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 ECCLESIASTICAL

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ECCLESIASTICAL

rit^, a priory dependent on C'luny, each arm had three apses, so that there were seven in all, immediately con- tiguous to one another, and varying in depth from the central to the northern and southern members of the system. The plan of Cluny itself was that of a cross with two transverse beams. Of the western transept each arm had two apses; of the eastern each had three, two projecting eastwards and one terminal. Saints Benoit-sur-Loire had likewise a double transept, fur- nished on the same principle with six subsidiary apses. Among English cathedrals — it may here be mentioned — both Canterbury and Norwich have a single chapel projecting from each arm of their respective tran- septs; and at Ely the " Galilee" porch, which has the form of a western transept, opens eastwards into two apsidal chapels, contiguous on either side to the main walls of the cathedral.

Far more important in their bearing on the later history of architecture than these developinents of the transept were certain changes which gradually took place in connexion with the chancel. It is not unusual in Romanesque churches, to find the chancel flanked, like the nave, with aisles, terminating in apsi- dal or square-ended chapels. But in more consider- able edifices, especially in France, the aisle is often carried round as an ambulatory behind the chancel apse; and when this is the case, the ambulatory most commonly opens into a series of radiating chapels. These are, in the earliest examples, entirely separate from one another, being sometimes two or four, but more usually three or five, in number. In later exam- ples the number of chapels increases to seven or even nine; and they are then contiguous, forming a com- plete corona or chevet.

The first beginnings of this system go back to so early a date as the fifth century. De Rossi has ar- gued, apparently on good grounds, that some early Roman, Italian, and African basilicas were furnished with an ambulatory round the apse. This form of design, however, was soon abandoned in Italy, and in the Romanesque pre-Gothic period it cannot be said to have been usual anywhere except in France, where it proved a seed rich with the promise of future devel- opments. The earliest instance of its adoption there was almost certainly the ancient church of St. Martin of Tours, as rebuilt by Bishop Perpetuus in A. D. 470. This edifice, as Quicherat has shown, had a semicircu- lar ambulatory at the back of the altar, in which, a few years later, was placed the tomb of Perpetuus himself. From Tours the type seems to have passed to Cler- mont-Ferrand (Sts. Vitalis and Agricola), and thence, many centuries later, to Orleans (St-Aignan, 1029). Meanwhile, in 997, the church of St. Martin had been rebuilt, and in the foundations of this edifice, which can still be traced, we find what is probably the earliest example of a chevet or corona of radiating chapels. It served, in its turn, in the course of the following cen- tury, as the model, in this respect, of Notre-Dame de la Couture at Le Mans (c. 100(1), St-Remi at Reims (c. 1010), St-Savin at Saiiit-Sa\iii (1020-30), the cathe- dral at Vannes (c. 1030), St-IIilaire at Poitiers (1049), and the abbey church at Cluny, as rebuilt in 10S9. Shortly before 1100 the church of St. Martin was once more rebuilt, on a scale of greater splendour; and once more the new building became the model for other churches, chief among which were those of St^Sernin at Toulouse (1090), of Santiago at Compostela (c. 1105), and of the cathedral at Chartres (1112).

Romanesque Vaulting. — The history of ecclesias- tical architecture in Western Europe durini; (lie rela- tively short [Xiriod which alone deserves to bi' niiai^liil as one of more or less continuous and sternly :iil\ :ni(c, and which extends, roughly speaking, from 1000 to 1300, may be described as (lie history of successive and progressive attempts to solve the problem, howliest to cover with stone vaulting a basilican or (luasi-basilican church, that is to say, a Duilding of which the leading

feature is a nave flanked with aisles and lighted with clerestory windows (Dehio and v. Bezold, op. cit., I, 296; Bond, op. cit., 6). It was the conditions of this problem, and the failure, more or less complete, of all previous attempts to solve it satisfactorilj', and by no means a mere aesthetic striving after beauty of architectural form, which led step by step to the de- velopment of the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century in its unsurpassed and unsurpassable perfec- tion.

The advantages of a vaulted, as compared with a timber, roof are so obvious that we are not surprised to find, dating from the tenth century or at latest from the beginning of the eleventh, examples of basilican churches with vaulted aisles (VioUet-le-Duc, Diet., I, 177). Indeed these first attempts at continuous vaulting would probably have been made much earlier but for the invasions of Saracens and Northmen, which delayed till that period the first beginnings of a steady development in ecclesiastical architecture, but which by their wholesale destruction of pre-existing buildings may be said to have prepared the way for that same development. The vaulting of the nave, however, in the case of any church of considerable size, was a very different matter; and it was not until the eleventh century was well advanced that the prol]- lem was seriously faced. And when at last it was defi- nitely taken in hand, this was done under pressure of dire necessity. Everyone who is at all conversant with medieval chronicles, or with the history of the cathedrals of Western Europe, must be aware how ex- tremely frequent were the disasters caused by confla- grations (Dehio and v. Bezold, op. cit., I, 296), and it was natural enough that the church-builders of the later Middle Ages should aim at making their build- ings, at least relatively, fire-proof.

The simplest form which the vaulting of a rectangu- lar chamber can take is, of course, the cylindrical bar- rel-vault; and this is, in fact, the form which was adopted in many of the earliest examples of vaulted roofs, especially in the south of France; a form, too, which was extensively used in Italy during the age of the Renaissance. But, though simplest alike in con- ception and in construction, the cylindrical barrel- vault is in fact the least satisfactory that could be de- vised for its purpose; and the objections which mili- tate against its employment are equally valid against that of the barrel-vault whose cross section forms a pointed arch. Of these obj ections the chief is that the horizontal thrust of a barrel-vault is evenly distril> uted throughout its entire length. Theoretically, then, this thrust requires to be met, not by a series of buttresses, but by a continuous wall of sufficient thick- ness to resist the outward pressiffe at any and every point along the line. Moreover, the higher the wall, the greater is the thickness needed, assimiing of course that the wall stands free, like the clerestory wall of an aisled church. Much, too, will depend on the cohe- siveness of the vaulting itself; and as the Romanesque church-builders were either unacquainted with, or vm- able to use, the methods by which the Romans and the Byzantines respectively contrived to give an almost rigid solidity to their masonry, it is no matter for sur- prise that in two large classes of instances they should have been content to sacrifice either the clerestory or the aisles to the advantages of a vaulted roof and to tlie exigencies of stability. Of aisleless churches, indeed, we nuist forbear here to speak. But of an important group of buildings which German writers have desig- nated Ihtllcnkirchen (hall-churches) a word must be said, as they unquestionably played a part in prepar- ing the way for the final solution of the problem of vaulting.

The most rudimentary form of hall-church is that in which the nave and aisles are roofed with three parallel barrel-vaults, those of the aisles springing from the same level as those of the nave. Examples