III., and Philip, his brother, was as devotedly cared for by the rival
Pope, Gregory VIII. Finally Innocent compromised the matter by securing
the election of Otho IV., of Brunswick.
With that "hotbed of heresies," Holland, this book has little to do,
dealing only with three centres of religious movement there.
Holland was the storm-centre for a great struggle for religious and
political freedom, and for this very reason there grew up here no great
Gothic fabrics of a rank to rival those of France, England, and
Germany. Still, there was a distinct and most picturesque element which
entered into the church-building of Holland in the middle ages, as one
notes in the remarkable church of Deventer. In the main, however, if we
except the Groote Kerk at Rotterdam, St. Janskerk at Gouda, the
archbishop's church at Utrecht, and the splendid edifice at Dordrecht,
there is nothing in Holland architecturally great.
IV
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF RHENISH ARCHITECTURE
It cannot be claimed that the church-building of one nation was any more
thorough or any more devoted than that of any other. All the great
church-building powers of the middle ages were, it is to be presumed,
possessed of the single idea of glorifying God by the building of houses
in his name.
"To the rising generation," said the editor of the _Architectural
Magazine_ in 1838, "and to it alone do we look forward for the real
improvement in architecture as an art of design and taste."
"The poetry of architecture" was an early and famous theme of Ruskin's,
and doubtless he was sincere when he wrote the papers that are included
under that general title; but the time was not then ripe for an
architectural revolution, and the people could not, or would not, revert
to the Gothic or even the pure Renaissance--if there ever was such a
thing. We had, as a result, what is sometimes known as early Victorian,
and the plush and horsehair effects of contemporary times.
In general, the churches of Germany, or at least of the Rhine provinces,
are of a species as distinct from the pure Gothic, Romanesque, or
Renaissance as they well can be. Except for the fact that of recent
years the _art nouveau_ has invaded Germany, there is little mediocrity
of plan or execution in the ecclesiastical architecture of that country,
although of late years all classes of architectural forms have taken on,
in most lands, the most uncouth shapes,--church edifices in
particular,--they becoming, indeed, anything but churchly.
The Renaissance, which spread from Italy just after the period when the
Gothic had flowered its last, came to the north through Germany rather
than through France, and so it was but natural that the Romanesque
manner of building, which had come long before, had a much firmer
footing, and for a much longer period, in Germany, than it had in
France. Gothic came, in rudimentary forms at any rate, as early here as
it did to France or England; but, with true German tenacity of purpose,
her builders clung to the round-arched style of openings long after the
employment of it had ceased to be the fashion elsewhere.
This, then, is the first distinctive feature of the ecclesiastical
edifices erected in Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when
the new Gothic forms were elsewhere budding into their utmost beauty.
One strong constructive note ever rings out, and that is that, while the
Gothic was ringing its purest sound in France and even in England, at
least three forces were playing their gamut in Germany, producing a
species quite by itself which was certainly not Gothic any more than it
was Moorish, and not Romanesque any more than was the Angevin variety of
round-arched forms, which is so much admired in France.
One notably pure Gothic example, although of the earliest Gothic, is
found in Notre Dame at Trèves, with perhaps another in the abbey of
Altenburg near Cologne; but these are the chief ones that in any way
resemble the consistent French pointed architecture which we best know
as Gothic.
The Rhenish variety of Romanesque lived here on the Rhine to a far
later period, notably at Bonn and Coblenz, than it did in either France
or England.
German church architecture, in general, is full of local mannerisms, but
the one most consistently marked is the tacit avoidance of the true
ogival style, until we come to the great cathedral at Cologne, which, in
truth, so far as its finished form goes, is quite a modern affair.
In journeying through Northeastern France, or through Holland or
Belgium, one comes gradually upon this distinct feature of the Rhenish
type of church in a manner which shows a spread of its influence.
All the Low Country churches are more or less German in their motive;
so, too, are many of those of Belgium, particularly the cathedral at
Tournai and the two fine churches at Liège (Ste. Croix and the
cathedral), which are frankly Teutonic; while at Maastricht in Holland
is almost a replica of a Rhenish-Romanesque basilica.
At Aix-la-Chapelle is the famous "Round Church" of Charlemagne, which is
something neither French nor German. It has received some later century
additions, but the "octagon" is still there, and it stands almost alone
north of Italy, where its predecessor is found at Ravenna, the Templars'
Church in London being of quite a different order.
Long years ago this Ravenna prototype, or perhaps it was this
eighth-century church of Charlemagne's, gave rise to numerous circular
and octagonal edifices erected throughout Germany; but all have now
disappeared with the exception, it is claimed, of one at Ottmarsheim, a
fragment at Essen, and the rebuilt St. Gérêon's at Cologne.
These round churches--St. Gérêon's at Cologne, the Mathias Kapelle at
Kobern, and, above all, Charlemagne's Münster at Aix-la-Chapelle, and
others elsewhere, notably in Italy--are doubtless a survival of a pagan
influence; certainly the style of building was a favourite with the
Romans, and was common even among the Greeks, where the little circular
pagan temples were always a most fascinating part of the general
ensemble.
It would hardly be appropriate in a book such as this to attempt to
trace the origin of Gothic, as we have come to know that twelfth and
thirteenth century variety of pointed architecture, which, if anything,
is French pointed. It has been plausibly claimed that, after its
introduction into France and England, it developed into the full-blown
style of the fourteenth century, which so soon fell before the
Renaissance in the century following.
In Germany the process, with differences with regard to its chronology,
was much the same.
It has been the fashion among writers of all weights of opinion to break
into an apparently irresistible enthusiasm with regard to Gothic
architecture in general, and this, so far as it goes, is excusable. Most
of us will agree that "the folk of the middle ages had fallen in love
with church-building, and loved that their goldsmith's work, and
ivories, their seals, and even the pierced patterns of their shoes
should be like little buildings, little tabernacles, little 'Paul's
windows.' Some of their tombs and shrines must have been conceived as
little fairy buildings; and doubtless they would have liked little
angels to hop about them all alive and blow fairy trumpets."
In the building of the great cathedrals it must certainly be allowed
that there is an element that we do not understand. Those who fashioned
them worked wonder into them; they had the ability which children have
to call up enchantment. "In these high vaults, and glistening windows,
and peering figures, there was magic even to their makers."
Gothic art must ever, in a certain degree, be a mystery to us, because
we cannot entirely put ourselves in the place of the men of those times.
"We cannot by taking thought be Egyptian or Japanese, nor can we again
be Romanesque or Gothic," nor indeed can we explain entirely the _motif_
of Burmese architecture, which, appearing as a blend of Chinese and
Indian, stands out as the exotic of the Eastern, as does the Gothic of
the Western, world.
Only in these latter two species of architectural art does stone-carving
stand out with that supreme excellence which does not admit of rivalry,
though one be pagan and the other Christian.
Germany, above all other nations of the middle ages in Europe, excelled
in the craftsmanship which fashioned warm, live emotions out of cold
gray stone, and to-day such examples of this as the overpowering and
splendid cathedrals at Cologne, Ratisbon, Strasburg, and Münster rank
among the greatest and most famous in all the world, in spite of the
fact that their constructive elements were reminiscent of other lands.
The distinction between French and German building cannot better be
described than by quoting the following, the first by James Russell
Lowell on Notre Dame de Chartres, and the second by Longfellow on the
cathedral at Strasburg:
CHARTRES
"Graceful, grotesque, with every new surprise of hazardous caprices sure
to please, heavy as nightmare, airy, light as fun, imagination's very
self in stone."
STRASBURG
"...A great master of his craft,
Ervin von Steinbach; but not he alone,
For many generations laboured with him,
Children that came to see these saints in stone,
As day by day out of the blocks they rose,
Grew old and died, and still the work went on,
And on and on and is not yet completed."
The first is typical of the ingenuity and genius of the French, the
second of the painstaking labour of the Teuton; what more were needed to
define the two?
"In Germany and throughout all the territory under the spell of Germanic
influence the growth of Gothic was not so readily accomplished as in
France," says Gonse.
"At best such Gothic as is to be seen at Bacharach, Bonn, Worms, etc.,
is but a variety, so far as the vaulting goes, of superimposed details
on a more or less truthful Romanesque framework. At Mayence, Roermond,
and Sinzig, too, it is the domical vault which still qualifies the other
Gothic essentials, and so depreciates the value of the Gothic of the
Rhine valley when compared with that of the Royal Domain of France."
The range of mediæval art and architecture has been said to run between
the fourth century and the fourteenth, or from the peace of the Church
to the coming of the Renaissance.
This is perhaps definite enough, but the scope is too wide to limit any
special form of art expression, so that one may judge it comparatively
with that which had gone before or was to come after.
Mostly, mediæval art groups itself around the two distinct styles of
Byzantine and Gothic, and they are best divided, one from the other, by
the two centuries lying between the tenth and the twelfth.
In truth, the architecture of Germany, up to the end of the tenth
century, was as much Byzantine as it was Romanesque, and the princes and
prelates alike drew the inspiration for their works from imported
Italians and Greeks, a procedure which gave the unusual blend that
developed the distinct Rhenish architecture.
The Popes themselves gave a very material aid when they sent or allowed
colonies of southern craftsmen to undertake the work on these great
religious edifices of the Rhine valley.
The grander plan of the cathedrals at Speyer, Worms, Mayence, Basel, and
even Trèves are all due somewhat to this influence, and for that reason
they retain even to-day evidences of these foreign and even Eastern
methods, though for the most part it is in the crypt and subterranean
foundations only that this is found.
Carlovingian architecture was perhaps more indigenous to Germany than to
any other part of the vast Empire. "This extraordinary man," as the
historians speak of Charlemagne, did much toward developing the arts.
In the southeast, the Grecian Empire was already become decrepit in its
influences, and a new building spirit was bound to have sprung up
elsewhere. "If Charlemagne," says Gibbon, "had fixed the seat of his
empire in Italy, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather than
violate the works of the Cæsars." He confined his predilections to the
virgin forests of Germany, however, and he despoiled Lombardy to enrich
his northern possessions; as witness the columns which he brought from
Ravenna and Rome wherewith to decorate his palace and church at
Aix-la-Chapelle.
No country has preserved finer or more numerous examples of Romanesque
architecture than Germany. The Rhine was so powerfully under Roman sway
that it adopted as a matter of course and without question quite all of
the tenets and principles of the Romanesque; not only with respect to
ecclesiastical structures, but as regards civil and military works as
well.
On the Rhine, as in Lorraine, Lyonnaise, and Central France, the
Romanesque endured with little deviation from Latin traditions till
quite the end of the thirteenth century.
Later, in the Gothic period, Germany returned the compliment and sent
Zamodia of Freiburg and Ulric of Ulm to lend their aid in the
construction of the grand fabric at Milan; and John and Simon of Cologne
to Spain to erect that astonishingly bizarre cathedral at Burgos.
Beginning with the revival of the arts in Italy, the Renaissance German
architects, in other countries than Germany, were apparently few in
number and not of their former rank.
Not alone did Italy aid Germany in the erection of ecclesiastical
monuments, but France as well, with the Norman variation of the
Romanesque and the later developed Gothic, sent many monkish craftsmen
to lend their aid and skill. Their work, however, was rather the putting
on of finishing touches than of planning the general outlines.
German architecture on the Rhine then was but a development and
variation of alien importations, which came in time, to be sure, to be
recognized as a special type, but which in reality resembled the
Lombardic and the Romanesque in its round-arched forms, and the Gothic
of France in its ogival details. German architecture in time, though not
so much with respect to churches, even went so far as to imitate the
rococo and bizarre ornamentation fathered and named by the Louis of
France.
Germany was a stranger to the complete development of Gothic
architecture long after it had reached its maturity elsewhere; so, too,
it was quite well into the fifteenth century before the slightest change
was made toward the interpolation of Renaissance details, and even then
it was Renaissance art, more than it was Renaissance architecture, which
was making itself felt.
The Renaissance came to Germany through the natural gateway of the north
of Italy; although it spread perhaps to some extent from France into the
Rhine district.
In truth, German Renaissance has ever been heavy and ugly, though
undeniably imposing. In both the ecclesiastical and the secular
varieties it lacked the lightness and grace which in France, so far as
domestic architecture went, soon developed into a thing of surprising
beauty.
What the Renaissance really accomplished in Germany toward developing a
new or national style is in grave doubt, beyond having left a legacy of
bizarre groupings and grotesque and superabundant ornament. In France
the case was different, and, while in ecclesiastical edifices the result
was poor and banal enough, there grew up the great and glorious style of
the French Renaissance, which, for civic and private buildings of
magnitude, has never been excelled by the modern architecture of any
land.
In Germany proper, as well as in Switzerland, one finds house-fronts and
walls covered with paintings, which is certainly one phase of
Renaissance art. But the brush alone could not popularize the new style,
and in religious edifices, at least, the Renaissance, as contrasted with
the earlier Romanesque, never attained that popularity along the Rhine
that it did in France or England, or even in Belgium.
Civic architecture took on the new style with a certain freedom, but
religious architecture almost not at all. Possibly the "Thirty Years'
War" (1618-48) had somewhat to do with stunting its growth; certainly no
church-building was undertaken in those years, and they were the very
ones in which, elsewhere, the Renaissance was making its greatest
headway.
Another very apparent reason is that, as the major part of the
population became Protestant, the need of a beautiful church edifice
itself, as a stimulus to the faith, had grown less and less. There was a
steady growth, perhaps one may as well say a great development, in civil
architecture throughout Germany at this time, but, to all intents and
purposes, from the early seventeenth century onward, the founding and
erecting of great churches was at an end.
If one would study the Renaissance in Germany he must observe the town
halls of such cities as Cologne, Paderborn, or Nuremberg, or the great
châteaux or castles, such as are best represented by ruined Heidelberg.
Of religious architecture Renaissance examples are practically lacking;
the most convincing details along the Rhine being seen in the western
tower of the cathedral at Mayence.
At Hildesheim, at Nuremberg, and at Prague there are something more than
mere "evidences" of the style, and throughout Germany, as elsewhere,
there are many sixteenth and seventeenth century accessories, such as
altars, _baldaquins_, tombs, and even entire chapels, which are nothing
but Renaissance in motive and execution. But there are no great
Renaissance ground-plans, façades, or _clochers_, which are in any way
representative of the style which crept in to ring the death-knell of
Gothic in France and England.
Perhaps it is for this reason alone that the great Gothic cathedral at
Cologne was completed at a late day with no base Renaissance
interpolation in its fabric.
V
THE ACCESSORIES OF GERMAN CHURCHES
Up to the tenth century the German basilicas were but copies of the
Roman variety. Even the great cathedral at Trèves, with its ground-plan
a great square of forty metres in extent, was but a gross imitation of
the Romanesque form of the sixth century.
Later, in the eighth century, came the modified Byzantine form which one
sees at Aix-la-Chapelle.
With the eleventh century appeared the double-apsed basilicas, but, from
this time on, German ecclesiastical art divorced itself from Latin
traditions, and from the simple parallelogram-like basilica developed
the choir and transepts which were to remain for ever.
The crypt is a distinct and prominent feature of many German churches.
On the Rhine curious and most interesting examples are very frequent,
those at Bonn, Essen, München-Gladbach, Speyer, Cologne (St. Gérêon's),
Boppart, and Neuss being the chief. All of these are so constructed that
the level of the pavement is broken between the nave and choir,
producing a singularly impressive interior effect.
Speyer has the longest, and perhaps the largest, crypt in all Germany.
Where the edifice has remained an adherent of Catholicism, the crypt
often performs the function of a place of worship independent of the
main church, it being fitted up with one or more altars and frequently
other accessories.
As the crypt, instead of being only an occasional attribute, became
general, squared, or even more rude, capitals replaced the antique and
classical forms which Christian Italy herself had adopted from pagan
Greece.
These squared or cubic capitals are particularly noticeable at Neuss, at
München-Gladbach, in St. James at Cologne, and in the old abbey of
Laach.
Towers came to be added to the west fronts, but the naves often remained
roofed with visible woodwork, though, by the end of the century, the
stone-vaulted nave had appeared in the Rhine district, and the pillars
of pagan birth had given way to the columns and _colonnettes_ of Latin
growth.
What is known as the German manner of church-building had more than one
distinguishing feature, though none more prominent than that of the
columns of the nave and aisles. The naves were in general twice the
width of their aisles, and the bays of the nave were made twice the
width of those of the aisles. Hence it followed that every pier or
column carried a shaft to the groin of the aisle vault, and every
alternate one a shaft to the nave vault; and so grew the most distinct
of all German features of Romanesque church-building, alternate light
and heavy piers in the nave.
It is on the Rhine, too, that one comes upon occasional examples of
rococo architectural decoration, a species which sounds as though it
might originally have been Italian, but which was originally French. At
its best it is seldom seen on the exterior, but on inside walls and
porticoes, notably at Bruchsal on the Rhine, one sees a frankly
theatrical arrangement of ornate details.
By the twelfth century the particular variety of Romanesque architecture
which had developed, and still endures, in the Rhine valley had arrived
at its maturity.
The thirteenth century saw the interpolation and admixture of Gothic,
which elsewhere, in France in particular, was making such great strides.
Towers multiplied and became lighter and more graceful, and great Gothic
arched windows gave place to round-headed ones, though scarcely ever to
the entire exclusion of the latter variety.
The species of cross-bred style which forms the link between the
Romanesque and Gothic abounds along the Rhine, and examples are
frequently encountered.
The semicircular apsides, with a decorative band beneath the cornices of
the exterior galleries, are also a distinctly Rhenish detail. They are
to be seen in St. Peter's at Bacharach, at St. Castor's at Coblenz, St.
Martin's at Cologne, the cathedral at Bonn, in St. Quirinus at Neuss,
and again at Limburg.
The Rhenish bell-towers are a variety distinct from the towers and
spires usually met with, and often terminate suddenly, as if they were
unfinished.
Finally, there are a number of churches in this region which offer the
singular, though not unique, disposition of a chevet showing a triple
apsis. Notable examples of this style are St. Maria in Capitola, St.
Andrew and St. Martin at Cologne, and St. Quirinus at Neuss.
The churches of the Rhine valley are abundantly supplied with steeples,
often in groups far in excess of symmetry or sense, as for instance the
_outré_ group at Mayence, which is really quite indescribable.
The Apostles' Church at Cologne, the cathedrals at Mayence, Speyer, and
Worms, and the abbey church of Laach all have wonderfully broken
sky-lines; while those with great central towers, such as at Neuss, or
the parish church of Sinzig, form another class; and the slim-spired
churches at Andernach and Coblenz yet another. St. Martin's at Cologne
is another single-spired church, but it rises from its three apses in
quite a different manner from that of St. Quirinus at Neuss, and must be
considered in a class by itself.
The minster at Bonn, though having three steeples, is not overspired,
like that of Mayence,--indeed, it is perhaps one of the most
picturesque, if somewhat theatrical, of all the spired churches of the
Rhine, excepting always Limburg. The openwork spire of Freiburg is
unequalled in grace by even that of Strasburg, whatever may be the
actual value of its constructive details.
[Illustration: WORMS CATHEDRAL]
A marked type of German church architecture is that species of building
known as the _Hallenkirche_. The variety is found elsewhere, even in
France, but still it is distinctively German in its inception.
Usually they are of the triple-naved variety, _i. e._, a nave with its
flanking aisles, with the aisles nearly always of the same height as the
principal nave.
There are two great churches of this order--though lacking aisles--in
France, the cathedrals at Rodez and Albi in the south.
Mostly these great halled churches exist in Westphalia, where there is a
fine example in the cathedral at Paderborn, and again there is St.
Ludger at Münster, and many others. In one form or another the type is
frequently met with throughout Germany, and is therefore to be
considered as a distinct German architectural expression.