Fig. 14.
On this plain and practical result M. Viollet le Duc (of whose admirable essay on vaulting, together with those of Dr. Whewell and Professor Willis, I have made free use) makes the following striking remarks:—
“It had required fifty years for the architects of the end of the twelfth century to arrive, from the still Romanesque vaults of Autun and Vezelay, at this great result; and from this moment the entire construction of religious edifices was derived from the disposition of the vaults; the form and dimension of the pillars—their spacing; the window-openings—their width and height; the position and direction of the buttresses—the importance of their pinnacler; the strength, the number, and curvature of the arched buttresses; the disposing and the carrying off the rain water; the system of covering,—all proceed from the combination of the vaulting. The vaults govern the ossature of the monument to a point to which it would be impossible to raise it otherwise than by commencing rigorously to plan them previously to laying the first courses of the structure. This rule is so well established that if we see a church of the thirteenth century destroyed to the level of the bases, and of which the plan alone remains, we can with certainty trace the plan of the vaults, and indicate the direction of all the arches and their thickness. At the end of the fourteenth century the rigour of the system is still more absolute; we can trace, in examining the base of an edifice, not only the number and direction of the arches of the vaults, and know their strength, but the number of their mouldings and even their profiles. In the fifteenth century it is the arches (mouldings) themselves which descend to the floor, and the pillars are only vertical fasces formed of all the members of these arches. After this, we demand how is it that serious men have been able to repulse, and still do repulse, the study of the architecture of the Middle Ages as having been only produced by chance?”
It will be seen from what I have above stated that the order in which the pointed arch was successively adopted for different parts of a building, and the motives which led to its adoption, may be roughly classified under the heads of Statical, Geometrical, and Æsthetical, or positions in which it was demanded for soundness of construction, for the mathematical agreement of parts, and for harmony and beauty of effect.
The first head embraces all wide-spanned arches, especially those I have pointed out as the first in which it made its appearance: the transverse arches of wide vaulting, also arches carrying towers, and others bearing great weight on their crown, and all which are defective in abutment, or demand the addition of buttresses (for remember that, though buttresses were rendered sources of beauty, they originated in necessity, and the aim was to keep their projection within bounds, rather than unduly to increase it). The second, or geometrical class, includes, primarily, the narrower arches of oblong vaulting; for, even had the transverse section continued round, the pointed arch must soon have suggested itself for the narrow arches of the sides; and though for a time the idea did not occur, the necessity of it is only the more apparent in the want of harmony, the undue stilting, and the loss of clerestory space which arose from its neglect. Under the same head come all other cases of irregularly formed vaulting in which the sides differ in width, and arches of varied proportion are therefore needed. Of the same kind are many other cases in which arches of different widths are in the same range, and where—though the statical view would demand that the widest span should have the strongest arch—geometrical agreement suggests the contrary; as, for instance, in the choir of St. Germain des Pres, at Paris, and many others, where the side arches are all round; but those of the apse, being narrower, are pointed. These two pressing necessities having once established the use of the pointed arch in a large number of the most important positions, a natural feeling for harmony would come in to suggest its use in many others. First we may mention windows under the narrow compartments of groining—as in clerestories, apsidal chapels, etc.,—where, as soon as the pointed arch was used for the vaulting, the round-topped window would present a certain degree of discord, as we see at St. Cross,[8] and at St. Joseph’s Chapel[9] at Glastonbury. Then again, as windows became more elongated, the round arch became ill-proportioned to the jambs; and generally, as the architecture acquired a more aspiring tendency, the pointed arch was found more congenial with its spirit; so that, little by little, from being an exception, used from mere constructional expediency, it became the prevailing feature of the style; the semicircle being reserved for those positions only in which want of space forbade the more elevated form. Still, however, it was never abandoned, and in every period of Pointed architecture we find it occasionally making its appearance, used from motives of convenience alone, as the pointed arch had at first been by reason of its strength.
After this it will be seen of how little importance it is to inquire whence the form is derived; for it was introduced not as a matter of taste, but of utility—not as a change of style, but to meet the practical requirements of that already in use. The pointed arch was, in fact, as early (or thereabouts) in its invention as the round;—it is foreshadowed in the works of the Egyptians, the Pelasgi, and the Etrurians; it was used by the Romans, and, I believe, by the Byzantines and other Oriental Christians, and by the Sassanian Persians, and was from an early period the prevailing arch among the Saracens. It is absurd, then, to suppose it unknown to the inhabitants of Western Europe, who were in constant communication with the East; and the most natural thing to expect was that, as soon as they wanted it, they would make use of it; though there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that they were especially reminded of it, in consequence of the two circumstances of the Crusades and Norman Conquest of Sicily. In the case last named, indeed, the conquerors had at once adopted it, simply because it was the prevailing arch of the country, and, as Mr. Gally Knight remarks, “with no scientific object, and without any reference to the vertical principle.”
The wonder which has been expressed at the introduction of the pointed arch reminds me of a very homely tale, which I must apologise for repeating before so grave an assembly. An unimaginative individual, on visiting the Falls of Niagara, was greatly perplexed at the astonishment expressed by his companions; and on one of them exclaiming to him—“Is it not a most wonderful fall?”—replied, “Wonderful? no! I see nothing wonderful in it. Why, what’s to hinder the water from falling?” Much the same reply is applicable to the wondering inquiries after the source of the pointed arch. When the builders of the twelfth century found they wanted it; when they had seen its form in the first proposition of Euclid; when they had actually used it hundreds of times in their intersecting arcades; when they knew that it was constantly used in the East, with which they were connected by trade, science, pilgrimage, and war; and when they knew that their brethren had used it in Sicily, and their fellow-countrymen in Provence; we may well ask, with our unsentimental friend, “What was to hinder them from using it?”
Simple, however, and obvious as were the means, the result was magical! It is not the materials of art to which its expression is due, but the sentiment—the heart—the soul of those who use it. This particular form of arch had long been used without one hint at such expression resulting from it. It had been highly conducive to beauty, but little, if at all, to elevation of sentiment: when, however, it came into use as an aid to the upward strivings of the architects of Northern Christendom, as an element placed in the hands of men who had been labouring for centuries, with all their energy, to render their architecture expressive of the ennobling sentiments of religion—it became, in their hands, a means of perfecting that solemnity of expression which the Romanesque buildings possessed in so wonderful a degree, and of adding the most exalted sublimity to its hitherto stern and rigid grandeur; just as the simple action of gravity gives to the Niagara Falls a sublime and overwhelming majesty; such as the same cause acting under different conditions has no tendency to produce.
I must apologise for having occupied so long a time on these merely preliminary and, perhaps, not very interesting topics. I hope in my next lecture to be able to give an outline of the transition as it showed itself in the different countries, and also to point out and illustrate the changes in the decorative and more purely artistic features of architecture by which it was accompanied.