Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/528

 496 FRENCH AROHITECTUEE. Fart II. CHAPTER V BURGUNDY. CONTENTS. Clmrch at Ainay — Cathedral at Pay — Abbeys of Tournns and Cliiny — Cathe- dral of Autun — Church of St. Meuoux. rpHE province of Burgundy was architecturally one of the most -J- important in France during the Middle Ages, but one the limits of which it is difficult to define. This is partly owing to the extreme fluctuation of the political power of the kingdom or dukedom, or whatever it might be, but more to the presence of two distinct peoples within its limits, the one or other of which gained the ascendancy at various intervals, and according as each Avas in power the architec- tural boundaries of the ]>rovince appear to have changed. In Pro- vence the Roman or Classical element remained superior down to the time when Paris influenced that province as it did all the rest of France ; but this event did not take place till very nearly the end of the Gothic period. In Burgundy, on the other hand, the Classical and Barbarian streams flowed side by side — at times hardly mingling their waters at all, but at others so amalgamated as to be undistin- guishable, while again in remote cornei-s either style is occasionally found to start up in almost perfect purity. It would add very much to the clearness of wliat follows if we could tell who the Burgundians were and whence they came : neither of which questions appears as yet to have received a satisfactory solution. That they differed in many respects from the other Barbarians who assisted in overthrowing the Roman Empire will probal)ly be admitted ; but in the present state of ethnogra]>hic knowledge it may seem too daring to assert that they had Turanian blood in their veins, and were Buddhists in religion, or belonged to some cognate faith, before they settled on the banks of the Saone or the Rhone. Yet if this were not so, it appears impossible to account for the essentially monastic foiMu which characterized this province during the whole Gothic period. From the time' at least wherr St. Gall and Columban settled them- selves at Luxueil till late in the Middle Ages, this country was the first and princi])al seat of those great monastic establishments which had so overwhelming an influence on the faith and forms of those times. We must go either to India in the flourishing period of Buddhism, or to Thibet in the present day, to find anything analogous