Fig. 320.—Gate of Moret. (Twelfth Century.)
While the nobles, jealous and suspicious, sheltered themselves in the shadow of their donjons built with many strategical contrivances and of substantial materials; while the large and small towns were surrounded with deep moats, high walls, impregnable towers, the most primitive simplicity presided over the construction of private dwellings. Stone hardly ever, and brick but seldom, figured among the number of the materials employed. Sawed or squared timbers serving as ribs, mud or clay filling up the interstices, were all that was at first required for the erection of houses as small as they were comfortless, and following each other in irregular lines along the narrow streets. The beams of the corbels, it is true, began to be adorned with carvings and paintings, the façades with panes (glass) of different colours; but we must reach the last half of the fifteenth century before we see the resources of architecture applied to the erection and ornamentation of private houses. Moreover, faith was already growing weak; and no longer was it possible to direct all the resources of an entire province to the honour of the Deity by the erection of a church; the use of gunpowder, by revolutionising the art of war, came to lessen, if it did not annihilate, the vast strength of walls; the decline of feudalism itself had commenced; and, lastly, the enfranchisement of corporations gave rise to a perfectly new order of individuals who took their place in history. We must refer to this period the house of Jacques Cœur, Bourges; the Hôtel de Sens, Paris ([Fig. 322]); the Palais de Justice, Rouen; and those town-halls in which the belfry was then considered as a sort of palladium, in whose shade the sacred rights of the community sheltered themselves. It is in our (French) northern towns—St. Quentin, Arras, Noyon; and in the ancient cities of Belgium—Brussels ([Fig. 323]), Louvain, Ypres, that these edifices assume the most sumptuous character.
Fig. 321.—Gate of St. John, with Drawbridge, Provins. (Fourteenth Century.)
In Germany, where for a time it reigned almost exclusively, Gothic art established the cathedrals of Erfurt, of Cologne, Fribourg, and of Vienna; then it died away in the growth of the Flamboyant style. In England, after having left some magnificent examples of pure inspiration, it found its decline in the attenuated meagreness and the complicated ornamentation of the style called Perpendicular ogival. If it penetrated also into Spain, it was to contend with difficulty against the mighty Moorish school, which had too many imposing chefs-d’œuvre in the past to surrender without resistance the country of its former triumphs ([Fig. 324]). In Italy it clashed not only with the Latin and Byzantine schools, but also with a style that, just beginning to form itself, was soon to dispute with it the empire of taste, and to dethrone it in that very land which had been its cradle. The cathedrals of Assisi, of Siena, of Milan, are the splendid works in which its influence triumphed over local traditions and over the Renaissance that was preparing to follow; yet we must not think that it succeeded even there in rendering itself absolutely the master, as it had done on the Rhenish or British territories. Sacrifices were made in its favour; but these sacrifices did not amount to an entire immolation.
Fig. 322.—Doorways of the Hôtel de Sens, at Paris; the last remaining portion of the Hôtel Royal de
Saint-Pol, built in the reign of Charles V. (Fourteenth Century.)
When we use the word Renaissance, we seem to be speaking of a return to an age already gone by, of the resurrection of a period that had passed away. It is not strictly in this sense that the word must be understood in the present instance.