, which do not accord with the superstructure, which is too heavy. Before these churches, in a court-yard, stood the fountain. These fountains were common to all the Indian, Egyptian, and Hebrew temples, because the sanctity of water was recognised by all the religious sects of the Southeast. San Paolo fuori le mura belonged to this class of churches. It was constructed by Theodosius and Honorius. ‘The mighty apsis, about eighty feet in breadth, is increased in effect by a lofty transept, which stretches in front of it, across the whole nave. The body of the church has five aisles. Eighty granite columns, connected by circular arches, rise in four rows in order to divide the aisles, and to support the upper wall of the central aisle, and the framework of the roof. The main aisle opens into the transept with a broad and lofty triumphal arch, which rests on two colossal columns. A splendid atrium, surrounded with colonnades, was added to the front, completing the plan of this basilica.’ The high walls above the central isle fulfilled a double purpose: they vividly expressed an expanding tendency upwards, and filled the soul with the idea of the infinite. This tendency was still more strongly expressed in ecclesiastical or Gothic architecture. Scenes from the life of Christ and his disciples were painted, and, in imitation of Roman decoration, gilded panels and marble pavings were freely used. After the fourth century the five aisles were gradually abandoned, and only three were used, symbolic of the Trinity. We have here a kind of Indian or rather Buddhistic renaissance.
When Ravenna became the seat of the Byzantine Exarchs (viceroys), the Ostrogoth influences which were perceptible under Theodoric vanished, and a freer organisation of the sacred edifices was introduced by the addition of an independent bell-tower, reminding us of the Buddhistic towers or pillars, the Irish round towers, the minarets of the Mahomedans, and the obelisks of the Egyptians. The tower rose in a cylindrical form, without tapering. The roofs of the churches were generally flat. Strong wall pillars, connected by circular arches, framed the windows as a repetition of the arcades below. The capitals retained a double row of acanthus leaves, but the imposts became stronger, taking the form of a coffin or a small altar, adorned with crosses, or the monogram of Christ. The churches of St. Vitale and St. Apollinare in Classe, are models of this transition style, which formed the link between the Romanesque and the Byzantine. In these we find Greek marble columns, profuse mosaics on gold grounds, panels and medallions filled with historical scenes, or the portraits of bishops, prophets, saints, and martyrs; the decoration is heavy in outlines, the forms and figures too naturalistic; the taste gorgeous without refinement; and the technical treatment rough and defective.
Whilst the architectural and ornamental styles were receiving fixed forms as the pure Romanesque of the West—through the influence of the Teutons, who became masters of Italy and worked with greater stiffness, simplicity, and angularity—Byzantine architecture assumed, from the time of Justinian, a peculiarly pompous, Asiatic type. The dome prevailed; the ground-plan was composed of squares and circles. Ceremonies and mysteries borrowed from the Egyptians, Persians, and Romans, and the division of priests into different castes, required a different arrangement of the building. There was a place for the high and one for the low clergy; another for the laymen; the galleries were, in the old Jewish fashion, assigned to the women; and, lastly, there was a place for the penitent. These divisions and subdivisions induced confusion and disunion in the whole plan. Many of the Christian buildings have become, in their turn, Mahomedan mosques, just as the Roman basilicæ of old were turned into Christian churches.
The mightiest and the most gigantic of all Byzantine churches is undoubtedly that of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. First the building was a temple dedicated to ‘Holy Wisdom,’ in the ancient or classic meaning of the word. The edifice was destroyed by fire, and rebuilt by Justinian in five years (A.D. 532–537). Twenty years later it was much damaged by an earthquake. The injured dome was removed, raised somewhat higher upon strengthened counterfoils, and finished A.D. 563. The architects were Anthemis of Tralles, and Isidorus of Miletus. The ground-plan, ornamentation, and construction, aim in combination at one single result—surprise. There is a contradiction between lengths and circles, destroying all effect of simple perspective. The various cupolas, arches, and half-cupolas, connected with great technical skill, have no organically united life. An antediluvian world opens its gates to us. There is everywhere something astounding and gorgeous, but we are unable to discern the necessity for the existence of the parts, to form a coherent total. The galleries with their colonnades puzzle us. The outer square-form, overtowered by a mighty cupola, and by half-cupolas, is as incongruous as the ornamentation of the interior. The shafts of the columns are amongst the finest specimens of Roman architecture. Walls and pillars are adorned with variegated marble panels in mosaic patterns. The roofs of the dome and semi-domes are covered with gold mosaics, set in coloured ornamented frames, interspersed with figurative tapestry-like representations. Christ, saints, and prophets, are suspended in golden clouds. The effect on an untutored mind is perfectly intoxicating. Though we do not underrate the fully developed system of stone-roof construction, we must draw the attention of our readers to the heavy and shapeless capitals with the scarcely recognisable Ionic volutes, combined with Corinthian leaf-work; all outlines being smothered by over-ornamentation, destroying the beautiful effect of the antique by a clumsy impost. Byzantine architecture remained stationary for hundreds of years. The religious spirit went hand in hand with their stiff, lifeless art. Ignorance and credulity engendered in the East a boundless intolerance of all divergence of opinion, to which was added an equally boundless toleration of falsehoods and frauds, so soon as these means served to support the received opinions. An intellectual standstill was the result of these principles, and acted on art, rendering it in general as well as in detail an unwieldy mixture of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman forms, overloaded with Asiatic filigree composed of lines drawn from Christian symbolism. The Byzantine style of ornamentation will always be, like that of China, a strange element to us. However much the ingenuity of the winding, coiling, and recoiling lines, interspersed with small and large jewels, may interest us, though we may gaze at the profusion of gold mixed with gaudy colours with a kind of vague bewilderment, Byzantine art can never appeal to our sense of beauty.
A most important branch of Byzantine ornamentation was the treatment of metals. For flat decoration, in the style of embroidery, nothing can excel the use of metal, be it gold, silver, bronze, or steel, or a combination of all these. There was a fantastic originality in these productions which, when combined with an assiduous study of the antique, may aid us in many instances to produce excellent specimens of book-covers, patterns for ornamented salvers, caskets, cups, candlesticks, crosses, &c. Byzantine art, however, is the very opposite of classic art. Repose, as a consequence of the liveliest vibration of forms, and uniformity through a rich variation of patterns, are the real elements of Byzantine and Oriental art; in contradistinction to classic art, which is based on the authority of purpose and a correct subordination of details. This is the reason why the free but well-systematised ornaments of classic Greece were revived at this period with Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian textile patterns in metal, stone, or colours. Nothing could be more appropriate for this mode of ornamentation than leaf-work, flowers, creepers, &c., in the arrangement of which, the stern law of a well-regulated distribution of the repeated forms must be observed, to bring about a thorough balance between rest and vibration, variety and uniformity.
Whilst Byzantium was exhausting all its powers, and socially and artistically preparing to fall a prey to iconoclasts and Mahomedans; the movement, next in importance to the establishment of Christianity, viz. the migration of the Northern Teutons, took place.
We intend to group Kelts, Normans, Franks, Ostrogoths, and Westrogoths or Visigoths, Alemanni, Burgundians, Vinilians, Ingavorians, Istavorians, Vandals, Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Markomanni, Rugi, Ubi, Gurgerni, Herulians, Bojoarians, Gepidi, Quadi, Marsingi, Sclavons, &c., all under the one name of North-European Ayrans. It is an imperative duty, with the art-historian, to group these scattered elements together, according to some visible signs, which serve to prove that, wherever we find an average facial angle of 90°, and an amount of brain averaging 92 cubic inches, we have to deal with the Aryan group of humanity. We avoid by this means divisions and sub-divisions ad infinitum, and the danger of losing ourselves in a labyrinth of petty national animosities and jealousies. Art, based on ethnology, and a study of climatological influences, has an immensely Christianising power. We see in the common language of forms, a common bond between those who formed themselves into small political communities, each in turn arrogating to themselves a kind of ‘chosen-people’ superiority, and turning their powers against that very mother-stock from which they received life, vigour, a common language, and a common mode of thinking on supernatural matters, and the phenomena of nature. The Kelts, Normans, Saxons, Danes, Swedes, Teutons, Germans (Garmans, Wahrmans, or Wehrmans, Brahmans), are all of the same stock. Separated at different periods from their Trans-and Cis-Himâlâyan ancestors, they lost more or less of their old religious notions, customs, and manners, according to their lesser or greater intermixture with the Turanian substrata of aborigines, who peopled the countries wherein they settled. Next to the aspect of the country in which they established themselves, its climate must be taken into consideration. The Aryan, snowed in for six months in Scandinavia, or living on the coasts of the Baltic, obliged to fight for every foot of fertile ground with a boisterous and obstinate nature, must have developed otherwise than the self-same Aryan who, as Kelt, took up his abode on an island everlastingly green with refreshing verdure, and was insulated from outer influences for long periods, being thus led to look upon this detached spot as the very centre of the universe around which the five parts of our globe, the myriads of suns, stars, planets, and comets revolved. Between the Aryan-Kelt and the Aryan-Frank or Norman, there will be a difference, brought about by the progress of time and a freer intermixture with other branches of the mother-stock who attained a higher kind of civilisation. The Aryans in India lost themselves in metaphysical abstractions, and made of fire, water, and air a theogony in which the anthropomorphic element was altogether effaced. The Aryans in the north of Europe, in their cosmogony, held to the original conceptions. They had to battle with fire, water, and air, in the form of volcanoes, seas, rain, snow, hail and storms; and finding that with their intellectual power they could master these elements, they soon deprived them of their individual godhead, and the whole earth, with its loves and passions, its kindnesses and destructive tendencies, was looked upon as a living being. They also knew of two regions on earth—not of a spiritually created paradise and hell, but of a Muspel-heim in the south, and a Nifel-heim in the north: the one giving warmth, heat, life; the other cold and death; the one light, the other night; the one summer, and the other winter. According to the Aryans of the north of Europe the first cosmical heat produced the giant Ymir, or Angelmir, who was nourished by the sacred cow Audumbla, from which ran four streams of milk, the four seasons. Like Brahmă, Ymir had a son and a daughter; the daughter grew out of his arm, and the son out of his foot. The Brahman was the outgrowth of Brahmă’s mouth: the Kshattriya sprung from his arms, the Vaisya grew out of his thighs, and the S’udra out of his feet. Ymir’s son became the father of the Hirmthursen (giants). By licking huge rocks of sandstone the cow became the mother of Buri. We thus pass from the pastoral into the agricultural state, and have the legend of Jupiter and Io before us. Buri had a son, Bor, who had three sons. Odin, Guodan, Wuodan, Wodan, the All-pervader—the ‘Allvater’ (father of all), Willi and We—air, fire and water. Wodan was also Baal, or the sun-god, in which capacity he had only one eye (the sun); he was also Apollo, the god of poetry, and of all things that love light and goodness. He was also the warfaring god who led the people to battle, and protected the valorous and virtuous. He had to fight against the giant Ymir with his brothers. A reminiscence of the wars of the Greek gods with the Titans, &c.; the Indian Vritaghna or the Persian Veretaghna, with the evil spirits of darkness, or the Egyptian Horus with Typhon. Out of the dead body of Ymir, the sons of Bor created everything. They formed the earth of his flesh, the rocks of his bones, the skull became heaven, and his blood furnished seas, rivers, and streams. They then took four dwarfs and placed Austri (in the East), Westri (in the West), Sudri (in the South), and Nordri (in the North), to guard the four corners of the heavens. Wuodan then embraced the earth, and created his mighty son Thor, Donar, Thunder, the protector of his mother-earth, and the enemy of the wicked. He sent his lightnings against giants, purified the air, dispersed frost and cold, killed the demons of heat, silenced the destructive storms, built bridges, made high-roads, furthered the intercourse of man with man, and promoted civilisation. The second son of Wuodan was Zio (Ziu, Zeus, Jovis, Síva, also Tyr-Tiu or Tusco), the god of battles, the destroyer. The third son was Fro (Froho, Freyr, free), the happy god, the god of love and marriage. Who does not recognise in Thor, Froh, and Ziu—Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—Jupiter, Apollo and Mars? As with the Aryans on the Ganges, so also with those on the Rhine, the Elbe or the Weser, and in Scandinavia, the passive element of nature was embodied in female divinities. Hertha, Nerthus (the earth), corresponds to S’ris, Hera, Ceres, Isis; Holda is closely allied with Hilda, Hela, Hell (the hidden), the goddess of death, Durga; and Freyja represents Venus, the goddess of love. These Aryans of northern Europe were known to the ancients as Hyperboræans. They were tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired, addicted to fighting, and sport. Some of them erected, in analogy with Buddhists and Egyptians, long thin towers reaching high into the air, pointing mystically upwards. The ‘Crux Ansata’ is reproduced in the Irish crosses, and their mode of ornamentation, with its twisted rope-like windings, and its serpent-like entanglements, points to Indian patterns of a very ancient type. When these Aryans of the north of Europe first dashed into the south, and destroyed the Roman colossus, they embraced Christianity with all the fervour of their unbiassed hearts. Entirely given up to the culture of the wild powers of nature, free from all metaphysical subtleties—the genuine men of wild oak, pine, and beech forests—they had no Vedas, no Homer, no Zoroaster, no Hermes, and no Moses to forget; they, in fact, only knew of an Allvater, because no two Teuton tribes held the same opinions on metaphysics. They had only one common ground, honest work—industry (at those times concentrated on warfare); and therefore they received Christianity with the greatest eagerness, and became the only upholders, expounders, and propagators of a religion for which their hearts were created. They recognised in Christ’s words, what they heard in whispers in their legends, and in the experiences of their wild life—that we ought to love others as ourselves. They added some of their old superstitions to the pure faith, which they found already much impregnated with Egyptian, Roman, and Indian signs and symbols. In the beginning, whilst Christianity was spreading all over Europe, they cultivated a mixture of North European and Roman forms in architecture as well as in ornamentation. They constructed their churches with plans borrowed from ancient times, and freely used geometrical symbols—for the sign of the Indian Trimurty, that of the shields of David or Solomon, and that of the Trinity, did not differ. The pentagram is still made on every loaf the Germans bake; it was a Druidical mystic sign, and now serves good Christians to protect their bread from being eaten by evil spirits. If we look at our Tudor roses, or St. Katherine’s wheels, we may clearly trace their origin to the Zodiacs of Egypt, used as signs of the Makrokosm. The Teuton minds found themselves suddenly dazzled by Christian theology. Greek, Alexandrian, Nestorian, Arian, Athanasian, Jewish and Christian mystics and casuists, already abounded in the sunny Muspel-heim, in which the Teutons settled, and they had to exchange their gloomy, foggy, and stormy Nifel-heim of reality, for a spiritual Nifel-heim of doctrinal controversies. They turned their elfs and sprites, their kobolds and gnomes, their spirits of air, water, and fire, into so many evil spirits. They looked upon the literature of the Greeks and Romans, of which they knew nothing, as the work of Beelzebub. Art was an enchantress of the senses, and sculpture invented by the father of all ‘lies,’ to deceive us with mock-creatures, to seduce men, and to cheat them of their share in everlasting salvation. In this gloomy spirit the newly converted Teuton Christians built churches, and, sunken in the most atrocious superstition, occupied themselves with the casting out of devils. Nature was, in fact, one grand dwelling-place for demons. Plague, poverty, and sickness, were attributed to the agency of the enemy of mankind. Epileptic fits and insanity were signs that the demon had taken possession of unfortunate wretches, who were either tormented or put to death. Satan, with his legions of devils, continually harassed mankind. To mortify and kill the body by fasting, chanting, whipping, praying, and self-inflicted mortification, was thought the only worthy and cheerful occupation of mankind. In addition to these religious tendencies, wars were waged with merciless cruelty, either in favour of, or against the new Christian superstition. A few so-called learned theologians studied the Jewish Cabala, Egyptian mysteries, Zoroastrian magical calculations, Greek sophisms, and Alexandrian Neo-Platonism. How could art have flourished under such circumstances? Incantations, astrological calculations, alchemical experiments, were the order of the day. The few learned men, whether architects or others, as soon as they produced anything astounding, were said to have received their ideas or plans, or their powers, from the devil. Who was to create any beautifully shaped product of art, surrounded by such misgivings?