Whether looming over the land as a symbol of a ruler’s authority or providing a setting for displays of wealth and power in spectacular feasts and tournaments, castles made a visual statement about their owners. All architecture has symbolic overtones, and the castle is a potent image.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, mounds, palisades, and ditches were enough to indicate a seat of power, but as stone replaced timber as the building material of choice, towers and crenellated palisades and rooflines defined the castle. The licenses to crenellate, which the king issued as official permission to fortify a place or residence, indicated a social status as much as a need for defense. In the fourteenth century, the introduction of gunpowder into warfare irrevocably changed the nature of battles and affected the design of castles. High walls and tall towers made excellent targets, so builders emphasized defense in depth—low walls and wide moats. Eventually earlier castles became an encumbrance because maintenance of a huge masonry structure drained resources better spent on men and munitions. Nevertheless, the idea of a castle—the castle as a symbol—lived on.
As warfare changed, the king needed money to pay armies of mercenary troops, but as we have seen, the oldest and most distinguished nobles counted their wealth in land, not money. Newly rich city people who engaged in commerce had the necessary ready cash. Consequently the king and a few forwardlooking nobles favored the cities. They founded new cities and gave the burghers positions at court. These retainers, who wanted to be associated with power and prestige, formed a new social hierarchy. An important way for one of these “new men” to establish himself in the eyes of his neighbors was to build a splendid castle for his family home. Meanwhile those already in the feudal hierarchy crenellated and refurbished their inherited castles. The addition of crenellated battlements to a simple domestic building gave it and the owner immediate stature and credibility. Even today, we can still see crenellations decorating college halls, government buildings, and even private houses.
Just as towers and crenellations indicated a building’s status, so the crenellated wall signified a castle in the visual arts and in that distinctively medieval system of visual identification known as heraldry. The heraldic symbol of the kingdom of Castile, for example, consisted of a wall and three crenellated towers. This simple composition was easily recognized and reproduced. As the emblem of the powerful French queen Blanche of Castile (the mother of Louis IX and regent during his childhood, 1226-34) the heraldic castle appears beside the lilies of France in works of art, such as the stained-glass windows of the cathedral of Chartres and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.
Symbolic Architecture
Castles were designed to intimidate, or at least impress, visitors. Any castle reinforced the impression of overwhelming power and the authority of its owner or his constable (castellan or governor of the castle). In an age of personal government, the architectural design of the castle played an important role in the control of the access to the lord and so to power. The increasing complexity of the physical relationship of the hall of justice, the presence chamber, and the private rooms of the lord may have been accidental or calculated, but it certainly had an effect. The guest or petitioner moved from public to increasingly private space, through corridors, courts with views, waiting rooms, and gates—until the lord was revealed in the great hall seated in a splendid chair on a dais. The castle plan was intended to be spatially confusing, both for protection and also to enhance the position of power through the difficulty of access. In time, however, the individual halls became a continuous series of rooms built against the walls and having the appearance and effect of a single building with an inner courtyard.
Matthew Johnson imagines and describes the typical visitor’s arrival at the castle in his book Behind the Castle Gate. At first sight the castle, whether emerging from the woods of a hunting park or rising in the distance on a hill, created an expectation of grandeur within. Arriving at the gate at last, the visitor waiting to be admitted had time to study the symbolic heraldic imagery decorating the gatehouse or towers. Coats of arms established the lineage and family connections of the lord of the castle. Even the form of admission into the castle depended on one’s place in the social hierarchy. Trumpeters on the walls might greet important visitors who then entered through wide-open doors. Lesser people entered quietly through a small door called the wicket, cut into the main door. A wicket gate sometimes even required the visitor to bend over to enter. The least important people might be sent around to the postern, which became a back door, not a hidden sally port.
World History
