BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Bourgoin, _Les Arts Arabes_. Coste, _Monuments

du Caire_; _Monuments modernes de la Perse_. Cunningham,

_Archæological Survey of India_. Fergusson, _Indian and Eastern

Architecture_. De Forest, _Indian Architecture and Ornament_.

Flandin et Coste, _Voyage en Perse_. Franz-Pasha, _Die Baukunst

des Islam_. Gayet, _L’Art Arabe_; _L’Art Persan_. Girault de

Prangey, _Essai sur l’architecture des Arabes en Espagne_, etc.

Goury and Jones, _The Alhambra_. Jacob, _Jeypore Portfolio of

Architectural Details_. Le Bon, _La civilisation des Arabes_; _Les

monuments de l’Inde_. Owen Jones, _Grammar of Ornament_.

Parvillée, _L’Architecture Ottomane_. Prisse d’Avennes, _L’Art

Arabe_. Texier, _Description de l’Arménie, la Perse_, etc.

+GENERAL SURVEY.+ While the Byzantine Empire was at its zenith, the new

faith of Islam was conquering Western Asia and the Mediterranean lands

with a fiery rapidity, which is one of the marvels of history. The new

architectural styles which grew up in the wake of these conquests,

though differing widely in conception and detail in the several

countries, were yet marked by common characteristics which set them

quite apart from the contemporary Christian styles. The predominance of

decorative over structural considerations, a predilection for minute

surface-ornament, the absence of pictures and sculpture, are found alike

in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Indian buildings, though in varying

degree. These new styles, however, were almost entirely the handiwork of

artisans belonging to the conquered races, and many traces of Byzantine,

and even after the Crusades, of Norman and Gothic design, are

recognizable in Moslem architecture. But the Orientalism of the

conquerors and their common faith, tinged with the poetry and

philosophic mysticism of the Arab, stamped these works of Copts,

Syrians, and Greeks with an unmistakable character of their own, neither

Byzantine nor Early Christian.

+ARABIC ARCHITECTURE.+ In the building of mosques and tombs, especially

at Cairo, this architecture reached a remarkable degree of decorative

elegance, and sometimes of dignity. It developed slowly, the Arabs not

being at the outset a race of builders. The early monuments of Syria and

Egypt were insignificant, and the sacred _Kaabah_ at Mecca and the

mosque at Medina hardly deserve to be called architectural monuments at

all. The most important early works were the mosques of +’Amrou+ at

Cairo (642, rebuilt and enlarged early in the eighth century), of +El

Aksah+ on the Temple platform at Jerusalem (691, by Abd-el-Melek), and

of +El Walid+ at Damascus (705-732, recently seriously injured by fire).

All these were simple one-storied structures, with flat wooden roofs

carried on parallel ranges of columns supporting pointed arches, the

arcades either closing one side of a square court, or surrounding it

completely. The long perspectives of the aisles and the minute

decoration of the archivolts and ceilings alone gave them architectural

character. The beautiful +Dome of the Rock+ (Kubbet-es-Sakhrah,

miscalled the Mosque of Omar) on the Temple platform at Jerusalem is

either a remodelled Constantinian edifice, or in large part composed of

the materials of one (see p. 116).

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN, CAIRO: SANCTUARY.

a, _Mihrâb_, b, _Mimber_.]

The splendid mosque of +Ibn Touloun+ (876-885) was built on the same

plan as that of Amrou, but with cantoned piers instead of columns and a

corresponding increase in variety of perspective and richness of effect.

With the incoming of the Fatimite dynasty, however, and the foundation

of the present city of Cairo (971), vaulting began to take the place of

wooden ceilings, and then appeared the germs of those extraordinary

applications of geometry to decorative design which were henceforth to

be the most striking feature of Arabic ornament. Under the Ayûb dynasty,

which began with Salâh-ed-din (Saladin) in 1172, these elements, of

which the great +Barkouk+ mosque (1149) is the most imposing early

example, developed slowly in the domical tombs of the _Karafah_ at

Cairo, and prepared the way for the increasing richness and splendor of

a long series of mosques, among which those of +Kalaoun+ (1284-1318),

+Sultan Hassan+ (1356), +El Mu’ayyad+ (1415), and +Kaîd Bey+ (1463),

were the most conspicuous examples (Fig. 80). They mark, indeed,

successive advances in complexity of planning, ingenuity of

construction, and elegance of decoration. Together they constitute an

epoch in Arabic architecture, which coincides closely with the

development of Gothic vaulted architecture in Europe, both in the stages

and the duration of its advances.

The mosques of these three centuries are, like the mediæval monasteries,

impressive aggregations of buildings of various sorts about a central

court of ablutions. The tomb of the founder, residences for the _imams_,

or priests, schools (_madrassah_), and hospitals (_mâristân_) rival in

importance the prayer-chamber. This last is, however, the real focus of

interest and splendor; in some cases, as in Sultan Hassan, it is a

simple barrel-vaulted chamber open to the court; in others an oblong

arcaded hall with many small domes; or again, a square hall covered with

a high pointed dome on pendentives of intricately beautiful

stalactite-work (see below). The ceremonial requirements of the mosque

were simple. The-court must have its fountain of ablutions in the

centre. The prayer-hall, or mosque proper, must have its _mihrâb_, or

niche, to indicate the _kibleh_, the direction of Mecca; and its

_mimber_, or high, slender pulpit for the reading of the Kôran. These

were the only absolutely indispensable features of a mosque, but as

early as the ninth century the _minaret_ was added, from which the call

to prayer could be sounded over the city by the _mueddin_. Not until the

Ayubite period, however, did it begin to assume those forms of varied

and picturesque grace which lend to Cairo so much of its architectural

charm.

+ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS.+ While Arabic architecture, in Syria and Egypt

alike, possesses more decorative than constructive originality, the

beautiful forms of its domes, pendentives, and minarets, the simple

majesty of the great pointed barrel-vaults of the Hassan mosque and

similar monuments, and the graceful lines of the universally used

pointed arch, prove the Coptic builders and their later Arabic

successors to have been architects of great ability. The Arabic domes,

as seen both in the mosques and in the remarkable group of tombs

commonly called “tombs of the Khalîfs,” are peculiar not only in their

pointed outlines and their rich external decoration of interlaced

geometric motives, but still more in the external and internal treatment

of the pendentives, exquisitely decorated with stalactite ornament. This

ornament, derived, no doubt, from a combination of minute corbels with

rows of small niches, and presumably of Persian origin, was finally

developed into a system of extraordinary intricacy, applicable alike to

the topping of a niche or panel, as in the great doorways of the

mosques, and to the bracketing out of minaret galleries (Figs. 81, 82).

Its applications show a bewildering variety of forms and an

extraordinary aptitude for intricate geometrical design.

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--MOSQUE OF KAÎD BEY, CAIRO]

+DECORATION.+ Geometry, indeed, vied with the love of color in its hold

on the Arabic taste. Ceiling-beams were carved into highly ornamental

forms before receiving their rich color-decoration of red, green, blue,

and gold. The doors and the _mimber_ were framed in geometric patterns

with slender intersecting bars forming complicated star-panelling. The

voussoirs of arches were cut into curious interlocking forms; doorways

and niches were covered with stalactite corbelling, and pavements and

wall-incrustations, whether of marble or tiling, combined brilliancy and

harmony of color with the perplexing beauty of interlaced

star-and-polygon patterns of marvellous intricacy. Stained glass added

to the interior color-effect, the patterns being perforated in plaster,

with a bit of colored glass set into each perforation--a device not very

durable, perhaps, but singularly decorative.

+OTHER WORKS.+ Few of the mediæval Arabic palaces have remained to our

time. That they were adorned with a splendid prodigality appears from

contemporary accounts. This splendor was internal rather than external;

the palace, like all the larger and richer dwellings in the East,

surrounded one or more courts, and presented externally an almost

unbroken wall. The fountain in the chief court, the _diwân_ (a great,

vaulted reception-chamber opening upon the court and raised slightly

above it), the _dâr_, or men’s court, rigidly separated from the

_hareem_ for the women, were and are universal elements in these great

dwellings. The more common city-houses show as their most striking

features successively corbelled-out stories and broad wooden eaves, with

lattice-screens covering single windows, or almost a whole façade,

composed of turned work (_mashrabiyya_), in designs of great beauty.

The fountains, gates, and minor works of the Arabs display the same

beauty in decoration and color, the same general forms and details which

characterize the larger works, but it is impossible here to

particularize further with regard to them.

+MORESQUE.+ Elsewhere in Northern Africa the Arabs produced no such

important works as in Egypt, nor is the architecture of the other Moslem

states so well preserved or so well known. Constructive design would

appear to have been there even more completely subordinated to

decoration; tiling and plaster-relief took the place of more

architectural elements and materials, while horseshoe and cusped arches

were substituted for the simpler and more architectural pointed arch

(Fig. 82). The courts of palaces and public buildings were surrounded by

ranges of horseshoe arches on slender columns; these last being provided

with capitals of a form rarely seen in Cairo. Towers were built of much

more massive design than the Cairo minarets, usually with a square,

almost solid shaft and a more open lantern at the top, sometimes in

several diminishing stories.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--MOORISH DETAIL, ALHAMBRA.

_Showing stalactite and perforated work, Moorish cusped arch,

Hispano-Moresque capitals, and decorative inscriptions._]

+HISPANO-MORESQUE.+ The most splendid phase of this branch of Arabic

architecture is found not in Africa but in Spain, which was overrun in

710-713 by the Moors, who established there the independent Khalifate of

Cordova. This was later split up into petty kingdoms, of which the most

important were Granada, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia. This

dismemberment of the Khalifate led in time to the loss of these cities,

which were one by one recovered by the Christians during the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries; the capture of Granada, in 1492, finally

destroying the Moorish rule.

The dominion of the Moors in Spain was marked by a high civilization and

an extraordinary activity in building. The style they introduced became

the national style in the regions they occupied, and even after the

expulsion of the Moors was used in buildings erected by Christians and

by Jews. The “House of Pilate,” at Seville, is an example of this, and

the general use of the Moorish style in Jewish synagogues, down to our

own day, both in Spain and abroad, originated in the erection of

synagogues for the Jews in Spain by Moorish artisans and in Moorish

style, both during and after the period of Moslem supremacy.

Besides innumerable mosques, castles, bridges, aqueducts, gates, and

fountains, the Moors erected several monuments of remarkable size and

magnificence. Specially worthy of notice among them are the Great Mosque

at Cordova, the Alcazars of Seville and Malaga, the Giralda at Seville,

and the Alhambra at Granada.

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--INTERIOR OF THE GREAT MOSQUE AT CORDOVA.]

The +Mosque at Cordova+, begun in 786 by ‘Abd-er-Rahman, enlarged in

876, and again by El Mansour in 976, is a vast arcaded hall 375 feet ×

420 feet in extent, but only 30 feet high (Fig. 83). The rich wooden

ceiling rests upon seventeen rows of thirty to thirty-three columns

each, and two intersecting rows of piers, all carrying horseshoe arches

in two superposed ranges, a large portion of those about the sanctuary

being cusped, the others plain, except for the alternation of color in

the voussoirs. The _mihrâb_ niche is particularly rich in its minutely

carved incrustations and mosaics, and a dome ingeniously formed by

intersecting ribs covers the sanctuary before it. This form of dome

occurs frequently in Spain.

The +Alcazars+ at Seville and Malaga, which have been restored in recent

years, present to-day a fairly correct counterpart of the castle-palaces

of the thirteenth century. They display the same general conceptions and

decorative features as the Alhambra, which they antedate. The +Giralda+

at Seville is, on the other hand, unique. It is a lofty rectangular

tower, its exterior panelled and covered with a species of

quarry-ornament in relief; it terminated originally in two or three

diminishing stages or lanterns, which were replaced in the sixteenth

century by the present Renaissance belfry.

The +Alhambra+ is universally considered to be the masterpiece of

Hispano-Moresque art, partly no doubt on account of its excellent

preservation. It is most interesting as an example of the splendid

citadel-palaces built by the Moorish conquerors, as well as for its

gorgeous color-decoration of minute quarry-ornament stamped or moulded

in the wet plaster wherever the walls are not wainscoted with tiles. It

was begun in 1248 by Mohammed-ben-Al-Hamar, enlarged in 1279 by his

successor, and again in 1306, when its mosque was built. Its plan (Fig.

84) shows two large courts and a smaller one next the mosque, with three

great square chambers and many of minor importance. Light arcades

surround the Court of the Lions with its fountain, and adorn the ends of

the other chief court; and the stalactite pendentive, rare in Moorish

work, appears in the “Hall of Ambassadors” and some other parts of the

edifice. But its chief glory is its ornamentation, less durable, less

architectural than that of the Cairene buildings, but making up for this

in delicacy and richness. Minute vine-patterns and Arabic inscriptions

are interwoven with waving intersecting lines, forming a net-like

framework, to all of which deep red, blue, black, and gold give an

indescribable richness of effect.

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--PLAN OF THE ALHAMBRA.

A, _Hall of Ambassadors_; a, _Mosque_; b, _Court of Mosque_;

c, _Sala della Barca_; _d, d_, _Baths_; e, _Hall of the

Two Sisters_; _f, f, f_, _Hall of the Tribunal_;

g, _Hall of the Abencerrages_.]

The Moors also overran Sicily in the eighth century, but while their

architecture there profoundly influenced that of the Christians who

recovered Sicily in 1090, and copied the style of the conquered Moslems,

there is too little of the original Moorish architecture remaining to

claim mention here.

+SASSANIAN.+ The Sassanian empire, which during the four centuries from

226 to 641 A.D. had withstood Rome and extended its own sway almost to

India, left on Persian soil a number of interesting monuments which

powerfully influenced the Mohammedan style of that region. The Sassanian

buildings appear to have been principally palaces, and were all vaulted.

With their long barrel-vaulted halls, combined with square domical

chambers, as in Firouz-Abad and Serbistan, they exhibit reminiscences of

antique Assyrian tradition. The ancient Persian use of columns was

almost entirely abandoned, but doors and windows were still treated with

the banded frames and cavetto-cornices of Persepolis and Susa. The

Sassanians employed with these exterior details others derived perhaps

from Syrian and Byzantine sources. A sort of engaged buttress-column and

blind arches repeated somewhat aimlessly over a whole façade were

characteristic features; still more so the huge arches, elliptical or

horse-shoe shaped, which formed the entrances to these palaces, as in

the Tâk-Kesra at Ctesiphon. Ornamental details of a debased Roman type

appear, mingled with more gracefully flowing leaf-patterns resembling

early Christian Syrian carving. The last great monument of this style

was the palace at Mashita in Moab, begun by the last Chosroes (627), but

never finished, an imposing and richly ornamented structure about 500 ×

170 feet, occupying the centre of a great court.

+PERSIAN-MOSLEM ARCHITECTURE.+ These Sassanian palaces must have

strongly influenced Persian architecture after the Arab conquest in 641.

For although the architecture of the first six centuries after that date

suffered almost absolute extinction at the hands of the Mongols under

Genghis Khan, the traces of Sassanian influence are still perceptible in

the monuments that rose in the following centuries. The dome and vault,

the colossal portal-arches, and the use of brick and tile are evidences

of this influence, bearing no resemblance to Byzantine or Arabic types.

The Moslem monuments of Persia, so far as their dates can be

ascertained, are all subsequent to 1200, unless tradition is correct in

assigning to the time of Haroun Ar Rashid (786) certain curious tombs

near Bagdad with singular pyramidal roofs. The ruined mosque at Tabriz

(1300), and the beautiful domical +Tomb+ at +Sultaniyeh+ (1313) belong

to the Mogul period. They show all the essential features of the later

architecture of the Sufis (1499-1694), during whose dynastic period were

built the still more splendid and more celebrated +Meidan+ or square,

the great mosque of Mesjid Shah, the Bazaar and the College or Medress

of Hussein Shah, all at Ispahan, and many other important monuments at

Ispahan, Bagdad, and Teheran. In these structures four elements

especially claim attention; the pointed bulbous dome, the round minaret,

the portal-arch rising above the adjacent portions of the building, and

the use of enamelled terra-cotta tiles as an external decoration. To

these may be added the ogee arch (_ogee_ = double-reversed curve), as an

occasional feature. The vaulting is most ingenious and beautiful, and

its forms, whether executed in brick or in plaster, are sufficiently

varied without resort to the perplexing complications of stalactite

work. In Persian decoration the most striking qualities are the harmony

of blended color, broken up into minute patterns and more subdued in

tone than in the Hispano-Moresque, and the preference of flowing lines

and floral ornament to the geometric puzzles of Arabic design. Persian

architecture influenced both Turkish and Indo-Moslem art, which owe to

it a large part of their decorative charm.

+INDO-MOSLEM.+ The Mohammedan architecture of India is so distinct from

all the native Indian styles and so related to the art of Persia, if not

to that of the Arabs, that it properly belongs here rather than in the

later chapter on Oriental styles. It was in the eleventh century that

the states of India first began to fall before Mohammedan invaders, but

not until the end of the fifteenth century that the great Mogul dynasty

was established in Hindostan as the dominant power. During the

intervening period local schools of Moslem architecture were developing

in the Pathan country of Northern India (1193-1554), in Jaunpore and

Gujerat (1396-1572), in Scinde, where Persian influence predominated; in

Kalburgah and Bidar (1347-1426). These schools differed considerably in

spirit and detail; but under the Moguls (1494-1706) there was less

diversity, and to this dynasty we owe many of the most magnificent

mosques and tombs of India, among which those of Bijapur retain a marked

and distinct style of their own.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.--TOMB OF MAHMUD, BIJAPUR. SECTION.]

The Mohammedan monuments of India are characterized by a grandeur and

amplitude of disposition, a symmetry and monumental dignity of design

which distinguishes them widely from the picturesque but sometimes

trivial buildings of the Arabs and Moors. Less dependent on color than

the Moorish or Persian structures, they are usually built of marble, or

of marble and sandstone, giving them an air of permanence and solidity

wanting in other Moslem styles except the Turkish. The dome, the round

minaret, the pointed arch, and the colossal portal-arch, are universal,

as in Persia, and enamelled tiles are also used, but chiefly for

interior decoration. Externally the more dignified if less resplendent

decoration of surface carving is used, in patterns of minute and

graceful scrolls, leaf forms, and Arabic inscriptions covering large

surfaces. The Arabic stalactite pendentive star-panelling and

geometrical interlace are rarely if ever seen. The dome on the square

plan is almost universal, but neither the Byzantine nor the Arabic

pendentive is used, striking and original combinations of vaulting

surfaces, of corner squinches, of corbelling and ribs, being used in its

place. Many of the Pathan domes and arches at Delhi, Ajmir, Ahmedabad,

Shepree, etc., are built in horizontal or corbelled courses supported on

slender columns, and exert no thrust at all, so that they are vaults

only in form, like the dome of the Tholos of Atreus (Fig. 24). The most

imposing and original of all Indian domes are those of the +Jumma

Musjid+ and of the +Tomb of Mahmud+, both at Bijapur, the latter 137

feet in span (Fig. 85). These two monuments, indeed, with the Mogul Taj

Mahal at Agra, not only deserve the first rank among Indian monuments,

but in constructive science combined with noble proportions and

exquisite beauty are hardly, if at all, surpassed by the greatest

triumphs of western art. The Indo-Moslem architects, moreover,

especially those of the Mogul period, excelled in providing artistic

settings for their monuments. Immense platforms, superb courts, imposing

flights of steps, noble gateways, minarets to mark the angles of

enclosures, and landscape gardening of a high order, enhance greatly the

effect of the great mosques, tombs, and palaces of Agra, Delhi,

Futtehpore Sikhri, Allahabad, Secundra, etc.

The most notable monuments of the Moguls are the +Mosque of Akbar+

(1556-1605) at Futtehpore Sikhri, the tomb of that sultan at Secundra,

and his palace at Allahabad; the +Pearl Mosque+ at Agra and the +Jumma

Musjid+ at Delhi, one of the largest and noblest of Indian mosques, both

built by Shah Jehan about 1650; his immense but now ruined palace in the

same city; and finally the unrivalled mausoleum, the +Taj Mahal+ at

Agra, built during his lifetime as a festal hall, to serve as his tomb

after death (Fig. 86). This last is the pearl of Indian architecture,

though it is said to have been designed by a European architect, French

or Italian. It is a white marble structure 185 feet square, centred in a

court 313 feet square, forming a platform 18 feet high. The corners of

this court are marked by elegant minarets, and the whole is dominated by

the exquisite white marble dome, 58 feet in diameter, 80 feet high,

internally rising over four domical corner chapels, and covered

externally by a lofty marble bulb-dome on a high drum. The rich

materials, beautiful execution, and exquisite inlaying of this mausoleum

are worthy of its majestic design. On the whole, in the architecture of

the Moguls in Bijapur, Agra, and Delhi, Mohammedan architecture reaches

its highest expression in the totality and balance of its qualities of

construction, composition, detail, ornament, and settings. The later

monuments show the decline of the style, and though often rich and

imposing, are lacking in refinement and originality.

[Illustration: FIG. 86.--TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.]

+TURKISH.+ The Ottoman Turks, who began their conquering career under

Osman I. in Bithynia in 1299, had for a century been occupying the

fairest portions of the Byzantine empire when, in 1453, they became

masters of Constantinople. Hagia Sophia was at once occupied as their

chief mosque, and such of the other churches as were spared, were

divided between the victors and the vanquished. The conqueror, Mehmet

II., at the same time set about the building of a new mosque, entrusting

the design to a Byzantine, Christodoulos, whom he directed to reproduce,

with some modifications, the design of the “Great Church”--Hagia Sophia.

The type thus officially adopted has ever since remained the controlling

model of Turkish mosque design, so far, at least, as general plan and

constructive principles are concerned. Thus the conquering Turks,

educated by a century of study and imitation of Byzantine models in

Brusa, Nicomedia, Smyrna, Adrianople, and other cities earlier

subjugated, did what the Byzantines had, during nine centuries, failed

to do. The noble idea first expressed by Anthemius and Isidorus in the

Church of Hagia Sophia had remained undeveloped, unimitated by later

architects. It was the Turk who first seized upon its possibilities, and

developed therefrom a style of architecture less sumptuous in color and

decoration than the sister styles of Persia, Cairo, or India, but of

great nobility and dignity, notwithstanding. The low-curved dome with

its crown of buttressed windows, the plain spherical pendentives, the

great apses at each end, covered by half-domes and penetrated by smaller

niches, the four massive piers with their projecting buttress-masses

extending across the broad lateral aisles, the narthex and the arcaded

atrium in front--all these appear in the great Turkish mosques of

Constantinople. In the Conqueror’s mosque, however, two apses with

half-domes replace the lateral galleries and clearstory of Hagia Sophia,

making a perfectly quadripartite plan, destitute of the emphasis and

significance of a plan drawn on one main axis (Fig. 87). The same

treatment occurs in the mosque of Ahmed I., the +Ahmediyeh+ (1608; Fig.

88), and the +Yeni Djami+ (“New Mosque”) at the port (1665). In the

mosque of +Osman III.+ (1755) the reverse change was effected; the

mosque has no great apses, four clearstories filling the four arches

under the dome, as also in several of the later and smaller mosques. The

greatest and noblest of the Turkish mosques, the +Suleimaniyeh+, built

in 1553 by Soliman the Magnificent, returned to the Byzantine

combination of two half-domes with two clearstories (Fig. 89).

[Illustration: FIG. 87.--MOSQUE OF MEHMET II., CONSTANTINOPLE.

PLAN.

(The dimensions figured in metres.)]

In none of these monuments is there the internal magnificence of marble

and mosaic of the Byzantine churches. These are only in a measure

replaced by Persian tile-wainscoting and stained-glass windows of the

Arabic type. The division into stories and the treatment of scale are

less well managed than in the Hagia Sophia; on the other hand, the

proportion of height to width is generally admirable. The exterior

treatment is unique and effective, far superior to the Byzantine

practice. The massing of domes and half-domes and roofs is more

artistically arranged; and while there is little of that minute carved

detail found in Egypt and India, the composition of the lateral arcades,

the simple but impressive domical peristyles of the courts, and the

graceful forms of the pointed arches, with alternating voussoirs of

white and black marble, are artistic in a high degree. The minarets are,

however, inferior to those of Indian, Persian, and Arabic art, though

graceful in their proportions.

[Illustration: FIG. 88.--EXTERIOR AHMEDIYEH MOSQUE.]

Nearly all the great mosques are accompanied by the domical tombs

(_turbeh_) of their imperial founders. Some of these are of noble size

and great beauty of proportion and decoration. The +Tomb of Roxelana+

(Khourrem), the favorite wife of Soliman the Magnificent (1553), is the

most beautiful of all, and perhaps the most perfect gem of Turkish

architecture, with its elegant arcade surrounding the octagonal domical

mausoleum-chamber. The +monumental fountains+ of Constantinople also

deserve mention. Of these, the one erected by Ahmet III. (1710), near

Hagia Sophia, is the most beautiful. They usually consist of a

rectangular marble reservoir with pagoda-like roof and broad eaves, the

four faces of the fountain adorned each with a niche and basin, and

covered with relief carving and gilded inscriptions.

[Illustration: FIG. 89.--INTERIOR OF SULEIMANIYEH,

CONSTANTINOPLE.]

+PALACES.+ In this department the Turks have done little of importance.

The buildings in the Seraglio gardens are low and insignificant. The

+Tchinli Kiosque+, now the Imperial Museum, is however, a simple but

graceful two-storied edifice, consisting of four vaulted chambers in the

angles of a fine cruciform hall, with domes treated like those of

Bijapur on a small scale; the tiling and the veranda in front are

particularly elegant; the design suggests Persian handiwork. The later

palaces, designed by Armenians, are picturesque white marble and stucco

buildings on the water’s edge; they possess richly decorated halls, but

the details are of a debased European rococo style, quite unworthy of an

Oriental monarch.

+MONUMENTS.+ ARABIAN: “Mosque of Omar,” or Dome of the Rock, 638;

El Aksah, by ’Abd-el-Melek, 691, both at Jerusalem; Mosque ’Amrou

at Cairo, 642; mosques at Cyrene, 665; great mosque of El Walîd,

Damascus, 705-717. Bagdad built, 755. Great mosque at Kairouân,

737. At Cairo, Ibn Touloun, 876; Gama-El-Azhar, 971; Barkouk,

1149; “Tombs of Khalîfs” (Karafah), 1250-1400; Moristan Kalaoun,

1284; Medresseh Sultan Hassan, 1356; El Azhar enlarged; El Mûayed,

1415; Kaïd Bey, 1463; Sinan Pacha, 1468; “Tombs of Mamelukes,”

16th century. Also palaces, baths, fountains, mosques, and tombs.

MORESQUE: Mosque at Saragossa, 713; mosque and arsenal at Tunis,

742; great mosque at Cordova, 786, 876, 975; sanctuary, 14th

century. Mosques, baths, etc., at Cordova, Tarragona, Segovia,

Toledo, 960-980; mosque of Sobeiha at Cordova, 981. Palaces and

mosques at Fez; great mosque at Seville, 1172. Extensive building

in Morocco close of 12th century. Giralda at Seville, 1160;

Alcazars in Malaga and Seville, 1225-1300; Alhambra and Generalife

at Granada, 1248, 1279, 1306; also mosques, baths, etc. Yussuf

builds palace at Malaga, 1348; palaces at Granada. PERSIAN: Tombs

near Bagdad, 786 (?); mosque at Tabriz, 1300; tomb of Khodabendeh

at Sultaniyeh, 1313; Meidan Shah (square) and Mesjid Shah (mosque)

at Ispahan, 17th century; Medresseh (school) of Sultan Hussein,

18th century; palaces of Chehil Soutoun (forty columns) and Aineh

Khaneh (Palace of Mirrors). Baths, tombs, bazaars, etc., at

Cashan, Koum, Kasmin, etc. Aminabad Caravanserai between Shiraz

and Ispahan; bazaar at Ispahan.

INDIAN: Mosque and “Kutub Minar” (tower) _cir._ 1200; Tomb of

Altumsh, 1236; mosque at Ajmir, 1211-1236; tomb at Old Delhi;

Adina Mosque, Maldah, 1358. Mosques Jumma Musjid and Lal Durwaza

at Jaunpore, first half of 15th century. Mosque and bazaar,

Kalburgah, 1435 (?). Mosques at Ahmedabad and Sirkedj, middle 15th

century. Mosque Jumma Musjid and Tomb of Mahmûd, Bijapur, _cir._

1550. Tomb of Humayûn, Delhi; of Mohammed Ghaus, Gwalior; mosque

at Futtehpore Sikhri; palace at Allahabad; tomb of Akbar at

Secundra, all by Akbar, 1556-1605. Palace and Jumma Musjid at

Delhi; Muti Musjid (Pearl mosque) and Taj Mahal at Agra, by Shah

Jehan, 1628-1658.

TURKISH: Tomb of Osman, Brusa, 1326; Green Mosque (Yeshil Djami)

Brusa, _cir._ 1350. Mosque at Isnik (Nicæa), 1376. Mehmediyeh

(mosque Mehmet II.) Constantinople, 1453; mosque at Eyoub; Tchinli

Kiosque, by Mehmet II., 1450-60; mosque Bayazid, 1500; Selim I.,

1520; Suleimaniyeh, by Sinan, 1553; Ahmediyeh by Ahmet I., 1608;

Yeni Djami, 1665; Nouri Osman, by Osman III., 1755; mosque

Mohammed Ali in Cairo, 1824. Mosque at Adrianople. KHANS,

cloistered courts for public business and commercial lodgers,

various dates, 16th and 17th centuries (Validé Khan, Vizir Khan),

vaulted bazaars, fountains, Seraskierat Tower, all at

Constantinople.

CHAPTER XIII.

EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE

IN ITALY AND FRANCE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Cattaneo, _L’Architecture en Italie_. Chapuy,

_Le moyen age monumental_. Corroyer, _Architecture romane_.

Cummings, _A History of Architecture in Italy_. Enlart, _Manuel

d’archéologie française_. Hübsch, _Monuments de l’architecture

chrétienne_. Knight, _Churches of Northern Italy_. Lenoir,

_Architecture monastique_. Osten, _Bauwerke in der Lombardei_.

Quicherat, _Mélanges d’histoire et d’archéologie_. Reber, _History

of Mediæval Architecture_. Révoil, _Architecture romane du midi de

la France_. Rohault de Fleury, _Monuments de Pise_. Sharpe,

_Churches of Charente_. De Verneilh, _L’Architecture byzantine en

France_. Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture

française_ (especially in Vol. I., Architecture religieuse);

_Discourses on Architecture_.

+EARLY MEDIÆVAL EUROPE.+ The fall of the Western Empire in 476 A.D.

marked the beginning of a new era in architecture outside of the

Byzantine Empire. The so-called Dark Ages which followed this event

constituted the formative period of the new Western civilization, during

which the Celtic and Germanic races were being Christianized and

subjected to the authority and to the educative influences of the

Church. Under these conditions a new architecture was developed, founded

upon the traditions of the early Christian builders, modified in

different regions by Roman or Byzantine influences. For Rome recovered

early her antique prestige, and Roman monuments covering the soil of

Southern Europe, were a constant object lesson to the builders of that

time. To this new architecture of the West, which in the tenth and

eleventh centuries first began to achieve worthy and monumental results,

the generic name of +Romanesque+ has been commonly given, in spite of

the great diversity of its manifestations in different countries.

+CHARACTER OF THE ARCHITECTURE.+ Romanesque architecture was

pre-eminently ecclesiastical. Civilization and culture emanated from the

Church, and her requirements and discipline gave form to the builder’s

art. But the basilican style, which had so well served her purposes in

the earlier centuries and on classic soil, was ill-suited to the new

conditions. Corinthian columns, marble incrustations, and splendid

mosaics were not to be had for the asking in the forests of Gaul or

Germany, nor could the Lombards and Ostrogoths in Italy or their

descendants reproduce them. The basilican style was complete in itself,

possessing no seeds of further growth. The priests and monks of Italy

and Western Europe sought to rear with unskilled labor churches of stone

in which the general dispositions of the basilica should reappear in

simpler, more massive dress, and, as far as possible, in a fireproof

construction with vaults of stone. This problem underlies all the varied

phases of Romanesque architecture; its final solution was not, however,

reached until the Gothic period, to which the Romanesque forms the

transition and stepping-stone.

+MEDIÆVAL ITALY.+ Italy in the Dark Ages stood midway between the

civilization of the Eastern Empire and the semi-barbarism of the West.

Rome, Ravenna, and Venice early became centres of culture and maintained

continuous commercial relations with the East. Architecture did not lack

either the inspiration or the means for advancing on new lines. But its

advance was by no means the same everywhere. The unifying influence of

the church was counterbalanced by the provincialism and the local

diversities of the various Italian states, resulting in a wide variety

of styles. These, however, may be broadly grouped in four divisions: the

+Lombard+, the +Tuscan-Romanesque+, the +Italo-Byzantine+, and the

unchanged +Basilican+ or Early Christian, which last, as was shown in

Chapter X., continued to be practised in Rome throughout the Middle

Ages.

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--INTERIOR OF SAN AMBROGIO, MILAN.]

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--WEST FRONT AND CAMPANILE OF CATHEDRAL,

PIACENZA.]

+LOMBARD STYLE.+ Owing to the general rebuilding of ancient churches

under the more settled social conditions of the eleventh and twelfth

centuries, little remains to us of the architecture of the three

preceding centuries in Italy, except the Roman basilicas and a few

baptisteries and circular churches, already mentioned in Chapter X. The

so-called Lombard monuments belong mainly to the eleventh and twelfth

centuries. They are found not only in Lombardy, but also in Venetia and

the Æmilia. Milan, Pavia, Piacenza, Bologna, and Verona were important

centres of development of this style. The churches were nearly all

vaulted, but the plans were basilican, with such variations as resulted

from efforts to meet the exigencies of vaulted construction. The nave

was narrowed, and instead of rows of columns carrying a thin clearstory

wall, a few massive piers of masonry, connected by broad pier-arches,

supported the heavy ribs of the groined vaulting, as in S. Ambrogio,

Milan (Fig. 90). To resist the thrust of the main vault, the clearstory

was sometimes suppressed, the side aisle carried up in two stories

forming galleries, and rows of chapels added at the sides, their

partitions forming buttresses. The piers were often of clustered

section, the better to receive the various arches and ribs they

supported. The vaulting was in square divisions or _vaulting-bays_, each

embracing two pier-arches which met upon an intermediate pier lighter

than the others. Thus the whole aspect of the interior was

revolutionized. The lightness, spaciousness, and decorative elegance of

the basilicas were here exchanged for a sombre and massive dignity

severe in its plainness. The Choir was sometimes raised a few feet above

the nave, to allow of a crypt and _confessio_ beneath, reached by broad

flights of steps from the nave. Sta. Maria della Pieve at Arezzo

(9th-11th century), +S. Michele+ at Pavia (late 11th century), the

+Cathedral of Piacenza+ (1122), +S. Ambrogio+ at Milan (12th century),

and +S. Zeno+ at Verona (1139) are notable monuments of this style.

+LOMBARD EXTERIORS.+ The few architectural embellishments employed on

the simple exteriors of the Lombard churches were usually effective and

well composed. Slender columnettes or long pilasters, blind arcades, and

open arcaded galleries under the eaves gave light and shade to these

exteriors. The façades were mere frontispieces with a single broad

gable, the three aisles of the church being merely suggested by flat or

round pilasters dividing the front (Fig 91). Gabled porches, with

columns resting on the backs of lions or monsters, adorned the doorways.

The carving was often of a fierce and grotesque character. Detached

bell-towers or _campaniles_ adjoined many of these churches; square and

simple in mass, but with well-distributed openings and well-proportioned

belfries (Piacenza S. Zeno at Verona, etc.).[18]

[Footnote 18: See Appendix B.]

+THE TUSCAN ROMANESQUE.+ The churches of this style (sometimes called

the +Pisan+) were less vigorous but more elegant and artistic in design

than the Lombard. They were basilicas in plan, with timber ceilings and

high clearstories on columnar arcades. In their decoration, both

internal and external, they betray the influence of Byzantine

traditions, especially in the use of white and colored marble in

alternating bands or in panelled veneering. Still more striking is the

external decorative application of wall-arcades, sometimes occupying the

whole height of the wall and carried on flat pilasters, sometimes in

superposed stages of small arches on slender columns standing free of

the wall. In general the decorative element prevailed over the

constructive in the design of these picturesquely beautiful churches,

some of which are of noble size. The +Duomo+ (cathedral) of +Pisa+,

built 1063-1118, is the finest monument of the style (Figs. 92, 93). It

is 312 feet long and 118 wide, with long transepts and an elliptical

dome of later date over the _crossing_ (the intersection of nave and

transepts). Its richly arcaded front and banded flanks strikingly

exemplify the illogical and unconstructive but highly decorative methods

of the Tuscan Romanesque builders. The circular +Baptistery+ (1153),

with its lofty domical central hall surrounded by an aisle, an imposing

development of the type established by Constantine (p. 111), and the

famous +Leaning Tower+ (1174), both designed with external arcading,

combine with the Duomo to form the most remarkable group of

ecclesiastical buildings in Italy, if not in Europe (Fig. 92).

[Illustration: FIG. 92.--BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL,

AND LEANING TOWER, PISA.]

The same style appears in more flamboyant shape in some of the churches

of Lucca. The cathedral +S. Martino+ (1060; façade, 1204; nave altered

in fourteenth century) is the finest and largest of these; +S. Michele+

(façade, 1288) and S. Frediano (twelfth century) have the most

elaborately decorated façades. The same principles of design appear in

the cathedral and several other churches in Pistoia and Prato; but these

belong, for the most part, to the Gothic period.

[Illustration: FIG. 93.--INTERIOR OF PISA CATHEDRAL.]

+FLORENCE.+ The church of +S. Miniato+, in the suburbs of Florence, is a

beautiful example of a modification of the Pisan style. It is in plan a

basilica with two piers interrupting the colonnade on each side of the

nave and supporting powerful transverse arches. The interior is

embellished with bands and patterns in black and white, and the woodwork

of the open-timber roof is elegantly decorated with fine patterns in

red, green, blue, and gold--a treatment common in early mediæval

churches, as at Messina, Orvieto, etc. The exterior is adorned with

wall-arches of classic design and with panelled veneering in white and

dark marble, instead of the horizontal bands of the Pisan churches. This

system of external decoration, a blending of Pisan and Italo-Byzantine

methods, became the established practice in Florence, lasting through

the whole Gothic period. The +Baptistery+ of Florence, originally the

cathedral, an imposing polygonal domical edifice of the tenth century,

presents externally one of the most admirable examples of this practice.

Its marble veneering in black and white, with pilasters and arches of

excellent design, is attributed by Vasari to Arnolfo di Cambio, but is

by many considered to be much older, although restored by that architect

in 1294.

Suggestions of the Pisan arcade system are found in widely scattered

examples in the east and south of Italy, mingled with features of

Lombard and Byzantine design. In Apulia, as at Bari, Caserta Vecchia

(1100), Molfetta (1192), and in Sicily, the Byzantine influence is

conspicuous in the use of domes and in many of the decorative details.

Particularly is this the case at Palermo and Monreale, where the

churches erected after the Norman conquest--some of them domical, some

basilican--show a strange but picturesque and beautiful mixture of

Romanesque, Byzantine, and Arabic forms. The +Cathedral+ of +Monreale+

and the churches of the +Eremiti+ and +La Martorana+ at Palermo are the

most important.

The +Italo-Byzantine+ style has already found mention in the latter part

of Chapter XI. Venice and Ravenna were its chief centres; while the

influence, both of the parent style and of its Italian offshoot was, as

we have just shown, very widespread.

+WESTERN ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE.+ In Western Europe the unrest and

lawlessness which attended the unsettled relations of society under the

feudal system long retarded the establishment of that social order

without which architectural progress is impossible. With the eleventh

century there began, however, a great activity in building, principally

among the monasteries, which represented all that there was of culture

and stability amid the prevailing disorder. Undisturbed by war, the only

abodes of peaceful labor, learning, and piety, they had become rich and

powerful, both in men and land. Probably the more or less general

apprehension of the supposed impending end of the world in the year 1000

contributed to this result by driving unquiet consciences to seek refuge

in the monasteries, or to endow them richly.

The monastic builders, with little technical training, but with plenty

of willing hands, sought out new architectural paths to meet their

special needs. Remote from classic and Byzantine models, and mainly

dependent on their own resources, they often failed to realize the

intended results. But skill came with experience, and with advancing

civilization and a surer mastery of construction came a finer taste and

greater elegance of design. Meanwhile military architecture developed a

new science of building, and covered Europe with imposing castles,

admirably constructed and often artistic in design as far as military

exigencies would permit.

+CHARACTER OF THE STYLE.+ The Romanesque architecture of the eleventh

and twelfth centuries in Western Europe (sometimes called the

+Round-Arched Gothic+) was thus predominantly though not exclusively

monastic. This gave it a certain unity of character in spite of national

and local variations. The problem which the wealthy orders set

themselves was, like that of the Lombard church-builders in Italy, to

adapt the basilica plan to the exigencies of vaulted construction.

Massive walls, round arches stepped or recessed to lighten their

appearance, heavy mouldings richly carved, clustered piers and

jamb-shafts, capitals either of the _cushion_ type or imitated from the

Corinthian, and strong and effective carving--all these are features

alike of French, German, English, and Spanish Romanesque architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 94.--PLAN OF ST. FRONT.]

+THE FRENCH ROMANESQUE.+ Though monasticism produced remarkable results

in France, architecture there did not wholly depend upon the

monasteries. Southern Gaul (Provence) was full of classic remains and

classic traditions while at the same time it maintained close trade

relations with Venice and the East.[19] The church of +St. Front+ at

Perigueux, built in 1120, reproduced the plan of St. Mark’s with

singular fidelity, but without its rich decoration, and with pointed

instead of round arches (Figs. 94, 95). The domical cathedral of

+Cahors+ (1050-1100), an obvious imitation of S. Irene at

Constantinople, and the later and more Gothic Cathedral of +Angoulême+

display a notable advance in architectural skill outside of the

monasteries. Among the abbeys, +Fontevrault+ (1101-1119) closely

resembles Angoulême, but surpasses it in the elegance of its choir and

chapels. In these and a number of other domical churches of the same

Franco-Byzantine type in Aquitania, the substitution of the Latin cross

in the plan for the Greek cross used in St. Front, evinces the Gallic

tendency to work out to their logical end new ideas or new applications

of old ones. These striking variations on Byzantine themes might have

developed into an independent local style but for the overwhelming tide

of Gothic influence which later poured in from the North.

[Footnote 19: See Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire raisonné_, article

ARCHITECTURE, vol. i., pp. 66 _et seq._; also de Verneilh,

_L’Architecture byzantine en France_.]

[Illustration: FIG. 95.--INTERIOR OF ST. FRONT, PERIGUEUX.]

Meanwhile, farther south (at Arles, Avignon, etc.), classic models

strongly influenced the details, if not the plans, of an interesting

series of churches remarkable especially for their porches rich with

figure sculpture and for their elaborately carved details. The classic

archivolt, the Corinthian capital, the Roman forms of enriched

mouldings, are evident at a glance in the porches of Notre Dame des Doms

at Avignon, of the church of St. Gilles, and of St. Trophime at Arles.

[Illustration: FIG. 96.--PLAN OF NOTRE DAME DU PORT, CLERMONT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 97.--SECTION OF NOTRE DAME DU PORT, CLERMONT.]

+DEVELOPMENT OF VAULTING.+ It was in Central France, and mainly along

the Loire, that the systematic development of vaulted church

architecture began. Naves covered with barrel-vaults appear in a number

of large churches built during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with

apsidal and transeptal chapels and aisles carried around the apse, as in

St. Etienne, Nevers, +Notre Dame du Port+ at Clermont-Ferrand (Fig. 96),

and +St. Paul+ at Issoire. The thrust of these ponderous vaults was

clumsily resisted by half-barrel vaults over the side-aisles,

transmitting the strain to massive side-walls (Fig. 97), or by high

side-aisles with transverse barrel or groined vaults over each bay. In

either case the clearstory was suppressed--a fact which mattered little

in the sunny southern provinces. In the more cloudy North, in Normandy,

Picardy, and the Royal Domain, the nave-vault was raised higher to admit

of clearstory windows, and its section was in some cases made like a

pointed arch, to diminish its thrust, as at +Autun+. But these

eleventh-century vaults nearly all fell in, and had to be reconstructed

on new principles. In this work the Clunisians seem to have led the way,

as at +Cluny+ (1089) and +Vézelay+ (1100). In the latter church, one of

the finest and most interesting French edifices of the twelfth century,

a groined vault replaced the barrel-vault, though the oblong plan of the

vaulting-bays, due to the nave being wider than the pier-arches, led to

somewhat awkward twisted surfaces in the vaulting. But even here the

vaults had insufficient lateral buttressing, and began to crack and

settle; so that in the great ante-chapel, built thirty years later, the

side-aisles were made in two stories, the better to resist the thrust,

and the groined vaults themselves were constructed of pointed section.

These seem to be the earliest pointed groined vaults in France. It was

not till the second half of that century, however (1150-1200), that the

flying buttress was combined with such vaults, so as to permit of high

clearstories for the better lighting of the nave; and the problem of

satisfactorily vaulting an oblong space with a groined vault was not

solved until the following century.

+ONE-AISLED CHURCHES.+ In the Franco-Byzantine churches already

described (p. 164) this difficulty of the oblong vaulting-bay did not

occur, owing to the absence of side-aisles and pier-arches. Following

this conception of church-planning, a number of interesting parish

churches and a few cathedrals were built in various parts of France in

which side-recesses or chapels took the place of side-aisles. The

partitions separating them served as abutments for the groined or

barrel-vaults of the nave. The cathedrals of +Autun+ (1150) and

+Langres+ (1160), and in the fourteenth century that of Alby, employed

this arrangement, common in many earlier Provençal churches which have

disappeared.

[Illustration: FIG. 98.--A SIX-PART RIBBED VAULT, SHOWING

TWO COMPARTMENTS WITH THE FILLINGS COMPLETE.

_a, a_, _Transverse ribs_ (_doubleaux_); _b, b_, _Wall-ribs_

(_formerets_); _c, c_, _Groin-ribs_ (_diagonaux_).

(All the ribs are semicircles.)]

+SIX-PART VAULTING.+ In the Royal Domain great architectural activity

does not appear to have begun until the beginning of the Gothic period

in the middle of the twelfth century. But in Normandy, and especially at

Caen and Mont St. Michel, there were produced, between 1046 and 1120,

some remarkable churches, in which a high clearstory was secured in

conjunction with a vaulted nave, by the use of “six-part” vaulting (Fig.

98). This was an awkward expedient, by which a square vaulting-bay was

divided into six parts by the groins and by a middle transverse rib,

necessitating two narrow skew vaults meeting at the centre. This

unsatisfactory device was retained for over a century, and was common in

early Gothic churches both in France and Great Britain. It made it

possible to resist the thrust by high side-aisles, and yet to open

windows above these under the cross-vaults. The abbey churches of +St.

Etienne+ (the Abbaye aux Hommes) and +Ste. Trinité+ (Abbaye aux Dames),

at Caen, built in the time of William the Conqueror, were among the most

magnificent churches of their time, both in size and in the excellence

and ingenuity of their construction. The great abbey church of +Mont St.

Michel+ (much altered in later times) should also be mentioned here. At

the same time these and other Norman churches showed a great advance in

their internal composition. A well-developed triforium or subordinate

gallery was introduced between the pier-arches and clearstory, and all

the structural membering of the edifice was better proportioned and more

logically expressed than in most contemporary work.

+ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS.+ The details of French Romanesque architecture

varied considerably in the several provinces, according as classic,

Byzantine, or local influences prevailed. Except in a few of the

Aquitanian churches, the round arch was universal. The walls were heavy

and built of rubble between facings of stones of moderate size dressed

with the axe. Windows and doors were widely splayed to diminish the

obstruction of the massive walls, and were treated with jamb-shafts and

recessed arches. These were usually formed with large cylindrical

mouldings, richly carved with leaf ornaments, zigzags, billets, and

grotesques. Figure-sculpture was more generally used in the South than

in the North. The interior piers were sometimes cylindrical, but more

often clustered, and where square bays of four-part or six-part vaulting

were employed, the piers were alternately lighter and heavier. Each

shaft had its independent capital either of the block type or of a form

resembling somewhat that of the Corinthian order. During the eleventh

century it became customary to carry up to the main vaulting one or more

shafts of the compound pier to support the vaulting ribs. Thus the

division of the nave into _bays_ was accentuated, while at the same time

the horizontal three-fold division of the height by a well-defined

triforium between the pier-arches and clearstory began to be likewise

emphasized.

+VAULTING.+ The vaulting was also divided into bays by transverse ribs,

and where it was groined the groins themselves began in the twelfth

century to be marked by groin-ribs. These were constructed independently

of the vaulting, and the four or six compartments of each vaulting-bay

were then built in, the ribs serving, in part at least, to support the

centrings for this purpose. This far-reaching principle, already applied

by the Romans in their concrete vaults (see p. 84), appears as a

re-discovery, or rather an independent invention, of the builders of

Normandy at the close of the eleventh century. The flying buttress was a

later invention; in the round-arched buildings of the eleventh and

twelfth centuries the buttressing was mainly internal, and was

incomplete and timid in its arrangement.

+EXTERIORS.+ The exteriors were on this account plain and flat. The

windows were small, the mouldings simple, and towers were rarely

combined with the body of the church until after the beginning of the

twelfth century. Then they appeared as mere belfries of moderate height,

with pyramidal roofs and effectively arranged openings, the germs of the

noble Gothic spires of later times. Externally the western porches and

portals were the most important features of the design, producing an

imposing effect by their massive arches, clustered piers, richly carved

mouldings, and deep shadows.

+CLOISTERS, ETC.+ Mention should be made of the other monastic buildings

which were grouped around the abbey churches of this period. These

comprised refectories, chapter-halls, cloistered courts surrounded by

the conventual cells, and a large number of accessory structures for

kitchens, infirmaries, stores, etc. The whole formed an elaborate and

complex aggregation of connected buildings, often of great size and

beauty, especially the refectories and cloisters. Most of these

conventual buildings have disappeared, many of them having been

demolished during the Gothic period to make way for more elegant

structures in the new style. There remain, however, a number of fine

cloistered courts in their original form, especially in Southern France.

Among the most remarkable of these are those of +Moissac+, +Elne+, and

+Montmajour+.

+MONUMENTS.+ ITALY. (For basilicas and domical churches of

6th-12th centuries see pp. 118, 119.)--Before 11th century: Sta.

Maria at Toscanella, altered 1206; S. Donato, Zara; chapel at

Friuli; baptistery at Boella. 11th century: S. Giovanni, Viterbo;

Sta. Maria della Pieve, Arezzo; S. Antonio, Piacenza, 1014;

Eremiti, 1132, and La Martorana, 1143, both at Palermo; Duomo at

Bari, 1027 (much altered); Duomo and baptistery, Novara, 1030;

Duomo at Parma, begun 1058; Duomo at Pisa, 1063-1118; S. Miniato,

Florence, 1063-12th century; S. Michele at Pavia and Duomo at

Modena, late 11th century.--12th century: in Calabria and Apulia,

cathedrals of Trani, 1100; Caserta, Vecchia, 1100-1153; Molfetta,

1162; Benevento; churches S. Giovanni at Brindisi, S. Niccolo at

Bari, 1139. In Sicily, Duomo at Monreale, 1174-1189. In Northern

Italy, S. Tomaso in Limine, Bergamo, 1100 (?); Sta. Giulia,

Brescia; S. Lorenzo, Milan, rebuilt 1119; Duomo at Piacenza, 1122;

S. Zeno at Verona, 1139; S. Ambrogio, Milan, 1140, vaulted in 13th

century; baptistery at Pisa, 1153-1278; Leaning Tower, Pisa,

1174.--14th century: S. Michele, Lucca, 1188; S. Giovanni and

S. Frediano, Lucca. In Dalmatia, cathedral at Zara, 1192-1204.

Many castles and early town-halls, as at Bari, Brescia, Lucca,

etc.

FRANCE: Previous to 11th century: St. Germiny-des-Prés,

806, Chapel of the Trinity, St. Honorat-des-Lérins; Ste. Croix de

Montmajour.--11th century: Cérisy-la-Forêt and abbey church of

Mont St. Michel, 1020 (the latter altered in 12th and 16th

centuries); Vignory; St. Genou; porch of St. Bénoit-sur-Loire,

1030; St. Sépulchre at Neuvy, 1045; Ste. Trinité (Abbaye aux

Dames) at Caen, 1046, vaulted 1140; St. Etienne (Abbaye aux

Hommes) at Caen, same date; St. Front at Perigueux, 1120; Ste.

Croix at Quimperlé, 1081; cathedral, Cahors, 1050-1110; abbey

churches of Cluny (demolished) and Vézelay, 1089-1100; circular

church of Rieux-Mérinville, church of St. Savin in Auvergne, the

churches of St. Paul at Issoire and Notre-Dame-du-Port at

Clermont, St. Hilaire and Notre-Dame-la-Grande at Poitiers; also

St. Sernin (Saturnin) at Toulouse, all at close of 11th and

beginning of 12th century.--12th century: Domical churches of

Aquitania and vicinity; Solignac and Fontévrault, 1120; St.

Etienne (Périgueux), St. Avit-Sénieur; Angoulême, Souillac,

Broussac, etc., early 12th century; St. Trophime at Arles, 1110,

cloisters later; church of Vaison; abbeys and cloisters at

Montmajour, Tarascon, Moissac (with fragments of a 10th-century

cloister built into present arcades); St. Paul-du-Mausolée;

Puy-en-Vélay, with fine church. Many other abbeys, parish

churches, and a few cathedrals in Central and Northern France

especially.

CHAPTER XIV.

EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE.--_Continued._

IN GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN, AND SPAIN.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Hübsch and Reber. Bond, _Gothic

Architecture in England_. Also Brandon, _Analysis of Gothic

Architecture_. Boisserée, _Nieder Rhein_. Ditchfield, _The

Cathedrals of England_. Hasak, _Die romanische und die gotische

Baukunst_ (in _Handbuch d. Arch._). Lübke, _Die Mittelalterliche

Kunst in Westfalen_. Möller, _Denkmäler der deutschen Baukunst_.

Puttrich, _Baukunst des Mittelalters in Sachsen_. Rickman, _An

Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture_. Scott,

_English Church Architecture_. Van Rensselaer, _English

Cathedrals_.

+MEDIÆVAL GERMANY.+ Architecture developed less rapidly and

symmetrically in Germany than in France, notwithstanding the strong

centralized government of the empire. The early churches were of wood,

and the substitution of stone for wood proceeded slowly. During the

Carolingian epoch (800-919), however, a few important buildings were

erected, embodying Byzantine and classic traditions. Among these the

most notable was the +Minster+ or palatine chapel of Charlemagne at

+Aix-la-Chapelle+, an obvious imitation of San Vitale at Ravenna. It

consisted of an octagonal domed hall surrounded by a vaulted aisle in

two stories, but without the eight niches of the Ravenna plan. It was

preceded by a porch flanked by turrets. The Byzantine type thus

introduced was repeated in later churches, as in the Nuns’ Choir at

Essen (947) and at Ottmarsheim (1050). In the great monastery at Fulda a

basilica with transepts and with an apsidal choir at either end was

built in 803. These choirs were raised above the level of the nave, to

admit of crypts beneath them, as in many Lombard churches; a practice

which, with the reduplication of the choir and apse just mentioned,

became very common in German Romanesque architecture.

+EARLY CHURCHES.+ It was in Saxony that this architecture first entered

upon a truly national development. The early churches of this province

and of Hildesheim (where architecture flourished under the favor of the

bishops, as elsewhere under the royal influence) were of basilican plan

and destitute of vaulting, except in the crypts. They were built with

massive piers, sometimes rectangular, sometimes clustered, the two kinds

often alternating in the same nave. Short columns were, however,

sometimes used instead of piers, either alone, as at Paulinzelle and

Limburg-on-the-Hardt (1024-39), or alternating with piers, as at

Hecklingen, +Gernrode+ (958-1050), and +St. Godehard+ at Hildesheim

(1133). A triple eastern apse, with apsidal chapels projecting eastward

from the transepts, were common elements in the plans, and a second

apse, choir, and crypt at the west end were not infrequent. Externally

the most striking feature was the association of two, four, or even six

square or circular towers with the mass of the church, and the elevation

of square or polygonal turrets or cupolas over the crossing. These

adjuncts gave a very picturesque aspect to edifices otherwise somewhat

wanting in artistic interest.

[Illustration: FIG. 99.--PLAN OF MINSTER AT WORMS.]

+RHENISH CHURCHES.+ It was in the Rhine provinces that vaulting was

first applied to the naves of German churches, nearly a half century

after its general adoption in France. Cologne possesses an interesting

trio of churches in which the Byzantine dome on squinches or on

pendentives, with three apses or niches opening into the central area,

was associated with a long three aisled nave (+St. Mary-in-the-Capitol+,

begun in 9th century; +Great St. Martin’s+, 1150-70; +Apostles’ Church+,

1160-99: the naves vaulted later). The double chapel at

+Schwarz-Rheindorf+, near Bonn (1151), also has the crossing covered by

a dome on pendentives.

[Illustration: FIG. 100.--ONE BAY OF CATHEDRAL AT SPIRES.]

The vaulting of the nave itself was developed in another series of

edifices of imposing size, the cathedrals of +Mayence+ (1036), +Spires+

(Speyer), and +Worms+, and the +Abbey of Laach+, all built in the 11th

century and vaulted early in the 12th. In the first three the main

vaulting is in square bays, each covering two bays of the nave, the

piers of which are alternately lighter and heavier (Figs. 99, 100). At

Laach the vaulting-bays are oblong, both in nave and aisles. There was

no triforium gallery, and stability was secured only by excessive

thickness in the piers and clearstory walls, and by bringing down the

main vault as near to the side-aisle roofs as possible.

+RHENISH EXTERIORS.+ These great churches, together with those of +Bonn+

and +Limburg-on-the-Lahn+ and the cathedral of +Treves+ (Trier, 1047),

are interesting, not only by their size and dignity of plan and the

somewhat rude massiveness of their construction, but even more so by the

picturesqueness of their external design (Fig. 101). Especially

successful is the massing of the large and small turrets with the lofty

nave-roof and with the apses at one or both ends. The systematic use of

arcading to decorate the exterior walls, and the introduction of open

arcaded dwarf galleries under the cornices of the apses, gables, and

dome-turrets, gave to these Rhenish churches an external beauty hardly

equalled in other contemporary edifices. This method of exterior design,

and the system of vaulting in square bays over double bays of the nave,

were probably derived from the Lombard churches of Northern Italy, with

which the Hohenstauffen emperors had many political relations.

[Illustration: FIG. 101.--EAST END OF CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES,

COLOGNE.]

The Italian influence is also encountered in a number of circular

churches of early date, as at Fulda (9th-11th century), Drügelte, Bonn

(baptistery, demolished), and in façades like that at Rosheim, which is

a copy in little of San Zeno at Verona.

Elsewhere in Germany architecture was in a backward state, especially in

the southern provinces. Outside of Saxony, Franconia, and the Rhine

provinces, very few works of importance were erected until the

thirteenth century.

+SECULAR ARCHITECTURE.+ Little remains to us of the secular architecture

of this period in Germany, if we except the great feudal castles,

especially those of the Rhine, which were, after all, rather works of

military engineering than of architectural art. The palace of

Charlemagne at Aix (the chapel of which was mentioned on p. 172) is

known to have been a vast and splendid group of buildings, partly, at

least of marble; but hardly a vestige of it remains. Of the extensive

+Palace of Henry III.+ at +Goslar+ there remain well-defined ruins of an

imposing hall of assembly in two aisles with triple-arched windows. At

Brunswick the east wing of the +Burg Dankwargerode+ displays, in spite

of modern alterations, the arrangement of the chapel, great hall, two

fortified towers, and part of the residence of Henry the Lion. The

+Wartburg+ palace (Ludwig III., _cir._ 1150) is more generally

known--a rectangular hall in three stories, with windows effectively

grouped to form arcades; while at Gelnhausen and Münzenberg are ruins of

somewhat similar buildings. A few of the Romanesque monasteries of

Germany have left partial remains, as at +Maulbronn+, which was almost

entirely rebuilt in the Gothic period, and isolated buildings in Cologne

and elsewhere. There remain also in Cologne a number of Romanesque

private houses with coupled windows and stepped gables.

+GREAT BRITAIN.+ Previous to the Norman conquest (1066) there was in the

British Isles little or no architecture worthy of mention. The few

extant remains of Saxon and Celtic buildings reveal a singular poverty

of ideas and want of technical skill. These scanty remains are mostly of

towers (those in Ireland nearly all round and tapering, with conical

tops, their use and date being the subjects of much controversy) and

crypts. The tower of Earl’s Barton is the most important and best

preserved of those in England. With the Norman conquest, however, began

an extraordinary activity in the building of churches and abbeys.

William the Conqueror himself founded a number of these, and his Norman

ecclesiastics endeavored to surpass on British soil the contemporary

churches of Normandy. The new churches differed somewhat from their

French prototypes; they were narrower and lower, but much longer,

especially as to the choir and transepts. The cathedrals of +Durham+

(1096-1133) and +Norwich+ (same date) are important examples (Fig. 102).

They also differed from the French churches in two important particulars

externally; a huge tower rose usually over the crossing, and the western

portals were small and insignificant. Lateral entrances near the west

end were given greater importance and called _Galilees_. At Durham a

Galilee chapel (not shown in the plan), takes the place of a porch at

the west end, like the ante-churches of St. Benoît-sur-Loire and

Vézelay.

[Illustration: FIG. 102.--PLAN OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL.]

+THE NORMAN STYLE.+ The Anglo-Norman builders employed the same general

features as the Romanesque builders of Normandy, but with more of

picturesqueness and less of refinement and technical elegance. Heavy

walls, recessed arches, round mouldings, cubic cushion-caps, clustered

piers, and in doorways a jamb-shaft for each stepping of the arch were

common to both styles. But in England the Corinthian form of capital is

rare, its place being taken by simpler forms.

+NORMAN INTERIORS.+ The interior design of the larger churches of this

period shows a close general analogy to contemporaneous French Norman

churches, as appears by comparing the nave of Waltham or Peterboro’ with

that of Cérisy-la-Forêt, in Normandy. Although the massiveness of the

Anglo-Norman piers and walls plainly suggests the intention of vaulting

the nave, this intention seems never to have been carried out except in

small churches and crypts. All the existing abbeys and cathedrals of

this period had wooden ceilings or were, like Durham, Norwich, and

Gloucester, vaulted at a later date. Completed as they were with wooden

nave-roofs, the clearstory was, without danger, made quite lofty and

furnished with windows of considerable size. These were placed near the

outside of the thick wall, and a passage was left between them and

a triple arch on the inner face of the wall--a device imitated

from the abbeys at Caen. The vaulted side-aisles were low, with

disproportionately wide pier-arches, above which was a high triforium

gallery under the side-roofs. Thus a nearly equal height was assigned

to each of the three stories of the bay, disregarding that subordination

of minor to major parts which gives interest to an architectural

composition. The piers were quite often round, as at Gloucester,

Hereford, and Bristol. Sometimes round piers alternated with clustered

piers, as at Durham and Waltham; and in some cases clustered piers alone

were employed, as at Peterboro’ and in the transepts of Winchester (Fig.

103).

[Illustration: FIG. 103.--ONE BAY OF TRANSEPT,

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL.]

+FAÇADES AND DOORWAYS.+ All the details were of the simplest character,

except in the doorways. These were richly adorned with clustered

jamb-shafts and elaborately carved mouldings, but there was little

variety in the details of this carving. The zigzag was the most common

feature, though birds’ heads with the beaks pointing toward the centre

of the arch were not uncommon. In the smaller churches (Fig. 104) the

doorways were better proportioned to the whole façade than in the larger

ones, in which they appear as relatively insignificant features. Very

few examples remain of important Norman façades in their original form,

nearly all of these having been altered after the round arch was

displaced by the pointed arch in the latter part of the twelfth century.

Iffley church (Fig. 104) is a good example of the style.

[Illustration: FIG. 104.--FRONT OF IFFLEY CHURCH.]

+SPAIN.+ During the Romanesque period a large part of Spain was under

Moorish dominion. The capture of Toledo, in 1062, by the Christians,

began the gradual emancipation of the country from Moslem rule, and in

the northern provinces a number of important churches were erected under

the influence of French Romanesque models. The use of domical

pendentives (as in the +Panteon+ of +S. Isidoro+, at Leon, and in the

_cimborio_ or dome over the choir at the intersection of nave and

transepts in old Salamanca cathedral) was probably derived from the

domical churches of Aquitania and Anjou. Elsewhere the northern

Romanesque type prevailed under various modifications, with long nave

and transepts, a short choir, and a complete _chevet_ with apsidal

chapels. The church of +St. Iago+ at Compostella (1078) is the finest

example of this class. These churches nearly all had groined vaulting

over the side-aisles and barrel-vaults over the nave, the constructive

system being substantially that of the churches of Auvergne and the

Loire Valley (p. 165). They differed, however, in the treatment of the

crossing of nave and transepts, over which was usually erected a dome or

cupola or pendentives or squinches, covered externally by an imposing

square lantern or tower, as in the +Old Cathedral+ at +Salamanca+,

already mentioned (1120-78) and the +Collegiate Church+ at +Toro+.

Occasional exceptions to these types are met with, as in the basilican

wooden-roofed church of S. Millan at Segovia; in +S. Isidoro+ at Leon,

with chapels and a later-added square eastern end, and the circular

church of the Templars at Segovia.

The architectural details of these Spanish churches did not differ

radically from contemporary French work. As in France and England, the

doorways were the most ornate parts of the design, the mouldings being

carved with extreme richness and the jambs frequently adorned with

statues, as in +S. Vincente+ at Avila. There was no such logical and

reasoned-out system of external design as in France, and there is

consequently greater variety in the façades. Perhaps the most remarkable

thing about the architecture of this period is its apparent exemption

from the influence of the Moorish monuments which abounded on every

hand. This may be explained by the hatred which was felt by the

Christians for the Moslems and all their works.

+MONUMENTS.+ GERMANY: Previous to 11th century: Circular churches

of Holy Cross at Münster, and of Fulda; palace chapel of

Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, 804; St. Stephen, Mayence, 990;

primitive nave and crypt of St. Gereon, Cologne, 10th century;

Lorsch.--11th century: Churches of Gernrode, Goslar, and Merseburg

in Saxony; cathedral of Bremen; first restoration of cathedral of

Treves (Trier), 1010, west front, 1047; Limburg-on-Hardt, 1024;

St. Willibrod, Echternach, 1031; east end of Mayence Cathedral,

1036; Church of Apostles and nave St. Mary-in-Capitol at Cologne,

1036; cathedral of Spires (Speyer) begun 1040; Cathedral

Hildesheim, 1061; St. Joseph, Bamberg, 1073; Abbey of Laach,

1093-1156; round churches of Bonn, Drügelte, Nimeguen; cathedrals

of Paderborn and Minden.--12th century: Churches of Klus,

Paulinzelle, Hamersleben, 1100-1110; Johannisberg, 1130; St.

Godehard. Hildesheim, 1133; Worms, the Minster, 1118-83; Jerichau,

1144-60; Schwarz-Rheindorf, 1151; St. Michael, Hildesheim, 1162;

Cathedral Brunswick, 1172-94; Lubeck, 1172; also churches of

Gaudersheim, Würzburg, St. Matthew at Treves, Limburg-on-Lahn,

Sinzig, St. Castor at Coblentz, Diesdorf, Rosheim; round churches

of Ottmarsheim and Rippen (Denmark); cathedral of Basle, cathedral

and cloister of Zurich (Switzerland).

ENGLAND: Previous to 11th century: Scanty vestiges of Saxon church

architecture, as tower of Earl’s Barton, round towers and small

chapels in Ireland.--11th century: Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral,

1070; chapel St. John in Tower of London, 1070; Winchester

Cathedral, 1076-93 (nave and choir rebuilt later); Gloucester

Cathedral nave, 1089-1100 (vaulted later); Rochester Cathedral

nave, west front cloisters, and chapter-house, 1090-1130; Carlisle

Cathedral nave, transepts, 1093-1130; Durham Cathedral, 1095-1133,

vaulted 1233; Galilee and chapter-house, 1133-53; Norwich

Cathedral, 1096, largely rebuilt 1118-93; Hereford Cathedral, nave

and choir, 1099-1115.--12th century: Ely Cathedral, nave, 1107-33;

St. Alban’s Abbey, 1116; Peterboro’ Cathedral, 1117-45; Waltham

Abbey, early 12th century; Church of Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge,

1130-35; Worcester Cathedral chapter-house, 1140 (?); Oxford

Cathedral (Christ Church), 1150-80; Bristol Cathedral

chapter-house (square), 1155; Canterbury Cathedral, choir of

present structure by William of Sens, 1175; Chichester Cathedral,

1180-1204; Romsey Abbey, late 12th century; St. Cross Hospital

near Winchester, 1190 (?). Many more or less important parish

churches in various parts of England.

SPAIN. For principal monuments of 9th-12th centuries, see text,

latter part of this chapter.

CHAPTER XV.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Adamy, _Architektonik des gotischen Stils_.

Corroyer, _L’Architecture gothique_. Enlart, _Manuel d’archéologie

française_. Hasak, _Einzelheiten des Kirchenbaues_ (in _Hdbuch d.

Arch._). Moore, _Development and Character of Gothic

Architecture_. Parker, _Introduction to Gothic Architecture._

Scott, _Mediæval Architecture_. Viollet-le-Duc, _Discourses on

Architecture_; _Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture

française_.

+INTRODUCTORY.+ The architectural styles which were developed in Western

Europe during the period extending from about 1150 to 1450 or 1500,

received in an unscientific age the wholly erroneous and inept name of

Gothic. This name has, however, become so fixed in common usage that it

is hardly possible to substitute for it any more scientific designation.

In reality the architecture to which it is applied was nothing more than

the sequel and outgrowth of the Romanesque, which we have already

studied. Its fundamental principles were the same; it was concerned with

the same problems. These it took up where the Romanesque builders left

them, and worked out their solution under new conditions, until it had

developed out of the simple and massive models of the early twelfth

century the splendid cathedrals of the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries in England, France, Germany, the Low Countries and Spain.

+THE CHURCH AND ARCHITECTURE.+ The twelfth century was an era of

transition in society, as in architecture. The ideas of Church and State

were becoming more clearly defined in the common mind. In the conflict

between feudalism and royalty the monarchy was steadily gaining ground.

The problem of human right was beginning to present itself alongside of

the problem of human might. The relations between the crown, the feudal

barons, the pope, bishops, and abbots, differed widely in France,

Germany, England, and other countries. The struggle among them for

supremacy presented itself, therefore, in varied aspects; but the

general outcome was essentially the same. The church began to appear as

something behind and above abbots, bishops, kings, and barons. The

supremacy of the papal authority gained increasing recognition, and the

episcopacy began to overshadow the monastic institutions; the bishops

appearing generally, but especially in France, as the champions of

popular rights. The prerogatives of the crown became more firmly

established, and thus the Church and the State emerged from the social

confusion as the two institutions divinely appointed for the government

of men.

[Illustration: FIG. 105.--CONSTRUCTIVE SYSTEM OF GOTHIC CHURCH,

ILLUSTRATING PRINCIPLES OF ISOLATED SUPPORTS AND BUTTRESSING.]

Under these influences ecclesiastical architecture advanced with rapid

strides. No longer hampered by monastic restrictions, it called into its

service the laity, whose guilds of masons and builders carried from one

diocese to another their constantly increasing stores of constructive

knowledge. By a wise division of labor, each man wrought only such parts

as he was specially trained to undertake. The master-builder--bishop,

abbot, or mason--seems to have planned only the general arrangement and

scheme of the building, leaving the precise form of each detail to be

determined as the work advanced, according to the skill and fancy of the

artisan to whom it was intrusted. Thus was produced that remarkable

variety in unity of the Gothic cathedrals; thus, also, those singular

irregularities and makeshifts, those discrepancies and alterations in

the design, which are found in every great work of mediæval

architecture. Gothic architecture was constantly changing, attacking new

problems or devising new solutions of old ones. In this character of

constant flux and development it contrasts strongly with the classic

styles, in which the scheme and the principles were easily fixed and

remained substantially unchanged for centuries.

[Illustration: FIG. 106.--PLAN OF SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS,

SHOWING SUPPRESSION OF SIDE-WALLS.]

+STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES.+ The pointed arch, so commonly regarded as the

most characteristic feature of the Gothic styles, was merely an

incidental feature of their development. What really distinguished them

most strikingly was the systematic application of two principles which

the Roman and Byzantine builders had recognized and applied, but which

seem to have been afterward forgotten until they were revived by the

later Romanesque architects. The first of these was the _concentration

of strains_ upon isolated points of support, made possible by the

substitution of groined for barrel vaults. This led to a corresponding

concentration of the masses of masonry at these points; the building was

constructed as if upon legs (Fig. 105). The wall became a mere

filling-in between the piers or buttresses, and in time was, indeed,

practically suppressed, immense windows filled with stained glass taking

its place. This is well illustrated in the +Sainte Chapelle+ at Paris,

built 1242-47 (Figs. 106, 122). In this remarkable edifice, a series of

groined vaults spring from slender shafts built against deep buttresses

which receive and resist all the thrusts. The wall-spaces between them

are wholly occupied by superb windows filled with stone tracery and

stained glass. It would be impossible to combine the materials used more

scientifically or effectively. The cathedrals of Gerona (Spain) and of

Alby (France; Fig. 123) illustrate the same principle, though in them

the buttresses are internal and serve to separate the flanking chapels.

[Illustration: FIG. 107.--EARLY GOTHIC FLYING BUTTRESS.]

The second distinctive principle of Gothic architecture was that of

_balanced thrusts_. In Roman buildings the thrust of the vaulting was

resisted wholly by the inertia of mass in the abutments. In Gothic

architecture thrusts were as far as possible resisted by

counter-thrusts, and the final resultant pressure was transmitted by

flying half-arches across the intervening portions of the structure to

external buttresses placed at convenient points. This combination of

flying half-arches and buttresses is called the _flying-buttress_ (Fig.

107). It reached its highest development in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries in the cathedrals of central and northern France.

+RIBBED VAULTING.+ These two principles formed the structural basis of

the Gothic styles. Their application led to the introduction of two

other elements, second only to them in importance, _ribbed vaulting_ and

the _pointed arch_.

[Illustration: FIG. 108.--RIBBED VAULT, ENGLISH TYPE,

WITH DIVIDED GROIN-RIBS AND RIDGE-RIBS.]

The first of these resulted from the effort to overcome certain

practical difficulties encountered in the building of large groined

vaults. As ordinarily constructed, a groined vault like that in Fig. 47,

must be built as one structure, upon wooden centrings supporting its

whole extent. The Romanesque architects conceived the idea of

constructing an independent skeleton of ribs. Two of these were built

against the wall (_wall-ribs_), two across the nave (transverse ribs);

and two others were made to coincide with the groins (Figs. 98, 108).

The _groin-ribs_, intersecting at the centre of the vault, divided each

bay into four triangular portions, or _compartments_, each of which was

really an independent vault which could be separately constructed upon

light centrings supported by the groin-ribs themselves. This principle,

though identical in essence with the Roman system of brick skeleton-ribs

for concrete vaults, was, in application and detail, superior to it,

both from the scientific and artistic point of view. The ribs, richly

moulded, became, in the hands of the Gothic architects, important

decorative features. In practice the builder gave to each set of ribs

independently the curvature he desired. The vaulting-surfaces were then

easily twisted or warped so as to fit the various ribs, which, being

already in place, served as guides for their construction.

[Illustration: FIG. 109.--PENETRATIONS AND INTERSECTIONS

OF VAULTS.

_a, a_, _Penetrations by small semi-circular vaults sprung from

same level_. b, _Intersection by small semi-circular vault sprung

from higher level; groins form wavy lines_. c, _Intersection by

narrow pointed vault sprung from same level; groins are plane

curves_.]

+THE POINTED ARCH+ was adopted to remedy the difficulties encountered in

the construction of oblong vaults. It is obvious that where a narrow

semi-cylindrical vault intersects a wide one, it produces either what

are called _penetrations_, as at a (Fig. 109), or intersections like

that at b, both of which are awkward in aspect and hard to construct.

If, however, one or both vaults be given a pointed section, the narrow

vault may be made as high as the wide one. It is then possible, with but

little warping of the vaulting surfaces, to make them intersect in

groins c, which are vertical plane curves instead of wavy loops like a

and b.

The Gothic architects availed themselves to the full of these two

devices. They built their groin-ribs of semi-circular or pointed form,

but the wall-ribs and the transverse ribs were, without exception,

pointed arches of such curvature as would bring the apex of each nearly

or quite to the level of the groin intersection. The pointed arch, thus

introduced as the most convenient form for the vaulting-ribs, was soon

applied to other parts of the structure. This was a necessity with the

windows and pier-arches, which would not otherwise fit well the

wall-spaces under the wall-ribs of the nave and aisle vaulting.

+TRACERY AND GLASS.+ With the growth in the size of the windows and the

progressive suppression of the lateral walls of vaulted structures,

stained glass came more and more generally into use. Its introduction

not only resulted in a notable heightening and enriching of the colors

and scheme of the interior decoration, but reacted on the architecture,

intensifying the very causes which led to its introduction. It

stimulated the increase in the size of windows, and the suppression of

the walls, and contributed greatly to the development of _tracery_. This

latter feature was an absolute necessity for the support of the glass.

Its evolution can be traced (Figs, 110, 111, 112) from the simple

coupling of twin windows under a single hood-mould, or discharging arch,

to the florid net-work of the fifteenth century. In its earlier forms it

consisted merely of decorative openings, circles, and quatrefoils,

pierced through slabs of stone (_plate-tracery_), filling the

window-heads over coupled windows. Later attention was bestowed upon the

form of the stonework, which was made lighter and richly moulded

(_bar-tracery_), rather than upon that of the openings (Fig. 111). Then

the circular and geometric patterns employed were abandoned for more

flowing and capricious designs (_Flamboyant_ tracery, Fig. 112) or (in

England) for more rigid and rectangular arrangements (_Perpendicular_,

Fig. 134). It will be shown later that the periods and styles of Gothic

architecture are more easily identified by the tracery than by any other

feature.

[Illustration: FIG. 110.--PLATE TRACERY, CHARLTON-ON-OXMORE.]

+CHURCH PLANS.+ The original basilica-plan underwent radical

modifications during the 12th-15th centuries. These resulted in part

from the changes in construction which have been described, and in part

from altered ecclesiastical conditions and requirements. Gothic church

architecture was based on cathedral design; and the requirements of the

cathedral differed in many respects from those of the monastic churches

of the preceding period.

[Illustration: FIG. 111--BAR TRACERY, ST. MICHAEL’S, WARFIELD.]

The most important alterations in the plan were in the choir and

transepts. The choir was greatly lengthened, the transepts often

shortened. The choir was provided with two and often four side-aisles,

and one or both of these was commonly carried entirely around the

apsidal termination of the choir, forming a single or double

_ambulatory_. This combination of choir, apse, and ambulatory was

called, in French churches, the _chevet_.

Another advance upon Romanesque models was the multiplication of

chapels--a natural consequence of the more popular character of the

cathedral as compared with the abbey. Frequently lateral chapels were

built at each bay of the side-aisles, filling up the space between the

deep buttresses, flanking the nave as well as the choir. They were also

carried around the _chevet_ in most of the French cathedrals (Paris,

Bourges, Reims, Amiens, Beauvais, and many others); in many of those in

Germany (Magdeburg, Cologne, Frauenkirche at Treves), Spain (Toledo,

Leon, Barcelona, Segovia, etc.), and Belgium (Tournay, Antwerp). In

England the choir had more commonly a square eastward termination.

Secondary transepts occur frequently, and these peculiarities, together

with the narrowness and great length of most of the plans, make of the

English cathedrals a class by themselves.

[Illustration: FIG. 112.--ROSE WINDOW, CHURCH OF ST. OUEN, ROUEN.]

+PROPORTIONS AND COMPOSITION.+ Along with these modifications of the

basilican plan should be noticed a great increase in the height and

slenderness of all parts of the structure. The lofty clearstory, the

arcaded triforium-passage or gallery beneath it, the high pointed

pier-arches, the multiplication of slender clustered shafts, and the

reduction in the area of the piers, gave to the Gothic churches an

interior aspect wholly different from that of the simpler, lower, and

more massive Romanesque edifices. The perspective effects of the plans

thus modified, especially of the complex choir and _chevet_ with their

lateral and radial chapels, were remarkably enriched and varied.

The exterior was even more radically transformed by these changes, and

by the addition of towers and spires to the fronts, and sometimes to the

transepts and to their intersection with the nave. The deep buttresses,

terminating in pinnacles, the rich traceries of the great lateral

windows, the triple portals profusely sculptured, rose-windows of great

size under the front and transept gables, combined to produce effects of

marvellously varied light and shadow, and of complex and elaborate

structural beauty, totally unlike the broad simplicity of the Romanesque

exteriors.

[Illustration: FIG. 113.--FLAMBOYANT DETAIL FROM PULPIT

IN STRASBURG CATHEDRAL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 114.--EARLY GOTHIC CARVING.]

+DECORATIVE DETAIL.+ The mediæval designers aimed to enrich every

constructive feature with the most effective play of lights and shades,

and to embody in the decorative detail the greatest possible amount of

allegory and symbolism, and sometimes of humor besides. The deep jambs

and soffits of doors and pier-arches were moulded with a rich succession

of hollow and convex members, and adorned with carvings of saints,

apostles, martyrs, and angels. Virtues and vices, allegories of reward

and punishment, and an extraordinary world of monstrous and grotesque

beasts, devils, and goblins filled the capitals and door-arches, peeped

over tower-parapets, or leered and grinned from gargoyles and corbels.

Another source of decorative detail was the application of tracery like

that of the windows to wall-panelling, to balustrades, to open-work

gables, to spires, to choir-screens, and other features, especially in

the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (cathedrals of York, Rouen,

Cologne; Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster). And finally in the carving

of capitals and the ornamentation of mouldings the artists of the

thirteenth century and their successors abandoned completely the classic

models and traditions which still survived in the early twelfth century.

The later monastic builders began to look directly to nature for

suggestions of decorative form. The lay builders who sculptured the

capitals and crockets and finials of the early Gothic cathedrals adopted

and followed to its finality this principle of recourse to nature,

especially to plant life. At first the budding shoots of early spring

were freely imitated or skilfully conventionalized, as being by their

thick and vigorous forms the best adapted for translation into stone

(Fig. 114). During the thirteenth century the more advanced stages of

plant growth, and leaves more complex and detailed, furnished the models

for the carver, who displayed his skill in a closer and more literal

imitation of their minute veinings and indentations (Fig. 115). This

artistic adaptation of natural forms to architectural decoration

degenerated later into a minutely realistic copying of natural foliage,

in which cleverness of execution took the place of original invention.

The spirit of display is characteristic of all late Gothic work.

Slenderness, minuteness of detail, extreme complexity and intricacy of

design, an unrestrained profusion of decoration covering every surface,

a lack of largeness and vigor in the conceptions, are conspicuous traits

of Gothic design in the fifteenth century, alike in France, England,

Germany, Spain, and the Low Countries. Having worked out to their

conclusion the structural principles bequeathed to them by the preceding

centuries, the authors of these later works seemed to have devoted

themselves to the elaboration of mere decorative detail, and in

technical finish surpassed all that had gone before (Fig. 113).

[Illustration: FIG. 115.--CARVING, DECORATED PERIOD,

FROM SOUTHWELL MINSTER.]

+CHARACTERISTICS SUMMARIZED.+ In the light of the preceding explanations

Gothic architecture may be defined as that system of structural design

and decoration which grew up out of the effort to combine, in one

harmonious and organic conception, the basilican plan with a complete

and systematic construction of groined vaulting. Its development was

controlled throughout by considerations of stability and structural

propriety, but in the application of these considerations the artistic

spirit was allowed full scope for its exercise. Refinement, good taste,

and great fertility of imagination characterize the details and

ornaments of Gothic structures. While the Greeks in harmonizing the

requirements of utility and beauty in architecture approached the

problem from the æsthetic side, the Gothic architects did the same from

the structural side. Their admirably reasoned structures express as

perfectly the idea of vastness, mystery, and complexity as do the Greek

temples that of simplicity and monumental repose.

The excellence of Gothic architecture lay not so much in its individual

details as in its perfect adaptation to the purposes for which it was

developed--its triumphs were achieved in the building of cathedrals and

large churches. In the domain of civil and domestic architecture it

produced nothing comparable with its ecclesiastical edifices, because it

was the requirements of the cathedral and not of the palace, town-hall,

or dwelling, that gave it its form and character.

+PERIODS.+ The history of Gothic architecture is commonly divided into

three periods, which are most readily distinguished by the character of

the window-tracery. These periods were not by any means synchronous in

the different countries; but the order of sequence was everywhere the

same. They are here given, with a summary of the characteristics of

each.

EARLY POINTED PERIOD. [_Early French_; _Early English_ or _Lancet_

Period in England; _Early German_, etc.] Simple groined vaults; general

simplicity and vigor of design and detail; conventionalized foliage of

small plants; plate tracery, and narrow windows coupled under pointed

arch with circular foiled openings in the window-head. (In France, 1160

to 1275.)

MIDDLE POINTED PERIOD. [_Rayonnant_ in France; _Decorated_ or

_Geometric_ in England.] Vaults more perfect; in England multiple ribs

and liernes; greater slenderness and loftiness of proportions;

decoration much richer, less vigorous; more naturalistic carving of

mature foliage; walls nearly suppressed, windows of great size, bar

tracery with slender moulded or columnar mullions and geometric

combinations (circles and cusps) in window-heads, circular (rose)

windows. (In France, 1275 to 1375.)

FLORID GOTHIC PERIOD. [_Flamboyant_ in France; _Perpendicular_ in

England.] Vaults of varied and richly decorated design; fan-vaulting and

pendants in England, vault-ribs curved into fanciful patterns in Germany

and Spain; profuse and minute decoration and cleverness of technical

execution substituted for dignity of design; highly realistic carving

and sculpture, flowing or flamboyant tracery in France; perpendicular

bars with horizontal transoms and four-centred arches in England;

“branch-tracery” in Germany. (In France, 1375 to 1525.)

CHAPTER XVI.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Adamy, Corroyer, Enlart, Hasak,

Moore, Reber, Viollet-le-Duc.[20] Also Chapuy, _Le moyen age

monumental_. Chateau, _Histoire et caractères de l’architecture

française_. Davies, _Architectural Studies in France_. Ferree,

_The Chronology of the Cathedral Churches of France_. Johnson,

_Early French Architecture_. King, _The Study book of Mediæval

Architecture and Art_. Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc, _Notre Dame de

Paris_. Nesfield, _Specimens of Mediæval Architecture_. Pettit,

_Architectural Studies in France_.

[Footnote 20: Consult especially articles ARCHITECTURE,

CATHÉDRALE, CHAPELLE, CONSTRUCTION, ÉGLISE, MAISON, VOÛTE.]

+CATHEDRAL-BUILDING IN FRANCE.+ In the development of the principles

outlined in the foregoing chapter the church-builders of France led the

way. They surpassed all their contemporaries in readiness of invention,

in quickness and directness of reasoning, and in artistic refinement.

These qualities were especially manifested in the extraordinary

architectural activity which marked the second half of the twelfth

century and the first half of the thirteenth. This was the great age of

cathedral-building in France. The adhesion of the bishops to the royal

cause, and their position in popular estimation as the champions of

justice and human rights, led to the rapid advance of the episcopacy in

power and influence. The cathedral, as the throne-church of the bishop,

became a truly popular institution. New cathedrals were founded on every

side, especially in the Royal Domain and the adjoining provinces of

Normandy, Burgundy, and Champagne, and their construction was warmly

seconded by the people, the communes, and the municipalities. “Nothing

to-day,” says Viollet-le-Duc,[21] “unless it be the commercial movement

which has covered Europe with railway lines, can give an idea of the

zeal with which the urban populations set about building cathedrals; ...

a necessity at the end of the twelfth century because it was an

energetic protest against feudalism.” The collapse of the unscientific

Romanesque vaulting of some of the earlier cathedrals and the

destruction by fire of others stimulated this movement by the necessity

for their immediate rebuilding. The entire reconstruction of the

cathedrals of Bayeux, Bayonne, Cambray, Evreux, Laon, Lisieux, Le Mans,

Noyon, Poitiers, Senlis, Soissons, and Troyes was begun between 1130 and

1200.[22] The cathedrals of Bourges, Chartres, Paris, and Tours, and the

abbey of St. Denis, all of the first importance, were begun during the

same period, and during the next quarter-century those of Amiens,

Auxerre, Rouen, Reims, Séez, and many others. After 1250 the movement

slackened and finally ceased. Few important cathedrals were erected

during the latter half of the thirteenth century, the chief among them

being at Beauvais (actively begun 1247), Clermont, Coutances, Limoges,

Narbonne, and Rodez. During this period, and through the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries, French architecture was concerned rather with the

completion and remodelling of existing cathedrals than the founding of

new ones. There were, however, many important parish churches and civil

or domestic edifices erected within this period.

[Footnote 21: _Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française_,

vol. ii., pp. 280, 281.]

[Footnote 22: See Ferree, _Chronology of Cathedral Churches of

France_.]

+STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT: VAULTING.+ By the middle of the twelfth century

the use of barrel-vaulting over the nave had been generally abandoned

and groined vaulting with its isolated points of support and resistance

had taken its place. The timid experiments of the Clunisian architects

at Vézelay in the use of the pointed arch and vault-ribs also led, in

the second half of the twelfth century, to far-reaching results. The

builders of the great +Abbey Church+ of +St. Denis+, near Paris, begun

in 1140 by the Abbot Suger, appear to have been the first to develop

these tentative devices into a system. In the original choir of this

noble church all the arches, alike of the vault-ribs (except the

groin-ribs, which were semi-circles) and of the openings, were pointed

and the vaults were throughout constructed with cross-ribs, wall-ribs,

and groin-ribs. Of this early work only the chapels remain. In other

contemporary monuments, as for instance in the cathedral of Sens, the

adoption of these devices was only partial and hesitating.

[Illustration: FIG. 116--PLAN OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 117.--INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS.]

+NOTRE DAME AT PARIS.+ The next great step in advance was taken in the

cathedral of +Notre Dame+[23] at Paris (Figs. 116, 117, 125). This was

begun, under Maurice de Sully in 1163, on the site of the twin

cathedrals of Ste. Marie and St. Étienne, and the choir was, as usual,

the first portion erected. By 1196 the choir, transepts, and one or two

bays of the nave were substantially finished. The completeness, harmony,

and vigor of conception of this remarkable church contrast strikingly

with the makeshifts and hesitancy displayed in many contemporary

monuments in other provinces. The difficult vaulting over the radiating

bays of the double ambulatory was here treated with great elegance. By

doubling the number of supports in the exterior circuit of each aisle

(Fig. 116) each trapezoidal bay of the vaulting was divided into three

easily managed triangular compartments. Circular shafts were used

between the central and side aisles. The side aisles were doubled and

those next the centre were built in two stories, providing ample

galleries behind a very open triforium. The nave was unusually lofty and

covered with six-part vaults of admirable execution. The vault-ribs were

vigorously moulded and each made to spring from a distinct

vaulting-shaft, of which three rested upon the cap of each of the

massive piers below (Fig. 117). The +Cathedral+ of +Bourges+, begun

1190, closely resembled that of Paris in plan. Both were designed to

accommodate vast throngs in their exceptionally broad central aisles and

double side aisles, but Bourges has no side-aisle galleries, though the

inner aisles are much loftier than the outer ones. Though later in date

the vaulting of Bourges is inferior to that of Notre Dame, especially in

the treatment of the trapezoidal bays of the ambulatory.

[Footnote 23: This cathedral will be hereafter referred to, for

the sake of brevity, by the name of _Notre Dame_. Other cathedrals

having the same name will be distinguished by the addition of the

name of the city, as “Notre Dame at Clermont-Ferrand.”]

The masterly examples set by the vault-builders of St. Denis and Notre

Dame were not at once generally followed. Noyon, Senlis, and Soissons,

contemporary with these, are far less completely Gothic in style. At +Le

Mans+ the groined vaulting which in 1158 was substituted for the

original barrel-vault of the cathedral is of very primitive design,

singularly heavy and awkward, although nearly contemporary with that of

Notre Dame (Fig. 118).

[Illustration: FIG. 118.--LE MANS CATHEDRAL. NAVE.]

+DOMICAL GROINED VAULTING.+ The builders of the South and West,

influenced by Aquitanian models, adhered to the square plan and domical

form of vaulting-bay, even after they had begun to employ groin-ribs.

The latter, as at first used by them in imitation of Northern examples,

had no organic function in the vault, which was still built like a dome.

About 1145-1160 the cathedral of +St. Maurice+ at +Angers+ was vaulted

with square, groin-ribbed vaults, domical in form but not in

construction. The joints no longer described horizontal circles as in a

dome, but oblique lines perpendicular to the groins and meeting in

zigzag lines at the ridge (Fig. 119). This method became common in the

West and was afterward generally adopted by the English architects. The

+Cathedrals+ of +Poitiers+ (1162) and +Laval+ (La Trinité, 1180-1185)

are examples of this system, which at Le Mans met with the Northern

system and produced in the cathedral the awkward compromise described

above.

[Illustration: FIG. 119.--GROINED VAULT WITH ZIG-ZAG RIDGE-JOINTS.

_a_ shows a small section of filling with courses parallel to

the ridge, for comparison with the other compartments.]

+THIRTEENTH-CENTURY VAULTING.+ Early in the thirteenth century the

church-builders of Northern France abandoned the use of square

vaulting-bays and six-part vaults. By the adoption of groin-ribs and the

pointed arch, the building of vaults in oblong bays was greatly

simplified. Each bay of the nave could now be covered with its own

vaulting-bay, thus doing away with all necessity for alternately light

and heavy piers. It is not quite certain when and where this system was

first adopted for the complete vaulting of a church. It is, however,

probable that the +Cathedral+ of +Chartres+, begun in 1194 and completed

before 1240, deserves this distinction, although it is possible that the

vaults of Soissons and Noyon may slightly antedate it. +Troyes+

(1170-1267), +Rouen+ (1202-1220), +Reims+ (1212-1242), +Auxerre+

(1215-1234, nave fourteenth century), +Amiens+ (1220-1288), and nearly

all the great churches and chapels begun after 1200, employ the fully

developed oblong vault.

+BUTTRESSING.+ Meanwhile the increasing height of the clearstories and

the use of double aisles compelled the bestowal of especial attention

upon the buttressing. The nave and choir of Chartres, the choirs of

Notre Dame, Bourges, Rouen, and Reims, the chevet and later the choir of

St. Denis, afford early examples of the flying-buttress (Fig. 107).

These were at first simple and of moderate height. Single half-arches

spanned the side aisles; in Notre Dame they crossed the double aisles in

a single leap. Later the buttresses were given greater stability by the

added weight of lofty pinnacles. An intermediate range of buttresses and

pinnacles was built over the intermediate piers where double aisles

flanked the nave and choir, thus dividing the single flying arch into

two arches. At the same time a careful observation of statical defects

in the earlier examples led to the introduction of subordinate arches

and of other devices to stiffen and to beautify the whole system. At

+Reims+ and +Amiens+ these features received their highest development,

though later examples are frequently much more ornate.

+INTERIOR DESIGN.+ The progressive change outlined in the last chapter,

by which the wall was practically suppressed, the windows

correspondingly enlarged, and every part of the structure made loftier

and more slender, resulted in the evolution of a system of interior

design well represented by the nave of Amiens. The second story or

gallery over the side aisle disappeared, but the aisle itself was very

high. The triforium was no longer a gallery, but a richly arcaded

passage in the thickness of the wall, corresponding to the roofing-space

over the aisle, and generally treated like a lower stage of the

clearstory. Nearly the whole space above it was occupied in each bay by

the vast clearstory window filled with simple but effective geometric

tracery over slender mullions. The side aisles were lighted by windows

which, like those in the clearstory, occupied nearly the whole available

wall-space under the vaulting. The piers and shafts were all clustered

and remarkably slender. The whole construction of this vast edifice,

which covers nearly eighty thousand square feet, is a marvel of

lightness, of scientific combinations, and of fine execution. Its great

vault rises to a height of one hundred and forty feet. The nave of St.

Denis, though less lofty, resembles it closely in style (Fig. 120).

Earlier cathedrals show less of the harmony of proportion, the perfect

working out of the relation of all parts of the composition of each bay,

so conspicuous in the Amiens type, which was followed in most of the

later churches.

[Illustration: FIG. 120.--ONE BAY, ABBEY OF ST. DENIS.]

+WINDOWS: TRACERY.+ The clearstory windows of Noyon, Soissons, Sens, and

the choir of Vézelay (1200) were simple arched openings arranged singly,

in pairs, or in threes. In the cathedral of Chartres (1194-1220) they

consist of two arched windows with a circle above them, forming a sort

of plate tracery under a single arch. In the chapel windows of the choir

at Reims (1215) the tracery of mullions and circles was moulded inside

and out, and the intermediate triangular spaces all pierced and glazed.

Rose windows were early used in front and transept façades. During the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they were made of vast size and

great lightness of tracery, as in the transepts of Notre Dame (1257) and

the west front of Amiens (1288). From the design of these windows is

derived the name _Rayonnant_, often applied to the French Gothic style

of the period 1275-1375.

+THE SAINTE CHAPELLE.+ In this beautiful royal chapel at Paris, built

1242-47, Gothic design was admirably exemplified in the noble windows 15

by 50 feet in size, which perhaps furnished the models for those of

Amiens and St. Denis. Each was divided by slender mullions into four

lancet-like lights gathered under the rich tracery of the window-head.

They were filled with stained glass of the most brilliant but harmonious

hues. They occupy the whole available wall-space, so that the ribbed

vault internally seems almost to rest on walls of glass, so slender are

the visible supports and so effaced by the glow of color in the windows.

Certainly lightness of construction and the suppression of the

wall-masonry could hardly be carried further than here (Fig. 121). Among

other chapels of the same type are those in the palace of St.

Germain-en-Laye (1240), and a later example in the château of Vincennes,

begun by Charles VI., but not finished till 1525.

[Illustration: FIG. 121.--THE STE. CHAPELLE, PARIS.]

+PLANS.+ The most radical change from the primitive basilican type was,

as already explained in the last chapter, the continuation of the side

aisles around the apse to form a _chevet_; and later, the addition of

chapels between the external buttresses. Radiating chapels, usually

semi-octagons or semi-decagons in plan, early appeared as additions to

the _chevet_ (Fig. 122). These may have originated in the apsidal

chapels of Romanesque churches in Auvergne and the South, as at Issoire,

Clermont-Ferrand, Le Puy, and Toulouse. They generally superseded the

transept-chapels of earlier churches, and added greatly to the beauty of

the interior perspective, especially when the encircling aisles of the

chevet were doubled. Notre Dame, as at first erected, had a double

ambulatory, but no chapels. Bourges has only five very small

semicircular chapels. Chartres (choir 1220) and Le Mans, as

reconstructed about the same date, have double ambulatories and radial

chapels. After 1220 the second ambulatory no longer appears. Noyon,

Soissons, Reims, Amiens, Troyes, and Beauvais, Tours, Bayeux, and

Coutances, Clermont, Limoges, and Narbonne all have the single

ambulatory and radiating chevet-chapels. The Lady-chapel in the axis of

the church was often made longer and more important than the other

chapels, as at Amiens, Le Mans, Rouen, Bayeux, and Coutances. Chapels

also flanked the choir in most of the cathedrals named above, and Notre

Dame and Tours also have side chapels to the nave. The only cathedrals

with complete double side aisles alike to nave, choir, and chevet, were

Notre Dame and Bourges. It is somewhat singular that the German

cathedral of Cologne is the only one in which all these various

characteristic French features were united in one design (see Fig. 140).

[Illustration: FIG. 122.--PLAN OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL.]

Local considerations had full sway in France, in spite of the tendency

toward unity of type. Thus Dol, Laon, and Poitiers have square eastward

terminations; Châlons has no ambulatory; Bourges no transept. In Notre

Dame the transept was almost suppressed. At Soissons one transept, at

Noyon both, had semicircular ends. +Alby+, a late cathedral of brick,

founded in 1280, but mostly built during the fourteenth century, has

neither side aisles nor transepts, its wide nave being flanked by

chapels separated by internal buttresses (Fig. 123).

[Illustration: FIG. 123.--PLAN OF CATHEDRAL OF ALBY.]

+SCALE.+ The French cathedrals were nearly all of imposing dimensions.

Noyon, one of the smallest, is 333 feet long; Sens measures 354. Laon,

Bourges, Troyes, Notre Dame, Le Mans, Rouen, and Chartres vary from 396

to 437 feet in extreme length; Reims measures 483, and Amiens, the

longest of all, 521 feet. Notre Dame is 124 feet wide across the five

aisles of the nave; Bourges, somewhat wider. The central aisles of these

two cathedrals, and of Laon, Amiens, and Beauvais, have a span of not

far from 40 feet from centre to centre of the piers; while the ridge of

the vaulting, which in Notre Dame is 108 feet above the pavement, and in

Bourges 125, reaches in Amiens a height of 140 feet, and of nearly 160

in Beauvais. This emphasis of the height, from 3 to 3½ times the clear

width of the nave or choir, is one of the most striking features of the

French cathedrals. It produces an impressive effect, but tends to dwarf

the great width of the central aisle.

+EXTERIOR DESIGN.+ Here, as in the interior, every feature had its

constructive _raison d’être_, and the total effect was determined by the

fundamental structural scheme. This was especially true of the lateral

elevations, in which the pinnacled buttresses, the flying arches, and

the traceried windows of the side aisle and clearstory, repeated

uniformly at each bay, were the principal elements of the design. The

transept façades and main front allowed greater scope for invention and

fancy, but even here the interior membering gave the key to the

composition. Strong buttresses marked the division of the aisles and

resisted the thrust of the terminal pier arches, and rose windows filled

the greater part of the wall space under the end of the lofty vaulting.

The whole structure was crowned by a steep-pitched roof of wood, covered

with lead, copper, or tiles, to protect the vault from damage by snow

and moisture. This roof occasioned the steep gables which crowned the

transept and main façades. The main front was frequently adorned, above

the triple portal, with a gallery of niches or tabernacles filled with

statues of kings. Different types of composition are represented by

Chartres, Notre Dame, Amiens, Reims, and Rouen, of which Notre Dame

(Fig. 124) and Reims are perhaps the finest. Notre Dame is especially

remarkable for its stately simplicity and the even balancing of

horizontal and vertical elements.

[Illustration: FIG. 124.--WEST FRONT OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 125.--WEST FRONT OF ST. MACLOU, ROUEN.]

+PORCHES.+ In most French church façades the porches were the most

striking features, with their deep shadows and sculptured arches. The

Romanesque porches were usually limited in depth to the thickness of the

front wall. The Gothic builders secured increased depth by projecting

the portals out beyond the wall, and crowned them with elaborate gables.

The vast central door was divided in two by a pier adorned with a niche

and statue. Over this the tympanum of the arch was carved with

scriptural reliefs; the jambs and arches were profusely adorned with

figures of saints, apostles, martyrs, and angels, under elaborate

canopies. The porches of Laon, Bourges, Amiens, and Reims are especially

deep and majestic in effect, the last-named (built 1380) being the

richest of all. Some of the transept façades also had imposing portals.

Those of +Chartres+ (1210-1245) rank among the finest works of Gothic

decorative architecture, the south porch in some respects surpassing

that of the north transept. The portals of the fifteenth and early

sixteenth centuries were remarkable for the extraordinary richness and

minuteness of their tracery and sculpture, as at Abbeville, Alençon, the

cathedral and St. Maclou at Rouen (Fig. 125), Tours, Troyes, Vendôme,

etc.

+TOWERS AND SPIRES.+ The emphasizing of vertical elements reached its

fullest expression in the towers and spires of the churches. What had

been at first merely a lofty belfry roof was rapidly developed into the

spire, rising three hundred feet or more into the air. This development

had already made progress in the Romanesque period, and the south spire

of Chartres is a notable example of late twelfth-century steeple design.

The transition from the square tower to the slender octagonal pyramid

was skilfully effected by means of corner pinnacles and dormers. During

and after the thirteenth century the development was almost wholly in

the direction of richness and complexity of detail, not of radical

constructive modification. The northern spire of Chartres (1515) and the

spires of Bordeaux, Coutances, Senlis, and the Flamboyant church of St.

Maclou at Rouen, illustrate this development. In Normandy central spires

were common, rising over the crossing of nave and transepts. In some

cases the designers of cathedrals contemplated a group of towers; this

is evident at Chartres, Coutances, and Reims. This intention was,

however, never realized; it demanded resources beyond even the

enthusiasm of the thirteenth century. Only in rare instances were the

spires of any of the towers completed, and the majority of the French

towers have square terminations, with low-pitched wooden roofs,

generally invisible from below. In general, French towers are marked by

their strong buttresses, solid lower stories, twin windows in each side

of the belfry proper--these windows being usually of great size--and a

skilful management of the transition to an octagonal plan for the belfry

or the spire.

+CARVING AND SCULPTURE.+ The general superiority of French Gothic work

was fully maintained in its decorative details. Especially fine is the

figure sculpture, which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

attained true nobility of expression, combined with great truthfulness

and delicacy of execution. Some of its finest productions are found in

the great doorway jambs of the west portals of the cathedrals, and in

the ranks of throned and adoring angels which adorned their deep arches.

These reach their highest beauty in the portals of Reims (1380). The

_tabernacles_ or carved niches in which such statues were set were

important elements in the decoration of the exteriors of churches.

[Illustration: FIG. 126.--FRENCH GOTHIC CAPITALS.

_a_, From Sainte Chapelle, Paris, 13th century. _b_, 14th-century

capital from transept of Notre Dame, Paris. _c_, 15th-century

capital from north spire of Chartres.]

Foliage forms were used for nearly all the minor carved ornaments,

though grotesque and human figures sometimes took their place. The

gargoyles through which the roof-water was discharged clear of the

building, were almost always composed in the form of hideous monsters;

and symbolic beasts, like the oxen in the towers of Laon, or monsters

like those which peer from the tower balustrades of Notre Dame, were

employed with some mystical significance in various parts of the

building. But the capitals corbels, crockets, and finials were mostly

composed of floral or foliage forms. Those of the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries were for the most part simple in mass, and crisp and vigorous

in design, imitating the strong shoots of early spring. The +capitals+

were tall and slender, concave in profile, with heavy square or

octagonal abaci. With the close of the thirteenth century this simple

and forcible style of detail disappeared. The carving became more

realistic; the leaves, larger and more mature, were treated as if

applied to the capital or moulding, not as if they grew out of it. The

execution and detail were finer and more delicate, in harmony with the

increasing slenderness and lightness of the architecture (Fig. 126 a,

b). +Tracery forms+ now began to be profusely applied to all manner of

surfaces, and open-work gables, wholly unnecessary from the structural

point of view, but highly effective as decorations, adorned the portals

and crowned the windows.

+LATE GOTHIC MONUMENTS.+ So far our attention has been mainly occupied

with the masterpieces erected previous to 1250. Among the cathedrals,

relatively few in number, whose construction is referable to the second

half of the century, that of +Beauvais+ stands first in importance.

Designed on a colossal scale, its foundations were laid in 1225, but it

was never completed, and the portion built--the choir and

chapels--belonged really to the second half of the century, having been

completed in 1270. But the collapse in 1284 of the central tower and

vaulting of this incomplete cathedral, owing to the excessive loftiness

and slenderness of its supports, compelled its entire reconstruction,

the number of the piers being doubled and the span of the pier arches

correspondingly reduced. As thus rebuilt, the cathedral aisle was 47

feet wide from centre to centre of opposite piers, and 163 feet high to

the top of the vault. Transepts were added after 1500. +Limoges+ and

+Narbonne+, begun in 1272 on a large scale (though not equal in size to

Beauvais), were likewise never completed. Both had choirs of admirable

plan, with well-designed chevet-chapels. Many other cathedrals begun

during this period were completed only after long delays, as, for

instance, Meaux, Rodez (1277), Toulouse (1272), and Alby (1282),

finished in the sixteenth century, and Clermont (1248), completed under

Napoleon III. But between 1260 or 1275 and 1350, work was actively

prosecuted on many still incomplete cathedrals. The choirs of Beauvais

(rebuilding), Limoges, and Narbonne were finished after 1330; and

towers, transept-façades, portals, and chapels added to many others of

earlier date.

The style of this period is sometimes designated as +Rayonnant+, from

the characteristic wheel tracery of the rose-windows, and the prevalence

of circular forms in the lateral arched windows, of the late thirteenth

and early fourteenth centuries. The great rose windows in the transepts

of Notre Dame, dating from 1257, are typical examples of the style.

Those of Rouen cathedral belong to the same category, though of later

date. The façade of Amiens, completed by 1288, is one of the finest

works of this style, of which an early example is the elaborate parish

church of +St. Urbain+ at Troyes.

+THE FLAMBOYANT STYLE.+ The geometric treatment of the tracery and the

minute and profuse decoration of this period gradually merged into the

fantastic and unrestrained extravagances of the +Flamboyant+ style,

which prevailed until the advent of the Renaissance--say 1525. The

continuous logical development of forms ceased, and in its place caprice

and display controlled the arts of design. The finest monument of this

long period is the fifteenth-century nave and central tower of the

church of +St. Ouen+ at Rouen, a parish church of the first rank, begun

in 1318, but not finished until 1515. The tracery of the lateral windows

is still chiefly geometric, but the western rose window (Fig. 112) and

the magnificent central tower or lantern, exhibit in their tracery the

florid decoration and wavy, flame-like lines of this style. Slenderness

of supports and the suppression of horizontal lines are here carried to

an extreme; and the church, in spite of its great elegance of detail,

lacks the vital interest and charm of the earlier Gothic churches. The

cathedral of Alençon and the church of +St. Maclou+ at Rouen, have

portals with unusually elaborate detail of tracery and carving; while

the façade of Rouen cathedral (1509) surpasses all other examples in the

lace-like minuteness of its open-work and its profusion of ornament. The

churches of +St. Jacques+ at Dieppe, and of +St. Wulfrand+ at Abbeville,

the façades of Tours and Troyes, are among the masterpieces of the

style. The upper part of the façade of Reims (1380-1428) belongs to the

transition from the Rayonnant to the Flamboyant. While some works of

this period are conspicuous for the richness of their ornamentation,

others are noticeably bare and poor in design, like St. Merri and St.

Séverin in Paris.