Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/748

 GOTHIC

670

GOTHIC

the least kinship to Jumieges, and the difference be- tween the two — separated by only fifty years — is that between barbarism and civilization. All that was good in Lombard architecture has been assimilated, and in addition we find fixed for the whole Gothic pe- riod those lofty and monumental proportions, that masterly setting out of plan, the powerful grouping of lofty towers, the final organism of arcade, triforium,

Che\et, Cathe

and clerestory that together w"ere to set the type of Gothic architecture for its entire term and endure un- changed, though infinitely perfected, so long as the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages remained operative. After Jumieges the abbeys of Caen were easy, and, given a continuation of cultural conditions, Amiens and Lincoln inevitable.

During the latter half of the eleventh century these cultural conditions ceased in Normandy. .Vftcr the death of William the Conqueror the duchy fell on evil times, and the working out to its logical and supreme conclusion of the great style it had initiated fell into other hands, viz., those of the French of the old Royal Domain and of the transplanted Normans in England. In France the eleventh centiu-y had been marked by royal inefficiency, unchecked feudal tyranny, episco- pal insubordination to papal control, indifference to the Cluniac reform, and general anarchy. By the middle of the century Cluny had done its immediate work and had begun to lapse from its lofty ideals, Iiut others were to take its place and do its work, and in 1075 St. Robert of Molesme founded in Burgundy the first house of that Cistercian Order which was to play in the twelfth century the part that Cluny had played in the eleventh. The preliminary fight that was to clear the ground in France began with the Council of Reims called by Pope Leo IX (1049-1054), when the sovereign pontiff antl the monastic orders made com- mon cause against the simony, secularism, and inde- pendence of the French episcopate. The contest was carried on simultaneously with the even greater fight against the empire, and, as there, the victory re- mained with the papacy. With the close of the elev- enth century conditions in France had become such that the torch that fell from the hands of the decadent Norman could be caught by the crescent Frank and carried on without a pause.

During the first half of the twelfth century the out- burst of architectural vigour in the Ile-de-France is very remarkable. Soi.ssons, Amiens, and Beaiivais liecame simultaneously centres of activity, and the rib vault makes its appearance at the same time in many places. "During the first phiise of the transi- tion, 1100-40, the l)uililers struggled to master the rib vault in its simpler problems: they learned to con- struct it on square and on oblong plans and even over the awkward curves of ambulatories, but their experi-

ments were always on a small scale. During the sec- ond phase (1140-80) the problem of vaulting great naves was attacked ; the evolution centres in the pecu- liar development which the genius of the French build- ers gave to the concealed flying buttress and to the sexpartite vault, both borrowed from Normandy" (Porter, op. cit., II, 54). The semicircular ambula- tory of Morienval (c. 1122), with its vaulting sup- ported on ribs curved in plan, and the church of .St- Etienne at Beauvais (c. 1130), of which Professor Moore says that with the exception of ,St-Louis of Poissy it is " the only Romanesque structure extant on the soil of France that was unmistakably designed for ribbed, groined vaulting over both nave and aisles", are valuable landmarks in the development. The second task of the French builders was simplified by the introduction of the pointed arch. As in the case of the ribbed vault, there is no means of knowing the exact source from whence this was derived. It had been in use in the East for nearly a thousand years be- fore it appeared in the West ; it was established in the South of France as an efTective and economical con- tour for barrel vaults by the year 10.50, whence it mi- grated to Burgundy and so to Berry (where it appears in 1110), but always in connexion with vaults rather than arches. The earliest structural pointed arch recorded in France is in the ambulatory of Morienval, referred to above, and is dated 1122.

This form, so pregnant of structural and artistic possibilities, may have been brought from the Holy Land by returning pilgrims, or it may have been inde- pendently evolved. Whatever its source, its advan- tages were so great from a practical standpoint that it is hard to believe that the races that had produced Sant' Ambrogio and Jumieges should not have worked out independently the idea of the pointed arch. Its two great \'irtues are its slight thrust as compared with the round arch, and its infinite possibilities of variation in height. The elliptical diagonals of the Romans did not commend themselves to the builders of the North, and the doming that resulted from the uniform use of semicircular arches, while not offensive in the case of square areas, became impossible where oblong spaces were to be covered, the expedient of stilting the longi- tudinal arches not yet having suggested itself. With

The Cathedr.

the pointed arch in use, all difficulties disappeared. Once introduced it became in a few years the univer- sal form, and its beauty was such that it immediately won its way against the round arch for the spanning of all voids. Almost coincidently with the acceptance of the pointed arch came the deWce of stilting, the transverse arches of Bury (c. 1125) being so treated. This would seem to indiclile lliat to the Gothic build- ers the value of the pointed arch lay rather in its com- paratively small thrust and in its intrinsic beauty than