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,[1] 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.
- ↑ 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.
