Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/426

408 V. 1 — 3); Holy Rood monastery at Vienna, founded in 1134, (IV. 1); S. Michael's Schwabischall, built by Gebhard, bishop of Wurzburg, in 1156. All these agree perfectly in style with English buildings of the same periods, and although there is a marked national character, they would naturally be assigned to the twelfth century by any person acquainted with the general history of architecture, but ignorant of these particular examples.

On the other hand it seems impossible to reconcile these with the other examples of the same style given in this work to which such very different dates are assigned: without any apparent difference of style, we have several referred to the beginning of the eleventh century, and others to the eighth. The only ground for these strange vagaries appearing to be that the monasteries were founded at those periods; this very obvious mistake has been continually made, and is still persevered in to an extraordinary extent. The date of the foundation of an abbey or of a church is satisfactory evidence that no portion of it is earlier than that time, but none whatever that it is not later; it is at least as probable that in the course of ages every vestige of the original buildings of a religious establishment, which has greatly increased in wealth at a subsequent period, should have disappeared amidst repairs, restorations, rebuilding, and enlargement, without any distinct record of the fact, than that any given building was erected at a remote date in a style earlier by some centuries than that generally in use at the period.

The numerous buildings assigned to Charlemagne are in so many different styles of masonry as well as sculpture, that it is impossible they can all be of the same period: one of the best authenticated appears to be the portico or gatehouse of the abbey of Lorsch, in the Bergstrasse, engraved by Moller; the style of this is very late and debased, such as we might expect to find at that period, before the arts of the Romans were quite lost: the addition of a staircase at one end of this building, in rude and clumsy Norman work, concealing part of the Roman cornice, was probably made in the eleventh century, and serves to confirm the impression that the rest is a genuine piece of work of the time of Charlemagne. If this is correct, then the Kaiserberg, (VI. 1, 2,) to which the same date is assigned, must have been rebuilt in the thirteenth century, the period to which the ornament clearly belongs.