II. SAXON ARCHITECTURE…

II. SAXON ARCHITECTURE

SO few and indistinct are the traces of architectural art in England before the Norman Conquest, that for a long time it was a moot point among antiquaries whether or not any such thing existed as true Saxon architecture. The question may now be considered as settled in the affirmative. In his last edition, Rickman enumerates twenty churches in which fragments are found which certainly belong to the pre-Norman period, though no complete example can be pointed to as illustrating the style then prevalent. Since Rickman’s death ten to fifteen more specimens have been discovered. Generally they are towers or crypts, as St. Winifred’s at Ripon, or the pillars of a chancel-arch, as at Reculver. Sometimes it is a doorway, at others only a piece of rude walling. On a review of the whole, it is evident that architecture in England was certainly ruder and less developed than that on the Continent at the same age; both were, of course, based on the Roman art which preceded them; but, owing probably to our insular position, the attempted reproduction of Roman work was of so barbaric a character as to have suggested at first a wooden origin for some of the features. Mr. G.G. Scott, however, in his essay on the history of ‘English Church Architecture’ (1871), says: “What we term Saxon architecture is in reality but an English version of the contemporary art of Italy with which the Roman missionaries and their successors were well acquainted, and which they endeavoured with imperfect success to naturalize here.” On this subject Mr. Scott says, p. 42: “There is no feature more characteristic of Saxon architecture than the use of rude pilaster strips. The imitation of the mode of bonding of such pilasters, in the construction of groins, and in the jambs of doorways and other openings, constitutes what is known as ‘long and short work.’ This has sometimes been supposed to be a tradition of wooden construction. It is certainly nothing of the kind. It represents simply the manner in which a classic pilaster is ordinarily constructed as distinguished from the mediæval method of forming a quoin.” It should be observed also that the method of placing upright posts of timber at intervals for the sake of economy in filling in between, with brick-nogging or forming plaster surfaces or battens, is a much later type of construction; the earliest timber church in existence (and it is doubtful if that was built before Norman times), viz., Greensted Church, Essex, is constructed of huge balks of timber placed side by side, and is entirely unlike the disposition of the upright bands of stone found in Saxon work. Triangular heads to doorways and windows are found in St. Jean of Poitiers, in St. Front at Périgueux, and elsewhere in France, “where the scientific mode of the construction and the perfection of the details, forbid us to attribute it to the habit of building in wood.” The baluster shafts also, Mr. Scott suggests, were copied from Roman balusters. The projecting hood-mould over doorway and window openings, which is not an independent ring of masonry as in Norman and Gothic work, is copied from the outer moulding of the Roman archivolt. In fact, as Mr. Scott observes, p. 43: “Our ruder Saxon churches exhibit, in however crude a form, the principles of a style distinctly arcuated—a style, that is, of which the typical forms are determined by scientific masonry. However rude and even barbarous in execution they may be, they are not rightly termed even debased Roman.” “They exhibit a purely arcuated style, true in its science, however imperfect in its art.”

Although interesting to English antiquaries, the specimens of Saxon art are so insignificant as hardly to deserve much notice in a universal history of the art, and one or two examples will suffice to explain the peculiarities of the style. The tower of Earl’s Barton in Northamptonshire contains in itself more undoubted Saxon characteristics than any other specimen yet described: its angles, as shown in Woodcut No. 799, are constructed with that peculiar form of quoin known as “long and short,” while its faces are ornamented by long pilaster-like slips connected by semicircular arches or more frequently by straight-lined cross-bracing which might be regarded as wooden in its character were it not for the through bond stones which mark their junction. The windows (Woodcut No. 800) are formed by gouty balusters, looking very much as if they were turned in a lathe, and the whole arrangements bear out that character. Even more characteristic of the style than this, is the doorway under the tower of the church at Monkwearmouth in Durham (Woodcut No. 801). There seems no doubt but that it is part of the church which Benedict Biscop erected there in the 7th century. According to the chronicles, when he was enabled by the liberality of King Ecgfrid to found a monastery there, he went, in 674, to Gaul to procure masons who could erect it in the “Roman manner” that is, in imitation of the basilicas in Rome. The twined serpents with birds’ beaks, on the right doorpost, are, as we know from manuscripts of that age, singularly characteristic of the style, but not, so far as I know, found elsewhere engraved in stone on a church door. Though quaint and interesting to the antiquary, it must be confessed there is not much grace or beauty in any feature of the style, or even an approach to grandeur of dimensions in any example which has been spared to the present day.

Had any great conventual church or cathedral survived we might perhaps be forced to modify this opinion:[410] but the only one of which we know anything is that which was erected at Canterbury by Archbishop Odo in the years 940-960, to replace the older church of St. Augustine.[411] Even this, however, we only know from the description of Edmer, the singer, who saw it before it was destroyed by fire in 1067. Like the German churches of that age, it seems to have had two apses. The principal one, towards the east, was appropriated to the clergy; while the western one belonged to the laity, or, as we should now say, was devoted to parochial purposes.

Its walls and structure probably resembled the nave of Montier-en-Der (Woodcut No. 610), or the Basse Œuvre at Beauvais (Woodcut No. 608)— plain piers supporting round arches below, and small circular-headed windows in a plain wall above.

Outside the original church of St. Augustine to the eastward—at what distance we unfortunately are not told—Cuthbert, the second archbishop, about the year 750 erected a second church, “as a baptistery, and in order that it might serve as the burying-place of future archbishops;”[412] thus combining the two rites in a ceremonial church apart from the basilica, exactly as was done in Italy during the Romanesque age. It is by no means improbable that the eastern termination of the present cathedral known as Becket’s Crown stands on the site of this old baptistery, and retains its dimensions; but it is difficult to prove this, so completely have all the features of the church been altered by subsequent rebuildings.

From what we know of Saxon MSS. and other indications, it would seem that painting was a favourite mode of decoration among the Saxons; and if so, their interiors may have been more successful as works of art than their external architecture would lead us to expect. But as no specimen of Saxon painted mural decoration has come down to our time, it is hardly safe to assume much with regard to this.

III. ENGLISH MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE

AN entirely new state of affairs was inaugurated in 1066 by the Norman Conquest of England. A new aristocracy, new laws, and a new language infused new life and energy into every department of the State, and an age of unwonted activity and brilliancy superseded the lethargic misrule of the Saxon period.

In nothing was this more manifestly evident than in architecture. Instead of a barbaric and debased style, a real lithic art was introduced and adopted at once, on a scale of magnificence but little known even in France at that time. Almost all our great cathedrals were either rebuilt, or at least remodelled, at that time, and great monastic institutions were founded all over the country, demanding churches and buildings on a scale undreamt-of before that time. The impulse thus given lasted for nearly five centuries, till the Saxon element in the population again came to the surface at the Reformation; but during that long period it continued without break or drawback, and forms a style complete and perfect in itself,—imported, it is true, in the first instance, but taking root in the soil, and with little aid from abroad growing into a thoroughly vigorous and acclimatised style. So completely is this the case, and so steady and uninterrupted was its progress, that it is impossible to separate its various stages one from another, but it is proposed to treat it as one style and in one chapter in the following pages. In a larger work it might be necessary to divide it into parts, but within our limits it will certainly be found more convenient, as it certainly is more logical, to treat it as a whole.

PLANS OF ENGLISH CATHEDRAL CHURCHES.

The most remarkable and universal peculiarity in the arrangement of English churches, when compared with those on the Continent, is their extraordinary length in proportion to their breadth. In this respect they seem to stand alone when compared with any buildings existing in other parts of the world. The ancients affected a double square; in other words, their temples were generally twice as long as they were broad. In the Middle Ages, on the Continent, this proportion was generally doubled. Practically the internal width was multiplied by 4 for the length. This at least seems to have been the proportion generally aimed at, though of course it was often modified by circumstances. In England the larger churches generally reached the proportion of 6 times their width for their length. Most of our cathedrals have been so altered and modified by subsequent additions that it is difficult now to trace their original arrangements; but Norwich exists in plan almost exactly as originally erected (A.D. 1096-1135), as will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 802). The nave to the west of the intersection is more than 4 times its width (70 × 295). The rectangular part of the choir is more than a square, and with the apse and its aisle, exclusive of the chapels, makes altogether a length of 410 ft. internally, or nearly 6 squares. At Peterborough and Ely the proportion seems to have been as 5 to 1 to the centre of the apse; but if there was a circumscribing aisle or chapel, the longer proportion would obtain. At Canterbury and Winchester, and generally in the south-eastern cathedrals, as built more immediately under French influence, the original proportion was somewhat shorter; but so impressed were the English architects with the feeling that length was the true mode of giving effect, that eventually the two cathedrals last named surpassed it. Canterbury (Woodcut No. 803) attained an internal length of 518 ft. while the width of the nave is only 72, or as 7 to 1. At Winchester (Woodcut No. 806) these dimensions are 525 and 82, or something less than 7 to 1, owing to the greater width of the nave.

It is extremely difficult to assign a satisfactory reason for this peculiarity of English plans. It arises so suddenly, however, in the English churches of the Norman age that it must have pre-existed in those of the Saxons; though why they should have adopted it is by no means clear. If these churches had wooden roofs, which was almost certainly the case, their naves might easily have been wider, and it can hardly have arisen from any æsthetic motive. As we now judge them, these early naves were badly proportioned for hearing an address from the bishop or prior, and as ill adapted for a multitude to see what was passing at the altar; but for pictorial effect they surpass everything erected on the Continent, unless with greatly increased dimensions of height or width. Whether, therefore, it were hit upon by accident or by design, its beauty was immediately appreciated, and formed the governing principle in the design of all the English cathedrals. It was a discovery which has added more to the sublimity of effect which characterises most of our cathedrals than any other principle introduced during the Middle Ages.

All the cathedrals above enumerated, indeed most of those which were designed by Norman prelates during the first half-century after the Conquest, were erected on very nearly the same plan as that at Norwich. Durham (1095-1133) was the first to show any marked deviation from the type[413] (Woodcut No. 804). The nave and choir became nearly proportioned to one another, and for the first time we see a distinct determination from the first that the building should be vaulted. All this involved an amount of design and contrivance which entirely emancipated us from the Continental type, and may be considered as laying the foundation of the English style.

In addition to what was doing at Durham there prevailed an extraordinary activity in church-building in the North of England during the whole of the 12th century, owing to the erection of the great abbeys whose gigantic fossils still adorn every main valley in Yorkshire. As this part of the country was more remote from foreign influence than the South, the style developed itself there with a vigour and originality not found elsewhere; but its effect was appreciated, and when Lincoln was rebuilt, about the year 1200, the English style was perfected in all essential parts. This is even more remarkably shown, however, at Salisbury, commenced in 1220 and completed in 1258, with the exception of the spire, which does not appear to have formed part of the original design.

In this church we have a plan not only extremely beautiful, but perfectly original. There is scarcely a trace of French or foreign influence; everything is the result of the native elaboration during the previous century and a half. The internal dimensions, according to Britton, are 450 ft. by 78—a little under the English standard, but sufficiently long for effect. The apsidal arrangement, so universal in Norman cathedrals, has disappeared never to return, except in Westminster Abbey (1245-1269), and in some readjustments, as at Tewkesbury; and the square eastern termination may henceforth be considered as established in this country—the early symbol of that independence which eventually led to the Reformation.

Once the Salisbury plan came to be considered the true English type, the Norman cathedrals were gradually modified to assimilate their arrangements to it. The nave and transept of Winchester were already too extensive to admit of a second transept, but the choir was rebuilt on the new model; and when afterwards the nave was remodelled by William of Wykeham it became one of the most beautiful, as it continued to be the longest, of English cathedrals (556 feet, over all).

About the same time Ely had a choir and presbytery added to it in lieu of the old Norman choir, which raised it to the very first rank among English churches;[414] and when, in 1322, by a fortunate accident the old Norman tower fell, the intersection was rebuilt in a manner that rendered it exceptionally pre-eminent among its rivals. There is perhaps no feature in the whole range of Gothic architecture either here or on the Continent more beautiful than the octagon of Ely (Woodcut No. 808), as rebuilt by Alan of Walsingham, the sacrist at the time the tower fell. He, and he alone of all northern architects, seems to have conceived the idea of abolishing what was in fact the bathos of the style—the narrow tall opening of the central tower, which, though possessing exaggerated height, gave neither space nor dignity internally to the central feature of the design. On the other hand, the necessity of stronger supports to carry the tower frequently contracted still more the one spot where, according to architectural propriety, an extended area was of vital importance to the due harmony of the design.

In the present instance the architect took for the base of his design the whole width of the nave and aisles, constructing in it an octagon, the sides of which are respectively 25 and 30 ft., and the diameter 65 ft. in one direction east and west, and 70 ft. transversely. By this arrangement a central area was obtained more than three times the extent of that originally existing, and, more than this, a propriety and poetry of design which are not to be found elsewhere. All this too was carried out with the exquisite details of the best age of English Gothic, and the effect in consequence is surpassingly beautiful. Unfortunately, either for want of funds, or of confidence in their ability to execute it, the vault, like that of York, is only in wood, though, from the immense strength of the supports, and their arrangement, it is evident that a stone vault was originally intended. The very careless—one might almost say ugly—way in which the lantern was finished externally, shows unmistakably that it was not intended to last long in its present form. Be that as it may, this octagon is in reality the only true Gothic dome in existence; and the wonder is, that being once suggested, any cathedral was ever afterwards erected without it. Its dimensions ought not to have alarmed those who had access to the domes of the Byzantines or Italians. Its beauty ought to have struck them as it does us. Perhaps the true explanation lies in the fact that it was invented late in the style. New cathedrals or great churches were very rarely commenced after the death of Edward the Third; and when they were, it was more often by intelligent masons, than by educated gentlemen, that they were designed.

After this, very little novelty was introduced into the design of English cathedrals. York, however, was almost entirely rebuilt in the form towards which the architects were tending during the whole of the Middle Ages, and it may consequently be considered as the type at which they were aiming, though hardly the one to which we can give the most unqualified praise. The nave was erected between the years 1291 and 1331, the choir between 1361 and 1405; the length internally is 486 ft.; the width of the choir, 100 ft.; of the nave, 106 ft.; both these last were, unfortunately, dimensions which the architects did not feel themselves equal to grappling with in stone, so that the roof, like the lantern at Ely, was constructed of wood, in imitation of a stone vault, and remains so to this day.

Owing to the great width attempted for the nave, York has not the usual proportion of length affected by other English cathedrals, and loses in effect accordingly. Its great peculiarity is the simplicity and squareness of its plan, so unlike what is found anywhere abroad. The church is divided into two equal parts; one devoted to the laity, one to the clergy. There are no apsidal or other chapels. Three altars stood against the eastern wall, and it may be 3 or 4 in the transept. Beyond this nothing. There is none of that wealth of private chapels which distinguishes Continental cathedrals and churches, or even Canterbury, the most foreign of our English examples. The worship even at that early period was designed to be massive and congregational, not frittered away in private devotion or scattered services, and marks a departure from Continental practices well worthy the attention of those who desire to trace the gradual development of the feelings of a people as expressed in their architecture, and the architecture only.

The abbey church at Westminster is exceptional among English examples, and is certainly, in so far at least as the east end is concerned, an adaptation of a French design. The nave, however, is essentially English in plan and detail, and one of the most beautiful examples of its class to be found anywhere. So, too, are the wide-spreading transepts; but eastward of these the form is decidedly that of a French cathedral. Henry VII.’s Chapel now stands over the space formerly occupied by the Lady Chapel; but before it was pulled down the circlet of apsidal chapels[415] was as completely and as essentially French as any to be found in the country where that feature was invented. In the choir, however, the architects betrayed their want of familiarity with the form of termination they had selected. The angle at which the three bays of the apse meet is far from pleasing, and there is a want of preparation for the transition, which tends to detract from the perfection of what would otherwise be a very beautiful design.[416]

As the choir was sepulchral, to accommodate the shrine of the Confessor, the design was appropriate, and its introduction in this instance cannot be regretted; but on the whole, there is nothing in the church of Westminster to make us wish that this feature had become more common on this side of the Channel.

Notwithstanding the beauty of the result, it may still be considered as open to discussion whether the English architects were always correct in adhering to length in preference to height as the modulus of their designs. When, however, we reflect how immensely the difficulties of constructing a stone roof are increased by every addition to the width or height of the vault, we cannot but acknowledge their wisdom in stopping at that point where sufficient spaciousness was attained, without increasing constructive difficulties. Nowhere in English cathedrals are we offended by mechanical tours de force. Everywhere there is sufficient solidity for security, and a consequent feeling of repose most conducive to true architectural effect.

It may also be remarked that the strain of turning the head upwards detracts considerably from the pleasure of contemplating tall interiors, while the eye likes to dwell on long-drawn vistas which can be explored in a natural position. But, perhaps, the greatest advantage of moderate dimensions in section is that they do not dwarf either the worshippers or the furniture of the church. Everything in an English cathedral is in just proportion, which is certainly not the case in many Continental examples; and there is variety and a play of light and shade in the long aisles of our churches which is wholly wanting in French and German examples.

Another point on which a difference of opinion may fairly exist, is whether the square termination of our cathedrals is or is not more beautiful than the apsidal arrangements so universal abroad.

When, as at Salisbury, or Wells, or Exeter, there is a screen of open arches below the east window, it may safely be asserted that a polygonal termination would have been more pleasing; but when, as at York, or Gloucester, or Carlisle, the whole eastern wall is a screen of painted glass, divided by mullions and tracery of most exquisite design, judgment will probably go the other way. Such a window as that at York, 33 ft. in width by 80 ft. in height, is a marvellous creation, which few architectural developments in any part of the world can rival or even approach. On the whole, perhaps, the true answer to the question, is that, where a number of smaller chapels are wanted, the chevet form is the best and most artistic termination for a church; where these are not required, the square form is the most beautiful, because it is the most appropriate, and, like everything appropriate, capable of being made beautiful in the hands of a true artist.

VAULTS.

Whatever opinion may be formed as to the proportions of English cathedrals, or the arrangement of their plans, there can be no dispute as to the superiority of their vaults over those of all their Continental rivals. The reasons for this are various, and not very recondite. The most obvious is the facility of construction which arose from the moderation just pointed out in the section of our churches.

The English always worked within their strength, instead of going to the very verge of it, like the French; and they thus obtained the power of subordinating constructive necessities to architectural beauty. Thus the English architects never attempted a vault of any magnitude till they were sufficiently skilled in construction to do it with facility. In a former chapter it has been pointed out how various and painful were the steps by which the French arrived at their system of vaulting—first by pointed tunnel-vaults and a system of domes, then by a combination of quadripartite and hexapartite intersecting vaults, of every conceivable form and variety, but always with a tendency to domical webs, and to the union of all pre-existing systems. This experimentalising, added to the great height of their roofs, and the slenderness of their clerestories, never left them sufficiently free to admit of their studying æsthetic effects in this part of the construction.

A second reason was, that for 150 years after the Conquest, our architects were content with wooden roofs for their naves. One of the earliest vaults we possess is that at Durham, commenced by Prior Melsonby, 1233. Long before that time the French architects had been trying all those expedients detailed at pp. 113, 114, and had thus succeeded in vaulting their central aisles a century before we attempted it. In doing so, however, their eyes got accustomed to mechanical deformities which we never tolerated, and they were afterwards quite satisfied if the vault would stand, without caring much whether its form were beautiful or not.

A third cause of the perfection of English vaults arose from the constant use of ornamental wooden roofs throughout the Middle Ages. The typical example of this form now remaining to us is that of Westminster Hall. But St. Stephen’s Royal Chapel had one of the same class, and there is reason to believe that they were much more common than is usually supposed.[417] All these were elaborately framed and richly carved and ornamented, often more beautiful than a stone vault, and quite as costly; and it seems impossible that a people who were familiar with this exquisite mode of roofing could be content with the lean twisted vaults of the Continental architects. The English alone succeeded in constructing ornamental wooden roofs, and, as a corollary, alone appreciated the value of a vault constructed on truly artistic principles and richly ornamented. Their eyes being accustomed to the depth and boldness of timber construction could never tolerate the thin weak lines of the French ogive, just sufficient for strength, but sadly deficient in expression and in play of light and shade.

Although it is, perhaps, safe to assert that there is not, and never was, a Saxon vaulted church in existence; and that, during the purely Norman period, though the side-aisles of great churches were generally vaulted, the central aisle was always ceiled with wood; yet, from a study of their plans, we are led to conclude that their architects always intended that they should, or at least might, be ornamented with stone roofs.

In the first place the area of their piers is enormous, and such as could never have been intended to support wooden roofs. Even making every allowance for the badness of the masonry, one-tenth of the sectional area would have sufficed, and not more was employed cotemporaneously in Germany when it was intended to use wooden roofs. There is also generally some variation in the design of the alternate piers, as if a hexapartite arrangement were contemplated. But the evidence is not conclusive, for the vaulting shafts are usually similar, and in all instances run from the ground through the clerestory, and terminate with the copings of the wall, so that, in their present form, they could only be meant to support the main timber of the roof. It may be that it was intended to cut them away down to the string-course of the clerestory, as was actually done at Norwich in 1446, when the nave was vaulted; but at present we must be satisfied with the evidence that the architects were content with such roofs as that of Peterborough (Woodcut No. 810), which is the oldest and finest we possess. It is very beautiful, but certainly not the class of roof these massive piers were designed to support.

Though we may hesitate with regard to the intention of the builders of Norwich, Ely, or Peterborough, there can be no doubt, from the alternate piers and pillars, that when Durham (Woodcut No. 804) was commenced it was intended that the nave should be covered by a great hexapartite vault. Before, however, the intention could be carried out, the art of vaulting had been so far perfected that that very clumsy expedient was abandoned; and, by the introduction of a bracket in the nave, and afterwards of a vaulting shaft in the choir, a vault of the usual quadrilateral form was successfully carried out between the years 1233 and 1284.

It is probably to St. Hugh of Lincoln that we owe the first perfect vault in England. Coming from Burgundy he must have been familiar with the great vaults which had been constructed in his country long before the year 1200, when he encouraged his new followers to undertake one not necessarily in the Burgundian style, but in that form with which they were conversant from their practice in erecting smaller side-vaults. He built and roofed the choir of Lincoln, immediately after which (1209-1235) the nave (Woodcut No. 811) was undertaken by Hugh of Wells, and its roof may be taken as a type of the first perfected form of English vaulting. It is very simple and beautiful; but it cannot be denied—and this is felt still more at Exeter—that the great inverted pyramidal blocks of the roof are too heavy for the light pier and pierced walls which support them. Another defect is, that the lines of the clerestory windows do not accord with the lines of the “severeys” of the vault. This defect was remedied at Lichfield, but nowhere else, until the invention of the four-centred arch and of fan-tracery. At Lichfield (Woodcut No. 812) the triangular form of the clerestory windows afforded a perfect solution of the difficulty, and gave a stability and propriety to the whole arrangement that never was surpassed, and never might have been relinquished had not their fatal fondness for painted glass forced the architects in this, as in other instances, to forego constructive propriety for indulgence in that fascinating mode of decoration.

Beautiful as these simple early roofs were felt to be, the great mass of the “severeys,” or inverted pyramids, formed a very obvious defect. It was, however, easily remedied when once perceived. The earliest example of its successful removal is probably in the roof of the choir at Gloucester (1337-1377) (Woodcut No. 813). In this instance the roof is almost a tunnel-vault with the window spaces cutting into it, so as to leave nearly one-third of the space unbroken; and, as the whole is covered with rich and appropriate tracery, the effect is highly pleasing. The same principle was afterwards carried to its utmost perfection in the roof of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. In that case a flat band was introduced as a separate constructive compartment in the centre, supported by the severeys, and as the roof is ornamented with ribbings of the most exquisite design, it forms perhaps the most beautiful vault ever designed by a Gothic architect.

The great invention of the English architects in vaulting is the form usually known as fan-tracery. It is so beautiful in itself, and so exclusively English, that it may, perhaps, be worth while to retrace the steps by which it was arrived at. This may lead to a little repetition, but the stone vault is so essentially the governing modulus of the style that its principles cannot be made too clear.

The original form of the intersecting vault is that of two halves of a hollow-sided square pyramid placed opposite one another in an inverted position.[419] One half of such a vault is shown at A and A A (Woodcut No. 814, fig. 1). The English seem early to have tired of the endless repetition of these forms, and, after trying every mode of concealing their sameness by covering them with tracery, they hit on the happy expedient of cutting off their angles, as shown at B and B B. This left a flat square space in the centre, which would have been awkward in the central vault, though in a side-aisle it was easily got over, and its flatness concealed by ornament. Arrived at this stage it was easy to see that by again dividing each face into two, as at C, fig. 1, the principal original lines were restored, and the central space could be subdivided by constructive lines to any extent required. By this process the square pyramid had become a polygonal cone of 24 sides, which was practically so near a circle that it was impossible to resist the suggestion of making it one, which was accordingly done, as shown at D and D D, fig. 1.

So far all was easy, but the fact of the flat central space resting on the four cones was still felt to be a defect, as indeed is apparent in such a vault as that of the cloisters at Gloucester (Woodcut No. 815), where a segment is used nearly equal to an equilateral spherical triangle. In this case they did not dare to employ a constructive decoration, but covered the space with circles so as to confuse and deceive the eye. At Windsor (Woodcut No. 816) the defect was obviated by using a low four-centred arch invented for the purpose, so that the outer tangent of the concoid was nearly flat, and the principal transverse rib was carried to the centre without being broken—as the others might have been had that mode of decoration been deemed expedient. This may be considered the perfection of this kind of vaulting, and is perhaps the most beautiful method ever invented. At Westminster (as shown in Woodcut No. 817) the difficulty was got over by reversing the curve by the introduction of pendants. This was a clever expedient, and produced a startling effect, but is so evidently a tour de force that the result is never quite satisfactory; though on a small scale perfectly admissible.

These devices all answered perfectly so long as the space to be roofed was square, or nearly so; but when this mode of vaulting came to be applied to the bays of the central nave, which were twice as long in one direction as in the other, the difficulties seemed insuperable. By cutting off the angle as in the former instance (as at B, fig. 2, Woodcut No. 814), you may get either a small diamond-shaped space in the centre or a square, but in both cases the pyramid becomes very awkward; and by carrying on the system as before, you never arrive at a circle, but at an elliptical section as shown at D, fig. 2 (Woodcut No. 814).

The builders of King’s College Chapel strove to obviate the difficulty by continuing the conoid to the centre, and then cutting off what was redundant at the sides, as in E, fig. 2, or, as shown in the view of the interior (Woodcut No. 846) further on.

The richness of the ornaments, and the loftiness and elegance of the whole, lead us to overlook these defects at Cambridge, but nothing can be less constructive or less pleasing that the abruptness of the intersections so obtained. In the central aisle of Henry VII.’s Chapel it was avoided by a bold series of pendants, supported by internal flying buttresses, producing a surprising degree of complexity, and such an exhibition of mechanical dexterity as never fails to astonish, and generally to please; though it must be confessed that it is at best a mere piece of ingenuity very unworthy of English art. By far the most satisfactory of these roofs is that at Windsor, where a broad flat band is introduced in the centre of the roof, throughout the whole length of the chapel. This is ornamented by panelling of the most exquisite design, and relieved by pendants of slight projection, the whole being in such good taste as to make it one of the richest and probably the most beautiful vault ever constructed. It has not the loftiness of that at Cambridge, being only 52 ft. high, instead of 78, nor is it of the same extent, and consequently it does not so immediately strike observers, but on examination it is far more satisfactory.

The truth of the matter seems to be that, after all their experience, the architects had got back to precisely the point from which they started, namely, the necessity of a square space for the erection of a satisfactory intersecting vault. The Romans saw this, and never swerved from it. The side-aisles of all cathedrals and all cloisters adhered to it throughout; and, when it was departed from in the wider central aisles, it always led to an awkwardness that was hardly ever successfully conquered. In some instances, as in the retro-choir at Peterborough (1438-1528), two windows are boldly but awkwardly included in one bay (Woodcut No. 818), and the compartments are so nearly square that the difficulty is not very apparent, but it is sufficient to injure considerably the effect of what would otherwise be a very beautiful roof.

In Henry VII.’s Chapel the difficulty was palliated, not conquered, by thrusting forward the great pendants of the roof and treating them as essential parts of the construction, and as if they were supported by pillars from the floor instead of by brackets from the wall. By this means the roof was divided into rectangles more nearly approaching squares than was otherwise attainable; but it is most false in principle, and, in spite of all its beauty of detail, cannot be considered successful.

Strange as it may appear from its date, the most satisfactory roof of this class is that erected by Cardinal Wolsey in the beginning of the 16th century over the choir of Oxford Cathedral. In this instance the pendants are thrust so far forward and made so important that the central part of the roof is practically quadripartite. The remaining difficulty was obviated by abandoning the circular horizontal outline of true fan-tracery, and adopting a polygonal form instead. As the whole is done in a constructive manner and with appropriate detail, this roof— except in size—is one of the best and most remarkable ever executed.

The true solution of the difficulty, in so far as the vault was concerned, would have been to include two bays of the side-aisles in one of the centre; but this would have necessitated a rearrangement of both plan and exterior to an extent the architects were not then prepared to tolerate, and it never was attempted, except perhaps in the instance of the retro-choir at Peterborough (Woodcut No. 818). Had it been done in King’s College Chapel at Cambridge (Woodcut No. 846), it would have been in every respect an immense improvement. At present the length of King’s College Chapel is too great for its other dimensions. Had there been six bays instead of twelve, its apparent length would have been considerably diminished, and the variety introduced by this change would have relieved its monotony without detracting from any of the excellent points of design it now possesses.

The English architects never attempted such vaults as those of Toulouse and Alby, 63 and 58 ft. respectively, still less such as that of Gerona in Spain, which is 72 ft. clear width. With our present mechanical knowledge, we could probably construct wider vaults still. Even the Mediæval architects in England might have done more in this direction than they actually accomplished, had they tried. On the whole, however, it seems that they exercised a wise discretion in limiting themselves to moderate dimensions. More poetry of design and greater apparent size is attainable by the introduction of pillars on the floor, and with far less mechanical effort. Unless everything is increased in even a greater ratio, the dwarfing effect of a great vault never fails to make itself painfully apparent. We may regret that they did not vary their vaults by such an expedient as the lantern at Ely, but hardly that they confined them to the dimensions they generally adopted.

PIER ARCHES.

Although the principles adopted by the English architects did not materially differ from those of their Continental confrères with regard to the arrangement of pier arches and the proportions of triforia and clerestories, still their practice was generally so sound and the results so satisfactory, that this seems the best place to point out what the Mediæval architects aimed at in the arrangement of their wall surfaces.

In the Norman cathedrals the general scheme seems to have been to divide the height into three equal parts, and to allot one to the pier arch, another to the triforium or great gallery, and the third to the clerestory. In all the examples we now have, the upper is the smallest division; but I cannot help fancying that some arrangement of the timbers of the roof gave the additional height required. It is generally supposed that the roof at Peterborough (Woodcut No. 810) was originally flat. This, however, is by no means clear, nor that it started so low; but, be that as it may, the woodcut (No. 820) will explain the usual arrangement, as well as the changes afterwards introduced. At Winchester the two lower divisions are practically equal, the upper somewhat less, and the alternate arrangement of the piers hints at a hexapartite vault, if such should ever come to be executed. When William of Wykeham undertook to remodel the style of the nave, he first threw the two lower compartments into one, as shown on the left-hand side of the cut. He then divided the whole height, as nearly as the masonry would allow him, into two equal parts, allotting one to the pier arches, and apportioning the upper as nearly as he could by giving two-thirds to the clerestory and one-third to the triforium. With pointed arches this was the most pleasing and satisfactory arrangement adopted during the Middle Ages; but when something very like it was attempted in the nave of Gloucester with round arches, the effect was most unpleasing. Before the architects, however, settled down to this proportion, a variety of experiments were tried. One of the most successful was the nave of Lichfield Cathedral (Woodcut No. 812). Here the whole height is divided equally: one half is given to the pier arches, and the other divided equally between the clerestory and triforium. If the latter had been glazed externally, as was the case at Westminster Abbey and elsewhere, and made to look like part of the church, the whole might be considered as satisfactory. As it is, the area of the clerestory is so much less than that of the triforium, that the proportion is not quite agreeable, though the solidity and repose which this arrangement gives to the roof is above all praise.

All these objections were obviated in the three bays of the choir at Ely, which were rebuilt by Walsingham at the same time as the octagon. Here the triforium and clerestory are equal; but the upper window is so spread out, and so much is made of it, that it looks equal to the compartment below. The pier arch below is also subdued to less than half the whole height, so as to give value to the upper division. These proportions are derived from the very beautiful Early English presbytery beyond; but they are here used with such exquisite taste and such singular beauty of detail that there is perhaps no single portion of any Gothic building in the world which can vie with this part of the choir of Ely for poetry of design or beauty of detail.

The perfection of proportion, as of many other things, was reached in Westminster Abbey (1245-1269). Here the whole height is divided into two equal parts, and the upper subdivided into three, of which one is allotted to the triforium, and two to the clerestory. It is true this involves the necessity of springing the vault from a point half way down the clerestory windows, and thus the lines of the severeys do not accord quite with those of the lights; but at best it is a choice of difficulties, and the happy medium seems to have been reached here more successfully than elsewhere. The proportion of the width of a bay to its height is here also most pleasing; it is as 1 to 5½.[420] Sometimes, as at Exeter, it sinks as low as 1 in 3, but the whole effect of the building is very much destroyed by the change.

Shortly after this, as in the choir at Lichfield (1250-1325) or at Exeter (1308-1369), the mania for the display of painted glass upset all these arrangements—generally at the expense of the triforium. This feature was never entirely omitted, nor was it ever glazed internally, as was frequently the case on the Continent; but it was reduced to the most insignificant proportions—sometimes not pierced—and, with the wider spacing just alluded to, deprived the English side screen of much of that vigour and beauty which characterised its earlier examples.

WINDOW TRACERY.

The date of the introduction of the pointed arch in England—for it may be considered as established that it was introduced—is a question which has been much discussed, but is by no means settled. The general impression is that it was at the rebuilding of the cathedral of Canterbury after the fire of 1174 that the style was first fairly tried. The architect who superintended that work for the first five years was William of Sens; and the details and all the arrangements are so essentially French, and so different from anything else of the same age in England, that his influence on the style of the building can hardly be doubted. Of course it is not meant to assert that no earlier specimens exist; indeed, we can scarcely suppose that they did not, when we recollect that the pointed arch was used currently in France for more than a century before this time, and that the pointed style was inaugurated at St. Denis at least thirty years before. Still this is probably the first instance of the style being carried out in anything like completeness, not only in the pier arches and openings, but in the vaults also, which is far more characteristic.

Even after this date the struggle was long, and the innovation most unwillingly received by the English, so that even down to the year 1200 the round arch was currently employed, in conjunction with the pointed, to which it at last gave way, and was then for three centuries banished entirely from English architecture.

Be this as it may, in their treatment of tracery, which followed immediately on the introduction of the pointed arch, the English architects showed considerable originality in design, though inspired by the same sobriety which characterises all their works. They not only invented the lancet form of window, but what may be called the lancet style of fenestration. Nowhere on the Continent are such combinations to be found as the Five Sisters at York (Woodcut No. 824), or the east end of Ely (Woodcut No. 825), or such a group as that which terminates the east end of Hereford (Woodcut No. 826). Tracery it can hardly be called, but it is as essentially one design as any of the great east windows that afterwards came into fashion; and until painted glass became all-important, such an arrangement was constructively better than a screen of mullions, and as used in this country is capable of very beautiful combinations.

So, at least, the English architects of the 13th century seem to have thought, for they continued to practise their lancet style, as in the much-quoted example of Salisbury Cathedral, long after the French had perfected the geometric forms; which may be seen from the contemporary cathedral in Amiens. In France, as was pointed out in a previous chapter (p. 163 et seq.), we can trace every step by which the geometric forms were invented. In England this cannot be done, and when we do find a rudimentary combination of two lancets with a circle, it is more frequently a harking back to previous forms than stepping forwards toward a new invention.

When, however, painted glass became an indispensable part of church decoration, it was impossible to resist the influence of the French invention. Like many other Continental forms it seems first to have been systematically employed at Westminster, when the choir was rebuilt by Henry III., A.D. 1245-69, but even then it was used timidly and unscientifically as compared with the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, which was commenced 1244, and completed long before the English choir. Once, however, it was fairly introduced, the English architects employed it with great success. One of the earliest examples is the beautiful circular window of the north transept at Lincoln. It, however, is still of the imperfect tracery of the early French examples. The lines do not in all instances follow one another, and flat plain spaces are left, as in what is generally called plate tracery. True geometric tracery is, however, seen in perfection in the Angel Choir at Lincoln (1270-1282), in the nave of (York 1291-1330), or better, in such abbeys as Tintern or Gainsborough. In the chapter-house at York (Woodcut No. 829) the style had already begun to deviate from the French pattern, and before the end of the 13th century the English had so thoroughly assimilated it that hardly a trace of its original form was left. The chapel at Merton College, Oxford, is perhaps the most beautiful example remaining of that exquisite form of English tracery; but St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, was the typical example, and specimens of it are found in all our cathedrals. One at St. Anselm’s Chapel at Canterbury (Woodcut No. 830) is perhaps as characteristic as any. When tracery had reached this stage, it seemed capable of any amount of development, and was applicable to any form of opening. All the difficulties of fitting circles into spherical triangles which had so puzzled the early builders were conquered,[421] and the range of design seemed unlimited. But during the Edwardian period there prevailed a restless desire for new inventions, and an amount of intellectual activity applied to architecture which nothing could resist; so that these beautiful geometric forms in their turn were forced to give way after being employed for little more than half a century, and were superseded by the fashion of flowing tracery, which lasted, however, for even a shorter period than the style which preceded it. This time the invention seems to have been English; for though we cannot feel quite certain when the first specimen of flowing tracery was introduced in France, the Flamboyant style was adopted by the French only after the English wars, whereas the Perpendicular style had superseded this and all other Decorated forms in England before the death of Edward III.

During the time that flowing forms were used in England they gave rise to some of the most beautiful creations in window tracery that are anywhere to be found. The east windows at Carlisle (Woodcut No. 831) and of Selby, are two of the finest examples, and illustrate the peculiarity of the style as adopted in this country. Though the forms are flowing, and consequently, as lithic forms, weak, the parts are so exquisitely balanced by the stronger ribs introduced and by the arrangement of the whole, that, so far from any weakness being felt, the whole is quite as stable as the purposes to which it is applied would seem to require. Another equally constructive and equally beautiful example is the south transept window at Lincoln (Woodcut No. 832), where the segmental lines introduced give the strength required. Though almost all its lines are flowing, it looks stronger and more constructively correct than the north transept window (Woodcut No. 828), which is wholly made up of circular forms, and is in itself one of the best examples of the earlier form of English geometric tracery. Circular windows were not, however, the forte of English architects; they very rarely used them in their west fronts, not always in their transepts, and generally indeed may be said to have preferred the ordinary pointed forms, in which, as in most matters, they probably exercised a wise discretion.

It may not be quite clear whether William of Wykeham (1366-1404) invented perpendicular tracery, but certain it is that the admiration excited by his works in this style at Winchester, Oxford, and elsewhere, gave a death-blow to the Decorated forms previously in fashion. Although every lover of true art must regret the change, there was a great deal to be said in favour of the new style. It was pre-eminently constructive and reasonable. Nothing in a masonic point of view could be better than the straight lines running through from bottom to top of the window, strengthened by transoms when requisite for support, and doubled in the upper division. The ornaments, too, were all appropriate, and, externally at least, the whole harmonised perfectly with the lines of the building. Internally, the architects were more studious to prepare forms suitable by their dimensions and arrangements for the display of painted glass, than to spend much thought on the form of the frames themselves. The poetry of tracery was gone, but it was not only in this respect that we miss the poetic feeling of earlier days. The mason was gradually taking the guidance of the work out of the hands of the educated classes, and applying the square and the rule to replace the poetic inspirations of enthusiasts and the delicate imaginings by which they were expressed.

It is curious to observe how different the course of events was in France. While Saxon common sense was gradually coming to the surface in this country and curbing every fancy for which a good economic reason could not be given, the Celtic fancy of our neighbours broke loose in all the playful vagaries of the Flamboyant style. Their tracery became so delicate and so unconstructive that it is a wonder it ever stood, and no wonder that half the windows of that date are now without tracery at all. They were carved, too, with foliage so delicate that it ought to have been executed in metal and never attempted in stone—in wonderful contrast to the plain deep mouldings which surround most of our windows of that period.

EXTERNAL PROPORTIONS.

If the sobriety of proportion which characterised the design of English architects led to satisfactory results internally, its influence was still more favourable on the external appearance of their churches. An English cathedral is always a part of a group of buildings—the most important and most dignified part, it is true, but always coinciding and harmonising with its chapter-house, its cloister and conventual buildings, its bishop’s palace or abbot’s lodging. In France the cathedral is generally like a giant among pigmies—nothing can exist in its neighbourhood. The town itself is dwarfed by the immense incubus that stands in its centre, and in almost no instance can the subordinate buildings be said to form part of the same design[422]—both consequently suffering from their quasi-accidental juxtaposition.

This effect is even more apparent when we come to examine the sky-line of the buildings. Their moderate internal dimensions enabled the English architects to keep the roofs low, so as to give full effect to the height of the towers, and to project their transepts so boldly as to vary in perspective the long lines of the roofs from whatever point the building was viewed. Their greatest gain, however, was that they were able to place their tallest and most important feature in the centre of their buildings, and so to give a unity and harmony to the whole design which is generally wanting in Continental examples. One of the few cases in which this feature is successfully carried out in France is the church of St. Sernin at Toulouse (Woodcut No. 578), but there the body of the building is low and long like the English type, and a tower of the same height as those of the façade at Amiens suffices to give dignity to the whole. That church, however, wants the western towers to complete the composition. In this respect it is the reverse of what generally happens in French cathedrals, where the western façades are rich and beautifully proportioned in themselves, but too often overpowered by the building in the rear, and unsupported by any central object. In Germany they took their revenge, and in many instances kill the building to which they are attached. In England the group of three towers or spires—the typical arrangement of our architects—was always pleasing, and very frequently surpasses in grace and appropriateness anything to be found on the Continent. Even when, as at Norwich or at Chichester, the spire is unsupported by any western towers, the same effect of dignity is produced as at Toulouse; the design is pyramidal, and from whatever point it is viewed it is felt to be well balanced, which is seldom the case when the greatest elevation is at one end.

The cathedral at Salisbury (Woodcut No. 834), though, like the two last named, it has no western towers, still possesses so noble a spire in the centre, and two transepts so boldly projecting, that when viewed from any point east of the great transept it displays one of the best proportioned and at the same time most poetic designs of the Middle Ages. It is quite true that the spire is an afterthought of the 14th century, and that those who added it ought to have completed the design by erecting also two western towers, but, like St. Sernin’s, it is complete as it is, and very beautiful. The flêche at Amiens is 20 ft. higher than the spire at Salisbury, being 424 ft. as against 404 ft. Yet the Salisbury spire is among the most imposing objects of which Gothic architecture can boast, the other an insignificant pinnacle that hardly suffices to relieve the monotony of the roof on which it is placed.

Lichfield (Woodcut No. 835), though one of the smallest of English cathedrals, is one of the most pleasing from having all its three spires complete, and in the proportion originally designed for the building and for each other. The height of the nave internally is only 58 ft., and of the roof externally only 80 ft.; yet with these diminutive dimensions great dignity is obtained and great beauty of composition, certainly at less than one-fourth the expenditure in materials and moyen it would have cost to produce a like effect among the tall heavy-roofed cathedrals of the Continent.

Had the octagon at Ely been completed externally,[423] even in wood, it would probably have been superior to the spire at Salisbury both in height and design. As before mentioned, it was left with only a temporary lantern externally, and, as was always the case in England, no drawing—no written specifications of the designer have been left. The masons on the Continent were careful to preserve the drawings of unfinished parts of the designs. The gentlemen architects of England seem to have trusted to inspiration to enable them to mould their forms into beauty as they proceeded. With true Gothic feeling they believed in progress, and it never occurred to them but that their successors would surpass them in their art, in the manner they felt they were excelling those who preceded them.

The three-towered cathedrals are not less beautiful and characteristic of England than those with three spires. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the outline of Lincoln[424] as it stands on its cliff looking over the Fens (Woodcut No. 836); though the erection of a screen in front of the western towers cuts them off from the ground, and so far mars their effect when seen close at hand. York perhaps possesses the best façade of the class in England, both as regards proportion and detail. The height of the towers to the top of the pinnacles is under two hundred feet (196), but this is quite sufficient for the nave they terminate, or the central tower with which they group. At Amiens the western towers are respectively 224 and 205 ft. in height, but they are utterly lost under the roof of the cathedral, and fail to give any dignity to the design.

For poetry of design and beauty of proportion, both in itself and in the building of which it forms a part, perhaps the Angel Tower at Canterbury is the best in England, and is superior to any of the same class of towers to be found elsewhere. It is difficult, however, among so many beautiful objects, to decide which is the best. The highest tower at Wells is only 165 ft. from the ground to the top of the pinnacle, yet it is quite sufficient for its position, and groups beautifully with the western towers. Though of different ages, the three towers at Durham group beautifully together, and the single tower at Gloucester crowns nobly the central point of that cathedral. But the same is true of all. The central tower or spire is the distinguishing feature of the external design of English cathedrals, and possessing it they in this respect surpass all their rivals.

The western façades of English cathedrals, on the contrary, are generally inferior to those on the Continent. We have none of those deeply recessed triple portals covered with sculpture which give such dignity and meaning to the façades of Paris, Amiens, Rheims, Chartres, and other French cathedrals. Beautiful as is the sculptured façade of Wells, its outline is hard, and its portals mean. Salisbury is worse. Winchester, Exeter, Canterbury, Gloucester, indeed most of our cathedrals, have mean western entrances, the principal mode of access to the building being a side door of the nave. Peterborough alone has a façade at once original and beautiful. Nothing but the portico of a classic temple can surpass the majesty of the three great arches of the façade of this church. The effect is a little marred by the fact that the central arch, which should have been the widest and have formed the chief entrance to the nave, is narrower than the other two, and, further, is blocked up by a chapel built between the central piers. The great portal in fact does not agree, either, with the main lines of the church behind, and so far must be regarded only as a decorative front; but, take it all in all, it is one of the most beautiful inventions of the Middle Ages.

Such a screen would have been better had the arches been flanked by two more important towers than those which now adorn that façade, but unless the piers of the central tower were sufficient to carry a much more important feature in the centre, the architects showed only their usual discretion in refusing to dwarf the rest of the cathedral by an exaggerated façade.

It may sound like the indulgence of national predilection to say so; but it does seem that the English architects seized the true doctrine of proportion to a greater extent than their contemporaries on the Continent, and applied it more successfully. It will be easily understood that in so complicated and constructive a machine as a Gothic cathedral, unless every part is in proportion the whole will not unite. It is as if, in a watch or any delicate piece of machinery, one wheel or one part were made stronger or larger in proportion to all the rest. It may be quite true that it would be better if all were as strong or as large as this one part; but perfection in all the arts is attained only by balance and proportion. Whenever any one part gets too large for the rest the harmony is destroyed. This the English architects perfectly understood. They kept their cathedrals narrow, that they might appear long; they kept them low, that they might not appear too narrow. They broke up the length with transepts, that it might not fatigue by monotony. Externally they kept their roofs low that with little expenditure they might obtain a varied and dignified sky-line, and they balanced every part against every other so as to get the greatest value out of each without interfering with the whole. A Gothic cathedral, however, is so complicated—there are so many parts and so many things to think of—that none can be said to be perfect. A pyramid may be so, or a tower, or a Greek temple, or any very simple form of building, whatever its size; but a Gothic cathedral hardly can be made so—at least has not yet, though perhaps it might now be; but in the meanwhile the English, considering the limited dimensions of their buildings, seem to have approached a perfect ideal more nearly than any other nation during the Middle Ages.

DIVERSITY OF STYLE.

There is still another consideration which must not be lost sight of in attempting to estimate the relative merit of Continental and English cathedrals; which is, the extraordinary diversity of style which generally prevails in the same building in this country as compared with those abroad. All the Great French cathedrals—such as Paris, Rheims, Chartres, Bourges, and Amiens—are singularly uniform throughout. Internally it requires a very keen perception of style to appreciate the difference, and externally the variations are generally in the towers, or in unessential adjuncts which hardly interfere with the general design. In this country we have scarcely a cathedral, except Salisbury, of which this can be said. It is true that Norwich is tolerably uniform in plan and in the detail of its walls up to a certain height; but the whole of the vaulting is of the 15th century, and the windows are all filled with tracery of the same date. At Ely, a Norman nave leads up to the octagon and choir of the 14th century, and we then pass on to the presbytery of the 13th. At Canterbury and Winchester the anomalies are still greater; and at Gloucester, owing to the perpendicular tracery being spread over the Norman skeleton, they become absolutely bewildering.

In some, as Wells or York, it must be confessed the increase in richness from the western entrance to Lady Chapel is appropriate, and adds to the effect of the church more than if the whole were uniform throughout. This is particularly felt at Lincoln, where the simplicity of the early English nave and choir blossoms at last into the chaste beauty of the Angel Choir at the east end. It follows so immediately after the rest as not to produce any want of harmony, while it gives such a degree of enrichment as is suitable to the sanctity of the altar and the localities which surround it.

Even, however, when this is not the case, the historical interest attaching to these examples of the different ages of English architecture goes far to compensate for the want of architectural symmetry, and in this respect the English cathedrals excel all others. That history which on the Continent must be learnt from the examination of fifty different examples, may frequently be found in England written complete in a single cathedral. The difficulty is to descriminate how much of the feeling thus excited is due to Archæology, and how much to Architecture. In so far as the last-named art is concerned, it must probably be confessed that our churches do suffer from the various changes they have undergone, which, when architecture alone is considered, frequently turn the balance against them when compared with their Continental rivals.

SITUATION.

Whatever conclusion may be arrived at with regard to some of the points mooted in the above section, there can be no doubt that in beauty of situation and pleasing arrangement of the entourage the English cathedrals surpass all others. On the Continent the cathedral is generally situated in the market-place, and frequently encumbered by shops and domestic buildings, not stuck up against it in barbarous times, but either contemporary, or generally at least Mediæval; and their great abbeys are frequently situated in towns, or in localities possessing no particular beauty of feature. In England this is seldom or never the case. The cathedral was always surrounded by a close of sufficient extent to afford a lawn of turf and a grove of trees. Even in the worst times of Anne and the Georges, when men chiselled away the most exquisite Gothic canopies to set up wooden classical altar-screens, they spared the trees and cherished the grass; and it is to this that our cathedrals owe half their charm. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that the architect’s mission ceases with heaping stone on stone, or arranging interiors for convenience and effect. The situation is the first thing he should study; the arrangement of the accessories, though the last, is still amongst the most important of his duties.

Durham owes half its charm to its situation, and Lincoln much of its grandeur. Without its park the cathedral at Ely would lose much of its beauty; and Wells lying in its well wooded and watered vale, forms a picture which may challenge comparison with anything of its class. Even when situated in towns, as Canterbury, Winchester, or Gloucester, a sufficient space is left for a little greenery and to keep off the hum and movement of the busy world. York, among our great cathedrals is about the most unfortunate in this respect, and suffers accordingly. But in order to appreciate how essentially the love of Nature mingled with the taste for architectural beauty during the Middle Ages, it is necessary to visit some of the ruined abbeys whose remains still sanctify the green valleys or the banks of placid streams in every corner of England.

Even if it should be decided that in some respects the architects of England must yield the palm to those of the Continent as regards the mechanical perfection of their designs, it must at least be conceded, that in combining the beauties of Art with those of Nature they were unrivalled. Their buildings are always well fitted to the position in which they are placed. The subsidiary edifices are always properly subordinated, never too crowded nor too widely spaced, and always allowing when possible for a considerable admixture of natural objects. Too frequently in modern times—even in England—this has been neglected; but it is one of the most important functions of the architect, and the means by which in many instances most agreeable effects have been produced.

CHAPTER-HOUSES.

The chapter-house is too important and too beautiful an adjunct to be passed over in any sketch, however slight, of English architecture. It also is almost exclusively national. There are, it is true, some “Salles Capitulaires” attached to Continental cathedrals or conventual establishments, but they are little more than large vestry-rooms, with none of that dignity or special ordinance that belongs to the English examples. One cause of the small importance attached to this feature on the Continent was that, in the original basilica, the apse was the assembly-place, where the bishop sat in the centre of his clergy and regulated the affairs of the church. In Italy this arrangement continued till late in the Middle Ages. In France it never seems to have had any real existence, though figuratively it always prevailed. In England we find the Bishop’s throne still existing in the choir at Norwich; and at Canterbury, and doubtless in all the apsidal Norman cathedrals, this form of consistory originally existed. Such an arrangement was well suited for the delivery of an allocution or pastoral address by the bishop to his clergy, and was all that was required in a despotic hierarchy like the French Church; but it was by no means in accordance with the Anglo-Saxon idea of a deliberate assembly which should discuss every question as a necessary preliminary to its being promulgated as a law.

In consequence of this, we find in England chapter-houses attached to cathedrals even in early Norman times. These were generally rectangular rooms, 25 or 30 ft. wide by about twice that extent in length. We can still trace their form at Canterbury and Winchester. They exist at Gloucester and Bristol and elsewhere. So convenient and appropriate does this original form appear, that it is difficult to understand why it was abandoned, unless it was that the resonance was intolerable. The earliest innovation seems to have been at Durham, where, in 1133, a chapter-house was commenced with its inner end semicircular; but shortly after this, at Worcester, a circular chamber with a central pillar was erected, and the design was so much approved of, that it became the typical form of the English chapter-house ever afterwards. Next, apparently, in date came Lincoln, and shortly afterwards the two beautiful edifices at Westminster and Salisbury. The former, commenced about the year 1250, became, without any apparent incongruity, the parliament-house of the nation, instead of the council-chamber of a monastic establishment; and all the parliaments of the kingdom were held within its walls till the dissolution of the religious orders placed the more convenient rectangular chapel of St. Stephen at their disposal. Now that it has been restored, we are enabled to judge of the beauty of its proportions; and, from the remains of paintings which have been so wonderfully preserved, of the beauty of the art with which it was once decorated. It only wants coloured glass in its windows to enable us to realise the beauty of these truly English edifices.

That at Bristol is late in the style (1155-1170), and consequently almost approaches the transitional epoch, but is very rich and beautiful. The eastern end has been unfortunately pulled down and rebuilt, but the western end, shown in the annexed Woodcut (No. 839), is one of the richest and best specimens of late Norman work to be found anywhere.

But, having once got rid of the central pillar, which was the great defect of their construction as halls of assembly, they would hardly have reverted to it again, and a true Gothic dome might have been the result had the style been continued long enough to admit of its being perfected.

Salisbury chapter-house (Woodcut No. 840) was erected shortly afterwards; and, though its original beauties have been to a great extent washed out by modern restorations, it still affords a very perfect type of an English chapter-house of the 13th century, at a time when the French geometric tracery was most in vogue. That at Wells (1293-1302, Woodcut No. 841), however, is more beautiful and more essentially English in all its details. The tracery of the windows, the stalls below them, and the ornaments of the roof, are all of that perfect type which prevailed in this country about the year 1300. Its central pillar may perhaps be considered a little too massive for the utilitarian purpose of the building, but as an architectural feature its proportions are perfect. Still the existence of the pillar was a defect that it was thought expedient to remove, if possible; and it was at last accomplished in the chapter-house at York, the most perfect example of the class existing, as its boasting inscription testifies,—

“Ut Rosa flos florum, Sic Domus ista Domorum.”

Like all the rest of them, its diameter is 57 or 58 ft.—as has been suggested, an octagon inscribed in a circle of 60 ft. diameter. In this instance alone has a perfect Gothic dome been accomplished. It is 12 ft. less in diameter than the lantern at Ely, and much less in height; but it is extremely beautiful both in design and detail, and makes us regret more and more that, having gone so far, the Gothic architects did not follow out this invention to its legitimate conclusion.

By the time, however, that York chapter-house was complete, all the great cathedrals and monastic establishments had been provided with this indispensable adjunct to their ecclesiastical arrangements, and none were erected either in the Lancastrian or Tudor periods of the art, so that we can hardly guess what might have been done had a monastic parliament-house been attempted at a later date.[425]

CHAPELS.[426]

Although not so strictly peculiar, the forms of English chapels were so original and offer so many points of interest that they are well worthy of study.

With the exception of the chapel in the White Tower there is perhaps no example of a Norman Chapel now existing, unless the remains of the infirmary chapels at Canterbury and Ely may be considered as such. The practice of erecting them seems to have risen with our educational colleges, where all those present took part in the service, and the public were practically excluded. One of the finest and earliest of these is that of Merton College, Oxford. It has, and was always designed to have, a wooden roof; but of what fashion is not quite clear, except that it certainly could never have been like the one now existing.

The typical specimen of that age, however, was the royal chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster, which, from what remained of it till after the Great Fire, we know must have been the most exquisitely beautiful specimen of English art left us by the Middle Ages.[427]

It was 92 ft. long by 33 ft. wide internally, and 42 ft. high to the springing of the roof. This was of wood, supported by hammer-beam trusses similar to, but evidently more delicate in design and more elegantly carved than those of Westminster Hall, which were apparently copied from those of the chapel. The proportions were beautiful; but the greatest charm was in its details, which were carried out evidently by the best artists, and with all the care that was required in the principal residence of the sovereign.

Though nearly a century later in date,[428] St. Stephen’s Chapel is so nearly a counterpart of the royal chapel of Paris—“the Sainte Chapelle”— that it may be worth while to pause a second to compare the two. In dimensions, on plan, they are not dissimilar; both are raised on an under-croft or crypt of great beauty. The French example has the usual apsidal termination; the English the equally characteristic square east end. The French roof is higher and vaulted; the English was lower and of wood. It is impossible to deny that the French chapel is very beautiful, and only wants increased dimensions to merit the title of a sublime specimen of Gothic art; but the English example was far more elegant. All the parts are better balanced, and altogether it was a far more satisfactory example than its more ambitious rival, of the highest qualities to which the art of the Middle Ages could attain.

We have an excellent means of ascertaining how far St. Stephen’s Chapel would have been damaged by a vaulted roof, by comparing it with the nearly contemporary chapel at Ely (1321-1349), erected under the superintendence of the same Alan de Walsingham who designed the octagon of the church. Its internal dimensions are 100 ft. long by 43 wide, and sixty high. The details of the screen of niches which form a dado round the whole chapel are perhaps, without exception, the most exquisite specimens of decorative carving that survive from the Middle Ages. The details of the side windows are also good, but the end windows are bad in design, and neither externally nor internally fit the spaces in which they are placed. With painted glass this might be remedied, internally at least; but the whole design is thrown out of harmony by its stone roof. As a vault its width is too great for its length; the height insufficient for its other dimensions; and altogether, though its details are beyond all praise, it leaves a more unsatisfactory impression on the mind than almost any other building of its class.

King’s College Chapel at Cambridge (1479-1515) errs in exactly the opposite direction. It is too long for its width, but has height sufficient to redeem the length, though at the expense of exaggerating its narrowness. These, however are all errors in the direction of sublimity of effect; and though greater balance would have been more satisfactory, the chapel is internally so beautiful that it is impossible not to overlook them. It is more sublime than the Saint Chapelle, though, from its late age, wanting the beauty of detail of that building.

Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster (1502-1515), differs from all previous examples, in having side-aisles with chapels at the east end and a clerestory. Its proportions are not, however, pleasing, but it makes up in richness of detail for any defects of design.

Of the three royal chapels, that at Windsor (1475-1521) is perhaps on the whole the most satisfactory. Being a chapel it has no western or central towers to break its sky-line and give it external dignity; but internally it is a small cathedral, and notwithstanding the lateness of some of its details (part of the vault was finished in the reign of Henry VIII.), is so elegant and so appropriate in every part as to be certainly one of the most beautiful Gothic buildings in existence; for its size, perhaps the most beautiful. Considering that these three last-named chapels were being erected contemporaneously with St. Peter’s at Rome, it is wonderful how little trace of classic feeling they betray; and how completely not only Gothic details but true Gothic feeling still prevailed in this country almost up to the outbreak of the Reformation.

PARISH CHURCHES.

Were it possible in a work like this to attempt anything approaching an exhaustive enumeration of the various objects of interest produced during the Middle Ages, it would be impossible to escape a very long chapter on the parish churches of England. They are not so magnificent as her cathedrals, nor so rich as her chapels; but for beauty of detail and appropriateness of design they are unsurpassed by either, while on the Continent there is nothing to compare with them. The parochial system seems to have been more firmly rooted in the affection of the people of this country than of any other. Especially in the 14th and 15th centuries the parishioners took great pride in their churches, and those then erected are consequently more numerous as well as more ornamental than at any other time.

Strange to say, considering how common the circular form was in the countries from which our forefathers are said to have emigrated, it never took root in England. The round churches at Cambridge, Northampton, and London, were certainly sepulchral, or erected in imitation of the church at Jerusalem. The one known example of a village church with a circular nave is that at Little Maplestead, in Essex. It is of the pure German or Scandinavian type[429]—a little St. Gereon, standing alone in this form in England; but a curious modification of it occurs in the eastern counties, in which this church is situated, which points very distinctly to the origin of a great deal of the architecture of that country. There are in Norfolk and Suffolk some forty or fifty churches with round Western towers, which seem undoubtedly to be mere modifications of the western round nave of the Scandinavian churches. At page 331, Läderbro Church (Woodcut No. 795) was pointed out as an example of a circular nave attenuated into a steeple, and there are no doubt many others of the same class in Scandinavia. It was, however, in England, where rectangular naves were common, that the compromise found in this country became fashionable. These Norfolk churches with round towers may consequently be looked upon as safe indexes of the existence of Scandinavian influences in the eastern counties, and also as interesting examples of the mode in which a compromise is frequently hit upon between the feelings of intrusive races and the habits of the previous inhabitants.

It is doubtful whether round-naved and round-towered churches existed in the eastern counties anterior to the Norman Conquest; so far as we know, none have been described. The earliest that are known were erected during the Norman period, and extend certainly down to the end of the Edwardian period. Some of the towers have perpendicular details, but these seem insertions, and consequently do not indicate the date of the essential parts of the structure.

As a rule, the English parish church is never vaulted, that species of magnificence being reserved, after the Norman times at least, for cathedrals and collegiate churches; but on the other hand, their wooden roofs are always appropriate, and frequently of great beauty. So essential does the vault appear to have been to Gothic architecture both abroad and in this country, that it is at first sight difficult to admit that any other form of covering can be as beautiful. But some of the roofs in English churches go far to refute the idea. Even, however, if they are not in themselves so monumental and so grand, they had at least this advantage, that the absence of the vault allowed the architect to play with the construction of the substructure. He was enabled to lighten the pillars of the nave to any extent he thought consistent with dignity, and to glaze his clerestory in a manner which must have given extreme brilliancy to the interior when the whole was filled with painted glass. Generally with a wooden roof there were two windows in the clerestory for one in the aisles: with a vaulted roof the tendency was the other way. Had they dared, they would have put one above for two below. But the great merit of a wooden roof was, that it enabled the architect to dispense with all flying buttresses, exaggerated pinnacles, and mechanical expedients, which were necessary to support a vault, but which often sadly hampered and crowded his designs.

So various were the forms these wooden roofs took that they almost defy classification. The earlier and best type was a reminiscence, rather than an imitation, of the roof of St. Stephen’s Chapel or Westminster Hall, but seldom so deeply framed. That at Trunch Church, Norfolk (Woodcut No. 850), may be taken as a fair average specimen of the form adopted for the larger spans, and that at New Walsingham of the mode adopted for roofing aisles. Some, of course, are simpler, but many much more elaborate. In later periods they become flatter, and more like the panelled ceiling of a hall or chamber; but they were always perfectly truthful in construction, and the lead was laid directly on the boarded framing. They thus avoided the double roof, which was so inherent a defect in the vaulted forms, where the stone ceiling required to be protected externally by a true roof.

Among so many examples it is difficult to select one which shall represent the class, but the annexed plan of Walpole St. Peter’s, Norfolk, will suffice to explain the typical arrangement of an English parish church. In almost every instance the nave had aisles, and was lighted by a clerestory. The chancel was narrow and deep, without aisles, and with a square termination. There was one tower, with a belfry, generally, but not always, at the west end; and the principal entrance was by a south door, usually covered by a porch of more or less magnificence, frequently, as in this instance, vaulted, and with a muniment room or library chamber over it.

Often, as at Coventry, Boston, and other places, these churches with the above described arrangements almost reached the dimensions of small cathedrals, the towers and spires matching those of the proudest ecclesiastical edifices; and in many instances the details of their tracery and the beauty of their sculptured ornaments are quite equal to anything to be found in the cathedral of the diocese.

DETAILS.

When we consider the brilliancy of invention displayed in the decorative details of French ecclesiastical buildings, the play of fancy and the delicacy of execution, it must perhaps be admitted that in this respect the French architects of the Middle Ages far excelled those of any other nation. This was, no doubt, due in a great measure to the reminiscences of classical art that remained in the country, especially in the south, where the barbarian influence never really made itself felt, and whence the feeling gradually spread northwards; and may be traced in the quasi-classical details of the best French examples of the 13th century, even in the Isle de France. More also should perhaps be ascribed to the Celtic feeling for art, which still characterises the French nation, and has influenced it ever since its people became builders.

Though the English must yield the palm to the French in this respect, there is still a solidity and appropriateness of purpose in their details which goes far to compensate for any want of fancy. There is also in this country a depth of cutting and a richness of form, arising from the details being so often imitated from wood-carving, which is architecturally more valuable than the more delicate exuberance of French examples.

These remarks apply with almost equal force to figure-sculpture as a mode of decoration. Neither in Germany nor in this country is anything to be found at all comparable with the great sculptural Bibles of Rheims, Chartres, Bourges, and other great cathedrals of France; even such at Poitiers, Arles, St. Gilles, are richer in this respect than many of our largest churches. It is true that the sculptures of the façade at Wells, or of the Angel Choir at Lincoln, and the façade of Croyland Abbey, are quite equal in merit to anything of the same period on the Continent; and, had there been the same demand, we might have done as well or better than any other nation. Whether it arose from a latent feeling of respect for the Second Commandment, or a cropping out of Saxon feeling, certain it is that, with certain exceptions, such as the Lady Chapel at Ely, figure-sculpture gradually died out in England. In the 14th century it was not essential; in the 15th and 16th it was subordinate to the architectural details, and in this respect the people became Protestant long before they thought of protesting against the pope and the papist form of worship.

As already hinted at, it is probable that a great deal of the richness of English decorative carving is due to the employment, in early times, of wood as a building material in preference to stone. It is difficult, for instance, to understand how such a form of decorative arch as that on the old staircase at Canterbury could have arisen from any exigency of stone construction; but it displays all that freedom of form and richness of carving that might easily arise from the employment of timber.

The same remarks apply, though in a less degree, to the Norman gateway at Bristol (Woodcut No. 854); which may be regarded as a typical specimen of the style—sober, and constructive, yet rich—without a vestige of animal life, but with such forms as an ivory or wood carver might easily invent, and would certainly adopt.

The great defect of such a style of decoration as this was its extreme elaboration. It was almost impossible to carry out a large building, every part of which should be worked up to the same key-note as this; and, if it had been done, it would have been felt that the effect was not commensurate with the labour bestowed upon it. What the architects therefore set to work to invent was some mode of decoration which should be effective with a less expenditure of labour. This they soon discovered in the deep-cut mouldings of the Gothic arch, with the occasional intermixture of the dog-tooth moulding (as in the nave at Lichfield, Woodcut No. 812), which was one of the earliest and most effective discoveries of the 13th century. Sometimes a band of foliage was introduced with the dog-tooth, as in the doorways leading to the choir aisles at Lincoln (Woodcut No. 855), making together as effective a piece of decoration as any in the whole range of English architecture,—more difficult to design, but less expensive to execute, than many Norman examples, and infinitely more effective when done.

The west doorway at Lichfield (A.D. 1275, Woodcut No. 856) shows the style in its highest degree of perfection. There is just that admixture of architectural moulding with decorative foliage which is necessary to harmonise the constructive necessities of the building with the decorative purposes to which it was to be applied, combined with a feeling of elegance which could only have proceeded from a thoroughly cultivated and refined class of intellect.

Everything in England of the same age bears the same impress, so that it is difficult to go wrong in selecting examples, though hopeless to expect, with any reasonable amount of illustration, to explain its beauties. The niches at the back of the altar-screen at Winchester are among the best examples of that combination of constructive lines and decorative details which when properly balanced make up the perfection of architectural decoration; or, perhaps, even better than these are the heads of the three niches over the sedilia in the parish church at Heckington in Lincolnshire (Woodcut No. 858). The style of these examples is peculiar to England, and quite equal to anything that can be found on the Continent; and thousands of examples, more or less perfect, executed during the Edwardian period, exist in every corner of the country. Bishop Marshall’s tomb at Exeter (Woodcut No. 621), though somewhat earlier, displays the same playful combination of conventional foliage with architectural details.

After the year 1300, however, we can perceive a change gradually creeping over the style of decoration. Constructive forms are becoming more and more prominent; merely decorative features being gradually dropped as years went on. In Prior de Estria’s screen in Canterbury Cathedral, for instance (Woodcut No. 859), though all the elegance of earlier times is retained, the principal features are mechanical, and the decoration much more subdued than in the examples just quoted. The celebrated doorway leading to the chapter-house at Rochester (Woodcut No. 860) is a still more striking example of this. It is rich even to excess; but the larger part of its decoration consists of ornaments which could be drawn with instruments. Of free-hand carving there is comparatively little: and though the whole effect is very satisfactory, there is so evident a tendency towards the mere mechanical arrangement of the Perpendicular style that it does not please to the same extent as earlier works of the same class.

TOMBS.

Among the more beautiful objects of decorative art with which our churches were adorned during the Middle Ages are the canopies or shrines erected over the burying-places of kings or prelates, or as cenotaphs in honour of their memory. Simple slabs, with a figure upon them, seem to have been all that was attempted during the Norman period; but the pomp of sepulchral magnificence gradually developed itself, so that by the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century we have some of the most splendid specimens existing, and the practice lasted down almost to the Renaissance, as exemplified in Bishop West’s tomb at Ely (1515-1534), or Bishop Gardiner’s at Winchester (1531-1555).

At first the tomb-builders were content with a simple wooden tester, like that which covers the tomb of the Black Prince at Canterbury; but this became one of great beauty when applied, as in Westminster Abbey, to the tomb of Edward III. (Woodcut No. 862), where its appropriateness and beauty of detail distinguish it from many more ambitious shrines in stone.

In general design these two monuments are similar to one another, and must have been erected very nearly at the same time—the difference being in the superior richness and elaboration of the regal as compared with the princely tomb.

Although this form of wooden tester was the most usual in monuments of the age, stone canopies were also frequently employed, as in the well-known monument of Aymer de Valence (died 1324) in Westminster Abbey. But all previous examples were excelled by the beautiful shrine which the monks of Gloucester erected, at a considerably later period, over the burying-place of the unfortunate Edward II. (Woodcut No. 863). In its class there is nothing in English architecture more beautiful than this. It belongs to the very best age of the style, and is carried out with a degree of propriety and elegance which has not been surpassed by any example now remaining. If the statues with which it was once adorned could now be replaced, it would convey a more correct idea of the style of the Edwardian period than can be obtained from larger examples.

It seems to have been as much admired then as now; for we find its form repeated, with more or less correctness of outline and detail, at Winchester, at Tewkesbury, and St. Alban’s, as well as elsewhere, the whole forming a series of architectural illustrations unmatched in their class by anything on the continent of Europe.

As a fine specimen of the form taken by a multitude of these tombs during the last period of Gothic art we may select that of Bishop Redman at Ely (1501-1506). Though so late in date, there is nothing offensive either in its form or detail. On the contrary, it is well proportioned and appropriate; and though there is a little display of over-ingenuity in making the three arches of the canopy sustain themselves without intermediate supports, this is excusable from its position between two massive piers. It is doing in stone what had been done in wood over Edward III.’s tomb at Westminster, and is one of many instances which might be quoted of the interchangeableness of wooden and stone forms during the whole of the Middle Ages in this country, and a proof of the influence the one always had on the other.

Among the most beautiful monuments of a quasi-sepulchral character existing in this country are the crosses erected by Edward I. on the spots at which the body of his queen Eleanor rested on its way from Nottinghamshire to London. Originally, it is said, there were fifteen of these, all different in design. Three only now remain; one near Northampton, one at Geddington, and a third at Waltham (Woodcut No. 865).[430] Though greatly dilapidated, enough remains to show what was the original design. While extremely varied both in outline and detail, every part is elegant, and worthy of the best age of English architecture.

Had it not been the custom in those days to bury the illustrious dead within the walls of the churches, this is probably the form which sepulchral monuments would generally have taken. If we may judge from the examples left us, we can have little doubt but that, with more experience and somewhat increased dimensions, these monuments would have surpassed the spires of our cathedrals or parish churches in every respect as architectural designs. Being entirely free from utilitarian exigencies, the architect had only to consult the rules of his art in order to produce what would be most pleasing and most appropriate. We can only therefore regret that so purely English a form of sepulchral design began and ended with this one act of conjugal devotion.

CIVIL AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of English architecture, though but a negative one, is the almost total absence of any municipal buildings during the whole period of the Middle Ages. The Guildhall of London is a late specimen, and may even be called an insignificant one, considering the importance of the city. There are also some corporation buildings at Bristol, and one or two unimportant town-halls in other cities; but there we stop. Nothing can more vividly express how completely the country was Frenchified by the result of the battle of Hastings, than this absence of municipal architecture. Till a very recent period the king, the baron, and the bishop, were the estates of the realm. The people were nowhere, and neither municipalities nor guilds could assert an independent existence.

On the other hand, in proportion to her population, England is rich in castles beyond any other country in Europe—especially of the Norman or round-arched Gothic age. Germany, as already pointed out, has some fine examples of the Hohenstaufen period. France has scarcely any, and neither France nor Germany can match such castles as those of London, Rochester, Norwich, Rising, &c. The Welsh castles of the Edwardian period form an unrivalled group themselves; and are infinitely superior, both in extent and architectural magnificence, to the much-lauded robber-dens of the Rhineland; while such castles as Raglan, Chepstow, Kenilworth, Warwick, or Windsor are, for picturesque beauty and elegance of detail, quite unmatched except by one or two ruined strongholds in the North of France. The discussion of their merits, however, would more probably come under the head of military architecture, which is excluded from this work, and cannot therefore be entered on here.

It is difficult, however, to draw the line exactly between the castles and the castellated mansion, the moated grange, and lastly the mansion or manor-house, which, towards the end of the Gothic period, had become so numerous in England, and form an architectural group so beautiful and so peculiarly English.

Taken altogether, there is perhaps no class of buildings to which an Englishman may turn with more pride than the educational establishments which the Middle Ages have left him. Though in some cases entirely rebuilt and no doubt very much altered, still the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge retain much of their original features, and are unrivalled in their kind. None of them, it is true, are very ancient as we now see them. With the exception of some of the earlier buildings at Merton, the greater number owe their magnificence to the days of Wykeham (ob. 1426) and Waynflete (ob. 1486). It was during the reign of Henry VI. (1422-1470) that the great impulse was given, not only within the limits of the Universities, but by the foundation of Eton and Winchester, and other great schools, all which belong to the 15th century. But the building of Gothic or quasi-Gothic educational establishments was continued till the death of Queen Elizabeth (1602).

In most respects, these colleges resembled the monastic establishments, which, to a certain extent, they may be considered as superseding. The principal difference was that the church of the monastery became subdued into a chapel exclusively devoted to the use of the inmates of the college. In all these establishments, whether palaces or colleges, castles or manor-houses, the principal apartment was the hall, in some cases subordinate to the chapel only. It was on the halls that the architects lavished their art, and, generally speaking, these are most entitled to be considered as architectural features. Even now there are in England at least a hundred of these halls, either entire and in use, or sufficiently perfect to render their restoration easy. All have deeply and beautifully framed roofs of timber. In this respect they stand alone, no wooden roofs on the Continent being comparable with them.

Among them the largest and grandest is, as it ought to be, the hall of the King’s Palace at Westminster, as rebuilt by Richard II. Internally it is 239 ft. long by 68 ft. in width, covering about 23,000 superficial feet. The hall at Padua is larger, and so may some others be, but none have a roof at all approaching this either in beauty of design or mechanical cleverness of execution. In this respect it stands quite alone and unrivalled, and, with the smaller roof of St. Stephen’s chapel adjoining, seems to have formed the type on which most of the subsequent roofs were framed.

The roof of the hall at Eltham (Woodcut No. 868), which belongs to the reign of Henry IV., is inferior both in dimensions and design to that at Westminster, but still displays clearly the characteristics of the style. It would have been better if the trusses had sprung from a line level with the sills of the windows, and if the arched frame had been less flat; but that was the tendency of the age, which soon became so exaggerated as to destroy the constructive proportion altogether.

We are not able to trace the gradual steps by which the hammer-beam truss was perfected, but we can follow it from the date of the hall at Westminster (1397), to Wolsey’s halls at Hampton Court and Oxford, till it passed into the Jacobean versions of Lambeth or the Inner Temple. Among all these, that of Kenilworth, though small (86 ft. × 43 ft.), must have been one of the most beautiful. It belongs to an age when the style adopted for halls had reached its acme of perfection (middle of 15th century), when the details of carpentry had been mastered, but before there was any tendency to tame the deep framing down to the flatness of a ceiling. The wooden roofs of churches were generally flatter and less deeply framed than those of the halls, which may have arisen from their being smaller in span, and being placed over clerestories with little abutment to resist a thrust; but, whether from this or any other cause, they are generally less beautiful.

There are few features of Mediæval art in this country to which attention could be more profitably directed than the roof; for, whether applied to secular or ecclesiastical buildings, the framed and carved wooden roof is essentially English in execution and application, and is one of the most beautiful and appropriate manifestations of our national art.

Did space admit of it, it would be easy to extend these remarks, and in so doing to explain and prove a great deal which in the previous pages it has been necessary to advance as mere assertion. The subject is, in fact, practically inexhaustible; as will be easily understood when it is remembered that for more than five centuries all the best intellects of the nation were more or less directed towards perfecting this great art. Priests and laymen worked with masons, painters, and sculptors; and all were bent on producing the best possible building, and improving every part and every detail, till the amount of thought and contrivance accumulated in any single great structure is almost incomprehensible. If any one man were to devote a lifetime to the study of one of our great cathedrals—assuming it to be complete in all its Mediæval arrangements— it is questionable whether he would master all its details, and fathom all the reasonings and experiments which led to the glorious result before him. And when we consider that not in the great cities alone, but in every convent and every parish, thoughtful professional men were trying to excel what had been done and was doing, by their predecessors and their fellows, we shall understand what an amount of thought is built into the walls of our churches, castles, colleges, and dwelling-houses. If any one thinks he can master and reproduce all this, he can hardly fail to be mistaken. My own impression is that not one-tenth part of it has been reproduced in all the works written on the subject up to this day, and much of it is probably lost and never again to be recovered for the instruction and delight of future ages.

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF ENGLISH CATHEDRALS.[431]

-------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------+-------+--------+---------+------------- | | | | | | | | | Width | Approximate | Area. | Length | Western | Central | Height | Height | Width | Width | of | ratio of | | inside. | Towers. | Towers. | of | of | of | of | Central | Height to | | | | | Nave. | Choir. | Nave. | Choir. | Aisle. | Width. -------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------+-------+--------+---------+------------- | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | Feet. | York | 72,860 | 486 | 196 | 198 | 93 | 101 | 106 | 102 | 51 | 1 to 2 Lincoln | 66,900 | 468 | 206 | 258 | 82 | 71 | 80 | 81 | 39 | 1 2 Winchester | 64,200 | 530 | .. | 140 | 76 | .. | 85 | .. | 35 | 1 2·43 Westminster | 61,729 | 505 | 220 | .. | 103 | .. | 75 | .. | 35 | 1 3 Ely | 61,700 | 517 | 215 | 170 | 72 | 70 | 75 | .. | 34 | 1 2·1 Canterbury | 56,280 | 514 | 152 | 229 | 80 | 70 | 73 | 85 | 33 | 1 2·4 Salisbury | 55,830 | 450 | .. | 404 | 84 | .. | 82 | .. | 35 | 1 2·3 Durham | 55,700 | 473 | 164 | 216 | 74 | .. | 81 | 77 | 32 | 1 2·3 Peterborough | 50,516 | 426 | 154 | 143 | 78 | .. | 79 | .. | 36 | 1 2 Wells | 40,680 | 388 | 125 | 165 | 67 | .. | 69 | .. | 34 | 1 2 Norwich | 40,572 | 408 | .. | 309 | 73 | .. | 70 | .. | 26 | 1 2·8 Worcester | 38,980 | 387 | .. | 191 | 66 | .. | 78 | .. | 32 | 1 2·45 Exeter | 35,370 | 383 | .. | .. | 70 | .. | 72 | .. | 34 | 1 2·1 Lichfield | 33,930 | 319 | 192 | 252 | 55 | .. | 66 | .. | 28 | 1 2 -------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------+-------+--------+---------+-------------

IV. ARCHITECTURE OF SCOTLAND

CONTENTS.

Affinities of Style—Early Specimens—Cathedral of Glasgow—Elgin—Melrose— Other Churches—Monasteries.

CHRONOLOGY.

DATES. Malcolm Canmore. Accession A.D. 1057 David I. 1124 William the Lion 1165 John Baliol 1292 Robert Bruce 1306 David II. 1329 Robert II., Stuart 1371 James I. 1406 Mary Queen of Scots 1542

THERE are few countries in the world in respect to whose architecture it is so difficult to write anything like a connected narrative as it is regarding that of Scotland. The difficulty does not arise from the paucity of examples, or from their not having been sufficiently examined or edited, but from the circumstance of the art not being indigenous. No one who knows anything of the ethnography of art would suspect the people who now inhabit the lowlands of Scotland of inventing any form of architecture, or of feeling much sympathy with it when introduced from abroad. It may have been that the Celtic element was more predominant in the country during the Middle Ages, and that the Teutonic race only came to the surface with the Reformation, when they showed their national characteristic in their readiness to destroy what they could not build. If this were not so, it must have been that their priests were strangers, who brought their arts with them and practised them for their own satisfaction, in despite of the feelings of their flocks.

Briefly, the outline of Scotland’s architectural story seems to be this. Till the time of the wars of the Edwards, the boundary line between the styles on either side of the border cannot be very clearly defined. In Scotland the forms were ruder and bolder than in the South, but were still the same in all essential respects.

After the days of Wallace and of Bruce, hatred of the English threw the Scotch into the arms of France. Instead of the Perpendicular style of the South, we find an increasing tendency to copy the Flamboyant and other contemporary styles of France, till at last, just as the style was expiring, both churches and mansions are almost literal copies of French designs. But, in addition to these, an Irish element is strongly felt: at Iona and throughout the West, extending in exceptional cases to the east, as at Brechin and Abernethy. It can also be traced in the Lothians in the chapels and smaller edifices of the 11th and 12th centuries, and seems to be the ingredient which distinguishes the early Round-arched Gothic of Scotland from the Norman of England. Besides these three, a Scandinavian element makes itself felt in the Orkneys, and as far south as Morayshire; and even Spain is said to have contributed the design to Roslyn Chapel, and made her influence felt elsewhere.

All these foreign elements, imported into a country where a great mass of the people belonged to an art-hating race, tended to produce an entanglement of history very difficult to unravel. With leisure and space, however, it might be accomplished; and, if properly completed, would form a singularly interesting illustration, not only of the ethnography of Scotland, but of art in general.

The buildings of David I. (1124-1165) gave an immense impulse to the round-arched style, which continued for nearly a century after his time, and long after the pointed arch had been currently used in the South. It is true we find pointed arches mixed up with it, as at Jedburgh, but the pillars and capitals are those of the earlier orders; and the circular arch continued to be used from predilection whenever the constructive necessities of the building did not suggest the employment of the pointed form.

The feature of English art which the Scotch seem to have best appreciated was the lancet window, which suited their simple style so completely that they clung to it long after its use had been abandoned in England. This circumstance has given rise to much confusion in the dates of Scottish buildings, antiquaries being unwilling to believe that the lancet windows of Elgin and other churches really belong to the middle of the 14th century, after England had passed through the phases of circle and flowing tracery, and was settling down to the sober constructiveness of the perpendicular.

Circle tracery is, in fact, very little known in the North, and English flowing tracery hardly to be found in all Scotland. It is true that a class of flowing tracery occurs everywhere in Scotland, but it is, both in form and age, much more closely allied to French Flamboyant than to anything English. It was used currently during the whole period between the 2nd and 3rd Richards, and even during the Tudor period of England.

The one great exception to what has been said is the east window of the border monastery of Melrose; but even here it is not English Perpendicular, but an original mode of treating an English idea, found only in this one instance, and mixed up with the flowing tracery of the period.

Of Tudor architecture there is no trace in Scotland; neither the four-centred low arch nor fan-vaulting are to be found there, nor that peculiar class of perpendicular tracery which distinguished the 16th and 17th centuries in the South. At that period the Scotch still adhered to their Flamboyant style, and such attempts as they did make at Perpendicular work were so clumsy and unconstructive that it is little wonder that, like the French, they soon abandoned it.

In so poor and thinly-populated a country as Scotland was in the 11th century, it would be in vain to look for any of the great ecclesiastical establishments that are found in the South. The churches seem at this age to have been cells or small chapels, such as that at Leuchars or Dalmeny, closely resembling St. Clement’s church at Trondhjem, and a little larger than the contemporary edifices so frequently found in Ireland.

Leuchars is perhaps the most characteristic and beautiful specimen of its class, of which, like the contemporary chapel at Cashel, which it much resembles, it may be considered as the type. Its details are not only rich, but, as may be seen from the woodcut, bold and elegant at the same time. Both internally and externally, the ornament is applied in so masterly a manner that the beauty of the art makes up for the smallness of dimensions, and renders it one of the most interesting churches in Scotland.

David I. seems to have been the first king who gave an impulse to the monastic establishments and to the building of larger churches. His endowment of the great border abbeys, and his general patronage of the monks, enabled them to undertake buildings on a greatly extended scale. The churches of Jedburgh and Kelso, as we now find them, belong either to the very end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century. They display all the rude magnificence of the Norman period, used in this instance not experimentally, as was too often the case in England, but as a well-understood style, whose features were fully perfected. So far from striving after novelty, the Scotch architects were looking backwards, and culling the beauties of a long-established style. The great arch under the tower of Kelso is certainly a well-understood example of the pointed-arched architecture of the 13th century, while around it and above it nothing is to be seen but circular-headed openings, combined generally with the beaded shafts and the foliage of the Early English period. The whole is used with a Doric simplicity and boldness which is very remarkable. Sometimes, it must be confessed, this independence of constraint is carried a little too far, as in the pier-arches at Jedburgh (Woodcut No. 870), which are thrown across between the circular pillars without any subordinate shaft or apparent support. This was a favourite trick of the later Gothic architects of Germany, though seldom found at this early period. Here the excessive strength of the arch in great measure excuses it.

Besides the general grandeur of their designs, a great deal of the detail of these abbeys is of the richest and best class of the age. The favourite form, as at Leuchars, is that of circular arches intersecting one another, so as to form pointed sub-arches, and these are generally ornamented with all the elaborate intricacy of the period, such as is shown in Woodcut No. 871, taken from Kelso Abbey Church.

While these great abbeys were being erected in the southern extremity of the kingdom, the cathedral of St. Magnus was founded at the other extremity, at Kirkwall in the Orkneys. This building was commenced 1137, and carried on with vigour for some time. The first three arches of the choir (Woodcut No. 872) are all that can certainly be identified as belonging to that period. The arch of the tower belongs probably to the 14th century, and the vaulting can hardly be much earlier. The three arches beyond this are still circular, though with mouldings of a late period. It is said that these were not completed till the 16th century.

Farther south, arches of this late age could not have been built in such an ancient style, but we can believe that in that remote corner the old familiar modes were retained in spite of changing fashion; and the consequence is that, though the building of this cathedral was carried on at intervals during 400 years, it is at first sight singularly uniform in style, and has all the characteristics of an old Norman building, as may be seen from the woodcut.

The cathedral of Glasgow (Woodcut No. 878) is almost the only other of the great ecclesiastical edifices of Scotland which retains its original features in a nearly perfect state. It is at the same time one of the most satisfactory and characteristic buildings to be found in the country.

The bishopric was founded by David I., but it was not till after several destructions by fire that the present building was commenced, probably about the year 1240. The crypt and the whole of the choir belong to the latter part of the 13th century, the nave to the 14th, the tower and spire to the 15th. The central aisle never having been intended to be vaulted, the architect has been enabled to dispense with all pinnacles, flying buttresses, and such expedients, and thus to give the whole outline a degree of solidity and repose which is extremely beautiful, and accords perfectly with the simple lancet openings which prevail throughout.

The whole length of the building externally, exclusive of the western towers, one of which has recently been pulled down, is 300 feet, the breadth 73, and the area about 26,400 square feet, so that it is far from being a large building; but its situation is so good, and its design and proportion so appropriate and satisfactory throughout, that it is more imposing than many others of twice its dimensions. The spire, which is 219 feet in height from the floor of the church, is in perfect proportion to the rest of the building, both in dimensions and outline, and aids very much the general effect of the whole.

The glory of this cathedral is its crypt, which is unrivalled in Britain, and indeed perhaps in Europe. Almost all the crypts now found in England were built during the Norman period, or very early in the pointed style. That at Glasgow, however, belongs to the perfected style of the 13th century, and as the ground falls rapidly towards the west, the architect was enabled to give it all the height required, and to light it with perfect ease. Here the crypt actually extends under and beyond the whole choir; but even with all its adjuncts, it did not equal in size the crypt of old St. Paul’s. There is a solidity, however, in the architecture of the crypt at Glasgow, a richness in its vaulting, and a variety of perspective in the spacing of its pillars, which make it one of the most perfect pieces of architecture in these islands.

In the crypt and lower part of the church the windows are generally single or double lancet, united by an arch. In the clerestory they sometimes take the form of three lancets, united, as shown in Woodcut No. 877, by an imperfect kind of tracery, more in accordance with the simplicity of the building than the more complex form prevalent in England at the same period. In the south transept, and some of the later additions, there is a tracery of considerable elaboration and beauty of design.

Perhaps the most beautiful building in Scotland is, or was, the cathedral of Elgin. The province of Moray, in which it was situated, was so remote that it seems to have been comparatively undisturbed by the English wars, and the greater part of the building was erected during the Edwardian period, with all the beautiful details of that age. The seat of the see was removed from Spynie to Elgin in the year 1223, and the cathedral commenced contemporaneously with those of Amiens and Salisbury. All that now remains of this period is the fragment of the south transept (Woodcut No. 880), where we see the round arch reappearing over the pointed, at a period when its use was entirely discontinued in the South. At the same time the details of the doorway (Woodcut No. 881) show that in other respects the style was at that period as far advanced as in England. The cathedral was burnt down in 1270, and again partially in 1390. The choir and other parts which still remain were built subsequently to the first conflagration and escaped the second. These parts appear at first sight to belong to the lancet style of the previous century, but used with the details and tracery of the Edwardian period, and with a degree of beauty hardly surpassed anywhere. As compared with English cathedrals, that at Elgin must be considered as a small church, being only 253 ft. in length internally, and 82 wide across the five aisles of the nave. It is very beautifully arranged, and on the whole is perhaps more elegant in plan than any of the Southern examples. As a mechanical design, its worst fault is that the piers supporting the central tower want strength and accentuation. As will be seen from the plan, an attempt was made to throw the weight of the tower on the transept walls, which are built solid for this purpose; but this was artistically a mistake, while mechanically it caused the destruction of the tower at the beginning of the last century. The choir (see Woodcut No. 879) is terminated by what is virtually a great east window, but with piers between the compartments instead of mullions. As an architectural object this is a far more stable and appropriate design than a great mullioned window like that of York and others in England. But the latter must be judged of as frames for glass pictures, which Elgin is by no means so well suited to display. Its details, however, are exquisite, and the whole design very rich and beautiful.

The north and south aisles of the nave and the chapter-house were rebuilt after the last destruction, and belong to the 15th century. These parts, though very charming, display generally the faults of the Scotch Flamboyant style, and show a certain amount of heaviness and clumsiness mixed with the flowing and unconstructive lines of this class of tracery, which nothing could redeem but the grace and elegance with which the French always used it.

Next in beauty to Elgin Cathedral is the well-known abbey at Melrose. This, though founded contemporaneously with Jedburgh and Kelso, was entirely rebuilt during the Lancastrian period, and, owing to its situation near the border, shows much more affinity to the English style than the building last described. The nave, as may be seen from the view of its aisle (Woodcut No. 883), is of a bold, solid style of architecture, with a vault of considerable richness. The window of the south transept is the most elegant specimen of flowing tracery to be found in Scotland, and its great east window (Woodcut No. 884), as before remarked, is almost the only example of the Perpendicular style in the North, and is equal to anything of the kind on this side of the Tweed.

Few of the architectural antiquities of Scotland are so well known, or have been so much admired, as the chapel at Roslyn (Woodcut No. 885), which William St. Clair caused to be erected in the year 1446.

For this purpose he did not employ his countrymen, but “brought artificers from other regions and forraigne kingdomes,”[433] and employed them to erect a building very unlike anything else to be found in Great Britain.

Our present knowledge of styles enables us to pronounce with little doubt that his architects came from the Spanish peninsula. In fact, there is no detail or ornament in the whole building which may not be traced back to Burgos or Belem; though there is a certain clumsiness both in the carving and construction that betrays the workmanship of persons not too familiar with the task that they were employed upon. The building, which perhaps exhibits the greatest affinity of detail to the Chapel is the church at Belem on the Tagus, opposite Lisbon (Woodcut No. 969). Nothing, in fact, can well be more similar than the two are. That at Roslyn is the oldest, having been commenced in 1446. Belem, begun in 1498, was finished apparently in 1511, at which date the Scottish example hardly appears to have been complete. Roslyn Chapel is small, only 68 ft. by 35 ft. internally. The central aisle is but 15 ft. wide, and has the Southern peculiarity of a tunnel-vault with only transverse ribs, such as is found at Fontifroide (Woodcut No. 553), and in almost all the old churches of the South of France. The ornaments between these, which were painted in the earlier examples, are at Roslyn carved in relief. The vault, as in the South, is a true roof, the covering slabs being laid directly on the extrados or outside of it, without the intervention of any woodwork, a circumstance to which the chapel owes its preservation to the present day. Beyond the upper chapel is a sub-chapel (Woodcut No. 886), displaying the same mode of vaulting in a simpler form, but equally foreign and unlike the usual form of vaults in Scotland.

Another very interesting chapel of the same class is that now used as the church at Bothwell, near Glasgow. Like Roslyn, it has the peculiarity unknown in England, though common in the South of France, of a tunnel-vault with a stone roof resting directly upon it. It is not large, measuring only 53 feet by 22, internally. The beauty of its details, however—late in the 14th century—and the simplicity of its outline, combined with the solidity of its stone roof, impart to the whole an air of grandeur far greater than its dimensions would justify. Had it been constructed with a timber roof, as usual in churches of its date, it would hardly be considered remarkable, but it is redeemed both internally and externally by its stone roof. As will be seen from Woodcut No. 888, the arrangement of the stones forming the roof is very elegant, and gave rise to a form of battlement frequently found afterwards in Scotland, though generally used only as an ornament.[434]

The chapel attached to the palace at Holyrood is of a very different character from that at Roslyn; being infinitely more beautiful, though not nearly so curious. The building was originally founded by David I. in 1128, but what now remains belongs to the latter end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century, and has all the elegance of the Edwardian style joined to a massiveness which in England would indicate a far earlier period. Some of its details (as that shown, Woodcut No. 889) are of a beautiful transitional character, though not so early as might be suspected; and others (such as Woodcut No. 890) have the rich but foreign aspect that generally characterises the architecture of Scotland.

The nave of the cathedral of Aberdeen is still sufficiently entire to be used as a church, and with its twin western spires of bold castellated design is an impressive building; but it has a character of over-heaviness arising from the material used being granite, which did not admit of any of the lighter graces of Gothic art.

The cathedral of St. Andrew’s must at one time have been one of the most beautiful in Scotland, but fragments only of its east and west ends now remain. They suffice to show that it was of considerable dimensions, and inferior, perhaps, only to Elgin and Melrose in beauty of detail.

Besides these there are in Scotland many ruined monastic establishments, all evincing more or less beauty of design and detail. One of the most remarkable of these is Dunfermline, whose nave is of a bold, round-arched style, very like what Durham Cathedral would have been had it been intended (as this was) for a wooden roof. The other parts display that intermixture of styles so usual in monastic buildings; bold billeted arches, as in Woodcut No. 891, being surmounted by vaults of a much later date. But Scotch vaulting was in general so massive and rich that it requires the eye of an archæologist to detect a difference that is never offensive to the true artist. Among the remaining specimens are Dunblane, Aberbrothock, Arbroath, and Dunkeld, a window of which (Woodcut No. 892) is a fine specimen of the Scotch flamboyant, identical in design with one still existing in Linlithgow parish church, and very similar to many found elsewhere. The west doorway in the last named church is a pleasing specimen of the half Continental[435] manner in which that feature was usually treated in Scotland.

It has already been hinted that the Scotch unwillingly abandoned the circular archway, especially as a decorative feature, and that they indeed retain it occasionally throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, though with the details of the period. The doorway illustrated in Woodcut No. 894, from St. Giles’s, Edinburgh, is a fine specimen of this mode of treatment, and so is the next illustration, from Pluscardine Abbey. Similar doorways occur at Melrose and elsewhere. For canopies of tombs and suchlike purposes, the circular arch is almost as common as the pointed. Other examples are found at Iona, though there the buildings are nearly as exceptional and Continental in design as Roslyn itself—the circular pier-arch is used with the mouldings of the 13th century, and the pointed arch is placed on a capital of intertwined dragons, more worthy of a Runic cross or tombstone than a Gothic edifice. The tower windows are filled with a quatrefoil tracery (Woodcut No. 896), in a manner very unusual, and a mode of construction is adopted which does not perhaps exist anywhere else in Britain. The whole group, in fact, is as exceptional as its situation, and as remote from the usual modes of architecture on the mainland.

The early Scotch vaults, as already mentioned, were singularly bold and massive, and all their mouldings were characterised by strength and vigour, as shown in the examples taken from Glasgow and Dunfermline (Woodcuts Nos. 876, 891). At a later period, however, when the English were using perpendicular tracery, and when the invention of fan-vaulting was beginning to be introduced, the Scotch, with the flamboyant tracery of the French, adopted also their weak and unconstructive modes of vaulting. It is not uncommon to find as poor a vault as that of the lately destroyed Trinity College Church, Edinburgh (Woodcut No. 897), erected contemporaneously with the elaborate vaulting of the royal chapels in England; and not only in this but in every other respect it is to the Continent, and not to their nearest neighbours, that we must at this late period look for analogies with the architecture of the Scotch.

Scotland is, generally speaking, very deficient in objects of civil or domestic architecture belonging to the Middle Ages. Of her palaces, Holyrood was almost rebuilt in the reign of Charles I., and Edinburgh Castle entirely remodelled. Stirling still retains some fragments of ancient art, and Falkland seems on the verge of the Renaissance. Linlithgow perhaps alone remains in its original state, a fine specimen of a fortified palace, with bold flanking towers externally, and a noble courtyard in the centre.

There are, besides these, numberless square towers and fortalices scattered over the country, which were the residences of the turbulent barons of Scotland during the Middle Ages; but none of these can properly be called objects of architecture.

The baronial edifices of the succeeding age give the impression of belonging to an earlier style, which was retained in this wild country long after it had been laid aside elsewhere. They are as remarkable as any class of buildings erected after the Middle Ages, both for originality and picturesqueness. But they were, with scarcely an exception, built after the accession of Elizabeth to the throne of England, and all, when closely examined, display features belonging to the Renaissance style. Their description would therefore be more appropriate in a subsequent volume than in a chapter devoted to the Gothic architecture of Scotland.

V. IRELAND

CONTENTS.

Oratories—Round Towers—Domical Dwellings—Domestic Architecture—Runic Cross Decoration.

THE history of architecture in Ireland forms as distinct a contrast to that of Scotland as it is possible to conceive. At a very early period the Irish showed themselves not only capable of inventing a style for themselves, but perfectly competent to carry it to a successful issue, had an opportunity ever been afforded them. But this has not yet happened. Before the English conquest (1169) the country seems to have been divided into a number of small states, whose chieftains occupied the scant leisure left them between the incursions of the Danes and other Northmen, in little wars among themselves. These were never of such importance as to yield glory to either party, though amply sufficient to retard the increase of population and to banish that peace and sense of security which are indispensable for the cultivation of the softer arts. Yet during that period the Irish built round towers and oratories of a beauty of form and with an elegance of detail that charm even at the present day. Their metal work showed a true appreciation of the nature of the material, and an artistic feeling equal in kind, if not in degree, to anything in the best ages of Greece or Italy; and their manuscripts and paintings exhibit an amount of taste which was evidently capable of anything.

After the conquest, the English introduced their own pointed architecture, and built two churches in Dublin which, in dimensions and detail, differ very little from English parish churches. But beyond the Pale their influence was hardly felt. Whatever was done was stamped with a character so distinctly Irish as to show how strong the feeling of the people was; and sufficient to prove, with our knowledge of their antecedents, how earnestly and how successfully they would have laboured in the field of art had circumstances been favourable to its development. For seven centuries, however, the two races have lived together, hating and hated, and neither capable of comprehending the motives or appreciating the feelings of the other. It was not that the Saxon was tyrannical or unjust, but that he was prosaic among a people whose imagination too often supplied the place of reason, and that he was strong among those who could not combine for any steady purpose. His real crime was that, like the leopard, he could not change his spots. He belonged to a different race, and the Irish have always chosen to cherish the idea of vengeance and suffer the derangement consequent on it, rather than enjoy peace and prosperity under those they hated. Art is a plant too tender to flourish in the garden of hatred, and it has consequently been long banished from Irish soil, though, under gentler influences, it is probable that it might be more easily revived and more successfully cultivated there than in any other part of the British Isles.

Whatever may be the fate of art in Ireland for the future, the history of the past is sufficiently discouraging.

The cathedral of Dublin must always have been a second-class edifice for a metropolitan church, and those of Cashel and Kildare, which are as celebrated and as important as any in Ireland, are neither so large nor so richly ornamented as many English parish churches. The cathedral of Lismore has entirely disappeared; and generally it may be asserted that, throughout the country, there is not one cathedral church remarkable for architectural beauty or magnificence, though many are interesting from their associations, and picturesque from the state of ivy-clad ruin in which they appear.

The same is true with regard to the monasteries—they are numerous; and many, though small, are rich in detail. One of the most elaborate is that of the Holy Cross near Cashel, erected in the 15th century. This, like every other building of the Gothic period in Ireland, shows a strong affinity to the styles of the Continent, and a clearly marked difference from those of this country.

Some of the monasteries still retain their cloisters, which, in all instances, have so foreign an aspect as to be quite startling. That at Muckross (Killarney) retains the round arch on two sides with the details of the 15th century. That at Kilconnel (Woodcut No. 662)[436] looks more like a cloister in Sicily or Spain than anything in the British Islands. None of them seem large. The last named is only 48 ft. square, though, if more extensive, it would be out of place compared with the rest of the establishment.

There is scarcely a single parish church of any importance which was built in Ireland beyond the limits of the Pale during the Middle Ages, nor, indeed, could it be expected that there should be. The parochial system is singularly unsuited to the Celtic mind at all times, and, during the Gothic period, the state of Ireland was especially unfavourable to its development, even if any desire for it had existed. What the Celt desiderates is a hierarchy who will take the trouble of his spiritual cares off his hands, and a retreat to which he can retire for repose when the excitement of imagination no longer suffices to supply his daily intellectual wants. These may lead to a considerable development of cathedral and monastic establishments, but not to that self-governing parish system which is so congenial to the Saxon mind.

View it as we will, the study of the Mediæval architecture of Ireland is a melancholy one, and only too truly confirms what we know from other sources. It does not even help us to answer the question whether or not Ireland could successfully have governed herself if left alone. All it does tell us is that, from the accidental juxtaposition of two antagonistic races, one of them has certainly failed hitherto in fulfilling the artistic mission which, under favourable circumstances, it seems eminently qualified to perform.

From these causes, the Mediæval antiquities of Ireland would not deserve much notice in a work not specially devoted to that one subject, were it not that, besides these, Ireland possesses what may properly be called a Celtic style of architecture, which is as interesting in itself as any of the minor local styles of any part of the world, and, so far as at present known, is quite peculiar to the island. None of the buildings of this style are large, though the ornaments on many of them are of great beauty and elegance. Their chief interest lies in their singularly local character, and in their age, which probably extends from the 5th or 6th century[437] to the time of the English conquest in 1169. They consist principally of churches and round towers, together with crosses and a number of other antiquities hardly coming within the scope of this work.

No Irish church of that period now remaining is perhaps even 60 ft. in length, and generally they are very much smaller, the most common dimensions being from 20 to 40 ft. long. Increase of magnificence was sought to be attained more by extending the number of churches than by augmenting their size. The favourite number for a complete ecclesiastical establishment was 7, as in Greece and Asia Minor, this number being identical with that of the 7 Apocalyptic Churches of Asia. Thus, there are 7 at Glendalough and 7 at Cashel; the same sacred number is found in several other places,[438] and generally two or three at least are found grouped together.

As in Greece, too, the smallness of the churches is remarkable. They were not places for the assembly of large congregations of worshippers, but were oratories, where the priests could celebrate the divine mysteries for the benefit of the laity. In fact, no church is known to have existed in Ireland before the Norman Conquest that can be called a basilica, none of them being divided into aisles either by stone or wooden pillars, or possessing an apse, and no circular church has yet been found—nothing, in short, that would lead us to believe that Ireland obtained her architecture direct from Rome; while everything, on the contrary, tends to confirm the belief of an intimate connection with the farther East, and that her earlier Christianity and religious forms were derived from the East, by some of the more southerly commercial routes which at that period seem to have touched on Ireland.

A good deal of uncertainty and even of ridicule has been thrown on the subject of the Eastern origin of the Irish Church by the extreme enthusiasm of its advocates, but there seems to be no reasonable ground for doubting the fact.[439] At all events, it may safely be asserted that the Christian religion did not reach Ireland across Great Britain, or by any of the ordinary channels through the Continent. As a corollary to this, we must not look for the origin of her architectural styles either in England or in France, but in some more remote locality whose antiquities have not yet been so investigated as to enable us to point it out as the source whence they were derived.

The Irish Celtic churches are generally rectangular apartments, a little longer than they are broad, like the small one on the island of Innisfallen on the lake of Killarney (Woodcut No. 663). To the larger churches a smaller apartment of the same proportions is added to the eastward, forming a chancel, with an ornamental arch between the two.

The most remarkable of these now existing is that known as Cormac’s Chapel, on the rock at Cashel (Woodcut No. 900), which was consecrated in the year 1134. It is a small building, 55 ft. long over all externally. The chancel is 12 ft. square internally, covered with an intersecting vault; the nave is 18 ft. by 29, and covered by a tunnel-vault with transverse ribs, very like those found in the South of France. Externally, as shown in the view, it has two square towers attached to it at the juncture of the nave and chancel, while the church itself is richly ornamented by a panelling of small arches.

In almost all cases the principal entrance to these churches is from the west, opposite to the altar. The chapel at Cashel is, however, an exception, since it has both a north and a south entrance. That on the north is the principal, and very richly ornamented. The same is the case at Ardmore, where the whole of the west end is taken up by a bas-relief rudely representing scenes from the Bible, and the entrance is on the north side of the nave. On these principal entrances all the resources of art were brought to bear, the windows generally being very small, and apparently never glazed. There is a doorway at Freshford in Kilkenny, and another at Aghadoe near Killarney, which for elegance of detail will bear comparison with anything in England or on the Continent of the same age.

One of the peculiarities of these churches is, that they were nearly all designed to have stone roofs, no wood being used in their construction. The annexed section (Woodcut No. 901) of the old church at Killaloe, belonging probably to the 10th century, will explain how this was generally managed. The nave was roofed with a tunnel-vault of the ordinary form; over this is a chamber formed by a pointed arch, and on the outside of these two, the roofing slabs were laid. Sometimes, instead of being continuous, the upper vault was cut into ribs, and the roof built up straight externally, with horizontal courses resting on these ribs. This mode of double roofing was, perhaps, a complication, and no improvement on that adopted in the South of France in the same age (Woodcuts Nos. 312, 319), but it enabled the Irish to make the roof steeper than could be effected with a single vault, and in so rainy a climate this may have been of the first importance.

The roof of the Cashel Chapel is of this double construction; so is the building called “St. Kevin’s Kitchen” at Glendalough (Woodcut No. 902), which apparently belongs to the 10th century. There is another very similar at Kells, and several others in various parts of Ireland, all displaying the same peculiarity.

Had the Irish been allowed to persevere in the elaboration of their own style, they would probably have applied this expedient to the roofing of larger buildings than they ever attempted, and might, in so doing, have avoided the greatest fault of Gothic architecture. Without more experience, it is impossible to pronounce to what extent the method might have been carried with safety, or to say whether the Irish double vault is a better constructive form than the single Romance pointed arch. It was certainly an improvement on the wooden roof of the true Gothic style, and its early abandonment is consequently much to be regretted.

ROUND TOWERS AND ORATORIES.

The round towers which accompany these ancient churches have long proved a stumbling-block to antiquaries, not only in Ireland but in this country; and more has been written about them, and more theories proposed to account for their peculiarities, than about any other objects of their class in Europe.

The controversy has been, to a considerable extent, set at rest by the late Mr. George Petrie.[440] He has proved beyond all cavil that the greater number of the towers now existing were built by Christians, and for Christian purposes, between the 5th and 13th centuries; and has shown that there is no reasonable ground for supposing the remainder to be either of a different age or erected for different uses.

Another step has recently been made by Mr. Hodder Westropp, who has pointed out their similarity with the Fanal de Cimetière so frequently found in France,[441] and even in Austria (Woodcut No. 765).

To any one who is familiar with the Eastern practice of lighting lamps at night in cemeteries or in the tombs of saints, this suggestion seems singularly plausible when coupled with the knowledge that the custom did prevail on the Continent in the Middle Ages. It is, however, far from being a complete explanation, since many of these towers have only one or two very small openings in their upper storey; and there is also the staggering fact that this use is not mentioned in any legendary or written account of them which has come down to our time. On the other hand, they are frequently described as bell-towers, and also as treasuries and places of refuge, and seem even better adapted to these purposes than to that of displaying lights.

That they may have been applied to all these purposes seems clear, but a knowledge of their use does not explain their origin; it only removes the difficulty a step farther back. No attempt has been made to show whence the Irish obtained this very remarkable form of tower, or why they persevered so long in its use, with peculiarities not found either in the contemporary churches or in any other of their buildings. No one imagines it to have been invented by the rude builders of the early churches, and no theory yet proposed accounts for the perseverance of the Irish in its employment, at a time when the practice of all the other nations of Europe was so widely different. It must have been a sacred and time-honoured form somewhere, and with some people, previous to its current adoption in Ireland; but the place and the time at which it was so, still remain to be determined.[442]

Although, therefore, Mr. Petrie’s writings and recent investigations have considerably narrowed the grounds of the inquiry, they cannot be said to have set the question at rest, and anyone who has seen the towers must feel that there is still room for any amount of speculation regarding such peculiar monuments.

In nine cases out of ten they are placed unsymmetrically at some little distance from the churches to which they belong, and are generally of a different age and different style of masonry. Their openings, from the oldest to the most modern, generally have sloping jambs, which are very rare in the churches, being only found in the earliest examples. Their doorways are always at a height of 7, 10, or 13 ft. from the ground, while the church doors are, it need hardly be said, always on the ground level. But more than all this, there is sometimes an unfamiliar aspect in the detail of the towers which is not always observed in the churches. The latter may be rude, or may be highly finished, but they rarely have the strange and foreign appearance which the towers always present.

Notwithstanding this, the proof of their Christian origin is in most cases easy. Woodcut No. 902, for instance, shows a round tower placed upon what is, undoubtedly, a Christian chapel, and which must consequently be either coeval with the tower or more ancient. At Clonmacnoise (Woodcut No. 904) the masonry of the tower is bonded with the walls of the church, and evidently coeval therewith, the chancel arch being undoubtedly Christian round Gothic of the 10th or 11th century. At Kildare the doorway of the tower (Woodcut No. 905) is likewise of unquestionable Christian art, and an integral part of the design, though it may be somewhat earlier than the foregoing; and at Timahoe the doorway of the tower is richer and more elaborate, but at the same time of a style so closely resembling that of Cormac’s Chapel as to leave no doubt of their being nearly of the same age. The only remarkable difference is that the jambs of the doorway of the tower slope considerably inwards, while all those of the chapel are perfectly perpendicular. Another proof of their age is, that many of the doorways have Christian emblems carved in relief on their lintels, as in the example from the tower at Donoughmore (Woodcut No. 906), or that from Antrim (Woodcut No. 907), or on the round tower at Brechin in Scotland,— emblems which, from their position, and the fact of their being in relief, cannot have been added, and must therefore be considered as original. When we find that the towers which have not these indications differ in no other respect from those that have, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that they too are of Christian origin; the positive evidence of a few being sufficient to overbalance the mere absence of a proof in a far greater number.

Antiquaries have enumerated 118 of these monuments as still to be found in Ireland; of these some twenty are perfect, or nearly so, varying in height from about 60 ft. to 130 ft., which is the height of the imperfect one at Old Kilcullen. They all taper upwards towards the summit, and are generally crowned with a conical cap like that at Clonmacnoise (Woodcut No. 904), though not often constructed in the herring-bone masonry there shown.

The tower of Devenish (Woodcut No. 908) may be taken as a typical example of the class. It is 82 ft. high, with a conical cap, and its doorway and windows are all of the form and in the position most usually found in monuments of this class. The conical cap is sometimes omitted, and its place supplied by a battlemented crown, though this is probably of later date; this is the case at Kildare, and also at Kilree (Woodcut No. 909). In one instance, and, I believe, one only, the base of the tower is octagonal. This is found at Kinneh, county Cork (Woodcut No. 910).[443]

One of the most beautiful and most perfect is that of Ardmore (Woodcut No. 911). It is of excellent ashlar masonry throughout, and is divided externally into 4 storeys by string-courses, which do not, however, mark the position of the floors inside. Its mouldings and details lead to the presumption that it is nearly coeval with Cormac’s Chapel, Cashel, and that consequently it must belong to the 12th century. It stands within the precincts of the rude old church mentioned above, and when explored not long ago the skeletons of two persons were found below its foundations, placed in such a manner as to lead to the inevitable conclusion that it was a place of Christian burial before the foundations of the tower were laid. [Illustration: 910. Tower, Kinneh, Cork.]

[Illustration: 911. Tower, Ardmore.] The floors which divide the tower into storeys are generally of wood, but sometimes of masonry, constructed as that at Kinneh (Woodcut No. 912). There are no stairs, but ladders are used to pass from one storey to the next.

Several instances of doorways have been quoted above. Of these no two are exactly alike, though all show the same general characteristics. That at Monasterboice, for instance (Woodcut No. 913), has an arch cut out of a horizontal lintel extending the whole way across, while that at Kilcullen (Woodcut No. 914) has the arch cut out of two stones, which is by far the most usual arrangement.

The windows are generally headed with two stones meeting at the apex, as in the three examples given below (Woodcut No. 915); but sometimes the window-head is either a flat lintel or a single stone cut into the form of an arch, as at Glendalough (Woodcut No. 916).

Though these remarkable towers are of extremely various forms, differing according to their age and locality, almost all exhibit that peculiar Cyclopean character of masonry which has led to such strange, though often plausible, speculations; for though neither their details, nor their masonry would excite remark if found at Norba in Latium or at Æniade in Acarnaniæ, yet here they stand alone and exceptional to everything around them.

Whatever may have been their origin, there can be no doubt as to the uses to which they were applied by the Christians—they were symbols of power and marks of dignity. They were also bell-towers, and lamps were possibly lighted in them in honour of the dead. But perhaps their most important use was that of keeps or fortalices; to which, in troubled times, the church plate and other articles of value could be removed and kept in safety till danger was past.

As architectural objects these towers are singularly pleasing. Their outline is always graceful, and the simplicity of their form is such as to give the utmost value to their dimensions. Few can believe that they are hardly larger than the pillars of many porticoes, and that it is to their design alone that they owe that appearance of size they all present. No one can see them without admiring them for these qualities, though the peculiar fascination they possess is no doubt in great measure owing to the mystery which still hangs round their origin, and to the association of locality. In almost every instance the tower stands alone and erect beside the ruins of an ancient but deserted church, and among the mouldering tombstones of a neglected or desecrated graveyard. In a town or amid the busy haunts of men, they would lose half their charm; situated as they are, they are among the most interesting of the antiquities of Europe.

There is still another class of antiquities in Ireland, older perhaps than even these round towers, and certainly older than the churches to which the towers are attached. These are the circular domical dwellings found in the west of the island, constructed of loose stones in horizontal layers approaching one another till they meet at the apex, like the old so-called treasuries of the Greeks, or the domes of the Jains in India. Numbers of these are still to be found in remote parts, sometimes accompanied by what are properly called oratories, like that shown in Woodcut No. 917, taken from Mr. Petrie’s valuable work. It is certainly one of the oldest places of worship in these islands, belonging probably to the age of St. Patrick; and it is also one of the smallest, being externally only 23 ft. by 10. It shows the strange Cyclopean masonry, the sloping doorway, the stone roof, and many of the elements of the subsequent style, and it is at the same time so like some things in Lycia and in India, and so unlike almost any other building in Europe, that it is not to be wondered at that antiquaries should indulge in somewhat speculative fancies in endeavouring to account for such remarkable phenomena.

Ireland is not rich in specimens of domestic architecture of the Middle Ages, but such fragments as do exist show marked variations from the contemporary style in England. Such battlements, for instance, as those which crown the tower of Jerpoint Abbey are identical with many found in the North of Italy, but very unlike anything either in England or Scotland, and give a foreign look to the whole building which is very striking.

The same may be said of the next example (Woodcut No. 919) from a house in Galway. Its architecture might be Spanish, but its ornamental details look like a reminiscence of the entwined decoration of a Runic cross, and reminds one more of the interlaced work of the Byzantine style than of any other.[444]

Ballyromney Court, illustrated in Woodcut No. 920, is perhaps the most usual form of an Irish mansion in the last age of Gothic. After its time the Elizabethan became the prevalent style. All individuality vanished with the more complete subjection of the country in the reign of that queen. This is, no doubt, to be regretted; but, as before remarked, Ireland is interesting, not for her Gothic so much as for her Celtic antiquities, the epoch of which closed as nearly as may be with the English conquest in 1169.

I. INTRODUCTORY

SPAIN.

Introduction

CHRONOLOGY.

DATES.

Gothic Conquest—Athulf A.D. 411 Moorish conquest 711 Kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon established, about 760 Sancho I., King of Castille 1005 Alphonso VI. unites all Northern Spain into one kingdom 1072 Henry de Besançon—foundation of kingdom of Portugal 1095 Alphonso III.—conquest of Toledo 1085 Conquest of Cordova 1226 Conquest of Valencia 1238 Conquest of Seville and Murcia 1243 Ferdinand el Santo died 1252 Alonso el Sabio 1252-1284 Pedro the Cruel 1350-1369 Ferdinand and Isabella 1474-1516 Conquest of Granada 1492

SPAIN is one of those countries regarding the architecture of which it is almost as difficult to write anything consecutive as regarding that of Scotland. This does not arise from the paucity of examples nor from their not having been examined and described, but from the same cause as was insisted upon in speaking of Scotch art, that the style was not indigenous, but borrowed from other nations, and consequently practised far more capriciously than if it had been elaborated by the Spaniards themselves.

In the very early ages of their architectural history we do find the inhabitants of the Peninsula making rude attempts to provide themselves with churches. These, however, were so unsuited for their purposes that so soon as returning prosperity put the Spaniards in a position to erect larger edifices, they at once fell into the arms of the French architects, who had advanced far beyond them in the adaptation of classical materials to Christian purposes. When tired of the French styles, they enlisted the Germans to assist them in supplying their wants, and Italy also contributed her influence, though less directly than the other two. In the mean time the Moors were more steadily elaborating their very ornate but rather flimsy style of art in the southern part of the Peninsula, and occasionally contributed workmen and ideas whose influence may be traced almost to the foot of the Pyrenees. When all this passed away with the Middle Ages, they borrowed the Renaissance style of the Italians, but used its Doric and Corinthian details more literally and with less adaptation, than any other nation. With these classical materials they erected churches which were larger and more gorgeous than those of the previous styles, and admired them with the same unreasoning devotion they had bestowed on their predecessors.

So far as we at present know, this peculiarity is unique in the history of architecture. Some nations are content to worship in barns, or to dispense with temples altogether. It is not, therefore, surprising that they should have no architecture, or should throw it aside as the Scotch did the moment they could shake off its trammels. But the Spaniards loved art. They delighted in the display of architectural magnificence, and indulged in pomp and ceremonial observances beyond any other people on the Continent.

The singularity is, that though endowed with the love of architecture, and an intense desire to possess its products, nature seems to have denied to the Spaniard the inventive faculty necessary to enable him to supply himself with the productions so indispensable to his intellectual nature. We can perfectly understand how, among so Teutonic a people as the Scotch, architecture should be found planted in an uncongenial soil and perish with the first blast of winter; but what seems unique is that, planted where both the soil and climate seem so thoroughly congenial as they do in Spain, it should still remain exotic and refuse to be acclimatised.

If we knew who the Spaniards were we might be able to explain these phenomena, but we know so little of the ethnography of Spain that at present this source of information is not available. The term “Iberian” hardly conveys a distinct idea to the mind. The first impulse is to say they must have been Turanian; but, if so, where are their tombs? Few tumuli or rude-stone monuments exist in Spain, and fewer traces of sepulchral rites or ancestral worship, and these have been so imperfectly described that it is difficult to reason regarding them, but unless they do exist we are safe in asserting that no Turanian people lived in historic times in Spain. From history we know that the Phœnicians occupied the coast-line at least all round the southern part of the Peninsula, and their settlements probably penetrated some way into the interior. The facility with which the Moors conquered and colonised the country, is in itself sufficient to prove that a people of cognate race had occupied the land long before they came there; but this hardly helps us, for neither the Phœnicians nor any of the Semitic races were ever builders, and we look in vain in Spain or at Carthage, or at Tyre or Sidon, for anything to tell us what their architecture may have been. The Goths who invaded Spain in the beginning of the 5th century must have been of Teutonic race, Aryans pur sang, for they have not left a building or a tradition of one, and they therefore can hardly have influenced the style of their successors in the Peninsula. Even the Moors were scarcely an architectural people in the proper sense of the term. Their mosques were, so far as we know them, made up of fragments of classical temples arranged without art or design. Their palaces were ornamented with plaster work of the most admired complexity of design, coloured with the most exquisite harmony; but all this was the work of the ornamentalist, hardly of the architect. It was perfectly suited to the wants of an elegant and refined Oriental race, but most ill adapted to the wants of a hardy race of mountaineers struggling for freedom against the invaders of their birthright. The Celtic element must have been the one wanting in this “olla podrida” of nations to fuse the whole together, and to give the arts that impulse which in Spain was always wanting. All the other elements they seem to have possessed, but the absence of this single one prevented them from attaining that unity which would enable us to follow their story with the same interest which we feel in tracing the development of the arts in France or England. Notwithstanding this, however, it must be confessed that the result in Spain is frequently grand, and even gorgeous, though never quite satisfactory.

The periods of Gothic architecture in Spain coincide in age very nearly with those in this country; far more nearly than with France or Italy, or any other nation. Before the era of the Cid (1066-1099), which was coincident with that of William the Conqueror, there existed a style similar in importance and character to our Saxon style. This the Spaniards call “obras de los Godos,” and the term may be practically correct, but it would confuse our nomenclature to call it the “Gothic” of Spain. “Asturian” or “Catalonian” might nearly describe it, but for the present some such indefinite description as “Early Spanish” must suffice.

In the latter half of the 11th century it was overwhelmed, as in this country, by a wholesale importation of French designs. These continued to be employed, as if no Pyrenees existed for about a century, with the round arch in all the decorative features, but with an occasional tendency to employ the pointed arch in construction.

By degrees this round-arched style grew into an early pointed Spanish, which, like our own lancet, is more national and more characteristic than any other phase of the art, and, like it, seems to have been more cherished and for a longer time. In the beginning of the 13th century a new set of French patterns were introduced; but while French cathedrals with geometric tracery were being erected at Toledo, Burgos, and Leon, in the provinces they continued to adhere to the simpler and more solid forms of the earlier style.

During the 14th century the French style reigned supreme, with only a slight touch of local feeling and a slight infusion of Moorish details in parts, till in the 15th it broke away from its prototype into a style half German, half Spanish, with all the masonic cleverness so fatal to the style in Southern Germany, and more than German exuberance of detail, and complexity of vaulting expedients. With these the style continued to be used for churches as late as in England, and long after the classical styles had become universal in Italy and fashionable in France.

The Gothic style was not entirely disused in Spain till after the middle of the 16th century, but there its history ends, no attempt at a Gothic revival having yet been perpetrated among that inartistic race. It may come, however; but they would adopt Mexican or Chinese with equal readiness, if either of these styles would provide them with places of worship as gorgeous and as suited to their purposes as those they now possess.[445]

II. CONTENTS

Romanesque: Churches at Naranco, Roda, and Leon—Early Spanish Gothic: Churches at Santiago, Zamora, Toro, Avila, Salamanca, and Tarragona— Middle Pointed style: Churches at Toledo, Burgos, Leon, Barcelona, Manresa, Gerona, Seville—Late Gothic style: Churches at Segovia, Villena—Moresco style: Churches at Toledo, Ilescas, and Saragoza.

EARLY SPANISH ROMANESQUE.

AS might be expected from what we know of the history of Spain, the only specimens of this style which are known to exist in the country are to be found in the Asturias or in the recesses of that mountain range which extends from Corunna to Barcelona. It was in these regions alone that the Spanish Christians found refuge during the supremacy of the Moslems in the Peninsula, and were free to exercise their religious forms without molestation.

Four or five examples of the style have been described in sufficient detail to enable us to see what its leading features were. The earliest appears to be that of Santa Maria de Naranco, near Oviedo, said to be erected A.D. 848.[446] Another is San Miguel de Lino, which appears to be nearly as old. A third, San Salvador de Val de Dios,[447] is less important than the other two, though peculiar, more like an Irish or French oratory than the others. A fourth is Santa Cristina de Lino.[448] San Pablo, Barcelona,[449] may be of about the same age as these; and no doubt there are many others which have escaped notice from their insignificant dimensions.

Among these the most interesting is that first named, which stands at Naranco. As will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 923), it is unlike any contemporary example we are acquainted with. Practically it is a Roman tetrastyle amphiprostyle temple, if such terms can be applied to a Christian edifice; and, so far as we can understand, the altar was placed originally in one of the porticoes, and the worship was consequently probably external. The great difference seems to have been that there was a lateral entrance, and some of the communicants at least must have been accommodated in the interior. The ornamentation of the interior differs from classical models more than the plan. The columns are spirally fluted—a classical form—but the capitals are angular, and made to support arches. On the walls also there are curious medallions from which the vaulting-ribs spring, which seem peculiar to the style, since they are found repeated in S. Cristina.

The chief interest of this building, however, lies in the fact that it exhibits the Spaniards in the middle of the 9th century trying to adapt a Pagan temple to Christian purposes, as if the Romans had left no basilicas in the land, and as if the Goths had been unable to elaborate any kind of “ecclesia” in which they might assemble for worship. San Miguel and Santa Cristina are adapted for internal worship, but their form is very unlike those of any other church we are acquainted with. The church of San Pablo differs essentially from them, inasmuch as it is a complete Christian church in all its essentials. Though very small (80 ft. by 67), it is triapsal, with a central dome and all the arrangements of a church, but more like examples found in the East than anything usually known in the West. Its details still retain traces of classic feeling (Woodcut No. 925), though something not unlike the Jewish candlestick of the Temple is mixed up with ornaments of Christian origin.

It is difficult to distinguish between the buildings existing in Catalonia and on the southern side of the Pyrenees, and those which prevailed in the southern Aquitanian province. The church at Roda, for instance (Woodcut No. 926), might as well have been found at Alet (Woodcuts Nos. 549, 550) or Elne (Woodcuts Nos. 560, 561). It presents a complete Gothic style, rich and elegant in its details, but the parts badly fused together, and not well proportioned either to each other or to the work they have to do. Still the combinations are so picturesque, and the details so elegant, that it is not without regret that we find the style of Alet and Roda passing away into something more mechanically perfect, but without their quasi-classical refinement.

Towards the other extremity of the architectural province we find in the Panteon of the church of San Isidoro at Leon (A.D. 1063) a contemporary example, exhibiting a marked difference of style. At the time when this and the church at Roda were erected, Catalonia belonged architecturally to Aquitaine, and Leon to Anjou, or some more completely Gothicised province of France. In consequence, we find the style at Leon much more complete in principle, but very much ruder in detail. The eastern province was in the hands of a Latin people; the inhabitants of the western must have been far more essentially Gothic in blood, and their style is strongly marked with the impress of their race.

EARLY SPANISH GOTHIC.

After three centuries of more or less complete supremacy over the whole of Spain with the exception of the northern mountain fastnesses, the tide of fortune at length turned against the Moors. During the course of the 11th century the Castilles and all to the north of them were freed for ever from their power. Their favourite capital, Toledo, fell into the hands of the Christians in 1085, and from that time the Christians had nothing to fear from the Moors, but on the contrary had the prospect of recovering the whole of their country from their grasp. It was consequently a period of great and legitimate exultation, greater than that which followed the fall of the last stronghold of the infidels before the conquering arms of Ferdinand and Isabella (A.D. 1492)—an event that ended the drama of the Middle Ages in Spain, which the conquest of Toledo had commenced. It is between these two events that the history of Gothic art in Spain is practically included.

For present purposes it may suffice to divide this history into three great chapters.

1. Early Spanish Gothic, commencing about 1060, and lasting for two centuries. A plain and simple, but bold and effective style, first borrowed from the French, but latterly assuming a local character. Round-arched when first introduced, but adopting the pointed form in its later development, though still retaining the rounded form in many of its details till a very late period of the style.

2. Middle or perfect Pointed Gothic, introduced from France about the year 1220, when Amiens and Salisbury were founded; and used in the plans of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon. It consequently overlaps the other to some extent, though its actual development as we now see it (except in plans) must probably date from the latter part of the 13th century. It may be said to have lasted for more than 200 years, though it is extremely difficult to draw a line between it and the

3rd period, or Late Gothic style, the duration of which was probably hardly more than one century. The cathedral at Salamanca was founded 1513, and that at Segovia 1525; and these are the two typical examples of the style, which in minor examples continued to be practised till nearly the end of the 16th century, but latterly with a considerable admixture of Renaissance detail.

One of the earliest examples of a complete cathedral in Spain is that of Compostella, commenced in 1078, and carried on vigorously from the foundation. As will be seen by the plan, it is a complete French cathedral in every respect, very nearly identical with that of St. Sernin at Toulouse (Woodcut No. 572), possessing only three aisles instead of five in the nave, though otherwise very similar to it in arrangement and general dimensions.

Its internal structure is also that of the French cathedral, and forms an instructive point of comparison with our English examples of the same age. Up to the string-course above the triforium the Spanish, French, and English examples are much alike, except that the section of the piers in England is nearly double that of the others. Above this, at Toulouse and Compostella, there is a bold tunnel-vault with transverse ribs; at Ely, Norwich and Peterborough a clerestory with a flat wooden roof. These differences in the treatment of the upper part no doubt arose to some extent from the difference of latitude, sufficient light being attainable in the South without a clerestory, though the gloom of such a design could never be tolerated in Normandy, and much less in England.

What is most striking, however, at Compostella is the completeness of the style. The piers are not only judiciously proportioned to the work they have to perform, but are as perfect in their details as any of the contemporary churches in Auvergne; and though in what may be called a Doric style, this church is as complete in itself as any of the florid Corinthian Gothics that succeeded it.

The same may be said of the church of San Isidoro at Leon, which, though probably somewhat later—the church seems to have been completed about 1149—presents the same simple style in the same degree of well-understood completeness, all the lines running through without confusion, and every part well proportioned to the other. The foliation of the transept arch may be a peculiarity borrowed from the Moors, but, as used here, it is simple and appropriate, and perhaps better than a roll moulding, which would have been the mode of treatment on this side of the Pyrenees.

The interior of Zamora Cathedral, which seems to have been erected about the year 1174, though wholly in the pointed-arch style, is as plain and as little ornamented as that last described. Even the interior of the dome is plain when compared with its exterior, which is varied in outline and rich in decoration, like most of those of that age in Spain. As in the façade, the round arch is employed in the cimborio almost to the exclusion of the pointed arch as a decorative feature, though in the lower part of the façade and under the dome all the arches are pointed.

It is possible that these interiors, which now look so plain, were, or were intended to be, plastered and painted; though, had the intention been carried out, it is hardly probable but that traces of this mode of decoration would have remained to this day, which does not seem to be the case. Still it is difficult to understand why they should have designed a façade so rich as that of Zamora Cathedral (Woodcut No. 931), if it were to lead to an interior infinitely plainer than the exterior would lead one to expect. In all the countries of Europe during the Romanesque period the external doorways were the features on which the architects lavished all their art, and Spain was certainly not behind the others in this respect. That at Zamora is excelled in richness by that at Toro (Woodcut No. 932), though the rest of the façade is not so well worked up to its key-note as in the last example. Among a hundred, one of those at Lérida (Woodcut No. 933), borrowed from Mr. Street’s work, will illustrate their beauty, and seems to force on us the conviction that so much labour would not have been bestowed on them if they were not intended to herald a greater richness within.

In this last example, the doorway has been covered by a porch of 14th or 15th century work; but occasionally the Spaniards seem to have attempted a porch on the scale of Peterborough, as in the church of San Vincente at Avila (Woodcut No. 934). In this instance we have only one arch between two flanking towers; but, though limited in extent, it forms a very noble feature, and gives a dignity to the entrance, too often wanting in Gothic design. Its date is uncertain—probably the end of the 12th century—but, strange as it may appear, the richly carved doorway within, though round-arched, seems to be an insertion either of the same age, or subsequent to the pointed-arch architecture which surrounds it.

Beautiful as are these details, the great feature of the Early Spanish style is the cimborio, or dome, which generally occurs at the intersection of the nave with the transepts. Something very similar is to be found in France, especially in Auvergne and Anjou; but the Spaniards seized upon it with avidity, and worked it out more completely than any other nation; and with their wide naves it afterwards assumed an importance almost equal to the octagon at Ely. One of the most perfect examples in the early style is that which crowns the old cathedral at Salamanca (Woodcut No. 935), and dates about 1200. As will be observed from the view of the exterior, every detail belongs to the round-arched style, and in France would certainly be quoted as belonging to that date, or earlier; but when we turn to the interior (Woodcut No. 936), we find that the whole substructure is of pointed architecture. True it is the old simple Early Spanish style, yet still such as rather to upset our ideas of architectural chronology in this respect. The internal diameter of the dome is only 28 ft.; yet it is a most effective feature both internally and externally, and gives great dignity to what otherwise would be a very plain building.

Without going beyond the limits of the style, the dome at Tarragona (Woodcut No. 938) illustrates the form usually taken by Gothic domes when resting on square bases. There is a little awkwardness in the form of the pendentives, which do not fit the main arches below them, though at that age the Spaniards might have learned from the Saracens how to manage this feature. At Salamanca the mode in which the square base was worked up into a circle was by pendentives of Byzantine form, the courses of masonry simply projecting beyond one another till the transition was effected, but without that accentuation which was thought so essential in Gothic art. Above the pendentives, however, at Tarragona, the form of the dome is perfect. The windows are alternately of three and four lights, and the whole is fitted together with exquisite propriety and taste.

Although borrowing their style in the first instance immediately from the French, the Spaniards developed it with such a variety of plans and details, as might have made it a style of their own but for the fresh importation of French designs in the beginning of the 13th century. Before these came in, however, they had very frequently in their churches adopted a form of external portico which was singularly suited to the climate and produced very original and pleasing effects. In the annexed plan of St. Millan at Segovia (Woodcut No. 937), they form fourth and fifth aisles, opening externally instead of internally; these, with the windows over them and the shadow they afford, break up the monotony of the sides of the church most pleasingly.[450] Sometimes the aisles are carried round the church, so as to form a portico at the west end as well as at the sides. Sometimes they are on one side or the other as the situation demands; but wherever used they are always pleasing and appropriate.

The round form of church does not seem ever to have been a favourite in Spain. There are some examples, it is true, but they seem, like that at Segovia (Woodcut No. 939), to have been built by the Templars in imitation of the church at Jerusalem, and used by them, and them only. The idea of a circular ceremonial church attached to a rectangular “ecclesia,” does not appear to have entered into Spanish arrangements. As before remarked, the sepulchres of the original people of Spain do not seem to have been sufficiently important to lead to any considerable development of this form in the Christian times.

MIDDLE POINTED SPANISH STYLE.

While the early style described in the last chapter was gradually working itself into something original and national, its course was turned aside by a fresh importation of French designs in the beginning of the 13th century. Before the Germans had made up their minds by building the Cathedral of Cologne to surpass the grandest designs of the French architects, the Spaniards had already planned a cathedral on a scale larger than any attempted even in France. The great church at Toledo was commenced in 1227, seven years after Amiens and Salisbury cathedrals had been determined upon. The plan is certainly of that date; the present superstructure may rather be taken as representing the style of the end of the 13th century, though it does not seem to be known when the church was first consecrated.

The church which Toledo Cathedral most resembles in that plan is at Bourges (Woodcut No. 640). The length is about the same, but the French example is only 130 ft. in width across the five aisles, while the Spanish church is 178 ft., so that its area is considerably in excess. It is not easy to say what the area of Toledo Cathedral really was, as we cannot quite determine which of the excrescences belong to the original design; but we shall not probably be far wrong in estimating it as under 75,000 sq. ft. It is less therefore than Seville, Milan, or Cologne. It covers rather more ground than York Cathedral, but considerably exceeds Chartres (68,000 sq. ft.), or any of the French cathedrals.

The church at Toledo possesses the same defect in plan that we remarked on in describing that at Cologne: it is too short for its other dimensions. When the French architect at Bourges found himself in that difficulty he omitted the transepts, and so, to a great extent, restored the appearance of length. The architect at Toledo has not projected his transepts to the same extent as at Cologne, but they are still sufficiently prominent internally to make the church look short; but, on the other hand, by keeping his vault low, he has done much to restore the harmony of his design; and instead of the 150 ft. of Cologne, or the 125 of Bourges, even with his greater lateral extension, the height of the central vault is little over 100 ft. (105?). The next aisle is 60, the outer 35,—a proportion certainly more pleasing than Bourges, or any other five-aisled cathedral. So thoroughly French is the design, that there is no attempt at a cimborio or dome of any sort at the intersection of the nave and transepts; but, on the other hand, the arrangement of the choir is essentially Spanish, and the screen surrounding it among the most gorgeous in Spain, and one of the most beautiful parts of the cathedral.

The origin of the Spanish arrangement of the choir will be understood by referring to the plan of San Clemente at Rome (Woodcut No. 395). The higher clergy were in the early days of the Church accommodated on the bema in the presbytery. The singers, readers, &c., were in an enclosed choir in the nave. The place for the laity was around the choir outside. So long as the enclosing wall of the choir was kept as low as it was at Rome (about 3 ft.), this arrangement was unobjectionable: but when it came to be used as in Spain, it was singularly destructive of internal effect. In France the stalls of the clergy were in the choir beyond the transept, and all to the eastward of the intersection was reserved for them, the nave being wholly appropriated to the laity. This was an intelligible and artistic arrangement of the space; but in Spain the stalls of the clergy were projected into the nave, blocking up the perspective in every direction, and destroying its usefulness as a congregational space, where the laity could assemble or be addressed by the bishop or clergy. Worse than this, it separated the clergy from the high altar and Capilla Mayor, in which it was situated, so that a railed gangway had to be kept open to allow them to pass to and fro.[451] When the Spaniards determined that this was the proper liturgical arrangement for a church, had they been an artistic people they would have invented an appropriate shell to contain it; but to put such an arrangement into a French church was a mistake that nothing could redeem. Even the elaborate richness of the exterior of the choir at Toledo fails to reconcile us to it, though it is perhaps the richest specimen of its class in Europe, and betraying in certain parts of its ornamentation the influence of Moorish taste which still lingered in the soil in spite of persecution and every attempt to eradicate it.

The external appearance of this church is very much less beautiful than that of the interior. It is, however, so encumbered, that a good view of it can hardly be obtained, and what is seen has been so much altered as to have lost its original character. The north-western tower, in granite, of the façade is fine, though late (1428-1479) and hardly worthy of so grand a building. Its companion was terminated with an Italian dome in the last century, and both in height and design is quite incongruous with the rest.

If at Toledo we find a noble interior encased in an indifferent husk, the contrary is the case at Burgos. Although very much smaller, being only originally designed to be 90 ft. wide by about 310 ft. long, and all its dimensions reduced in proportion, still externally it is as picturesque and effective a design as can be found anywhere in Europe. The western façade (1442) is essentially a German design, originally consisting of three portals deeply recessed and richly sculptured, and still crowned with two spires of open work, and is exquisitely proportioned to the size of the building, though its details are open to criticism. It is well supported by the cimborio or dome at the intersection, though this is even later, having been erected to replace the old dome which fell in 1539, and seems not to have been completed till 1567. Beyond this again, to the extreme east, rises the chapel of the Connestabile, erected about 1487, and though this also is impure in detail, it is beautiful in outline, and groups pleasingly with the other features of the design. The effect of the interior is very much injured by the four great masses of masonry which were introduced as piers to support the cimborio when it was rebuilt; and which, with the “Coro” thrust as usual into the nave, greatly destroy the appearance of the building. On the other hand, the richness of the details of the Capilla Mayor and of the Connestabile chapel, together with the variety and elaborateness of the other chapels, make up an interior so poetic and so picturesque, that the critic is disarmed, and must admit that Burgos merits the title of a romance in stone if any church does.

Leon is a third 13th-century church, the design of which seems certainly to have been imported from France. The exact date of its commencement is not known. Mr. Street thinks it about 1250-58, which seems very probable, and it may have been practically completed about 1305. Its dimensions are not unlike those of Burgos; but it has been very much less altered, and may be taken as the type of a 3-aisled basilica as imported into Spain in the 13th century. In the arrangement of the pier-arches (Woodcut No. 945) it very much resembles Beauvais, and in the extent of the clerestory it is more essentially French than almost any other church in Spain. Burgos, on the contrary (Woodcut No. 946), possesses features not to be found in France, such as the round-arched head to the triforium, and the rounded form of the clerestory intersecting vault. The tracery of the clerestory windows is also peculiar in such a situation, and altogether there is a Southern feeling about the whole design which we miss at Leon.

Oviedo is another example of the same class, and generally it may be said that the Spanish cathedrals which were commenced in the first half of the 13th century are all more or less distinctly French in design. But the Spaniards were again working themselves free from their masters, and towards the end of the century and during the next erected a class of churches with wide naves and widely spaced piers which were very unlike anything to be found in France; and, if they cannot be considered as original, their affinities must be looked for rather in Italy than to the north of the Pyrenees.

Among these churches the most remarkable group is that still existing in Barcelona. That city seems during the 14th century to have had a season of great prosperity, when the cathedral and other churches were rebuilt on a scale of great magnificence, and with special reference to the convenience of the laity as contradistinguished from the liturgical wants of the clergy. The cathedral seems to have been commenced about 1298, and been tolerably far advanced in 1329. Its internal length is about 300 ft., its width, exclusive of the side chapels, about 85 ft., so that it is not a large church, but is remarkable for the lightness and wide spacing of its piers, and generally for the elegance of its details. Looked at from a purely æsthetic point of view, it has neither the grandeur nor solemnity of the older and more solid style; but gloom and grandeur are not necessary accompaniments of a city church, and where cheerfulness combined with elegance are considered appropriate, few examples more fully meet these conditions than this church. Considerable effect is obtained by the buttresses of the nave being originally designed, as was so frequently the case in the South of France, as internal features, and the windows being small are not seen in the general perspective. This supplies the requisite appearance of strength, in which the central piers are rather deficient, while the repetition of the side chapels, two in each bay, gives that perspective which the wide spacing of the central supports fails to supply. Altogether the design seems very carefully studied, and the result is more satisfactory than in most Spanish churches.

The system which was introduced in this cathedral was carried a step further in Sta. Maria del Mar (1328-1383). There the central vault was made square and quadripartite, as was frequently the case in Italy; the vault of the aisles oblong, on exactly the contrary principle to that adopted in the North of Europe. Again, however, the equilibrium is to some extent restored by each bay containing three side chapels, though the effect would have been better if these had been deeper and more important. Such a design is inappropriate when a choir is necessarily introduced to separate the clergy from the laity, but for a congregational church it is superior to most other designs of the Middle Ages.

A third church, Sta. Maria del Pi (1329-1353), carries this principle one step farther—this time, however, evidently borrowed from such churches as those of Alby (Woodcut No. 568) or Toulouse (Woodcut No. 569). It has been carried out with the utmost simplicity. The clear internal length is nearly 200 ft., the clear width upwards of 50 ft. Such a church would easily contain 2000 worshippers seated where all could see and hear all that was going on. Though it may be deficient in some of those poetic elements which charm so much in our Northern churches, there is a simple grandeur in the design which compensates for the loss.

The church (Woodcut No. 950) at Manresa is very similar in design so Sta. Maria del Mar, only carried a step farther, and in the wrong direction. From wall to wall it is 100 ft. wide, and 200 ft. long, and is thus so comparatively short that we miss the perspective which is the great charm in Northern cathedrals. Still if it were not that the central aisle is blocked up by the choir, as is usual in Spain, it would be a very noble church. Its central aisle, which possesses a clear width of 56 ft., would be a very noble place of assembly for a congregation. There is, at the same time, a simplicity and propriety about its details and the arrangement of its apse which have seldom been surpassed, while at the same time, they are characteristic of Spain.

The Spaniards having once grasped the idea of these spacious vaulted halls, and found out the means of constructing them, they carried the principle far beyond anything on this side of the Pyrenees. Their most successful effort in this direction was at Gerona. The choir of a church of the usual French pattern had been erected there in the beginning of the 14th century (1312?), but it had remained unfinished till 1416, when after much consultation it was determined to carry out the design of a certain Guillermo Boffiy, who proposed to add a nave without pillars, of the same breadth as the centre and side aisles of the choir. As will be seen from the plan, it consists of a hall practically of two squares, the clear width being 73 ft., the length 160 ft. Considering that 40 ft. is about the normal width of the naves of the largest French and English cathedrals, such a span is gigantic, though with the internal buttresses of the side chapels it presented no great difficulty of construction. Indeed, when we remember that in their vaulted halls the Romans had adopted 83 ft. (vol. i. p. 331) as the normal span of their intersecting vaults, it is not its novelty or mechanical boldness that should surprise us so much as its appropriateness for Christian worship. As might be expected, there is a little awkwardness in the junction of the two designs. It is easy to see what an opportunity the eastern end of the great nave offered to a true artist, and how a Northern architect would have availed himself of it, and by canopies and statues or painting have made it a masterpiece of decoration. It is too much to expect this in Spain; but it probably was originally painted, or at least intended to be. Otherwise it is almost impossible to understand the absence of string-courses or architectural framings throughout. But, even as it stands, the church at Gerona must be looked upon as one of the most successful designs of the Middle Ages, and one of the most original in Spain.

The cimborio had somewhat gone out of fashion in the North of Spain in the 15th century, and with these very wide naves had become not only difficult to construct, but somewhat inappropriate.

Still there are examples, such as that at Valencia (Woodcut No. 953), which, externally at least, are very noble objects. The church at Valencia seems to have been erected in 1404, and probably it was originally intended to have added a spire or external roof of some sort to the octagon. So completed, the tower would have been a noble central feature to any church, though hardly so perfect in design as that of the old cathedral at Salamanca (Woodcut No. 935).

Of about the same age (1401) is the great cathedral of Seville, the largest and in some respects the grandest of Mediæval cathedrals. Its plan can, however, hardly be said to be Gothic, as it was erected on the site of the Mosque which was cleared away to make room for it, and was of exactly the same dimensions in plan (Woodcut No. 954). It consists of a parallelogram 415 ft. by 298, exclusive of the sepulchral chapel behind the altar, which is a cinque-cento addition. It thus covers about 124,000 sq. ft. of ground, more than a third in excess of the cathedral at Toledo (75,000), and more than Milan (108,000 sq. ft.), which, next to Seville, is the largest of Mediæval creations. The central aisle is 56 ft. wide from centre to centre of the columns, the side-aisles 40 ft., in the exact proportion of 7 to 10, or of the side of an isosceles right-angled triangle to the hypothenuse. As will be explained hereafter, this is the proportion arrived at from the introduction of an octagonal dome in the centre of the building, though it may have arisen here from the existence of an octagonal court in the centre of the mosque; but, be that as it may, it is a far more agreeable proportion than the double dimensions generally adopted by Gothic architects, and probably the most pleasing that has yet been hit upon. Unfortunately no section of the cathedral has been published, but the nave is said to be 145 ft. in height, and the side-aisles seem to be in as pleasing proportion to it in height as they are in plan, so that, though different from the usually received notions of what a Gothic design should be, it is an invention that should well bear to have been further followed out. Perhaps it might have been, had it not come so late. The cathedral was only finished about 1520, when St. Peter’s at Rome was well advanced.

The architect of this noble building is not known, but he was probably a German acting under Spanish inspiration, as at Milan we find a German carrying out an Italian design with just that admixture of foreign feeling which seems to prevail at Seville. When, however, we consider what was done at Barcelona so shortly before, or at Segovia so soon afterwards, we need hardly be surprised if a Spanish architect really built this cathedral also. Those features which to us have a foreign aspect may really be peculiarities forced upon him by having to suit his church to the lines of a mosque, and there may be forms in Andalusian architecture derived from Moorish examples with which we are not so familiar as with those which the Northern provinces derived from France. But, be this as it may, Spain may well feel pride in possessing a cathedral which is certainly the largest of those of the Middle Ages, as well as far more original in design than Toledo or any that were built under French influence. These remarks apply only to the interior. Externally it never was completed, and those parts which are finished were erected so late in the style that their details are far from pleasing in form or constructively appropriate.

LATE SPANISH GOTHIC.

The last stage of Spanish Gothic was not less remarkable than those which preceded it, and perhaps more original. At the time when other Continental nations were turning their attention to the introduction of the classical styles, Spain still clung to the old traditions, and actually commenced Gothic cathedrals in the 16th century. A new cathedral was designed in the year 1513, for Salamanca, to supersede the old one; and another very similar both in dimensions and style was commenced at Segovia in 1523.[452] Both these churches are practically five-aisled, but as they have three free aisles and two ranges of chapels between the internal buttresses, making a total internal width of 160 ft., with an internal length of twice that dimension, no fault is to be found with their internal proportions. But their details want that purity and subordination so characteristic of the earlier styles.

Their great peculiarity, however, consists in the extreme richness and elaboration of their vaults. In this respect they more resemble St. Jacques, Liège (Woodcut No. 681), and some of the late German churches, than anything to be found nearer home. But, wherever derived from, the practice of thus ornamenting the vaults at this late date contrasts singularly with what was done in earlier stages of the style.

One of the defects of Spanish architecture, after the earliest examples in the round-arched forms, is the poverty of its vaults. Generally they are like those of the French; but owing to the vast extent they attained at Gerona, Manresa, and elsewhere, the one lean rib in the centre and the absence of any ridge-rib make themselves more painfully felt than even in the French examples. When in the 16th century the architects tried to obviate this defect, it was not done as in England by constructive lines representing the arches, but by waving curved lines spread capriciously over the vault, which was thus certainly enriched, but can hardly be said to have been adorned.

In one or two instances, the late Gothic architects aimed at the introduction of new principles, not perhaps in the best taste, but still so striking as to merit attention. In the church at Villena (1498-1511), for instance, all the columns are ornamented with spiral flutings so boldly executed as to be very effective; and as this spiral ornament is consistently carried throughout the design, and the parts are sufficiently massive not to look weakened in consequence, the whole design must be admitted to be both pleasing and original.

The exteriors of these 16th century churches have a much more modern look than their interiors. From the buttresses being internal, the external walls are perfectly flat, generally terminating upwards by a cornice more or less classical in design. The windows are frequently without tracery, and are ornamented with balconies, and Renaissance ornaments are often intermixed with those of Gothic form in a manner more picturesque than constructive. At times, however, they exhibit such a gorgeous exuberance of fancy that it is impossible to avoid admiring, though we feel at the same time that it would be heresy to the principles of correct criticism to say that such a style was legitimate.

Among the minor examples of the age, perhaps the most remarkable is the church or chapel of San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo, built by Ferdinand and Isabella as a sepulchral chapel for themselves, though not used for that purpose. It is thus the exact counterpart of our Henry VII.’s Chapel, and of the church at Brou in Bresse. As its founders were at the time of its erection among the richest and most prosperous sovereigns in Europe, all that wealth could do was lavished on its ornamentation. It is as rich as our example, and richer than the French one. But, on the whole, the palm must be awarded the English architect. There is more constructive skill, and the construction is better expressed, at Westminster, than either at Toledo or Brou; though it is difficult not to feel that the money in all these cases might have been better expended on a larger and purer style of art.

Some parts of the church of San Miguel at Xeres exceed even this in richness and elaborateness of ornament, and surpass anything found in Northern cathedrals, unless it be the tabernacle-work of some tombs, or the screens of some chapels. In these it is always applied to small and merely ornamental parts. In Spain it is frequently spread over a whole church, and thus, what in a mere subordinate detail would be beautiful, on such a scale becomes fatiguing, and is decidedly in very bad taste.

It would be tedious to attempt to enumerate or describe the other cathedrals of Spain, or the numerous conventual or collegiate churches, many of which are still in use, with their cloisters and conventual buildings nearly complete. In this respect Spain is nearly as rich as France; while she possesses, in proportion to her population, a larger number of important parochial churches than that country, though inferior in that respect to England. The laity seem during the Middle Ages to have been of more importance in the Spanish Church than they were north of the Pyrenees, and the tendency of the architecture therefore was to provide for their accommodation. If, however, any such feeling then existed, it was carefully stamped out by the Inquisition after the fall of Granada. It would be interesting, however, to trace it back, and try to ascertain the cause whence it arose. Was it that the Aryan blood of the Goths was then more prevalent, and that the Iberian race has since become more dominant? Whatever the cause, it is one of those problems on which architecture may hope to throw some light, and to which, consequently, it is most desirable that the attention of architects should be turned.

MORESCO STYLE.

While Gothic churches were being erected under French influence in the north and centre of Spain, another style was developing itself under Moorish influence in the south, which in the hands of a more artistic people than the Spaniards might have become as beautiful as any other in Europe. It failed, however, to attain anything like completeness, primarily because the Spaniards were incapable of elaborating any artistic forms, but also perhaps because the two races came to hate one another, and the dominant people to abhor whatever belonged to those they were so cruelly persecuting.

If we knew more of the ethnic relations of the Moors, who conquered Spain in the 8th century, we might perhaps be able to predicate whether it were possible for such dissimilar parents to produce a fertile hybrid. It seems certain, however, that the Moors did not belong to any Turanian race, or traces of their tombs would be found; but none such exist. Nor did they belong to any of the great building races, for during the whole of their sojourn in Spain they showed no constructive ability, no skill in arrangement of plans, and no desire for architectural magnificence. But they were a rich, luxurious, and refined people possessing an innate knowledge of colour and an exquisite perception of the beauty of form and detail. They were, in fact, among the most perfect ornamentalists we are acquainted with, but they were not architects. Had the inhabitants of Toledo from the 11th century been French, or any Celtic race, the combination of their constructive skill with the taste in detail of the Moors could hardly have failed to produce the happiest results. As it was, after a few feeble efforts the style died out, but not without leaving some very remarkable specimens of architectural art, though on a small scale. They were also only in perishable plaster, which, though well suited to the style of the Moors, is a material which no architectural people ever would have employed.

As might be expected, the principal examples of this style are to be found in or about Toledo, but specimens exist in almost every province of Spain up to the very roots of the Pyrenees, and its influence is often felt in the extreme richness of ornamentation into which the architects of Spain were often betrayed, even when expressing themselves in Gothic or Renaissance details.

Among the examples at Toledo the two best interiors seem to be the church of Sta. Maria la Bianca and that of Nuestra Senora del Transito, both originally built as synagogues, though afterwards appropriated to Christian purposes. The first is said to have been erected in the 12th century, and was appropriated by the Christians in 1405. As will be seen by the plan, it is an irregular quadrangle, about 87 ft. by 65 ft. in width across the centre, and divided into five aisles by octagonal piers supporting horse-shoe arches. Above these now runs what may be called a blind clerestory, though it appears as if light were originally admitted through piercings in it. The objects are so dissimilar that it is difficult to institute a very distinct comparison between the synagogue and a contemporary Gothic church of the same dimensions; but it may safely be said that if the Northern style is grander in conception, this is far more elegant in detail: the essential difference lying in the fact that the Gothic style always had, or aimed at having, a vault, and consequently forced the architects to work and think—the very difficulty of the task being thus the cause of its success. The Saracens in Spain, on the contrary, never attempted either a vault or a dome, but were always content with an easily constructed wooden roof, calling for no ingenuity to design, and no thought how to convert its mechanical exigences into artistic beauties. The Moorish architects could play with their style, and consequently produced fascinating elegances of detail; the Gothic architects, on the contrary, were forced to work like men, and their result appeals to our higher intellectual wants; though in doing so they frequently neglected the polish and lighter graces of style which are so pleasing in the semi-Asiatic art of the South of Spain.

The other synagogue—del Transito—we know was completed in 1366. It is merely a large room, of pleasing proportion, the walls of which are plain and solid up to about three-fourths of their height. Above this a clerestory admits the light in a manner singularly agreeable in a hot climate. The roof is of wood, of the form called Artesinado in Spain, from its being something in the form of an inverted trough—with coupled tie-beams across, so that, though elegant in detail it has no constructive merit, and the whole depends for its effect,[453] like all Moorish work in Spain, on its ornamental details.

All the churches we know of in this style date within the period comprised between the fall of Toledo (1085) and that of Granada (1492). During that time the Moors were still sufficiently powerful to be respected and their art tolerated. After their expulsion from their last stronghold, fear being removed, bigotry became triumphant, and persecution followed, not only of the people and their religion, but of everything that recalled either to remembrance.

It is possible that some larger and more important churches than those we now find were erected during this period in this style; but if so, they have perished. One of the largest at Toledo, San Bartolomeo, has an apse (Woodcut No. 959) little more than 30 ft. across over all, and others, such as Santa Fé, Santa Leocadia, San Eugenio, or Santa Isabel, are all smaller, St. Ursula alone being of about the same dimensions with St. Bartolomeo. The decoration of the apse of the latter will afford a fair idea of the style of detail adopted in these churches. For brick architecture it is singularly appropriate. It admits of more or less light, as may be required. It is crowned by a cornice of pleasing profile, and the whole is simpler and better than the many-buttressed and pinnacled apses of the Gothic architects.

A more picturesque example, though not so pure as that last quoted, is found in the little chapel of Humanejos in Estremadura (Woodcut No. 960). As will be observed from the woodcut, there is some 13th-century tracery in its windows, thus revealing its date as well as betraying its origin, and but for which it might almost be mistaken for an example of pure Saracenic architecture.

This is even more the case in a beautiful chapel in the monastery of the Huelgas, near Burgos, which, were it not for some Gothic foliage of the 14th century, introduced where it can hardly be observed, might easily pass for a fragment of the Alhambra. The same is true of many parts of the churches at Seville. That of La Feria, for instance, and the apse of the church of the Dominicans at Calatayud, are purely in this style, and most beautiful and elaborate specimens of their class.

Very pleasing examples of the adaptation of Moorish art to Christian purposes are to be found in various churches throughout Spain. That of St. Roman at Toledo[454] is a very pleasing and pure example of the style, but neither so picturesque nor so characteristic as that at Ilescas (Woodcut No. 961), not far from Madrid, which, though differing essentially from any Gothic steeple, is still in every part appropriately designed, and, notwithstanding its strongly marked horizontal lines, by no means deficient in that aspiring character so admirable in Gothic steeples.

Another remarkable example is the tower and roof of the church of St. Paul, Saragoza. It is so unlike anything else in Europe, that it might pass for a church in the Crimea or the steppes of Tartary. As if to add to its foreign aspect, the tiles of the roof are coloured and glazed, thus rendering the contrast with Gothic art stronger than even that presented in the details and forms of the architecture.

The Church of St. Thomé at Toledo has a tower so perfectly Moorish in all its details, that but for its form it might as well be classed among the specimens of Moorish as of Mozarabic architecture. Throughout Spain there are many of the same class, which were undoubtedly erected by the Christians. Both in this country and in Sicily it is never safe to assume that because the style of a building is Moorish, even purely so, the structure must belong to the time when the Moors possessed the country, or to a happy interval, if any such existed, when a more than usually tolerant reign permitted them to erect edifices for themselves under the rule of their Christian conquerors.

Sometimes we find Moorish details mixed up with those of Gothic architecture in a manner elsewhere unknown, as for instance in the doorway, in Woodcut No. 963, from the house of the Ablala at Valencia. The woodwork is of purely Moorish design, the stonework of the bad unconstructive Gothic of the late Spanish architects, altogether making up a combination more picturesque than beautiful, at least in an architectural point of view.

III. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE

CONTENTS.

Monastic Buildings—Municipal Buildings—Castles.

MONASTIC BUILDINGS.

AS already mentioned, to most of the great churches described above there were attached monastic establishments on a scale commensurate with them in dignity, and ornamented in an equal degree. Most of these, too, had chapter-houses, generally square vaulted apartments, not equal in originality or magnificence with those of England, but very superior to anything found in France. The most ornamental part of these is generally the screen of triple arches by which they open on the cloister. Internally they are now generally plain, but they may have been adorned with wooden stalls and furniture, which have since disappeared.

More important than these are the cloisters to which they were attached— the patio of the convent, which in such a climate as that of Spain was an indispensable adjunct, and much more appropriate than a covered arcade ever was or could be in our northern climate. The Spanish architects seem, in consequence, to have revelled in the designs of their cloisters, and from the simple arcade of Gerona (1117) to the exuberant caprice of San Juan de los Reyes, they form a series of examples completely illustrative of the progress of Spanish art: perhaps more so than even the churches to which they are attached. Some of the cloisters have octagonal projections with lavatories.

The favourite form of the earlier examples, like those in the South of France (Woodcut No. 559), is that of an open arcade supported on coupled columns, on the capitals of which the architects delighted to lavish all their powers of variety and design. That at the convent of the Huelgas (Woodcut No. 964) gives a fair idea of the mode in which they are carried out, and is certainly far more appropriate than the traceried arches of Northern examples, which, without glazing, are most unmeaning. During the 14th and 15th centuries the Spaniards adopted them, and some of the best specimens of their traceries are to be found in the cloister arcades. Having gone so far, however, they went on, and carried the idea to its legitimate conclusion by filling up the whole opening with a screen of pierced tracery. The most complete example of this style is that found at Tarazona in Aragon. The cloister itself is in brick, but not even plastered; the openings are filled with stone slabs pierced with the most varied and elegant Gothic tracery. It would seem a more reasonable plan to have used stone for the structure and terra-cotta for the openings; but as it is, the effect of the whole is extremely pleasing. It is, however, more like an Oriental than an European design, and reveals as clearly as the churches of Toledo the continued presence of the Moor in the land of Spain.

MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS.

Spain does not seem to have possessed, during the Middle Ages, any municipalities of sufficient importance to require buildings of an important or permanent character for their accommodation. There are, it is true, one or two Lonjas, or places for the assembly of merchants, which are of some magnificence. But these were erected on the very verge of the Renaissance, and betray all the feebleness of an expiring style. That at Valencia is, perhaps, the best example. Internally it has twisted fluted columns similar to those at Villena[455] (Woodcut No. 956). The two buildings are said to have been designed by the same architect, but the columns in this instance are much more attenuated than in the church. The exterior has at least the merit of expressing the internal arrangements. On one side of the central tower is the great hall, on the other the public rooms, and above these an upper storey with an open arcade. The last is a feature very frequently found in Spain, not only in Mediæval palaces, but in those of the Renaissance period, and wherever it exists it is one of the most pleasing that can be found; it gives all the shadow of a cornice, without its inconvenient and useless projection, and crowns the whole design in an appropriate and pleasing manner.

CASTLES.

One example must suffice to recall attention to the fact of the existence of “Chateaux en Espagne.” On the plains of Castille they are not only numerous, but of great magnificence; erected apparently before the fear of inroads from the Moors of Granada had passed away, or at all event when a military aristocracy was indispensable to save the nation from reconquest by these dreaded enemies. Of these the Kasr at Segovia is one of the best known and most frequently drawn. It has the advantage of being still inhabited, and its turrets retained, till recently, their tall conical roofs, which gave it so peculiar and local an aspect.[456] It also possesses the advantage—rare in Spanish castles—of standing on the edge of a tall rock, to which it has been fitted with almost Oriental taste.

Another favourable specimen is the now ruined castle of Cocos. Its tall towers and clustering turrets still attest its former magnificence, and point to a local style of defensive architecture differing from that of any other part of Europe, but even more picturesque than the best examples of either France or England. The castle at Olite is still more local in its style. Many other examples might be quoted; but they hardly belong to the fine-art branch of Architecture, and thus scarcely come within the scope of this work, though a monograph of the military architecture of Spain during the Middle Ages would be almost as interesting as that of her ecclesiastical remains.

IV. PORTUGAL

CONTENTS.

Church of Batalha—Alcobaça—Belem.

SO little attention has been paid to the subject of Gothic architecture in Portugal, that it is by no means clear whether it contains any churches of interest belonging to that style. There are certainly some splendid remains at Belem near Lisbon, and fragments at least elsewhere; but those who have described them are so little qualified for the task by previous study, that it is impossible to place reliance on the correctness of their assertions regarding them. One church, however,— that at Batalha,—has met with a different fate, and having arrested the attention of Mr. Murphy, “the illustrator of the Alhambra,” was drawn by him, and published in a splendid folio work at the end of the last century. As might be supposed from the date of the work, the illustrations do not quite meet the exigences of modern science, but it is at all events one of the best illustrated churches in the Peninsula, and seems in some respects to be worthy of the distinction, being certainly the finest church in Portugal.

It was erected by King John of Portugal, in fulfilment of a vow made during a battle with his namesake of Spain in the year 1385, and was completed in all essentials in a very short period of time. From the plan (Woodcut No. 968) it will be seen that the form of the original church is that of an Italian basilica—a three-aisled nave ending in a transept with five chapels; the whole length internally being 264 ft., and the width of the nave 72 ft. 4 in. It is therefore a small building compared with most of the Gothic churches hitherto described. To the right of the entrance, under an octagonal canopy which once supported a German open-work spire, are the tombs of the founder and of his wife Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt; beyond this the octagon expands into a square, in a very Eastern fashion, to accommodate the tombs of other members of the royal family who are buried around. The whole design of this part is one of the most suitable for a family sepulchre to be found anywhere. The wonder, however, of the Batalha, or rather what would have been so had it been completed, is the tomb-house which Emanuel the Fortunate commenced for himself at the east end of the church. Similar chapels at Burgos and Murcia have already been noticed, but this was to have surpassed them all, and if completed would have been the most gorgeous mausoleum erected during the Middle Ages.

It is curious to observe how the tradition of the circular tomb-house behind the altar remained constant in remote provinces to the latest age. The plan of this church is virtually that of St. Martin at Tours, of St. Benigne at Dijon (Woodcuts Nos. 575, 577), and of other churches in Aquitania. It is easy to see how by removing the intermediate walls this basilica would become a chevet church, complete except for the difference in the span of the two parts. Had the mausoleum been finished, the wall separating it from the church would not improbably have been removed.

The plan of this tomb-house is interesting as being that of the largest Gothic dome attempted, and as showing how happily the Gothic forms adapt themselves to this purpose, and how easily any amount of abutment may be obtained in this style with the utmost degree of lightness and the most admirable play of perspective; indeed no constructive difficulties intervene to prevent this dome having been twice its present diameter (65 ft.); in which case it would have far surpassed Sta. Maria del Fiore and all the pseudo-classical erections that have since disfigured the fair face of Europe.

Generally speaking, neither the proportions nor the details of this church are good; it was erected in a country where the principles of Gothic art were either misapprehended or unknown, and where a lavish amount of expenditure in carving and ornament was thought to be the best means of attaining beauty. The church from this cause may almost be considered a failure; its two sepulchral chapels being in fact by far the most interesting and beautiful parts of the structure. It may be observed also that the open-work spire agrees much better with the semi-Oriental decoration of the churches both of Burgos and Batalha than with the soberer forms of the more Northern style. One is almost tempted to fancy that the Germans borrowed the idea from Spain rather than that Spain imported it from the North. Till we know more of the age of the cathedrals of Leon, Oviedo, and other cities in the North of Spain, the point cannot be determined; but it seems by no means certain but that further knowledge will compel the Germans to resign their claim to this their single alleged invention in the pointed style.

Next in importance to the church at Batalha is that at Alcobaça, commenced in the year 1148, and finished in 1222. It is a simple and grand Cistercian abbey-church, not unlike that at Pontigny (Woodcut No. 643) in style. Its total length is 360 ft.; its height about 64. The nave is divided from the side-aisles by twelve piers, the arches of which support vaults of the same height over the three divisions—a circumstance which must detract considerably from the beauty of its proportions. The east end is terminated by a chevet (called by the Portuguese a charola) with nine chapels.

The monastery attached to this church, formerly one of the most splendid in the world, was burnt by the French in their retreat from Portugal.

At Coimbra there are still some remains of Gothic churches; the principal of these is the old cathedral, which, though much destroyed, still retains many features belonging to the same age as that of Alcobaça.

In the same town is the church of Sta. Cruz, rebuilt by French architects in the year 1515, in the then fashionable flamboyant style of their country; and in complete contrast to this is the small but interesting Round Gothic church of Sta. Salvador, erected about the year 1169.

The church of the convent at Belem near Lisbon, though one of the latest, was intended by its founder, Emanuel the Fortunate, to be one of the most splendid in the kingdom. It was commenced in 1500, but not finished till long after the Renaissance had set in, so that (in the interior especially) it is very much disfigured by incongruities of every sort. The southern portal, however, is wholly in the style of the first years of the 16th century, and is as elaborate an example of the exuberant ornamentation of that age as can be found in the Peninsula. It is, of course, full of faults, and by no means worthy of imitation; but its richness in figure sculpture and in architectural carving is very impressive and pleasing, in spite of all that can be said against its taste.

No one who is familiar with the chapel at Roslyn can fail to recognise at once the similarity of design and detail between the two. The Portuguese example is half a century more modern, for which allowance must be made. It is also more delicate, as the work of a Southern people might be expected to be. Moreover, it is the work of men among whom the style arose, and who consequently were more at home in it than the Scotch builder could pretend to be; but notwithstanding all these deductions, there is a similarity between the style of the two buildings so remarkable as to leave no doubt of their common origin.

The other churches of Portugal, such as those of Braga, Guimaraens, &c., seem to have been of late flamboyant style, and generally are so much modernised that the little beauty they ever possessed is concealed or destroyed by modern details.

Notwithstanding the late age of the principal examples and the apparent paucity of those of an earlier time, it is still possible that Portugal may contain much to interest the archæologist. But travelling has hitherto been inconvenient and slow in that country, and it has not yet been visited, or at least described, by any one familiar with the peculiarities of Mediæval art. When properly explored, we may be surprised at the treasures it contains. On the other hand, it is by no means impossible that the ‘Handbook of Portugal’ is correct when it asserts that “There is no European country which has less interesting ecclesiology than Portugal. There are certainly not 150 old churches in the kingdom. The French invasion, the great earthquake, and the rage for rebuilding in the 18th century, have destroyed nearly all.”

Let us hope it may not be so, but at present we have little beyond the hope to rely on.

Chapter I

SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE IN CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES; OR, BYZANTINE SARACENIC.

NOTE.—In consequence of the re-arrangement of the work, as explained above, by which all the Indian chapters are taken out of it and put together in a separate volume by themselves, the third part of the original work is reduced to very limited dimensions. It consists in the first place of those styles of Saracenic art which are in any way connected with the European styles, and which consequently must be studied together with them in order to be understood. But all the Indian developments of the same style are omitted; first, because they have no real or direct connection with the Western styles; and, secondly, because their affinities are much more intimate with the local styles of Hindostan than with those of Europe. When, however, this great branch is cut off, the Saracenic styles west of the Indus do not occupy a very important place in a general history of architecture—nothing that can compare with the great Christian or classical styles, and hardly even with those of Assyria or Egypt.

As the Indian styles necessarily include the Cambodian, Chinese, Japanese, &c., the only styles that remain to be described are those of the New World. Their connection with other styles is at present so hazy and indefinite that they may be arranged anywhere; but in order to avoid any appearance of prejudging any hypothesis, it may be as well to place them in this part of the work, in juxtaposition with a style with which they cannot be suspected of having any connection.

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