Ratisbon, are early examples; whilst Ratisbon cathedral, S. Catherine,
Lübeck, the Marien-Kirche at Muhlhausen, and the Wiesen-Kirche at
Soest, are examples of the same plan angularized at a later day. And
you should note, that this parallel triapsidal plan is by far the most
common of German plans in all ages, and is, moreover, one of which
scarcely any examples exist out of Germany.[84]
Sometimes, as in S. Nicholas, Lemgo, whilst the choir is apsidal,
the east end of the aisles is square; but this is a rather rare and
very bad plan. In all these varieties of arrangement, there is no
comparison for a minute with the beauty of the French chevet; but it
is right to observe, that there are some examples of imitation of this
better type.
One of the earliest and most interesting, is the church of S. Godehard,
at Hildesheim, in which we have the aisle round the apse, with three
apsidal chapels, as well as apsidal chapels east of the transepts.
This plan was imitated in the grand parish church of S. James, also
at Hildesheim, at a much later date. The apse of Magdeburg cathedral
is very much like that of S. Godehard, but of rather later date, and
remarkable for the profusion of dogtooth in its cornices. In both,
it is to be observed that the small chapels round the apse are mere
excrescences, and finish with stone roofs below the parapet of the
aisle. The Marien-Kirche at Lübeck is a later example of a chevet,
whilst at Cologne cathedral, in emulation of Amiens, a plan of the
best kind was adopted, and again wrought out on a smaller scale at
Altenberg. There can be little doubt that it was not only in emulation
but also in imitation of a French church, that this plan was designed.
Scarcely another German church is at all like it, whereas its plan was
the common one in France. In the Marien-Kirche at Lübeck, where there
is an aisle round the apse, it is formed in the most clumsy manner,
by enlarging the chapels; whilst S. Giles, at Brunswick, illustrates
another and unsuccessful plan, viz., an apse, with the surrounding
aisle, but no chapels.
I believe one of the reasons for this difference between French and
German plans is to be found in the very remarkable objection which the
Germans always exhibited to any departure from correct orientation of
any of their altars. In the French chevet, it is impossible to attend
to this; and hence, in a country where the feeling was strong on the
point, it would be felt to be an unsuitable form. I believe that it was
so felt in England, where, to the present day, the prejudice in favour
of strict orientation is stronger than in any other country in Europe.
In Germany, we have most remarkable evidence of the feeling. At
Magdeburg, for example, the altars in the apse of the cathedral are
all placed with their fronts facing due west, and cutting, therefore,
in the strangest way across all the main architectural lines of the
building. It was for this reason that the parallel triapsidal plan was
so popular.
But there is another most curious arrangement of plan, to which I
must refer; that, namely, of which Laach, Bamberg, Worms, Mayence, S.
Sebald, Nuremberg, and Naumburg, are remarkable examples, in which both
east and west ends have apsidal choirs. The object of these western
choirs is not very intelligible; but in that at Naumburg, we have most
curious evidence of what I have before referred to: for the original
altar in the western apse faces west, and has its back, therefore,
towards the nave, so that the face of the priest at the altar would be
seen by the congregation in the nave.
I ought to have observed, in speaking of some examples of apses with
aisles, that even in these, the treatment was essentially German.
The two churches at Nuremberg are examples which, as the aisles are
of the same height as the choir, and the whole roofed over with one
immense roof, present the appearance on the exterior of immense apses
without aisles. And certainly there is great grandeur of effect in
such a termination, though less structural truth, and less internal
variety and beauty. Still, they are admirable departures from ordinary
rules. The churches at Münster, S. Stephen at Vienna, Munich cathedral,
Landshut, and the Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are examples of the same kind
of design. They have a very fine effect of simple unbroken height, but
the absence of the triforium and clerestory is not forgiven, whilst the
plan helped to develop that German extravagance of proportion in the
length of the window monials which we so often have to deplore.
And here I must not forget to tell you of the cathedral at
Aix-la-Chapelle, and the church of S. Gereon, at Cologne, in which the
naves are circular and decagonal, of great size and grand effect, with
long choirs running out to the east.
In the earlier churches western transepts are also not uncommon, as at
S. Cunibert, S. Andrew, and S. Pantaleon at Cologne, S. Paul at Worms,
Mayence, and many other examples; whilst towers of small size were
commonly placed in the re-entering angles, between the nave, and choir,
and transepts, as well as over their intersections.
Lastly, there is a plan of common occurrence, especially among
smaller churches, in which the main building is a large and lofty
parallelogram, with a small apse tacked on at the end, without any
regard to proportion. There are two or three of these churches in
Nuremberg, and many elsewhere.
I have detained you for a long time on the subject of ground-plans,
but it is one of importance to the right understanding of any style of
church architecture, and it was not possible therefore to pass it over.
I will now ask you to consider, a little in detail, the characteristics
of the early German work. I do not intend to go thoroughly into the
question of pure Romanesque work, for which I have no time. I am
dealing with pointed architecture, and must confine myself as much as
possible to it only. We may take the early churches at Cologne, and
along the banks of the Rhine, as examples of the kind of work which
is perhaps the most interesting, and very thoroughly German in all
its characteristics. It was derived, as I have no doubt, from the
churches in Lombardy, with which it has very many features absolutely
identical. The churches at Pavia are beyond all question the prototypes
of those at Cologne; but it is to be observed that their scale is
smaller, and, their effect certainly not so fine.
S. Castor at Coblentz, at the end of the twelfth century, Andernach
a little later, Zinzig, S. Gereon and S. Cunibert, Cologne, at the
beginning of the thirteenth century, give us a fairly complete
evidence of the succession of styles. After these we have Limburg and
Gelnhausen, taking us on to the time at which the German complete
Gothic was in other places in full perfection.
In the early churches there are many features worthy of remark:--
First, the curiously early development of a kind of heavy cusping, of
which Worms, Zinzig, Boppart, Andernach, and S. Gereon at Cologne, are
good examples. It is essentially German, and I know nothing like it out
of the Rhine district.
Secondly, the treatment of the apsidal terminations is very remarkable.
S. Castor at Coblentz, e.g., at the end of the twelfth century, has
three stages in its apse, whereof that next the ground has a trefoiled
arcade, the next is pierced with round-headed windows, whilst under
the eaves is a recessed arcade and a cornice, which, in one form or
other, was almost the invariable finish of these early apses. Zinzig
has the same kind of apse, but it is polygonal, and each side is
gabled. The eaves-cornice has a row of square sunk panels below it; and
this singular feature we see reproduced very often, as at S. Gereon.
The apse at Andernach is nearly identical with that at Coblentz, as
also is that of Bonn. The fine cathedral at Worms has a very singular
arrangement. The apse is polygonal, with the eaves-cornice and ground
arcade as at Coblentz, but in the intermediate stage it has circular
windows, filled in with quatrefoils and sexfoils. The apse and steeple
of S. Martin, at Cologne, are extremely noble examples of these
portions of the early German churches. Generally speaking, these early
apsidal terminations are most remarkable for their similarity of
design, but their external effect is, nevertheless, always striking.
The third and chief feature of the early German churches is the
treatment of their steeples. They are square or octangular in plan,
without buttresses, arcaded or pierced with windows pretty regularly
all over their surface, and roofed in the most varied manner. You are
all, no doubt, familiar with some examples of these really striking
towers, and you will feel, I think, that in their whole composition
they generally look too much like turrets, and are often too uniform
in their height to be perfectly satisfactory. The towers were often
gabled, and had square spires rising from the points of the gables;
or, as in the fine example at Soest, they had octagonal spires. This
Soest example has great interest: it is the first perfect example,
so far as I know, of a long series of very remarkable steeples. At
Paderborn, indeed, there is no doubt that the tower had a spire; but it
is destroyed, and Soest is therefore the more interesting. At a later
date, this kind of steeple was reproduced at Lüneburg and Lübeck, in
the steeples which adorn their churches.
The variety of ornamental moulding is less, I think, in Germany than in
either England or France; but there are some fine examples of carving
in capitals and string-courses of early date at Naumburg and Magdeburg.
The groining of early German churches is generally simple. The
lanterns, where central, are covered in with a plain kind of domical
vault; and the apses have generally hemispherical groining, sometimes
marked with ribs. The vaulting is first of all plain waggon-vaulting,
then simple quadripartite, and sometimes--especially where (as is often
the case in Germany) one bay of the groining covers two bays of the
nave--it is sexpartite, and generally then very much raised in the
centre.
Doorways are almost invariably square-headed, under pointed arches. In
the north porch of Lübeck cathedral, as also at Andernach, and at S.
Cunibert, and again at S. Gereon, Cologne, is a very peculiar doorhead,
formed by two straight lines sloping to the centre at a very obtuse
angle.
The windows are generally of a very simple and rude kind. There was
no approach in their treatment to that delicacy which is such an
especial characteristic of our English first-pointed; and this mainly
because the science of mouldings was never worked out thoroughly by the
early German school. It is true that no school of architects has ever
rivalled the English in this particular; and one reason, perhaps, for
this is to be found in the resolute way in which foreigners resisted
any modification of the square abacus, whose only fault was, no doubt,
the limitation it imposed upon the outline of mouldings.
One other feature of these churches must not be forgotten, viz.,
the great size of their triforia. This was usual all over Europe in
Romanesque buildings; but in Germany in this, as in other things, the
early tradition was long adhered to, and you have nowhere else such
elaborate constructional galleries as theirs. Even in works of the
latest date they are found,--as, for instance, in the curious church
of S. Andrew, at Frankfort, where the outer aisles are galleried all
round with a triforium, the arches in front of which are about twice
the height of the main arches below them. The interior of Andernach
cathedral will explain how grand the treatment of this feature was in
the earliest buildings.
I trust I have said enough now to show you, at any rate, the general
characteristics of early German work. Its great marks of distinction
from French and English work are to be seen mainly in its planning, the
treatment and number of its towers and spires, and in the peculiarly
Italian character of its apsidal terminations; and, as I have said,
this style prevailed, with but little modification, up to the very
time at which the completely developed German middle-pointed made its
appearance.
I suppose the characteristics of this later work must be known to most
of you. Cologne cathedral is in fact so completely an embodiment of
nearly all the essential features of the style, and is so well known to
most people that I suspect less description is required of it than of
any other foreign style. It has been often said--and that by no mean
authorities--that the German middle-pointed was identical with our own,
and indeed that this one style prevailed for a time all over Europe.
The theory would be pretty if it were true: the gradual working up
to the same point in various ways, and the gradual divergence of art
again in different directions, would certainly be a strong ground for
giving in our adhesion to this one perfect and universal style. But I
confess that though there is something of a _similarity_, I have not
been able to trace anything like an identity between German and French
and English work at any time. I am thankful for this because, with all
its beauty, the best German middle-pointed style is not a great style,
and has many and obvious defects. From the very first is conspicuous
that _love of lines_ which is so marked and so unpleasant a peculiarity
in German art, and that desire to play with geometrical figures--I know
not how else to express what I mean--which in time degenerated into
work as pitiful and contemptible as any of which mediaeval architects
were ever guilty.
I have here a large collection (which should have been larger had I
had time to select all the examples which I have scattered through my
sketch-books) of German window traceries, which will enable you to
judge whether I am too severe in my opinion of their demerits. And you
may observe, by the way, that whilst in the earlier styles we have
very many points for consideration in studying the characteristics of
the style, in this work there is a sacrifice of almost everything else
to the desire to introduce in every direction specimens of new and
ingenious combinations of tracery. The windows at Paderborn are some
of the finest and purest examples of early tracery. They are genuine
and noble examples, and quite free from any tinge of the faults of
later examples, and worthy of comparison with the best of our own early
traceries. The mouldings of these windows are simple, but composed
mainly of a succession of bold rolls, and so entirely free from any
_lininess_. In the cupola of S. Gereon at Cologne, and a little later
in its sacristy are also some good early traceries, whilst most of the
windows at Marburg are also examples of the same character. So too
are the traceries in one of the Brunswick west fronts, and in the apse
of the church of S. Giles in the same city. From these look to the
windows of S. Mary, Lemgo, and you have the commencement of the new
style, though these are fine windows, boldly and simply conceived and
carried out. Next to these come the marvellous series of traceries in
Minden cathedral; a series, I suppose, quite unmatched for variety, and
indeed, I must own, for a certain grandeur of effect, by those in any
church in Europe. You will be struck, I think, by the curious desire
for variety of arrangement which these traceries evidence. They are
a series of aisle windows, placed side by side in a cathedral church
of very modest pretensions. S. Martin in the same town has a great
variety of traceries of a later type--good examples of the kind of
tracery which henceforward is to be found for a long time predominant
throughout nearly the whole of Germany, in which, whilst one admires
and wonders at the ingenuity which has devised so many combinations
of spherical triangles and circles, one is tempted to think that
the men who excelled in this sort of work would have been admirably
fitted for designing children’s toys and puzzles, but had much better
have been kept away from church windows. Among the other sketches of
traceries, those from Ratisbon are of the best kind, whilst those
from the cloister at Constance (essentially German work) are almost
as interesting as the Paderborn examples in their ingenious variety
of form. They show too, occasionally, a tendency to ogee lines in
the tracery, which leads me to say a few words on the curious fact,
that whereas in England the ogee line was always seen in the later
middle-pointed work, this was by no means the case in Germany. The
tracery in the staircase to the Rathhaus at Ratisbon, though of late
date, is noticeable for the almost entire absence of any but pure
geometrical figures, but then these are thrown about in a confused and
irregular manner, and are entirely wanting in due subordination of
parts. When, however, the ogee line does show itself in German work, it
is always a certain evidence of debasement.
But to leave the question of traceries and to justify my denial of the
virtues of German pointed architecture, let me ask you to compare the
effect of French and German work side by side in some of these most
valuable evidences of facts which photography so liberally affords us.
You have here side by side a west door from Amiens and from Cologne;
and again here, some door-jamb sculpture from Amiens between similar
works from Strasburg. Now striking as these German examples are, do you
not see how entirely the Germans sacrifice all nobility and simplicity
of expression, all that we call repose, to the vain desire to arrest
attention by some tricky arrangement of a drapery and some quaint
speckiness or lininess of detail?
The German love of tracery is evidenced by the fondness for such spires
as that of Freiburg, which, striking as it is, is not altogether a
legitimate kind of thing, and is certainly inferior in its effect to
the much simpler spires of which we are so justly proud.
I can only say a few words as to the plans of German complete Gothic,
and this only to repeat what I have before said as to the extent to
which they contrived to build on the same plans as in earlier days. The
parallel and transverse triapsidal plans were as popular in Germany in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as they were in the twelfth and
thirteenth, of which the little chapel in the castle at Marburg is a
curious example. It is apsidal at the east and west ends, and the bay
between has the window-splay so contrived as to make another apse north
and south. It was in detail more than in plan that the later architects
developed.
But I feel that time will not allow me to go into the features of the
style with more minuteness, or to do more than direct your attention
to the strange eccentricity which characterizes the last phase of
German Gothic, of which the design for the spire of Ulm (never carried
out) is one of the most curious examples. In the short time that still
remains to me, I would rather prefer to call your attention to the
local peculiarities which you will meet with in different districts of
this great country--a part of my subject which would, if I had time for
it, be of more value perhaps to those who are going to explore German
churches for themselves than any other.
I have said so much about the churches of Cologne and the Rhine, that
I need say no more than that they are very much a class by themselves.
You have there the best specimens of early churches; whilst in Cologne
cathedral, in Altenberg abbey, in the church of the Minorites at
Cologne--an admirable example--in the very interesting church at
Oberwesel, and in S. Werner at Bacharach, a church at Andernach, and
Frankfort cathedral, you have a series of examples within a short
distance of each other of the best complete German Gothic.
Then leaving this district and going in a north-easterly direction, you
will find a series of towns full of local peculiarities, quite unlike
those of the Rhine:--Münster, for instance, with its churches of great
height and without distinction between nave and aisles; or Soest, where
the beautiful Wiesen-Kirche affords one of the finest evidences of what
Germans could do in their palmiest days: whilst in the other churches
in the same little known city you would see examples of Romanesque of
the most grand kind in the remarkable steeple of the cathedral, and
of a very curious kind in the low groined entrances which support a
continuation of the triforia round the west end of the naves. In towns
like these, and Paderborn, Lemgo, Herford, Minden, and Hildesheim, you
will find a rich store of architectural matter; and then if you will
venture so far, you will find at Lüneburg, and Lübeck, and Ratzeburg,
abundant examples (as I have once before explained in this room) of
the German mode of building in brick developed in a group of churches
quite unlike any others in Germany, and most interesting in every point
of view. Then again there are those curious churches at Brunswick
and Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Burg, whose west fronts, contrived
apparently solely for the sake of obtaining space for the display of
immense window traceries, are so completely local and so thoroughly,
I suppose I may say, an invention! Here too you will see the churches
almost invariably with gabled aisles,--sometimes, as in the cathedral
at Lemgo, so gabled at the sides that one doubts which is the side and
which the end, and sometimes, as in a church at Brunswick, filled with
tracery and panelling of extreme beauty. Then again at Halberstadt,
Erfurt, Naumburg, and Marburg, you may see some of the most excellent
work in all Germany of the best period. And if you go further south, to
where Nuremberg takes you back in almost all externals to the sixteenth
century, or where Ratisbon to the thirteenth, you will find yourselves
again in the neighbourhood of brick churches, at Landshut and Munich:
and lastly at Freiburg you may see one of the very best of German
churches, eclipsed though it undoubtedly is by the unequalled (in
Germany) nave of the thoroughly German cathedral of Strasburg.
I can but give you a hurried list of names, but not without a warm
recommendation to you to go and see for yourselves how very much is to
be learnt in all these churches, not only in architectural matters, but
even much more in ecclesiological. Germany is the one part of Europe
in which the furniture of the Middle Ages still remains. There where
in Protestant Nuremberg every altar still stands with its white cloth,
and candles, and crucifix; where the great rood still hangs aloft in
the churches; where in one church, as at Brandenburg, one may see
some thirty or forty mediaeval vestments still hanging untouched in
their old presses; where you may see screens of every date, from early
Romanesque to the latest pointed; where coronae, and all kinds of metal
furniture and ancient work of a date far earlier than any other country
in Europe can show are still preserved; where, as in the choirs of
Halberstadt and Hildesheim, the old illuminated office books still rest
upon the old choir desk; where hangings of quaint and gorgeous patterns
still hang round the choirs, and where triptychs and carved retables
are so common that one forgets to take note of them;--there it is, I
say, that you must go if you would wish to study and to understand
fully the ecclesiology of the Middle Ages. It is indeed a country full
of the most wonderful interest to the ecclesiologist in all ways, and
I am anxious to say that though I have been asked by your committee to
give a second paper on Italian architecture, I feel very strongly that
I should be doing their work much better by telling you somewhat of all
those things to which I have just referred. In the first place, I have
said my say on Italy, and have nothing new to tell you; and secondly, I
have been obliged to avoid saying one word either on the furniture or
glass of German churches, or on the domestic architecture in which the
country is so rich,--and on all these points I should be only too glad
at some future day to give you some notes of what I have seen.
INDEX
Abbeville, 33.
Abbot Odalric of Conques, 242.
Abbot Peter de Wesencourt of S. Germer, 156.
_Abécédaire_, 155, 158, 220.
acanthus, 95.
Aesthetic Movement, 13, 32.
Agnolino of Orvieto, 94.
Ainay, church of, 35, 39, 207, 228, 247;
_v._ Lyon.
Aix-la-Chapelle, 302, 307, 322.