Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 2

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

Of Egyptian architecture we have little but of vast tombs and colossal temples; of Assyrian and Persian structures much the same may be said. Of Greek we have little but the temples, and a few public works of a monumental character; while of Roman architecture we have works of every possible description, meeting every demand, necessity, or wish. Such works must have existed during older periods, but were probably on an inferior scale and of ephemeral construction; but those of Rome were marked and permanent in their structure, and have thus been handed down to our own day, so that we may say that the whole range of their architecture is perfectly known to us; and, so far as we are concerned, it is the first of ancient styles which can be called complete.

As time went on, we find the arch, the vault, and the dome asserting, ever more and more, their supremacy. The influence of the Christian Church followed this on in the most marked manner; and, when the seat of empire was removed to a new, an Eastern and Christian metropolis, where no great monuments of older or Pagan art existed, this change would appear to have gone on with yet increased rapidity.

We have of late years become better acquainted with the course of this change through the discovery of the ancient cities of Central Syria, and their illustration by the Count de Vogüé, which show us what the late Roman and early Byzantine buildings of every class were on a scale suited to provincial towns, though influenced by the local tendency to megalithic construction which pervades the old architectures of Syria. I have not time to dwell upon these most instructive remains, which, beginning in Pagan and going on into Christian times, culminate in the vast and splendid dome erected over the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites. I, however, commend De Vogüé’s work to your attention.

In my lectures on the Dome I have said almost as much on Byzantine architecture as is perhaps needful for the purpose of this rapid sketch. I may add, however, that it was a purely or almost purely arcuated style, though yet more pre-eminently a domed style, and most of all a purely Christian style; that it rejoiced in surface decoration, in painting and mosaic, and in marble incrustation and inlay, though, from religious scruples, it discouraged sculpture. It delighted in every form of Oriental splendour, and the representation which its mosaics afford us of its secular buildings, when in full perfection, shows us that, though splendid solemnity characterised its churches, gaiety was a marked element in its more ordinary architecture. It is true that the gradual decay of the Empire caused a decline in the artistic quality of its buildings; yet we must admit its architecture to be one of the boldest and most original of developments; and we owe to Byzantium a heavy debt of gratitude for having kept alight the lamp of art during the long and dreary ages when Western Europe was trampled down by barbarian hordes, its arts destroyed, and its civilisation well-nigh forgotten.

It was from this still glimmering lamp that Charlemagne nobly attempted, though almost in vain, to rekindle that of the Western Empire. It was from the same that the three first Othos made a second and more successful effort; it was from thence that the revived art was further aided at the time of the Crusades; and to this source we, in a large degree, owe our modern civilisation. All thanks and honour, then, be to the unfortunate Eastern Empire, which, having performed its work, has now so long been trodden under foot of the Gentiles!

As architectural art recovered itself, after the ages of darkness, the later works of old Christian Rome, the still living architecture of Byzantium, and the half-living architecture of the day in Rome itself, formed together the groundwork of the revival. This architecture was all mainly arcuated; and the increased difficulty of obtaining and transporting large blocks of stone tended to render this the necessary element in the reviving style. We know the style which thus rose in Italy. I do not believe myself that much of this is so old as the time of the Lombard kings, but that it was in a much greater degree the work of the Othos—emperors at once of Italy and of Germany—and thus extending the same style from the south of the Alps, across into Germany, and onwards almost to the Baltic. I cannot, in this short lecture, follow up the details of this early Romanesque style; but I beg you to do so for yourselves, and at the same time to make yourselves acquainted with the contemporary architecture of France, in which, subject to many variations, the same feeling will be found to prevail.

I have, in my last lecture, mentioned the introduction of purely Byzantine architecture at Venice, as especially illustrated in St. Mark’s and the churches at Torcello, etc., and, I may add, in secular buildings. I mentioned also its transference, apparently by the Venetians, into the south-west of France, where and whence it exercised a very decided influence on the subsequent architecture, and I have, in one of my early lectures, shown the extension of that influence at a later date—in the form of architectural sculpture—into the north of France, and thence into our own country. I will here add that parallel, though not exactly similar, evidences of Byzantine influence pervade the Romanesque of Germany, whose rulers were in constant communication with the Eastern Empire—an influence greatly promoted in decorative art by the importation of woven fabrics, metal-work, jewellery, and illuminations from the East into the West.

From such united influences, added to and aiding the earnest strivings after refined and improved art, arose the Romanesque architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, becoming at length a perfectly original, consistent, and artistic development of arcuated architecture.

I have, in my previous lectures, gone much into detail in recording and explaining the history of the development of this Romanesque into the subsequent pointed-arch style. It is, perhaps, mockery to refer you back to lectures which probably no one now present heard; but time will not allow me to do more, and should they be published, you may perhaps think it worth your while to refer to them.

As the Byzantine was the Christian architecture of the East, so was the Pointed style the culminating Christian architecture of our own group of nations in the West; and, while the former had the disadvantage of being developed during ages of gradually declining civilisation, the young and vigorous shoot which grew from it in the West had the immense advantage of developing itself during the vigorous upstriving of a new and better civilisation.