Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/279

 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE. 221 building was done, but he in a great measure restored the arts and civihzation to Western Europe before his death in a.d. 814. Before the year a.d, iooo, when it was popularly supposed that the world would come to an end, little building was carried out, but after the millennium had passed, buildings sprang up in all parts, with many local peculiarities, which will be noticed under each country ; but the change was slow, traditional forms being firstly transformed in general design and detail, and then new features created. Nearly all the nations of Europe had at this time come into existence ; France, Germany, and Spain, were becoming powerful and tending to set aside the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, which now had become only a title. In northern Europe, Den- mark, Sweden, and Norway were distinct kingdoms, and England had become welded into one by the Norman kings at the end of the eleventh century. 2. ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER. The term Romanesque may be said to include all those phases of Western European architecture which were more or less based on Roman art, and which were being carried out, in a rough and ready way, in various parts of Europe, from the departure of the Romans up to the introduction of the pointed arch in the thirteenth century. The general architectural character is sober and dignified, while picturesqueness is obtained by the grouping of the towers, and projection of the transepts and choir. As helping towards the appreciation of the character of Romanesque architecture, imagine an ancient civilization of vast extent, devoid of physical force, and recognisable only by the multitude of its monuments, some intact, others injured or partially destroyed, all unguarded, and most of them disused — a calamity which happens in due course to every great nation or group of peoples ; and further suppose that the civilization is represented by a man, dormant, but who slowly, and with many a contortion, and many a yawn, threw off the sleep of ages and awakened to a sense of the treasure he possessed, of the wants he began to understand, of the means to the ends he would attain. In his midst were ruins of vast edifices, some still standing among heaps of stones hewn and carved, of sculptured capitals and friezes, of monoliths of porphyry and marble, while his own shelter aff"orded him little protection either from heat or cold. What happened ? As time went on he gathered up the smaller fragments and arranged them perhaps upon the foundations, still intact, of an ancient building, and as he gradually acquired a knowledge of the uses to which he might apply this and that fragment, he insensibly