Development and Character of Gothic Architecture/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSION
The foregoing examination and comparison of the pointed architectures of the different countries of Europe will be seen, I think, to afford a serviceable, though it be not an exhaustive illustration of the peculiar nature of Gothic architecture, and to throw light upon its origin. The true nature of this architecture has not been generally understood, mainly because the fact was not recognised that its distinctive characteristics were not arbitrary inventions but were based on principles deduced from practice, and determined by the laws of mechanics governing the structure. Our examination of these principles reveals the existence of a great class of buildings which display a perfectly distinctive character, and are confined, for the most part, to one closely circumscribed region. In this region a logical growth, from the earliest germs, of the principles of Gothic art may still be traced. Elsewhere we find buildings, in all cases later in date of erection, which exhibit many apparently kindred features, but which, in hardly any case, completely display in their structure the same distinctive system, and in many cases do not display it at all. In France, and in France alone, is the system complete and the development apparent. There alone are the successive steps of change spontaneous and connected, and there only does the inventive spirit of the builders manifest the character of a general movement.
And what the architecture itself shows is borne out by the inferences which the respective conditions of the different countries, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, naturally suggest. In France, as I have before remarked, the ethnological character of the people was such as to render them the most artistic race of Northern Europe, while their social and political conditions were most favourable to artistic production. The force of natural aptitude, the spirit of national unity as well as of communal independence, and the comparative freedom from ecclesiastical restraints, were all highly conducive to the exercise of that artistic genius which, during the period in which Gothic architecture was developed, was passing from the clergy to the laity. And in addition to all this the native rock-beds furnished better materials for building than were generally accessible elsewhere.
In England at this epoch the conditions were very different. Prior to the Conquest no architecture on a great scale existed, though there were the elements of a style which might, doubtless, in time have grown into importance. By the Conquest the progress of this art was naturally checked, and was for some time held in abeyance by the fact that the conquerors took care to place a prelate or an abbot of their own race at the head of nearly every diocese and monastic institution. No admixture of complementary elements gave to the people what their purely Teutonic nature lacked in the direction of artistic aptitudes. The Norman infusion, after it really took place, did much; but the Norman race was itself too near of kin to introduce such new elements as were required for a fresh life of art.
After the oppression of the conquerors had in a measure ceased, and the fusion of the two races had so far proceeded as to remove the old distinctions between Normans and English, and produce somewhat of common national feeling, the conditions for the growth of a national art were still far less auspicious than they were in France. No free communities like those of the Continent existed. The Commune in England had not the same character and meaning that it had in France. It was not, as in France, a great centre of independent life, where the arts might naturally become the enthusiastic concern of large bodies of laymen working in the municipal employ. Ecclesiastical corporations and private individuals alone, under the Crown, held in England the powers that in France were possessed by the Communes.[1] Hence the cathedrals here did not generally spring up as central objects in active towns; but they were placed often in more or less out-of-the-way places, and in connection with monastic establishments. Salisbury, Wells, Ely, Peterborough, Worcester, Canterbury, and many others remain to this day surrounded by little more than country villages; while even York and Lincoln arose in connection with the Bishops' sees rather than with the towns in which they were situated. The spirit of popular enthusiasm of which the Abbot Haymon writes,[2] had no counterpart in England. Building was here much more exclusively in charge of the clergy, regular and secular. Among them, indeed, there was often no lack of zeal. Bishop Hugh of Lincoln is said to have assisted with his own hands in the erection of his splendid choir; and record is not wanting of many other similar instances. But no general popular activity in connection with the building of churches, like that which prevailed in France, was called out.
The architecture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England differs, therefore, from the Gothic of France in being largely of foreign rather than native origin, and in being ecclesiastical rather than popular.
Yet the native genius was by no means wholly or permanently inactive. It was rather quickened and improved. It did not, however, exercise itself independently, but it was acted upon by that of the foreign settlers, and in turn it reacted upon them. This reaction was in fact so strong that Norman art, which was chiefly developed on English soil, became widely different from what it would have become had the Conquest never taken place, and had its development been confined to the duchy of Normandy. But the English influence upon Norman art was not so much fundamental as superficial. It affected the details alone rather than the structural principles of building. And of both Norman and Anglo-Norman art it must be said that they would never have become what they did had not French influence been exerted upon them. The Normans in Normandy had so far assimilated French ideas and feelings as to have become almost Frenchmen. They had, in their arts, imbibed as much of the French spirit as was possible to the Northern nature; under French influence they had learned to build, and they came with their growing arts into England, where by degrees they mingled, in character, in customs, and in arts, with the native race much more completely than they had mingled with the French.
For two hundred years after the Conquest the dominant elements in architecture were decidedly Norman. The Cathedral of Salisbury, the nave and transept of Wells, and the Presbytery of Lincoln, among others, are substantially Norman buildings, differing, as we have seen, from buildings of the earlier Norman style in little more than the substitution of pointed arches for round arches, and in the modification of ornamental details. This architecture cannot, therefore, be properly called English. It is strictly an Anglo-Norman architecture.
Of the two elements, English and Norman, which mainly constitute the English race, the English has, in the long run, proved the stronger; and it has, since the thirteenth century, held the ascendant in arts no less than in institutions. The character, however, that has been impressed upon architecture, since this ascendency became active, is by no means so admirable as that which it had before. The perpendicular style, which alone, since the Conquest, is entitled to be called, in the restricted sense, an English art, is certainly neither Gothic, nor at all comparable in merits to the architecture which it superseded.
In Germany the conditions in the twelfth century were far less favourable than even in England to the formation of a style like the Gothic. The grand Romanesque architecture of the country was, in the main, a native style, and fairly well suited to the conditions of climate and of taste. The Germans showed little disposition to change radically this style, and had little need to do so. The inventive genius of the people was naturally less quick than that of the French; and no event, like the Norman Conquest of England, occurred to infuse foreign ideas, and stimulate to new artistic enterprises. Under these circumstances the Gothic of France had, for a long time, little effect on the architecture of Germany. And when finally it did begin to have effect, it was rather as a model which it seemed desirable to copy, than as an influence quickening new invention.
Whatever may have been thought of the pointed architecture of Italy, few have supposed that there was ever any original development of the Gothic style in that country. The large infusion of foreign blood through the various incursions of the Northern races had been absorbed into purely Italian veins. Italian tastes, traditions, and needs were all favourable to the ancient forms of building, which were their natural inheritance; and in the revival of the arts, after the stagnant period which followed the downfall of the ancient civilisation, it was not only natural that the Italians should have recourse to these ancient forms, but that they should permanently retain a preference for them.
The Italians of the Middle Ages were never constructive builders. The Romanesque architecture of Italy (excepting always the semi-Teutonic Lombard-Romanesque) was not an organic style. The Cathedral of Pisa, for instance, though subtle in its proportions, and beautiful in its details, is almost as childish in construction as a house of toy-blocks. Its superposed colonnades are without organic connection; and its whole system is one that could give rise to no further developments. A comparison of Pisa with the nearly contemporaneous Cathedral of Durham will show how widely the Italian Romanesque system differs from that rudimentary organic system which contained some of the most potent germs of the Gothic style.
There can certainly be no question, on the score of social or political conditions, with regard to an original development of Gothic art in Spain. The Christian civilisation of the country was, from the time of the Moorish invasion, far too warlike and unsettled to admit of such development, even had the ethnological constitution of the race been favourable. Of all the nations of the West the Spanish, in the Middle Ages, were the least advanced in those conditions of political and social organisation, and of intellectual and moral life, which favour the development of the fine arts.
It does not, then, from historical considerations, any more than from those which the buildings of the different countries themselves suggest, appear that Gothic architecture arose either in England, Germany, Italy, or Spain; but everything points clearly to France as the locality of its origin, and the only locality of its full and distinctive development.
- ↑ Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. v. ch. xxv.
- ↑ The well-known letter of the Abbot Haymon, of St. Pierre sur Dive, written in 1154, gives a most striking account of the religious enthusiasm which possessed all classes of people, and the material assistance which they voluntarily rendered towards the progress of the church edifice.