The towers and campaniles of Provence also either correspond in design
with those of Italy or are imitated from Roman monuments in the country.
The circular baptisteries, of which a good many examples survive, are
like those in Rome, constructed with columns and caps from ancient
buildings, or are wrought in imitation of them.
Sculpture also abounds in Provence, being inspired by the abundant
remains of ancient work in this favoured province of the Empire. Along
with the imitations of Roman work, there is also, as already remarked, a
considerable infusion of Byzantine influence. This, according to
Viollet-le-Duc, may be observed in the polygonal form of the apses; in
the polygonal cupolas supported on a series of corbelled pendentives; in
the flat arcades employed to decorate the walls; in the mouldings with
small projection and numerous members; in the flat and delicate
ornament; and in the sharp and toothed carving of the foliage. Other
writers, however, are of opinion that too much weight has been
attributed to the influence of Byzantine art, and that almost all the
above elements may be accounted for by the Roman traditions of the
locality. It is doubtful in how far the Roman buildings which survived
in Provence and the imported classic taste of Byzantium were beneficial
to the arts in that country. They no doubt gave an impetus and motive
which would otherwise have been awanting, and thus assisted the
Provençals in making the early start they did in the revival of their
architecture. But on the other hand they acted prejudicially to that
revival, in impressing on it the stamp of the classic trabeated style,
which in their absence it would have escaped, and might probably have
been developed in the freer and more natural manner which occurred at a
later date in the North.
The early use of the pointed arch in the vaulting of the Provençal
churches is another striking feature of the architecture of the
district. Much has been written about the origin of the pointed arch
and the date of its introduction into Western Europe. In the North of
France its first use occurred in the twelfth century, and it was at one
time maintained that the Provençal churches, from their having pointed
vaults, must necessarily be later than that date. There is now, however,
no question as to the greater antiquity of many of the Southern
buildings, thus proving that the use of the pointed arch was adopted in
the South considerably earlier than in the North.
We have already seen that that form of arch was first used in Provence
as a constructional expedient, and not from any preference for the
pointed form. The original idea may possibly have been derived from the
Moors in Spain, amongst whom the pointed arch was common from early
times, and was employed as a decorative feature. In Provence its use was
limited to the vaulting, the round arch being preferred for all the
ornamental parts of the architecture, and it continued to be so employed
till the thirteenth century. It is a striking circumstance, observes
Mérimée, that at the moment when the round arch was entirely abandoned
in the North the pointed arch experienced the same disgrace in the
South. In the North the pointed arch became the decorative form, when in
the South the round arch was preferred. The position of the pointed arch
is thus completely reversed in the North and in the South. The greater
part of the vaulted constructions of the thirteenth century in the South
are exclusively round, the advancement in skill, both in execution and
in the use of materials, having rendered that form more generally
available. Numerous examples of this employment of the round arch will
be found in the following pages.
The Roman and Byzantine influences were naturally strongest where the
ancient remains and Eastern ornaments were most frequently met with. As
we retire from the Mediterranean northwards and westwards the Roman
buildings become less numerous and the signs of Byzantine commerce
diminish. In those various countries different styles were naturally
developed. These are divided by Viollet-le-Duc into the schools of
Toulouse, Poitou, Auvergne, Burgundy, &c., all having distinct
characteristics in plans, elevations, form of towers, ornament,
sculpture, and every detail. Of these various schools the Burgundian
was, during the twelfth century, in advance of all the others, not only
in the size and magnificence of its buildings, but also as regards
progress in design--efforts being there made to free the ornaments from
the conventional and stereotyped patterns of classic art.
Viollet-le-Duc endeavours to account for this advancement in Burgundian
architecture by the suggestion that it possibly arose from the study of
the paintings of Byzantine MSS., which were numerous in the monasteries,
and therefore more frequently under the eyes of the monks than the
purely architectural forms of buildings. These paintings preserve
considerable freedom of treatment both as regards natural expression in
the features and dramatic action in the figure, and are much less bound
and fixed by traditional and conventional rules than the architectural
forms and ornament.
The artist monks of the Burgundian convents were thus led to look to
nature as their model in sculpture, and their attention was gradually
turned to natural objects as their guide in the representation of
foliage, as well as figures. This process, in course of time, opened the
way for an entire departure from ancient precedent, and led to the
wonderful development of the natural school of the Royal Domain, which
took place in the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth
centuries.
At the head of the Burgundian school stood the great Benedictine Abbey
of Cluny. (_See ante_, p. 20). The church of this Abbey was the largest
building of its time, although unfortunately not one stone of it now
remains upon another. Cluny had numerous dependencies and offshoots
which were all animated with the same spirit, and spread a taste for
richness and magnificence in architecture, wherever they were planted.
But the period we are now considering was one of awakening and
expansion, not only in the direction of architectural art, but also in
every department of intellectual and religious development. It is not
therefore to be wondered at that all men were not actuated by the same
feeling of admiration for splendid buildings and paintings. Many of the
religious rather sympathised with the severity of the old ascetics. It
appeared to these reformers that all this sumptuous and splendid mode of
life was not in accordance with the fundamental principles of their
religion, and they longed to return to the simplicity of the primitive
church.
Amongst those who raised their voices most strenuously in this behalf,
was the great St Bernard, who even went the length of separating from
the Clunisians, and devoted his energy to the encouragement of the new
order of the Cistertians, which was destined to play an important part
in the future history of the Church and its architecture. Of the severe
rules of this order, those relating to the erection of buildings, were
amongst the most stringent. These were required to be of the simplest
form, and to be entirely free from ornament and decoration of every
kind. At first this maxim was strictly adhered to in all the buildings
of the Cistertians, which are therefore of the baldest possible
description, as the numerous examples hereafter illustrated in Provence
and elsewhere show. But this very severity of style seems to have had
great influence in clearing the way for the introduction of a new and
more natural art, by sweeping away the last remains of the ancient
traditional forms, and leaving the course clear for the invention of
novel ornamentation derived from natural objects. This may be regarded
as the second phase of Provençal art. The first comprised all those
primitive structures, the style of which was founded on Roman or classic
design. But this second phase discarded all such ornament, and retained
only the structural elements which had up to this time been developed.
These of course included the use of the pointed arch, which is always
employed in the vaulting and all the important structural features,
while the round form is frequently retained in the minor arches. Of this
bare but vigorous style no finer example can be cited than the Abbey of
Thoronet (to be afterwards described), but the whole country abounds (as
we shall find) with examples, both large and small, of this reformed or
second period of Provençal architecture. After a time the Cistertian
strictness was gradually relaxed. The more ornate style of the
Clunisians was found to be more in accordance with the feelings and
taste of the times; and the Cistertians ultimately came to vie with them
in the beauty and richness of their edifices. But, as above pointed out,
the traditional Roman and Byzantine elements were entirely banished, and
a new and natural system of ornament adopted.
Up to the date which we have now reached the progress of the great
monastic centres of Burgundy and the cities of the South had been in
advance of that of the Royal Domain, and the Northern provinces
generally. But from the end of the twelfth century many circumstances
combined to reverse that position. The country of the Franks had become
settled--the restless spirit of that people, which had found expression
in the Crusades, had exhausted itself; the idea of the one great and
holy Roman Empire had passed away, and the various countries of modern
Europe were gradually consolidating themselves and forming separate
nationalities.
The Feudal system, which tended to break up all general authority, was
gradually being subjected to the growing power of a central supreme
ruler. Trade and commerce were reviving. The towns and corporations
which had grown up under the fostering care of the monasteries, or under
the shadow of the great castles of the nobility, were now assuming a
more prominent and independent position. They perseveringly pressed
their claims on their superiors, whether lay or ecclesiastical, and were
by slow degrees obtaining charters and liberties. The Bishops whose sees
were connected with the towns encouraged the citizens in this course,
with the view of strengthening their own power and importance, so as to
enable them to keep pace with and if possible overcome the great
influence of their rivals the monasteries. This growth of the popular
element in the towns naturally led to the employment of laymen in
connection with the designing and execution of the works of the
cathedral and other ecclesiastical edifices attached to the various
sees.
The monks, who had hitherto been the sole possessors of the requisite
knowledge and practical skill, had by their schools, and by the guilds
of tradesmen which they had encouraged, sown the seeds which were now
springing up in a form they had not looked for, and producing a crop of
lay artists, who were soon to leave their old masters behind. The
monastic system of carrying on everything according to rule had long
held architecture in bondage. Under the new impulse all conventional
rules were abandoned, and the artists trusted to the inspiration of
nature for their guidance. Hence it followed that whether in planning,
in construction, or in ormamentation, the forms so long reverently
followed by the architects of the monasteries, were speedily dropped by
the lay artists of the towns, and a new art sprung up with the most
marvellous rapidity. To the new school of artists nothing which would
naturally and logically suit their requirements came amiss. The round
arch was the traditional form of the ecclesiastics, but, the lay
architects of the North finding (as the builders of the South had long
previously done) that the pointed arch was more flexible and amenable to
their requirements, forthwith adopted it. This enabled them to overcome
what had hitherto been the great difficulty with the round arch, viz.,
to erect intersecting vaults over spaces of any form, whether square or
oblong, and at the same time to keep the apex of all the vaults at any
desired height. The transverse arches and the wall arches being thus
pointed, soon led in the most natural manner to the window arches within
the latter being also made of a pointed shape, so as to conform to the
outline of the wall arch, and by an easy transition the pointed arch was
soon adopted for all the wall openings as the most flexible, and most in
accordance with the spirit of the new style.
In like manner the old conventional forms of decoration, derived from
Byzantine carvings and MSS. or from Roman remains, were entirely
abandoned, and inspiration in decorative design was sought in the
natural flowers and plants of the soil.
The intellectual development, no less than the artistic, of this great
period of revival was boldly represented in its architecture. The timid
forms of traditional construction were soon left behind, and scientific
methods were introduced. The clumsy mode of sustaining the central
vault by the half vault of the side aisles was superseded by the bold
and beautiful form of the flying buttress, loaded with pinnacles where
needed to secure stability. This scientific invention enabled the
architects to dispense with heavy walls and to bring the whole pressure
of the vaults on to points, where they were discharged by the flying
buttresses. The side walls were only required as enclosing screens, not
as supports, so that there was free scope and every inducement for the
expansion of the windows, which rapidly progressed till the whole
building became, in striking contrast to the dark and gloomy structures
of the monastic regime, an edifice of marvellous lightness and elegance,
illuminated from floor to vault with walls of glowing glass.
The rapid and extensive development of the Gothic style of the North is
one of the most remarkable facts in the history of architecture. Within
the century following the first appearance of the style in the pointed
vaulting of the abbey church of St Denis, erected under the Abbé Suger
in 1144, this style reached its highest point. During that period it
found expression in most of the great cathedrals of the North of France,
such as Paris, Chartres, Sens, Amiens, Beauvais, &c. This occurred
contemporaneously with the long and brilliant reign of Philip Augustus,
under whom the royal power became consolidated, and the royal domain
extended to an extraordinary degree.
As the royal domain extended, its Gothic architecture extended with it,
and even passed beyond it, and produced a striking effect on the
provinces, such as Provence, not yet absorbed into the kingdom of
France. Of this we shall meet with several remarkable examples, as in
the cathedrals of Carcassonne and Narbonne, where the designs are pure
Northern Gothic, and were furnished by a northern architect. But these
and similar structures always strike one as having the appearance of
exotics; they are evidently imported plants, not native to the soil.
There are also, as we shall see, many other buildings in the South in
which some of the features only of the Gothic style are adopted, and
which exhibit various attempts to ingraft its details on the native art.
But even this is not successful, the buildings having neither the
lightness and elegance of the Gothic, nor the massive grandeur of the
native style.
In later times, when Provence and a great part of the Riviera had passed
into the kingdom of France, its period of vigour and independence had
faded away, and its architecture only presents a picture of the various
foreign influences under which it lay. This is seen in the examples of
the flamboyant work of the French, and in the Italian Gothic introduced
by the Genoese, who were long masters of the Riviera. All other
architecture, however, soon yielded to the revival of the classic style,
which here, amongst so many Roman relics, found a congenial soil.
The great development of Gothic architecture in the North was not
limited to churches and other ecclesiastical structures, but extended to
every species of building. For it is one of the leading characteristics
of Gothic, that it is available for every variety of architectural
requirement. It is a free and natural style, not subject to the
arbitrary rules of monastic or academic systems, but ready to apply
itself in the simplest and most direct manner to all human wants in the
way of building. The Gothic lay architects therefore naturally directed
their skill to the proper development of Domestic and Castellated
Architecture, as well as Ecclesiastical and Monastic. Of the former,
many most interesting examples are to be seen in the Southern towns; and
of the castellated architecture, we shall meet with not only such
splendid examples as the Pope’s Palace at Avignon, and the great castles
of Villeneuve and Beaucaire; but we shall also have an opportunity of
examining, at Carcassonne and Aigues Mortes, the towns which possess
probably the completest and best preserved specimens, now extant, of the
military architecture of the Middle Ages.
That kind of architecture was, as was natural, especially in the South,
to a considerable extent founded on that of the Romans. This will be
more fully explained and illustrated, when we come to treat of the
fortifications of Carcassonne, which are partly Roman or of Roman
foundation. In the North the early fortresses consisted of earthen
mounds, protected by palisades and ditches. Such were the defences of
the native Gauls, which Cæsar found so boldly defended. To these
succeeded the strong towers of masonry, of which the Norman keep is the
well known type. Stone-built towers of that description gradually
superseded the wooden fort set upon the top of an earthen “motte” or
mound which formed the central stronghold of the earlier fortresses.
Masonry then, step by step, took the place of wood in the defences;
first, as we have seen, in the keep, and then in the enclosing walls. As
the science of attack improved, the latter were made stronger, and were
further fortified by the construction in connection with them of
numerous strong towers. These were generally round in the North and
square in the South. The means of active defence were chiefly from the
parapet. At first the parapets of the walls and towers were armed in
time of war with wooden enclosures, called “hoards” or “brétêches,”
projected on short wooden beams. These enabled the defenders to overlook
and protect the base of the works, which were then the weak points of
the fortifications, and were liable to attack by sapping or mining. The
assailants carried out this kind of assault by rolling up their sappers
to the walls in “cats” or “sows” (small wagons strongly constructed and
defended on the top with bags of wool and wet hides), which could only
be destroyed by great stones and beams, hurled down from the projecting
“hoards” above. The sockets for this wooden armature of the walls still
exists unaltered in the thirteenth century fortifications of Carcassonne
and Aigues Mortes. By degrees the wooden hoards were abandoned, being
found liable to destruction by the fire balls or “Greek fire,” which the
crusaders had learned the use of in the East. Parapets of masonry were
then substituted for them, projected on bold stone corbels, which left
intervals between the parapet and the face of the wall, called”
machicolations,” through which the defenders could rain missiles on the
assailants. In the fourteenth century these corbelled parapets are
amongst the most prominent and picturesque features of the castles and
fortifications of the period. In course of time the stone parapets were
further improved and heightened into several storys, the lower ones
being covered, and the upper forming an open crenellated walk. In the
fifteenth century this system reached its height, and produced in the
lofty towers and walls, crowned with their numerous boldly overhanging
works, some of the most magnificent works of the military architecture
of the Middle Ages. We shall have occasion to refer to the various
systems of defence adopted in the different castles and towns to be
visited, when attention will also be drawn to the differences of the
systems adopted in the North and South. We shall also find a remarkable
application of castellated features in the churches of the South, where,
after the twelfth century, almost every ecclesiastical structure is
carefully fortified. This produces in the churches of the South one of
their most striking peculiarities, and gives them, instead of the light
and gracefully aspiring character of the Northern Gothic structures, a
reflection of the grim and stern aspect of the feudal castle. The
peculiar church architecture just referred to, no doubt derived its
origin from the constant state of alarm and disturbance in which the
Southern provinces were kept by the Albigensian wars, and the attacks of
the Moors and Corsairs by sea and land. Some place of refuge and defence
was required by the harassed inhabitants, who naturally fled to the
church and fortified themselves therein. Frequently the cathedrals were
comprised within the precincts of the Bishop’s Palace, which was
fortified like a feudal castle. The cathedral being the largest building
was eagerly seized upon as an important part of the fortifications, and
even when the design was in Northern Gothic, had externally at least to
adopt many of the defensive features of the South. Of this remarkable
illustrations occur at Narbonne, Béziers, and Fréjus.
We have now rapidly sketched the various steps by which Roman
architecture was gradually transformed, from being in its decorative
features an imitation of the classic trabeated style, into an embodiment
of the true principles of arcuated or genuine stone construction, as
exhibited in the fully developed Gothic of the thirteenth century. We
have seen that this was by no means a simple process, and that it was
only accomplished by the ordeal of the destructive though purifying
dissolution of the Dark Ages, whence the true spirit of Roman
construction emerged, cleared to a great extent of the extraneous
elements with which it had been so long encrusted. But although the true
features of arcuated architecture now slowly began to be developed,
they were both aided and retarded by the surviving relics of Roman art
which existed in the West, as well as by the influence of the classic
taste which continued to prevail, although in a modified and expanded
condition, in the East. The country through which we are about to travel
is remarkably favourable for the study of the effects of these various
influences. We have already seen how rich it is in genuine Roman
structures. In our further progress we shall note how these examples
served as models for the revival of the architecture; for so closely
were the ancient designs frequently followed that the new structures
were almost complete resuscitations of the style of the Lower Empire.