The architectural style now known as the Gothic had its origins in northern France in the second quarter of the twelfth century. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw a vast amount of building in western Europe and French architecture was the increasingly fashionable model. This can be observed in the geographical spread of the Gothic style and can occasionally be documented, as in the hiring of William of Sens to rebuild Canterbury cathedral in 1174 or in the presence of a mason from Paris in Wimpfen, who, it was noted in the late thirteenth century, built in the French style.
In the years around 1230 a French traveller, keenly interested in architecture, made a series of drawings, which are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (ms. fr. 19,093). At some stage he wrote (or perhaps dictated) a series of captions in the French of Picardy. (Two hands added further texts later in the century.) The name he gives is usually modernized as Villard de Honnecourt. The varied contents include architectural details, plans, carpentry, mechanical devices, figure subjects (several after sculpture, both contemporary and antique) and animals (some copied from bestiaries and some perhaps
From life). There are also diagrammatic representations of ideas deriving from the practice of masons and carpenters and figurative drawings based on geometric schemata. In both the latter and in his 'preface' he lays selfconscious emphasis on geometry.
Villard has generally been thought of as a master mason who prepared a set of annotated drawings for the edification of his workshop. Recently his architectural competence has been questioned. Other suggestions are that he was a sculptor, or a metalworker, or a clerk with architectural, artistic and mechanical interests.
Whatever his trade, he tells us that he travelled to many lands, including Hungary. His sketches show that he visited modern buildings and building sites at Cambrai (near Honnecourt), Laon, Lausanne, Meaux, Reims and Vaucelles. Recent excavations at the site of the Cistercian abbey of Pilis in Hungary revealed tiles similar to those he sketched in Hungary. Whether artisan or clerk or some combination of the two, Villard was alert and well-travelled, and his book shows one way in which (mainly French) visual and technical ideas were collected and, perhaps, diffused.
J. Higgitt
The Spread of the Old French Epic (The Roland Legend)
The skirmish at Roncesvaux produced a legend of great vitality. Roland's name is first associated with the battle in the ninth-century Vita Caroli, written in court circles at Aachen by Eginhard. A note in an eleventh-century chronicle from San Millan de la Cogolla (Castile) adds a mythic dimension to Charlemagne and his twelve 'nephews', increases the role of the Moors ('Saracens') and associates many French epic heroes with the battle. C. 1100 the archetype of the extant poems was produced in Normandy, possibly by a literate poet exploiting oral traditions. This version gave rise to the oldest manuscript of the Chanson de Roland, copied in England c. 1150. Material gathered in England was transmitted to Norway and thence to Denmark to form the two versions of the Old Norse Karlamagnus Saga (thirteenth century). In the course of the twelfth century semi-independent versions arose in central and eastern France, emphasizing romance features centred on Roland's fiancee, Aude. Over the next two centuries the Roland was translated into English, Welsh, Middle High German, Provencal, Aragonese and the Franco-Italian koine of the Veneto. Two versions of Roland's youthful deeds (Enfances) were produced: Aspremont, in the Norman kingdom of Sicily, c. 1190, and Girart de Vienne, by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, c. 1175, linking the legend of Roland to that of the Narbonnais clan. Roland's incestuous birth is closely linked to legends of Charlemagne's early years, recorded, amongst other places, in the now lost Castilian Mocedades de Mainete and the German Karl der Grosse by Der Stricken As pseudohistory the legend served crusading purposes in the Historia Caroli Magni ('Pseudo Turpin Chronicle') an early version of which is preserved
In the Codex Calixtinus in Compostela. It also provided material for official chronicles of France (fourteenth century) and to bolster the prestige of the house of Burgundy in the fifteenth. The lasting appeal of the legend is seen in the fourteenth-century Entree d'Espagne and Prise de Pampelune, both written in the region of Padua and inspiring Ariosto and Boiardo, in the folk tales of Liege and Naples, generating puppet theatres still extant, and in similar tales circulating in Andalusia and Portugal whence they were carried to the New
World and to Goa, where they are still productive. Artistic representations of the legend abound, ranging from the Romanesque capitals at Estella and Fidenza to the thirteenth-century 'Charlemagne Window' at Chartres, Gothic statues at Reims, the reliquary of Charlemagne in Aachen (1200-15) and the fifteenth-century statue of Roland in Dubrovnik. Now lost is a twelfth-century mosaic floor dealing with the Battle of Roncesvaux in the cathedral in Bari.
P. E.Bennett
World History
