between paris and cologne, strasbourg and bruges lies, in little, nearly the whole history of northern architecture from charlemagne to the last louis of france, when it ceased to be an art and became a fashion. the greater part of normandy lies, it is true, across the seine, and is, for the time, beyond our field of vision, but, barring caen, architectural significance is well concentrated in the triangle, rouen, dieppe, le havre. the same is true of the old royaume of france; though chartres and bourges lie to the south, the beginning, and in some sense the culmination, of gothic is to be found between seine and somme. in the east, to the rhine, we have practically all that germany has contributed, except in the later days of the renaissance.
if we like, we may go far beyond the dim and mysterious era of the carolings, finding in trèves old roman ruins that take us back four or five centuries earlier, but the real history of this region begins with charlemagne and takes us to his fa{85}vourite city of aix-la-chapelle for the single, but vastly significant, building left us as evidence of his inspiration and his creative power. with the ending of this day-dream there comes a great silence, while civilisation and culture disappear again, to be restored two centuries later, far to the west, and at the hands of the normans. here we find st. georges de bocherville, fécamp, and the inestimable and forgotten ruins of jumièges. for transition to gothic we have senlis, soissons, noyon, with laon and paris as earliest gothic of pure and consistent type; chalons, amiens, and reims for culmination, and abbeville, rouen, beauvais, troyes, and strasbourg for its sumptuous decline.
from the other hand we go on from aix to cologne for the fine eleventh-century work that took up the tale after the second dark ages that followed the ending of the empire of the carolings, with more examples at laach and in hildesheim, which also are beyond our survey. a century later we get the consistent teutonic art of trèves, mayence, spires, and worms, while the high gothic of the noon of medi?valism is found at cologne and strasbourg, with the last rich fantasy of all, in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen{86}turies, in brussels and antwerp and malines, in courtrai, tournai, namur, louvain, ghent, ypres, and bruges. for renaissance we find all we need, and everywhere; churches, palaces, guild-halls, chateaux, dwellings, from the fanciful transition at dieppe, rouen, gisors, to the sophisticated, well-conditioned, and perfectly artificial restored classic of nancy.
as there is no other country in the north, of equal area, where history has been made so plenteously and of such varied quality, so it is with its art, and its architecture in particular, which marks the beginnings, the culmination, and the close of the three stylistic periods of christian civilisation in the west—carolingian, norman, and gothic—and through monuments singularly significant and equally notable in their perfection. it would be impossible to quote a tenth of them; there are a hundred at least, each of which demands (and many have received) a volume or more, but at least we can pick the most priceless, either for history or beauty, in a farewell that may be final for all, as already it is for such consummate and vanished masterpieces as the cloth hall at ypres and the cathedral of reims.
let us begin with aix, just over the belgian frontier, the “city of the great king,” where culture lightened again after the long night, and where, of all the churches and palaces of the emperor, only one remains as evidence of what he did. the royal chapel has been built onto and over and around, but the original norm remains in the shape of that polygonal form with surrounding arcades that was a step in the development of the perfect gothic chevet. to a great extent it is a replica of san vitale in ravenna, and may very well have been built by the descendants of those roman craftsmen who, after the fall of the one-time capitol of the world, sought refuge either under byzantine protection in ravenna or on lake como, where the tradition is they carefully cherished the traditions and the esoteric mysteries of their art, perpetuating the slowly fading memory through secret lodges that, some held, were the progenitors of modern freemasonry.
when the possibilities of a new culture and a restored civilisation revealed themselves to the conqueror, who was also statesman, patriot, and (after his dim and flickering light) christian, two centuries had left the west a wilderness, and all was to do over again. there were, it seemed,{88} neither scholars nor artists nor righteous leaders of any sort in the world, and the task must have appeared hopeless. charlemagne, undaunted, sent east and west, from britain to spain, searching out those who, by report, rose above the hopeless level of barbarian mediocrity. alcuin of britain, peter of pisa, theodulphus, hincmar, eriugena, radbertus maurus, gathered around him at aix, forming a cultural centre, reforming the church, building up schools, creating an art almost out of nothing.
there was little enough, though rome had its basilicas of the time of constantine—san paolo, san lorenzo, santa maria maggiore; from the east, it is true, travellers brought back wondering stories of the splendour of justinian’s churches, with hagia sophia at the head; in ravenna were the more modest monuments of the exarchate—sant’ apollinare in classe, san vitale—in istria, at parenzo and grado, were churches showing some new elements probably provided by lombard builders, and san pietro, toscanella stood like a miracle, novel, without forebears, a new version of an ancient theme. these are what we have left, and then there was more, for much has since been destroyed, but most of it lay far afield,{89} and in the north there was nothing. the work of co-ordination was well performed, however, and the succession was re-established; after the chapel at aix, therefore, architectural development was continuous, if moderate, though any estimate must be dubious owing to the almost complete destruction of the monuments. we still have the apses of sant’ ambrogio in milan; san donato, zara, n. d. de la couture of le mans, and montier en der, none of them particularly inspiring or inspired, and none with any hint of what was suddenly to happen at jumièges in the eleventh century. that the latter building may not have been as amazing an innovation as it appears is indicated by fragments and foundations of the work that came between it and charlemagne, as at st. martin of tours, where the revolution has left us nothing but foundations indicative of a former superstructure that may well have been the connecting-link, and might have changed our entire estimate of the quality of the architecture of the second dark ages. as it is, this chapel at aix stands not only first in the great recovery of the eighth century, but almost unique, with no successors for nearly three centuries.{90}
when the true dawn begins to lighten the hills, it is in the west that its coming is foreshown, in that duchy of normandy, where in a century the fierce vikings, who had been driven from the coast of flanders in their forays from the baltic, had become the finely tempered material out of which was to be forged, by the monks of cluny, a catholic civilisation that was to extend itself over all western europe and endure for five centuries. of the three great abbeys that were the centres from which radiated the great transforming force, bec, fécamp, and jumièges, the two latter lie on our side of the seine, with the third only ten miles on the other side, while st. georges de bocherville, intact except for its pestilential restoration, is of the same period, as is cérisy le forêt. caen, with its two abbeys of the conqueror, inestimable monuments of architectural history, is well to the west, with evreux, lisieux, bayeux, and mont st. michel, but we have enough on the right bank to demonstrate the nature and the greatness of the work accomplished by cluny and the normans in a union cemented by a vital and crescent christianity.
jumièges stands first, in its forgotten loop of{91} the seine, and is amazing, no less. but for its fine new fourteenth-century chevet, it was, at the time of the french revolution, almost in its original state, but it was destroyed then, with cluny, avranches, st. martin of tours, and other priceless monuments, though by no means so completely. to-day its towering walls, rising above thick trees and greenery, are startlingly picturesque, but their great value lies in the revelation they make of what was possible in the earliest days of christian recovery. the work was begun in 1040 and finished within twenty-five years, being followed immediately by the abbeys of caen, as these were followed by st. georges de bocherville. the original plan was in each case about the same, the standard type, originally latin, with syrian, and probably lombard and carolingian, developments; cruciform, aisled both in nave and choir, the latter being of two bays only, with an apse, but no apsidal aisle and chapels as at tours. the transepts are of two bays on either side the central tower, the end bays having galleries or tribunes, with a subordinate apse to the east, so forming, in the lower stage, small, low chapels. it is in the working upward from this plan that the significant developments ap{92}pear, and both here and at cérisy le forêt, we find the order of round-arched arcade, high triforium of two arches under a containing arch, and a single clerestory window, cérisy having as well an open clerestory arcade of three units. the system is clearly alternating, as in lombardy and tuscany, but there is no evidence that vaulting was ever contemplated; instead, i think it certain that great transverse arches on every other pier, supporting a wooden roof, were in mind, after the syrian fashion, as it was later modified at san miniato in florence, a few years before, though these were certainly never built at jumièges. the west front, with its tall, flanking towers, is of the como type (query: is the hand of the comacine master visible here?), while all the vertical proportions are more lofty and aspiring than had ever been known before. as a matter of fact, given the chevet with its aisle and radiating chapels, which was already being worked out farther south by the simple process of halving the syrian, byzantine, ravennesque, and carolingian polygonal church and attaching this to the simultaneously developed nave, and you have all the potency of the gothic system, the high vault (sexpartite or quadripartite) with its flying{93} buttresses now to be worked out at caen, giving the final structural element, while the expanding catholic faith and the buoyant northern blood were woven together to have issue in that essentially medi?val character which was to transform the whole, infusing it with that peculiar spiritual quality which gave its distinctive character, through a new vision of beauty, to the art that had been evolved for the full expression of a christian civilisation at last triumphant and supreme over a dead paganism.
after cluny and jumièges, paris, bourges, chartres, and reims are inevitable, and the working out of a great destiny is headlong and almost incredible. jumièges was finished in 1066, the year of the norman conquest of england; reims was begun in 1212. within a space of a century and a half the greatest architectural evolution in history had taken place, so echoing and voicing an equally unprecedented development in human character and culture. in 1066, hardly more than fifty years had passed since christian society emerged from two centuries of barbarism; in 1212 it had mounted to the loftiest levels of human achievement, with a theology, a philosophy, and an art, whatever its form, with which{94} there had been nothing comparable in the past, with which the achievements that were to follow, as they now show themselves in the red light of a revealing war, seem only the insane wanderings of a disorganised horde.
the sequence of development is well worked out east of the seine, and at the hands of the franks of the “royaume,” now under the direction of the cistercians, as a century before the normans had been controlled by the cluniacs. this constant revivification of monasticism during crescent periods of human growth is a very interesting phenomenon. apparently monasticism, which has accompanied christianity from its earliest beginning until to-day, is an essential portion of its working structure, and if you accept christianity in fact, you cannot escape accepting the “religious life” in principle. it seems, however, that it is always in unstable equilibrium, prone to inevitable decadence, and no order lasts out three generations without losing its beneficent energy. when life is on its periodic upward curve, a reformation always occurs at the critical moment, and there is no loss of impetus; so the original benedictinism which had served charlemagne so well, but had sunk into worse than inaction, gave place in the eleventh century to the{95} great cluniac reform, which in its turn was succeeded by the cistercian reform, as this yielded after another hundred years to the reform of st. dominic and st. francis.
now the romanesque art of toulouse, aquitaine, and burgundy, the norman of normandy and england, the rhenish of germany, were largely benedictine of the cluniac mode, and the style rapidly became inordinately sumptuous, costly, and magnificent, as at arles, toulouse, poitiers, glastonbury, durham. it has been said of monastic movements: “first generation pious, second generation learned, third generation decadent.” certainly as the benedictines in france went on to the twelfth century, their original austerity and fervour were relaxed, and their art became a thing of splendour as their wealth and learning and temporal power increased. the cistercian movement of robert of molesme and stephen harding and bernard of clairvaux was a revolt against luxury and laxity, an attempt (as ever) to get back to the supposititious simplicity of earlier times, and in the success that followed architecture changed completely, though the ending of the new style, and even its consummation, were different indeed from what the cistercian reforms had desired.{96}
in its beginnings gothic architecture was an attempt at economy, the trying for something less massive and ornate than the great benedictine piles of inert masonry. by cleverly developing a system of balanced thrusts, the sheer bulk of masonry was reduced by half, while attention was drawn away from the fast-increasing ornamentation to the shell itself, whereby a great gain was effected, and architecture became once more a study in organism, in composition, and in proportion. gothic is primarily the perfection of exquisite organism, almost living in its consummate integrity and its sensitive interplay of forces. this perfectly co-ordinated structure is, of course, infused and transfigured by an intense sense of beauty, quite new in its forms, and given a spiritual and symbolical content peculiar to itself, the result being what, for want of a better term, we call gothic. the two elements cannot be disassociated, as pedants feign, for, like all great art, it is in a sense sacramental, and the “outward and visible sign” may never be separated from the “inward and spiritual grace.”[a]
[a] “sacramentum est corporale vel materiale elementum foris sensibiliter propositum ex similitudine repr?sentans, et ex institutione significans et ex sanctificatione continens, aliquam invisibilem et spiritualem gratiam.”—(hugo de st. victoire.){97}
both processes may be followed through the great sequence of churches between the seine, the marne, and the somme—or might have been a year ago. to-day it is safe to postulate nothing of a dim and ominous future; we know that much of this galaxy has been destroyed after seven centuries of careful cherishing through innumerable wars and revolutions. that all may go is possible, as the power that brought them into existence has gone, though in this case only for a time. once, however, the great and triumphal progress from jumièges through noyon, senlis, st. denis, laon, paris, amiens, to its final achievement at reims, was a complete and visible record of the greatest and most headlong advance toward the real things in christian civilisation by means of the real things in christian civilisation history has ever recorded. five of these—senlis, noyon, laon, amiens, and reims lie either within the battle lines that have maintained themselves so long, or at least within sound of the guns; one has been destroyed—reims; one thus far preserved—amiens. the fate of the others is in doubt, together with that of all the lands that lie to the east, and the danger of irreparable loss is greater than ever before since the french revolution.{98}
there was no better place than this once-lovely region, now hidden from view in the lurid smoke and the poisoned fumes of a new and demoniac sort of war, in which to watch the swift growth to a splendid self-consciousness of gothic architecture. the elements of gothic organism had been developed in the twelfth century by the great cluniac-norman alliance, but this was only a beginning; gothic quality was still to be achieved, and this consisted largely in three elements—cohesion, economy, and character. the first means the synthetic knitting of everything together, and the giving it dynamic power to develop from within outward; it means making structure absolutely central and comprehensive, but also beautiful; ornament, decoration, remaining something added to it, something of the bene esse, though not of the esse; deriving from it in every instance, but not necessary to its perfection. the second is the reducing of mass to its logical and structural (and also optical) minimum, bringing into play the forces of accommodation, balance, and active, as opposed to passive, resistance. the third is the hardest to describe or determine, and probably can only be perceived through comparison. it is the differentiation in quality, the determination of personality, and it is hardly to be defined, though it is instantly perceived.
in the abbaye aux hommes, or cérisy, or st. georges de bocherville, we find great majesty and beauty, many elements that are distinctive of true gothic work and persist through its entire course, but none of these buildings is actually gothic. in st. germer de fly, however, and in sens and noyon, while there seems at first little differentiation from the others, the gothic spirit has found itself and is already working rapidly toward its consummation.
of the condition of noyon at the present time we know little; of what this may be in a few months’ time we know less. the town itself was of the oldest, its foundation being roman, and within its walls chilperic was buried in 721, while charlemagne was crowned king of the franks about thirty years before he became emperor, and hugh, first of the capetian dynasty, was here chosen king in 987. incidentally, the town was also the birthplace of john calvin. the ancient cathedral was burned in 1131 and the present work begun shortly after, though it is hard to believe that much of the existing structure antedates the year 1150. the crossing and transepts{100} date from about 1170, the nave about ten years later, while the west front and towers are of the early part of the next century. the certainty and calm assurance of the work is remarkable. paris, which is later, is full of tentative experiments, but there is no halting here, rather a serene certainty of touch that is perfectly convincing. the plan is curious in that it has transepts with apsidal ends, after the fashion of rhenish romanesque, one of the few instances in france. the alternating system is used throughout, and the vault was originally sexpartite; the interior order consists of a low arcade, high triforium, triforium gallery, and a clerestory comprised wholly within the vault lines; round and pointed arches are used indiscriminately, and the flying buttresses are perhaps the earliest that emerged from the protection of the triforium roofs. in the choir, which is earliest in date, the ornament is rude, even rudimentary, though distinctly gothic in form, but in the nave twenty years has served to change this into work of the most brilliant and classical beauty. in 1293 the whole town was destroyed by fire, and the cathedral wrecked; it was immediately reconstructed, however, and at this time the sexpartite gave place{101} to quadripartite vaulting, while the west front, with its great towers, very noble in their proportions and their powerful buttressing, was completed. this rebuilding and the loss of all the original glass has left noyon less perfect than many of the neighbouring churches, but it still remained a grave and strikingly solemn example of the transition.
not far away, past the huge and formidable ruins of coucy, the greatest castle of the middle ages, whose lords haughtily proclaimed, “roi ne suys, ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi: je suys le sire de coucy,” is laon on its sudden hill. how great the loss has been here we do not know, but the town has been frequently under german bombardment, and the end is not yet. laon is unique, a masterly work of curious vitality, original, daring, and even rebellious against a growing tradition. in the middle ages it was vastly admired, but to us of a day more dull and timorous in architecture, because we have no art of our own and have found so little in life from which we could draw an inspiration, it is less safe and satisfying than such coherent and scholastic work as amiens or reims. begun about 1165, it was finished in 1225, the growth being from the cross{102}ing in all directions, for not only is the amazing west front of the central period of gothic perfection, but the choir as well, for the unique square termination takes the place of a regular chevet which was part of the original design. this square-ended choir is the only one in france, and is thoroughly english in effect; moreover, the transepts have aisles and are the first in france to be so finished, while they have tribunes at the ends after the norman fashion, and there is a central tower or lantern as well. the towers of laon are its distinguishing glory, for there are five in all, out of an original seven, all incomplete, not one retaining its spire, but striking and immensely individual. the interior organism is not wholly coherent, for while the vaulting is sexpartite throughout, the system is regular, and was as manifestly intended for quadripartite vaulting as noyon for sexpartite. the west front is vastly picturesque, if somewhat incoherent, and is clearly a growth from year to year; it lacks both the sublime calm and grandeur of paris and the faultless organism of reims, but its detail is as brilliantly conceived as any in france, while its carvings and sculptures are in the same class as the best of hellas. in the tops of the towers{103} are the well-known stone effigies of oxen, placed there by the builders in recognition of the patient service of the beasts that year after year helped drag the heavy stones from the plain to the top of the hill where the cathedral stands.
in and around laon were once innumerable religious houses, but nearly all their churches were destroyed during the french revolution, which annihilated more noble art in five years than had happened in five centuries. st. martin remains, and is of the middle of the twelfth century, but the church of the abbey of st. vincent is wholly destroyed.
south of laon, and about as far away as noyon, lies soissons, an ancient town, famous in history, and containing, until the war, another masterpiece of medi?val art, the cathedral, which already has been made the target of german shells, and has suffered seriously. as a city, it antedated the roman occupation, was christianised toward the end of the third century, became a capital of the merovings, and a notable city of the carolingian dynasty. the south transept is the oldest part, and dates from about 1175, the choir was finished in 1212, the north transept and nave about 1250. porter says of the south tran{104}sept: “this portion of soissons, one of the most ethereal of all twelfth-century designs, is the highest expression of that fairy-like, saracenic phase of gothic art that had first come into being at noyon. like noyon, however, this transept lacks the elements of grandeur which are found in so striking a degree in the nave and choir of this same church of soissons.” the nave and choir are indeed amongst the noblest creations of catholic art; for justness and delicacy of proportions, refinement of line, restraint in the placing and determination of ornament, soissons ranks with chartres and bourges. the richness of its vertical lines is unusual, the mouldings clear, powerful, and distinguished in contour, and altogether it has well served for nearly seven centuries as a perfect exemplar of the christian art of france as its highest point.
already it has been appallingly shattered, one shell having struck the roof of the north aisle, hurling one of the nave shafts into fragments and obliterating an entire bay. thus far it has been spared a conflagration, and if the prussian lines are promptly forced back, it may still be preserved as a wonder for still further generations.
so far as the numberless other great churches{105} of soissons are concerned, it has for long been too late; they perished, with uncounted others in this region, at the time of the revolution. of the vast abbey of st. jean-des-vignes nothing remains but the sumptuous west front, cut clear like an architectural “frontispiece” from all the rest, and even this has been further shattered by german gunfire. the royal abbey of our lady has become a military barracks, st. crepin, st. medard with its famous seven churches, all have vanished, and the loss is irreparable.
nearer paris we find senlis, a further step in architectural development. the town itself is charming, and full of old art and old history. roman walls, with sixteen towers, still remain, together with fragments of a royal palace of the french kings, from clovis to henri iv, with ancient houses, picturesque streets, desecrated churches, and monastic ruins, such as those of the abbey of victory, founded by philip augustus after the battle of bouvines, and wrecked, of course, during the revolution.
the cathedral is curious and fascinating. set out in 1155 on enormous lines, it was curtailed both in height and length through the failure of adequate funds. it has been rebuilt, extended,{106} supplemented, century after century, until it has become almost an epitome of french architecture from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the sixteenth century. the southwest tower (its mate is unfinished) is of the thirteenth-century culmination, and surpassed by no other spire in france for subtlety of composition and perfection of detail. one of its crocketed pinnacles has already been shot away, but apparently further danger is well removed, and will become progressively less threatening as the prussian lines are driven back.
it is, of course, quite impossible even to note all the architectural monuments between the seine and the frontiers of belgium. paris must be wholly left out, for st. denis, st. germain l’auxerois, notre dame, and the ste. chapelle would justly require a volume to themselves. rouen, with its cathedral, st. ouen, st. maclou, the palais de justice, rich with all the lace and embroidery of the flamboyant period, lies now well beyond danger, and so does beauvais, where the nemesis of worldly pride overtook the lagging spiritual impulse that had made the middle ages the climax of christian civilisation. chalons-sur-marne, once threatened, is now reprieved, and its
cathedral, its churches of st. jean and st. loup, and its noble and distinguished church of our lady are safe for another period.
apart from the great architectural monuments are numberless others invaluable in arch?ology, and forming links in the great gothic development: st. etienne of beauvais, st. leu d’esserent, morienval, bury, st. germer, and st. remi of reims—the last valuable beyond estimate, with an apse that was unparalleled as a masterpiece of transitional work when gothic was in its first and finest estate, now wrecked and desecrated by shells that have burst its vaults into crumbled fragments and hurled its perfect windows in showers of splintered glass to the pavements heaped high with the wreck of masonry and of dismembered altars.
and as in the case of the great churches, so in that of the small, from braisne to caudebec, they cannot even be catalogued. the whole region was, and is, one of wonderful little parish churches, of all periods, and many of them are now only shapeless ruins. the great abbeys and smaller religious houses are practically gone, scores having fallen prey to the insane fury of the revolution or the sordid secularism of the restoration.{108} what we have lost may be seen from countless such lovely and pathetic fragments as st. wandrille, near caudebec, given a new fame through the name of maeterlinck, and so linked with the greater martyrdom of belgium in these last days. this, like its myriad companions, was architecture of the most singular beauty, the loss of which leaves the world poor, so poor, indeed, that it had at first nothing wherewith to meet the last assault of the enemy. the loss is being made good, the penalty already is paid, and though one could not—one would not—restore or rebuild these silent fragments of exquisitely wrought stone, meshed in tall trees and clambering vines, the vision is possible of new foundations, equal in number to these that are gone, each an expiation and a spiritual guard, each making late reparation for the past, guaranteeing a future immunity from perils of the same nature as those that now shake the world.
