Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/597

Rh NORMANS 551 &quot;Wales, and Ireland, and in each land his settlement put on a somewhat different character, according to the circum stances of the land. In Scotland he was not a conqueror, but a mere visitor, and oddly enough he came as a visitor along with those whom he had himself overcome in England. Both Normans and English came to Scotland in crowds in the days of Margaret, Edgar, and David, and Scottish national feeling sometimes rose up against them. In Scot land again the Norman settlers were lost in the mixed nationality of the country, but not till they had modified many things in the same way in which they modified things in England. They gave Scotland nobles and even kings ; Bruce and Balliol were both of the truest Norman descent ; the true Norman descent of Comyn might be doubted, but he was of the stock of the Francigenae of Wales, the Conquest. In Wales the Norman came as a conqueror, more strictly a conqueror than in England ; he could not claim Welsh crowns or Welsh estates under any fiction of Welsh law. The Norman settler in Wales therefore did not to any perceptible extent become a Welshman ; the existing relations of England and Wales were such that he in the end became an Englishman, but he seems not un naturally to have been somewhat slower in so doing in Wales than he was in England. At least Giraldus Cam- brensis, the Norman Welshman or Welsh Norman, was certainly more alive to the distinction between Normans and English than any other of his contemporaries. In Ireland. Ireland the Norman was more purely a conqueror than anywhere else ; but in Ireland his power of adaptation caused him to sink in a way in which he sank nowhere else. While some of the Norman settlers in Ireland went to swell the mass of the English of the Pale, others threw in their lot with the native Irish, and became, in the well- known saying, Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores. Norman There is yet one point in which we may profitably go arclritec- b ac k; to our comparison between England and Sicily. England Both countries are rich in works of architecture raised and in during the time of Norman rule. And the buildings of Sicily, both lands throw an instructive light on the Norman national character, as we have described it. Few buildings, at least few buildings raised in any reasonable style of architecture which makes use of the arched construction, can be less like one another than the buildings of the Nor man kings in England and the buildings of the Norman kings in Sicily. In Sicily the Normans found the two most outwardly civilized of the nations of Europe, the two which had as yet carried the arts to the highest pitch. The Greek had created the column ; the Roman had developed it ; the Roman Greek or Greek Roman had taught the column to bear the cupola ; the Saracen had taught it to bear arches of his own favourite pointed shape. Out of these elements the Saracens of Sicily had formed a noble and beautiful style, grand and simple in its construction, rich and graceful in its characteristic detail. With the Saracen and the Greek to his subjects, the Norman had really no need to innovate ; he had simply to bid the men of the land to go on working for him instead of for any other. The palaces and churches of the Norman kings at Palermo and Monreale and Cefalu and Messina are in style simply Saracenic; they were most likely the work of Saracen builders; they were beyond doubt built after Saracenic models. In these buildings, as in those of Aquitaine, the pointed arch is the surest sign of Saracenic influence ; it must never be looked on as marking the approach of the Gothic of the North. With that form of art the pointed style of Sicily has nothing in common. A Sicilian church has nothing in common with a French or an English church ; it is sometimes purely Oriental, sometimes a basilica with pointed arches. But, if the Saracen gave the lines of the building, the Greek gave the mosaic decorations of its walls. In such a case the ruling people, rather the ruling dynasty, had really nothing to add to what they found ready for them. They had simply to make Saracen and Greek work in partnership. In England, on the other hand, the Normans did really bring in a new style of their own, their own form of Romanesque, differing widely in deed from the Saracenic style of Sicily. This Norman form of Romanesque most likely had its origin in the Lombard buildings of northern Italy. But it took firm root on Norman soil ; it made its way to England at an early stage of its growth, and from that time it went on developing and improving on both sides of the Channel till the artistic revolution came by which, throughout northern Europe, the Romanesque styles gave way to the Gothic. Thus the history of architecture in England dur ing the llth and 12th centuries is a very different story from the history of the art in Sicily during the same time. There were no Greeks or Saracens in England ; there was no Greek or Saracen skill. England indeed had, possibly in a somewhat ruder form, the earlier style of Romanesque once common to England with Italy, Gaul, and Germany. To this style it is no wonder that the Normans preferred their own, and that style therefore supplanted the older one. A comparison of Norman buildings in England and in Normandy will show that the Norman style in England really was affected by the earlier style of England ; but the modification was very slight, and it in no way affected the general character of the style. Thus, while the institutions of England in the 12th century were English with very con siderable Norman modifications, the architecture of England in that century was Norman with a very slight English modi fication. The difference then is plain. Where, as in Sicily, the Normans felt that they could not improve, they simply adopted the style of the country. Where, as in England, they felt that they could improve, they substituted for the style of the country their own style, that is, a style which they had not created but which they had adopted, which they had made thoroughly their own, and which they went on improving in England no less than in Normandy. That is, the discerning Norman, as ever, adapted himself, but adapted himself in an intelligent way, to the circumstances of each land in which he found himself. And this comes out the more clearly if we compare Norman work in England and in Sicily with Norman work in at least some parts of Apulia. At Bari, Trani, and Bitonto we see a style in which Italian and strictly Norman elements are really mingled. The great churches of those cities are wholly unlike those of Sicily ; but, while some features show us that we are in Italy, while some features even savour of the Saracen, others distinctly carry us away to Caen and Peterborough. It is plain that the Norman settlers in Apulia were not so deeply impressed with the local style as they were in Sicily, while they thought much more of it than they thought of the local style of England. In each of the three cases there is adaptation, but the amount of adapta tion differs in each case according to local circumstances. In Normandy itself, after the separation from England, architecture becomes French, but it is French of a remark ably good type. The buildings of the latest French style keep a certain purity and sobriety in Normandy which they do not keep elsewhere. Of all the points here insisted on that which it is most necessary to bear in mind is the Norman power of adapta tion to circumstances, the gift which in the end destroyed the race as a separate race. English history is utterly misconceived if it is thought that an acknowledged dis tinction between Normans and English went on, perhaps into the 14th century, perhaps into the 17th. Long before the earlier of those dates the Norman in England had done his work ; he had unwittingly done much to preserve and