"Moreover, there is no type of architecture which so {101} admirably

embodies the romantic spirit as Spanish Gothic. Such a statement

implies no heresy against the supremacy of French Gothic. But the

very qualities of harmony and balance of finely tempered reason,

which make French Gothic so exquisitely satisfying, softened the

combination of mysteriously grandiose splendor with detailed

realism, in which lies the essence of Gothic as the manifestation of

the romantic spirit. Spanish Gothic at once by its massiveness and

extravagance and by its realistic naturalness, far more potently

embodies the spirit of medieval life. It is less esthetically

beautiful but it is more romantic. In Leon Cathedral, Spain

possesses one of the very noblest and purest examples of French

Gothic--a church which may almost be said to be the supreme type of

the Gothic ideal, of a delicate house of glass finely poised between

buttresses; but there is nothing Spanish about it. For the typical

Gothic of Spain we must go to Toledo and Burgos, to Tarragona and

Barcelona. Here we find the elements of stupendous size, of

mysterious gloom, of grotesque and yet realistic energy, which are

the dominant characters, alike of Spanish architecture and of

medieval romance."

Those who think that the Gothic architecture came to a perfection all

its own by a sort of wonderful manifestation of genius in a single

generation, and then stayed there, are sadly mistaken. There was a

constant development to be noted all during the Thirteenth Century.

This development was always in the line of true improvement, while

just after the century closed degeneration began, decoration became

too important a consideration, parts were over-loaded with ornament,

and the decadence of taste in Gothic architecture cannot escape the

eye even of the most untutored. All during the Thirteenth Century the

tendency was always to greater lightness and elegance. One is apt to

think of these immense structures as manifestations of the power of

man to overcome great engineering difficulties and to solve immense

structural problems, rather than as representing opportunities for the

expression of what was most beautiful and poetic in the intellectual

aspirations of the generations. But this is what they were, and their

architects were poets, for in the best sense of the {102} etymology of

the word they were creators. That their raw material was stone and

mortar rather than words was only an accident of their environment.

Each of the architects succeeded in expressing himself with wonderful

individuality in his own work in each Cathedral.

The improvements introduced by the Thirteenth Century people into the

architecture that came to them, were all of a very practical kind, and

were never suggested for the sake of merely adding to opportunities

for ornamentation. In this matter, skillful combinations of line and

form were thought out and executed with wonderful success. At the

beginning of the century, delicate shafts of marble, highly polished,

were employed rather freely, but as these seldom carried weight, and

were mainly ornamental in character, they were gradually eliminated,

yet, without sacrificing any of the beauty of structure since

combinations of light and shade were secured by the composition of

various forms, and the use of delicately rounded mouldings alternated

with hollows, so as to produce forcible effects in high light and deep

shadow. In a word, these architects and builders, of the Thirteenth

Century, set themselves the problem of building effectively, making

every portion count in the building itself, and yet, securing

ornamental effects out of actual structure such as no other set of

architects have ever been able to surpass, and, probably, only the

Greek architects of the Periclean period ever equaled. Needless to

say, this is the very acme of success in architectural work, and it is

for this reason that the generations of the after time have all gone

back so lovingly to study the work of this period.

It might be thought, that while Gothic architecture was a great

invention in its time and extremely suitable for ecclesiastical or

even educational edifices of various kinds, its time of usefulness has

passed and that men's widening experience in structural work, ever

since, has carried him far away from it. As a matter of fact, most of

our ecclesiastical buildings are still built on purely Gothic lines,

and a definite effort is made, as a rule, to have the completed

religious edifice combine a number of the best features of Thirteenth

Century Gothic. With what {103} success this has been accomplished can

best be appreciated from the fact, that none of the modern structures

attract anything like the attention of the old, and the Cathedrals of

this early time still continue to be the best asset of the towns in

which they are situated, because of the number of visitors they

attract. Far from considering Gothic architecture outlived, architects

still apply themselves to it with devotion because of the practical

suggestions which it contains, and there are those of wide experience,

who still continue to think it the most wonderful example of

architectural development that has ever come, and even do not hesitate

to foretell a great future for it.

Reinach, in his Story of Art Throughout the Ages, [Footnote 10] has

been so enthusiastic in this matter that a paragraph of his opinion

must find a place here. Reinach, it may be said, is an excellent

authority, a member of the Institute of France, who has made special

studies in comparative architecture, and has written works that carry

more weight than almost any others of our generation:

[Footnote 10: Scribners, New York, 1905.]

"If the aim of architecture, considered as an art, should be to free

itself as much as possible from subjection to its materials, it may

be said that no buildings have more successfully realized this ideal

than the Gothic churches. And there is more to be said in this

connection. Its light and airy system of construction, the freedom

and slenderness of its supporting skeleton, afford, as it were, a

presage of an art that began to develop in the Nineteenth Century,

that of metallic architecture. With the help of metal, and of cement

reinforced by metal bars, the moderns might equal the most daring

feats of the Gothic architects. It would even be easy for them to

surpass them, without endangering the solidity of the structure, as

did the audacities of Gothic art. In the conflicts that obtain

between the two elements of construction, solidity and open space,

everything seems to show that the principle of free spaces will

prevail, that the palaces and houses of the future will be flooded

with air and light, that the formula popularized by Gothic

architecture has a great future before it, and that following the

revival of the Graeco-Roman style from {104} the Sixteenth Century,

to our own day, we shall see a yet more enduring renaissance of the

Gothic style applied to novel materials."

It would be a mistake, however, to think that the Gothic Cathedrals

were impressive only because of their grandeur and immense size. It

would be still more a mistake to consider them only as examples of a

great development in architecture. They are much more than this; they

are the compendious expression of the art impulses of a glorious

century. Every single detail of the Gothic Cathedrals is not only

worthy of study but deserving of admiration, if not for itself, then

always for the inadequate means by which it was secured, and most of

these details have been found worthy of imitation by subsequent

generations. It is only by considering the separate details of the art

work of these Cathedrals that the full lesson of what these wonderful

people accomplished can be learned. There have been many centuries

since, in which they would be entirely unappreciated. Fortunately, our

own time has come back to a recognition of the greatness of the art

impulse that was at work, perfecting even what might be considered

trivial portions of the cathedrals, and the brightest hope for the

future of our own accomplishment is founded on this belated

appreciation of old-time work.

It has been said that the medieval workman was a lively symbol of the

Creator Himself, in the way in which he did his work. It mattered not

how obscure the portion of the cathedral at which he was set, he

decorated it as beautifully as he knew how, without a thought that his

work would be appreciated only by the very few that might see it.

Trivial details were finished with the perfection of important parts.

Microscopic studies in recent years have revealed beautiful designs on

pollen grains and diatoms which are far beneath the possibilities of

human vision, and have only been discovered by lens combinations of

very high powers of the compound microscope. Always these beauties

have been there though hidden away from any eye. It was as if the

Creator's hand could not touch anything without leaving it beautiful

as well as useful.

{opp105}

[Illustration]

CATHEDRAL (AMIENS)

{105}

To as great extent as it is possible perhaps for man to secure such a

desideratum, the Thirteenth Century workman succeeded in this same

purpose. It is for this reason more than even for the magnificent

grandeur of the design and the skilful execution with inadequate

means, that makes the Gothic Cathedral such a source of admiration and

wonder.

To take first the example of sculpture. It is usually considered that

the Thirteenth Century represented a time entirely too early in the

history of plastic art for there to have been any fine examples of the

sculptor's chisel left us from it. Any such impression, however, will

soon be corrected if one but examines carefully the specimens of this

form of art in certain Cathedrals. As we have said, probably no more

charmingly dignified presentation of the human form divine in stone

has ever been made than the figure of Christ above the main door of

the cathedral of Amiens, which the Amiennois so lovingly call their

"beautiful God." There are some other examples of statuary in the same

cathedral that are wonderful specimens of the sculptor's art, lending

itself for decorative purposes to architecture. This is true for a

number of the Cathedrals. The statues in themselves are not so

beautiful, but as portions of a definite piece of structural work such

as a doorway or a facade, they are wonderful models of how all the

different arts became subservient to the general effect to be

produced. It was at Rheims, however, that sculpture reached its acme

of accomplishment, and architects have been always unstinted in their

praise of this feature of what may be called the Capitol church of

France.

Those who have any doubts as to the place of Gothic art itself in art

history and who need an authority always to bolster up the opinion

that they may hold, will find ample support in the enthusiastic

opinion of an authority whom we have quoted already. The most

interesting and significant feature of his ardent expression of

enthusiasm is his comparison of Romanesque with Gothic art in this

respect. The amount of ground covered from one artistic mode to the

other is greater than any other advance in art that has ever been

made. After all, the real value of the work of the period must be

judged, rather by the amount of progress that has {106} been made than

by the stage of advance actually reached, since it is development

rather than accomplishment that counts in the evolution of the race.

On the other hand it will be found that Reinach's opinion of the

actual attainments of Gothic art are far beyond anything that used to

be thought on the subject a half century ago, and much higher than any

but a few of the modern art critics hold in the matter. He says:

"In contrast to this Romanesque art, as yet in bondage to

convention, ignorant or disdainful of nature, the mature Gothic art

of the Thirteenth Century appeared as a brilliant revival or

realism. The great sculptors who adorned the Cathedrals of Paris,

Amiens, Rheims, and Chartres with their works, were realists in the

highest sense of the word. They sought in Nature not only their

knowledge of human forms, and of the draperies that cover them, but

also that of the principles of decoration. Save in the gargoyles of

cathedrals and in certain minor sculptures, we no longer find in the

Thirteenth Century those unreal figures of animals, nor those

ornaments, complicated as nightmares, which load the capitals of

Romanesque churches; the flora of the country, studied with loving

attention, is the sole, or almost the sole source from which

decorators take their motives. It is in this charming profusion of

flowers and foliage that the genius of Gothic architecture is most

freely displayed. One of the most admirable of its creations is the

famous Capital of the Vintage in Notre Dame at Rheims, carved about

the year 1250. Since the first century of the Roman Empire art had

never imitated Nature so perfectly, nor has it ever since done so

with a like grace and sentiment."

Reinach defends Gothic Art from another and more serious objection

which is constantly urged against it by those who know only certain

examples of it, but have not had the advantage of the wide study of

the whole field of artistic endeavor in the Thirteenth Century, which

this distinguished member of the Institute of France has succeeded in

obtaining. It is curious what unfounded opinions have come to be

prevalent in art circles because, only too often, writers with regard

to the Cathedrals have spent their time mainly in the large cities, or

along the principal arteries of travel, and have not realized {107}

that some of the smaller towns contained work better fitted to

illustrate Gothic Art principles than those on which they depended for

their information. If only particular phases of the art of any one

time, no matter how important, were to be considered in forming a

judgment of it, that judgment would almost surely be unfavorable in

many ways because of the lack of completeness of view. This is what

has happened unfortunately with regard to Gothic art, but a better

spirit is coming in this matter, with the more careful study of

periods of art and the return of reverence for the grand old Middle

Ages.

{opp107}

[Illustration]

CATHEDRAL (RHEIMS)

Reinach says: "There are certain prejudices against this admirable,

though incomplete, art which it is difficult to combat. It is often

said, for instance, that all Gothic figures are stiff and emaciated.

To convince ourselves of the contrary we need only study the marvelous

sculpture of the meeting between Abraham and Melchisedech, in Rheims

Cathedral; or again in the same Cathedral, the Visitation, the seated

Prophet, and the standing Angel, or the exquisite Magdalen of Bordeaux

Cathedral. What can we see in these that is stiff, sickly, and puny?

The art that has most affinity with perfect Gothic is neither

Romanesque nor Byzantine, but the Greek art of from 500 to 450 B. C.

By a strange coincidence, the Gothic artists even reproduce the

somewhat stereotyped smile of their forerunners." Usually it is said

that the Renaissance brought the supreme qualities of Greek plastic

art back to life, but here is a thoroughly competent critic who finds

them exhibited long before the Fifteenth Century, as a manifestation

of what the self-sufficient generations of the Renaissance would have

called Gothic, meaning thereby, barbarous art.

What has been said of sculpture, however, can be repeated with even

more force perhaps with regard to every detail of construction and

decoration. Builders and architects did make mistakes at times, but,

even their mistakes always reveal an artist's soul struggling for

expression through inadequate media. Many things had to be done

experimentally, most things were being done for the first time.

Everything had an originality of its own that made its execution

something more than merely a secure accomplishment after previous

careful {108} tests. In spite of this state of affairs, which might be

expected sadly to interfere with artistic execution, the Cathedrals,

in the main, are full of admirable details not only worthy of

imitation, but that our designers are actually imitating or at least

finding eminently suggestive at the present time.

To begin with a well known example of decorative effect which is found

in the earliest of the English Cathedrals, that of Lincoln. The nave

and choir of this was finished just at the beginning of the Thirteenth

Century. The choir is so beautiful in its conception, so wonderful in

its construction, so charming in its finish, so satisfactory in all

its detail, though there is very little of what would be called

striving after effect in it, that it is still called the Angel Choir.

The name was originally given it because it was considered to be so

beautiful even during the Thirteenth Century, that visitors could

scarcely believe that it was constructed by human hands and so the

legend became current that it was the work of angels. If the critics

of the Thirteenth Century, who had the opportunity to see work of

nearly the same kind being constructed in many parts of England,

judged thus highly of it, it is not surprising that modern visitors

should be unstinted in their praise. It is interesting to note as

representative of the feeling of a cultured modern scientific mind

that Dr. Osler said not long ago, in one of his medical addresses,

that probably nothing more beautiful had ever come from the hands of

man than this Angel Choir at Lincoln. As to who were the designers,

who conceived it, or the workmen who executed it, we have no records.

It is not unlikely that the famous Hugh of Lincoln, the great Bishop

to whom the Cathedral owes its foundation and much of its splendor,

was responsible to no little extent for this beautiful feature of his

Cathedral church. The workmen who made it were artist-artisans in the

best sense of the word and it is not surprising that other beautiful

architectural features should have flourished in a country where such

workmen could be found.

Almost as impressive as the Angel Choir was the stained glass work at

Lincoln. The rose windows are among the most beautiful ever made and

one of them is indeed considered a gem of its kind. The beautiful

colors and wonderful {109} effectiveness of the stained glass of these

old time Cathedrals cannot be appreciated unless the windows

themselves are actually seen. At Lincoln there is a very impressive

contrast that one can scarcely help calling to attention and that has

been very frequently the subject of comment by visitors. During the

Parliamentary time, unfortunately, the stained glass at Lincoln fell

under the ban of the Puritans. The lower windows were almost

completely destroyed by the soldiers of Cromwell's army. Only the rose

windows owing to their height were preserved from the destroyer. There

was an old sexton at the Cathedral, however, for whom the stained

glass had become as the apple of his eye. As boy and man he had lived

in its beautiful colors as they broke the light of the rising and the

setting sun and they were too precious to be neglected even when lying

upon the pavement of the Cathedral in fragments. He gathered the

shattered pieces into bags and hid them away in a dark corner of the

crypt, saving them at least from the desecration of being trampled to

dust.

Long afterwards, indeed almost in our own time, they were found here

and were seen to be so beautiful that regardless of the fact that they

could not be fitted together in anything like their former places,

they were pieced into windows and made to serve their original purpose

once more. It so happened that new stained glass windows for the

Cathedral of Lincoln were ordered during the Nineteenth Century. These

were made at an unfortunate time in stained glass making and are as

nearly absolutely unattractive, to say nothing worse, as it is

possible to make stained glass. The contrast with the antique windows,

fragmentary as they are, made up of the broken pieces of Thirteenth

Century glass is most striking. The old time colors are so rich that

when the sun shines directly on them they look like jewels. No one

pays the slightest attention, unless perhaps the doubtful compliment

of a smile be given, to the modern windows which were, however, very

costly and the best that could be obtained at that time.

More of the stained glass of the Thirteenth Century is preserved at

York where, because of the friendship of General Ireton, the town and

the Cathedral were spared the worst ravages of the Parliamentarians.

As a consequence York still {110} possesses some of the best of its

old time windows. It is probable that there is nothing more beautiful

or wonderful in its effectiveness than the glass in the Five Sisters

window at York. This is only an ordinary lancet window of five

compartments--hence the name--in the west front of the Cathedral.

There are no figures on the window, it is only a mass of beautiful

greyish green tints which marvelously subdues the western setting sun

at the vesper hour and produces the most beautiful effects in the

interior of the Cathedral. Here if anywhere one can realize the

meaning of the expression dim religious light. In recent years,

however, it has become the custom for so many people to rave over the

Five Sisters that we are spared the necessity of more than mentioning

it. Its tints far from being injured by time have probably been

enriched. There can be no doubt at all, however, of the artistic

tastes and esthetic genius of the man who designed it. The other

windows of the Cathedral were not unworthy of this triumph of art. How

truly the Cathedral was a Technical School can be appreciated from the

fact that it was able to inspire such workmen to produce these

wondrous effects.

Experts in stained glass work have often called attention to the fact

that the windows constructed in the Thirteenth Century were not only

of greater artistic value but were also more solidly put together.

Many of the windows made in the century still maintain their places,

in spite of the passage of time, though later windows are sometimes

dropping to pieces. It might be thought that this was due to the fact

that later stained glass workers were more delicate in the

construction of their windows in order not to injure the effect of the

stained glass. To some extent this is true, but the stained glass

workers of the Thirteenth Century preserve the effectiveness of their

artistic pictures in glass, though making the frame work very

substantial. This is only another example of their ability to combine

the useful with the beautiful so characteristic of the century,

stamping practically every phase of its accomplishment and making

their work more admirable because its usefulness does not suffer on

account of any strained efforts after supposed beauties.

Though it is somewhat out of place here we cannot refrain {111} from

pointing out the educational value of this stained glass work.

Some of the stories on these windows gave details of many passages

from the Bible, that must have impressed them upon the people much

more than any sermon or reading of the text could possibly have

accomplished. They were literally sermons in glass that he who walked

by had to read whether he would or not. When we remember that the

common people in the Middle Ages had no papers to distract them, and

no books to turn to for information, such illustrations as were

provided by the stained glass windows, by the painting and the

statuary decorations of the Cathedrals, must have been studied with

fondest devotion even apart from religious sentiment and out of mere

inquisitiveness. The famous "prodigal" window at Chartres is a good

example of this. Every detail of the story is here pictorially

displayed in colors, from the time when the young man demands his

patrimony through all the various temptations he met with in being

helped to spend it, there being a naive richness of detail in the

matter of the temptations that is quite medieval, from the boon

companions who first led him astray to the depths of degradation which

he finally reached before he returned to his father,--even the picture

of the fatted calf is not lacking.

On others of these windows there are the stories of the Patron Saints

of certain crafts. The life of St. Crispin the shoemaker is given in

rather full detail. The same is true of St. Romain the hunter who was

the patron of the furriers. The most ordinary experiences of life are

pictured and the methods by which these were turned to account in

making the craftsman a saint, must have been in many ways an ideally

uplifting example for fellow craftsmen whenever they viewed the

window. This sort of teaching could not be without its effect upon the

poor. It taught them that there was something else in life besides

money getting and that happiness and contentment might be theirs in a

chosen occupation and the reward of Heaven at the end of it all, for

at the top of these windows the hand of the Almighty is introduced

reaching down from Heaven to reward his faithful servants. It is just

by such presentation of ideals even to the poor, that {112} the

Thirteenth Century differs from the modern time in which even the

teaching in the schools seems only to emphasize the fact that men must

get money, honestly if they can, but must get money, if they would

have what is called success in life.

Another very interesting feature of these windows is the fact that

they were usually the gifts of the various Guilds and so represented

much more of interest, for the members. It is true that in France,

particularly, the monarchs frequently presented stained glass windows

and in St. Louis time this was so common that scarcely a French

Cathedral was without one or more testimonials of this kind to his

generosity; but most of the windows were given by various societies

among the people themselves. How much the construction of such a

window when it was well done, would make for the education in taste of

those who contributed to the expense of its erection, can scarcely be

over-estimated. There was besides a friendly rivalry in this matter in

the Thirteenth Century, which served to bring out the talents of local

artists and by the inevitably suggested comparisons eventually served

to educate the taste of the people.

It must not be thought, however, that it was only in stained glass and

painting and sculpture--the major arts--that these workmen attained

their triumphs. Practically every detail of Cathedral construction is

a monument to the artistic genius of the century, to the wonderful

inspiration afforded the workmen and to the education provided by the

Guilds which really maintained, as we shall see, a kind of Technical

School with the approbation and the fostering care of the

ecclesiastics connected with the Cathedrals. An excellent example of a

very different class of work may be noted in the hinges of the

Cloister door of the Cathedral at York. Personally I have seen three

art designers sketching these at the same time only one of whom was an

Englishman, another coming from the continent and the third from

America. The hinge still swings the heavy oak door of the Thirteenth

Century. The arborization of the metal as it spreads out from the main

shaft of the hinge is beautifully decorative in effect.

{opp112}

[Illustration]

CLOISTER OF ST. PAUL'S (WITHOUT THE WALLS, ROME)

A little study of the hinge seems to show that these branching

portions were so arranged as to make the mechanical {113} moment of

the swinging door less of a dead weight than it would have been if the

hinge were a solid bar of iron. Besides the spreading of the branches

over a wide surface serves to hold the woodwork of the door thoroughly

in place. While the hinge was beautiful, then it was eminently useful

from a good many standpoints, and trivial though it might be

considered to be, it was in reality a type of all the work

accomplished in connection with these Thirteenth Century Cathedrals.

According to the old Latin proverb "_omne tulit punctum qui miscuit

utile dulci_," he scores every point who mingles the useful with the

beautiful, and certainly the Thirteenth Century workman succeeded in

accomplishing the desideratum to an eminent degree. This mingling of

the useful and the beautiful is of itself a supreme difference between

the Thirteenth Century generations and our own. Mr. Yeats, the well

known Irish poet, in bidding farewell to America some years ago said

to a party of friends, that no country could consider itself to be

making real progress in culture until the very utensils in the kitchen

were beautiful as well as useful. Anything that is merely useful is

hideous, and anyone who can handle such things with impunity has not

true culture. In the Thirteenth Century they never by any chance made

anything that was merely useful, especially not if it was to be

associated with their beloved Cathedral.

An excellent example of this can be found in their Chalices and other

ceremonial utensils which were meant for Divine Service. As we have

said elsewhere The Craftsman, the journal of the Arts and Crafts

Movement in this country not long since compared a Chalice of the

Thirteenth Century with the prize cups which are offered for yacht

races and other competitions in this country. We may say at once that

the form which the Chalice received during the Thirteenth Century is

that which constitutes to a great extent the model for this sacred

vessel ever since and the comparison with the modern design is

therefore all the more interesting. In spite of the fact that money is

no object as a rule in the construction of many of the modern prize

cups, they compare unfavorably according to the writer in The

Craftsman with the old time chalices. There is a tendency to over

ornamentation which {114} spoils the effectiveness of the lines of the

metal work in many cases and there is also only too often, an attempt

to introduce forms of plastic art which do not lend themselves well to

this class of work. It is in design particularly that the older

workman excels his modern colleague though usually there are

suggestions from several sources for present day work. In a word the

Thirteenth Century Chalice was much more admirable than the modern

piece of metal work, because the lines were simpler, the combination

of beauty with utility more readily recognizable and the obtrusiveness

of the ornamentation much less marked.

This same thing is true for other even coarser forms of metal work in

connection with the Cathedrals, and anyone who has seen some of the

beautiful iron screens built for Cathedral choirs in the olden times

will realize that even the worker in iron must have been an artist as

well as a blacksmith. The effect produced, especially in the dim light

of the Cathedral, is often that of delicate lace work. To appreciate

the strength of the screen one must actually test it with the hands.

This of itself represents a very charming adaptation of what might be

expected to be rough work meant for protective purposes into a

suitable ornament. Some of the gates of the old churchyards are very

beautiful in their designs and have often been imitated in quite

recent years, for the gates of country places, for our modern

millionaires. The Reverend Augustus Jessopp who has written much with

regard to the times before the Reformation, says that he has found in

his investigations, that not infrequently such gates were made by the

village blacksmiths. Most of the old parish records are lost because

of the suppression of the parishes as well as the monasteries in Henry

the Eighth's time. Some of the original documents are, however,

preserved and among them are receipts from the village blacksmith, for

what we now admire as specimens of artistic ironwork and corresponding

receipts from the village carpenter, for woodwork that we now consider

of equally high order. There were carved bench ends and choir stalls

which seem to have been produced in this way. Just how these

generations of the Thirteenth Century, in little towns of less than

ten thousand inhabitants, {115} succeeded in raising up artisans in

numbers, capable of doing such fine work, and yet content to make

their living at such ordinary occupations, is indeed hard to

understand. It must not be forgotten, moreover, that though there was

not much furniture during the Thirteenth Century what little there

was, was as a rule very carefully and artistically made. Thirteenth

Century benches and tables are famous. Cathedrals and castles worked

together in inspiring and giving occupation to these wonderful

workmen.

It was not only the workmen engaged in the construction of the

edifices proper who made the beautiful things and created marvelously

artistic treasures during this century. All the adornments of the

Cathedrals and especially everything associated in any intimate way

with the religious service was sure to be executed with the most

delicate taste. The vestments of the time are some of the most

beautiful that have ever been made. The historians of needlework tell

us that this period represents the most flourishing era of artistic

accomplishment with the needle of all modern history. One example of

this has secured a large share of notoriety in quite recent years. An

American millionaire bought the famous piece of needlework known as

the Cope of Ascoli. This is an example of the large garment worn over

the shoulders in religious processions and at benediction. The price

paid for the garment is said to have been $60,000. This was not

considered extortionate or enforced, as the Cope was declared by

experts to be one of the finest pieces of needlework in the world. The

jewels which originally adorned it had been removed so that the money

was paid for the needlework itself. After a time it became clear that

the Cope had been stolen before being sold, and accordingly it was

returned to the Italian government who presented the American

millionaire with a medal for his honesty.

We have spoken of the Cathedrals as great stone books, in which he who

ran, might read, even though he were not able to read in the technical

sense of the term. This has been an old-time expression with regard to

the Cathedrals, but not even its inventor perhaps, and certainly not

most of those who have repeated it have realized how literally true

was the saying. I {116} have elsewhere quoted from Reinach's Story of

Art Throughout the Ages as an authority on the subject. His

re-statement of the intellectual significance for the people of the

Cathedrals of their towns, in which it must be remembered that they

had a personal interest because in a sense they were really theirs,

and they felt their ownership quite as much as a modern member of a

parish feels with regard to his church, emphasizes and illuminates

this subject to a wonderful degree. The realization that the

information of the time was deliberately woven into these great stone

structures, mainly of course for decorative purposes, but partly also

with the idea of educating the people, is a startling confirmation of

the idea that education was the most important and significant work of

this great century.

"The Gothic Cathedral is a perfect encyclopedia of human knowledge.

It contains scenes from the Scriptures and the legends of saints;

motives from the animal and vegetable kingdom; representations of

the seasons of agricultural labor, of' the arts and sciences and

crafts, and finally moral allegories, as, for instance, ingenious

personifications of the virtues and the vices. In the Thirteenth

Century a learned Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, was employed by

St. Louis to write a great work which was to be an epitome of all

the knowledge of his times. This compilation, called The Mirror of

the World, is divided into four parts: The Mirror of Nature, The

Mirror of Science, the Moral Mirror, and the Historical Mirror. A

contemporary archaeologist, M. E. Male, has shown that the works of

art of our great cathedrals are a translation into stone of the

Mirror of Vincent of Beauvais, setting aside the episodes from Greek

and Roman History, which would have been out of place. It was not

that the imagers had read Vincent's work; but that, like him, they

sought to epitomise all the knowledge of their contemporaries. The

first aim of their art is not to please, but to teach; they offer an

encyclopedia for the use of those who cannot read, translated by

sculptor or glass-painter into a clear and precise language, under

the lofty direction of the Church which left nothing to chance. It

was present always and everywhere, advising and superintending the

artist, leaving him to his own devices only when he {117} modelled

the fantastic animals of the gargoyles, or borrowed decorative

motives from the vegetable kingdom." [Footnote 11]

[Footnote 11: Reinach--The Story of Art Throughout the Ages.

Scribner's, 1904.]

[Illustration]

CATHEDRAL (BOURGES)

[Illustration: ]

CATHEDRAL (CHARTRES)

As to how much the cathedrals held of meaning for those who built them

and worshiped in them, only a careful study of the symbolism of the

time will enable the present-day admirer to understand. Modern

generations have lost most of their appreciation of the significance

of symbolism. The occupation of mind with the trivial things that are

usually read in our day, leaves little or no room for the study of the

profounder thought an artist may care to put into his work, and so the

modern artist tells his story as far as possible without any of this

deeper significance, since it would only be lost. In the Thirteenth

Century, however, everything artistic had a secondary meaning.

Literature was full of allegories, even the Arthur Legends were

considered to be the expression of the battle of a soul with worldly

influences as well as a poetic presentation of the story of the old

time British King. The Gothic Cathedrals were a mass of symbolism.

This will perhaps be best understood from the following explanation of

Cathedral symbolism, which we take from the translation of Durandus's

work on the meaning of the Divine Offices, a further account of which

will be found in the chapter on The Prose of the Century.

"Far away and long ere we can catch the first view of the city

itself, the three spires of its Cathedral, rising high above its din

and turmoil, preach to us of the Most High and Undivided Trinity. As

we approach, the Transepts, striking out crosswise, tell of the

Atonement. The Communion of Saints is set forth by the chapels

clustering around Choir and Nave: the mystical weathercock bids us

to watch and pray and endure hardness; the hideous forms that are

seen hurrying from the eaves speak the misery of those who are cast

out of the church; spire, pinnacle, and finial, the upward curl of

the sculptured foliage, the upward spring of the flying buttress,

the sharp rise of the window arch, the high thrown pitch of the

roof, all these, overpowering the horizontal tendency of string

course and parapet, teach us, that vanquishing earthly desires, we

also should ascend in heart and mind. Lessons of holy {118} wisdom

are written in the delicate tracery of the windows; the unity of

many members is shadowed forth by the multiplex arcade; the duty of

letting our light shine before men, by the pierced and flowered

parapet that crowns the whole.

"We enter. The triple breadth of Nave and Aisles, the triple height

of Pier arch, Triforium, and Clerestory, the triple length of Choir,

Transepts, and Nave, again set forth the HOLY TRINITY. And what

besides is there that does not tell of our Blessed SAVIOUR? that

does not point out "HIM First" in the two-fold western door; "HIM

Last" in the distant altar; "HIM Midst," in the great Rood; "HIM

Without End," in the monogram carved on boss and corbel, in the Holy

Lamb, in the Lion of the tribe of Judah, in the Mystic Fish? Close

by us is the font; for by regeneration we enter the Church; it is

deep and capacious; for we are buried in Baptism with CHRIST; it is

of stone, for HE is the Rock; and its spiry cover teaches us, if we

be indeed risen from its waters with HIM, to seek those things which

are above. Before us in long-drawn vista are the massy piers, which

are the Apostles and Prophets--they are each of many members, for

many are the Graces in every Saint, there is beautifully delicate

foliage round the head of all; for all were plentiful in good works.

Beneath our feet are the badges of worldly pomp and glory, the

graves of Kings and Nobles and Knights; all in the Presence of God

as dross and worthlessness. Over us swells the vast valley of the

high pitched roof; from the crossing and interlacing of its curious

rafters hang fadeless flowers and fruits which are not of earth;

from its hammer-beams project wreaths and stars such as adorn

heavenly beings; in its center stands the LAMB as it has been slain;

from around HIM the celestial Host, Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones,

Principalities, and Powers, look down peacefully on the worshipers

below. Harpers there are among them harping with their harps; for

one is the song of the Church in earth and in Heaven. Through the

walls wind the narrow cloister galleries; emblems of the path by

which holy hermits and anchorets whose conflicts were known only to

their GOD, have reached their Home. And we are compassed about with

a mighty cloud of witnesses; the rich deep glass of the windows

teems {119} with saintly forms, each in its own fair niche, all

invested with the same holy repose; there is the glorious company of

the Apostles; the goodly fellowship of the Prophets; the noble army

of Martyrs; the shining band of Confessors; the jubilant chorus of

the Virgins; there are Kings, who have long since changed an earthly

for an heavenly crown; and Bishops who have given in a glad account

to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls. But on none of these things do

we rest; piers, arch behind arch, windows, light behind light,

arcades, shaft behind shaft, the roof, bay behind bay, the Saints

around us, the Heavenly Hierarchy above with dignity of preeminence

still increasing eastward, each and all, lead on eye and soul and

thought to the Image of the Crucified Saviour as displayed on the

great East window. Gazing steadfastly on that we pass up the Nave,

that is through the Church Militant, till we reach the Rood Screen,

the barrier between it and the Church Triumphant, and therein

shadowing forth the death of the Faithful. High above it hangs on

His Triumphant Cross the image of Him who by His death hath overcome

death; on it are portrayed Saints and Martyrs, His warriors who,

fighting under their LORD have entered into rest and inherit a

tearless eternity. They are to be our examples, and the seven lamps

above them typify those graces of the SPIRIT, by Whom alone we can

tread in their steps. The screen itself glows with gold and crimson;

with gold, for they have on their heads golden crowns; with crimson,

for they passed the Red Sea of Martyrdom, to obtain them. And

through the delicate network, and the unfolding Holy Doors, we catch

faint glimpses of the Chancel beyond. There are the massy stalls;

for in Heaven is everlasting rest; there are the Sedilia, emblems of

the seats of' the Elders round the Throne; there is the Piscina; for

they have washed their robes and made them white; and there heart

and soul and life of all, the Altar with its unquenched lights, and

golden carvings, and mystic steps, and sparkling jewels; even CHRIST

Himself, by Whose only Merits we find admission to our Heavenly

Inheritance. Verily, as we think on the oneness of its design, we

may say: Jerusalem edificatur ut civitas cujus participatio ejus in

idipsum."

{120}

It is because of all this wealth of meaning embodied in them, that the

Cathedrals of this old time continue to be so interesting and so

unfailingly attractive even to our distant and so differently

constituted generation. [Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: Those who care to realize to some degree all the

Wonderful symbolic meaning of the ornamentation of some of these

cathedrals, should read M. Huysman's book La Cathedrale, which has,

we believe, been translated into English. Needless to say it has

been often in our hands in compiling this chapter, and the death of

its author as this chapter is going through the press poignantly

recalls all the beauty of his work.]

We cannot close this chapter on the Book of the Arts leaving the

impression that only the Church Architecture of the time deserves to

be considered in the category of, great art influences. There were

many municipal buildings, some stately castles, and a large number of

impressively magnificent Abbeys and Monasteries, besides educational

and charitable institutions built at this same time. The town halls of

some of the great Hansa towns, that is, the German free cities that

were members of the Hanseatic League, present some very striking

examples of the civil architecture of the period. It has the same

characteristics that we have discussed in treating of the Cathedrals.

While wonderfully impressive, it was eminently suitable for the

purpose for which it was intended and the decorations always forming

integral parts of the structure, sounded the note of the combination

of beauty with utility which is so characteristic of every phase of

the art accomplishment of the century.

Some of the castles would deserve special description by themselves

but unfortunately space forbids more than a passing mention. Certain

castellated fortresses still standing in England and Ireland come from

the time of King John, and are excellent examples of the stability and

forceful character of this form of architecture in the Thirteenth

Century. It is interesting to find that when we come to build in the

Twentieth Century in America, the armories which are to be used for

the training of our militia and the storage of arms and ammunition,

many of the ideas used in their construction are borrowed from this

olden time.

{opp120}

[Illustration]

DURHAM CASTLE AND CATHEDRAL

[Illustration]

KING JOHN'S CASTLE (LIMERICK)

There is a famous castle in Limerick, Ireland, built in John's time

which constituted an {121} excellent example of this and which has

doubtlessly often been studied and more or less imitated.

One portion of Kenilworth Castle in England dates from the Thirteenth

Century and has been often the subject of careful study by modern

architects. The same thing might be said of many others.

With regard to the English Abbeys too much cannot be said in praise of

their architecture and it has been the model for large educational and

municipal buildings ever since. St. Mary's Abbey at York, though only

a few scattered fragments of its beauties are to be seen and very

little, of its walls still stand, is almost as interesting as

Yorkminster, the great Cathedral itself. There were many such abbeys

as this built in England during the Thirteenth Century--more than a

dozen of them at least and probably a full score. All of them are as

distinguished in the history of architecture as the English

Cathedrals. It will be remembered that what is now called Westminster

Abbey was not a Cathedral church, but only a monastery church attached

to the Abbey of Westminster and this, the only well preserved example

of its class furnishes an excellent idea of what these religious

institutions signify in the Thirteenth Century. They meant as much for

the art impulse as the Cathedrals themselves.

One feature of these monastic establishments deserves special mention.

The cloisters were usually constructed so beautifully as to make them

veritable gems of the art of the period. These cloisters were the

porticos usually surrounding a garden of the monastery within which

the Monks could walk, shaded from the sun, and protected from the rain

and the snow. They might very easily have been hideously useful

porches, especially as they were quite concealed from the outer world

as a rule, and those not belonging to the order were not admitted to

them except on very special occasions. The name cloister signifies an

enclosed place and lay persons were not ordinarily admitted to them.

Those who know anything about them will recall what beautiful

constructive work was put into them. Certain examples as that of St.

John Lateran in Rome and the Cloister of St. Paul's without the walls

some five miles from Rome, constructed during the {122} Thirteenth

Century and under the influence of the same great art movement as gave

the Cathedrals, are the most beautiful specimens that now remain. The

only thing that they can be compared with is the famous Angel Choir at

Lincoln which indeed they recall in many ways.

The pictures of these two Cloisters which we present will give some

idea of their beauty. To be thoroughly appreciated, however, they must

be seen, for there is a delicacy of finish about every detail that

makes them an unending source of admiration and brings people back

again and again to see them, yet always to find something new and

apparently unnoticed before. It might be thought that the studied

variety in the columns so that no two are of exactly the same form,

would produce a bizarre effect. The lack of symmetry that might

result, from this same feature could be expected to spoil their

essential beauty. Neither of these effects has been produced, however.

The Cloisters were, moreover, not purple patches on monasteries, but

ever worthy portions of very beautiful buildings.

All of these buildings were furnished as regards their metal work,

their wood work, and the portions that lent themselves to decoration,

in the same spirit as the Cathedrals themselves. The magnificent

tables and benches of the Thirteenth Century are still considered to

be the best models of simplicity of line with beauty of form and

eminent durability in the history of furniture making. The fashion for

Colonial furniture in our own time has brought us nearer to such

Thirteenth Century furniture making than has been true at any other

time in history. Here once more there was one of these delightful

combinations of beauty and utility which is so characteristic of the

century. Even the kitchen utensils were beautiful as well as useful

and the Irish poet might have been satisfied to his heart's content.

{opp122}

[Illustration]

PALAZZO VECCHIO (ARNULFO, FLORENCE)

CAMPANILE (GIOTTO)

[Illustration]

GIOTTO'S TOWER (FLORENCE)

Certain other architectural forms were wonderfully developed during

the Thirteenth Century and the opening years of the Fourteenth Century

while men trained during the former period were still at work.

Giotto's tower, for instance, must be considered a Thirteenth Century

product since its architect was well past thirty-five years of age

before the Thirteenth {123} Century closed and all his artistic

character had been formed under its precious inspiration. It is a

curious reflection on modern architecture, that some of the modern

high business buildings are saved from being hideous just in as much

as they approach the character of some of these tower-like structures

of the Thirteenth Century. The first of New York's skyscrapers which

is said to have escaped the stigma of being utterly ugly, as most of

them are, because of their appeal to mere utility, was the New York

Times Building which is just Giotto's tower on a large scale set down

on Broadway at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Seen from a

mile away the effect is exactly that of the great Florentine

architect's beautiful structure and this was of course the deliberate

intention of the modern architect. Anyone who would think, however,

that our modern business building with its plain walls recalls in any

adequate sense its great pattern, should read what Mr. Ruskin has said

with regard to the wealth of meaning that is to be found in Giotto's

tower. Into such structures just as into the Cathedrals, the

architects and builders of the time succeeded in putting a whole

burden of suggestion, which to the generations of the time in which

they were built, accustomed to the symbolism of every art feature in

life around them, had a precious wealth of significance that we can

only appreciate after deep study and long contemplation. We have felt

that only the quotation from Mr. Ruskin himself can fully illustrate

what we wish to convey in this matter.

"Of these representations of human art under heavenly guidance, the

series of basreliefs which stud the base of this tower of Giotto's

must be held certainly the chief in Europe. At first you may be

surprised at the smallness of their scale in proportion to their

masonry; but this smallness of scale enabled the master workmen of

the tower to execute them with their own hands; and for the rest, in

the very finest architecture, the decoration of most precious kind

is usually thought of as a jewel, and set with space round it--as

the jewels of a crown, or the clasp of a girdle."

{124}

VII

ARTS AND CRAFTS--GREAT TECHNICAL SCHOOLS

The most interesting social movement in our time is undoubtedly that

of the arts and crafts. Its central idea is to lift the workmen up

above the mere machine that he is likely to become, as the result of

the monotonous occupation at some trade, that requires him only to do

a constantly repeated series of acts, or direct, one little portion of

machinery and so kills the soul in him. Of course, the other idea that

a generation of workmen shall be created, who will be able to make

beautiful things, for the use of the household as well as the

adornment of the house is another principal purpose. Too many people

have mistaken this entirely secondary aim of the movement for its

primary end. It is because of the effect upon the workman himself of

the effort to use his intellect in the designing, his taste in the

arrangement, and his artisan skill for the execution of beautiful

things, that the arts and crafts movement has its appeal to the

generality of mankind.

The success of the movement promises, to do more, to solve social

problems than all the socialistic agitation that is at present causing

so much dismay in some quarters and raising so many hopes that are

destined to be disappointed in the hearts of the laboring classes. The

solution of the problem of social unrest is to be found, not in

creating new wants for people and giving them additional wages that

will still further stimulate their desire to have many things that

will continue to be in spite of increased wages beyond their means,

but rather to give them such an interest in their life work that their

principal source of pleasure is to be found in their occupation.

Unfortunately work has come to be looked upon as a drudgery and as men

must spend the greater portion of their lives, at least the vast

majority of them must, in doing something that will enable them to

make a living, it is clear that unhappiness {125} and discontent will

still continue. Blessed is the man who has found his work, blessed is

the man to whom his work appeals with so much interest that he goes

from it with a longing to be able to finish what he has been at, and

comes back to it with a prospect that now he shall be able to

accomplish what time and perhaps fatigue would not allow him to

proceed with the day before.

This is the best feature of the promises held out by the arts and

crafts movement, that men shall be interested in the work they do.

This may seem to some people an unrealizable idea and a poetic

aspiration rather than a possible actuality. A little study of what

was accomplished in this line during the Thirteenth Century, will

surely prove even to the most skeptical how much of success is capable

of being realized in this matter. The men who worked around the

Cathedrals were given opportunities to express themselves and the best

that was in them as no class of workmen before or since have ever had

the opportunity. Every single portion of the Cathedral was to be made

as beautiful as the mind of man could conceive, his taste could plan

and his hands could achieve. As a consequence the carpenter had the

chance to express himself in the woodwork, the village blacksmith the

opportunity to display his skill in such small ironwork as the hinges

or the latch for the door and every workman felt called upon to do the

best that was in him.

It is easy to understand under these circumstances with what interest

the men must have applied themselves to their tasks. They were, as a

rule, the designers as well as the executors of the work assigned

them. They planned and executed in the rough and tried, then modified

and adapted, until finally as we know of most of the Cathedrals, their

finished product was as nearly perfect in most particulars as it is

ordinarily given to man to achieve. Their aim above all was to make

such a combination of utility with beauty of line yet simplicity of

finish, as would make their work worthy counterparts of all the other

portions of the Cathedral. The sense of competition must have stirred

men to the very depths of their souls and yet it was not the heartless

rivalry that crushes when it succeeds, but the inspiring emulation

that makes one do as well as or better than others, though not

necessarily in such a way as to {126} belittle others' efforts by

contrast or humble them by triumph.

{opp126}

[Illustration]

FOUNTAIN (PERUGIA) [TOWN PUMP]

[Illustration]

LAVATOIO (TODI) [PUBLIC WASH-HOUSE]

In these old medieval days England used to be called Merrie England

and it is easy to understand that workmen would be profoundly merry at

heart, when they had the consciousness of accomplishing such good

work. Men must have almost tardily quitted their labor in the evening

while they hoped and strove to accomplish something that would be

worthy of the magnificent building in which so many of their fellow

workmen were achieving triumphs of handicraftsmanship. Each went home

to rest for the night, but also to dream over what he might be able to

do and awoke in the morning with the thought that possibly to-day

would see some noteworthy result. This represents the ideal of the

workman's life. He has an interest quite apart from the mere making of

money. The picture of the modern workman by contrast looks vain and

sordid. The vast majority of our workmen labor merely because they

must make enough money to-day, in order that they may be able to buy

food enough so as to get strength to work to-morrow. Of interest there

is very little. Day after day there is the task of providing for self

and others. Only this and nothing more. Is it any wonder that there

should be social unrest and discontentment? How can workmen be merry

unless with the artificial stimulus of strong drink, when there is

nothing for them to look forward to except days and weeks and years of

labor succeeding one another remorselessly, and with no surcease until

Nature puts in her effective demand for rest, or the inevitable end

comes.

It would be idle to say that these men who knew how to make the

beautiful things for these cathedrals were not conscious of the

perfection of the work that they were accomplishing. The very fact

that each in his own line was achieving such beautiful results must

have stamped him as thoroughly capable of appreciating the work of

others. The source of pleasure that there must have been therefore, in

some twenty towns in England alone, to see their Cathedral approaching

completion, must have been of itself a joy far beyond anything we can

imagine as possible for the workmen of the present day. The interest

in it was supreme and was only heightened by the fact that it was

being done by relatives and friends and brother workmen, even {127}

though they might be rivals, and that whatever was done was redounding

first to the glory of the Lord to whom they turned with so much

confidence in these ages of faith, and secondly, and there was

scarcely less satisfaction in the thought, to the reputation of their

native town and their fellow-townsmen.

This is the feature of the life of the lower classes in the Thirteenth

Century which most deserves to be studied in our time. We hear much of

people being kept in ignorance and in servitude. Men who talk this way

know nothing at all of the lives of the towns of the Middle Ages and

are able to appreciate not even in the slightest degree the wonderful

system of education, that made life so much fuller of possibilities

for intellectual development for all classes and for happiness in

life, than any other period of which we know. This phase of the

Thirteenth Century is at once the most interesting, the most

significant for future generations, and the most important in its

lessons for all time.

We have been following up thus far the exemplification in the

Thirteenth Century of John Ruskin's saying, that if you wish to get at

the real significance of the achievements of a period in history, you

must read the book of its deeds, the book of its arts and the book of

its words. We have been turning over a few of the pages of the book of

the deeds of the Thirteenth Century in studying the history of the

establishment of the universities and of the method and content of

university teaching. After all the only deeds that ought to count in

the history of mankind are those that are done for men--that have

accomplished something for the uplift of mankind. History is

unfortunately occupied with deeds of many other kinds, and it is

perhaps the saddest blot on our modern education, that it is mainly

the history of deeds that have been destructive of man, of human

happiness and in only too many cases of human rights and human

liberties, that are supposed to be most worthy of the study of the

rising generation. History as written for schools is to a great extent

a satire on efforts for social progress.

We shall continue the study of the book of the deeds of the Thirteenth

Century and its most interesting and important chapter, that of the

education of the masses. We shall find in what was accomplished in

educating the people of the {128} Thirteenth Century, the model of the

form of education which in spite of our self-complacency does not

exist, but must come in our time, if our education is to fulfill its

real purpose. Perhaps the most interesting phase of this question of

the education of the masses will be the fact that in studying this

book of the deeds, we shall have also to study once more the book of

the arts of the Thirteenth Century. All their best accomplishment was

linked with achievement and progress in art. Yet it was from the

masses that the large number of artist-artisans of workmen with the

true artistic spirit came, who in this time in nearly every part of

Europe, created masterpieces of art in every department which have

since been the admiration of the world.

We may say at once that the opportunity for the education of the

masses was furnished in connection with the Cathedrals. In the light

of what we read in these great stone books, it is a constant source of

surprise that the Church should be said to have been opposed to

education. Reinach in his Story of Art throughout the Ages says:

"The Church was not only rich and powerful in the Middle Ages; it

dominated and directed all the manifestations of human activity.

There was practically no art but the art it encouraged, the art it

needed to construct and adorn its buildings, carve its ivories and

its reliquaries, and paint its glass and its missals. Foremost among

the arts it fostered was architecture, which never played so

important a part in any other society. Even now, when we enter a

Romanesque or Gothic church, we are impressed by the might of that

vast force of which it is the manifestation, a force which shaped

the destinies of Europe for a thousand years."

It was as the result of this demand for art that the technical schools

naturally developed around the Cathedrals. To take the example of

England alone, during the Thirteenth Century some twenty cathedrals

were erected in various parts of the country. Most of these were built

in what we would now call small towns, indeed some of them would be

considered scarcely more than villages. There were no large cities, in

praise be it spoken, during the Thirteenth Century, and it must not be

forgotten that the whole population of England at the beginning {129}

of the century was scarcely more than two millions of people and did

not reach three millions even at the end of it. Every rood of ground

did not perhaps maintain its man, but every part of England had its

quota of population so that there could not be many crowded centers.

Even London probably at no time during the century had more than

twenty-five thousand inhabitants and Oxford during the palmiest days

of the University was perhaps the most populous place in the land.

There was a rivalry in the building of Cathedrals, and as the main

portion of the buildings were erected in the short space of a single

century, a feeling of intense competition was rife so that there was

very little possibility of procuring workmen from other towns. Each

town had to create not only its cathedral but the workmen who would

finish it in all its details. When we consider that a Cathedral like

Salisbury was practically completed in the short space of about

twenty-five years, it becomes extremely difficult to understand just

how this little town succeeded in apparently accomplishing the

impossible. It has often been said that artists cannot be obtained

merely because of a demand for them and that they are the slow

creation of rather capricious nature. It is only another way of saying

that the artist is born, not made. Nature then must have been in a

particularly fruitful mood and tense during the Thirteenth Century,

for there is no doubt at all of the wonderful artistic beauty of the

details of these Gothic cathedrals. While nature's beneficence meant

much, however, the training of the century probably meant even more

and the special form of popular education which developed well

deserves the attention of all other generations.

It may be said at once that education in our sense of teaching

everybody to read and write there was none. There were more students

at the universities to the number of the population than in the

Twentieth Century as we have seen, but people who were not to devote

themselves in after life to book learning, were not burdened with

acquisitions of doubtful benefit, which might provide stores of

useless information for them, or enable them to while away hours of

precious time reading trash, or make them conceited with the thought

that because they had absorbed some of the opinions of others on

things in general, {130} they had a right to judge of most things

under the sun and a few other things besides. The circulation of our

newspapers and the records of the books in demand at our libraries,

show how much a knowledge of reading means for most of our population.

Popular education of this kind may, and does benefit a few, but it

works harm to a great many.

Of education in the sense of training the faculties so that the

individual might express whatever was in him and especially that he

might bring out what was best in him, there was much. Take again the

example of England. There was considerably less in population than

there is in Greater New York at the present time, yet there was some

twenty places altogether in which they were building Cathedrals during

this century, that would be monuments of artistic impulse and

accomplishment for all future time. Any city in this country would be

proud to have any one of these English cathedrals of the Thirteenth

Century as the expression of its taste and power to execute. We have

tried to imitate them more or less in many places. In order to

accomplish our purpose in this matter, though, we deliberately did

everything on a much smaller and less ambitious scale than the people

of the small English towns of seven centuries ago, and our results do

not bear comparison for a moment with theirs, we had to appeal to

other parts of the country and even to Europe for architects and

designers, and even had to secure the finished products of art from

distant places. This too, in spite of the fact that we are seven

centuries later and that our education is supposed to be developed to

a high extent. If there were twenty places of instruction in Greater

New York where architects and artist workers in iron and glass, and

metal of all kinds, and wood and stone, were being trained to become

such finished artisans as were to be found in twenty different little

towns of England in the Thirteenth Century, we should be sure that our

manual training schools and our architectural departments of

universities and schools of design were wonderfully successful.

When we find this to be true of the England of the Thirteenth Century

we can conclude that somehow better opportunities for art education

must have been supplied in those times than in our own, and though we

do not find the mention or {131} records of formal schools, we must

look patiently for the methods of instruction that enabled these

generations to accomplish so much. Needless to say such attainments do

not come spontaneously in a large number of people, but must be

carefully fostered and are the result of that greatest factor in

education, environment. It will not be hard to find where the

ambitious youth of England even of the workman class found

opportunities for technical education of the highest character in

these little towns. This was never merely theoretic, though, it was

sufficiently grounded in principle to enable men to solve problems in

architecture and engineering, in decoration and artistic arrangement,

such as are still sources of anxiety for modern students of these

questions.

To take but a single example, it will be readily appreciated that the

consideration of the guilds of builders of the Cathedrals as

constituting a great technical school, is marvelously emphasized by

certain recent observations with regard to architects' and builders'

methods in the Cathedrals. There is a passage in Evelyn's Diary in

which he describes certain corrections that were introduced into Old

St. Paul's Cathedral, London (the Gothic edifice predecessor of the

present classical structure), in order to remove appearances of

dissymmetry and certain seeming mistakes of construction. This passage

was always so misunderstood that editors usually considered it to be

defective in some way and as the classical critics always fall back on

an imperfect text for insoluble difficulties, so somehow Evelyn was

considered as either not having understood what he intended to say, or

else the printer failed to put in all the words that he wrote. It was

the modern readers, however, not Evelyn nor his printer who were

mistaken. Mr. Goodyear of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences

has proved by a series of photographs and carefully made observations,

that many of the old Gothic Cathedrals have incorporated into them by

their builders, optical corrections which correspond to those made by

the Greeks in their building in the classical period, which have been

the subject of so much admiration to the moderns.

The medieval architects and builders knew nothing of these classical

architectural refinements. They learned for themselves by actual

experience the necessity for making such optical {132} corrections and

then introduced them so carefully, that it is not until the last

decade or so that their presence has been realized. It is only by an

educational tradition of the greatest value that the use of such a

refinement could become as general as Professor Goodyear has found it

to be. Besides the practical work then, and the actual exercise of

craftsmanship and of design which the apprentices obtained from the

guild, there was evidently a body of very definite technical

information conveyed to them, or at least to certain chosen spirits

among them, which carried on precious traditions from place to place.

This same state of affairs must of course have existed with regard to

stained glass work, the making of bells and especially the finer work

in the precious metals. Practical metallurgy must have been studied

quite as faithfully as in any modern technical school, at least so far

as its practical purposes and application were concerned. Here we have

the secret of the technical schools revealed.

It is extremely interesting to study the details of the very practical

organization by which this great educational movement in the arts and

crafts was brought about. It was due entirely to the trades' and

merchants' guilds of the time. In the cathedral towns the trades'

guilds preponderated in influence. There gathered around each of these

cathedrals during the years when work was most active, numbers of

workmen engaged at various occupations requiring mechanical skill and

long practice at their trade. These workmen were all affiliated with

one another and they were gradually organized into trades' unions that

had a certain independent existence. There was the guild of the stone

workers; the guild of the metal workers--in some places divided into a

guild of iron workers and a guild of gold workers, or workers in

precious metals; there was the guild of the wood workers and then of

the various other forms of occupation connected with the supplying of

finished or unfinished materials for the cathedral. In association

with these were established guilds of tailors, bakers, butchers, all

affiliated in a merchants' guild which maintained the rights of its

members as well as the artisans' guilds. Some idea of the number and

variety of these can be obtained from the list given in the chapter on

the Origin of the Drama.

{opp133}

[Illustration]

RELIQUARY (LIMOGES MUSEO, FLORENCE)

[Illustration]

CRUCIFIX (DUOMO, SIENA)

{133}

These were the workmen who not only accomplished such brilliant

results in art work, but also succeeded in training other workmen so

admirably for every line of artistic endeavor.

It is somewhat difficult to understand just how a village carpenter

did wood-carving of so exquisite a design and such artistic finish of

detail that it has remained a subject of admiration for centuries. It

is quite as difficult to understand how one of the village blacksmiths

of the time made a handsome gate, that has been the constant

admiration of posterity ever since, or designed huge hinges for doors

that artists delight to copy, or locks and latches and bolts that are

transported to our museums to be looked at with interest, not only

because they are antiques, but for the wonderful combination of the

beautiful and the useful which they illustrate. We are assured,

however, by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, that he has seen in the

archives of the old English parishes, some of the receipts for the

bills of these village workmen as we would term them, for the making

of these beautiful specimens of arts and crafts.

The surprise grows greater when we realize that these beautiful

objects were made not alone in one place or even in a few places, but

in nearly every town of any size in England and France and Italy and

Germany and Spain at various times during the Thirteenth Century, and

that at any time a town of considerably less than ten thousand

inhabitants seemed to be able to obtain among its own inhabitants, men

who could make such works of art not as copies nor in servile

imitation of others, but with original ideas of their own, and make

them in such perfection that in many cases they have remained the

models for future workmen for many centuries. Even the bells for the

cathedrals seem to have been cast in practically all cases in the

little town in which they were to be used. It may be added that these

bells of the Thirteenth Century represent the highest advances in bell

making that have ever been attained and that their form and

composition have simply been imitated over and over again since that

time. Even the finer precious metal work such as chalices and the

various sacred vessels and objects used in the church services, were

not obtained from a distance but were made at home.

An article that appeared a few years ago in The Craftsman {134}

(Syracuse, N. Y.), a magazine published in the interests of the Arts

and Crafts movement, called attention to how much more beautifully the

Thirteenth Century workman in the precious metals accomplished his

artistic purpose than does the corresponding workman of the present

day. A definite comparison, was made between some typical chalices of

the Thirteenth Century and some prize cups which were made without

regard to cost, as rewards for yachting and other competitions in the

Twentieth Century. The artist workman of the olden time knew how to

combine the beautiful with the useful, to use decoration just enough

not to offend good taste, to make the lines of his work eminently

artistic and in general to turn out a fine work of art. The modern

prize cup is usually made by one of the large firms engaged in such

work who employ special designers for the purpose, such designs

ordinarily passing through the trained hands of a series of critics

before being accepted, and only after this are turned over to the

modern skilled workmen to be executed in metal. All this ought to

assure the more artistic results; that they do not according to the

writer in The Craftsman, demonstrates how much such success is a

matter of men and of individual taste rather than of method. We have

already called attention to the fact that in needlework and in other

arts connected with the provision of church ornaments and garments,

the success of the Thirteenth Century workers was quite as great. The

Cope of Ascoli considered by experts to be one of the most beautiful

bits of needlework ever made is an example of this. Many other

examples are to be found in the treasuries of churches and

monasteries, in spite of the ravages of time and only too often of

intolerant and unfortunate destruction by so-called reformers, who

could see no beauty in even the most beautiful things if they ran

counter to certain of their religious prejudices.

The training necessary for the production of such beautiful objects of

handicraftsmanship was obtained through the guilds themselves. The boy

in the small town who thought that he had a liking for a certain trade

or craft was received as an apprentice in it. If during the course of

a year or more he demonstrated his aptness for his chosen craft, he

was allowed to {135} continue his labor of assisting the workmen in

various ways, and indeed very early in the history of the guilds was

bound over to some particular workman, who usually supplied him with

board and clothing, though with no other remuneration during his years

of apprenticeship. After four or five years, always, however, with the

understanding that he had shown a definite talent for his chosen

trade, he was accepted among the workmen of the lowest grade, the

journeymen, who usually went traveling in order to perfect their

knowledge of the various methods by which their craft maintained

itself and the standard of its workmanship in the different parts of

the country.

During these three years of "journeying" a striking development was

likely to take place in the mind of the ambitious young workman. His

_wanderjahre_ came just at the most susceptible period, sometime

between 17 and 25, they continued for three years or more, and the

young workman if at all ambitious was likely to see many men and

methods and know much of the cities and towns of his country before he

returned to his native place. Sometimes these craft-wanderings took

him even into France, where he learned methods and secrets so

different to those at home.

After these years if he wished to settle down in his native town or in

some other, having brought evidence of the accomplishment of his

apprenticeship and then of his years as a journeyman, he became an

applicant for full membership in the guild to which his years of

training had been devoted. He was not admitted, however, until he had

presented to the officials of the organization a piece of work showing

his skill. This might be only a hinge, or a lock for a door, but on

the other hand it might be a design for an important window or a

delicate piece of wood or stone-carving. If it was considered worthy

of the standard of workmanship of the guild it was declared to be a

masterpiece. This is where the fine old English word masterpiece comes

from. The workman was then admitted as a master workman and became a

full member of the guild.

This membership carried with it a number of other rights besides that

of permission to work as a master-workman at full wages whenever the

guild was employed. Guilds had certain privileges conferred on them by

the towns in which they lived, {136} by the nobles for whom they

worked and the ecclesiastical authorities on whose various church

structures they were employed. At the beginning of the Thirteenth

Century at least, feudal ideas prevailed to such an extent that no one

was supposed to enjoy any rights or privileges except those which had

been conferred on him by some authority. Besides the workmen of the

same guild were bound together by ties, so that any injury inflicted

on one of them was considered to be done to the whole body. When human

rights were much less recognized than has come to be the case since,

this constituted an important source of protection against many forms

of injury and infringement of rights.

Besides the privileges, however, the guild possessed certain other

decided advantages which made membership desirable, even though it

involved the fulfilment of certain duties. In the various towns in

England, after the introduction during the Thirteenth Century of the

practice of having mystery plays in the various towns, the guild

claimed and obtained the privilege of giving these at various times

during the year. The guild of the goldsmiths would give the

performance of one portion of the Old Testament; the guild of the

tailors another; the guild of the butchers and so on for each of the

trades and crafts still another, so that during the year a whole cycle

of the mysteries of the Christian religion in type and in reality were

exhibited to the people of each region. Almost needless to say, on

such festive occasions, for the plays were given on important feast

days, the people from the countryside flocked in to see them and the

influence was widespread. What was most important, however, was the

influence on those who took part in the plays, of such intimate

contact for a prolonged period with the simplicity of style, the

sublimity of thought, the concentration of purpose and the

effectiveness of expression of the Scriptures and the Scripture

narratives even in their dramatized form.

The fact of actually taking part in these performances meant ever so

much more than merely viewing them as an outsider. It is doubtless to

this intimate relationship with the great truths of Christianity that

the profound devotion so characteristic of the accomplishments of the

arts and crafts, during the Thirteenth Century, must be to no little

extent attributed.

{opp136}

[Illustration ]

MADONNA, CIMABUE

(RUCELLAI CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE)

{137}

Their beautiful work could only have come from men of profoundest

faith, but also it could not have come from those who were ignorant of

the basis of what they accepted on faith. In other words, there was a

mental training with regard to some of the sublimest truths of life

and its significance, the creation of a Christian philosophy of life,

that made the workman see clearly the great truths of religion and so

be able to illustrate them by his handiwork. Education of a higher

order than this has never been conceived of, and the very lack of

tedious formality in it only made it all the more effectual in action.

Other duties were involved in membership in the guild. All the members

were bound to attend church services regularly and to perform what is

known as their religious duties at periodic intervals, that is, the

rule of the guild required them to go to mass on Sundays and holy

days, to abstain from manual labor on such days unless there was

absolute necessity for it, and to go to confession and communion

several times a year. Besides they were bound to contribute to the

support of such of their fellow-members as were sick and unable to

work or as had been injured. A very interesting phase of this duty

toward sick members existed at least in some parts of the country. A

workman was supposed to pass one night at certain intervals on his

turn, in helping to nurse a fellow-workman who was seriously hurt or

who was very ill. It was considered that the family were quite worn

out enough with the care of the sick man during the day, and so one of

his brother guildsmen came to relieve them of this duty at night. It

is a custom that is still maintained in certain country places but

which of course has passed out of use entirely in our unsympathetic

city life. In a word, there was a thorough education not only in the

life work that made for wages and family support, but also in those

precious social duties that make for happiness and contentment in

life.

{138}

VIII

GREAT ORIGINS IN PAINTING. [Footnote 13]

[Footnote 13: Most of this chapter is taken from the work on Italian

painting (La Peinture Italienne depuis les origines jusqu'a la fin

du xv Siecle, par Georges Lafenestre, Paris Ancienne Maison Quantin

Libraries-Imprimeries Reunies, May & Motteroz, Directeurs, rue

Saint-Benoit. Nouvelle Edition), which forms one of the series of

text books for instruction in art at L'Ecole Des Beaux-Arts--the

famous French Government Art School in Paris. It may be said that

this collection of art manuals is recognized as an authority on all

matters treated of, having been crowned by the Academie Des

Beaux-Arts with the prize Bordin. There is no better source of

information with regard to the development of the arts and none

which can be more readily consulted nor with more assurance as to

the facts and opinions exposed.]

At the commencement of the Thirteenth Century the movement of

emancipation in every phase of thought and life in Italy went on apace

with an extraordinary ardor. After a very serious struggle the Italian

republics were on the point of forcing the German Empire to recognize

them. Everywhere in the first enthusiasm of their independence which

had been achieved by valiant deeds and aspirations after liberty as

lofty as any in modern times, the cities, though united in

confederations they were acting as independent rivals, brought to all

enterprises, lay or religious foundations, commercial or educational

institutions, a wonderful youthful activity and enterprise. The papacy

allied with them favored this movement in its political as well as its

educational aspects and strengthened the art movement of the time.

Christianity under their guidance, by the powerful religious

exaltation which it inspired in the hearts of all men, became a potent

factor in all forms of art. From Pope Innocent III to Boniface VIII

probably no other series of Popes have been so misunderstood and so

misrepresented by subsequent generations, as certainly the Popes of no

other century did so much to awaken the enthusiasm of Christians for

all modes of religious development, and be it said though credit for

this is {139} only too often refused them, also for educational,

charitable and social betterment.

The two great church institutions of the time that were destined to

act upon the people more than any others were the Franciscan and

Dominican orders--the preachers and the friars minor, who were within

a short time after their formation to have such deep and widespread

influence on all strata of society. Both of these orders from their

very birth showed themselves not only ready but anxious to employ the

arts as a means of religious education and for the encouragement of

piety. Their position in this matter had an enormous influence on art

and on the painters of the time. The Dominicans, as became their more

ambitious intellectual training and their purpose as preachers of the

word, demanded encyclopedic and learned compositions; the Franciscans

asked for loving familiar scenes such as would touch the hearts of the

common people. Both aided greatly in helping the artist to break away

from the old fashioned formalism which was no longer sufficient to

satisfy the new ardors of men's souls. In this way they prepared the

Italian imagination for the double revolution which was to come.

It was the great body of legends which grew up about St. Francis

particularly, all of them bound up with supreme charity for one's

neighbor, with love for all living creatures even the lowliest, with

the tenderest feelings for every aspect of external nature, which

appealed to the painters as a veritable light in the darkness of the

times. It was especially in the churches founded by the disciples of

"the poor little man of Assisi," that the world saw burst forth before

the end of the century, the first grand flowers of that renewal of art

which was to prove the beginning of modern art history. It is hard to

understand what would have happened to the painters of the time

without the spirit that was brought into the world by St. Francis'

beautifully simple love for all and every phase of nature around him.

This it was above all that encouraged the return to nature that soon

supplanted Oriental formalism. It was but due compensation that the

greatest works of the early modern painters should have been done in

St. Francis' honor. Besides this the most important factor in art was

the revival of the thirst for knowledge, which arose among the more

intellectual portions of the {140} communities and developed an

enthusiasm for antiquity which was only a little later to become a

veritable passion.

The most important phase of Italian art during the Thirteenth Century

is that which developed at Florence. It is with this that the world is

most familiar. It began with Cimabue, who commenced painter, in the

quaint old English phrase, not long before the middle of the century

and whose great work occupies the second half of it. There are not

wanting some interesting traditions of certain other Florentine

painters before his time as Marchisello, of the early part of the

century, Lapo who painted, in 1261, the facade of the Cathedral at

Pistoia, and Fino di Tibaldi who painted a vast picture on the walls

of the Municipal Palace about the middle of the century, but they are

so much in the shadow of the later masters' work as to be scarcely

known. Everywhere Nature began to reassert herself. The workers in

Mosaic even, who were occupied in the famous baptistry at Florence

about the middle of the century, though they followed the Byzantine

rules of their art, introduced certain innovations which brought the

composition and the subjects closer to nature. These are enough to

show that there was a school of painting and decoration at Florence

quite sufficient to account for Cimabue's development, without the

necessity of appealing to the influence over him of wandering Greek

artists as has sometimes been done.

Though he was not the absolute inventor of all the new art modes as he

is sometimes supposed to be, Cimabue was undoubtedly a great original

genius. Like so many others who have been acclaimed as the very first

in a particular line of thought or effort, his was only the

culminating intelligence which grasped all that had been done before,

assimilated it and made it his own. As a distinct exception to the

usual history of such great initiators, this father of Italian

painting was rich, born of a noble family, but of a character that was

eager for work and with ambition to succeed in his chosen art as the

mainspring of life. At his death, as the result of his influence,

artists had acquired a much better social position than had been

theirs before, and one that it was comparatively easy for his

successors to maintain. His famous Madonna which was subsequently

borne in triumph from his studio to the Church of {141} Santa Maria

Novella, placed the seal of popular approval on the new art, and the

enthusiasm it evoked raised the artist for all time from the plane of

a mere worker in colors to that of a member of a liberal profession.

Even before this triumph his great picture had been deemed worthy of a

visit by Charles of Anjou, the French King, who was on a visit to

Florence and according to tradition ever afterwards the portion of the

city in which it had been painted and through which it was carried in

procession, bore by reason of these happy events the name Borgo

Allegri--Ward of Joy.

This picture is still in its place in the Rucellai chapel and is of

course the subject of devoted attention on the part of visitors.

Lafenestre says of it, that this monument of Florentine art quite

justifies the enthusiasm of contemporaries if we compare it with the

expressionless Madonnas that preceded it. There is an air of

beneficent dignity on the features quite unlike the rigidity of

preceding art, and there is besides an attractive suppleness about the

attitude of the body which is far better proportioned than those of

its predecessors. Above all there is a certain roseate freshness about

the colors of the flesh which are pleasant substitutes for the pale

and greenish tints of the Byzantines. It did not require more than

this to exalt the imaginations of the people delivered from their

old-time conventional painting. It was only a ray of the dawn after a

dark night, but it announced a glorious sunrise of art and the

confident anticipations of the wondrous day to come, aroused the

depths of feeling in the peoples' hearts. Life and nature went back

into art once more; no wonder their re-apparition was saluted with so

much delight.

Two other Madonnas painted by him, one at Florence in the Academy, the

other in Paris in the Louvre, besides his great Mosaic in the apse of

the Cathedral at Pisa, serve to show with what prudence Cimabue

introduced naturalistic qualities into art, while always respecting

the tradition of the older art and preserving the solemn graces and

the majestic style of monumental painting. The old frescoes of the

upper church at Assisi which represent episodes in the life of St.

Francis have also been attributed to Cimabue, but evidently were done

by a number of artists probably under his direction. It is easy to

{142} see from them what an important role the Florentine artist

played in directing the gropings of his assistant artists.

After Cimabue the most important name at Florentine in the Thirteenth

Century is that of his friend, Gaddo Gaddi, whose years of life

correspond almost exactly with those of his great contemporary. His

famous Coronation of the Virgin at Santa Maria de Fiore in Florence

shows that he was greatly influenced by the new ideas that had come

into art. Greater than either of these well-known predecessors

however, was Giotto the friend of Dante, whose work is still

considered worthy of study by artists because of certain qualities in

which it never has been surpassed nor quite outgrown. From Giotto,

however, we shall turn aside for a moment to say something of the

development of art in other cities of Italy, for it must not be

thought that Florence was the only one to take up the new art methods

which developed so marvelously during the Thirteenth Century.

Even before the phenomenal rise of modern art in Florence, at Pisa, at

Lucca and especially at Siena, the new wind of the spirit was felt

blowing and some fine inspirations were realized in spite of hampering

difficulties of all kinds. The Madonna of Guido in the Church of St.

Dominic at Siena is the proof of his emancipation. Besides him

Ugolino, Segna and Duccio make up the Siena school and enable this

other Tuscan city to dispute even with Florence the priority of the

new influence in art. At Lucca Bonaventure Berlinghieri flourished and

there is a famous St. Francis by him only recently found, which proves

his right to a place among the great founders of modern art. Giunta of

Pisa was one of those called to Assisi to paint some of the frescoes

in the upper church. He is noted as having striven to make his figures

more exact and his colors more natural. He did much to help his

generation away from the conventional expressions of the preceding

time and he must for this reason be counted among the great original

geniuses in the history of art.

The greatest name in the art of the Thirteenth Century is of course

that of Giotto. What Dante did for poetry and Villani for history,

their compatriot and friend did for painting. Ambrogio de Bondone

familiarly called Ambrogiotto (and with the abbreviating habit that

the Italians have always had for the names of all those of whom they

thought much shortened to {143} Giotto, as indeed Dante's name had

been shortened from Durante) was born just at the beginning of the

last quarter of the Thirteenth Century. According to a well-known

legend he was guarding the sheep of his father one day and passing his

time sketching a lamb upon a smooth stone with a soft pebble when

Cimabue happened to be passing. The painter struck by the signs of

genius in the work took the boy with him to Florence, where he made

rapid progress in art and soon surpassed even his master. The

wonderful precocity of his genius may be best realized from the fact

that at the age of twenty he was given the commission of finishing the

decorations of the upper Church at Assisi, and in fulfilling it broke

so completely with the Byzantine formalism of the preceding

millennium, that he must be considered the liberator of art and its

deliverer from the chains of conventionalism into the freedom of

nature.

It is no wonder that critics and literary men have been so unstinted

in his praise. Here is an example:

"In the Decamerone it is said of him 'that he was so great a genius

that there was nothing in nature he had not so reproduced that it

was not only like the thing, but seemed to be the thing itself.'

Eulogies of this tenor on works of art are, it is quite true, common

to all periods alike, to the most accomplished of classical

antiquity as well as to the most primitive of the Middle Age; and

they must only be accepted relatively, according to the notion

entertained by each period of what constitutes truth and

naturalness. And from the point of view of his age, Giotto's advance

towards nature, considered relatively to his predecessors, was in

truth enormous. What he sought was not merely the external truth of

sense, but also the inward truth of the spirit. Instead of solemn

images of devotion, he painted pictures in which the spectator

beheld the likeness of human beings in the exercise of activity and

intelligence. His merit lies, as has been well said, in 'an entirely

new conception of character and facts.'" [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: History of Ancient, Early Christian and Medieval

Painting from the German of the late Dr. Alfred Woltmann,

Professor at the Imperial University of Strasburg, and Karl

Woertmann, Professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, Dusselford.

Edited by Sidney Colvin, M. A., Dodd, Mead & Co., N. Y., 1894.]

{144}

Lafenestre, in his history of Italian painting for the Beaux-Arts of

Paris already referred to, says that what has survived of Giotto's

work justifies the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. None of his

predecessors accomplished anything like the revolution that he worked.

He fixed the destinies of art in Italy at the moment when Dante fixed

those of literature. The stiff, confused figures of the mosaics and

manuscripts grew supple under his fingers and the confusion

disappeared. He simplified the gestures, varied the expression,

rectified the proportions. Perhaps the best example of his work is

that of the upper Church of Assisi, all accomplished before he was

thirty. What he had to represent were scenes of life almost

contemporary yet already raised to the realm of poetry by popular

admiration. He interpreted the beautiful legend of the life of the

Saint preserved by St. Bonaventure, and like the subject of his

sketches turned to nature at every step of his work. If his figures

are compared with those of the artists of the preceding generations,

their truth to life and natural expressions easily explain the

surprise and the rapture of his contemporaries.

Beautiful as are the pictures of the Upper Church, however, ten years

after their completion Giotto's genius can be seen to have taken a

still higher flight by the study of the pictures on the vast ceilings

of the Lower Church. The four compartments contain the Triumph of

Chastity, the Triumph of Poverty, the Triumph of Obedience, and the

Glorification of St. Francis. The ideal and the real figures in these

compositions are mingled and grouped with admirable clearness and

inventive force. To be appreciated properly they must be seen and

studied _in situ_. Many an artist has made the pilgrimage to Assisi

and none has come away disappointed. Never before had an artist dared

to introduce so many and such numerous figures, yet all were done with

a variety and an ease of movement that is eminently pleasing and even

now are thoroughly satisfying to the artistic mind. After his work at

Assisi some of the best of Giotto's pictures are to be found in the

Chapel of the Arena at Padua. Here there was a magnificent opportunity

and Giotto took full advantage of it. The whole story of Christ's life

is told in the fourteen episodes of the life of his Mother which were

painted here by Giotto. For their sake Padua as well as {145} Assisi

has been a favorite place of pilgrimage for artists ever since and

never more so than in our own time.

{opp144}

[Illustration]

ST. FRANCIS' MARRIAGE WITH POVERTY (GIOTTO, ASSISI)

No greater tribute to the century in which he lived could possibly be

given than to say that his genius was recognized at once, and he was

sought from one end of Italy to another by Popes and Kings, Republics

and Princes, Convents and Municipalities, all of which competed for

the privilege of having this genius work for them with ever increasing

enthusiasm. It is easy to think and to say that it is no wonder that

such a transcendent genius was recognized and appreciated and received

his due reward. Such has not usually been the case in history,

however. On the contrary, the more imposing the genius of an artist,

or a scientist, or any other great innovator in things human, the more

surely has he been the subject of neglect and even of misunderstanding

and persecution. The very fact that Giotto lifted art out of the

routine of formalism in which it was sunk might seem to be enough to

assure failure of appreciation. Men do not suddenly turn round to like

even great innovations, when they have long been satisfied with

something less and when their principles of criticism have been formed

by their experience with the old.

We need not go farther back than our own supposedly illuminated

Nineteenth Century to find some striking examples of this. Turner, the

great English landscapist, failed of appreciation for long years and

had to wait till the end of his life to obtain even a small meed of

reward. The famous Barbizon School of French Painters is a still more

striking example. They went back to nature from the classic formalism

of the early Nineteenth Century painters just as Giotto went back to

nature from Byzantine conventionalism. The immediate rewards in the

two cases were very different and the attitude of contemporaries

strikingly contrasted. Poor Millet did his magnificent work in spite

of the fact that his family nearly starved. Only that Madame Millet

was satisfied to take more than a fair share of hardships for herself

and the family in order that her husband might have the opportunity to

develop his genius after his own way, we might not have had the

magnificent pictures which Millet sold for a few paltry francs that

barely kept {146} the wolf from the door, and for which the next

generation has been paying almost fabulous sums.

All through the Thirteenth Century this characteristic will be found

that genius did not as a rule lack appreciation. The greater the

revolution a genuinely progressive thinker and worker tried to

accomplish in human progress, the more sure was he to obtain not only

a ready audience, but an enthusiastic and encouraging following. This

is the greatest compliment that could be paid to the enlightenment of

the age. Men's minds were open and they were ready and willing to see

things differently from what they had been accustomed to before. This

constitutes after all the best possible guarantee of progress. It is,

however, very probably the last thing that we would think of

attributing to these generations of the Thirteenth Century, who are

usually said very frankly to have been wrapped up in their own

notions, to have been only too ready to accept things on authority

rather than by their own powers of observation and judgment, and to

have been clingers to the past rather than lookers to the present and

the future. Giotto's life shows better than any other how much this

prejudiced view of the Thirteenth Century and perforce of the Middle

Age needs to be corrected.

During forty years Giotto responded to every demand, and made himself

suffice for every call, worked in nearly every important city of

Italy, enkindling everywhere he went the new light of art. Before the

end of the century he completed a cartoon for the famous picture of

the Boat of Peter which was to adorn the Facade of St. Peter's. He was

in Rome in 1300, the first jubilee year, arranging the decorations at

St. John Lateran. The next year he was at Florence, working in the

Palace of the Podesta. And so it went for full two score years. He was

at Pisa, at Lucca, at Arezzo, at Padua, at Milan, then he went South

to Urbino, to Rome and then even to Naples. Unfortunately the strain

of all this work proved too much for him and he was carried away at

the comparatively early age of sixty in the midst of his artistic

vigor and glory.

{opp147}

[Illustration]

ESPOUSAL OF ST. CATHERINE

(GADDI, XIII. CENTURY PUPIL, PERUGIA)

The art of the Middle Ages and especially at the time of the

beginnings of modern art in the Thirteenth Century, is commonly

supposed to be inextricably bound up with certain {147} influences

which place it beyond the pale of imitation for modern life. It has

frequently been said, that this art besides being too deeply mystical

and pietistic, is so remote from ordinary human feelings as to

preclude a proper understanding of it by the men of our time and

certainly prevent any deep sympathy. The pagan element in art which

entered at the time of the Renaissance and which emphasized the joy of

life itself and the pleasure of mere living for its own sake, is

supposed to have modified this sadder aspect of things in the earlier

art, so that now no one would care to go back to the pre-Renaissance

day. There has been so much writing of this kind that has carried

weight, that it is no wonder that the impression has been deeply made.

It is founded almost entirely on a misunderstanding, however. Reinach

whom we have quoted before completely overturns this false notion in

some paragraphs which bring out better than any others that we know

something of the true significance of the Thirteenth Century art in

this particular.

Those who think that Gothic art was mainly gloomy in character, or if

not absolutely sad at heart that it always expressed the sadder

portion of religious feelings, who consider that the ascetic side of

life was always in the ascendant and the brighter side of things

seldom chosen, for pictorial purposes, should recall that the Gothic

Cathedrals themselves are the most cheery and lightsome buildings,

that indeed they owe their character as creations of a new idea in

architecture to the determined purpose of their builders to get

admission for all possible light in the dreary Northern climates. The

contradiction of the idea that Gothic art in its essence was gloomy

will at once be manifest from this. Quite apart from this, however, if

Gothic art be studied for itself and in its subjects, that of the

Thirteenth Century particularly will be found far distant from,

anything that would justify the criticism of over sadness. Reinach (in

his Story of Art Throughout the Middle Ages) has stated this so

clearly that we prefer simply to quote the passage which is at once

authoritative and informing:

"It has also been said that Gothic art bears the impress of ardent

piety and emotional mysticism, that it dwells on the suffering of

Jesus, of the Virgin, and of the martyrs with harrowing persistency.

Those who believe this have never studied {148} Gothic art. It is so

far from the truth that, as a fact, the Gothic art of the best

period, the Thirteenth Century, never represented any sufferings

save those of the damned. The Virgins are smiling and gracious,

never grief stricken. There is not a single Gothic rendering of the

Virgin weeping at the foot of the cross. The words and music of the

Stabat Mater, which are sometimes instanced as the highest

expression of the religion of the Middle Ages, date from the end of

the Thirteenth Century at the very earliest, and did not become

popular till the Fifteenth Century. Jesus himself is not represented

as suffering, but with a serene and majestic expression. The famous

statue known as the Beau Dieu d'Amiens may be instanced as typical."

[Illustration]

GROUP FROM VISITATION (RHEIMS)

{149}

IX

LIBRARIES AND BOOKMEN.

As the Thirteenth Century begins some 250 years before the art of

printing was introduced, it would seem idle to talk of libraries and

especially of circulating libraries during this period and quite as

futile to talk of bookmen and book collectors. Any such false

impression, however, is founded entirely upon a lack of knowledge of

the true state of affairs during this wonderful period. A diocesan

council held in Paris in the year 1212, with other words of advice to

religious, recalled to them the duty that they had to lend such books

as they might possess, with proper guarantee for their return, of

course, to those who might make good use of them. The council, indeed,

formally declared that the lending of books was one of the works of

mercy. The Cathedral chapter of Notre Dame at Paris was one of the

leaders in this matter and there are records of their having lent many

books during the Thirteenth Century. At most of the abbeys around

Paris there were considerable libraries and in them also the lending

custom obtained. This is especially true of the Abbey of St. Victor of

which the rule and records are extant.

Of course it will be realized that the number of books was not large,

but on the other hand it must not be forgotten that many of them were

works of art in every particular, and some of them that have come down

to us continue to be even to the present day among the most precious

bibliophilic treasures of great state and city libraries. Their value

depends not alone on their antiquity but on their perfection as works

of art. In general it may be said that the missals and office books,

and the prayer books made for royal personages and the nobility at

this time, are yet counted among the best examples of bookmaking the

world has ever seen. It is not surprising that such should be the case

since these books were mainly meant for use in the Cathedrals and the

chapels, and these edifices were so beautiful in every detail that the

generations that erected them {150} could not think of making books

for use in them, that would be unworthy of the artistic environment

for which they were intended. With the candlesticks, the vessels, and

implements used in the ceremonial surpassing works of art, with every

form of decoration so nearly perfect as to be a source of unending

admiration, with the vestments and altar linens specimens of the most

exquisite handiwork of their kind that had ever been made, the books

associated with them had to be excellent in execution, expressive of

the most refined taste and finished with an attention utterly careless

of the time and labor that might be required, since the sole object

was to make everything as absolutely beautiful as possible. Hence

there is no dearth of wonderful examples of the beautiful bookmaking

of this century in all the great libraries of the world.

The libraries themselves, moreover, are of surpassing interest because

of their rules and management, for little as it might be expected this

wonderful century anticipated in these matters most of our very modern

library regulations. The bookmen of the time not only made beautiful

books, but they made every provision to secure their free circulation

and to make them available to as many people as was consonant with

proper care of the books and the true purposes of libraries. This is a

chapter of Thirteenth Century history more ignored perhaps than any

other, but which deserves to be known and will appeal to our century

more perhaps than to any intervening period.

The constitutions of the Abbey St. Victor of Paris give us an

excellent idea at once of the solicitude with which the books were

guarded, yet also of the careful effort that was made to render them

useful to as many persons as possible. One of the most important rules

at St. Victor was that the librarian should know the contents of every

volume in the library, in order to be able to direct those who might

wish to consult the books in their selection, and while thus sparing

the books unnecessary handling also save the readers precious time. We

are apt to think that it is only in very modern times that this

training of librarians to know their books so as to be of help to the

readers was insisted on. Here, however, we find it in full force seven

centuries ago. It would be much more difficult in the present day to

know all the books confided to his care, but some of the {151}

librarians at St. Victor were noted for the perfection of their

knowledge in this regard and were often consulted by those who were

interested in various subjects.

In his book on the Thirteenth Century [Footnote 15 ] M. A. Lecoy de

la Marche says that in France, at least, circulating libraries were

quite common. As might be expected of the people of so practical a

century, it was they who first established the rule that a book might

be taken out provided its value were deposited by the borrower. Such

lending libraries were to be found at the Sorbonne, at St. Germain des

Pres, as well as at Notre Dame. There was also a famous library at

this time at Corbie but practically every one of the large abbeys had

a library from which books could be obtained. Certain of the castles

of the nobility, as for instance that of La Ferte en Ponthieu, had

libraries, with regard to which there is a record, that the librarian

had the custom of lending certain volumes, provided the person was

known to him and assumed responsibility for the book.

[Footnote 15: Le Treizieme Siecle Litteraire et Scientifique, Lille,

1857.]

Some of the regulations of the libraries of the century have an

interest all their own from the exact care that was required with

regard to the books. The Sorbonne for instance by rule inflicted a

fine upon anyone who neglected to close large volumes after he had

been making use of them. Many a librarian of the modern times would be

glad to put into effect such a regulation as this. A severe fine was

inflicted upon any library assistant who allowed a stranger to go into

the library alone, and another for anyone who did not take care to

close the doors. It seems not unlikely that these regulations, as M.

Lecoy de la Marche says, were in vigor in many of the ecclesiastical

and secular libraries of the time.

Some of the regulations of St. Victor are quite as interesting and

show the liberal spirit of the time as well as indicate how completely

what is most modern in library management was anticipated. The

librarian had the charge of all the books of the community, was

required to have a detailed list of them and each year to have them in

his possession at least three times. On him was placed the obligation

to see that the books were not destroyed in any way, either by

parasites of any kind or by {152} dampness. The librarian was required

to arrange the books in such a manner as to make the finding of them

prompt and easy. No book was allowed to be borrowed unless some pledge

for its safe return were left with the librarian. This was emphasized

particularly for strangers who must give a pledge equal to the value

of the book. In all cases, however, the name of the borrower had to be

taken, also the title of the book borrowed, and the kind of pledge

left. The larger and more precious books could not be borrowed without

the special permission of the superior.

The origin of the various libraries in Paris is very interesting as

proof that the mode of accumulating books was nearly the same as that

which enriches university and other such libraries at the present

time. The library of La St. Chapelle was founded by Louis IX, and

being continuously enriched by the deposit therein of the archives of

the kingdom soon became of first importance. Many precious volumes

that were given as presents to St. Louis found their way into this

library and made it during his lifetime the most valuable collection

of books in Paris. Louis, moreover, devoted much time and money to

adding to the library. He made it a point whenever on his journeys he

stopped, at abbeys or other ecclesiastical institutions, to find out

what books were in their library that were not at La Saint Chapelle

and had copies of these made. His intimate friendship with Robert of

Sorbonne, with St. Thomas of Aquin, with Saint Bonaventure, and above

all with Vincent of Beauvais, the famous encyclopedist of the century,

widened his interest in books and must have made him an excellent

judge of what he ought to procure to complete the library. It was, as

we shall see, Louis' munificent patronage that enabled Vincent to

accumulate that precious store of medieval knowledge, which was to

prove a mine of information for so many subsequent generations.

From the earliest times certain books, mainly on medicine, were

collected at the Hotel Dieu, the great hospital of Paris, and this

collection was added to from time to time by the bequests of

physicians in attendance there. This was doubtless the first regular

hospital library, though probably medical books had also been

collected at Salernum. The principal colleges of the universities also

made collections of books, some of them {153} very valuable, though as

a rule, it would seem as if no attempt was made to procure any other

books than those which were absolutely needed for consultation by the

students. The best working library at Paris was undoubtedly that of

the Sorbonne, of which indeed its books were for a long time its only

treasures. For at first the Sorbonne was nothing but a teaching

institution which only required rooms for its lectures, and usually

obtained these either from the university authorities or from the

Canons of the Cathedral and possessed no property except its library.

From the very beginning the professors bequeathed whatever books they

had collected to its library and this became a custom. It is easy to

understand that within a very short time the library became one of the

very best in Europe. While most of the other libraries were devoted

mainly to sacred literature, the Sorbonne came to possess a large

number of works of profane literature. Interesting details with regard

to this library of the Sorbonne and its precious treasures have been

given by M. Leopold Delisle, in the second volume of Le Cabinet des

Manuserits, describing the MSS. of the Bibliotheque Nationale at

Paris. According to M. Lecoy de la Marche, this gives an excellent

idea of the persevering efforts which must have been required, to

bring together so many bibliographic treasures at a time when books

were such a rarity, and consequently enables us better almost than

anything else, to appreciate the enthusiasm of the scholars of these

early times and their wonderful efforts to make the acquisition of

knowledge easier, not only for their own but for succeeding

generations. When we recall that the library of the Sorbonne was,

during the Thirteenth Century, open not only to the professors and

students of the Sorbonne itself, but also to those interested in books

and in literature who might come from elsewhere, provided they were

properly accredited, we can realize to the full the thorough

liberality of spirit of these early scholars. Usually we are prone to

consider that this liberality of spirit, even in educational matters,

came much later into the world.