HUGH THE BUILDER
The strong personality of the man, his boldness and sagacity combined,
come out in his building as clearly as in his conduct; but since the
learned are very litigious upon the questions of his architecture, the
reader must have indulgence in his heart and a salt cellar in his hand,
when he approaches this subject.
First of all we must remember that in his age it was part of the
education of a gentleman to know something about building. Hugh's
grandfather must have built the old keep of Avalon Castle, which still
stands above the modern château, and a family whose arms are, on a field
or the eagle of the empire sable, were builders, both of necessity and
of choice. When every baron, or at least every baron's father, had built
himself a castle, planned and executed under his own eye; when King
Richard in person could plan and superintend the building of his great
Castle Saucy, the Château Gaillard, it is not wonderful that Hugh also
should be ready and willing to do much in stone and mortar. Then, again,
he must have had some architectural training at the Grande Chartreuse.
The first buildings of wood were overthrown in 1126 by an avalanche, and
Guigo, the fifth prior, had refounded the whole buildings after that
date. The upper church, since then a chapter house, was built in
Romanesque style, with round arches, two rose windows, and three
sanctuary windows with wide splays. In 1150 Humbert, Count of Savoy,
founded a beautiful chapel and a guest house for visitors; and even
later than this there is a good deal of building going on at the lower
house, farm buildings, guest house, and possibly even a church during
the very time that Hugh was monk and procurator. Even if he took no
personal part in any of these last works, he must have known and heard
much of the art from men, who had done or were doing it. But it would
not be rash to conclude that he had an apprenticeship in building before
he set foot on English soil, and as well by education as by inheritance
knew something of this work.
Next we must bear in mind that every stone would, if possible, have a
mystic signification. For some reason or other this notion makes the
modern man impatient; but this impatience does not alter the facts, but
only obscures their explanation. Everybody knows that the three eastern
lights mean, as they did to St. Barbara, the blessed Trinity; but few
people recognize that all numbers, whether in beams, pillars, sides,
arches, or decoration had a well recognised symbolism, which had come
down, hall-marked by St. Augustine and St. Bernard, to the building and
worshipping generations of those and much later days.
What was done at Witham we cannot now fully tell, for everything has
perished of the upper house. The monks' church would be of stone, and
probably was very like the present Friary Church. The cells certainly
would be of wood in the second stage, for they were of "weeps," as we
have seen, in the first. This part of the Charterhouse we have concluded
stood in a field now called "Buildings," but now so-called without
visible reason.
Round the present Friary Church there were the houses of the original
inhabitants, a little removed from their foreign intruders; not quite a
mile away, as at Hinton, where the two houses are thus divided, but yet
something near three quarters of that distance.
When the inhabitants were removed to Knap in North Curry and elsewhere,
they took their old rafters with them or sold these. Their walls seem to
have been of mud and wattle, or of some unsaleable stuff, and these, no
doubt, served for a time for the lay brethren, after a little trimming
and thatching. But their church had to be looked to before it could
serve for the worship of the _conversi_. The old inhabitants (near two
hundred, Mr. Buckle thinks, rather generously), were still there up to
Hugh's time, and if their church was like their houses the wooden roof
was much decayed and the walls none of the best. Hugh resolved upon a
stone vault of the Burgundian type, followed at the Grande Chartreuse,
and he therefore had to thicken the walls by an extra case. The building
was next divided into three parts, with doors from the north and west,
so that men might seek refuge in the Holy Trinity from the dark of the
world and its setting suns. The stone roof is supported upon small
semi-octagonal vaulting shafts, ending in truncated corbels. This
fondness for the number eight, which reappears markedly at Lincoln, has
to do with St. Augustine's explanations that eight (the number next to
seven, the number of creation and rest) signifies the consummation of
all things and Doomsday. Four is the number of the outer world, with its
seasons and quarters; three of the soul of man, the reflection of God;
and eight, therefore, which comes after the union of these, is judgment
and eternal life. Hugh was, no doubt, his own architect (if such a word
is not an anachronism here), but he employed Somerset builders, who left
the mark of English custom upon this otherwise peculiar and continental
looking building. The leper window has been noticed above. The only
other building at Witham which pretends to bear traces of Hugh's hand is
the guest house, and this, as we have seen, may be at bottom the very
house where Hugh hob-a-nobbed with King Henry.
The same style, the same severity, the same sacramental feeling no doubt
marked the Conventual Church, and it is sad to think what great and
pathetic memories perished with its destruction. If only the pigstyes
and barns built out of these old stones could have been the richer for
what was lost in the transit, they would have been the richest of their
kind. For Hugh turned to this his first great work in the house of
Martha with a peculiar relish, which was that of a lover more than of a
man who had merely heaped up stones against the wind. If Lincoln was
his Leah, Witham was his dear Rachael. Hither he was translated, like
Enoch or Elijah, from a vexing world for a time every year. The two
parts of the Charterhouse were the embodiments of "justice and
innocence." Here was "the vine of the Lord of Hosts." His cell was kept
for him, and while all the world was hotly harvesting he was laying up
here his spiritual stores. Here his face seemed to burn with the horned
light of Moses, when he appeared in public. His words were like fire and
wine and honey, but poised with discretion. Yet he never became a
fanatical monk, nor like Baldwin, whom the Pope addressed as "most
fervent monk, clever abbot, lukewarm bishop, and slack archbishop." He
warned his monastic brethren here that the great question at doom is
not, Were you monk or hermit? but Did you show yourself truly Christian?
The name is useless, or positively baleful, unless a man has the
threefold mark--_caritas in corde; veritas in ore; castitas in
corpore_--of love in the heart, truth on the lips, pureness in the body.
Here he told them that chaste wedlock was as pure as continence and
virginity, and would be blessed as high. He lived as he taught always,
but here he seemed beyond himself. His buildings at Witham, enumerated
in the Great Life, and not even planned before his time, are the major
and minor churches, the cells for monks, the cloisters, the brothers'
little houses, and the guest chambers. The lay kitchen was a poor
building of brushwood and thatch, six or seven paces from the guest
house, the blaze of which, when it caught fire, could be seen from the
glass windows of the west end of the lay church. The wooden cells of
the brothers lay round this in a ring. The guest house roof was of
shingles. This kitchen fire took place at the last visit of the bishop
while he was at the "night lauds." He gave over the office when it broke
out, signed the cross several times, and prayed before the altar, while
the young men fought the flame. He had already often ordered a stone
kitchen to be built in its place, and so no real harm was done, for the
fire did not spread. The only question which arises is whether the
present guest house is far enough west to square with this story. No
mention is made of the fish ponds, but they are likely enough to have
been prepared in his time, for the rule, which never allowed meat, did
allow fish on festivals. Hugh had no notion of starving other people,
but used to make them "eat well and drink well to serve God well." He
condemned an asceticism run mad, and called it vanity and superstition
for people to eschew flesh when they had no such commandment, and
substitute for it foreign vegetables, condiments for fat, and expensive
fishes. He liked dry bread himself, and the drier the tastier, but he
did all he could to spare others. Consequently, we may credit him with
the fish ponds.
His work at Lincoln was on a much larger scale and happily much of it is
still there, a goodly material for wonder, praise and squabbling. It was
imposed upon him, for he found the Norman building more or less in
ruins. This building consisted of a long nave, with a west front, now
standing; and a choir, which ended something east of the present
faldstool in a bow. At the east end of the nave was a tower, and to the
north and south of this tower were two short transepts, or porches. The
tower was either not very high or else was shortened, and perhaps
recapped to make it safe after the earthquake, for the comparatively
small damage which it did when it fell upon the choir proves that it
could not have been very massive. It fell in Grossetestes' time and its
details with it.
The first requisite for building is money: and money, as we have seen,
was very hard to obtain in England just at this juncture. Three means by
which Hugh raised it are known to us. The austere ideals of the
Carthusian bishop, his plain vestments, his cheap ring, his simple
clothes set free a good deal of the money of the see for this purpose.
Then he issued a pastoral summons to the multitude of her sons to appear
at least once a year at the mother church of Lincoln with proper
offerings according to their power; especially rural deans, parsons, and
priests through the diocese were to gather together at Pentecost and
give alms for the remission of their sins and in token of obedience and
recollection of their Lincoln mother. This, combined with a notice of
detention of prebend for all non-resident and non-represented canons,
must have brought the faithful up in goodly numbers to their
ecclesiastical centre. If they were once there, the cracked and
shored-up building and the bishop's zeal and personal influence might be
entrusted to loose their purse strings, especially as he led the way,
both by donation and personal work, for he carried the hod and did not
disdain to bring mortar and stones up the ladder like any mason's
'prentice. Then, thirdly, he established or used a Guild of St. Mary, a
confraternity which paid for, and probably worked at, the glorious task.
Its local habitation was possibly that now called John of Gaunt's
stables,{20} but anyhow it stood good for a thousand marks a year. A
mark is thirteen and fourpence; and six hundred and sixty six pounds
odd, in days when an ox cost three shillings and a sheep fourpence was a
handsome sum. It could not have been far short of £10,000 of our money.
It is evident from records and architecture alike that the building had
to be begun from the very roots and foundations. In examining it we had
better begin with the chroniclers. The Great Life is curiously silent
about this work, and if we had no other records we should almost
consider that the work was done under, rather than by, the bishop. He
went to Lincoln "about to build on this mountain, like a magnificent and
peaceful Solomon, a most glorious temple," says his laconic friend Adam.
"Also fifteen days before he died Geoffrey de Noiers (or Nowers) the
constructor or builder of the noble fabric, came to see him. The
erection of this fabric was begun from the foundations, in the renewal
of the Lincoln church, by the magnificent love of Hugh to the beauty of
God's house." The dying bishop thus spoke to him: "In that we have had
word that the lord king with the bishops and leading men of this whole
kingdom are shortly about to meet for a general assembly, hasten and
finish all that is needful for the beauty and adornment about the altar
of my lord and patron saint, John Baptist, for we wish this to be
dedicated by our brother, the Bishop of Rochester, when he arrives there
with the other bishops. Yea, and we ourselves, at the time of the
aforesaid assembly, shall be present there too. We used to desire
greatly to consecrate that by our ministry; but since God has disposed
otherwise, we wish that it be consecrated before we come thither on a
future occasion." This is all that Adam has to tell us. Giraldus
Cambrensis says, "Item, he restored the chevet of his own church with
Parian stones and marble columns in wonderful workmanship, and reared
the whole anew from the foundation with most costly work. Similarly,
too, he began to construct the remarkable bishop's houses, and, by God's
help, proposed, in certain hope, to finish them far larger and nobler
than the former ones." Then again he says, "Item, he took pains to erect
in choiceness, the Lincoln church of the blessed Virgin, which was built
remarkably by a holy man, the first bishop of the same place, to wit the
blessed Remigius, according to the style of that time. To make the
fabric conformed to the far finer workmanship and very much daintier and
cleverer polish of modern novelty, he erected it of Parian stones and
marble columns, grouped alternately and harmoniously, and which set off
one another with varying pictures of white and black, but yet with
natural colour change. The work, now to be seen, is unique." The Legenda
says that Hugh carried stones and cement in a box for the fabric of the
mother Church, which he reared nobly from the foundations. Other
chroniclers say just the same, and one adds that he "began a remarkable
episcopal hall" as well. But far the most important account we have is
that of the metrical life--written between 1220 and 1235. This gives us
some of the keys to the intense symbolism of all the designs. Since a
proper translation would require verse, it may be baldly Englished in
pedagogic _patois_, as follows: "The prudent religion and the religious
prudence of the pontiff makes a bridge (_pons_) to Paradise, toiling to
build Sion in guilelessness, not in bloods. And with wondrous art, he
built the work of the cathedral church; in building which, he gives not
only his wealth and the labour of his people, but the help of his own
sweat; and often he carries in a pannier the carved stones and the
sticky lime. The weakness of a cripple, propped on two sticks, obtains
the use of that pannier, believing an omen to be in it: and in turn
disdains the help of the two sticks. The diet, which is wont to bow the
straight, makes straight the bowed. O remarkable shepherd of the flock,
and assuredly no hireling! as the novel construction of the Church
explains. For Mother Sion lay cast down, and straitened, wandering,
ignorant, sick, old, bitter, poor, homely and base: Hugh raises her when
cast down, enlarges her straitened, guides her wandering, teaches her
ignorant, heals her sick, renews her old, sweetens her bitter, fills her
when empty, adorns her homely, honours her when base. The old mass falls
to the foundation and the new rises; and the state of it as it rises,
sets forth the fitting form of the cross. The difficult toil unites
three whole parts; for the most solid mass of the foundation rises from
the centre,{21} the wall carries the roof into the air. [So the
foundation is buried in the lap of earth, but the wall and roof shew
themselves, and with proud daring the wall flies to the clouds, the roof
to the stars.] With the value of the material the design of the art well
agrees, for the stone roof talks as it were with winged birds, spreading
its wide wings, and like to a flying thing strikes the clouds, stayed
upon the solid columns. And a sticky liquid glues together the white
stones, all which the workman's hand cuts out to a nicety. And the wall,
built out of a hoard of these, as it were disdaining this thing,
counterfeits to unify the adjacent parts; it seems not to exist by art
but rather by nature; not a thing united, but one. Another costly
material of black stones props the work, not like this content with one
colour, not open with so many pores, but shining much with glory and
settled with firm position; and it deigns to be tamed by no iron, save
when it is tamed by cunning, when the surface is opened by frequent
blows of the grit, and its hard substance eaten in with strong acid.
That stone, beheld, can balance minds in doubt whether it be jasper or
marble; but if jasper, dull jasper; if marble, noble marble. Of it are
the columns, which so surround the pillars that they seem there to
represent a kind of dance. Their outer surface more polished than new
horn, with reflected visions, fronts the clear stars. So many figures
has nature painted there that if art, after long endeavour, toils to
simulate a like picture, scarce may she imitate nature. Likewise has the
beauteous joining placed a thousand columns there in graceful order;
which stable, precious, shining, with their stability carry on the whole
work of the church, with their preciousness enrich it, with their shine
make it clear. Their state indeed is lofty and high, their polish true
and splendid, their order handsome and geometric, their beauty fit and
useful, their use gracious and remarkable, their stability unhurt and
sharp. A splendid double pomp of windows displays riddles to the eyes,
inscribing the citizens of the Heavenly City and the arms whereby they
tame the Stygian tyrant.{22} And two are greater, like two lights; of
these the rounded blaze, looking upon the quarters of north and south,
with its double light, lords it over all windows. They can be compared
to the common stars, but these two are one like the sun, the other like
the moon. So do these two candles lighten the head of the Church. With
living and various colours they mimic the rainbow, not mimic indeed, but
rather excel, for the sun when it is reflected in the clouds makes a
rainbow: these two shine without sun, glitter without cloud.
These things, described but puerilely, have the weight of an allegory.
Without it seems but as a shell, but within lies the kernel. Without it
is as wax, but within is combed honey; and fire lightens more pleasantly
in the shade. For foundation, wall roof, white carved stone, marble
smooth, conspicuous and black, the double order of windows, and the twin
windows, which, as it were, look upon the regions of north and south,
are great indeed, in themselves, but figure greater things.
The foundation is the body, the wall man, the roof the spirit, the
division of the Church threefold. The body possesses the earth, man the
clouds, the spirit the stars. The white and carved stone means the
chaste and wise; the whiteness is modesty, the carving dogma. By the
effigy of marble, smooth, shining, dark, the bride is figured,
guileless, well conducted, working. The smoothness very rightly means
guilelessness, the splendour good conduct, the blackness work. The noble
cohort of the clergy lightening the world with light divine is expressed
by the clear windows. The corresponding order can everywhere be
observed. The Canonic is set forth by the higher order; the Vicarious by
the lower; and because the canonic handles the business of the world,
and the busy vicarious fulfils, by its obligations, divine matters, the
top line of windows shines bright with a ring of flowers around it,
which signifies the varying beauty of the world, the lower contains the
names of the holy fathers. The twin windows, which afford the rounded
blaze, are the two eyes of the Church, and rightly in these respects
seem to be, the greater the bishop, and the lesser the dean. The North
is Satan, and the South the Holy Ghost, which the two eyes look upon.
For the bishop looks upon the South to invite, but the dean upon the
North to avoid it. The one sees to be saved, the other not to be lost.
The brow of the church beholds with these eyes the candles of Heaven and
the darkness of Lethe. Thus the senseless stones enwrap the mysteries of
the living stones, the work made with hands sets forth the spiritual
work; and the double aspect of the Church is clear, adorned with double
equipage. A golden majesty paints the entry of the choir: and properly
in his proper image Christ crucified is shewn, and there to a nicety
the progress of His life is suggested. Not only the cross or image, but
the ample surface of the six columns and two woods, flash with tested
gold. The capitols{23} cleave to the Church, such as the Roman summit
never possessed, the wonderful work of which scarce the monied wealth of
Croesus could begin. In truth their entrances are like squares. Within
a rounded space lies open, putting to the proof, both in material and
art, Solomon's temple. If of these the perfection really stays, the
first Hugh's work will be perfected under a second Hugh. Thus then
Lincoln boasts of so great a sire, who blessed her with so many titles
on all sides."
The church itself is the best comment upon this somewhat obscure
account, and it may be briefly divided into Pre-Hugonian, Hugonian, and
Post-Hugonian parts. The first, the Norman centre of the west façade,
does not concern us, except that its lovely face often looked down upon
the great bishop in his dark or tawny cloak trimmed with white lambs'
wool, which hid his hair shirt. Except for this Norman work and the
Norman font, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the whole is
by or for Hugh, for his shrine, his influence, and his example,
completed what his work, and his plans, never dreamed about. Yet these
last are responsible for much. He built a cruciform church, beginning
with the entrance to the choir, with the aisles on either side. The
chapels of St. Edward Martyr and St. James{24} form the base or step of
the cross. The east transept, with all chapels adjoining, the
choristers' vestry, antevestry, dean's or medicine chapel, with its
lovely door and the cupboards in the now floorless room above it, the
vaulted passage and chamber adjoining, are all his. So are, possibly,
the matchless iron screens between the two choirs (topped with modern
trumpery). South-east of the Medicine Chapel is one of St. Hugh's great
mystic columns, and there are a pair of them. Where the Angel Choir now
lifts its most graceful form and just behind the high altar, rose the
semi-hexagonal east end, the opened honeycomb, where most fitly was
placed the altar of St. John Baptist. It was somewhere in the walls of
this forehead that the original bishop's eye and dean's eye were once
fixed, possibly in the rounded eye sockets which once stood where Bishop
Wordsworth and Dean Butler are now buried.{25}
When we look closely at this work, we are astonished at the bold
freedom, and yet the tentative and amateur character of it. The builders
felt their way as they went along, and well they might, for it was not
only a new church but a new and finer style altogether. They built a
wall. It was not strong enough, so they buttressed it over the
mouldings. The almost wayward double arcade inside was there apparently,
before the imposed vaulting shafts were thought about. The stones were
fully shaped and carved on the floor, and then put in their positions.
Hardly anything is like the next thing. Sometimes the pointed arch is
outside, as in "St. James'" Chapel, sometimes inside as in "St.
Edward's." Look up at the strange vaulting above the choir, about the
irregularity of which so much feigned weeping has taken place. It
represents, maybe, the Spirit blowing where it listeth and not given by
measure. So, too, mystic banded shafts are octagonal for blessedness,
and they blossom in hidden crockets for the inner flowers of the Spirit,
and there are honeycombs and dark columns banded together in joyful
unity, all copied from nowhere, but designed by this holy stone poet to
the glory of God. The pierced tympanum has a quatrefoil for the four
cardinal virtues, or a trefoil for faith, hope, and charity. Compared
with the lovely Angel Choir which flowered seventy years later, under
our great King Edward, it may look all unpractised, austere; but Hugh
built with sweet care, and sense, and honesty, never rioting in the
disordered emotion of lovely form which owed no obedience to the spirit,
and which expressed with great elaboration--almost nothing. He may have
valued the work of the intellect too exclusively, but surely it cannot
be valued too highly? The work is done as well where it does not as
where it does show.
The bishop's hall, which he began, could not have been much more than
sketched and founded. It was carried on by one of his successors, Hugh
de Wells (1209-1235), though one would like to believe that it was in
this great hall that he entertained women, godly matrons, and widows,
who sat by his side at dinner, to the wonder of monkish brethren. He
would lay his clean hands upon their heads and bless them, sometimes
even gently embrace them, and bid them follow the steps of holy women
of old. Indeed he had quite got over the morbid terror he once felt for
these guardians of the Divine humanity, for he used often to say to
them, "Almighty God has deserved indeed to be loved by the feminine sex.
He was not squeamish of being born of a woman. Yea, and he has granted
hereby a magnificent and right worthy privilege to all women folk. For
when it is not allowed to man to be or to be named the Father of God,
yet this has been bestowed upon the woman to be the parent of God." The
traces of his work at the other manor houses are wiped out by time.
There is nothing at Stow; Buckden was built later; and the other
footprints of this building saint are lost upon the sands of time.
FOOTNOTES:
{20} This building itself is of an earlier date.
{21} Of the earth.
{22} _I.e._, Saints and Lances.
{23} Side chapels.
{24} Or of SS. Dennys and Guthlac it may be.
{25} It is a pity in that case that the bishop lies under the old
"dean's eye," and _vice versâ_.