In Pope Innocent Ill’s dream, St. Peter’s church and papal palace are about to collapse and fall on his bed chamber, but the young St. Francis holds up the building and saves the pope, the church of St. Peter, and the Church in a more general sense. In many ways the picture is not an exaggeration. In 1200 the Church was in trouble. Heretics offered attractive, alternative teachings about Christianity. The laity was critical of the worldliness of the Church and its involvement in politics. While Innocent worked to reform the Church, it was St. Francis and his followers who reached out to the laity.
While Eleanor of Aquitaine represents the innovations and new spirit of the revival of Europe in the 12th century, no single figure can personify the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Henry II, Eleanor’s young second husband, was an energetic man who established many of the laws and government systems in England that are stiU used today. Among Eleanor and Henry’s children were two sons who also made a major impact on historical events—Richard I (“the Lion-Hearted”), who led the Third Crusade, and John I (“Lackland”), who signed the Magna Carta.
But perhaps the man who presided over the most far-reaching changes in Europe at the time was Innocent III, who was only 37 when he was made pope. He had the vision to see that the new ideas of Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans, and Dominic, founder of the Dominicans, about mingling among the laity might prove better than the seclusion of the older monastic orders.
Enthusiasm for religious revival remained strong among lay Christians, but they began to voice their own concepts about religion, which they gleaned from the teachings of priests, stories of the lives of saints, and art in the churches. The contact between merchants, pilgrims, crusaders, and scholars and Byzantines, Turks, and Arabs also introduced new ideas about religion. The laity’s religious views often were counter to those of the Church, and the Franciscan and Dominican orders offered to teach by example and by preaching where the true path to salvation lay. But those who strayed far from the Church’s view were few in number and most lay people continued to support the building of parish churches, cathedrals, and monasteries.
An exciting new architectural style, called “gothic” by modern art historians, also revolutionized church building. Gothic architecture takes us back to the days of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis VII, Henry II, and that shaper ofEuropean politics—Suger, Abbot of St. Denis (d. 1151). He had been a mentor to Louis, had helped to arrange his marriage to Eleanor, and had governed France in their stead during the Second Crusade. He was an energetic man, who found time to patronize the development of a new architectural style in order to glorify his abbey church. His portrait, in which he is
Gothic Architecture
The term “Gothic” is a misnomer because the style had nothing to do with the Gothic tribes. It was first applied to late medieval architecture during the Renaissance, when aU medieval artistic production was looked down on as barbaric. The identifying characteristics of Gothic style were “flying” buttresses, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, expanses of stained glass windows, and a soaring height. The Gothic buildings were towering frameworks of masonry piers or columns and arches that were supported on the outside by flying buttresses. Only if all these elements were perfectly balanced would the structure be stable. Unlike Romanesque churches, in which the walls supported the roof. Gothic churches were held up by the skeletal structure. Their stonework, therefore, could be thinner and used as a decorative element.
Gothic churches were higher and lighter, and, because of their taller piers, had more space for windows in the clerestory as well as in other walls.
A great rose window of stained glass dominated the front wall of the
The front of Reims Cathedral in France, with its two rose windows, shows the extensive use of glass in Gothic architecture. The exteriors of Gothic churches were ornately cawed with biblical figures to instruct the laity.
Structures. All the windows had stone tracery that supported the glass; that of the rose window gave the appearance of a rose in its tracery. Filling in the stone were pieces of glass in bright colors set in a framework of lead. Figures of the saints, apostles, biblical characters, animals, and flowers
Were painted on window glass. Taken together, the images on a church’s windows often told a story. The sculpture that appeared, on both the external and internal portions of churches also frequently represented biblical stories, the four Gospels, or the Last Judgment.
Shown in prayer, appears in a small comer of one of the stained glass windows of his church.
Romanesque churches were limited in height and number of windows because they required heavy masonry to support their barrel and cross vaults. As a result, the buildings were dark inside. Because candles were too expensive to illuminate an entire church, churches usually were quite dark even during services. Gothic architecture approached the building oflarge stmctures, such as cathedrals, very differendy. Rather than placing all the weight of the stmcture on the walls, an external skeleton composed of buttresses supported the internal building skeleton of columns and vaults. The buttresses are described as “flying” because an external column of masonry supported arches that met the stress points of the building itself Because the skeletal stmcture supported the building, the walls could be pierced, allowing for portions of the wall to be used for windows. The change was revolutionary. Within 50 years of the development of Abbot Suger’s new style of architecture, cathedrals and large churches aU over Europe had abandoned Romanesque architecture and adopted the new, Gothic innovations.
Of course, some calamities resulted. Sometimes the engineering was faulty and the whole roof of a church caved in, as happened to the church at Beauvais. Many European cathedrals successfully melded elements of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, however.
Building a cathedral was a complex undertaking that often took centuries. Some say that cathedrals are never really com-
Castles served both as defensive structures and as residences for the nobles, their knights and men-at-arms, servants, and guests. The castle had a large keep in the center that could withstand siege. Around it was the bailey, which had stables and barns, a kitchen, and workshops for craftsmen. A portion of the bailey was a garden containing medicinal herbs.
Pleted, but are continually added to. The bishop and his clergy financed the building of a cathedral and hired an architect to design it. Sometimes they could afford to construct only part of the building, then the project lapsed until more money could be raised. Architects moved from one job to another, often from England to France to Germany and back again. Some became famous throughout Europe. Architects trained on the job and often integrated ideas inspired by other cathedrals into their own designs. Even so, an architect had to be able to draw plans of his proposed buildings and have a good knowledge of the principles of mechanical engineering.
The sketchbook of Villard de Honne-court, a French architect ofthe 13th century, shows the way in which an architect developed his ideas. De Honnecourt designed the cathedral at Cambrai, but seems to have observed the constmction of the cathedrals at Laon, Chartres, and Reims. In about 1250 the queen of Hungary commissioned him to build churches in that country. His notebook contained sketches of animals— such as a parakeet, crawfish, and dragonfly—but also drawings of the features of the cathedrals he most admired. Inventions depicted in the notebook included siege equipment and a sawmill powered by water. Much of the book was dedicated to engineering questions, such as estimating the height of a tower from the ground, constructing a vaulted roof in wood, and finding the center of a given area. He observed in the introduction that “in this book may be found great help in learning about the principles of masonry and of construction by carpentry. You will also find in it methods of portraiture and drawing, according to the requirements and teachings of geometry.”
A cathedral architect was also the foreman ofthe project and hired master masons, carpenters, stonecutters, sculptors, and carvers. Preparation included acquiring timber for a scaffolding, stone for building the walls and the tracery of the windows and ornamental designs, lime and sand for mortar, metal for bells, and fine quality sand and pigments for window glass. Master craftsmen designed and supervised each stage, but the apprentices and less skilled craftsmen under their direction did most of the work. The marks of the masons, stonecutters, and sculptors can be seen on the building blocks of cathedrals. In addition, the building of such a large structure required a number of unskilled laborers to dig the foundations, carry the stones, set up the scaffolding, lift the timbers, and perform other heavy labor.
The 12th and 13th centuries must have been golden years for architects, masons, carpenters, and even laborers. The developing towns were building walls around their perimeters, partly to protect themselves, but also to indicate that they had charters from the king that licensed them as independent cities. Nobles and even members of the clergy were building city dwellings in the major urban centers to be their residences when they were in town on official business. In the countryside, mon-archs and nobles alike were building bigger and better castles. Many of the ideas for constructing better fortresses came from those that the crusaders had found in the Near East, such as Antioch.
Castles became far more complex than the simple motte-and-bailey stmctures of the 11th and early 12th centuries, although many of the basic features remained the same. The motte became a defensible tower made of stone. The parts below the ground served to stabilize a construction of masonry with walls as thick as 15 feet. The basement rooms were used as dungeons or prisons. The first level above the ground was used for storing barrels of wine, flour, salted fish, and other provisions that were needed to feed the castle garrison. Weapons might also be stored at this level, which might include a guard room as well. On the main level was the great hall—the center of castle life. Everyone took their meals in the hall, and many people slept on its floor after the trestle tables had been put away for the night. The lord of the castle performed acts of governance in the great haU, and all guests were entertained there. The upper stories were reserved for the lord and his family.
World History
