[33] ‘Syrie Centrale.’
CHAPTER XIII.
ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE.
THE term Romanesque is here used to indicate a style of Christian architecture, founded on Roman art, which prevailed throughout Western Europe from the close of the period of basilican architecture to the rise of Gothic; except in those isolated districts where the influence of Byzantium is visible. By some writers the significance of the word is restricted within narrower limits; but excellent authorities can be adduced for the employment of it in the wide sense here indicated. Indeed some difficulty exists in deciding what shall and what shall not be termed Romanesque, if any more restricted definition of its meaning is adopted; while under this general term, if applied broadly, many closely allied local varieties—as, for example, Lombard, Rhenish, Romance, Saxon, and Norman—can be conveniently included.
The spectacle which Europe presented after the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium and the incursions of the Northern tribes was melancholy in the extreme. Nothing but the church retained any semblance of organised existence; and when at last some kind of order began to emerge from a chaos of universal ruin, and churches and monastic buildings began to be built in Western Europe, all of them looked to Rome, and not to Constantinople, as their common ecclesiastical centre. It is not surprising that, as soon as differences between the ritual of the Eastern and the Western Church sprang up, a contrast between Eastern and Western architecture should establish itself, and that the early structures of the many countries where the Roman Church flourished never wandered far from the Roman type, with the exception of localities where circumstances favoured direct intercourse with the East. The architecture of the Eastern Church, on the other hand, adhered quite as closely to the models of Byzantium.
Fig. 166.—Tower of Earl’s Barton Church.