Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/226

198 Notwithstanding the check which ecclesiastical authority had received so early as the reign of Richard II., the Church yet exercised an exclusive control over the construction of religious edifices, as it appears, in regard to the magnificent buildings of antiquity, that the priests or hierophants had controlled the erection of all works of a religious character. We find by a papal bull, prior to the year 1200, an authority to the heads of churches to build temples to the divinity, attaching to them, as the magnitude or elegance of the structure required, a certain number of "liberi muratores," or Freemasons, to direct and execute the ornamental parts of the fabric.

During one century not less than five priors of Canterbury made architecture their study, and there can be no doubt that the cathedrals and monasteries, erected from the Conquest to the thirteenth century, were in greater part designed by ecclesiastics, who, during the slow work of years, had by the time of their completion formed another and a very different class of artists. It was a school in which the cementarii, or masons, acquired that scientific knowledge which had been elaborated by the churchmen in the solitude or seclusion of the cloister, and this they again transmitted to their apprentices. To this class of artificers we may add the goldsmiths, who, like their Italian brethren of the same and later periods, generally practised as architects, modellers, or painters.

Ample as the information is which relates to other circumstances of the period, the records of the state of Art during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are so scanty, that it is not possible to offer any extended notice, either of the works themselves, or the practice of the artists.

To the munificence of Henry III., the first monarch of England who paid attention to the Arts, may be ascribed the most beautiful works of the medieval age which we possess; indeed the monumental statues of Queen Eleanor, of Henry III., and of Aveline, countess of Lancaster, may be ranked with the productions of any country, of the period. Henry repaired the castles and other royal edifices, and by the introduction of foreign talent, established a taste, and developed the genius of his countrymen.

There are works of this period highly deserving the attention of the archæologist, or lover of beautiful art. The Last Judgment, over the west door of Lincoln cathedral, may be