Ill
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
PUBLICATIONS OF
THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA
No. 100
GEORGE EDMUND STREET
UNPUBLISHED NOTES
AND
REPRINTED PAPERS
IVITH AN ESSAY
BY
GEORGIANA GODDARD KING
QUAM DILECTA TABERNACULA TUA DOMINE VIRTUTUM
THE HISPANIC SOCIETY
OF AMERICA
1916
COPYRIGHT, 191 6, BY
THE HISPANIC SOCIETY
OF AMERICA
>*
a:
CONTENTS
1 1
II. Notes of a Tour in Central Italy . . 59
III. Notes on French Churches 97
Some French Churches Chiefly in the
Royal Domain 99
Architectural Notes in France .... 127
Some Churches of Le Puy en Velay and
auvergne 201
Appendix 253
S. MARY'S Stone . 255
Churches in Northern Germany .... 270
Index 335
323185
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Zamora on the Douro Frontispiece
PAGE
George Street at about twenty-five 8
In Leon Cathedral 29
The Old Cathedral of Salamanca 46
George Edmund Street in 1877 57
Master Matthew's Porch at Santiago 92
The Ambulatory, Cathedral of Tours 127
The South Transept at Soissons 162
Nave and Transept, Salamanca 196
The Templars' Church at Segovia 227
The Western Porch, Saumur 249
Rood-screen in Lubeck Cathedral 271
The Great S. Martin, Cologne 307
GEORGE EDMUND STREET
/ have to thank Arthur Edmund Street, Esq., of London,
for the generous loan of some notebooks and drawings, and
through these for a more intimate knowledge of his great
father's fine temper and manly art.
Bryn Mawr, Epiphany, 1915
I
" And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city,
and the gates thereof and the walls thereof. And the city lieth four-
square, and the length is as large as the breadth. And the building
of the wall of it was of jasper; every several gate was of one pearl."
GEORGE EDMUND STREET
I
I HAVE written the memorial, brief enough and all
inadequate, of a man who died more than thirty
years ago, who lived a Tory and a High Churchman,
who worked to revive Gothic architecture in England.
His books are out of print, his occasional papers and
pamphlets so entirely dispersed and forgotten that not
even a bibliography can be recovered. His name goes
unrecognized in general talk; his party is wasted to a
wraith or transformed beyond recognition; his Church
is menaced by Disestablishment in Wales, and Modern-
ism on the Continent; his strong and sincere architec-
ture is superseded by steel and concrete; yet no man
ever less fought a losing fight, no figure ever less evoked
regret or toleration. He prospered, but his personality
made that a kind of happy consequence; he served God,
but his genius made that a kind of crowning grace; he
was an Englishman, but was that in no mean or halfway
fashion. Rather, George Street embodied and expressed
in his own temper the very genius of the northern kind.
[1]
His people were substantial, of the strong British stock
which is good for grafting on. In the sixteenth century
they were respected in and about Worcester; one of
the name went to Parliament in 1563, and another had
been Mayor in 1535. In the eighteenth century some
of them went to Surrey, and early in the nineteenth
Thomas Street was a solicitor in London. He had moved
into the suburbs, however, before his youngest son,
George Edmund Street, was born. This was in 1824.
The boy did well enough at school, but at fifteen he was
taken away, when his father removed from Camberwell
to Crediton. No school was at hand, and a solicitor
would not send his son to Eton and Oxford. Instead, he
sent him to the London office. This was in 1840, After
the father's death, in that year, young Street was anxious
to go to college and to prepare for Holy Orders, but want
of money made the hope impossible, and the strong vo-
cation proved to be for the Third Order — a layman's
part in building up the house of the Lord and making
fair the ministry therein.
It seems to have mattered not at all, in the event, that
Street was not a University man. In reading the cor-
respondence of Keats, we must deplore that he had not
had certain conventions of good taste and good feeling
sharply imposed upon him at a great public school; in
reading the poetry of Browning we must regret that he
missed the tradition of self-criticism and academic sta-
bility which would have saved him from the fantasti-
cality of his Greek names and the dullness of his longer
Parleyings; but Street seems to have got out of his pro-
fession and his associates all that Oxford would have
given, and escaped whatever harm it could have done.
[2]
He saved, meanwhile, nearly ten years of life, and spent
these on churches, chiefly old. He has not the marks of
the University man, but for that he is none the worse.
No more in truth has Morris. Instead of culture he has
energy, instead of urbanity he has self-control, instead
of classical he has professional reading behind him. It
is only in a very special sense, after all, that he did with-
out what we call culture and what we call urbanity; in
the sense of Newman's rather malicious definition of a
gentleman as a University man who is too indifferent
for enthusiasms and too sceptical for prejudices. If
young Street never went to school after he was fifteen,
and no record remains of his reading regularly or under
direction, yet he read irregularly all his life; by middle
age he had read everything that a man must have read.
Beyond this, in the subjects that he had at heart he
had gone wide and deep. He must have mastered and
spoken, besides French and German, both Italian and
Spanish, and he carried on his research into Latin docu-
ments, it seems, with ease and speed. After meals and
on journeys the busy man found his opportunity; he
took up and took in a vast deal of contemporary
thinking; finished the newspaper quickly, and reviews
and the graver sort of periodical literature almost as
fast. In his case, as rarely happens, another art could
give what most men seek in literature if they ever seek
it, and the taste was refined and the spirit inspired not
so much by fine poetry as by pure Gothic. The churches
of England and the cathedrals of France taught him that
perfect measure, that economy of force, that high seri-
ousness, that austerity of beauty, for which others are
sent to the Iliad and the Divine Comedy. Barring
[3]
belles-lettres and biology, there is little indeed, whether
in science or in mathematics, that the University can
offer, which the arts do not exact. If architecture is
on the one side an art, it is on the other a profession,
and partakes as little of the tradesman's mean-minded-
ness as of the artist's irresponsibility. It is probable,
moreover, that his passion for landscape had as much
to do in forming the character as Wordsworth's. By
the living rock and the ancient wall, by the perfect fabric
of Notre Dame and S. Marco, by the worship in chanted
psalm and antiphonal prayer, his spirit was forged and
tempered.
At school he had sketched and scrawled, and when
after his father's death in 1840 he was recalled to live
with his mother and sister at Exeter, he studied paint-
ing for a while as painting was taught in the provinces,
learning the management of oils and the science of per-
spective. No harm could come from this except that in
landscape sketching later he was shy of strong colour,
and set down Spain and Italy more pallid than he liked;
but already the current of his life was running by church
walls. In the year before, his brother, who was eight
years his senior and was brim-full of mediaevalism, had
taken him on a short walking trip for what they called
ecclesiologizing. For a while he lived near Exeter cathe-
dral, drawn to it at that time by every sentiment: grief
for his father — since his domestic affections were
stable — and anxiety for the future, strong religious feel-
ing, aesthetic feeling as strong, the beauty of the service
and the beauty of the building. Thence he made another
trip with this same brother, Thomas, around about
through the West of England to Barnstaple, Bideford,
[4]
Torrington and Clovelly. The diary of that tour, writ-
ten shortly after his sixteenth birthday, is simply the
first of the always happy notebooks which record his
many journeys in the interest of landscape and art. It
sets down the lay of the land and the aspect of the
streets where they passed; it notes that he got up at
six to sketch out of his bedroom window; and it pre-
serves more fact than comment, and less of the trivial
than of the significant. Within another year he was
articled to an architect in Winchester, studying the
cathedral from every point and at every hour. The
two brothers tramped the country for twenty miles
about, and as they could pushed further, for the
most part on foot still. In the spring of 1843 they
walked to Chichester; in the autumn into Lincolnshire;
the next year into Sussex. In 1845 they reached North-
ampton, returning thither in 1846 and again in 1850.
The same autumn he went to the Lake Country and
thence across to Durham and home by the Yorkshire
dales and abbeys. Jervaulx, however, he missed at
this time, nor does it appear among the sketches of
other abbeys in a notebook of 1875. In the spring
of 1847 the two brothers were among the churches of
the fen-land in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Mean-
while in 1844 Thomas, who was the eldest of the broth-
ers, and had succeeded to his father's practice, took a
house near London and fetched his mother and sister
to live with him there.
George, who was lonely and heartily sick of Win-
chester, came up to share it, with a letter for G. G.
Scott and drawings of his own to show. Taken on be-
cause work was pressing, he was kept on because his
[5]
work was good, and stayed in the office of Scott and
Moffatt until he was ready to set up for himself five years
later. Thomas Street by 1849 was married; the require-
ments of his profession, if not more serious, were more
exacting. He made fewer tours, but his taste for archi-
tecture, and apparently his taste in architecture, re-
mained sound. "At this time, they were all living
together at Lee, and afterwards at Peckham," says the
Memoir written in 1888 by George Street's son. "My
aunt relates how the two young men used to arrive with
sketch-books full and rolls of rubbings of brasses, and
would then sit up till the small hours, in all the ex-
citement of archaeological discussions and arguments.
My uncle [Thomas] was quite untaught. His love for
and appreciation of good architecture were quite spon-
taneous, and the proficiency which he attained with
his pencil and the knowledge he had of this subject,
more than considerable."
As the first knowledge of architecture had come
through a brother, so Street's first commission came
through the sister. Miss Street worked at ecclesiastical
embroidery. She heard through another lady embroid-
erer of a clergyman who intended building a church in
Cornwall. The story turns prettily on the scrupulous
girl's anxieties. Mr. Prynne, the clergyman, begins —
"Has your brother got much work going on?" The
sister, who wants to make him out as important as pos-
sible, yet cannot bring herself to a fib; and the sorry
truth that he is quite at leisure from affairs of his own,
unexpectedly satisfies the impatient projector. The
commission for Biscovey church led to others in Corn-
wall. Between restorations and new churches and
[6]
schools, commissions accumulated, and Street at this
period was in those parts for several weeks together,
three or four times a year, overseeing the work in prog-
ress and finding new work ready always at hand. In
1849 he had chambers in London and was "on his own":
at the end of 1850 he went to Wantage to be within reach
of Cuddesden, being appointed by the Bishop of Oxford,
diocesan architect.
Two main interests mark this time. He was engaged
to be married, and he was at the well-spring of the
Oxford Movement. He spent his Sundays at Maiden-
head with Marquita Proctor, on the river, seeing churches
and sketching; he spent his working days at Wantage.
"Mr. Street, having no special ties to any locality,
desired to live at Wantage where daily service and
weekly celebration had been established at a time
when such were rare. He took, therefore, in conjunction
with Mr. Stillingfleet — one of the clergy of the parish —
a little house in Wallingford Street. During the time
he lived there I saw him almost daily." This is Dr.
William Butler, later Dean of Lincoln. "When not
called from Wantage on business, he regularly attended
my service, and took his part in the choir. He had, I
remember, a baritone voice, and took a tenor part.
He was much interested in the improvement of services,
and, although at this time far from wealthy, he offered
a large annual subscription, I think it was £20, toward
the payment of an organist. . . . Never was there a man
of simpler or less luxurious habits. In those two years
he dined with us and the clergy of the parish, he drank
no wine, and had only the plainest food."
It was an energetic wholesome life, simple not so much
C7]
by limitation as by renunciation, full of interest and ex-
pression, keeping a right line, as always, by the force of
the initial impulse. The energetic, wholesome figure
stands firm in a clear sunlight that is hardly dimmed by
the space of sixty-odd years intervening. With nothing
of the prig, as little of the aesthete, he was alien to both
types by virtue of his vitality, his mirth, his essential
soundness. A daguerreotype taken about 1850 shows
quiet strength with a sort of sweet gravity. The hands
are strong and flexible, not large, with tapering fingers
and fine modelling on the back. You would have turned
in the street to look after the head, with a big square
brow jutting over blue eyes, brown hair very soft and
round chin very firm, a mouth poetic and self-controlled.
If poetry were (as once was rashly said) merely an affair
of genius, and genius the affair of energy, Street would
have been infallibly a poet. Energy and beauty in him
were mingled in unusual measure, and he found expres-
sion in active more than in abstract creation: in loving
landscape and sketching it, in hearing music and singing
it, in building Gothic churches and restoring them.
His invention was inexhaustible; he designed not
only all the mouldings for his churches, and all deli-
cately various, not only reredos and pulpit, baldachin
and font, and once a whole book of organs, but equally
as a matter of course the windows, the stalls, the iron-
work, the very altar-cloths. About this time he painted
the ceilings to some of his churches after Fra Angelico,
and elsewhere from his own designs. His early work
may have been a trifle severe at times, and at times a
trifle daring, but it had always freshness, vitality, one
might say vibration. His capitals ring clearer than
[8]
GEORGE EDMUND STREET AT ABOUT TWENTY-FIVE
glass when it is struck; his mouldings sound as true a
note as a violin when it is tuned. His building expresses,
beyond possibility of mistake, as specific a sentiment as
any composition of Palestrina or Fra Angelico: — viz.,
religious emotion, a combination of reverence and ac-
tion, a solemn joy. But with this power to express an
emotion from within himself and furthermore to create
it in others, went an indefatigable energy. He was tall
and very ready of movement, thickset and thin-skinned,
blue-eyed and brown-bearded, ruddy, compact of
strength and gentleness.
The energy found outlet normal and adequate in
three directions — his work, his affections and his relig-
ion. He worked apparently as a young dog runs, from
accumulated motor impulses, from strength that brims
over. You have never the pang of our brother the ass,
over-ridden, over-laden, that agonizes under the goad.
You have never the fever craving for work as anodyne,
that drives on desperately at the straining task as the
only escape from the hell-hounds that bay hard after
the sickening soul. The work is never done for work's
sake. It is a pleasure always, but only by the way. It
is done to support some one he loves and to add to the
glory of God.
The affections are close and sweet, those of the hearth.
His mother was a good Christian but even more a Stoic,
and Street held her the better for it. Theirs was a love
undemonstrative but recognized, of the most exacting
sort, neither of them accepting from the other anything
short of the very best. After he went to Winchester,
being then seventeen, she treated him like a man, and
rarely praised him for doing what he should. If a pleas-
[9]
ure was renounced, she said, "I knew that under the
circumstances you would be Philosopher enough to give
it up." Her grandson wrote: " It is enough to read the
mother's letters to see the source of the son's strength
and steadfastness of character. She was one of those
women who, in some indefinable way, have a powerful
influence for good on all those into whose company they
are thrown; who, themselves rather sparing in outward
signs of affection, create in others a warm love and a
perfect confidence. Her pride in her son was unbounded,
but was left to be inferred rather than expressed; while
her love was shown more in the demand for sacrifices,
in the confidence with which she appealed to her son's
sense of duty and obedience, however severe the test."
Besides a wide and wakeful kindness and untiring in-
terest in others of his own profession, he had full, warm
friendships, but where he could he took his pleasure
with his nearest of kin. The early journeys were made
in his brother's company, the continental with his wife,
and later with his son. The brothers, George and
Thomas, were married to cousins, and up to the very
last the longest and most frequent visits abroad were
made to his son's grandfather. After his wife's death
he took for a second wife her close friend, an intimate
of the household and frequent companion.
The relations not of choice, the intimacies sweetened
and consecrated by tender use and wont and all the
sanctities of the hearth, the blind impulses of the blood
and yearnings of the flesh toward kindred flesh and blood,
were for him alike inevitable and dear. Here also he ex-
presses the genius of the English stock. The northern
race stood out long for the righteousness of the married
[10]
life even in the priesthood, and the English church has
at all times tended toward the family life as distin-
guished from the cloistered, and elaborated and adorned
those services and sacraments which celebrate marriage
and the birth of children and their coming to maturity.
The Church of England may be in a position undig-
nified, uncomfortable, or even ridiculous, coupled up
with the State as it is; the doctrine of the great English
churchmen may be honeycombed with Erastianism;
but the English church has the virtue of providing for
every one of her children, lay not less than clerical, a
daily office in which they may take an intelligent, a per-
sonal, and a common share. The first characteristic of
the primitive church was apparently the fact of worship
done in common, action in some sort not merely simul-
taneous but mutual. There are some — the Society of
Friends for instance — who define religion by that col-
lectivity of feeling, and in expectation of the Holy Ghost
assemble themselves together. They draw most profit
from thirty minutes of silent meditation where a hundred
people in presence make up that silence and meditate
each one. The monastic life, with its multiplied choir
offices, met in another way this same desire for the
warmth of human contact, this same enhancement of
the experience of the whole far beyond the several ex-
periences. The Roman church, with its sodalities and
confraternities meeting regularly for special services,
its litanies and rosaries recited by tired, troubled women
together after nightfall, has recognized this and is busy
recovering hereby what has been lost out of the Sacra-
ment of the Mass. I remember after three weeks' inces-
sant travel finding myself in Siena cathedral, among
[11]
women unquestionably devout, who held well-thumbed
books, and, having lost count of the Sundays after Pen-
tecost, as I opened my Paroissien I asked my neighbour
on the right what Sunday it was. She shook her head
and questioned her neighbour; I turned to the one on
my left, but there was no one within decent whispering
distance who knew what the priests and the choir were
singing that day. Against such a chance, their church
service assures Anglicans. The English Prayer Book
may be a compromise, the office for morning and even-
ing prayer may be patched up and anomalous, but it
is an order of common prayer. The instinct of kind
enhances the personal expression of psalm and antiphon,
and daily service and saints'-day celebration have the
sweetness and warmth of the family life, the dearness of
the sacred ritual of the hearth.
Into his religion Street was born, as he was born into
his family. In the dawn of consciousness he found it
about him; with adolescence he felt it an influence and
a motive. In the months at Exeter he was anxious
often, but always there was the cathedral. In the last
year at Winchester he was lonely and sick for home, but
at hand there was the cathedral. While in Scott's office
he used to go with his sister to mattins before walking
into town; in the later years in London he never missed
with his wife the early celebration on saints'-days.
Church-going was as natural as eating, and as satis-
factory. He loved God as consciously as he loved his
mother and his wife; and said even less about it. After
he gave up the hope of taking Holy Orders he made a
plan for a sort of half-monastic fraternity of artists and
architects, who should be in art what the Templars
[12]
were, selected, set apart, and dedicated. It was pat-
terned after his own life unawares.
Younger than any of the great men of the Oxford
Movement, he was born in the Promised Land. What
they had hardly won, he inherited untroubled. Among
the many things the average Englishman would rather
go without than talk about, even to himself, may be
counted his religion, but the strain of enthusiasm in the
temper of Street, the genius that leavens his English
substance, would not let him rest without a reason for
the faith that was in him. He read and thought much
at this time. In later years, while the phrasing is reti-
cent yet the architecture is eloquent. In carved stone
and hewn timber, in chant and carol, in the colour and
contour of his records of the visible world, he let loose
the strong inward impulse that burned upward like a
flame. His natural element was creation not conflict,
and though he could strike a good blow at "pagan"
architecture and services restricted to the clergy and
the seventh day, he seems to have had small joy in
fighting and it, perhaps, killed him at the last. On the
ground, already won, of English Catholicity, he stood
firm and built strong and fair. Webbe and Neale and
Wilberforce, and I suppose Keble and Pusey, were friends
and advisers, but his real contemporaries were the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood with their allies and admirers
who launched the Aesthetic Movement.
How that was born at Oxford, and was baptized into
the English church with the Heir of Redely ffe for god-
father, is hard to keep in mind. But Morris and Burne-
Jones knew each other there and knew Street, who had
married in the June of 1852 and taken his wife to a house
[13]
in Beaumont Street. To us in another century it seems
that in those years, from 1852 when the two boys from
Walthamstow and Birmingham met and matriculated
together at Exeter College, even to 1857 when Rossetti
brought them back to paint the walls of the Union,
Oxford must have been a place of lightnings and splen-
dours. It sheds the same radiance that a great city just
beyond the horizon's bound throws up at night against
low-hanging clouds. To them it seemed spiritually grey
and dull enough. The Oxford Movement was in a sense
ended; some men had broken away, some had got to
cover, and in the rest religious emotion, having gone
past the stage of smoke and flame, glowed clear but
very still. Burne-Jones, according to his wife, "had
thought to find the place still warm from the fervour of
the learned and pious men who had shaken the whole
land by their cry of danger within and without the
Church. . . . But when he got there the whole life seemed
to him languid and indifferent, with scarcely anything
left to show the fiery times so lately past."
"Oxford is a glorious place," he wrote home, "God-
like. At night I have walked round the colleges under
the full moon and thought it would be heaven to live
and die here." He described it later: —
" It was a different Oxford in those days from anything
that a visitor would now dream of. On all sides, except
where it touched the railway, the city ended abruptly,
as if a wall had been about it, and you came suddenly
upon the meadows. There was little brick in the city,
it was either grey with stone or yellow with the wash of
the pebble-dash in the poorer streets. It was an endless
delight with us to wander about the streets where were
[14]
still many old houses with wood-carving and a little
sculpture here and there. The chapel of Merton College
had been lately renovated by Butterfield, and Pollin, a
former fellow of Merton, had painted the roof of it.
Indeed, I think the buildings of Merton and the cloisters
of New College were our chief shrines in Oxford."
These two undergraduates, both alike so young and
so typically English, lived at a high pitch in those years;
each strong impetus pushing hard upon the foregoing.
There was, to begin, an intention to take Orders, with a
real and inward sense of dedication in both. Out of that
flowered Burne-Jones's dream of a Brotherhood very
like that which Street had earlier nursed. "A small
conventual society of cleric and lay members working
in the heart of London," his wife called it soberly, many
years later, but he himself, at the time, "the Order of
Sir Galahad." To a friend he wrote at the end of a letter
— and the postcript is like one of his own exquisite pen-
cil drawings, all archaic, and altogether lovely: "You
have as yet taken no vows, therefore you are as yet
perfectly at liberty to decide your own fate. If your
decision involve the happiness of another you know your
course, follow nature, and remember the soul is above the
mind and the heart greater than the brain; for it is mind
that makes man, but soul that makes man angel. Man
as the seat of mind is Isolated in the universe, for angels
that are above him and hearts that are below him are
mindless, but it is soul that links him with higher beings
and distinguishes him from the lower also, therefore
develops it to the full, and if you have one who may
serve for a personification of all humanity, expand your
love there, and it will orb from its centre wider and
[15]
wider, like circles in water when a stone is thrown there-
in. But self-denial and self-disappointment, though I
do not urge it, is even better to the soul than that. If
we lose you from the cause of celibacy, you are no traitor;
only do not be hasty. Pax vobiscum in seternum —
Edouard."
That summer they went to France and saw Amiens.
Their companion said: "Morris surveyed it with calm
joy and Jones was speechless with admiration. It did
not awe me until it got quite dark, for we stayed till
after seven, but it was so solemn, so human and divine
in its beauty that love cast out fear." They went to
Beauvais, Paris and Chartres. "There we were for two
days, spending all our time in the church, and thence
made northward for Rouen, travelling gently and stop-
ping at every church we could find. Rouen was still a
beautiful mediaeval city, and we stayed awhile and had
our hearts filled. From there we walked to Caudebec,
then by diligence to Havre, on our way to the churches
of the Calvados; and it was while walking on the quay
at Havre at night that we resolved definitely that we
would begin a life of art and put off our decision no longer
— he should be an architect and I a painter. It was
a resolve only needing final conclusion; we were bent
on that road for the whole past year and after that night's
talk we never hesitated more — that was the most mem-
orable night of my life."
They were to start The Oxford and Cambridge Maga-
zine, and Burne-Jones was to meet Rossetti and very
heartily worship him but never to be drawn, even by
that blazing, fiery star, out of his own orbit of art delib-
erate and devout. Morris meanwhile, as soon as he had
[16]
taken his degree, addressed himself to work under
Street. Afterwards, as we know, he tried painting,
before he found his happiest outlet in decorative design-
ing, in dyeing and printing, and surely his finest and
most enduring expression in the writing that came so
easily we can only wish that he had taken it harder.
A note of Burne-Jones's in the year 1856 is so charming
and so characteristic that it may well serve as the note
of the whole set when they had really found themselves.
"There was a year in which I think it never rained nor
clouded, but was blue summer from Christmas to Christ-
mas, and London streets glimmered, and it was always
morning, and the air sweet and full of bells."
Their lives were, however, what could not be called
less than intense. Their emotions were all fervid and
their sentiments all impassioned, their enthusiasms
fairly militant, their convictions even intransigent.
Lady Burne-Jones communicates an exquisite sense of
their way of being something better than human nature's
daily food:
"I wish it were possible to explain the impression
made upon me as a young girl. . . The only approach
I can make to describing it is by saying that I felt in the
presence of a new religion. Their love of beauty did
not seem to me unbalanced, but as if it included the
whole world and raised the point from which they re-
garded everything." Again she quotes from a letter of
her husband's, written long afterwards, an impression of
that first journey into France. " Do you know Beauvais,
which is the most beautiful church in the world? I
must see it again some day — one day I must. It is
thirty-seven years since I saw it and I remember it all
[17]
— and the processions — and the trombones — and the
ancient singing — more beautiful than anything I had
ever heard and I think I have never heard the like since.
And the great organ that made the air tremble — and
the greater organ that pealed out suddenly and I thought
the Day of Judgement had come — and the roof, and
the long lights that are the most graceful thing man has
ever made. What a day it was, and how alive I was,
and young — and a blue dragon-fly stood still in the
air so long that I could have painted him. Yes, if I
took account of my life and the days in it that went to
make me, the Sunday at Beauvais would be the first
day of creation."
Emotion exquisite and almost as frail as the dragon-
fly, almost as quick to pass as the Sunday sunlight! It
is the impression of a boy, an aesthete and a poet, who
kept to the end of his days the same sensibility and the
same delight in beauty tangible. What he expresses,
however, he felt with his generation ; his associates had
a like organization and a like attitude. In that very
year Street, who had gone first to France, at a like age,
not so long before, wrote from recollection, in a paper
that was read at Oxford and published at Cambridge:
"One of the first elements is height. I know of no
one thing in which one is so much astonished, in all one's
visits to foreign churches, as by the luxury of that art
which could afford to be so daringly grand. From the
small chapel, not forty feet long, to the glorious minster
of some four hundred, one feels more and more impressed
with the sense which the old men evidently entertained
of its value; and exaggerated as it often is, even to the
most curious extent, it is never contemptible. It is in-
[18]
deed a glorious element of grandeur, and not the less to
be admired by Englishmen because we seem always to
have preferred length to it; whilst they, so they could
have height, cared little as to the length to which they
could draw out a long arcade, and prolong the infinite
perspective of a roof. And there is perhaps this advan-
tage of height over length, that whilst the one seems
entirely done for the glory of God, the other is always
more apparently for use. So in a church, height in excess
seems to typify the excess of their adoration who so
built; whilst the greater length makes one think of pos-
sible calculations as to how many thousands of men
and women might pass through, or how long a proces-
sion. . . . And as I have said so much about foreign ex-
amples I will but observe that the wonderful beauty of
the apsidal east ends abroad ought to be gladly seized
upon. ... No one who has stood as I have at the west end
of such a cathedral as that at Chartres, and watched the
last rays die out from all other windows and at last grad-
ually fade away from the eastern crown of light in its
five windows; or who has seen the mounting sun come
through all those openings one after the other, with
matchless and continued brilliancy, would deny that
such glorious beauties are catholic of necessity, and not
to be confined by custom or etiquette to one age or one
nation."
There is the expression of the man, mustering his
facts, enforcing his conclusions, weighing his estimates,
recording of his pleasure the least possible part. The
comparison is hardly fair to painter or builder either,
but it is none the less significant. His power of expres-
sion, to be sure, is less, and his determination toward
[19]
self-control is greater, but all the while the source of
delight, though stiller, is no less deep. Street's private
notebooks are as reticent as his public papers. Like
everything else that he did, they illustrate the charac-
teristic maxim which opens The Christian Year, that,
next to a sound rule of faith, there is nothing of so much
consequence as a sober standard of feeling — strong
feeling, but sober. A better notion of his response
to beauty could be formed from some personal letters
that he wrote in 1845, being then twenty-one years
of age.
" I got out at Milton station and trudged off for Lan-
ercost Abbey, an enthusiastic ecclesiologist, with every-
thing upon earth to make my enthusiasm higher than
usual — a glorious autumn day, a beautiful walk and an
abbey in prospect, in ruins it is true, but so lovely and
admirable in its ruin that in my admiration of it, the
day, and the scenery, I had almost forgotten to be en-
raged with its iconoclastic destroyers; but it was not in
mortal temper, after having seen and sketched it and
studied it carefully and lovingly as I did, to ascend the
hill away from it, to look at the river still rushing along
as beautiful and as swift as when holy men planned its
bridge of yore, to look at the sunny fields first cultivated
by them, and not to feel sorrow and indignation at the
thought that avarice and sin could so far have trans-
ported men as to lead them to the destruction of so fair
a scene." "O that the abusers of the monastic system
would trouble themselves to examine this once happy
valley, and watch the soothing influence of the lovely
building and landscape, and would ask themselves
whether they did not, in looking, feel more of reverence,
[20]
more of awe and of love for the religions and for tiie
men than they have heretofore felt."
Street was twenty-six before he crossed the Channel.
A foreigner may be pardoned for feeling it a piece of his
good luck that he should have learned and loved the
English Gothic before seeing the larger beauties and the
grander styles of France, lest otherwise his own should
have seemed to him fair but pallid, pure but cold, bear-
ing much the same relation to the continental that the
English service bears to the Roman use. It was not in
him, however, to withdraw the affection once given for
due cause, nor yet to withhold that just devotion the
larger excellence could command. For him the greater
glory would not dim the less. Both shared henceforth
in his life.
The foreign journey was omitted only twice, in the
year 1855, when his son was born in October, and in 1870,
when the Germans had invaded France. In the latter
year Street went to Scotland; in the former he stayed
at home on the Thames with Mrs. Street's people, bring-
ing out his Italian book and working on the buildings
for the Bishop of Oxford at Cuddesden. Towards the
end of the year he moved to London and took a house
in Montague Place. The plans which he submitted in
competition for a new cathedral at Lille won a second
prize, and the Frenchman to whom the actual building
was given in the end had been rated originally below
him. He had by this time at least three assistants
working under him regularly, Edmund Sedding, Philip
Webbe, and William Morris. He was perpetually oc-
cupied with parishes and private persons — on schools,
chapels, restorations, residences even, country churches
[21]
fitted to a village community, town churches designed
for the artisan populace and their employers. He had
finished Cuddesden College and carried work far already
on the whole important cluster of diocesan buildings;
he had begun building for the Anglican sisterhood at
East Grinstead; he had been praised not a little in the
competition at Lille; he was to take a second place, the
next year, with his design for the Crimean Memorial
and in the end to build the church; and shortly there-
after he sent in plans for new Government Offices.
About this last he reasoned, with the spendthrift logic
of youth, that while he could hardly expect to win the
commission with a Gothic design, the premium offered
to him among others of the best was a hundred pounds
and would give him another trip to Italy, while he
would gain, furthermore, from the public exhibition of
the drawings.
The undertaking cost, to be sure, time and strength,
but of these he was never stingy. He seems to have
known how to be at once thrifty and generous of him-
self — generous perhaps because thrifty. All his life he
seems to have done three men's work in a day and all
work in a third of the time that other men would take.
He mentions once, being on a journey, that "it rained,
so we read, wrote, and occupied the many hours in the
rumbling diligence as best we might." The notes were
written often in diligence or train, as the firm clear
writing betrays, while it remains characteristic and leg-
ible. He worked habitually till half-past twelve at night,
yet with all the incessant occupation of the most exacting
sort, in large measure creative labour, you never think
of him, as he never can have thought of himself, as
[22]
overworked. The essential soundness, the vital force
made his way of life spontaneous and inevitable. The
strong, even, white teeth, the strong, curling, brown
beard, were the visible token of bodily sanity and power,
a sort of physical validity of which the cause was not
merely physical.
As the mediaeval builders reared and poised their
great churches by a calculated balance of thrust and
strain, and hung aloft in stone a proposition in propor-
tion, so, you feel, with Street, it must have been
some extraordinarily just measure, some perfect balance
of temper, some secret of self-control, only comparable
to the engineer's control of his crane or hammer or loco-
motive, that gave him life so abounding and yet so
temperate, so huge in accomplishment and yet so undis-
tressed. If we know that at times the pulse and the in-
vention flagged, yet it is only because we know by
testimony that tasks designed in hours of gloom were
not, indeed, fulfilled in hours of insight, but instead they
were destroyed, to be replaced later by designs better
because of more vitality and more elan.
Doubtless in this a fine natural constitution played a
large part, but even a larger part, one is tempted to
think, belongs to faith. Nisi Dominum, says the Psalm-
ist, but here the Lord did keep the house and their
labour was not lost that built it. One thinks of Huxley
coming home exhausted from his lectures to lie on a sofa
at one side of the hearth, that on the other side being
permanently occupied by his wife. There can be little
question which of the two men did more for his genera-
tion, but also there can be no question which found
more substantial and untroubled happiness. "It is not
[23]
lost labour that ye rise up so early, and so late take
rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, for so He giveth
His beloved sleep." By every reasonable standard of
happiness we must admit that Street's work, untiring,
joyous, faithful, done in direct loyalty to God Almighty,
bore the fruit of a constant blessing.
The domestic affections and the service of religion
filled up a life singularly pleasant to contemplate. Boat-
ing, cricket matches and riding, plain-song meetings and
the Philharmonic Society, opera, exhibitions and sales
of pictures, all found place without crowding. If he did
not ride he wrote letters for an hour and a half or two
hours before breakfast. He had his office in the house
and kept long hours in it without interruption except
from clients, but his little son was admitted as some-
thing less than a trouble, and watched him designing.
An assistant said, later: "We worked hard, or thought
we did. We had to be at the office at nine o'clock and
our hour of leaving was six o'clock, long hours — but he
never encroached on our time and as a matter of fact I
am sure I never stayed a minute past six o'clock."
After dinner there might be music, at home or abroad,
cards or reading, or a cigar and talk on the balcony over
the square — a London balcony, dingy and flower-beset,
above a London square in summer, dim with twilight
and coal-smoke, smelling of soot and dewfall on green
leaves. At half-past nine came tea and thereafter three
hours more of good work alone. He travelled, of course,
more than a little, and on the journey put in the normal
day's work. The same friend goes on: "I well remem-
ber a little tour deforce that fairly took our breath away.
He told us one morning that he was just off to measure
[24]
an old church, I think in Buckinghamshire, and he left
by the ten o'clock train. About half-past four he came
back and into the office for some drawing paper; he
then retired to his own room, reappearing in about an
hour's time with the whole church carefully drawn to
scale, with his proposed additions to it, margin lines
and title as usual, all ready to ink in and finish. Surely
this was a sufficiently good day's work. Two journeys,
a whole church measured, plotted to scale, and new
parts designed, in about seven hours and a half. He was
the beau-ideal of a perfect enthusiast. He believed in
his own work, and in what he was doing at the time,
absolutely; and the charm of his work is that when
looking at it you may be certain that it is entirely his
own, and this applies to the smallest detail as to the
general conception. ... No wonder we were enthusiastic
with such performances going on under our eyes daily."
Yes, it is good to know that such lives can be, filled
with pleasure in the exercise of conscious strength, suf-
ficient unto the day, with enough for all needs and to
spare. It is like watching a blooded dog or a thorough-
bred horse. As a rule we compare men to pleasant
animals only when they are unpleasant men, and say
they are engaging only when we cannot say they are
trustworthy. Here was one singularly engaging. Every
one in remembering him recalls his wit, fireside mirth,
good temper, ready answer. When a dull gentleman,
having dissected at great length the old mare's nest
about mediaeval irregularities in design, wound up after
a pompous question about the secrets of freemasonry:
"Now Mr. Street, what do you think?" Street flashed
back: "What do I think? I think the beggars could not
[25]
build straight." When a young architect consulted him
about going to law to recover his designs from a client
— would it be wise? Street answered, "That depends
on what sort of man your client is and whether you
have any expectation of further commissions from
him." "His experience and natural shrewdness," wrote
an acquaintance at the time of his death, "made him
a valuable adviser on points of professional practice,
and he had a humour very often caustic, which one
could not help sympathizing with."
He was a good son and brother, a good husband and
father, without loss of manliness. No man was less a
prig. No man, indeed, was ever more respectable, but
the touch of genius makes respectability itself engaging.
He was not subtle, but his directness can make subtlety
look devious and insincere. He was not complex, but
his straightness can make complexity look morbid and
mean-minded. In 1863 Crabbe Robinson wrote in his
diary:
''October 17. Dined with the Streets. Our amuse-
ment was three-handed whist. Both Mr. and Mrs.
Street very kind. On every point of public interest he
and I differ, but it does not affect our apparent esteem
for one another. I hold him in very great respect,
indeed admiration. He has first-rate talent in his pro-
fession as an architect. He will be a great man in act —
he is so in character already."
He lived afterwards in Russell Square and then in
Cavendish Square; always in the dear, unspoiled, sub-
stantial, smoke-stained professional quarter, the London
of those that live there all the year, where autumn
lights vistas of tawny splendour down every street, and
[26]
spring offers nosegays of early wall-flower and narcissus
from the Scilly Isles at every corner; where the air per-
petually tastes of soft coal, damp mud, and warm malt;
where in December the moist pavement glistens with
a permanent slime, and in May the porch roofs burgeon
into azaleas pied and trailing pink geraniums.
His life thenceforth falls into such periods as Ezekiel
counted, — a time and a time and half a time. Ten
years, from 1855 to 1865, were given to church-building,
to travel for the sake of study, to writing, beginning with
the Brick and Marble in Italy and culminating in the
Gothic Architecture in Spain. Mainly within the next
ten fall the great commissions — for the Law Courts,
for building the nave of Bristol cathedral, for rebuild-
ing the cathedral at Dublin, for restoring that of York.
If this period is closed with the death of his second
wife, in 1876, there will remain just five years for bring-
ing all to a conclusion, finishing wholly or very nearly
the great works, lending a strong hand to such public un-
dertakings as saving London Bridge, adorning S. Paul's,
rescuing S. Marco at Venice, and serving on the council
of the Royal Academy. Finally, he was President of
the Royal Institute of British Architects. He delivered,
as Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy, six
lectures on Gothic Architecture in the spring of 1881.
Those were widely read at the time, printed in the
weekly journal, the Builder, as they were delivered, and
in the Architect; and reprinted by his son as an ap-
pendix to the Memoir. In that same year he died and
on the twenty-ninth of December was buried in West-
minster Abbey. He was only fifty-seven and he had
been ill only a month.
[27]
With Street's actual building I have little here to do.
Immense in quantity, admirable in kind, it stands and
long will stand, not only amid the dense green of English
hedgerows and in the bitter grime of English towns,
but beside the graves of Alpine valleys and in the Stran-
ger's Quarter of continental cities. Of its technical ex-
cellence, the way it meets and happily resolves the
builder's problems, I am not competent to speak. Ar-
chitects have praised him well. The distinguished
American who has devoted his own rich and exquisite
talent to the quest of Gothic, tells me that Street, of
them all, had the most genius. To the mere ecclesiolo-
gist, who comes to the American church at Paris, or the
church and schools of S. James the Less, in Westmin-
ster, or the village spire of Holmbury S. Mary, it seems
that if new churches must be at all, they should be thus.
Where Scott's work seems colder than death and Butter-
field's trivial or thin, Street's alone has a kind of present
life, a pulse, an inner glow. It is again the abounding
life of the man which communicates of itself. Many
have put their heart into their work, but only a great
heart lives and burns in it.
Of architecture, apart from technical questions,
structural or archaeological, there is little profitable to
be said. Like the other arts which deal directly with
bodily experience, it suffers from the necessity of trans-
lating Into an alien speech. You may talk about
Shelley forever, since poetry is made of words, or about
Plato, since philosophy is made of ideas, but the truest
praise of the Passion according to St. Matthew is reserved
for the organ, and the real right comment on any Peru-
gino is the Granducal Madonna. Criticism may take a
[28]
IN LEON CATHEDRAL
lawful pleasure in explaining, first, how a given work of
art came to be what it is — which is matter of history;
and, second, why we enjoy it as much ■ as we do, —
which is matter of psychology; but the enjoyment
itself criticism cannot express except by a laborious
process of transmutation and translation. Of all the
arts architecture is least apt for this sort of evocation.
Even Pater hardly knows that song to which the mem-
ory of Chartres would, like a mist, rise into towers,
though he could reweave by his magic the very spell of
Botticelli, and recall with his subtle harmonies the very
presence that rose so strangely by the waters of Leo-
nardo. Those who have lingered at nightfall in the nave
of Chartres until through mounting darkness the blue
windows burned as by their own proper light, may know,
some of them, that a great church, like the deep sea,
like the ancient woods, like the starry heavens, can lib-
erate for an instant the soul from the limitations of the
conscious intelligence. But even if a man would tell of
that, and no man would, there are no words for the
telling. To put the matter anotherway: — the experience
of music is a matter of the auditory sensations and their
recall in memory; the experience of painting a matter
of the visual, for the most part; that of architecture is
a very curious combination of the tactual and muscular
with certain respiratory and vaso-motor functions.
Words, in each of the cases, are at the second and third
remove from the actual appreciation; and moreover
architecture shares with music, except where figure-
sculpture enters in, the supreme condition that represen-
tation merges in presentation, that form and content
coincide.
[29]
The love of thirteenth century France flowered in the
beauty of Street's designing; the knowledge of Cata-
lan city churches bore fruit in the frequent use of the
lofty nave arcade, which barely marks the aisle off,
and opens all the church to sight and hearing of the
preacher; the long acquaintance with Italian brick con-
struction led to his perpetual endeavour by bands of
colour to lighten the monotony of English stone. But
marbles under a southern sun will fade and stain and
modulate together, where other material and other
skies will not effect the combination, and while I feel
that some of Street's essays in colour have been less
happy than his other audacities, I feel stronglier yet that
the fault lies more with the material at hand than with
the shaping spirit of imagination.
He is supposed to have been at his best in designing
middle-sized churches for general use, like All Saints'
at Clifton, and S. Margaret's, Liverpool. I know he
felt that he never worked more to his own mind than
when he built his own church at Holmbury. The Ameri-
can churches in Paris and Rome, the English churches
in Rome and Genoa, the Anglican churches at Lausanne,
Vevey and Murren are all his. The list of his buildings
published in his son's Memoir stretches from Constan-
tinople to Trinidad. I notice that at the time of his
death some called the new nave of Bristol cathedral his
most entirely successful work. That may in a way be
reckoned as restoration, if one likes, and remain equally
characteristic, for Street did much work of restoring, and
the list of original work is followed in the Memoir by a
longer list of ancient work to which he lent a reverent
hand. Against any restoration but the most reverent
[30]
he protested, both generally and in such particular
cases as that of the Lincoln doorways. He was a member
of Morris's "Anti-scrape" society, though once at least
that body fell foul of him. The mere ecclesiologist in
this case is again disposed to admit that if, to keep a
church above ground, some restoration must be done, it
had better be in such hands as his.
In truth all the best work of Street was done in the
spirit and in the terms of mediaeval work, as the best
poetry of Morris was written. Each by a rare chance
found himself of blood kin, born to the same language,
gesture and emotion, with those long dead. I do not
know that Street's church building was ever blamed for
not being of its own age: certainly such a criticism
would be peculiarly unjust, for it is the translation into
brick and stone of The Christian Year. The Tractarians
and Street gave their lives to the same task, and they
patched up their churches so well that these will stand
for generations yet.
His knowledge, in truth, of the Middle Ages was
often enough made a reproach. He was accused by
competitors, by church-wardens and committees, by
journalists and critics, of allowing an undue influence
over his work to foreign styles. No one would be
likely now to hold that for a ground of grievance, but
the charge is the less plausible considering how early
mature were both the man and his workmanship. It
was in 1850 that he went to the Continent for the first
time, already knowing his England well. Rarely,
thereafter, he let a year go by without crossing the
Channel, and often he added, especially in later life, an
autumn or a winter holiday. There would be interest in
[31]
drawing up a table of his journeys, if one could be made
complete, year by year, and in supplying from letters
and diaries his fresh impressions, if these were available.
With the help of old notebooks, even without other
material, may be made out a list tentative and imperfect,
indeed, but still suggestive, — by the change in recur-
rence, for instance, by the perpetual discovery of fresh
interest on ground no matter how familiar. From what
he saw he took refreshment and suggestion, never pre-
cisely a model. There would be no use in setting off,
against the table of his travels, a table of his buildings.
These were the growth of English soil, and from his
masters, the cathedral builders of France and Spain, the
masons of Germany and Lombardy, he asked not what
they did but how. More often, the direct outcome of
travel, the transformation of observation into activity,
was not the high-reared vault but the written word —
figuring in the Ecclesiologist, in the Transactions
of Diocesan Societies and Architectural Associations,
in the Italian and the Spanish volumes, and in at
least two more that he projected but did not live to
finish.
Street never went to Greece or Russia, nor, I think,
to Dalmatia. The Gothic lands he loved, there his
genius renewed its mighty youth. For him as for the
young Pre- Raphael ites in 1845 and then for the young
Aesthetes in 1855, the first sight of a great French church,
say of Amiens, marked as much the close of one stage
and the commencement of another, as if they all had
not known Westminster and York Minster, Iffley and
Fountains Abbey; as if they were, in effect, young
Americans fed on nothing more ancient than those
[32]
white wood pillars of a front porch, that rough-dressed
stone or bluish brick of a central square with flanking
wings, which appear in our earliest and only, our
"Colonial," style.
If one is tempted to press the American parallel in
the matter of enthusiasm, as the only one adequate to
express the degree of it and the surprise, fresh as a May
morning, irrevocable as falling in love for the first time,
one is even more tempted to push the same parallel in
the matter of method — of "doing" churches and
"doing" towns at an incredible rate. Burne-Jones and
Morris on their memorable trip arrived at Abbeville
late Thursday night after a Channel crossing, and on
Friday had an hour in Amiens cathedral before dinner
and stayed there afterwards till nine, reached Beauvais
on Saturday and went to Sunday Mass and vespers,
thence on to Paris the same night, spent sixteen hours
Monday in sightseeing, and had only three days there
in all with which to see the Beaux-Arts exhibition, the
Cluny, Notre Dame, the Louvre, and hear Le Prophete.
Thursday and Friday they gave to Chartres — a longer
time, one likes to remember, than they spared for any
other cathedral. So, of Street, his son writes: " In Sep-
tember, 1850, ... in ten days he saw Paris, Chartres,
Alengon, Caen, Rouen and Amiens, sketching all the
time with might and main." That would be a fair
record now for any but the shameless, even if you sub-
stituted kodak and motor-car for sketch-book and in-
frequent trains. "In the summer of 1851 three weeks
sufficed to make him acquainted with Mayence, Frank-
fort, Wurtzburg, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Ratisbon,
Munich, Ulm, [Constance], Freiburg, Strasburg, Heidel-
[33]
berg, [Cologne], and three or four of the best of the
Belgian towns." The next trip was his wedding tour
and reached the great churches of what might be called
in architecture, conveniently, the Burgundian March
— Dijon, Auxerre, Sens, Troyes; and the year after that,
late in August, the pair came to Italy. The things done
and seen, and, even more the things thought, in some-
thing like five weeks, crammed the notebooks and bore
fruit in a volume that Murray published in 1855, Brick
and Marble in the Middle Ages.
The first thing, and, even on reflexion, the most sur-
prising, in all this travel, is of course the quality and the
quantity of what Street did in his vacations, the incred-
ibly rapid and inconceivably hard work, no less than the
enthusiasm and endurance of the man. The labour, in
the very doing, passes into creation. Besides the great
sketch-block he carried a leather-bound luxurious note-
book or two, of heavy and beautiful paper, some five or
six inches by eight, and thick as would go into a coat
pocket, in which he put down alternately sketches and
notes, plans and measurements, names of local building-
stone or extracts from a parish register, and occasionally
a memorandum of railway trains or addresses and dates
for forwarding letters. These worn little volumes are
evocative, are potent. He begins sketching, always,
the moment he reaches the Continent and keeps it up
till he touches the Channel again, but he rarely repeats
a subject or an observation. The text records facts and
inferences, judgements and estimates, more often than
impressions; and emotions, I think, never. The draw-
ings preserve more often a plan, a detail, a profile, than
a facade or an interior — in short, a picture. In a sense
[34]
everything is a picture, in its vitality of line and uner-
ring selection. For the rest, the great views of ambula-
tory and transept, west front and apse, were done on a
larger sheet, and such of them as were not later used up
or given away still preserve in books the itinerary of
the successive years. Whoever has known churches
hitherto by photographs only will turn the leaves of
these with strong delight. It is hard ever to say fully why
all drawings of architecture should satisfy more than
any photographs, and these overpass comparison. The
camera, after all cannot see around a corner and an
artist can.
The solar print is a dead thing, and here is the living
line. Street can afford, with great economy of line,
immense vitality; his son says that he never carried an
india rubber and never put in a line that he was not
sure of, and on the pages of the dusty note-books the
line lives and vibrates. One of 1874 may open at a
chapel of the abbey at Vezelay or a capital from the
choir arcade of Auxerre, or another of 1860, at the
church of Ainay or the gateway of Nevers; but all
the work of all the years is interchangeable in respect
of firmness and life, certainty and authority; and what
you see on the page is not merely knowledge, accuracy,
dexterity, it is genius. The quick notes, as surely as the
large studies and the great original designs, show never
lack of it. Architecture is a craft, a thing a man by ap-
plication can learn, like journalism, and architectural
drawings may be merely exact, neat and compact, and
give pleasure. But genius is like the grace of God in a
man's work, it is all in all and all in every part. The
vitality of the line in sketching, the vitality of the design
[35]
in building, are the outcome of it. The very handwriting,
rapid but neither negligent nor meticulous, is as much a
part of him as a man's hair.
The original notes, written from day to day, are
never slight, or stupid, or cock-sure. The Brick and
Marble volume has kept their fresh, quick finality.
Thanks in part most likely to Modern Painters, land-
scape in the early journeys counted nearly as much as
cities. Street had seen the Alps in 1851 from the Lake
of Constance, and looked at them and stuck to his
work. The next year, apparently, he visited Switzerland
with his wife and walked up as many as possible. On
the Italian journey two years later he literally made the
most of the mountains, going and coming — through
the Rhineland and the Vosges, by the lakes of Zurich
and Wallenstadt, down the canton of the Grisons and
over the Splugen to the lake of Como, one way, and the
other by Lake Maggiore and the S. Gothard, climbing
the Furka and including the lake of Lucerne. As, on
another visit, he comes down through the Tyrol by Grau-
enfels and the Pustertal, the bare hints are electrical,
the reader's imagination catches fire. In this first book,
the landscape gets more attention than ever again in
print, but all his life he loved a mountain about as well
as a cathedral, he saw the Alps as often as Amiens. His
pencil was almost as often and as happily set to land-
scape sketching as to any other; it caught the profile
of a bluff and traced the swelling and subsidence of a
mountain's flank. Now that in the pursuit of colour
and light most painters have abandoned form, and sec-
ond-rate Impressionists are content to let a landscape
welter in blues and mauves like a basket of dying fish,
[36]
his forcible contours and cool washes awake a tingling
of reality.
In 1854 he went to Munster and Soest, and wrote for
the Ecclesiologist during the following year three pieces
on the architecture of northern Germany, besides
another for the Oxford Architectural Society. Summary
as are these brief and practical papers, they remain still
so entirely and beyond dispute the fullest and most sug-
gestive account of German brick work, they are so good
to steal from and so indispensable as adjuncts to Bae-
deker, and finally, so characteristically foreshadow and
supplement the Spanish volume, that they are reprinted
bodily in the appendix here. It is precisely sixty years
since they were written, and they are not only not super-
seded, they are still unapproached. Back of the energy
which enabled him to cover a vast deal of ground and
never miss a detail, beyond the personal acquaintance,
and not mere book-knowledge, of the twelfth, thir-
teenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England,
France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy (to which later he
was to add Spain) — beneath all this learning lay the
happiest instinct for what was either first-rate or impor-
tant or both. He rarely went out of his way to look at a
church that was not worth his while, he rarely failed to
look at every church in a town that would repay him.
The Memoir quotes a letter from this journey, with the
characteristic prelude, "he worked hard, as he always
did, up early and in late": — " I have got a great budget
of sketches; indeed, I have done pretty well, for in a
fortnight I have mustered about fifty-five large sketches
besides filling a goodly memorandum book. We en-
joyed Lubeck immensely, and amongst other feats
[37]
323185
astonished the natives by making rubbings of some
magnificent brasses, of which Marique did her share, to
the delight of the sacristan."
His interest in German building was more practical
than aesthetic; he found suggestive parallels to his own
problems in those of the rich merchant cities, set down,
often, in a country without accessible stone. He recurs
a dozen times, in his writings, to the similar solutions
found in S. Mary's at Barcelona and S. Elizabeth's at
Marburg, and the same type of building in brick de-
veloped about Lubeck and Saragossa, Toulouse and
Cremona — in the great plains of the north of Germany,
the north of Spain, and the north of Italy.
Though in 1855 he took no summer holiday, he went
over in the fall to see the designs at Lille with William
Morris, and pushed on to S. Omer. The notebook of
that journey is particularly rich in detail, both personal
and architectural. The trip supplied material for pa-
pers in the Ecclesiologist, supplemented by another two
years later, through Normandy, the Soissonnais and the
German border. Even to-day when that country has
been written to death, ploughed up by pedants and
harrowed by illiterate motorists and photographers, the
papers are almost too good to leave in the dust of old
libraries, with their tang of a spring morning early
enough to taste of frost. The notebook still is more than
half a journal, coloured with detail not so irrelevant
as the writer fancied, and I have snatched out a bit
about Laon to reprint.^
* Since these words were written that country has seen another
harvest time; the fields have been ploughed with the trenches of
armies and harrowed by the bomb and bullet: Street's record of
what men saw fifty years ago has grown precious for us who shall
never see it more.
[38]
Far more brief are the notebooks, however, of 1860,
when he went to the Bernese Oberland and took in the
country that lies westward from Lyons — Le Puy,
Brioude, Clermont-Ferrand, Nevers, — and many of the
smaller churches of that curious Auvergnat type which
was to help him so well in the interpretation of Spanish
Gothic during the following years. There are sketches
and plans aplenty, with the scantiest jottings of fact,
and then a few fragments of bibliography; lastly terse
notes of reading done, I fancy, in Paris on the way home.
These served for an essay on The Churches of Velay,
which has been printed twice in the Transactions of the
Royal Institute of British Architects, once at the time,
and again, long after his death, in 1889. It is still inac-
cessible to most, and I reprint it once more, partly for
the bearing on his interpretation of Spanish building,
and partly because I know nothing better on Auvergne.
Nothing missed him, not the paintings on the wall
at Brioude nor the Liberal Arts on the pavement at
Ainay. A scrawled road-map on one page would be
still the ecclesiologist's best guide for the region. The
village of Monistrol which harbours, thereabouts, a char-
acteristic church, and to which he refers again for com-
parison in the Spanish volume, is not, I take pleasure in
noting, the scene of the first meeting with Modestine.
If it had been, you should not know from Stevenson
that a church stood thereby, for the good creature had
no great taste in churches, and though the Inland Voy-
age lay through a cathedral country, small good was
that to him.
The volume shows how Street's published books
were made, and it shows furthermore, what any other of
[39]
these little leather books could equally illustrate, how
his instinct drove straight at the truth and needed
from documents only confirmation. He wrote once:
" For that period of just five hundred years so regular
was the development that it is not too much to say that
a well-informed architect or antiquary ought always to
be able to give, within ten or at most twenty years, the
date of any, however small a portion, of Mediaeval ar-
chitecture with almost absolute certainty of being cor-
rect when his judgement can be tested by documentary
evidence."
That was his practice, the elan of his own judgement,
as certain as the stroke of his pencil, which other archi-
tects, of other nations, have delighted to honour.
Senor Lamperez, in his great book on Spanish archi-
tecture, bears generous and graceful witness to the just-
ness and certitude of Street's conjectures. He even gives
him the credit of finding the date of S. Maria at Bena-
vente, now known to be 1220, though in point of fact
Street had set down as opinion and not knowledge that
the church must have been built between 1200 and 1220.
The only case in which I know his instinct at fault is
that of the belated churches of Galicia, where Roman-
esque forms persisted sometimes even into the fifteenth
century. There, knowing few dates of buildings and
fewer of builders, he hardly estimated them enough of
laggards, and guesses wrong sometimes by a century,
or nearly.
Precisely in a case like this, where an unknown con-
dition vitiates the experiment, one sees how just is his
method and how right in all but the actual year of
our Lord, even here, is the outcome. The steady judge-
[40]
ment, the wide knowledge, the happy divination, which
we call genius, cannot play false. While the saint,
by ancient dogma, cannot sin, the foredamned cannot
do right; and the provincial-minded, even though all
the data lie before him, is foredoomed by his campani-
lismo to come out wrong. It is, moreover, a trifle un-
grateful in a few young Spaniards and a few fretful
Hispanophils to scold at Street, for he was the best
friend and the most practical, outside the Peninsula,
that Spain had ever had — not forgetting either the
Duke of Wellington or Murray's Ford. Let me quote
again Senor Lamperez, what he has to say at the open-
ing of his admirable Historia de la Arquitedura
Espanola Cristiana:
"Two foreigners deserve especial place and mention in
this survey, the English Street and the French Enlart.
Street was an architect, profoundly versed in Christian
art, Gothic in chief; he had studied the monuments of
it all over Europe; he visited Spain and before her
churches he sketched and took notes with so sure a vis-
ion that his book on Gothic Art [sic] in Spain has come
to be, if I may say so, classic. It is the greater pity that
Street saw of Spain only one very small part. On any
count, his work is of exceptional importance. His text
is too widely known for me to need to analyze it here;
suffice it to say that his method is based on a technical
study of each building, without any divagation into
poetic descriptions or literary lucubrations."
Some account of Gothic Architecture in Spain, pub-
lished in 1865, was the outcome of the journeys in
1861, '62 and '63 and (I suppose) of two more summers
spent at home in research and actual composition and
[41]
publication. At any rate I find no record of autumn
travel in '64 and '65.
It is hardly fair, in truth, for Senor Lamperez to say
that he saw only a small part of Spain. His journeys
covered, geographically speaking, much more than two-
fifths of the Peninsula, and archaeologically speaking, all
the best of the Romanesque and Gothic, both Gallegan,
Castilian, and Catalan. What he missed was the pre-
Romanesque, as it is found in the Asturias, and the
true Moorish, i.e. the Asiatic and non-Christian. If he
neglected the Mudejar work and the Renaissance period,
it was deliberately, because when he looked at them he
misliked them. The real difference between his field of
labour and that of Sefior Lamperez consists not so much
in the latter's possession of Estremadura and la Mancha,
Seville and the south-east coast, as in his fuller knowl-
edge and more minute experience of the northern prov-
inces. The Castiles and Leon, Galicia and Navarre, and
the ancient domain of the kings of Aragon, have been
examined league by league and published both fully
and frequently, since 1865. The peculiar styles which
give their importance to the regions of the Biscay shore
and the Sierra Morena, the Latin-Byzantine of Asturias
and the Mohammedan of Andalusia, are special phe-
nomena and must always be treated apart; they may
therefore at need be omitted, without grave loss, from
the general consideration of mediaeval building in Spain;
and if these are struck out, for instance from the lists
of Sefior Lamperez, there will remain, as the significant
monuments and the important regions, precisely those
which Street had already treated. Cuenca and Soria,
Poblet and Ripoll, Tuy and Orense, Toro, Jaca, the
[42]
Seo de Urgel, were all unvisited and other churches
yet; but the list is not long nor are the places vastly
important.
Some of them, if it must be known, are still but little
studied; and with all the fine enthusiasm of Spanish
architects, and societies learned and popular, treasures
of the great age still remain unexplored. Only last
summer the present writer rode over the flank of a hill to
salute, all unprepared, a superb transitional church of the
thirteenth century. It was not cathedral nor even collegi-
ate, but mere parroquia, and perhaps the finest parish
church in Spain: — and it is even to this hour, so far as
may be ascertained, completely inedite. When Street
went to Santiago he was much in the same case. " I had
been able to learn nothing whatever about the cathedral
before going there," he records, with ironic amusement;
"in all my Spanish journeys there had been somewhat
of this pleasant element of uncertainty as to what I was
to find; but here my ignorance was complete, and as
the journey was a long one to make on speculation, it
was not a little fortunate that my faith was rewarded
by the discovery of a church of extreme magnificence
and interest."
The three journeys were so planned as not only to
find out much that was new each time but to repeat and
verify earlier impressions. With his usual sobriety he
sets down the itinerary in the opening pages:
"In my first Spanish tour I entered the country from
Bayonne, travelled thence by Vitoria to Burgos, Pa-
lencia, Valladolid, Madrid, Alcala, Toledo, Valencia,
Barcelona, Lerida, and by Gerona to Perpifian. In the
second I went again to Gerona, thence to Barcelona,
[43]
Tarragona, Manresa, Lerida, Huesca, Zaragoza, Tudela,
Pamplona, and so to Bayonne; and in the third and last
I went by Bayonne to Pamplona, Tudela, Tarazona,
Siguenza, Guadalajara, Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Avila,
Salamanca, Zamora, Benavente, Leon, Astorga, Lugo,
Santiago, la Coruna, and thence back by Valladolid and
Burgos to San Sebastian and Bayonne. Tours such as
these have, I think, given me a fair chance of forming
a right judgement as to most of the features of Spanish
architecture; but it would be worse than foolish to
suppose that they have been in the slightest degree
exhaustive, for there are large tracts of country which
I have not visited at all, others in which I have seen
one or two only out of many towns which are un-
doubtedly full of interesting subjects to the architect,
and others again in which I have been too much pressed
for time."
Street is too modest here: his acquaintance with
Spain if not indeed exhaustive, like that with France
and England, is entirely representative; and however
pressed for time, he never scamps his work. The present
writer may testify, having followed his tracks with an
exact piety all the way, that he exhausted every town.
He passed through Miranda at dawn, but he described,
classified and dated the church; he went up the coast,
from Barcelona to Port Vendres, by train, but he saw
more churches and towers than the careful observer
after him. He continues:
"Yet I hardly know that I need apologize for my
neglect to see more, when I consider that, up to the
present time, so far as I know, no architect has ever
described the buildings which I have visited and indeed
[44]
no accurate or reliable information is to be obtained as
to their exact character, age, or history."
In that sentence is written down the debt Spain owes
to Street.
He took his wife on the first journey but not after-
wards. She was both patient and spirited, but it was a
little too rough for a lady. His own endurance and good
temper are unfailing, and infallible his sense of due pro-
portion. He never tells you what was for dinner, or
how the bed ailed, or when he quarrelled with the land-
lord. It is much if he mentions, in a sort of postscript,
that the journey to Compostela in diligence took sixty-
six hours, and, elsewhere, that in autumn a man can live
largely on bread and grapes. He is not, like Mr. Hewlitt
or Mr. Hutton when they go on the road, writing a pi-
caresque romance, but an account of Gothic architecture
in Spain. The structural analysis of Santiago, the dis-
cussion of the date of Avila, the appreciation of the
Catalan type of church-building — everyone knows that
famous parallel with "our own Norfolk middle-pointed"
— such passages provoke comparison and command
praise, for substantiality and lucidity, with the very
best of writing on a technical subject. The dexterity
with which he singles out the English or Angevine ele-
ments at Las Huelgas, and those of the I sle-of- France
at Toledo, and signals there the gradual interpenetration
of local influences, has the happiest certainty and the
most admired ease. It is hard to say where he is at his
best, — whether in dealing with a style like the Roman-
esque of Cluny or the Gothic of Paris, where he has a
vast store of experience long accumulated, and makes
comparisons and illustrates distinctions from England or
[45]
Italy indifferently, or whether coming upon fresh matter
like the domed churches about Zamora or the brick build-
ing around Saragossa, or even something so much out
of his line as the Mudejar work scattered about in the
Castiles, he applies reason and method to the unknown,
and, arriving at conviction, he enforces it. Nothing
could be more succinct and more satisfying than his
dealing with the dates of Don Patricio de la Escosura,
in Espana Ariisticay Monumental. "I see no reason,"
he writes easily, "for believing that the plaster decora-
tions are earlier than 1350 or thereabouts."
Only once in a very long while, a slight twist or tang
of perversity relieves the even good sense and good
taste. Of the lovely sepulchre in Avila of that young
brother of Joanna the Mad, too early dead, he remarks
that the great tomb "is one of the most tender, fine,
and graceful works I have ever seen, and worthy of any
school of architecture. The recumbent effigy, in par-
ticular, is as dignified, graceful and religious as it well
could be, and in no respect unworthy of a good Gothic
artist." The quaint anti-climax has the very, sweet,
gaucherie of a woodcut by Rossetti or a bit out of Scrip-
ture by the young, unspoiled Holman Hunt. We have
come, since that could be said, a very long way.
It would seem that he finished a great piece of work
only to be free for another. When he had published
Brick and Marble he moved to London and went in for
the Lille and the Government House competitions;
when he had published Gothic Architecture in Spain he
was to go in for the National Gallery and the Law
Courts. It is a great piece of work. The reading it im-
plies, that would have been for a mere student no trifle,
[46]
^ff\ Vfr
If \ ;' 'j !
biL
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-!-y»*^
i^p.
;u
,^ ■—
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,1 I
'11
'^j^-^.. '/•
ri
t
n 11,!
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11^
THE OLD CATHEDRAL OF SALAMANCA
was done by a professional man already more occupied
than most. The drawings for it were made on the wood
by a working architect, already designing for his own
churches every several moulding, every piece of iron-
work, every free-flowing tracery. Though the task took
all he had to spare out of five years of his life, that was,
after all, a life filled with other and more important in-
terests; yet the proudest nation in Europe has gone to
school to him. Every Spanish ecclesiologist knows this
book, not by repute only but by heart. Even those who
disclaim all working knowledge of English have the vol-
ume on their shelves and the substance of it in their
heads. The part which deals with Cataluna has been
translated into Catalan and published separately. A
Castilian version of the half-chapter on Valladolid, with
rich and appreciative annotation and comment, ap-
peared in the Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana de Ex-
cursiones in 1898. He is still cited as a final authority.
The effect of it was to teach the rest of Europe that
the glory of mediaeval Spain endured; that one could
actually see something south of the Pyrenees, neither
Saracenic nor Jesuit, a great religious art surviving,
not decadent, not moribund nor morbid nor corrupted
by the gold of the Indies, strong, virile, spontaneous,
the expression of personal independence and manly
piety. No one ever packed up fewer prejudices in
his baggage, no one ever brought out more truth. On
his accounts we still may confidently rely. The most
important truth was, of course, the debt to France,
which Spanish pride still at times shrinks from ac-
knowledging. But what some amiable enthusiasts are
loth to admit for love of Spain, and others less amiable
[47]
are fain to deny for a grudge against France, the stones
of the towns cry out to testify, and they have Seiior
Lamperez and Don Rafael Altamira, let them hear
them I The glory of Street is that by the light of his
intimate knowledge and love of France, he saw it
fifty years ago. To-day, as then, his is the one book
that cannot be spared. The great lover of Spain, who
set himself, on the first journey thither, to follow in the
steps of the Cid, reckoned also on planting his foot in
the track of Street. The casual traveller writes back
to London for a copy and sits down by the way for it to
overtake him. It is the best companion in the world,
never irrelevant, or peevish, or stodgy. It never fails
in sensibility to exalted beauty; it is never betrayed into
unction and the professional whine, or what Swinburne
once called rancid piety. The English sobriety and
good breeding just sufficiently are leavened with enthu-
siasm— yet that temperate admiration was really, I
suppose, the betrayal of an inner passion: the sound
rule of faith and the sober standard of feeling being
again in play.
With the National Gallery in mind, Street had gone
abroad in 1866 to study great halls, and swept a wide
round through Munich, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Ber-
lin, Hanover, Hildesheim, and the Belgian towns. The
next three years he was in Italy, and after the war
oftener there than elsewhere, coming or going by way of
the Val d'Aosta or the Engadine, the Bernese Oberland
or the Austrian Tyrol. The sad summer of 1871 he
spent in Switzerland. Street could not, indeed, have
been born and lived and died in England in the Victorian
age, without feeling that same passion for high moun-
[48]
tains which makes so touching the letters of Meredith,
in whom it was thwarted perpetually, and so inspires
the letters of Leslie Stephen, for whom it seems to have
supplied a source of spiritual regeneration. The two
Stephens, Tyndall, Clifford, Arnold and the rest of that
strong mid-century race that broke, most of them, with
the church, and repudiated, all of them, religion as by
law established, found literally in the Alps a substitute
for God. Street was able to keep God and the Alps too —
since "all these things shall be added unto you."
In 1874 he published a second edition of Brick and
Marble, augumented by notes gathered in journeys as
far back as 1857. Both editions have long been out of
print. It would be a good work if the ancient house of
Murray would republish it, for the author's most fan-
tastical reactions against Palladio cannot affect — shall
I say, its solid worth? Accurate observation, close and
careful description, knowledge that can read into every
detail its implications, would make the dullest book
indispensable for reference, and this runs lightly as a
traveller's tale. You are surprised when you find how
few of the books, with pictures and without, that every
year unloads on the subject of Italy, give any substan-
tial information beyond the hotel door-step. Upon my
faith, every author, from the venerable Mr. Howells to
the diligent Mr. Button, will run on and on discoursing
most excellent music — but if you would know what a
church really looks like, without or within, he is not
your man. Forms shift and dyes mingle in their de-
scriptions as in sunset clouds. Mr. Pennell will turn
you off a wonderful portfolio of pictures, each worthy
to be framed and glazed and hung on the wall, but if
[49]
//
the church be Gothic or pomafnesque, if the square be
classic or baroque, who cih say? If you need to know,
down comes the shabby Street from the shelf, and after
you have consulted the page and the drawing you may
have, belike, more than the author had when he set down
what he saw. His son notes somewhere that on refer-
ring to an old landscape sketch they found accurate
record of details they had not known till later: so truly
does truth stand by her lovers.
Meanwhile he had planned the companion volume on
central and southern Italy, to which he refers in the
preface. It is a sad pity he could not have found the
time nor the heart to write this, for with it in mind he
pushed as far in 1873 as Ancona, Lucera and Benevento.
The MS. notebook, I fear, has perished which should
have gone with a square thick book of sketches more
than usually stimulating and lovely. The choir of the
S. Chapelle at Chambery shows the way he went; then
plans of S. Ciriaco, at Ancona, the crossing and dome
seen from the nave, the south porch, the eastern and
western apses, with a tenderly faithful drawing of the
innumerably-arcaded front of S. Maria, imply the kind
of close study that culminates in a book. Had he but
followed up his observations there and elsewhere, at
Lucera for instance, where he recorded not only the
cathedral and the castles, but a whole group of churches
and a cluster of castles that front the Adriatic coast
thence southward; or at Foggia, where, with a sketch
of the fagade of the cathedral and a separate study of
the most characteristic Pisan and Pistojan traits he
fairly underlined the relation and suggested Troja to
a surprising degree; — had he merely knotted up the
[SO]
syllogisms that he laid out ready on the page, and
written his Q. E. D., then, beyond a question, from
his intimate knowledge of the Royal Domain he would
have made out and declared, here as in Spain, the
determining influence of northern France, and antici-
pated the thesis of M. Bertaux. That would have
been such another triumph as the Spanish volume,
for English intelligence and English taste. But in these
Christmas holidays of 1873 he snatched, as the train
passed, a castle at Recanati and a portal at Giulianuova,
then from Foggia made a great leap to Salerno, and ended
for the nonce with careful detailed drawings of the am-
bons and towers throughout the wonderful Salernitan
group, at Amalfi and Ravello and Scala.
Year after year he went back to the south-west coast
in winter; in 1874, after his wife's death, spending Christ-
mas with her father as usual, going down by the Riviera
and coming back by Florence and the Brenner, It is
this year, I fancy, that we may thank for a record of
Spoleto cathedral before the restorers had it, for a
series of notes in the Umbriah towns, and for another
series of the churches of Asti.
This was all familiar ground, of course, to him. The
MS. notes on central Italy belong mostly to a journey
to Florence made in 1857, reinforced by another, in 1872,
that carried him the rest of the way to Rome. Of these
notes I am reprinting not a little: in part because such
analysis as that of Assisi is profounder than any that
has been written since: in part because such comment
as that on Siena and Orvieto if not palatable is yet salu-
tary even to those who have learned to love the Tuscan
Gothic. Of Florence, others have written more elo-
[51]
quently though not with more sincerity. To the MS. of
the Florence episode the privileged reader will turn with
keen curiosity indeed, but without apprehension, to learn
how Street felt about Donatello and the primitives,
having the assurance beforehand that he will not like
the wrong thing. If one has to forgive Shelley the tink-
ling guitar of Jane, and to forgive Browning the thick
legs of Guercino's Guardian Angel, and both an occa-
sional lapse upon Guido Reni, Street wants no allowance
made. His taste is hardly out of date, even yet. His
friends at home had always been the young painters,
his house in London held not only some good pieces of
theirs but some early Italian panels and tondi.
Inevitably he transposed his taste in architecture
bodily into painting: Giotto and Fra Angelico are sure
of his liking, so usually are their pupils; but Donatello's
S. George is "a poor knock-kneed figure, and no one of
the statues [at Or San Michele] comes near the early
French figures in any way." Well, recalling the S.
George on the south porch of Chartres, on what ground
shall one dispute that?
Not merely the dates that Street will like may be fore-
seen, but the intellectual attitude and spiritual style:
as he cared little for the architecture of the Renaissance,
he will care no more for the masters of chiaroscuro,
and the baroque style he will feel equally distasteful
in the two arts. Lastly, his abiding love for Perugino
and Francia is utterly in keeping with his Anglican
faith; it recalls the very tone of the boyish letter about
Lanercost.
"It is particularly characteristic of Lanercost that all
is in harmony, every portion seems designed upon the
[52]
same principle and witl\jyie same amount of reverential
feeling, and all is so simple as to indicate truth and
solidity and the absence of gaudy and hypocritical re-
ligion. I dare say you have smiled at the way I come
at architecture and religion, it may perhaps be the bias
of a profession which makes me do so, but I cannot but
think that architecture as well as, not more than, the
other fine arts, is a great and most important assistant
to religion. Again in the matter of abbeys, I know there
will be an outcry when you read my journal [_if we could
but read that journal !~\ against my admiration of them
and their system; but when I lament their destruction
I lament it because I venerate the men who founded
them."
Rome he never cared for so much as Tuscany and
Umbria, that, too, being temperamental. In the early
weeks of 1876, after his second marriage, upon making
the usual visit to Naples he came back by Rome again,
taking the time from his business to see Subiaco, Albano,
Palestrina, and Frascati. The brief wedding journey,
when almond trees must have been in flower all the way,
though it was to end so cruelly in a Roman fever, had
begun in a strong fresh flow of happiness that found out-
let in a set of MS. notes on Amalfi. That is the last bit
of writing which I can trace that is not strictly exacted
by the circumstances of his profession.
Occasionally always, when something called for it, he
had written an open letter or a brief pamphlet of protest
or vindication. Like all men of strong creative imagina-
tion, Street cared more for doing than for undoing. He
was not a man of war, but he was a good fighter when the
issue was clear and the charge laid upon him. Having
[53]
taken part in the stormy competition over Edinburgh
cathedral in 1872, he said forcibly during the proceedings,
in the name of the English architects engaged, that the
award did not comply with the conditions. As finally
made it complied less than ever, and thereafter he said
nothing. It was a hurt and he held his peace. Some
other great controversies in which he was engaged, fell
later and lasted longer. One's own opinion to-day is
apt to sustain Street. In the matter of the younger
Scott's restoration at S. Albans the work was generally
challenged and came out unsatisfactory; in that of his
own dealing with the Fratry at Carlisle, he felt himself
at liberty, in the face of late and ugly alterations, to re-
place and piece out such fragments of the original work
as he found embedded in the building; in that of re-
adapting to general and cathedral use the Minster at
Southwell, his proposal respected the visible indications
of the architecture. The present writer, being at South-
well not long ago, had contrived to make out by mother
wit, from the signs of vault and arcade, of structure and
carved decoration, just such intentions as Street, it ap-
pears, presumed. His superb scheme for rearranging S.
Paul's, with the altar under a great baldachin at the
crossing, stood no chance of liking because it ignored the
average English habit of mind, it made religion splendid
and brought it near. Now the English like their religion
chilly and infrequent and a long way off. His stubborn
adherence to Gothic for all uses may have cost him the
award for the National Gallery, and cost England a
new and intelligible building in place of that which still
survives. Street's plan would have brought forth, in a
way, something not so unlike in effect, while quite dif-
[54]
ferent in style, to the Boston Public Library, stately
and gracious, a pleasure to the passer-by, adapted not
only to its use but to its dignity. The question of Gothic
with him was not only a matter of conscience, it was
more, a matter of temperament: all his life, all his relig-
ion, the very fibres of his body, were strung to that inter-
play of thrust and strain, were tuned to that upward
reaching of the mountain's heart toward God. He could
not otherwise. The battle of the Law Courts echoes still,
though faintly, in Englishmen's depreciation and guide-
books' disapproval. The great pile, notwithstanding,
in every aspect is noble, and the question must turn
merely on the style. Modern Gothic granted at all,
little can be said against it, and if the sixties and seventies
of the last century had not used modern Gothic, what
else could they have used? It seems unlikely that the
new Law Courts in New York will be better, built on
the plan of the Colosseum.
That work was to outlast his life. Meanwhile pri-
vate commissions did not fall off and ecclesiastical
appointments multiplied. At Oxford he had long
been diocesan architect; and he held somewhat the
same relation to the cathedrals of York, Ripon,
Winchester, Gloucester, Salisbury and Carlisle. With
all this he had building of his own in which to take
delight. In 1872 he bought land at Holmbury, near
Dorking, and made himself a garden there and in
time a house, lastly a church.
The country is there of very ancient occupation,
essential England. The buxom contour of the hills,
the generous leafage of the woods, are richer than else-
where. The lawns are springy with delicate turf of grass
[55]
fine like hair, the close hedges taller than a man, the
stocks and gillyflowers heavy-scented, the dahlias and
snapdragons dark-hued and gold-dusted. From the
ridge the eye can range — but the English landscape
needs an English pen.
"The house he decided to place on a brow, with a
terrace running all along its front, the whole, or nearly
the whole of the garden being disposed in the hollow
below. A certain formal effect had been obtained by
sunk rectangular lawns and banks. As the views to the
south-east and the south were almost equally good, he
planned the house in two wings, forming an obtuse angle
one with the other ;^ one facing southeast and the other
full south over the sunken garden . . . Below the hill
the ground swept down in an amphitheatre open at one
end to give a glimpse of the blue distance seen over a
bit of park-like foreground, whilst above it rose one
spur behind another of the near hills, clothed with juni-
pers and grand bushes of holly, and over them again
the farther edge of the hill crowned with masses of
dark firs."
He had, as he maintained the architect should always
in truth have, a right judgement in all things, interior
decoration as well as structure, secular and domestic
detail as well as ecclesiastic. When he had thought of
giving up the house in Cavendish Square a friend "told
me he never saw so charming a room as this drawing-
room and he was rejoicing that I could not leave it just
now — nearly every one seems to be of the same mind.
... All my happiest associations are with these rooms
1 Your man of genius has run ahead of fashion by forty years.
This description reads like the account of a house finished last week
somewhere up the River or on the Main Line.
[56]
GEORGE EDMUND STREET IN 1877
and I begin to think I should be less happy anywhere
else."
He was to need the happiness of associations. The
work begun and carried out by the nest-building instinct,
that faculty which shapes after one's own desire a shel-
ter for one's own kind and kin, was to prove a solace for
grief at the last. His wife had died in 1874; two years
later Street married "a lady who had been of all my
mother's friends the most highly prized, and had been
so intimate with us as to have been her companion on
many of our foreign tours" — her step-son writes. It
is typical of the homing breed, of the instinct that holds
in the old paths, to rebuild with the least possible of
novelty, and recommence without snapping one of the
old threads. The blind impulse of solidarity finds its
wants in the ancient walks, the ancient intimacies, the
ancient affections.
Mrs. Street lived only eight weeks after her marriage.
Thereafter Street kept men's company mostly. He had
for friends all that was most living in London, the Ros-
settis and Holman Hunt, George Boyce and J. W.
Inchbold, William Bell Scott, Madox Brown, Morris
and Burne-Jones. That enfant terrible of the last
generation, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, has probably
reminiscences of him. He had, before all, his son, who
on quitting Oxford came up to work under him; he had
his associates in his own profession and in the Royal
Academy. In that last year he made a tour with Arthur
Street among the German cities, but the drawings that
could date it are, few, and one of the latest notebooks
passes within a few leaves from pulpits in southern
Italy to the landscape around S. Gervais. Thither he
[57]
f ^
//
had gone in the autumn to take the waters: "he was
troubled more or less by headache the whole time, but
he did a good deal of walking and sketching in spite of
very bad weather." That was in September. The stroke
fell on him the middle of November; then he was better,
was planning a long journey in Egypt. On December
18 he was dead. The tireless energy never knew a
real abatement. He lies in the nave of the Abbey as
Pierre de Montereau lies in S. Germain-des-Pres, and
in Rheims Robert de Coucy.
It is not a long life as you count it over: five years
with Scott and Moffatt; five in and near Oxford; twenty
years in London of triumphant work; then five of hon-
ours like the pause at flood-tide, and never the ebb.
Like such a great river as that he knew so well and fre-
quented all his days, his life flowed steadily and strongly,
the brimming stream augmenting always, deepening
and widening, the heavier current moving, at the end,
more slowly but not through slackening of power,
until, at the last turn, the majestic estuary opens and
broadens, as, with no hurry of fretting waves, no
straining through silted sandbanks, undiminished, the
mighty mass of waters mingles with the sea.
[58]
NOTES OF A TOUR IN CENTRAL ITALY TO
WHICH ARE APPENDED A FEW NOTES
FROM A LATER TOUR
II
NOTES OF A TOUR IN CENTRAL ITALY
{From a notebook oj 1857)
August 20, 1857.
LEFT town at 8.30 p.m. by South-Eastern Railway
for Folkstone. A close push for it, as I was an
unwilling auditor of Lord Riverdale in the House
of Lords till 7 p.m. I then had a conference with the
Bishop of Oxford.
I left them to settle if possible the Divorce question
and rushed home just in time to pack and be off. A
very quiet passage over to Boulogne was seconded by a
weary hour's waiting at the station before the train
started.
We reached Paris at 9.10 and drove to the Hotel de
VEurope and then wandered about for the day seeing
sights. Tried for but could see no good MSS. Drove to
the Bois de Boulogne and went to the Pre Catalan, for
which I cannot say much. By dint of watering the grass
vigorously they get it to look very green, but it is coarse
stuff, more like a water meadow in texture than an
English lawn. The Pre Catalan without a soul in it ex-
cept the show men, etc. eating at fresco dinners, is rather
slow, so we came back soon. In the afternoon went to
the Hippodrome. The best thing probably was the rac-
ing between three men each riding a four-in-hand and
going at a great pace. Dined at V^four's and then off
to the station, and in a rash moment, and in submission
[61]
to the peremptory order of a grand railway clerk, booked
ourselves through from Paris to Turin. The train was
very full but I rested tolerably well and awoke in the
morning just in time to get a glimpse of the cathedral at
Tournus.^ At Macon we changed to another train and
crossing the Saone turned off toward Geneva; the
country invisible in a thick fog till we reached Am-
berieu, the junction with the line from Lyons, where it
rose sufficiently to disclose an exceedingly picturesque
situation. From this point up to Culoz, where we left
the line, the country is very wild and beautiful. The
railway runs up a very narrow winding valley hemmed
in with grand hills, showing here and there fine bold
bluffs of rock. The stream, a mountain torrent, was
nowhere — but wide banks of well-worn stones show
that it is powerful enough after rain or in the winter
and spring. At Culoz we embarked on a long and very
shaky steamboat, the "Coquette," and going stern fore-
most a half mile down the rapid Rhone (here a dirty white
colour) we finally turned out of it into a sort of canal
which connects the Lac du Bourget with the Rhone.
Our steamer was so long that in getting along we invari-
ably just touched land at one end and occasionally at
1 Note from the sketch-book: Tournus has a fine Romanesque
church with one complete and one unfinished steeple at the west
end and another complete steeple on the north side in about the
position (I think) of a transept. These two steeples have two ar-
caded stages of about equal height above the roof and are finished
with square tiled spires in a very characteristic manner. (These
square spires seem to be of very frequent occurrence in this district.)
Just in front of the church are two round towers which seem to form
a gateway and the space between the western steeples of the church
is finished horizontally with a crenelated parapet on a machicoulis
— the battlements pierced with openings of this kind >i* — the whole
looks as though done with a view to defence.
[62]
both, but by dint of great energy in the steering and by
aid of men who ran along the bank to push us off, we
were safely discharged into the lake. The water here is
of the blue green which one remembers at Geneva. The
banks are precipitous and the lake, though not very large,
very pretty. The Dent du Chat on the south-west is
a fine hill, and the high bold hill above Culoz stands
out to great advantage over the immense, perfectly
flat, meadow which occupies the space between the
Rhone and the lake, and which to-day is full of hay-
makers, — I should say some two or three hundred —
all hard at work. We embarked at a temporary kind of
port called S. Innocent and went thence by railway to
Chambery. Here we stopped for five hours to see the
cathedral, wash and eat. The cathedral is of small
interest. Its flamboyant west front is fairly good of
its kind. On the whole the church wants dignity, and
gives the impression of a parish church more than of a
cathedral. The castle which rises above the west side
of the town has not much old remaining. The chapel
is poor flamboyant with some good stained glass in the
apse. The king has a fine papered and cushioned gallery
at the west end. I looked into one or two other churches
but found no old features.
The situation of Chambery is exquisite. It is hemmed
in on all sides by mountains, and their outlines are
generally unusually sharp and bold, finishing as many of
them do with great bluffs of rock. A figure resting on
the fore-quarters of four elephants who spout water from
their trunks is the most remarkable modern feature in
the city. It is to the memory of General S a great
1 General de Boigne, d. 1830. — G. G. K.
[63]
benefactor. The streets contain few old houses: I saw
one of the sixteenth century nearly all windows. The
fronts of the shops have the old arrangement of a stone
arch the whole width of the front and a bold stone
counter.
We left Chambery at 5.30 p.m. for S. Jean de Mauri-
enne. The scenery as long as we could see it was beau-
tiful, but the clouds were low and at the point where
Mont Blanc ought to have been seen they effectually
prevented our seeing anything. At S. Jean we took pos-
session of the diligence for Turin and saw nothing till
we were well up on the mountain from Lons-le-Bourg.
It took us two hours to scale this height, pulled at a slow
pace by nine mules and two horses. The ascent was
uninteresting but we gradually came upon more and
more snow and the pass increased in interest. There is
a small lake at the top and a dreary drive across a crest
led us to the fine part of the descent. This is, for the
last hour and a half before reaching Susa, singularly
fine, finer indeed, I am inclined to think, than any de-
scent I have yet seen. The mountains are fine in their
outlines, and the road winds backward and forward
between chestnut and walnut trees. Susa is mainly
remarkable for its beautiful situation among mountains
with snowy peaks always in sight, and a burning sun
just now. The cathedral has a good campanile of brick
and a west front built on by the side of an old Roman
gateway, whose scale makes that of the church seem very
small. The spire of the cathedral is covered with small
pieces of copper (I think) cut like slates. The interior
is painted all over in the worst possible taste. Indeed
throughout the Sardinian dominions there seems to be
[64]
a passion for painting shaded imitations of tracery upon
walls and groining. Chambery cathedral is a notable
specimen of this and Susa not much better. We left
Susa at 8.30 p.m. and reached Turin at 10.30. I ex-
pected nothing here and was agreeably disappointed.
A city cannot fail to be charming which has at
the end of every street such a view, of mountains
and snow at one end and hills at the other, as
Turin can show. And then, though quite modern,
its streets have that narrow picturesque character so
universal in Italy, and in every way leave a pleas-
anter impression than one would expect from maps
and descriptions. . . .
The women in Turin wear handkerchiefs on their
heads. The streets are some of them arcaded, by ar-
cades filled with stalls of all kinds of wares — but fruit
is the staple commodity now. The effect is to make the
place look rather shabby and rubbishy. There is not
one church of any interest. The view of the city from
the opposite bank of the Po is charming, owing to the
immense chain of Alps spreading from right to left all
behind the city, and the hills above the Po are very re-
spectable, rising as they do about 2000 feet above the
city to where they are crowned by the church called the
Superga.
We left Turin at 5.30 and reached Genoa at 9.30.
The views of the Alps by sunset very charming. At
Asti we had a bottle of the effervescing vin d'Asii brought
to our carriage, and could not resist indulging in the
pleasant draught. . . .
The notes on Genoa appear in the second edition of
Brick and Marble.
[65]
August 29, Pisa.
My expectations were very high here and were a little
disappointed. The Gothic work in the grand group is
mainly confined to the Campo Santo and the baptis-
tery, and in the former the traceries are, as Pisano's
always are, very unscientific and more like a confec-
tioner's work than an architect's, whilst the latter has
undergone such an amount of "restoration" that not
one old crocket is left and barely one old piece of tra-
cery. There is abundant evidence however in the Spina
chapel and in the few portions of the original marble
still left in the Baptistery that Pisano could do his work
in a way very different from what we do, and I there-
fore prefer to think only of what his work once was and
not of what it is. The external design is very striking
and if the cone above the dome were properly finished
with a circle of canopied traceries and figures I have no
doubt its effect would be perfect. The traceries, carvings,
etc., when looked into are very bad, and it should be seen
therefore from a distance. The interior looks much older
than the exterior and there can be no doubt that this
must be the case, notwithstanding the inscription which
says it was "aedificata de novo" in 1728. Unquestion-
ably this must refer to the destruction of the exterior
which left the interior all but untouched. The dome is
in part covered with red tiles and in part with metal.
The Campo Santo is architecturally not pleasing.
Its large traceries, unskilful and long, never at all
fit on to the capitals of the shafts that support them —
but its great length and size are very effective and the
court with its greensward and some tall cypress trees
at the centre, the mountains blazing in the sun and the
[66]
deep blue sky above, combine to make a very charming
picture. Tiie great treasure here is the frescoes with
which its wails are covered. Orcagna's great fresco of
the Last Judgement quite and more than came up to my
hopes. It is a wonderful work and full of exquisitely
natural treatment of figures in most delicate colours.
The aureole round the figure of our Lord is too green, I
think, otherwise the dignity of the figure is unmatched
if not unapproachable.
The cathedral is not to my mind a pleasing structure.
Like most of the great churches in this part of the world,
it is raised on a basement of several steps extending in
front of it on every side. It is Romanesque in character
throughout, its nave of great height and the crossing
covered with a low and ugly tiled dome. The columns
between the nave and aisles (there are two aisles on
each side) are either antique or closely copied from the
antique and have nowhere any trace either in their
proportions or sculpture of any really Romanesque char-
acter. The columns everywhere have the entasis dis-
tinctly developed. All the walls are arcaded externally
and striped with black marble. All the Pisan and
Luccan buildings are similarly striped and (unlike the
architecture at Genoa) the black forms but a very
small proportion of the whole wall. It is generally spaced
regularly, and introduced at springings and sills of win-
dows and under cornices, and there is no approach even
to irregularity in its arrangement. The roof is one of a
class of heavy panelled wooden roofs which were com-
mon here in the Renaissance period, similar in idea to
the roof of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The
aisles are pleasing, vaulted without ribs. In the old
[67]
glass, of which some quantity remains, the colours are
very rich, there is scarcely any white (if any) and the
designs are almost entirely made of lead lines and not
by painting. The pulpit has two figures and some lions
under the columns which were preserved from an older
pulpit said to be the work of Giovanni Pisano. The
detail of all the ornamental mouldings is completely
Roman, the egg and tongue being everywhere finely
introduced. . . .
Of domestic buildings Pisa retains very extensive
remains, inasmuch as almost every house bears evidence
of being mediaeval, but they have been so much cut
about that there is little to be seen now at all perfect.
There is an elaborate brick and terra cotta front to a
house on the Lungarno but it is of very late date — al-
most Renaissance in much of its detail and very flat,
regular, and ineffective.
On the opposite side of the Arno is another old house
now used as the Custom House; this is of stone but its
traceries and details are poor, very much like those of
the Ptolomei palace at Siena. The windows are shafted,
but the capitals of the shafts are generally too large
for the arch mouldings which they have to support, and
the mouldings, if they may be called so, do not unite
properly and are singularly ineffective. Most of the old
.. houses seem to have had a row of plain pointed arches
rising some twenty feet from the ground line, but I
could not make out whether they had been filled in
with windows, or whether they belonged to the stage of
stables and coach houses so universal in these Italian
towns. The work is either brick or stone, but in no
case did I see the two materials countercharged.
[68]
On the Sunday evening there was a grand procession
of a figure of the B. V. M., with a vast number of atten-
dants all with lighted candles, a military band, and a
few cavalry to bring up the rear. The view from the
lowest bridge looking up the Arno, with the picturesque
outlines of the bold hills above Pisa behind the towers,
is one of the most charming I remember.
A railway journey from Pisa of an hour brought us
to Lucca. The railway cuts some fine hills, and passes
by the ruins of a large castle close to the station before
Lucca.
Lucca is entirely enclosed within elaborate brick forti-
fications, there being, I think, no vestige of suburbs on
any side. The ramparts are well planted with trees, and
the view of them from below, giving an impression of
the tall walls covered with trees and these surmounted
by the tall towers of the town, is fine. The view of the
surrounding mountains is, too, very exquisite.
Of course our first object was the cathedral. Its
west front need hardly be described. Its detail is very
rich and beautiful and there is a great deal of very good
inlaid work. In the upper part subjects from field sports
are introduced, whilst lower down they are mainly geo-
metrical patterns. Some of the shafts are inlaid. The
three great arches which stretch across this front give
a dignity to it in which S. Michele, Lucca, Pisa cathe-
dral, and the other imitations, are quite wanting. They
are remarkable for the way in which their arches are
treated; these are semicircular and the width of the
voussures is two or three times as great at the crown as
at the springing — the effect is good. An image is cut
in the right-hand upper end of this front.
[69]
All the walls and arches are partially striped with black,
the black courses being very thin with a considerable
space between them. The north and south walls of the
nave and transepts are cased in much later work than
the west front and are good specimens of Italian pointed
of the thirteenth century. The carving of foliage in this
work is very bad and what little moulding there is hardly
looks like the work of Gothic men. There is a good
inlaid string course under the windows. A fine campanile
stands a little in advance of the south-west angle of the
cathedral. It is of Romanesque date and built of brown-
ish rough stone below and of white stone (or marble)
above ; it is of very considerable height and effect. The
interior is certainly grand but disappointing — almost
all the arches are semicircular but (as the groining bays
are not square) the wall ribs of the groining bays are
pointed, and this gives in some way a general effect of
pointed to the whole work. The main arches are round,
but they were so covered with red hangings that it was
impossible to see much of them. The triforium is of
great height and consists in each bay of two round-
head windows, filled in with slight tracery — the
whole is of poor character and badly proportioned.
Above these two windows is a small circular window
which serves for clerestory. The groining of the nave
is painted richly. It has broad borders next the ribs
and the wall is painted blue, and figures in the centre
of each painted in a circle. The borders have a good
many white lines, but there is no gold in any part of
the work.
The planning of the transepts is very singular.
They are divided by an arcade down the centre,
[70]
and as the nave arcades and triforia are continued
across them some singular combinations are pro-
duced. The pavements have small compartments of
Italian fifteenth century geometrical patterns in mosaic,
surrounded by square arrangements of plain black and
white.
Close to the cathedral is S. Giovanni, which, though
not otherwise remarkable, has an immense baptistery
built on against its north transept; it is a square of
about fifty-seven feet internally and covered with a
square vault of a domical form. The old font has been
removed.
Near the south end of the cathedral is the little chapel
of S. Maria della Rosa. It is a small low building of
about the proportions of the Spina chapel, and mainly
remarkable for the window tracery in its side wall.
This is, like all other tracery hereabouts, unpalatable to
me. The windows are shafted and I suppose therefore
that they must have had their glass put in frames in-
side. This seemed to have been the case in the Spina
chapel. There are dates of 1309 and 1333 on the build-
ing, the latter on part of a door which in England I
should venture to call Renaissance. We could not get
inside but saw through a window that the interior had
been completely modernized. . . .
When we reached Siena we found the station elab-
orately decorated with wreaths and flowers in pots,
banners, and every possible kind of railway utensil
(even portions of engines), and all in honor of the Pope
who had left that morning for Citta della Pieve on his
way home after a tour through various parts of Italy.
He seemed to have been greatly feted at Siena.
[71]
Siena is situated on the irregular summit of a con-
siderable hill. All streets are up and down and in some
places very precipitous. A sort of natural amphitheatre
in the centre of the city — the Piazza del Campo — is the
chief point round which the rest is built, containing the
Palazzo Pubblico, a grand Gothic building, out of the end
of which soars the finest campanile, after that at Verona,
that I have seen. On the circle of the Campo opposite
the Palazzo Pubblico are some old houses but not any
of special interest. The Palazzo Pubblico is of the usual
type of brick buildings here and very regular. . . . The
campanile is brick without break or ornament of any
kind for a great height, and then is boldly corbelled for-
ward on all sides; the whole of the work is in stone. The
arches of the machicoulis, the bands round them, and
some older parts, are rendered much more distinct by
the introduction of lines of black marble. Seen by
a bright moonlight this campanile possesses such an
exquisite contour that nothing can be much more beau-
tiful. The contrasts of colours too are most admirably
arranged, and the exceeding simplicity of the lower
part cannot be too much praised.
A considerable ascent leads from the Campo to the
east end of the cathedral. This has a central door and
on entering you find a small chapel under the altar of
the cathedral gained out of the slope of the ground.
The detail of this chapel and of the east end of the
cathedral above it is by far the best example of Gothic
work in the city. There are all kinds of things which,
to an eye used to the exceptional skill and care in fitting
one part to another usual among northern architects,
are very unscientific-looking, but nevertheless this work
[72]
is original in its character and certainly beautiful in its
effect. It is of white marble striped sparingly with
black. A flight of steps leads up from the east end to
a north doorway in the east wall of the immense unfin-
ished work which, though in the position of a south
transept, would really have been rather larger than the
existing nave of the cathedral.
This south transept is quite unfinished though very
considerably advanced. Its south wall shows that the
vaulting was to have been semicircular in section like that
of the nave. The proportions of the whole are very
bold and fine. . . .The rest of the exterior has been
much modernized. The west front is much like that of
Orvieto but I don't know how much is original. There
is very little in it which I should accept as really pointed
architecture. The foliage and the feeling of the whole is
very Renaissance and the steep gables are all sham and
are very unpleasantly conspicuous in a distant general
view of the church. The campanile, coursed in black
and white in nearly even proportions (two courses of
white material for one course of colours), is Romanesque,
of very great height, and follows the usual rule of increas-
ing its number of openings in each stage. It is capped
with square spirelets at the angles, and a low octagon
spire, I think of stone — this I thought had crockets,
but I found they were only some arrangements for illu-
mination in honour of the Pope's visit. . . . Internally
the church has been painfully modernized; a row of
Popes' heads — about as artistic as a row of barber's
blocks — is ranged all round above the nave arcade,
and the whole of the church has been plastered and
painted in the most abominable manner. The walls
[73]
are striped in exactly equal courses (about eight and a
half inches in height) of black and white. The effect is
certainly too bizarre. There are no good specimens of
carving, and the detail of groining ribs, arches, etc.,
is hopelessly bad. All of the pavements are covered
with subjects formed by inlaying and incising the mar-
bles which compose them. There is a certain grandeur
in the completeness of the idea but the effect is not
good. . . .
We spent some hours to great advantage in the
Accademia. The collection of pictures of the early Sienese
school is wonderfully rich and gave me a very high idea
of the power of some of the men whose names one does
not often hear.
There are three or four tondos similar to that at San
Domenico and a considerable number of reredoses of
various sizes. A favorite subject is the B. V. M., sur-
rounded by saints in the outer compartments. Nothing
can exceed the beauty of some of the angels. In all,
the wood seems to have had canvas laid on it which
was prepared with a thick layer of size, and on this
gold was laid all over preparatory to painting. In some
the colour has peeled off and left the gold with lines for
the outline of the figures scratched on it. Generally
speaking the preservation of the colours in these pic-
tures is something quite marvellous, not a crack being
visible anywhere; may this be attributed to the gold
ground ?
The later pictures are not so interesting nor is the
collection of them so complete as it is of the others.
Room III is that in which the work is most beautiful.
There were several students at work drawing from the
[74]
life, and in one of the rooms all the designs submitted
in competition for prizes were exhibited. The archi-
tectural designs were generally very commonplace but
one or two for a holy-water stoup showed power of
drawing and some fancy. Renaissance is the only style
thought of . . . .
September 2.
The view from Cortona is very fme, over the broad
Val de Chiana with the end of Lake Thrasimene full in
view, and the irregular mountain outlines of Monte
Cortona and other heights filling up the whole of the
background.
We left after only two hours* pause and soon reached
the head of the lake. We were busy making out all the
sites of the battle (which may be done with great vivid-
ness), when we reached the Papal dogana. There were
two difficulties — first, my passport was improperly
vised but this I got over; and second, our driver had
no vise at all, and it was half an hour before he was
allowed to take us on as far as the next village under
strict promise to come back again at once. It rained
heavily as we started and we lost some of the beauty of
this the best part of our drive. Thrasimene is a grand
sheet of water but wants some striking feature on its
banks, some jutting out rocks or mighty hills plunging
perpendicularly into its depths, to make it thoroughly
attractive. Now it has a deserted look: its banks are
not grand and yet no houses or villages show there and
one gets a rather gloomy impression. The place at which
we changed our horse, Pasignano, is a miserable Italian
village, — and how miserable that is I can hardly say
— with its fair proportion of beggars, i.e., every one
[75]
whose eye you catch holds out a hand immediately for
a meiio baioccho. It is prettily situated, and, as one
of the places at which vetturini stop on the road to
Rome, ought to be rather better favoured as to an inn.
The only one did not look promising and we preferred
fasting to trying it. A few miles more and we left the
lake, and aided by two bullocks climbed a steep hill
above its banks, reached the cathedral and village of
Magione, and drove the rest of the way by moonlight
to Perugia where we were heartily glad to find our-
selves at 10.30 P.M. very ready for something to eat.
September 4.
Lucca in its flat, surrounded by mountains, Pisa
grand with water and hills, Genoa with the blue
Mediterranean at its feet, Siena on its lofty though
arid hills, and Arezzo with its fine prospect of cultivated
valley girt with hills, must all, lovely as they are, give
way to Perugia, seated on the irregular summit of a
mountain, looking one way toward Thrasimene and
Monte Cortona, another toward the irregular peaks of
the Appenines, a third down the rich flat valley of the
Tiber, and last of all toward the noble mountain against
whose streaked side stands whitely shining in the dis-
tance the object of many an artistic as well as many a
religious aspiration, the shrine of the great saint of
Assisi. Add to this beauty of situation a beauty of
atmosphere which we never dream of in England, and
the picture is complete.
Certainly since we have been here this has been no
land of cloudless blue skies. We have had glorious
weather, and yet without any doubt the most glorious
[76]
cloud scenery we have ever known anywhere. Sometimes
a violent storm in the distance and another close at
hand, sunsets short in duration but brilliant to excess
while they last, and in midday a purple, blue or violet
tint over every portion of the wonderful landscape. . . .
September 6.
We started at 5.30 A.M. for Assisi. . . . The sacristan
took us up through the sacristy by a staircase which
opens into the north transept of the upper church.
From the gloom of the lower church to the flood of col-
oured light in the upper the contrast is very great. The
latter is in all respects one of the most joyous buildings
I have ever seen, bold, nervous and simple in its design,
exquisitely harmonious in all its colouring, and in most
respects unharmed by the hand of the restorer. Ob-
viously however the frescoes on the roof are losing their
colour and being gradually washed out. This is not diffi-
cult to account for when one sees the state of the outer
roof of the church, which, I have no doubt, admits an
ample supply of wet at the top of the groining. The
upper church is used only on some few great days during
the year and is I suppose even less cared for. It gave
me a pang to be shown into such a building by a door in
a corner, to see the principal door permanently closed,
grass growing thick upon the dreary piazza in front of
it: it was even more mournful, I think, than is the sad
solitude of the great group at Pisa.
I am much puzzled by the interior of this upper church.
I cannot get out of my head the impression that they
[the two "churches"] were designed and in part executed
by Frenchmen. The detail of the groining piers and their
[77]
capitals and bases are so peculiarly and characteris-
tically French that (seeing how very different Italian
work of the same date was) I cannot believe that they
were ever wrought by Italian hands from French designs,
because sculpture of foliage was just one of these things
in which the character of different schools was so marked
that it was impossible to get any but Frenchmen to do
such work as this. Above this point I do not feel the
same thing because I see that the window traceries,
though very fair, have a feature peculiar to Italian
Gothic — in the way in which the circles, etc., in the
tracery are put under the main arch, just touching but
not uniting with it. The string under the windows has
for a considerable portion of its length a complete Eng-
lish dog-tooth. The whole of the walls are painted.
Below the string course, which is very high from the
floor, is, first a painted imitation of hangings (much
like our thirteenth century patterns) in which the diaper
is continued regularly without reference to folds in the
draperies; then a row of noble frescoes by Giotto; and
above the string on each side of the windows other
frescoes by Cimabue. The roof is by the latter, and the
groining bays are alternately blue studded with stars,
and frescoed in subjects. The latter have a predomi-
nance in the ground of a rich chrome — reddish yellow —
and the ribs throughout are bordered with wide patterned
borders. The contrast of colours is admirable and finer
than anything I have seen. The borders round the work
done by Giotto are very inferior to those in Cimabue's
work. The latter ^ are all severely flat and geometrical,
^ These must be those now given to Cavallini and his school;
and Street's taste comes out right where knowledge was a-wanting.
— G. G. K.
[78]
indulging, after a few feet of plain pattern, in a quatre-
foil \^\ or one inscribed on a square, painted with a
head on a blue ground. Giotto's, on the other hand,
though in some respects very beautiful, indulge too much
in perspective, e.g. each division between the groining
piers is divided into the subjects by painted and shaded
imitations of twisted columns bearing cornices. There
are some features of interest in the work beyond the
exquisite beauty. To me it was new to find Cimabue
painting with so little rudeness and so much magnifi-
cent simplicity and breadth of purpose. I note another
of Giotto's frescoes is interesting as showing the original
use of the painted roods of which we have seen so many.
I think there can be little doubt they were to be placed
on the rood-screen, as he distinctly shows them, and,
curiously, I find in this upper church the two ends of
the ancient rood-beam sawn off a foot from the wall.
This was a few feet west of the crossing. The transepts,
altar and stalls are all modern in their arrangements.
Externally there is nothing to notice save the fine
west door and circular window over it, of a type peculiar
so far as I have seen to the churches of Assisi. The
glass in the nave windows is certainly old and good,
very little white introduced.
After seeing this most interesting building well, we
betook ourselves to the not very easy work of climbing
about the city to see the other churches. The whole
place is as decayed, forlorn and dirty as the smallest and
rudest of fishing villages in the worst out-of-the-way
parts of Cornwall, spread out to ten times the extent.
Old walls remain nearly all round, with gateways, and
at the highest point the picturesque ruin of a castle.
[79]
The west end of the cathedral is fine and the campa-
nile by its side is also of noble size and good character
though built with very rough stone. . . .
September 7.
We left Perugia this morning at 6 a.m. in the ban-
quette of the diligence for Arezzo. The day was charm-
ing so that we enjoyed the ride throughly, though we
had done it all so lately on our way to Perugia.
Here I shall note down a few of the things we have
discovered on the road: —
Hay and corn stacks are all made round a tall pole
fixed in the ground. Another piece of wood nailed
across often converts this into a cross over the corn.
In Arezzo cathedral during tierce a black cat was
howling about the cathedral in a most ludicrous manner.
It belongs to the church and is always howling about,
sitting on altars, and so forth. Foreigners never care
about taking animals into church with them. Dogs
are special church-goers in Italy!
About Perugia the women's costume is good: white
sleeves, blue skirt, pink bodice and bright handkerchief
over the head. The women usually wear immense straw
hats about two feet six inches in diameter, generally
pinned on to the back of the head and flapping back to
shade none of the face. Between Arezzo and Florence
the women often wear round beaver hats with broad flat
brims — and very ugly they are. Women carry a fan
instead of a parasol. Women in Genoa wear white veils.
The staple production of much of Tuscany, Siena, and
the Papal States seems to be olives. The trunks of the
trees are always very old, crushed down in the centre
and sometimes two or three feet in diameter. The
[80]
branches are young wood and always trained out so as
to leave a hollow circle in the centre. The colour is a
very blue green and as they are planted everywhere in
lines and at regular intervals, they do not improve either
the near or the distant view of the landscape. Maple
trees are trained in the same way for the purpose of grow-
ing vines. The vines are festooned sometimes from tree
to tree and at others festooned round the tree itself.
The ploughs here are very clumsy, they have a very
heavy wooden frame with an iron shoe put on in front.
It does not turn the dirt over but only digs a rough fur-
row in the ground. Oxen are always used for all agri-
cultural work. They are ringed through the nose and
a cord, fastened to this ring and passing under a rope
between the horns, serves as a rein. The carts are so
made that they are loaded far out on the pole to the
shoulder of the men.
All houses here have a pigeon house raised above the
roof. On it are painted some flying pigeons on a white
ground. It is generally a large construction and looks
like a look-out room at first.
It is curious that we never see a bird flying about, yet
we eat at dinner every day portions of two or three.
Where do they all come from?
All the houses are built over stables.
Wayside churches seem almost always to have a small
window on each side of their western door protected by
a grating and with a shutter inside. Often there is an
arcaded porch above.
September 8.
We left Arezzo at 6 a.m. in the diligence for Florence.
With such a bourne the pace of an Italian diligence is
[81]
very aggravating — five and a quarter miles an hour is
the average speed, and the poor wretches of horses have
to go stages of twenty miles without stopping. The road
is very interesting. It passes nearly all the way through
hilly country rich in olives and vines and with the grand
outlines of the Appenines in the immediate neighbor-
hood. I saw not one architectural feature in the
entire journey. We passed through two or three small
towns busy with festivities in honour of the Nativity
of the B. V. M. but their churches seemed to be all
modern.
After passing ^ we recommenced a long ascent
and aided by four mules and ponies achieved the high-
est point after about two hours of the hardest work
under the hottest of suns. Here I caught a glimpse of
Florence in the distance; but about three miles further
the whole city suddenly opened to the view, filling up
the valley of the Arno with its campanile and dome
thrown out grandly by a passing shadow upon the deli-
cate blue and violet tints of the Pistojese mountains in
the background. Fiesole was on our right and the
whole country between it and Florence seemed to be
dotted over with villas, looking gay and lovely in the
brilliant sunshine. Behind Fiesole a long hill of rich
reddish brown stood out from the rest and afforded by
its contrast with the other colours of the landscape as
complete a whole as can be imagined. It is in vain to
describe such a view: it is the most exquisite of the kind
that I have ever seen, and words cannot carry the im-
pression of an effect not produced solely by facts but
in part undoubtedly by sentiment.
* If Street did not know the name, how should the editor? — G.G. K.
[82]
A long drive through suburbs brought us to an old
gate (shorn of its old Florentine machicoulis, however)
where we were detained nearly half an hour about our
passports and luggage, and this done we soon arrived
at our inn, crossing the Arno by the Ponte alle Grazie
and passing in our way the Palazzo Vecchio, Or San
Michele and Giotto's tower. The latter was looked for
eagerly and rewarded my anxious eyes. It is certainly
the most lovely piece of building I have ever seen. I
shall say no more but go on to journalize on the build-
ings as I am able. . . .
Street's appreciation of Florence was intelligent, ardent,
and characteristic, but is, more than any other of his
notes, a journal intime. / have respected his sincerities.
September 13.
We spent the whole of the afternoon very profitably
at Pistoia. The cathedral has not much architectural
character. The west front has a good simple Romanesque
door and an open arcade all across in front. At the north-
west stands a very lofty and massive campanile, plain
below but arcaded richly above with arcades that have
the appearance of being put on in front of the real tower
instead of helping to support it. They have semicir-
cular arches and then have their tympana filled in with
chequer patterns in white and black marble. The whole
of this arcaded part of the steeple is coursed in alternate
white and dark green: the lower part is of stone. In-
ternally the cathedral has little to show. There is a
moderately good monument near the west end to a
professor who is represented lecturing; no mark of his
religious faith (I think) is introduced.^ . . .
^ This will be Messer Cino — of Dante and Mr. Hewlett.— G. G. K.
[83]
Opposite the cathedral's west front stands the fine
baptistery. This is octangular in plan and built in
equal courses of white and dark marble. Its external
effect is very good indeed. It has a western door^ and
north and south doors and a small chancel projected on
the west side. The design recalls in some respects the
baptistery at Pisa and must have been built about the
time that was altered. The interior unfortunately is
as plain and bare as whitewash can make it. The great
octangular font in the centre is of the same kind of work
as the screens at S. Miniato, Byzantine in the char-
acter of its sculpture, but delicate and elaborate in its
detail and altogether a good specimen: it is executed
mainly in white marble. . . .
In another church, S. Bartolomeo, I found a pulpit
(also dated, etc.) made by Guido da Como in 1250. This
is square in plan, supported partly in the wall and partly
on three shafts, two of which rest on lions' backs and
the third on a sitting figure of a woman. The sculpture
is rude but vigorous. The whole of the sides is covered
with subjects, and at the angles are three figures, or
rather one figure with two others looking out from be-
hind him. The subjects are described by inscriptions
under each in Latin.
Going from here to the church of S. Giovanni Evan-
gelista, we saw a similar pulpit of later date and superior
workmanship but evidently very closely copied from
the work in S. Bartolomeo. The two angle columns
remain, both resting on lions' backs. The lions have
been turned round so as both to face the west wall, —
a most ridiculous position. It is clear indeed that
1 Eastern? queries Street in pencil.
[84]
all of these pulpits have been taken down and re-
constructed. In this work the central column at S.
Giovanni has been taken away. It seems to me that
this pulpit at S. Bartolomeo is the prototype of all
those for which the Pisani have so much credit. Gio-
vanni Pisano is said to have sculptured the pulpit in
S. Giovanni and if so (and I think it seems probable)
he simply copied the older work. I do not know what
the pulpit of S. Andrea is like, but I have little doubt
that it was really from this pulpit that they obtained
their idea for all their, very similar works.
The south front of S. Giovanni is arcaded in the
Pisan fashion (with lozenge panels in the arches) and
above arcaded with two rows of elaborate arcading. The
whole elevation is remarkable in its effect. The roof is
of the usual type, with long tie beams, and quite flat in
pitch. . . .
We were followed about everywhere here by two
very dirty and very ragged urchins who took us to see
everything. They knew about the pulpits, talked about
Luca del la Robbia, etc., and when I gave them an
indivisible coin, about which they quarrelled, they
settled the matter by putting it into the poor box.
How unlike any English boys altogether! We were im-
mensely amused by their sharp impudence.
The inn at Pistoia looked out on green shrubs and
gardens, very pleasant: the consequence was not so
pleasant — the being kept awake half the night
and bitten in all directions by our troublesome enemies
the mosquitoes. We had to turn out early to join the
diligence whch arrived by railway from Florence at 7.30
A.M. We made a brilliant start but very soon altered
[85]
our pace, the road beginning to ascend almost imme-
diately, and then for about four hours we toiled slowly
up the slopes of the Appenines, at first with six and
afterwards with eight horses. The day was fine but misty
so that we lost very much of the distant view. The scen-
ery is fine but not alpine. It reminded me more of the
Jura, save that the hills seem here more to be shaken
confusedly about and not to range themselves into regu-
lar lines or masses. The olive tree was seen for the last
time as we went up and then we came through great
numbers of Spanish chestnuts, and lastly for half an
hour at most through a bleak, open and treeless
country.
The descent was very different, down a narrow valley,
following the windings of the mountain stream,
with fine combinations of scenery and views. Stopped
at La Porretta for dinner, and then on through a fine
country but along a miserable road constantly crossing
the (now dry) beds of mountains torrents. The soil is
exceedingly liable to land slips and seems to be sliding
about in all directions — of course road-making is
difficult. At Vergato, a small village or town on this
part of the road, the old Palazzo Pubblico was passed,
covered with coats of arms in the usual way and dis-
tinguished by its Ringhiera still perfect and jutting out
into the narrow street. We reached Bologna at 8 p.m.
A wall and gate was passed about a mile from the town;
I could not understand what wall it was.
September 15.
S. Petronio is the grandest church in Bologna. Its
west front is of immense size and width but left nearly
all in rough brick, the door and basement alone being
[86]
finished. This part of the work is of poor character and
the sculpture^ (except in a stela on the south-west door
which I thought very vigorous) not particularly good.
The interior is magnificent. . . .
S. Francesco is one of the finest churches in the
town but shabby and decayed outside and "painted
and decorated" to such an extent inside as to have de-
stroyed nearly all its good effect. I never saw anything
more vile. The whole church is of brick and it has an
apsidal east end with an aisle all round the apse and
chapels beyond. The buttresses are "flying" but very
heavy. The west door is good and indeed the whole
west front is striking. The windows are new but ap-
peared to me to be probably copies of the original win-
dows. The campanili are curious. There are two —
one much smaller than the other and both on the south
side of the choir. They form a curious combination
in the views from the east. . . .
September 16.
The ride to Ferrara was very uninteresting — about
four and a half hours; we had left the hills altogether
and saw nothing at all of any distant country. The land
was rich with vines, mulberry trees and rice plantations,
but certainly not picturesque. The grapes were being
picked, and we met everywhere here and in Bologna
waggons bearing magnificent casks for the reception of
the grapes. These carts have a great beam from back
to front elaborately carved and ornamented with colour,
and wheels also carved and ornamented. They are
really very handsome and put one in mind of the frame-
> Attributed to Jacopo della Querela; it is not hard to divine why,
when Donatello had failed to satisfy, Jacopo should offend. —
G. G. K.
[87]
work for guns of Queen Elizabeth's time. They are al-
ways drawn by white oxen.
Here the Brick and Marble volume takes up the tale.
To 1872 belongs a notebook particularly spirited in text
and drawings. It opens:
1872 — With M. S. and Jessie Holland (afterwards
J. M. A. Street)
February 24.
Left London at 8.35, and reached Paris at 7 a.m. . . .
Towns generally built on hills. Curious number of
churches in which the tower and spire at one end and a
very high choir at the other have a low nave between
them. The scenery has the large French character,
owing to absence of hedgerows and the very long lines
of trees — generally lanky poplars closely set. Just
before Dijon, at Plombieres, I saw a very pretty tiled
spire, tiles of golden yellow, green, etc., very rich and
charming in colour; — green not at all blue-green.
Reached Macon at 8.30 and after coffee walked out to
try to see something. Moon rose beautifully over the
opposite side of the Saone, here a very fine looking
river. Walked about nearly in vain but came at last
on remains of a church of some interest.^ It has two
octagonal towers, the lower part of which seems to be
Romanesque, and a nave of some forty feet long with
an enormous central doorway of the fifteenth century,
and aisle arches on each side of it (now glazed) of the
twelfth century, — choir entirely destroyed, and a small
cloister arcade built up in front. The whole has been
all but destroyed and then I suppose just patched up by
1 Qy.: S. Vincent? — G. G. K.
[88]
some good-intentioned antiquary. It is (at least in the
dark) an arcliitectural puzzle.
February 25.
Called at 4.30 and off by train for Genoa via Turin
at 6 A.M. As we left and crossed the Saone saw that
the church I had discovered last night was the only old
looking church, and that the cathedral is an entirely
new stone building. It was a fine frosty morning and
we could do no more than keep ourselves warm by
shutting up windows, and so seeing but little through the
hoar frost on the glass.
At Culoz we had a second breakfast and found the
hills all about us suddenly looking like mountains ow-
ing to the snow on all their higher points. When we
came back from Geneva last year, fresh from the Alps,
we hardly deigned to look at them, and to-day they
seem to all of us about as lovely and grand as they
could be. At Culoz we changed carriages and then, keep-
ing by the pretty Lac du Bourget, were soon at Cham-
bery, and then all the way to Modane we entertained
ourselves by the discovery, first on one side then on the
other, of snow mountains of the first magnitude! At
Modane carriages are changed again for Italy, pass-
ports are examined, and then we start for the tunnel.
The railway runs round Lons-le-Bourg, where we used
to take sledges for the Mont Cenis, and then ascends
winding round until the mountain above Modane is
reached. Here the tunnel begins and we were just
twenty-six minutes passing through it. I promised
every one spring, oranges in fruit, and trees in full
foliage when we really reached Italy; but it was just
the opposite, for there was more snow, by very much,
[89]
when we reached Bardonnecchia than when we left
Modane. We caught one or two views of churches and
I just managed to secure a note of Susa seen in the
most picturesque way far below us. We reached Turin
at 6.42, got some dinner at the railway station and had
some much too sweet vin d'AsH, and started again at
7.35 for Genoa, where we arrived at midnight.
February 29, Genoa.
A glorious morning welcomed us to this most delight-
ful town. It was really like summer and the views in
all directions were most exquisite. Even before I got
up I saw through my window the beautiful outline of
the mountains of the Riviera all covered with snow, and
just a line of the blue Mediterranean above and beyond
the crowd of vessels below us in the port. We had
rooms at Feder's hotel — now Trombetta's — and our
bedroom had an oratory in it with a very elaborately
carved altar, etc., which has been not very reverently
turned now into a sleeping room.
I spent most of my day at the new English church
directing the workmen, etc. Lunched with the Shelbells,
but did not see Brown the consul, who had gone off to a
castle he had bought near Sestri. The church looks
fairly well, but it is difficult to make anything lofty
enough to compete with the enormous houses which it
is the fashion to build now in Genoa and with which it
is surrounded.
Walked a little about the city: into the Via Nuova
which is straight for the greater part of its length (in-
stead of curved as I fancied) — up and down the gold-
smith's street which seems always to lead to everything
— into the cathedral and some of my other old friends
[90]
among the churches. Noticed particularly the sump-
tuous effect which the painted palaces produce. The
palace now used by the British consul is covered outside
with painting, a good deal of which remains in fair con-
dition whilst the two arcades round the courtyard are in
a very fairly perfect state. The doors to the houses in
Genoa had commonly an oblong panel of sculpture over
them. These were cut in slate at or near Savona. The
Gothic houses here have arcades below, and corbel tables
under the second floor, and the windows divided into
lights by very delicate shafts. The best samples are
the Doria houses close to S. Matteo.
We left Genoa at 9.00 by steamer for Livorno. The
boat was small and full of passengers, but I slept well
on the floor of the cabin till we reached our port soon
after 5 a.m.
March 1.
Started by the 9.12 train for Empoli. Murray de-
scribes Empoli in such terms as made us feel no regret
at having to stop there those three hours. Unfortunately
his description turned out to be all wrong, and we found
but little to see or sketch. The best thing there is the
steeple of the collegiata. The front of this church is a
work of about 1600 in white marble and serpentine.
And the Pallei building opposite to it is entirely seven-
teenth century, but has some wall painting outside which
somewhat redeems its otherwise uninteresting walls.
Our train left Empoli at 2.25 and did not reach Orvieto
till nearly 10. During the first part of the journey I
was well employed making sketches from the windows
of the carriage of Certaldo, S. Gemignano, etc. We
caught some beautiful glimpses of Siena as we dashed
[91]
by, and then as we passed through the wretched country
just to the south of it, we gradually lost the daylight,
and slept away the hours till Orvieto was reached.
Here the station by daylight looks just under the town,
but it took us forty minutes to drive up.
March 2, Orvieto.
I was out before breakfast and spent a long, busy,
and happy day here. The town is perched on the top
of a rock which is on most sides a precipice at first
and then a long slope carrries the eye on to the river and
valleys at the bottom. Beyond on all sides are distant
hills to be seen, one of them very picturesque in outline.
In summer it must be a perfect view, but now the
olives are the only trees in leaf, and their colour is so
sad that it does not do much for the landscape.
The old walls exist round much of the town. They
are generally set back a few feet from the edge of the
rock so as to leave a passage outside, which in its turn
is defended by battlements built on the cliff. The lay
of the ground reminds one of Toledo, but the country is
more open, and the river is not a Tagus and does not
produce much effect on the landscape. The views which
may be had from various points of the rocks and walls
are, however, superb, and I have seldom seen anything
more striking. On the other hand there is no building
of sufficient importance in the town to give the best ef-
fect to the views. The cathedral, not having any tower,
produces but little general effect, and the only towers
are some of the plain square family fortress towers like
these sketched at S. Gemignano.
The cathedral more than fulfilled my expectations.
The west front is in its way very beautiful, delicate and
[92]
:^^;r -*
4 ^¥ ' r*)^ '
MASTER MATTHEWS PORCH AT SANTIAGO
refined — perhaps over-refined everywhere, and beau-
tiful in the symmetry of its arrangement. But it is
still not a great success. My great interest here is in the
sculpture of the piers between and at the sides of the
doors. First of all, I must say that they strike me as
too small and delicate for their place. This is their one
fault. If they were to be there they ought to be, as they
are, small and in low relief so as not to interfere with
the flatness and look of strength in the walls. The
sculpture in the northern pier — the days of creation —
is perhaps the most beautiful of the four. Nothing can
be much more refined in feeling or treatment. The
heads are a little exaggerated. The next pier which con-
tains the succession of the seed of Abraham seems to me
to be altogether inferior to the others. The third and
fourth (from the north) are equal, or nearly, to the
first, though a little more crowded. In the last the figure
of our Lord surrounded by an aureole of angels, in the
Last Judgement, is beautifully designed. The foliage
decorations of all this work are very natural in their
treatment and extraordinarily skilful. The play of relief
in leaves, whose extreme projection from the face of the
marble is often not more than an eighth of an inch, is
of the most delicate, subtle and artistic description.
Contrast the skill with which it is treated with the
workmanship in the south door, and the difference of
power will be seen.
The interior is very large and simple — the architec-
tural detail generally very poor. Columns (large cylin-
ders with exaggerated capitals of queer semi-classic
detail) carrying alternated arches, show the character-
istic faults of the Pisan school of architects. The clere-
[93]
story has long, simple, traceried windows, and the best
detail is in the east window, which has good geometrical
tracery, is of very long proportion, and is filled with
stained glass of beautiful design — subjects in square
panels. The effect of its colour is perfect. All round it
are paintings by Agnolino of Orvieto, not very fresh now,
but giving a colour of the most tender kind to the inte-
rior, to which the simple black and white striped construc-
tion of the columns and walls leads the eye up gradually
and well. In the east window the glass is divided into
small panels. There are four lights but in spite of the
irregularity caused by this even number the grounds
of the subjects are all countercharged, alternately
ruby and blue. . . .
fVhat Street said, and what he thought, of Siena and Or-
vieto, is nearly unique. At Viterbo and Toscanella,
he could only see and feel the first what others have
since made familiar. Corneto is less known. ^
March 4.
Looking back to Viterbo I saw it lighted up with beau-
tiful effect by a sudden burst of sunshine. Its towered
walls were in deep shade whilst a cloud of light, wind-
started from the town behind, caught the bright sunshine
and seemed to set the steeples of the town in a sort of
halo. Behind rose the high mountain and to the left
of this, in the far distance, a line of snow-capped moun-
tains which added immensely to the beauty of the view.
This open country is very charming — clouds casting
their shadows here and there and a horizon always
lovely in the pure colour of the mountains or hills
which fringe it. All the way we had Montefiascone in
full view.
[94]
Corneto stands on a steep hill above the marshy
flat which borders the Mediterranean. Its old walls and
towers standing generally on a rocky base give it a very
imposing appearance, but its interest seems to be mainly
Etruscan. The inn at which we stopped made amends
for any lack in the churches by its extremely good
character. It is of late fourteenth century work, but
the internal courtyard with its open arcades on two
sides is most beautiful. The front towards the street
shows in some of its detail and especially in the construc-
tion of the masonry in its upper portion, the influence
of the Renaissance. The building formed originally three
sides of a quadrangle with a passage-way corbelled out
on the wall which forms the fourth side. The lower
storeys have fine open arcades, and the third a series
of delicate shafts with very effective capitals oblong in
plan, carrying a white marble lintel under the wall plate.
The whole scheme is one of extreme beauty and has much
of the effect of being earlier in date than it really is. . . .
IVith a few notes on Rome, and the exquisite drawing of a
living acanthus leaf at Paestum, the book dies away
into a sort of Journal, that records talks with the Bishop
of Gibraltar and Pere Hyacinth, — "I found him very
pleasant and intelligent."
[9S]
NOTES ON FRENCH CHURCHES
Ill
SOME FRENCH CHURCHES CHIEFLY IN THE
ROYAL DOMAIN
(From a notebook of 1855)
June 13.
SOMER has lost much of its original interest by
the destruction wantonly in 1830 of nearly the
whole of the abbey of S. Bertin. It is wicked,
but I did not lament this so much as I should have
done, had the church been of rather earlier date. From
what now remains it appears to have been entirely in
one style, and that an early phase of flamboyant —
much more like some of our English late rhiddle-pointed
than flamboyant, and really very effective in its mould-
ings and sculpture, the two great tests of all architec-
ture. The west front and the north wall of the nave
are all that now remains of the once magnificent church,
and the latter has lost all its window tracery and is in a
sad state of decay.
The west doorway of the tower (which is central at
the west end) is fine, and has cut in the lintel stone of
its door an inscription: — "CasHssimum Divi Bertini
templum caste memento ingredi.'' The tympanum had a
painted subject and much of the rest of the stone work
still retains traces of decorative colour. The west win-
dow of the south aisle is an unhappy example of the
worst kind of flamboyant, the tower is covered all over
[99]
with vertical lines of panelling but is nevertheless, from
its great size, imposing, and indeed gives S. Omer all
the character it has when seen from the railway. A sen-
tinel keeping watch warned me off as I was measuring
the aisle: I suppose having lost so much they were
nervously alive to the chance of architects' hacking off
what remains!
A long winding street leads from S. Bertin at one end
of it to the cathedral of Notre Dame at the other.
This is a church well worthy of a visit for several peculi-
arities and not less for its generally fine effect, especially
in the interior.
The original fabric — of which the choir with its
aisle and two apsidal chapels thrown out from the aisle,
and the south transept and one and a half bays of the
north, are all now remaining — is of the earliest pointed,
with occasional round arches to windows, etc. The
character is very simple and mainly remarkable for the
great beauty of the profusion of sculptured capitals to
all the shafts. The section of the piers is singular and
gives great lightness of effect; they are in fact thin
slices of wall, and not piers formed in the usual way,
and as the weight of them is not a crushing weight, I
look upon them as excessively scientific in their arrange-
ment. The triforium is very lofty as compared with
the rest of the design, and consists of a very simple
arcade of pointed arches, supported only by long and
slender shafts set near together.
The groining is good, and in the chapels a small shaft
rises from the capitals for some feet and carries the wall
rib: this gets over a difficulty in mitring the mouldings.
The Lady-chapel appears to have been remodelled at
[ 100 ]
a later day but upon the foundation of one coeval with
the choir. A very grand effect is produced by the great
size of the transepts — which have aisles on both sides
— and by the placing of a chapel in the re-entering
angles between them and the choir aisle. In this way
an internal effect of lightness and space, of very fine
character, is obtained.
One of the most remarkable features about this cathe-
dral is, however, the extent to which, in later days, the
old design was persisted in: e.g. the remarkable tri-
forium is carried round the entire church, varied a little
in its details and quite different in its sculpture, but still
evidently a copy and from its great size giving an air
of great unity to the whole design. In the clerestory
windows generally there is a good deal of poor flamboy-
ant tracery with a little glass of the same date, but in
the choir the original windows all happily remain. These
are, in the apse, rather wide lancets, and in the rest of
the clerestory simple triplets. In the aisle there were
windows of two lights with a simple quatrefoil above.
Many of the windows have the dog-tooth ornament
round the external labels. The choir still retains on the
outside a very fine and original corbel table.
In a chapel south of the choir are extensive remains
of some most singular work for pavements — they are
squares of stone slightly sunk in regular patterns and
then filled in with some very hard black or red substance.
The same work is carried up against the walls of this
chapel, and in other parts of the cathedral are several
small fragments of similar pavements. The stone is of
a yellow colour and the system seems to admit of being
turned to most useful account.
[101]
Of the exterior, the south transept door is about
the most remarkable feature. It is very simple, almost
plain, but nevertheless its great size and the deep shadow
cast by its outer arch combine to make it a very magnifi-
cent work. The sculpture of the capitals is very good
and the delicate arcade, containing figures on either
side below the base of the columns, is thoroughly
French in its beauty of detail and exquisite finish. Un-
happily it has decayed much. There is a stoup inside
against the pier dividing the doors; this is not used now.
The western tower is like that of S. Bertin, engaged,
and has but little to recommend it to notice.
In the interior there is a very fine high tomb of a
bishop — I think S. Omer — early in the thirteenth
century, about of the same date as the south transept
door. The altar now stands on the east side of the
crossing; either side of it, a range of music-stools affords
fitting accommodation for the clergy, whilst behind,
stalls are arranged in the choir around the apse, encir-
cling an organ which stands about where the altar
ought to stand. In front of this organ is a group of
music stands etc., for the accommodation of the orches-
tra. The choir is enclosed with high stone screens toward
the aisles — old but quite unornamental. . . .
At S. Leu we had a very maigre meal at a small cafe
hiliard close to the station and left at 7.45 for Senlis.
The road was rather pretty and took us in sight of
Chantilly, a prettily situated town on the Oise with a
chateau which belonged to the Due d'Aumale. In
little more than an hour we rumbled through the old
■ narrow street of Senlis and took up our quarters at the
Grand Cerf. Before dark we saw the church of S. Pierre,
[102]
desecrated and used as a cavalry stable. A soldier
who spoke some English insisted on our seeing the
thirty "Hawks," as he called them, who occupied the
church. This we agreed to in order to see the building,
which has, however, little to remark on save its elaborate
west front and flamboyant architecture. Near this
church is the cathedral and near this a desecrated church,
but I must reserve them until to-morrow.
June 16.
My first visit in the morning was of course to the
cathedral, of which the west front with its magnificent
south-west tower and spire is the most delightful por-
tion. The rest of the church, though retaining many
of its old features and arrangements intact, has been
overlaid on the exterior with flamboyant work to an un-
pleasant extent. The two transept fronts are very elab-
orate and entirely in this late style. At the east end
some of the chapels which surround the apse are of
Romanesque date, semicircular in their plan outside
and roofed with lean-to roofs of stone. The west front
was intended to have two similar towers and spires:
the towers are both built but only one spire. The detail
of the lower portion is very simple, that of the upper
part of tower and spire very elaborate and covered with
ornament of varied description. The whole surface of
spire and turrets is covered with patterns which contrib-
ute very much to the general richness of effect. The
most remarkable features are however the open pin-
nacles at the point where the tower becomes octangular,
and the delicate spire-lights which are set on every side
of the spire and rise nearly half its height. The spire-
lights are remarkable in their arrangement at the top;
[ 103 ]
instead of going back iiorizontally at the ridge they slope
down rapidly to the spire so as to produce a very pi-
quant effect. The detail of all the sculpture and mould-
ings is most carefully executed throughout, and though
the scale of the steeple is not large it produces a very
great effect of height. The crockets and fmials on
the spire are very vigorously carved.
The construction of the spire is very ingenious and
allows of passage-ways in the wall to the base of the
spire-lights. At this point it is constructed in two thick-
nesses, one of which slopes and forms the outer line of
the spire; the other is perpendicular from the inside
face until it meets the external sloping portion and dies
into it; the two are occasionally bonded together with
large blocks of stone, and a passage-way is formed be-
tween them. The view from the steeple is fine.
Close to the cathedral on the south is the desecrated
church of S. Frambourg, a simple parallelogram in plan
and finished with an apse, rather broad and low in its
proportions, but nevertheless very effective. The groin-
ing is all sexpartite. The original windows remain only
in the apse, and there is but little to be said of the build-
ing farther than that its west front is remarkable for
the outer line of moulding of a prodigious rose window,
(now blocked up), and for a west doorway which though
mutilated has much beauty. There seems to have been
a tower at the north-west of the nave. This church is
now used as a store by a builder. . . .
We left the city of Senlis with some difficulty. Im-
primis we had an extortionate charge for a bad kind of
accommodation at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, and next
had great difficulty in getting places in the omnibus to
[104]
Pont S. Maxence. But all is well that ends well, and we
succeeded, happily, in getting away. The view of the
cathedral as the town is left behind becomes very fine,
but it is soon lost as the road plunges into the woods
through which for the best part of the way it runs. One
village, Fleurines, was passed, with a poor late church;
some large stone granaries are passed and then the long
street of Pont S. Maxence. The Oise is crossed at its
end and a few hundred yards bring us to the station;
from hence we booked to Noyon, passing on the way
Compiegne, which has an old town hall and two churches,
one of which, as seen from the distance, seems likely to
repay examination. Noyon was reached at four o'clock
and we walked off to the cathedral which towers up
most conspicuously above the town.
The general character of the church is, internally,
much the same as that of S. Leu, etc., but it is very much
loftier and has a singular arrangement into four stages
in height. There are in the nave: — 1. the arcades,
2. the triforium, very large, with windows and groined,
3. a small arcade more like an prdinary triforium, and
4. a clerestory. In the transepts there is no groined
triforium and the two upper stages, being of similar
height and both of them glazed, give the impression of
a double clerestory. I do not at all like this quadruple
arrangement of the interior. The columns of the nave
are alternately of clustered and single shafts. The
groining is divided into compartments of two bays by
reason of the transverse ribs from the clustered piers
being much larger than any of the others. Both the
transepts terminate with apses and there are many
very noble points in the internal effect. Here as at S.
[105]
Leu the aisles are very narrow compared to the width
of the nave, and the spaces between the columns of the
arcades are also very small indeed. Of the exterior, the
west end is perhaps the more striking part. It has two
immense and very simple towers with a grand triple
porch in front of its three great doorways. This porch
was constructed weakly and has been boldly buttressed
up. North of the north-west tower is a long building
connected with the church, of exquisite beauty, and other
old buildings enclose a considerable space on the north
side of the cathedral. These buildings are remarkable,
inter alia, for the bold foliage which is introduced be-
neath the parapets in a fashion very popular in this part
of France.
There is a small porch of fine early pointed character
on the east side of the north transept and above it a very
fine rose window. The ground at the east end is planted
out in a garden and the whole effect of the choir with
the restored steep roofs above the apsidal chapels is
very noble. There is what appears to be a distinct church
(now desecrated) attached to the east side of the south
transept. It is of simple early pointed and has in each
bay two lancets and a round window above. It has
several bays of length, and an apse, and is parallel with
the choir. Careful works of restoration are going on
here. I saw no trace of any other old building, saving
a portion of very late domestic work.
We left Noyon at 8.40 and reached S. Quentin at
10 P.M. . . .
June 17.
I turned out early and got a sketch of the great church
before breakfast. Its height is very imposing but in
[106]
its general character it disappointed my rather high
expectations. It appears to me to be a kind of late imi-
tation of early work. For instance the triforium and
clerestory have almost geometrical tracery differing only
in slight points from the best kind of geometrical work.
The proportions too are good and the groining very
simple. Many of the shafts in the choir are single
columns, but the carving of their capitals is very
inferior to that I have seen elsewhere. The choir has, too,
a triforium which seems to be much earlier than that
of the nave, probably early in the thirteenth century.
One of the best features is the management of the chapels
and aisles round the apse. There are two transepts;
the eastern one does not show however in the ground
plan. The tower was central at the west end, but has
been all modernized and does not now rise above the
immense pointed roof of the nave, so that in the distance
the church wants distinctness of character and outline,
badly. The flying buttresses are very elaborate and are
steadied by arches thrown across from pinnacle to
pinnacle, so as to keep them from falling laterally;
notwithstanding these precautions the church has fallen
out so much in some parts as to look very unsafe.
In the market place there is a quaint old town hall
standing on open arches and rather elaborate in its de-
tails but very late in its date. There was less to interest
in S. Quentin than in most places I have visited as yet,
so I was very well able to get away at 11 to Tergnier by
railway; here we waited for an hour and then started
in a slow diligence for Laon through La Fere and Crepy.
I could not see any church in the former place, but in
the latter — a good sized village — are two, both of
[107]
first-pointed date and one with a remarkably good
chancel having an east window and side windows of two
lights with a distinct circular window above, and all
adorned with dog-tooth ornaments. The other was
remarkable for a very striking western porch. The road
was pretty and soon after passing Crepy brought us in
sight of the cathedral of Laon crowning its noble hill
in right royal style. A drenching storm of rain pre-
vented our seeing much of the beauty of the view as
we climbed the steep road that winds round the hill
into the town, but in the evening when we walked round
the ramparts we found that it was one of most uncom-
mon magnificence — a vast expanse of flat country gen-
erally green in its colour, dotted here and there with
woods or villages, and bounded in some parts of the
horizon with distant hills. . . .
Our first object in the morning was the cathedral.
The original idea of the church (which is said to have
been built in the extraordinarily short space of two years)
was a great nave, choir and transepts, the west front and
both the transept fronts being flanked with two towers
of nearly equal height and even fairly similar design.
Four of these were completed, those on the east side of
the transepts having been only carried up to the height
of the roof gables. There is a combination of intense
simplicity with an intricate and delicate transparent
effect in the open pinnacles at the angles which is wonder-
fully fine. The scale is larger and the whole treatment
though similar is finer than that of Senlis, and though it
was imitated it was not, I think, rivalled, even in the
magnificent steeples at Rheims.
There is a lantern at the intersection of the nave and
[108]
transepts which, had it been carried up some vast height
above the other towers, might possibly have helped to
reduce them all to order; but there is no sign of any
such intention, and the only reason for it that can be
seen is the desire to elevate the groining at the inter-
section to a great height above the rest of the roof. I
have sketched and measured these towers so carefully
that 1 shall say no more about them, save that they are
groined just below the summit and that they were
evidently intended for some further finish than they now
have, probably for spires like those at Senlis.
The interior of Laon is singularly like that of Noyon,
having the same double triforium, but being finished
at the east with a square end instead of an apse. Going
from one church to another differing only in this respect
seemed to give the best possible means of ascertaining
with some degree of certainty their relative merits; and
certainly it seemed to me that, of the two, Noyon was
incomparably the superior, and entirely on this account.
The east end of Laon is nevertheless fine for a square
east end, and has the windows filled with very magnifi-
cent old glass of deep colour. The altar is now brought
forward one bay so as to leave a passage beneath the
east window.
The capitals generally of this church are very finely
treated and would afford endless examples of good work
in this early style. In studying the church one of the
features most to be noticed is the frequent recurrence of
carved courses of foliage which everywhere take the
place of moulded string courses.
The south transept has double doorways, and above
them a very beautiful rose window. This has now
[109]
become curious because by its side tiiere is the jamb of
a middle-pointed window, evidently inserted by some
ambitious man who was going on to put in an entirely
new window but who was happily stopped here; I say
"here" because he was unhappily not stopped in the
south transept and so we have to regret the loss of a
grand window suitable to the building and the insertion
of one which in no way improves it. On the north side
of the choir a great alteration was made in the thir-
teenth century by throwing out the outer walls to the
face of the buttresses in order to gain a considerable
number of chapels. This was done in very good style
indeed and much improves this part of the exterior.
The only apsidal terminations in the whole church are
those of two chapels thrown out on the east side of the
transepts. They are carried up three stages in height, one
of which opens into the transept aisle and the two others
form another chapel out of the magnificent triforium.
Round the east end of the cathedral are large remains
of old buildings of early date, connected probably with
the church (which, by the by, is said to have been built
in A.D. 1113 and 1114, dates which seem to me to be at
least fifty years too early for such a structure). The
main portion of these buildings consists of a long pile
opening to a sort of garth or cloister, north-east of the
cathedral, with simple pointed arches supported on low
circular columns, and showing on the other side the
elevation which I have sketched roughly, and which,
standing just at the edge of the cliff, looks on a vast
expanse of country until the far distance is lost in mist.
These buildings are now converted into some Courts of
Law, store houses and lumber rooms.
[110]
The Bishop of Laon lives elsewhere I fancy, as our
landlord made much of his having come expressly to
join in a procession through the city which we witnessed
on Sunday afternoon. This procession was new to me
and may as well be recorded: it visited a number of
altars got up in a temporary manner, elevated on high
flights of steps, and decorated profusely with flowers,
garlands and drapery. These were erected in every
available space, and I suppose by the zeal of the neigh-
bors in each locality. As the time for the procession
came, all the good people of the city hung up white
sheets over the fronts of their shops so that the whole
street bore a most singular appearance, though the uni-
versal white was here and there relieved by the old pieces
of tapestry with some sacred story on it hung out by
some more well-to-do person.
Presently through the dense crowd came the proces-
sion — first, girls bearing banners and draped in white,
then other banners, clergy, acolytes, censer-bearers and
lastly the bishop under a square velvet baldachin car-
ried by priests, walking between two priests, bearing a
monstrance with the Host.
At intervals the censer-bearers turned and censed and
then went on again, till they reached an altar, which
the bishop always ascended and gave the benediction
from it, displaying the Host to the people all kneeling
below. The procession was followed and kept in some
order by soldiers whose band, alternately with the
choristers, accompanied the march. In half an hour
after the return of the bishop from his rather long pro-
cession the town had resumed its old look, the white
sheets were gone, and the altars pulled down or denuded
C 111 ]
of all their ornaments. All the towns we had been in
had been preparing for the same fete, which was to be
greatest at Lille, where ''Notre Dame de la Treille" —
whose day it was — is looked on as the patron of the city.
From the cathedral we went to the church of S.
Martin at the other end of the main street. The general
effect of the exterior is very good, and very superior to
the interior, — which is very simple, rather bad in its
design, and much modernized. The south transept front
is very fine and remarkable for the boldness of the mould-
ings on its buttresses and strings. The west front is,
after this, the finest portion of the building, being a
very ornate addition in middle-pointed to the old Roman-
esque church. It is very picturesque and I liked it much.
From the church we turned down into a walk which
follows the line of the old ramparts and nearly surrounds
the city. The view, from this part of it, of the cathedral
standing on a sort of promontory, with the cluster of
houses around it, the vine-covered hill sloping down
rapidly to the valley on the right, and then the flat vale,
lined all over with rows of poplars, and finished against
the horizon with fine hills, was most charming. Indeed
I have never seen any town of which the views were so in-
variably magnificent as they are always round old Laon.
We saw no other old church here, save one below the
hill with a central tower and low spire, which looked at
all as though it might be worth visiting. In the street
close to the south transept of the cathedral is a gable
end of a good middle-pointed house.
We left Laon in the coupe of a small diligence at 6
P.M. for Rheims, grateful in the extreme for the one fine
day which we had as yet had — nowhere so grateful as
[112]
here, where every turn disclosed some view or some sub-
ject of which a bright sun was the most indispensable
adjunct.
Our going to Rheims afforded no incidents. When we
crossed the hills from Laon and descended towards the
broad valley of Champagne we had a most glorious
view, simple in all its detail, but full of beautiful colour,
and rich and verdant in the extreme. One small village
we passed on the way had a church of which I man-
aged to get a sketch while we changed horses. I
went inside and found the whole church fitted with
open seats on a raised wooden floor. The central tower
is groined and has only a small apse to the east, and the
effect of this inside is exceedingly good. The south
aisle consists of a series of compartments running north
and south, the roofs boarded on the under side and
coved or canted, and descending not on arches across
the aisle but on beams. The steeple was, I think, the
only part groined. From this village to Rheims our
journey was made in the dark and it was nearly eleven
as we drove along under the shadow of the great walls
of the cathedral and into the gate of the inn which faces
its west front, where happily we found rest for our
weary limbs. . . .
June 19.
It rained fast when I turned out early this morning
and continued to do so perseveringly all the day. This
was miserable and perhaps has made my recollection
of Rheims less pleasant than it ought to be.
The west front with its three great doorways is very
magnificent. The two steeples, which are developments
from the Laon idea, and like Laon unfinished, are at pres-
[113]
ent not large enough for the porch and look too much
like turrets, and yet they are of immense size. The
substitution of second-pointed mouldings in these steeples
for the first-pointed shafts of those at Laon, is unfortu-
nately not an improvement. The whole porch is cov-
ered in the most lavish manner with elaborate sculpture
of the very finest character and detail, but it is gener-
ally spread over the whole surface and gives perhaps an
effect of littleness and fritter to the whole front. The
detail of the pinnacles and flying buttresses at the sides
is unusually fine, and all of the same fine early middle-
pointed date — that of the apse and the chapels sur-
rounding it is equally fine. The northern transept is
also a fine composition, but the parapets were intended
to have flanking towers and these are carried up in the
same way as those both at Rouen and Chartres, hardly
on a sufficient scale to be looked on as towers. Their
great open belfry windows produce a fine effect. The
three doors of the north transept are all very fine, though
the sculpture on some of them is of earlier date than that
of the west front, and of very ingenious execution.
On entering, the impression produced is one of ex-
quisite proportions, colour, and decoration, but per-
haps a little too much of all this and not so much of
that indescribable feeling which some noble churches so
eminently produce. It is in fact a work of faultless art
rather than religious feeling, though so noble a work of
art cannot help inspiring great religious feeling. The
whole design is extremely simple and as free from su-
perfluous decoration as the west front is crowded with
it. Its triforium appeared to be poor and insignificant
in the extreme, after the magnificent triforia of Noyon
[114]
and the other early churches with their ampler open
spaces and fine groinings. The treatment of the west
wall on the inside is very curious. It is divided into a
great number of trefoiled niches with very little in the
way of moulding, each niche having a figure; and the
background being coloured white throws out these
figures remarkably. Borders, spandrels, etc., are filled
in profusely with much delicately carved and very
flat foliage, all most accurately copied from natural
forms. In the north transept is a curious wooden clock-
case of the fourteenth century. . . . We left Rheims
at 6 o'clock in the evening by railway for Meaux where
we arrived to sleep at 11.
June 20.
As is my wont, I was very early at the cathedral this
morning. The scale is not large, and in particular the
nave is singularly short, only three bays east of the
towers. One tower only is completed, and that in a
flamboyant style. The church is very open inside, hav-
ing two aisles, and chapels on each side of the nave and
a good arrangement of chapels, etc., around the choir.
The great beauty of the interior is its generally fine
style — very early third-pointed — the beauty of the
triforia, and the particularly fine interior of the transepts.
I managed to get some sketches to show its general
character before we left, which was at 11 a.m. for Paris,
and there seemed to be no old buildings of any interest
in Meaux, though I saw one old pile with corner turrets
near the cathedral.
We reached Paris at 12.30 having noticed a fine-look-
ing church on our way, at the station of Lagny, which
well deserves a visit. . . .
C 115 ]
June 22.
Wrote letters and then to Notre Dame. ... A fee
gave me admittance to the new sacristy and small
cloister. The detail of this is all very good, save the
doorways; and the glass, which is a grisaille with sub-
jects boldly drawn on glass of very pale tincture but
thick in texture, was very good indeed. The encaustic
tiles used here are very inferior to ours. ... On our
way we just looked at the S. Chapelle, the new turret
on which appears to me to be most unsatisfactory.
At 12.20 we left Paris for Evreux, going by railway
to Vernon station. I expected much here and was much
disappointed. The cathedral is a building whose sub-
stratum is good first-pointed, but this has been over-
laid by an accumulation of late flamboyant work, so as
to be almost invisible. The west front has been rebuilt
in bad classic. The north transept is a rich and pictur-
esque piece of flamboyant work of the most ornate kind,
and has across its angles internally some immense
squ inches to carry a passage from the aisle to the end
walls. A great deal of very good grisaille glass of the thir-
teenth century has been retained in the flamboyant win-
dows, and in the others there is a good deal of late stained
glass which seems to be of fair quality. The church in-
ternally is very narrow in proportion to' its height and
looks consequently more lofty than it really is. The
other church at Evreux, S. Taurin, is a Romanesque
church altered in flamboyant and adorned with a west
front of pseudo-classic. It is a fine church, and its main
ornament is the magnificent shrine of S. Taurin, of
which I managed to get some slight sketches. It is of
silver or other metal, gilt, with some very good ornamen-
[116]
tation in enamel and niello. In the south transept wall
is an arcade filled in with coloured tiles, but it hardly
looks as if it would be original; nevertheless, it is said
to be so and I see no reason for supposing it likely that
such an enrichment would have been subsequently
added in such a place.
June 23.
We left Evreux at 7 a.m. for S. Pierre station and
passed through Louviers on the way. I had only time
to run in for two minutes to look at the cathedral. It
is like Evreux, an early pointed church with flamboyant
alterations, but its scale is small. The triforium and
clerestory in first-pointed are very good, with relieving
arches inside. . . .
We reached Rouen at 11 and though I had seen all
its curiosities before, I was glad to have another oppor-
tunity of looking at them. The cathedral gains rather
than loses in my estimation. Its general proportions
are fine and all its detail admirably good. Unfortunately
it is whitewashed and not much cared for, and so people
fancy it a poor church. It is on the contrary very fine,
and much finer in all ways than its rival S. Ouen. . . .
After the cathedral almost everything in Rouen is very
late in style and unsatisfactory therefore; it is an inter-
esting town in many ways but in no way to be compared
with such a town as Cologne for real architectural interest.
In the evening I made a sketch of the north-west
tower, which with its quaint slated roof is a most pic-
turesque composition. Indeed the whole west front is
very grand and broad in its effect, whenever it can be
seen without the detestable new cast-iron spire of the
central steeple. ...
[117]
June 24.
We left Rouen by diligence for Lisieux at 7 a.m. The
ride is for much of the way very pretty, notably so between
Rouen and Elboeuf, and again about Brienne, a small
town with two churches, one of them undergoing some
restoration of not good character. At Bourgtheroulde I
went into the church and found all the roofs of wood,
arched and boarded, with tie-beams and ring-posts. . . .
We reached Lisieux at 3 p.m. It was a fair day, and
the place in front of the cathedral was crowded with
people, shows and booths. The church was very full,
and in the choir, suspended on a beam, were three great
new bells just made, and I suppose in process of being
blessed before being hung in the tower.
The whole church is very fine and of nearly uniform
date, the choir rather mo^e advanced first-pointed than
the nave and with a late Lady-chapel added. The
triforium of the choir is very charming; and here and in
the side windows of the choir aisle — also very beautiful
— there is a great fondness displayed for cusped circles
sunk slightly in plain wal ling-spaces, as also in the
spandrels of arches, etc. This is the case notably in the
west front and again in the fine north-west steeple,
where bands of circles are used as strings. This was
seen also in the steeple of Senlis. In the west front,
which has been elaborately restored, the side doorways
are small but very beautiful, finishing with trefoil heads
and remarkable for the great masses of regular foliage
round their arches in place of mouldings. These are
used with the happiest effect.^ The exterior of the
1 The same ornamentation appears in the doorways opening out of
the Great Cloister at Las Huelgas (province of Burgos, Spain). —
G. G. K.
[118]
south transept is also a fine simple composition and
the interior of this and of the north transept are spe-
cially good. The church is apsidal with two chapels be-
sides the Lady-chapel.
The music used here was strictly Gregorian; so also
at S. James's, where the congregation joined most heart-
ily. . . . The two western towers are very different,
that on the south-west early and for a number of stages
of Romanesque work; the other very beautiful, and in
its belfry stage giving a type for others — as especially
S. Pierre and others in Caen — to copy. The north-
west steeple has no spire and that of the other has been
much modernized. There is a low central tower which
forms a fine lofty lantern internally.
The only other mediaeval church in Lisieux is on a
large scale but entirely of poor flamboyant work. We
were there whilst a collection was being made; a Gre-
gorian psalm was sung and the collection was made by a
priest first and then by a little girl dressed up very
smartly in white. There was a crowded congregation
composed mostly of women.
A good many old wooden houses remain in the streets
of Lisieux; few however are of very rare character and
all seemed of the latest date. Our inn was dirty, dis-
agreeable, but cheap, — two" dinners, two beds and ser-
vants coming to 8 francs only! But its merits were so
questionable that we were very glad to find ourselves
on our way to Caen. We left at 6 a.m. and arrived
there at 10. There were one or two fine views on the
road, but otherwise it had no interest until the many
towers and spires of Caen rose before us. ... I had
seen Caen before, but five years had left me so far for-
[119]
getful of the detail of its beauties as to be heartily glad
to discover them again.
The church of S. Pierre was close to our inn and its
spire was first of all looked at. It is certainly very
glorious but not original. The spire is copied from S.
^tienne and the tower is a repetition of what seems to
have been the one idea of a tower in this part of France.
Lisieux has an early example, and so too have Bret-
teville, Norrey and others; but giving up the point of his
originality, the architect of S. Pierre must nevertheless
have great credit for his mode of working up old ideas. S.
Jean and Notre Dame in Caen have steeples copied from
S. Pierre, so that we have here an instance of the same
design being reproduced for three hundred years again
and again, dressed only in different detail. This is a most
curious fact and one not often paralleled, I think. . . .
The discussion in detail of the many churches in Caen
seems hardly to call for printing as mere record, for
the ground has been well covered by later travellers and
not, this time, reached by the German army.
June 26.
To-day we changed our diligence travelling for a more
agreeable mode, by hiring a phaeton to take us to Bay-
eux in order that we might be able to stop on our way
at one or two churches.
At 8 A.M., we started; the view of Caen on leaving is
fine, its towers and spires standing up well against the
sky. A village is passed very soon with an early church
whose bell-tower on the chancel end is of good character.
One or two steeples with saddleback roofs are seen
near the road, and at the end of about seven or eight
miles the tall spire of Bretteville I'Orgueilleuse rises on
[120]
the road. The design is most curiously like S. Pierre,
Caen, but it is earlier and has been much mutilated.
All the piercings in the spire are filled in, and one only
of the spire lights remains in its place, though there are
evident traces of others having existed. The tower
rises above the chancel and east of it is a sacrarium of
the same date, square-ended and with two lancets in
the east wall, but groined in such a way as to make one
think that its architect could not forget his apsidal
terminations. The nave is modern, or perhaps I should
rather say modernized. The windows of the tower and
sacrarium and the doorway in the north wall of the
former, are of very good detail — the transition from
Romanesque. There is a piscina in the south wall.
East of this chancel has been built within the last year
or two a most frightful sacristy, intended I suppose to
be pagan but at present not very definite, as all the
stones which compose its wall are built up in block to
be hewn out afterwards. This of course blocks up the
curious east end, but the priest to whom I protested
against this wanton piece of barbarism made very light
of the matter. I cannot see that the clergy anywhere
take the interest that one would expect in such matters,
for I have seen nowhere any restorations of at all proper
character, except such as are being carried out by gov-
ernment with public funds.
From Bretteville a drive of about a mile brought us
to Norrey, whose church is so remarkable that I meas-
ured its plan and sketched many of its details.
It consists of a nave without aisles and a choir and
transepts with aisles and two apsidal chapels to the
choir aisle. The nave is similar in its detail of windows
[121]
and doors to Bretteville, and in no way worth particular
notice, but the rest of the church is most singular. Its
decorations are extremely elaborate, the mouldings and
ornamental carvings being carved out with a depth of
elaborate elegance seldom rivalled. The mouldings are
singularly deep and effective, and the carving all very
good. The style is throughly good pure first-pointed,
and looks more like English work than foreign. The
dimensions are exceedingly small, the width in the clear
of the choir being only about sixteen feet and of the
aisle not seven feet, whilst some of the intercolumniations
are not more than three feet and a half and three feet
ten inches. The plan is nevertheless similar in all
respects to that of a large church of the first order,
save in the absence of a central chapel at the east end,
and it is therefore much more properly called a "model
cathedral" than churches so dignified generally are.
The piscinae of the chapels are good and have one orifice
and a large space of shelf. One of the altars is original
and has a mass of masonry under it for, I suppose,
relics. The whole church is in the most wretchedly
damp, dirty and neglected state, and a. disgrace to all
who have any charge of it.
The main entrance is now by a beautiful porch to the
north transept, which is, unfortunately, rapidly decay-
ing — as much of the other work executed in Caen stone
is doing everywhere. The small chapels of the apse are
roofed with most extraordinary stone roofs, of very
steep pitch, which at a little distance look like two great
pinnacles, and when seen close at hand look like nothing
else that ever was built or designed. There are very
curious marks, in the exterior, of a change of plan in
[122]
some respects as the work went on, some of the choir
windows having been commenced with most elaborate
mouldings outside as well as inside, but altered either
in one jamb or at their heads into a plain double chamfer,
in a most singular manner. There is some good arcading
commenced outside, and a beautiful arcade runs all
round the inside wall below the windows. The tower is
just like Bretteville, but the spire must have differed
considerably from it; unhappily it was struck by light-
ning some twelve years since, and there is now a poor
slated roof in place of the spire. The angle pinnacles
still remain and I think they prove that the transition
from the tower to the spire must always have
been very abrupt. I think from the character of all
the detail and especially from the great love shown
for the round trefoil, that this church must have been
designed by the same man who built the eastern
part of the cathedral at Bayeux. The mouldings
are excessively similar and the abaci are constantly
used octangular in plan in conjunction with square
and circular.
An interesting road took us from Norrey to Bayeux,
where we arrived at 3 P.M.
The general view of this cathedral is most magnifi-
cent, — owing to its two completed and similar western
spires and to the great height of a central tower of flam-
boyant work capped with a pagan cupola which, though
of bad details and inconsistent with all the rest of the
work, certainly aids much in making the magnificence of
the whole so great. This central steeple is on the point
of being taken down, I believe, as the piers below are
giving way; and the church is now filled with timber
[123]
shores, etc. I do not like the steeple but cannot help
regretting its loss. . . .
There is a curious old chimney near the west front of
the cathedral, rising out of a modern house. Attached
to a seminary near the Hotel Dieu is a good simple
chapel of first-pointed date. It is a parallelogram groined
simply and lighted with windows of two lights in each
bay. The whole is wretchedly whitewashed everywhere
and contrasts strongly with the magnificent colour of the
stonework throughout the interior of the cathedral.
June 27.
We left Bayeux at 11 a.m. in the diligence for S. L6
— I in the coupe, my unfortunate wife in the dusty
roiunde. The country was very pretty indeed, quite
like good parts of England, and very grateful to my eyes.
The church of S. Loup, passed just after leaving Bay-
eux, has a good Romanesque steeple capped with a low
square spire and remarkable for the great richness of its
belfry stage and the eccentric narrowness of the win-
dows with buttresses between them. Two miles before
entering the town the cathedral of S. L6 comes in sight;
and by the graceful proportions of its two western
spires gives promise of pleasure to the ecclesiologist. . . .
June 29.
We left Coutances this morning at 7.30 for Hambye
' en route for Avranche. The road was all the way exces-
sively pretty, and gave an admirable view of Coutances,
with the cluster of towers and spires which crowns the
hill on which it stands. ... I walked off alone to the
abbey. The situation is pretty; under a steep woody
and rocky hill, with a clear stream near, and woods
and riant hills and dales all around. The entrance is
[124]
by a very simple gateway, double in front and single-
arched behind. ... A few paces from this gateway
stands the church, of whose west front no traces now
remain, and some old and rustic buildings to the south
of it, which have only one old doorway remaining.
The church is remarkable in its plan, having a nave with-
out aisles, a central tower, transepts with eastern chapels,
aisles and chapels round the choir. The end of the north
transept is divided off by two arches from the church,
and was I think intended for a sacristy, corresponding
somewhat in position to the beautiful sacristy at Cou-
tances — of which cathedral this abbey church bears
most marked evidence of being in great degree a reduced
and simplified copy. Two small chapels are placed at
the re-entering angles of the nave and transept, and, sup-
posing the choir to have extended to the western side
of the tower, these would have been most useful in
allowing access to the choir aisles and transepts without
passing through the choir itself. The same point of
arrangement occurs at Rayham abbey — also an aisle-
less church — and would be necessary in all conventual
churches of this type. The effect of the interior is strik-
ing, owing to the excessive lightness of the nave and
to the great extension given by its aisles to the width of
the choir. The design of the choir is much like that of
Coutances — the same lofty proportions of columns, the
same caps, the same kind of clerestory window, and the
same double lean-to roof all round the choir, one side
over the aisle and the other over the chapels of the
apse. The whole work looks early, though there are
here and there suspicious-looking mouldings and Murray
says that the whole church is of late date. If he is
[125]
correct, it can only be, I think, on the assumption that
the builders of the present church used very nearly
stone for stone a large portion of the original first-
pointed edifice. The cloisters occupied the angle be-
tween the nave and south transept, but no trace remains
of them save the corbels which supported their roof. A
long range of old buildings still remains, south of the
south transept. On the ground floor they consist of:
first, a small groined room with a central column, and
its groining and walls painted rudely with patterns in
distemper; second, of a long building divided by a row
of columns down the centre and entered by three open
arches at the west end, which we may assume to have
been the chapter room; third, another square room with
a rude central column, also painted, and then another
room of that same kind; all these rooms are groined, and
above them, along the whole length of the building,
extends a great hall with an old timber roof, of such
great size that it is difficult to surmise its probable use
unless it was that of a great dormitory arranged with
cubicles down its sides.^
* The plan of six-foot cubicles, open above, with separate win-
dows but a single lofty roof, carried on immense stone arches span-
ning the vast hall, is that of the great dormitory at the Cistercian
abbey of Poblet, in Cataluna. — G. G. K.
[126]
THE AMBULATORY, CATHEDRAL OF TOURS
ARCHITECTURAL NOTES IN FRANCE
(From the Ecclesiologist, 1858-59)
I
A SHORT holiday among French churches has left
so many pleasant recollections of new ideas re-
ceived, new thoughts suggested, ancient mem-
ories revived afresh, that it is as impossible as it would
be churlish to refuse to communicate some notes of what
I have seen ; and as they are asked for I proceed to give
them, though they must be more slight and generalizing
than I could wish; for I have a very profound convic-
tion of the great grandeur of ancient French art, and a
corresponding sense of the danger of so treating it as to
convey too small a sense of its value to those who have
not studied it for themselves, or of offending those who
are so happy as to have realized that value to the fullest
extent and from actual inspection of its remains. It is
needless to say that as the France of the "present day is
an agglomeration of ancient and distinct provinces, so
also in its ancient buildings we can trace, without any
difficulty, a variety of different national or provincial
styles: it would be strange indeed were it not so. Even
in England we have most striking varieties in style con-
fined, generally, within the boundaries of particular
dioceses; so that to understand ancient art aright, it is
necessary to have an exact acquaintance with the third-
[127]
pointed work of Devonshire and Cornwall as well as
that of Norfolk and Suffolk, and to be able to perceive
all the difference between the first-pointed work of the
Yorkshire abbeys and that of Wells and Salisbury.
And if we have such marked differences in a country
like this, we may well expect a much greater variety in
a country which, like France in the Middle Ages, was
not as now one great nation but divided into sections
antagonistic to each other and exercising little if any
reciprocal influence. It is easy, therefore, to map our
France into certain divisions, each containing within
its boundaries a special individual style of Gothic archi-
tecture, distinguished by notable peculiarities, and each
affording a separate field for very careful study. Thus
we have in the north of France distinct French styles, in,
first, Normandy, and secondly, the old lie de France and
the surrounding country, and thirdly, in the country bor-
dering on Germany, a style which is rather German than
French in all its leading features. Then going south-
ward, we have, fourthly, a distinct Burgundian style,
and another, marked by extreme peculiarities, in Poitou
and Anjou, and (judging only by drawings, for I have
never myself visited the extreme south of France),
again other styles, whose centres are respectively at
Clermont and at Aries. Of these various styles that of
Normandy presents a very great affinity to our own. It
is there, and almost only there, that we see the circular
abacus, there only that we see much attempted in the
way of deep and complicated architectural mouldings,
whilst the general effect of many — especially among
the larger churches — is extremely English. The like-
ness is one of which we may well be proud, for the archi-
[128]
tecture of this province is full of beauty and interest
to a degree second only to that of the district of the old
lie de France. Its very deficiencies, too, are English in
their character, for in going from Paris into the heart
of Normandy, the one thing which we notice more per-
haps than anything else, is the general absence of the
figure sculpture to which we have become accustomed;
and this is the case also in England, where we have really
hardly any at all extensive remains of sculpture, and cer-
tainly none which can be named with those whose pride
it is to be the guardians of such churches as the cathe-
drals of Chartres, Paris, Amiens, Laon, or Rheims.^
The study of the architecture of Normandy is therefore
the proper and natural sequel of a complete and careful
study of English architecture, and may be entered on
with the less hesitation as I believe I may safely venture
to say, that what is learned there will be in no sense
foreign either to the precedents or the sympathies of
England.
The churches of Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, appear
to me to be of much less value for architectural study:
though from the connection which was maintained be-
1 Our ancient sculpture is therefore of inexpressible value to us;
and it is to be hoped that we shall hear less and less of that destruc-
tive and dangerous process called " restoration " in connection with
it. The Guardian lately contained a paragraph stating that a London
carver is employed on the restoration of the ancient figure-sculpture
at Lincoln. I shudder to think of the havoc which (if I may judge
of him by the former performances of his class) he must be making.
If the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln possessed a picture by an old
master, would they employ a painter to touch up the noses and put
in new heads where the old painting was defective? Assuredly not.
And can they not feel that any sculpture is just as much a work of
art, owing all its interest to the genius of the artist, as any painting
can be, and as far beyond restoration therefore?
[129]
tween our own country and those parts of France during
a long period of the Middle Ages, it is impossible but
they should present much that is of the greatest
interest to the English student. I have looked, how-
ever, in vain for evidence, either in the general design
or in the details of their architecture, of any influence
exercised by the English upon their art. In fact, when
we held the country, we held it as conquerors not as
colonists, and we left no mark of ourselves, but let the
people go on building for us and for themselves in their
own way. And their way was full of peculiarity, perhaps
more so than that of any other part of France. They
had their own system of planning, their own system of
groining: and this, it should be remarked, is sure, if
it has any peculiarity, to exercise a most powerful and
obvious effect upon the whole architecture. There is,
however, a heaviness, a repetition of the same idea, and
an absence of delicate skill, as well as of bold architec-
tural inspiration, which to my mind marks all the build-
ings in these parts inferior, not only to the best French
work, but also to that of Normandy and of England. And
now I go on naturally to say that I believe the best work
in France is that which I described shortly as that of
the old tie de France and the surrounding country; it
is that which I have studied the most carefully, and love
the most of any architecture that I know; it is one which
presents no features unsuitable for our country, or in-
consistent with the demands of our climate; it is one
from the study of which I believe we should all derive
an immense benefit, for it were wellnigh impossible to
spend much time among the works of art which it so
bountifully affords without being strongly impressed
[130]
with the stern grandeur and masculine character of the
men who conceived it, and without being elevated in
our whole tone of mind so far as we have been impressed.
A district which affords examples such as Rouen cathe-
dral, S. Quentin, Amiens, Noyon, Laon, Soissons, Meaux,
Rheims, Troyes, Chartres, Notre Dame of Paris, Mantes,
S, Leu, S. Germer, Senlis, Beauvais, and others, must
be conceded to be, if not the best, certainly the richest
field for the study of our art in all Europe; and it is
mainly to this district that I will take you, with this ex-
pression of my extreme veneration for the art enshrined
in its architectural remains.^ . . .
At Beuzeville, where the Fecamp branch joins the
main line of railway to Rouen, it is worth while to walk
a mile and a half to the church, not because it is a fine
building, but rather because it illustrates well enough
the differences between French and English ideas about
village churches. The unbroken nave, thirty-three feet
wide and sixty-nine feet in length, with its arched boarded
roof, — the central groined tower with a spire springing
some four or five feet below the ridge of the nave roof, —
and the hipped vestry roof, are all unlike English work,
yet the whole effect is particularly good notwithstanding
the poverty of style, which is late flamboyant. There
are four rows of fixed seats all down the nave — modern,
of course.
» I am, of course, aware that some of these churches are not locally
situated within the lie de France, and one of them — Rouen Cathe-
dral— might have been expected to be purely Norman in its char-
acter. To my mind, however, it represents a fusion between the
Norman and the real French style, affected, moreover, ^t first to
some extent by Italian influences. And Rouen, as well as most of
these churches, was comprised within the Domaine Royale before
the death of Philip Augustus.
[131]
From Beuzeville to Rouen the railway took me over
ground well known to the majority of English travel-
lers, and I would not say a word about Rouen, were it
not that the strong popular delusion which has elevated
the church of S. Ouen into its great attraction deserves
to be protested against always. And, this, not because
the church is not very fine and very pretty — it is both
— but because S. Ouen-worship leads people to miss
altogether, or only to half see and understand the ex-
treme value and beauty of the cathedral. I have seen
this often, and I find that, unlike some other churches,
each time I see it I discern new beauties and new value
in its art; and it lies so near to us, and teaches us so
much not to be learnt in England, and yet of the utmost
value to all of us, that I do not know how to express
myself sufficiently strongly as to the advantage of a
careful study of it to all workers in the revival. Indeed
I think that the Architectural Museum could perhaps
do more for art by helping young carvers to go for a
time to Rouen for study, than by adding to their collec-
tion a multitude of casts which are often of necessity
of doubtful excellence. The thing may be difficult to
accomplish, but it ought to be done, for this one cathe-
dral contains such an abundance and variety of sculpture
as would almost put to the blush all our churches com-
bined. The western doors of the north and south aisles
are, to my taste, the most exquisite portions of the
church. Their style is so early, and so immediate a
deduction from Byzantine or Romanesque work that I
can fancy a man, who had been taught to believe in the
absolute perfection of our English fourteenth-century
style, would be long before he appreciated to the full
[132]
their perfection. They are moreover of a kind of work
which is as rare as it is excellent. In England we have
nothing, to the best of my belief, of similar style. I
remember that Mr. Scott once suggested to me the prob-
ability that they were executed by the same man who
executed the doorways in the west front of Genoa cathe-
dral, and the suggestion evidenced fully his sense of the
extreme rarity of the work. I believe, however, that
they are examples of a style which was not that of an
individual only. That it owed much to Italy I have
little doubt: for even if there had been no trace of an
Italian influence in the extreme delicacy of the whole
of the sculpture, in the twining foliage of the door
jambs, and the very singular and graceful foliage of the
archivolts, yet it might, I think, have been detected
indirectly. For in this same church, in the aisle round
the apse, there still remains a monument of an Arch-
bishop Maurice, the Italianizing character of which is
most marked, and at the same time its details show that
it is a work of precisely the same school as the western
aisle-doorways. None who have been in Italy can for-
get the almost invariable type of the finer early monu-
ments— a simple arch, surmounted immediately by a
gable of very flat pitch, and supported on detached
shafts. They will remember them at Verona often, in
Venice, in Genoa, in Perugia, and indeed in all directions
and of all dates; well, in this monument, we have the
same thing, a round arch exquisitely adorned with
angels (whereof two in the centre bear up the soul of
the archbishop) and immediately above the arch a
very flat pediment or gable. Perhaps, too, it is an Italian
influence, which is evidenced in another respect in the
[133]
decorations of the western doors. The alternate orders
of the arch are simply chamfered, presenting in section
three sides of an octagon, and these are covered with
regular sunk patterns of the simplest kind, but marvel-
lously effective. Go from Rouen to Genoa and you find
the western doorways executed in marble, every plain
surface in which is inlaid with geometrical patterns, —
light patterns on dark ground, and dark on light. The
effect is very similar in the two places: at Genoa the
very best materials were to be had: and at Rouen where
nothing but common stone was used, the artist struck
out a system which produced an effect all but equal to
that obtained at Genoa. And yet with all this similar-
ity I am not disposed to class these two buildings to-
gether as the work of one man. The architect of Genoa
loved mouldings much more than did the architect of
these doorways; and I think 1 have met with a suffi-
cient number of traces of similar work to convince me
that it was the style of a class, not of a man, and one of
those many and glorious phases through which our art
in her rapid progress passed. The western doors at
Mantes are very similar in their detail; those of
Chartres — what a study they are! — partake largely of
the same spirit; in the western fagade of Notre Dame,
Paris, there are traces of it; in Notre Dame, Chalons-sur-
Marne, the south doorway was identical in character,
and fragments of work of the same style have been dis-
covered in the course of lowering the floor of that church
to its ancient level; and in S. Germer, in the chapter-
house of S. Georges de Boscherville, in the western door-
way of Angers cathedral, and in parts of S. Remi at
Rheims, I think we see the same style more or less de-
[ 134 ]
veloped. Undoubtedly the work at Rouen is the most
excellent of all, just as it occupies the central position
in point of date.
I am not afraid to confess that the whole of these
examples are largely Byzantine in their character; in
my eyes this is a virtue, not a fault; for I believe that
it is here perhaps more than anywhere else that we
may succeed in developing from our forefathers' work.
There seems to be here a mine of untold wealth, the
workings into which were no sooner commenced than
they were abandoned: and the style seems to be
one which affords special opportunity for meeting
our great difficulty at the present day, as it indi-
cates a mode of obtaining rich decorations without
being dependent for effect entirely on a horde of
slovenly carvers, who, without an idea in their heads,
ruin all the rest of our work by their failure in its
sculpture.
This is a digression, but the subject was tempting:
I will only say further, as to these remains at Rouen,
that they have the rare advantage of not having been
restored, and that they are entirely covered in all parts
with work of almost uniform excellence, though, to my
taste, the north-west door (the tympanum of which
contains the life of S. John the Baptist) is the finest.
The effigy of Archbishop Maurice is singularly elab-
orated: the patterns on the vestments, the details of
the censers, and indeed all parts, being finished with
the elaboration of a genuine Pre-Raphaelite. Before
modern sculptors sneer at these twelfth century works,
I wish that they would themselves attempt to produce
even one block of stone, a foot square, as well wrought,
C 135 ]
and I doubt not they would profit by the lesson, novel
though it might be.
The western doors of the aisles are placed between
large buttresses, and arches are thrown over them from
buttress to buttress. Between the arches of the doors
and these upper arches, a small space of plain wall
remained, which has been treated in the most ingen-
ious manner. Figures are marked in outline on the
stone, which were, I think, painted, and the ground
throughout is diapered with a very simple pattern sunk
in the stone. Over the south-west doorway was the
Last Judgement: and over the north-west, our Lord
seated with angels and saints on either side. In the
former our Lord is seated on a throne, between two
candles: angels present souls to Him, other angels
bear a soul in a sheet, and others again on the right
drive the wicked into hell.
I must say little more about Rouen ; but I ought not
to forget to notice the fine and very varied treatment
of the capitals throughout the nave, and the thoroughly
Norman (and English) effect of the immense numbers
of clustered shafts, of which all the piers are composed.
The double division in height of the main arcade is
not easily accounted for; but if it was owing to an
alteration in the height of the building, while it was
in progress, it is a happy instance to be added to many
others, of the skill with which mediaeval architects
seized upon difficulties as the best opportunities for
achieving successes.
The ground-plan of this cathedral is, I think, alto-
gether one of the best in France. In particular the chevet
is of great beauty. The aisle round the apse, instead
[136]
of being completely surrounded by chapels, has its alter-
nate bays only so occupied, with great advantage in
point of effect, both internally and externally. The
arrangement is almost identical with that of the fine
chevet of S. Omer cathedral, and appears to me to be
a happy mean between the one chapel at the east end
of Sens, and the cluster of chapels which crowd the
apsidal ends of almost all the great churches in the
north of France. Whilst in its plan it is more skil-
fully disposed than the somewhat similar chevet of
Chartres, it is preferable to those of Mantes and Notre
Dame, Paris, where there were no projecting apsidal
chapels,^ or Bourges, where they are so small as to
produce no effect.
The north-west tower (that of S. Romain), should
be ascended, if only to examine the framework of the
roof and for the bells, and to note, among other things,
the open wooden staircase in its upper stage. The view,
too, of the city is finely seen; and I know few cities
that reward more bountifully any trouble taken in the
attempt to see them in this way. A city it is, indeed,
of desecrated churches, but still a city whose situation
on the noble river winding here under great chalk hills,
and there along the edge of meadows green, flat and
extensive, fringed with long perspective lines of poplars,
is as beautiful and as happy as it can well be.
It is not a long walk from Rouen to S. Georges de
Boscherville, and the view from the hill at Chanteleu
is one of the best near Rouen. The church is but of
1 The plan of an aisle or " procession-path " without chapels is, in
execution, the only form of apse, the effect of which is decidedly in-
ferior to our English square ends. It is on the exterior that its
deformity is most conspicuous.
[137]
slight interest, though its flamboyant tower, with a
grand open western arch, forms a fine sort of porch,
and indicates a variety which might sometimes be intro-
duced among ourselves with advantage. S. Georges de
Boscherville is too well known to require description
but if others have formed the same conception of it that
I had, they will thank me for saying that the chapter-
house is an exquisite example of the earliest pointed
work, full of delicate and beautiful detail. The three
western arches are circular, but not Romanesque in
their character; some of their capitals have foliage,
some sculpture of figures, and the thickness of the wall
is supported by a miniature sexpartite vault. The
vaulting of the chapter-house is also sexpartite, with
additional cells at the east and west end to accommo-
date similar triplets. As I have before said, there is
much in the detail of parts of this building, which indi-
cates the same school as the early-pointed work at
Rouen. The chapter-house is a parallelogram, fifty-
four feet in length by twenty-four feet nine inches
in width, and groined in three bays. Some of the
western entrance shafts are elaborately carved. The
vault inside is coloured buff, and diapered with red
lines in a small regular pattern all over.
Between Rouen and Mantes, a pause of a few hours
at Pont de I'Arche enabled me to see the interesting
remains of the abbey of Bonport. The refectory is
nearly perfect, and there is a great deal of simple quad-
ripartite vaulting remaining throughout the modern-
looking farm-house. But of the church, the bases of
one or two columns, and one respond alone remain,
and these of an excellence of design which make it very
[138]
much to be regretted that it should have been destroyed.
The groined refectory, of five bays in length, is well
worthy of a visit. The side windows are of two lancet
lights, with a circle above, and at the north end is a
window of four equal lancets, with small cusped open-
ings above. The south end and entrance from the clois-
ter are modernized. The pulpit staircase is perfect, and
very ingeniously contrived; but the pulpit itself is des-
troyed. Among the buildings, which are of consider-
able extent, are some admirable examples of domestic
windows; and, to conclude, the whole is of the very
best early thirteenth-century style.
The church at Pont de I'Arche is one of those ambi-
tious but very picturesque buildings, of which we have
no counterpart. It is flamboyant in style, very lofty,
and intended for groining throughout. This, however,
was never completed, and there is a coved wooden
ceiling in its place. A good deal of late stained glass,
of very poor detail, exists in the windows, the subject
of one of them being the Tree of Jesse.
Of the ancient bridge over the Seine, at Pont de
I'Arche, not a vestige, I think, now remains.
The cathedral at Mantes is in many ways of much
interest. Your readers are, no doubt, well acquainted
with Notre Dame, Paris, and with the singular changes
which have been effected in it from time to time. In
Mantes, I believe they may see almost the same kind
of conception, left with such slight alterations as do
not in any way conceal the original design. It is there-
fore of special value.
I have already referred to the western doors. They
are much mutilated, and the south-west door was re-
[139]
placad in the fourteenth century by an immense and
conceited composition of a doorway with pediment and
flanking pinnacles which is very damaging to the gen-
eral effect of the fagade. The remainder of the front is
uniform first-pointed, with two steeples connected by
an open screen as at Paris. The north-west tower has
been already nearly rebuilt, and the south-west tower
is now suffering from the same process, "suffering" I
say, because I believe firmly that the original design is
being annihilated. In both the belfry stage, which rises
above the screen between the towers, is now much
smaller than the stage below; nothing can look much
worse than such a sudden diminution in size, and I am
convinced that the original intention must have been
(as at Laon) to continue the shafts and arcading which
surround the lower stage up to the top. I made as
careful an examination of the work as was possible, and
have hardly a shadow of doubt that this was the case;
but whether the authorities did not know the glorious
steeples of Laon, or whether they have a view of their
own as to what looks best, they are certainly making
the upper part of this unfortunate west front look as
modern in its outline and meagre in its character as it
is new and fresh-looking in its colour. It were better
that old work perished altogether, than that it should
be scraped, re-chiselled, cleaned and modernized in
this heartless manner!
The most noticeable feature of the interior is the
treatment of the triforium of the eastern portion of the
church. This is groined with a succession of transverse
barrel vaults, the effect of which is to give an immense
addition of strength to the main walls. They spring
from the capitals of a succession of detached shafts
[ 140 ]
which are placed across the triforium, so that the per-
spective of its interior is singularly picturesque. It
was not very long after the erection of the church that
the western portion of the triforium was altered, a
quadripartite vault being substituted for the barrel
vaulting, and wherever this has been done, the thrust
has been too great for the principal groining shafts,
which have bulged considerably, and are now held in
place by iron ties. In the apse, the bays being of neces-
sity much wider on one side than on the other, the ridge
of the barrel vault rises rapidly towards the external
wall: and the triforium is lighted by a succession of
immense simple circular windows. The internal ele-
vation of one bay of this cathedral is nearly identical
with the original design of that of Paris, though simple
and (I fancy) rather earlier in date; but from the short-
ness of the church and the absence of transepts (in
which one point it reminds me of the fine church of S.
Leu d'Esserent) it has both inside and outside the effect
rather of a choir only than of a complete cathedral.
There are various additions to the church of later date,
which add much to its picturesque character, especially
a chapel on the south side, the chapels round the apse,
and the sacristies on the north side. The stone roof
above the groining of one of these is remarkable. The
arrangement of coloured tiles on the roof is one of the
best I have seen. The pattern is rather complicated,
and is formed with dark tiles (green and black used
indiscriminately) on a ground of yellowish tiles.
The church from the apse to the western towers con-
sists of but three bays of sexpartite vaulting, each bay
covering two bays of the main arcades. Between the
towers is one bay of quadripartite vaulting.
[141]
Walking from Mantes across the river to the suburb
of Limay, a fine view is obtained of the town and
cathedral, which shows here the whole picturesque ex-
aggeration of height as compared with length which
distinguishes it. Limay church boasts of nothing save
a tower and spire on the south side, of late Romanesque
character throughout. The surface of the spire is cov-
ered with scalloping, and has spire-lights and fine pin-
nacles at its base. Some attached shafts against the
face of the belfry stage, which seem to serve no
purpose, are curious as being probably the type from
which some similarly placed shafts in the steeples of the
cathedral were derived. Here too, as in the cathedral,
a most effective form of label is used, the section of
which is a square cut out into diamonds like unpierced
dogteeth. We see the same thing in England, and
among other examples there is a good one at Lanercost.
Its effect is singularly bold and piquant.
A mile on the other side of Mantes is the little village
of Gassiecourt, whose cross church is of much interest.
The glass in the three chancel windows is fine, and of
late thirteenth-century date. The east window of four
lights with twenty-five subjects has been restored, and
two of the subjects — the thirteenth and eighteenth —
have been quite wrongly placed. The window repre-
sents the whole Passion of our Lord, The side windows
of two lights contain large figures under canopies of the
early part of the thirteenth century, in a sad state, but
of very considerable value. The east window of the
south transept has subjects from the lives of S. Laurence
and another. The internal arrangement is remarkable;
the fifteenth century stalls, with subsellae and returns,
being placed in the two eastern bays of the nave, leav-
[142]
ing three bays to the west. The old altar remains in
the east wall of the north transept. The walls and roof
of the south transept are covered with painting; on
the roof are four angels with the instruments of the
Passion, one in each division of the groining; the west
wall has a painting of the Last Judgement, and the east
large figures on each side of the east window; on the
soffit of the arch into the tower are angels playing on
musical instruments. The whole appears to have been
painted in the fifteenth century, and, though of no
great artistic merit, is of value in France, where, as in
England, such things are very rare. A grand Roman-
esque west doorway, and a simple gabled central tower
with a good belfry stage are the principal external fea-
tures of this interesting village church.
Before I conclude, I must say a few words as to the
evidence of popular feeling in regard to pointed archi-
tecture in France. It is partly, doubtless, owing to the
fact that all the great churches are national property,
and entirely sustained by the State, that we miss so
entirely any of that evidence of personal and widely
spread interest in them, which so honourably distin-
guishes most people in our own country. But descend-
ing to the second and inferior classes of churches, we
find unfortunately the same apathy, the same neglect:
so that a tour among French village churches would
leave an impression on the mind of any Englishman
that the clergy and laity are alike careless of their fate
and ignorant of their value. One of the very few village
churches which I have seen in process of restoration was
being done by order of the Emperor, and by a rate
imposed upon the commune, aided by an imperial grant;
but there, as elsewhere, the repair was entirely confined
[143]
to the fabric; and pews, pavements, altars, — all remain
still in their old state, ugly, dirty, and uncared for. I
must make honourable exception in favour of one large
parish church, Notre Dame, Chalons-sur-Marne, where,
with the greatest care and love for the building com-
mitted to his charge, the excellent cure is carrying on a
restoration which appears to me to be by very far the
best and most faithful that I have seen on the Conti-
nent. I have seen, I grieve to say, but little evidence
of any practical love on the part of the people or the
clergy for their glorious churches, but I will let M.
VioUet-le-Duc — than whom who can be a better judge?
— say what can be said as to the real impression which
they produce: —
"Depouilles aujourd'hui, mutilees par le temps et la
main des hommes, meconnues pendant plusieurs siecles
par les successeurs de ceux qui les avaient elevees, nos
cathedrales apparaissent au milieu de nos villes popu-
leuses, comme de grands cercueils; cependant elles in-
spirent toujours aux populations un sentiment de respect
inalterable; a certains jours de solemnites publiques,
elles reprennent leur voix, une nouvelle jeunesse, et
ceux memes qui repetaient, la veille, sous leurs voutes,
que ce sont la des monuments d'un autre age sans
signification aujourd'hui, sans raison d'exister, les trou-
vent belles encore dans leur vieillesse et leur pauvret§."
II
Leaving Paris for Beauvais, the first station at which I
stopped was I'lsle Adam, from whence a walk of two or
three miles by the banks of the Oise brought me to the
fine village church of Champagne. This is very unlike
[144]
an English village church in its general scheme, but full
of interest. In plan it consists of a groined nave and
aisles, of six bays, a central tower with a square chancel
of one bay, and transepts with apsidal projections from
their eastern walls. The date of the whole church (with
the exception of the tower arches, which must have
been either rebuilt or very much altered in the fifteenth
century) is about the end of the twelfth century. It is
now undergoing repair at the joint expense of the Em-
peror and the commune, but this is being done in so
careless a manner that it is to be hoped it will not pro-
ceed further than is absolutely necessary for the secur-
ity of the fabric. The western fagade has a very singular
doorway, the tympanum of which is pierced with a
window of six cusps, whilst the abacus of the capitals
is carried across the tympanum, and a square-headed
door pierced below. Above is a large wheel window of
twelve lights. The aisles are lighted with lancets, whilst
the clerestory has a succession of circular windows,
which internally form part of the same composition as
the triforium, the lower part being an unpierced arcade.
The chancel is lighted at the east with a circular window
enclosed within a pointed arch and on either side with
early geometrical windows of two lights. The finest
feature is the steeple, which rises in two stages above
the roofs. The belfry stage is excessively lofty and ele-
gant in its proportions, having two windows of two
lights in each face divided by a cluster of shafts, whilst
other clusters of shafts at the angles of the tower run
up to a rich corbel-table and cornice, under the eaves of
the roof. The finish is a hipped saddle-back roof of steep
pitch and covered with slate.
C 145 ]
Internally the most rare feature is a very light cusped
stone arch of flamboyant character, with pierced span-
drils, which spans the western arch of the tower, and no
doubt originally carried the Rood. The capitals in the
nave are boldly carved, and carry the groining shafts,
which are clusters of three. At the west end of the
north aisle, and projecting beyond the fagade of the
church, is the ruin of a small gabled chapel, the object
of which I did not understand.
Altogether this church, owing to its fine character,
and the retention of almost all its original features and
proportions unaltered, deserves to be known and visited
by all ecclesiologists, who travel along the north-of-
France railway to Paris. A few miles farther on the left
rises the fine church of S. Leu, which I have known for
a long time, and which deserves, as I think, very much
more notice and study than it appears to have received.
The plan, situation, details, and style (early first-pointed)
are all alike of the best, and I know few, even among
French churches, which impress me more strongly with
the thorough goodness and nobility of their style. The
east end of the church rises from the precipitous edge of
a rock, which elevates the whole building finely above
the level of the riant valley of the Oise. It was attached,
I believe, to a Benedictine abbey, the other buildings of
which are all in a most advanced state of decay. The
church fortunately, though much out of repair, and in
some points altered into flamboyant, is nevertheless
sufficiently perfect for all purposes of study. It consists
in plan of two western towers (the north-west tower
being only in part built) then six bays of nave and aisles,
three bays of choir, and an apse (circular on plan) of
[146]
seven bays; round the apse is the procession path, and
four chapels, also circular on plan, lighted by two win-
dows, so that one of the groining shafts is placed opposite
the centre of the arch into each, and over the altars. In
place of the fifth chapel on the north side, a circular
recess is formed in the external wall of the procession
path, so as to make space for an altar without forming
a distinct chapel. I should be disposed to say that
this was the original scheme of the church, afterwards
altered and much improved by the substitution of larger
and distinct chapels.^ The central chapel of the apse
has the unusual feature of another chapel above it, on a
level with the triforium, adding much to the picturesque
effect of the east end. In addition to the western steeples
there are gabled towers which rise above the aisles on
each side of the choir, and the church is remarkable, like
the church at Mantes, for the absence of transepts. Per-
haps, as the internal length is not quite two hundred feet,
this is of some advantage to the general effect. A con-
siderable change has at some time been effected in the
external appearance of the east end, for on examination
I found that each bay of the triforium was formerly
lighted by two lancet windows between the clerestory
and the roof over the aisles. My impression is, that
this must have been altered when the chapels round the
apse were erected and within a very short time of the
original construction of the church; but whatever the
1 The chapels round the apse of Senlis Cathedral form an inter-
mediate link between the two plans at S. Leu. They form exactly
half a circle on plan, and have only two bays, one of which is lighted
with a window. Externally they have stone roofs, finishing under
the triforium windows. These two churches should be studied and
compared together.
[147]
reason, the church has lost much by the alteration.
The six bays of the nave appear to have been built
after the west end and the choir. The latter has a
noble very early-pointed doorway, rich in chevron orna-
ment, and this seems to have had a porch gabled north
and south between the towers so as not to interfere with
the window in the west wall of the nave. The south-
west tower and spire, though small in proportion to the
height of the nave, are of elaborate character. All the
arches are round, and there are two nearly similar
stages for the belfry. The spire has large rolls at the
angles and in the centre of each face (an arrangement
seen at Chartres and Vendome) but in addition it has
the F>eculiarity of detached shafts, standing clear of the
rolls on the spire and held by occasional bands. They
have a certain kind of quaint picturesqueness of effect,
but were never, I think, imitated elsewhere. The whole
face of the spire is notched over with lines of chevroned
scalloping. On entering the church the first thing that is
remarked is the excessive width of the nave (thirty-six
feet between the columns) compared to that of the aisles
(about twelve feet) . The result is, that a grand unbroken
area is obtained for worshippers, whilst the aisles appear
to be simply passage-ways. The general proportion of
the building is, however, rather too low in proportion
for its great width. Almost all the arches throughout
the church are, more or less, stilted, and with the best
possible effect. When the eye is thoroughly accus-
tomed to this it is curious to notice how unsatisfactory
any other form of arch is. The fact is, that a curve
which commences immediately from its marked point
of support is never so fine as where it rises even a few
[148]
inches perpendicularly before it springs. The capitals
throughout the church are finely carved, and those
round the apse are of immense size, and crown circular
shafts of very delicate proportions, much as at Mantes,
and (though on a heavier scale) at Notre Dame, Paris.
The construction of this part is of the very boldest
character, and exemplifies in a very striking manner the
extreme skill in construction to which the architects of
the day had arrived.
Great effect is produced by the profusion of chevron
and nail-head ornament used on the exterior of the
church; a double course of the former of the very
simplest kind forms the cornice under all the eaves,
and is also used down the edges of all the flying but-
tresses. On the north side of the nave there still remains
a portion of the cloisters, of fine early character; two
sides only remain, with a room of the same date with
groining resting on detached shafts. Some remains of
gateways in the old walls of the abbey are worth notic-
ing, as also the old walls which surround the church,
built for the most part against the rock on which it
stands, with here and there very small openings, which
make them look as though they were intended for de-
fence. Whilst I was in the church some boys came to
toll the passing-bell. They said that they always did
so on Fridays, at three o'clock.^
I saw nothing between S. Leu and Beauvais, though
in the part of France bordering on the Oise, I believe
1 No one who visits S. Leu should omit to go also to Senlis. He
will find a tower and spire of unusual — if not unique — beauty and
elegance. There are two fine desecrated churches, and other remains
which, with the charming cathedral, make a lout ensemble not easily
forgotten. It is a walk of about six miles only from S. Leu — passing
by Chantilly.
[149]
that every village would afford something worth seeing
in its church. My time, however, was limited.
As you reach Beauvais, the country changes; there is
a great deal of wood, a very scattered population, and
but few churches. Of course the first object of every
one at Beauvais is the cathedral; a building from the
study of which I derived less satisfaction than might
be expected. It is unpleasant to find an artist striving
after more than he is really able to attain, and this was
conspicuously the case with the architect of Beauvais.
The church was consecrated in a.d. 1272 and fell in a.d.
1284. In order to repair its defects the arches of the
choir were subdivided, and from the great size of the
columns, and the narrow span of the arches, the present
effect is that of a church in which the arches have but
little to do, and in which everything has been sacrificed
to keep the building from falling again. Then when the
roofs and passages about the building are mounted it is
seen that the great object of the architect has been
simply to obtain one grand effect — that of height and
airiness, and that to this everything has been sacrificed,
the details throughout being poor, coarse, and slovenly
in their mode of execution. The whole gave me the im-
pression of being the work of an unsatisfactory archi-
tect, though at the same time it is impossible to deny
the excessive grandeur of the vast dimensions of the
interior so far as it is completed, or the beauty of ar-
rangement which marked the original scheme of the
ground-plan, unpractical and unstable as it was. It
may be right, however, to attribute some of the failures,
with M. Viollet-le-Duc, to the carelessness of workmen;
though no good architect allows himself to be so excused.
[150]
It seems very like presumption to criticise such a
building, yet I know not the use of architectural study
if it is to be pursued with that blind faith which obliges
one to admire indiscriminately everything that was
built in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The
mere fact that the main intention of the people of Beau-
vais was to build something finer than their neighbours
at Amiens is in itself suggestive; and I am not surprised
that a building erected on such terms is unworthy of
its age. It is one of the very few buildings of the kind
which impresses me in this way; for usually the feeling
derived from the study of mediaeval churches is one of
respect for the absence of anything but the most thor-
oughly artistic feeling on the part of their builders. No
doubt the architect of Amiens did his work in the best
way he could, with little reference to what was being
done by his neighbours; and it is curious that the grand
success which he achieved should have led, both at
Beauvais and (I think also) at Cologne, to unworthy
and unsuccessful attempts at rivalry. I can quite see
that a claim may be made for the architect of Beauvais,
as a man of genius who was not quite so safe a construc-
tor as his contemporaries, but who nevertheless con-
ceived the grandest idea of his age, as far as size and
height were concerned. I can only answer that this is
not the character of a great architect, and would lead
me to class him with the architect of the abbey of Font-
hill, rather than with the architect of Amiens or Char-
tres. The first architect of Beauvais was, however, a
better architect, in some respects, than his successor;
for though his details (seen in the apse only) were not
of the first order, those of the latter are about the worst
[151]
I have ever met with in a French church of such pre-
tensions.
The glass in the clerestory windows has a band of
figures and canopies crossing them at mid-height, with
light glass above and below: this is an arrangement
often met with, and generally productive of good effect,
especially in windows of such great height. A museum
attached to the west side of the north transept contains
a few antiquities; but the feature of most interest is a
late, but good cloister, noticeable for the extreme deli-
cacy of the shafts and piers between the tref oiled open-
ings. In the museum is a fair embroidered mitre, which
belonged to F. de Rochefoucald, Bishop of Beauvais,
in 1792.
The church of S. Etienne ^ is, after the cathedral, the
great architectural attraction of Beauvais. Its west
front has a grand arched doorway, with a sculptured
tympanum, containing the Nativity, the Adoration of
the Magi, and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin,
and four rows of figures of angels and others in the
arch. The jambs and central pier are completely de-
nuded of all their shafts and statues, and the whole
work is much mutilated in all its parts; nevertheless, it
is the best thing remaining in the city, as far as goodness
of sculpture and detail can make a work good. The
gable of this porch runs back into a triplet, and the
main gable has a cusped circular window, now blocked
^ 1 I copied the following from the "Tariff" of the seats in S.
Etienne: —
" Une stalle haute par annee, 8 fr.
Une stalle basse " 5 fr.
Les deux premiers bancs a chaque cote du chceur, 8 fr.
Les deux centres bancs derriere I'autel, 7 fr. 50 c."
[152]
up. The date of the whole front is early in the thirteenth
century. On the north side of the nave there is a fine
doorway, of very ornate Romanesque; it has been care-
fully repaired. An arcade of semicircular arches above
the doorway is diapered with a pattern sunk in the
stone and marked at regular intervals by red tiles in-
laid, and about two inches square. The effect is good,
and it is, I suppose, a restoration. The circular window
on the north side of the church is remarkable for the
figures sculptured outside its label; it is evidently a
Wheel of Fortune window.^ The buttresses of the aisles
are valuable examples of late Romanesque work. They
have a fair projection, but are weathered off some five
or six feet below the eaves' corbel-table; and from their
summit in some cases one, and in others two, shafts rise
to support the corbel-table. The choir is lofty flamboy-
ant work, but ugly. The nave, of early Transition char-
acter, internally has very heavy groining-shafts, and the
far from admirable peculiarity of a triforium with arches
formed of very flat segments of circles, and the string
under the clerestory rising in the same line, and forming,
as it were, a label to the arch below.
The gateway to the bishop's palace, with its steep
and picturesque roofs; the palace itself, with its val-
uable remains of Romanesque work at the back; a
portion of a Romanesque house near it; and a fine
fourteenth-century gabled house in the Rue S. Vero-
nique, with three pointed and canopied windows in its
first floor, are the principal features of interest after
the cathedral and S. j^tienne. There is, too, a great
1 See the Illustration of a Wheel of Fortune in Les Arts SomptU'
aires. Vol. II., taken from a MS. in the Bibl. Imp., No. 6877.
[153]
store of fine timber houses, one of which, in the Rue S.
Thomas, is particularly noticeable for the elaborate fil-
ling in of encaustic tiles between all the timbers.
From Beauvais I made an excursion of some ten or
fifteen miles, to see the abbey church of S. Germer.
It is a church little known, I suspect, to most English
tourists, but of very rare interest, and equal in scale to
our churches of the first class. The drive thither among
woods and low undulating hills is pleasant. The church
consists of a nave and aisles of eight bays, transepts,
and an apse of seven sides, with an aisle and two chapels
on either side. The place of the central chapel at the
east is occupied by a low passage of three bays, leading
to a grand Lady-chapel of four bays, with an apse of
seven. The whole of the nave and choir are of fine
style, in transition from Romanesque to pointed. Ex-
ternally, hardly any but round arches are seen, but
internally the main arches are pointed. I know few
things much more striking than the treatment of the
apse. The main arches have their soffits composed of
a very bold round member, with a large chevron on
each side; and the effect of this, in connection with the
acutely pointed arches, is strikingly good.^ Above this
is the groined triforium, opening to the church with an
arcade of semicircular arches, subdivided into two, and
supported on coupled detached shafts. Immediately
under the rather plain clerestory windows is a corbel-
table, and in each bay square recesses, now blocked up,
but which look as though they had opened to the roof
of the triforium. The groining-ribs of the apse are
1 This work recalls to mind the work of the same character at
Glastonbury.
[154]
large, and profusely adorned with sculpture. The aisle
round the apse is all built on the curve (as is usually the
case in early work), and the groining, constructed in the
same way, has those ungraceful and difficult curves
which result from this arrangement. Very good low
metal parcloses divide the choir from the aisles. In
the nave some of the capitals appear to be of very early
date (especially along the north wall, where the acan-
thus is freely used) ; the whole of the triforium is stopped
up, but the design of this part of the church seems to
have been similar to that of the choir, with the excep-
tion of the chevron round the arches. The groining, too,
save of the two eastern bays of the nave, is of later date.
At present the only steeple is an eighteenth century
erection over the crossing; but there was evidently an
intention originally to build two western towers. An
altar of the same date as the church, which remains in
it, is of much interest, as from its rather ornate char-
acter it seems probable that it was never intended to be
covered with a cloth. It is figured at p. 180 of M. de
Caumont's Abecedaire.
The exterior affords many features of interest. It is,
as I have said, almost entirely round-arched, and the
choir affords a good example of the triple division in
height, rendered necessary by the groined triforium and
the projecting chapels of the apse. The clerestory and
triforium are each lighted with one window in each
bay, whilst the chapels have three windows, — a wide
one in the centre, and a much smaller one in each side.
There are no flying buttresses to the clerestory, but
small quasi-buttresses, formed of three-quarters of a
shaft, finished under the eaves with a conical capping.
[155]
The eaves cornice all round the church, of intersecting
round arches, resting on corbels, is so similar in its
character to some of the work in the beautiful chapter-
house of S. Georges de Boscherville, that I can hardly
doubt that they were executed under the same influence,
if not even by the same workmen.
The feature, however, which lends the most interest
to the building and aids so much in its picturesque
effect externally, is the grand Lady-chapel,^ said to
have been built by the Abbot, Peter de Wesencourt,
between the years 1259 and 1266, In plan, disposition
and general arrangement it appears to be as nearly as
possible identical with the destroyed Lady-chapel of
S. Germain-des-Pres at Paris, built by the celebrated
Pierre de Montereau, between the years 1247 and 1255.
Pierre de Montereau built also the S. Chapelle at
Paris, between 1241 and 1248, and died on the 17th
March, 1266. A comparison of the design of these
three buildings has induced me to believe that in this
Lady-chapel of S. Germer we have another genuine
work of this great architect, for it was built before his
death, and is identical in many of its features with work
which we know to be his. The plan of all these buildings
is identical.2 They all had two staircase turrets and a
large rose-window at the west end, a parapet above the
rose-window, and a smaller rose in the otherwise plain
gable. The design of the window tracery, the gables
^ It is sometimes called also the "Sainie Chapelle" of S. Germer:
I know not, however, on what grounds. M. Viollet-le-Duc does
not mention it in his list of S. Chapelles.
* There is some reason for believing that the Lady-chapel of S.
Germain-des-PrJs was groined with sexpartite vaulting: if so, it
differed from the other chapels in this respect,
[156]
over the windows, the detail of the staircase turrets,
buttresses and parapets, are all so similar that my sug-
gestion really scarcely admits of a doubt. The main
differences are, that at S. Germer the original western
rose-window is perfect, whilst in the S. Chapelle it is
a flamboyant insertion, and that the chapel is of one
story in place of two. In this last point, and in its com-
plete separation from the church, it agrees entirely with
the destroyed chapel at S. Germain-des-Pres. The
passage between the apse and the chapel is of three
bays, with a doorway at the side, but, so far as I could
see, no trace of an entrance from the apse. It is groined:
the windows (of four lights) are much elaborated with
mouldings, and have tref oiled inside arches: and an
ascent of six steps leads from it under a fine archway
into the chapel. There is a north doorway in the chapel,
and the whole is groined. The dimensions appear, as
nearly as I can make out, to be precisely the same as at
S. Germain, but less than in the S. Chapelle, being
about twenty-seven feet six inches in the clear be-
tween the groining shafts, and between seventy and
eighty feet in length. The original altar of stone,
supported on a trefoiled arcading, remains fixed against
the east wall. This is six feet five and a quarter
inches long by three feet three inches high. In the
museum at the Hotel Cluny, at Paris, one of the most
valuable relics is a stone retable, painted and gilded,
formerly in this chapel. I have not its dimensions,
but it is of much greater length than this altar, and
I have no doubt, therefore, that the principal altar
stood in its proper place under the chord of the apse,
and that the retable belonged to it. This arrangement
[157]
was not uncommon; it was identical with that of the
altars in the S. Chapelle, the same arrangement existed
originally at Amiens; and we have an instance of it in
England in the choir of Arundel church.
The retable has subjects from the life of our Lord,
and illustrative of the legend of S. Germer. In the centre
is the Crucifixion, SS. Mary and John; to the right of the
Virgin is the Church, and to the left of S. John the Syn-
agogue; then come figures of SS. Peter and Paul, the
Annunciation and Salutation, S. Ouen (uncle of S. Ger-
mer) healing a knight, a noble speaking to a pilgrim,
and S. Germer asking Dagobert to allow him to leave
the court, in order to found his abbey. The whole of
the figures are painted and gilded in the most sumptuous
and yet delicate fashion, and though much damaged,
are still sufficiently perfect to be intelligible.
M. de Caumont has given a drawing in the Abece-
daire ^ of what seems to be a remarkably fine shrine, of
twelfth or thirteenth century character, still in the pos-
session of the commune of Coudray, S. Germer. I
believe this is within a few miles of S. Germer, and it
ought not to be missed by ecclesiologists who take this
route. It has an arcade of four tref oiled arches on each
side, and one at each end, and has a steep roof with a
fine open cresting at the ridge.
Of the other buildings of the abbey very slight traces
now remain. Close to the west end there is, however,
a very simple gate-house, and the modern conventual
buildings appear to be now used for a school, superin-
tended by nuns.
S. Germer is certainly one of those churches which no
1 P. 365.
[158]
ecclesiologist who goes to Beauvais should on any ac-
count miss seeing. Its rare scale, dignity, and archi-
tectural interest, and its secluded situation afford attrac-
tions of the highest kind, and I am confident that no
one who takes my advice in this matter will come back
disappointed.
Ill
From Beauvais I made my way to Compiegne,
where I found but little of much interest. The prin-
cipal church is in size, plan, and general design,
decidedly conspicuous; yet it is remarkable how
little there is in it to detain an architect beyond the
general effect. The bulk of the structure is of good
uniform first-pointed character. It consists of a nave
and aisle (fifty-three feet in width) of six bays, transepts,
and an apsidal choir, the lower part of which has been
modernized and has a very badly planned flamboyant
aisle round it; and there were intended to be two west-
ern towers. The groining of the nave is flamboyant.
The best feature is the apse, which has a glazed tri-
forium of two lancet windows in each bay, and a clere-
story of large single lancets. It is, I think, character-
istic of many French churches of this fine scale, that
they afford much less matter for study and description
than our own churches of one-fourth the size and pre-
tension. Their details are so uniform, and their plan-
ning so regular that a description of one bay is, in fact,
a description of the whole church, and there is nothing
in the shape of monumental effigies, screens, brasses, or
other similar relics, to give a special interest to each
part of the building. When we lament the general
[159]
scarcity of examples of groining in our English churches,
we ought not to forget that it was, in part at least, to
this that we may attribute the extraordinary variety
of their character; for it is undoubtedly very much
more difficult to obtain those picturesquely irregular
effects which charm us so justly in English examples,
when groined roofs are used, than when their place is
taken by roofs of wood. The points of support must be
much more equally spaced, the piers more regularly
planned, and each portion more exactly a reproduc-
tion of every other portion; and it has sometimes
struck me as possible that we owe the much greater
variety of designs in the treatment even of our groining,
as compared with the French, to the great love of change
and variety which our architects had imbibed in dealing
so largely with wooden-roofed buildings. In this re-
spect indeed, they sometimes ran into excesses for which
they had no example, and happily, no imitators on the
Continent; but on the whole, we have undoubtedly
reason to be grateful for a feature in our national art
which helped to place it in so high a position when
compared with that of other countries.
Another church, dedicated to S. Antoine, is of large
size and late flamboyant style. It has a fine font (now
disused) of the same character and material as the
well known fonts at Winchester, East Meon, and South-
ampton ; the bowl of which is no less than three feet nine
inches square. The floor of the nave of this church is
boarded, and fitted up with very smart chairs, whilst the
aisles have tiled floors and common chairs, and there is
a rail fixed between the columns to shut in the select
occupants of the smart chairs. It is a mistake, there-
[160]
fore, to suppose that the introduction of chairs will
necessarily secure the annihilation of the pew system.
Here, too, I saw a " mandement" of the Bishop of Beau-
vais, Senlis and Noyon, dated Dec. 8th, 1856, ordering
the adoption of the Roman liturgy, in place of the local
uses, of which he says there were no less than nine in
his diocese, so that it often happened that the same
priest " charge de deux paroisses, trouve dans I'Eglise
ou il va celebrer une premiere Messe une liturgie
differente de celle qui s'observe dans la paroisse ou il
reside:" — "le chant, les ceremonies, la couleur des
ornemens, les usages, tout est change." The Bishop
interdicted, among others, the Missals of Beauvais,
Noyon, Senlis, Amiens, Meaux, and Rouen, and his
order took effect from Whitsunday, 1857.
Of less distinctly ecclesiastical edifices Compiegne
retains some remains. A cloister in the Caserne S.
Corneille is a good example. The arches have no
tracery, and the piers have buttresses to resist the thrust
of the groining. This is very simple but good work,
though late in the fourteenth century. The old Hotel-
Dieu, too, has a characteristic gable end towards the
street, divided by a central buttress, and with a pointed
archway below and a large window above in each division.
The very picturesque front of the Hotel de Ville has
been recently very carefully restored, but so completely,
that it looks almost like a new building. The effect of
the front is very good, though the belfry tower rises
awkwardly from behind the parapet of the building.
There is an illustration of this building in M. Verdier's
Architecture Civile et Domestique, which will enable
your readers to understand the character of this pic-
[161]
turesque though late building better than any descrip-
tion that I can give. The roof of the main building, as
well as that of the turrets at the angles and the belfry,
is covered with slate: and it is worth notice how much
the effect of these roofs depends upon the thinness of
the slate, its small size and the sharpness and neatness
with which it is cut. Foreign slating is in truth just as
good in its effect as ours is generally bad and coarse.
The chateau of Pierrefonds ought to be visited from
Compiegne. The ruins must be interesting, and I believe
the site is very picturesque. It is a fashionable place of
resort, and at a distance of some three hours through
the forest from Compiegne. M. Viollet-le-Duc's de-
scription of the buildings is known probably to most
of your readers.
From Compiegne I made my way to Soissons. It was
here that on this journey I came first on the grand style
which distinguishes the buildings of this part of France.
Laon, chief in grandeur, both natural and architectural,
Noyon, S. Quentin, Meaux, and Soissons, are magnifi-
cent illustrations of the main features of the style:
whilst smaller churches, remains of abbeys, such as
those of Ourscamp (near Noyon) and Longpont (near
Soissons), and of castles, such as Coucy-le-Chateau,
enable us to appreciate all its varieties. It is to be
hoped that the stream of English travellers will for the
future set more in this direction than it has hitherto
done, since it is now possible in going to Strasbourg to
take the railway through this country to Rheims, and
in so doing to make acquaintance with a group of
churches, which impress me more and more each time
that I see them. They are remarkable evidence also of
[162]
1'!^
H^^/
Ij l!
;j 1 !
■Ml
% \
■ ! ■ ' !
: M • •
■SI?-''
THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AT SOISSONS
<■.-
the wonderful vigour of the age in which they were built:
for they are all of very nearly the same date — the end
of the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth century,
and conceived on the grandest possible scale. Indeed,
France, under Philip Augustus, affords a spectacle such
as perhaps no other country in the world can show . For
if we think of the wars which characterized his reign, it
is almost incredible that it should nevertheless at the
same time have been possible to found such cathedrals
as those of Paris, Bourges, Chartres, Amiens, Laon,
Meaux, Soissons, Noyon, Rouen, Seez, Coutances,
Bayeux : yet such was the case, and some of them were
completed in but a few years with extraordinary
energy.
Few things are more impressive than the cathedral
of Laon, even in its present state: and what must it not
have been with its central steeple and the six towers
and spires which once adorned its several fronts, rising,
as they all did, from the summit of a mighty hill, seen
on all sides for many a long mile by the dwellers in the
plain which stretches away from its feet! And yet,
magnificent as is the cathedral of Laon, it is one only
among many; and such a city as Soissons, inferior as
it is in situation, affords nevertheless in its architectural
remains, matter of almost equal interest.
The general view of Soissons, obtained from the dis-
tance, is striking only for its architectural character.
The effect is mainly attributable to the fact, that in
addition to the cathedral, with its lofty south-west
steeple, the town also contains the west front, with two
towers and spires, of the ruined abbey of S. Jean des
Vignes. It is to this ruin that the eye first turns in antic-
[163]
ipation of discovering the famous cathedral of the city;
but a little acquaintance with the details of the two
buildings leaves no room to doubt that the cathedral,
with its lonely steeple, is nevertheless by very much the
most interesting and noble example of art which the
city contains.
Let us at once, then, bend our steps thither. We
shall find a church, the greater part of which dates prob-
ably from the end of the twelfth or the first years of the
thirteenth century, whilst its plan is very remarkable,
and its details in some parts of exquisite beauty. In plan
it consists of two western towers (one of which only is
built), nave and aisles of seven bays, transepts (of
which more presently), a choir of five bays, and an apse
of five sides; chapels are obtained between the but-
tresses of the choir, and the apse is surrounded by an
aisle and five chapels; these chapels are circular in plan
at the ground line, octagonal above, and are groined
with a vault which covers the aisle also; this is a mode
which is seldom satisfactory in execution, and a falling
off from the structural truth of those plans in which
the groining of each chapel is complete in itself, and dis-
tinct from that of the aisle. The south transept is fin-
ished with an apse, and has a small circular chapel of
two stages in height attached on its south-eastern side.
The north transept is square-ended and of later date.
It is impossible to examine Soissons cathedral with-
out having recollections of several other churches forced
upon the mind. At Noyon, for instance, we have a
grand example of a church of the same date, both of
the transepts of which are apsidal ; but the south tran-
sept of Soissons has a great advantage over its neigh-
[164]
bour, in that it has an aisle round the transept opening
with three arches, supported upon slender and lofty
shafts, into each bay, both on the ground level and in
the triforium. Indeed there are few fairer works of the
period than this south transept of Soissons; for whether
we regard its plan, general scheme, or detail of design
and sculpture, all alike show the presence of a master
hand in its conception and execution; — the same hand,
I suppose, as is seeri at Noyon, but at a slightly later
period. Then, again, a comparison of Soissons with
Meaux will show so great a similarity of plan, dimen-
sions, and design in their eastern apses, that it is diffi-
cult to avoid the conclusion that they were the works
of the same man, and at about the same time. And
each of these churches has nevertheless some one spe-
cial feature of its own, wherein it is unique and un-
matched; Soissons has its exquisite south transept,
Noyon its western porch, and Laon its cluster of steeples,
by which every one who has seen them must especially
have been struck.
One of the features which most marks the churches
of this school is the fourfold division in height of the
main walls. There is first the arcade, then the trifo-
rium^ (which is large, groined, and lighted with its own
windows), then a blank arcade which is analogous to
the triforia of our English churches, and astly the clere-
story. I cannot say that this arrangement is ever pleas-
^ These groined triforia are called tribunes by the French an-
tiquaries. At Montierender, where both occur, the upper stage is
more than usually similar to our English triforia; and in all these
cases it would perhaps be best to accept the French terminology as
being substantially correct. The tribune is, in fact, a second stage
of the aisle.
[ 165 ]
ing. The clerestory always looks disproportionately
small and dwarfed, and the blank arcade below it rather
unmeaning, whilst all the divisions have the appearance
of being cramped and confined. At Soissons it occurs in
the south transept, but not in the nave — where we see
the usual triple division. Some of the capitals here are
well sculptured, though generally very simply, and in
the transept they are often held with iron ties (as in
Italian examples) to resist the thrust of the groining. I
should notice that the whole of the walling in this tran-
sept is circular on plan; this is generally a mark of early
date, and though it gave rise to some complexity in the
arches and groining, it undoubtedly often produces a
very charming effect. The windows of the three east-
ern chapels are full of richly-coloured early glass, rather
rudely drawn and executed; some of it, I suspect, came
from the clerestory, the eastern portion of which is still
full of similar glass. The clerestory has large lancet
windows and flying buttresses of two stages in height,
with the arches supported upon detached shafts, and a
passage behind the lower order on a level with the sill
of the clerestory windows.
On the exterior, one of the most noticeable features
is that the ridge of the south transept roof rises no
higher than the eaves of the rest of the church. Yet
such is the care with which the design is managed, that
this smallness of scale is not noticed, until from a dis-
tance a general view of the building is obtained, when
it looks undoubtedly very lop-sided.
From the cathedral one goes naturally to the ruined
but still imposing church of the great abbey of S. Jean
des Vignes. The west front of this church is exactly in a
[166]
line with that of the cathedral, at a distance of about a
furlong; and standing on higher ground, and still re-
taining its two towers and spires, it produces a greater
effect in the genera! views of the city. It is now the
centre of the arsenal, with powder-stores, piles of shot,
and various other preparations all around it, which
afford subject for rather gloomy forebodings, in case
Soissons should again suffer (as it has so often already
suffered) the danger of a siege. The remains of the
church are almost confined to the steeples and west
front. The lower portions of these date from the thir-
teenth century, but the upper portion is all of a very
ornate and rather late middle-pointed style; they are
very pyramidal in their outline, and have a rather
heavy arrangement of pinnacles at the base of the spires.
The belfry-window of the north-west tower has a very
large stone crucifix contrived against its monial and
tracery; there is a canopy in the tympanum over the
head of our Lord, and the tracery seems to have
been designed with a special view to the introduction
of the figure. The spires are crocketed on the angles,
scalloped on the face, and pierced with alternate slits
and quatrefoils. The sculpture of this front is not of
very good character. From the south of the south-west
tower extends a remarkably fine portion of the domestic
buildings of the abbey, two stages in height, and eight
bays in length. Its south end has the favourite French
arrangement of a central buttress between two large
circular windows, with two lancet windows in the gable.
On the west side each bay has a fine simple pointed
window: whilst on the east side the lower part is con-
cealed by the cloister, and the upper stage has a row of
[167]
plain circular windows, similar to those at the south end.
The steep-pitched roof still remains, and the whole
building is a very fine relic, even among the relics of
this kind in which France is so peculiarly rich. The
remains of the cloister are in a very dilapidated state.
Drawings which I had seen of it had prepared me for
earlier and better work than I found. I imagine that it
is not earlier than circa a.d. 1300. The sculptured foli-
age is in exact imitation of nature, very pretty, and no
more. It is, however, singularly instructive, as it illus-
trates just the kind of work which our English carvers
are most prone to introduce just now, and which is gen-
erally (as it is here) very ineffective for want of due
architectural subordination. The windows of this clois-
ter are of four lights, with geometrical tracery; but the
chief peculiarity is the treatment of the buttresses,
which are angular on the face, and above the springing
of the windows crocketed on the angles. Had the sculp-
ture been fifty years earlier in date, it would, I have no
doubt, have been a singularly beautiful cloister. A door-
way which opened from the cloister to the church is
peculiarly flat in its mouldings and sculpture, but re-
markable for the still existing traces of painting over its
whole surface. The foundations of the east wall show
that the church was not of any great length from east
to west.
The church of S. Leger is the finest edifice after these
of which the city can now boast. Anywhere its transepts
and choir would be of great interest for their early thir-
teenth-century date, and their good architectural char-
acter. The church consists of a nave and aisles of six
bays (of which the four western are Renaissance),
[168]
transepts of two bays in depth, and a choir without
aisles, which has one bay of sexpartite groining, and an
apse of seven sides. The detail is very much the same
as in the cathedral. The clerestory windows in the
apse are lancets, and in the rest of the church of two
lights with tracery, consisting of a cusped circle within
an enclosing arch. In these Soissonnais churches the
label generally has a ball or four-leaved flower at inter-
vals. There is a procession path or passage, with open-
ings in the buttresses, round the church outside the
clerestory windows, dividing the church very markedly
into two divisions in height, and recalling to memory
the very similar arrangement in the church of S. Eliza-
beth at Marburg. The transept has fine angle pinnacles
and a large three-light window with early tracery,
whilst the cloister is somewhat similar to that of S.
Jean des Vignes. Stepped gables are a favourite fea-
ture here even in early work. The aisles of S. Leger
are so finished, as is also an early building by the side of
the cathedral.
The church of S. Pierre, which is desecrated, has a
west front of much interest. It has a nave and aisles,
three western doorways (whereof the central is pointed,
the others round), and a single wide, round-arched win-
dow over each door. The detail is peculiar, — of late
Romanesque character, and effective. Only two bays
of the nave remain. The labels and string-courses have
a dogtooth enrichment, whilst the cornice above them
is adorned with a regular acanthus-leaf. The shafts
of the west door are fluted; and in this, as in the quad-
ruple arrangement in height, which I have already
noticed as a frequent characteristic of the Soissonnais
[169]
churches, I suspect we may trace the influence of the
grand church of S. Remi at Rheims.
Of domestic buildings there are but few traces in
Soissons. The best are: a building near the west front
of the cathedral, with stepped gables, central buttresses
in the end, and good simple three-light windows in each
bay; — a house in the Cloitre S. Gervais, near the north
transept of the cathedral, with a steep unpierced gable
and three two-light windows in the stage just below it,
and an unpierced ground story; — and an old hospital
near the cathedral, of good early-pointed work, without
groining, but with transverse arches from column to
column, — the capitals being carved, and the arches
quite square in section.
From Soissons, an excursion ought to be made to the
abbey of Longpont.^ I was not aware at the time I was
there that it was in this neighbourhood, but I believe
that it is only some eight or ten miles distant, and that
the church is of rare interest and grandeur. I regret
extremely my inability to give any notes of it.
A walk of a mile across meadows took me to the re-
mains of the great abbey of S. Medard. These are
very slight and consist of some remains of crypts, in
which are preserved portions of buildings or monu-
ments which have been dug up from time to time. An
old view of S. Medard shows it surrounded by fortified
walls, enclosing a vast range of buildings and two or
three churches. Of all this nothing now remains, beyond
a modern house, converted into an asylum for deaf and
^ The abbey church of Longpont was dedicated in A.D. 1227, in
the presence of S. Louis. Its value as a dated example is therefore
considerable, independent of its high architectural interest.
[170]
dumb, in one portion of wiiich remains an old vaulted
apartment, now used as tlie ciiapel of tlie institution.
From Soissons, I made my way across country to
Ciiateau Coucy. . . . and from Coucy, I made a con-
siderable detour to visit the abbey of Premontre. The
situation is very striking, in a narrow valley, closed in on
all sides with steep, thickly-wooded hills, and with only
a few dependent cottages leading up to the gate of the
abbey. This was the chief house of the Premonstra-
tensian Order, which established as many as thirty-five
houses in England. The abbots of the order were bound
to meet once a year at Premontre, and as there were as
many as a thousand abbeys belonging to them, the wild
valley must then have presented a singular contrast to its
present deserted state. Until lately the buildings have
been used as a glass manufactory: but they have just
been purchased by the Bishop of Soissons (who seems to
have a great character for piety and liberality among the
people) for an orphanage. I saw the nun who holds the
post of superior of the institution, and obtained permis-
sion to search for remains of the old buildings: she
seemed much surprised at my demand, and with some
reason, as the only traces left of them are a portion of (I
think) a crypt under the church, which has fallen with its
groining, and is left a confused mass of stones, just as it
fell. On my way from Premontre, I passed, between
Anizy-le-Chateau and Laon, a very interesting example
of a village church at (I believe) Chalvour. It is cruci-
form, with a good central gabled tower. The chancel
has single lancet windows to the east and south, and the
south transept a large boldly-cusped circular window,
and a small projection on the east for the altar, also
[171]
lighted with a circular window. The chancel, tower, and
transepts, are groined: the nave (with its aisles) is of
inferior work. Altogether, this is a very characteristic
thirteenth century church, of bold and vigorous char-
acter, and severely simple in all its details.
An ascent of about two miles leads up the side of the
mountain, on which Laon is perched, to the western
extremity of the city. And here I must pause, trusting
another time to say somewhat of the architectural glo-
ries of the place, upon which I suppose I can scarcely
descant too enthusiastically.
IV
The two great architectural attractions of Laon
are the cathedral and its subordinate buildings, and
the fine church of S. Martin. They are situated
at the two extremities of the long narrow ridge on
which the town is built, which towards the east falls
precipitously on three sides almost from the very walls
of the cathedral down to the broad vast plain which
extends as far as the eye can reach, and from all parts
of which the grand mass of the building, with its almost
unrivalled cluster of steeples, is seen standing — just
as our own glorious Lincoln — on the very spot of all
others fitted for a diocesan throne.
I know no church which is altogether more calculated
to leave a lasting impression on the mind than the
cathedral. What is wanting in grace and delicacy is
amply atoned for in force and majesty; and the com-
pleteness of the plan, the short period which seems to
have elapsed between its commencement and completion,
[172]
and the almost entire absence of later additions or alter-
ations, combine to make it in every respect of the utmost
value to the architectural student. The stern, solemn
majesty of its art is just what we modern men ought to
endeavour to impress ourselves with; but whilst I be-
lieve that all students would be enormously benefited,
they must not come here under the impression that they
are to see work which is pretty and attractive in the
same sense or degree as S. Ouen at Rouen, or Cologne
cathedral.
In plan this church has the remarkable peculiarity of
a square east end, and consists of a nave and choir
respectively of eleven and ten bays in length, transepts
with an eastern apsidal chapel to each, a small cloister
on the south side of the nave, and sacristies formed in
the angles between the transepts and choir. The groin-
ing is sexpartite in the principal vaults, and quadri-
partite in the aisles; there is a large vaulted triforium,
and the fourfold division in height to which I have
already referred as a characteristic of many of the
churches of this district. But the most noteworthy
feature is that the three principal facades — on the
west, north, and south — were each intended to have two
towers and spires, whilst a lantern crowned the crossing.
No less than four of these towers and the lantern still
remain (though without their spires, shown in an en-
graving by du Sommerard), as well as the lower portion
of the others. On the east and north the cathedral is
enclosed with extensive ranges of coeval buildings be-
longing to the bishop's palace, including the small
private chapel, to which I must recur again.
Let us hear what M. Viollet-le-Duc says about the
[173]
characteristics of this cathedral of Laon: ^ — "La cathe-
drale de Laon conserve quelque chose de son origine
democratique; elle n'a pas I'aspect religieux des egiises
de Chartres, d'Amiens ou de Reims. De loin, elle parait
un chateau plutot qu'une eglise; sa nef est, compara-
tivement aux nefs ogivales et m§me a celle de Noyon,
basse; sa physionomie exterieure est quelque peu brutale
et sauvage; et jusqu'a ces sculptures colossales d'ani-
maux, boeufs, chevaux, qui semblent garder les sommets
des tours de la fagade, tout concourt a produire une
impression d'effroi plutot qu'un sentiment religieux,
lorsqu'on gravit le plateau sur lequel elle s'eleve. On ne
sent pas, en voyant Notre Dame de Laon, I'empreinte
d'une civilisation avancee et policee comme a Paris ou
a Amiens; la, tout est rude, hardi: c'est le monument
d'un peuple entreprenant, energique et plein d'un male
grandeur. Ce sont les memes hommes que Ton retrouve
a Coucy-le-Chateau — c'est une race de geants."
I am disposed to think that M. le-Duc scarcely values
the architecture of Laon sufficiently highly, and that he
is mistaken in his idea of the democratic character im-
parted to it by the turbulence of the citizens at the
time of its erection. It appears to me that the peculiar-
ity of its character is derived much more from some
connection with German art, and I believe that the
churches throughout this part of France show many
evidences of such a connection. The planning of the
towers of Laon is very German; I need hardly adduce
examples from the Rhine district, where, as we all know,
the steeples are treated as so many great turrets, nearly
similar in size, height, and design, whilst the crossing
^ Dictionnaire, Vol. 11 . p. 309.
[ 174 3
is often marked by a low lantern. The grand cathedral
at Tournai in this respect resembles very strongly that
of Laon; and if we were coming from Germany into
France, we might at Andernach, Coblentz, Treves, and
Chalons-sur-Marne (in the church of Notre Dame), see
a regular sequence of buildings by which we should
arrive without any very great or sensible break at Laon.
The groined triforium is another well known German
feature, and though the apse is a very general termina-
tion to German churches, it is yet not impossible that
its absence at Laon may be an evidence of Germanic
origin, as we do meet there with some examples of the
same kind. In one particular feature I am able to trace
a most singular coincidence with a German example,
to which, however, I do not wish to attach very much
weight, though it is undoubtedly curious. The steeples
at Laon are very fine compositions — I should hardly
speak too strongly of the steeple of the south transept,
were I to say that it is the best-designed steeple in
France, — marked by turrets at the angles, which are
either octagonal or square in plan with shafts at their
angles, and very beautiful in their effect. In the west
front one of the stages has, in these open turrets, large
figures of oxen and other animals looking out from be-
tween the shafts on the city roofs far away below, — a
quaint conceit, which one would suppose to be a purely
personal and peculiar device, and of which nevertheless
there is an almost exact repetition in the very similar
steeples of the grand cathedral at Bamberg.
My belief is, that as we can trace a stream of Italian
art coming to the south and south-west of France, and
thence working on to the north in gradual and steady
[175]
development, so we may also see the same thing here.
Italian art first spread down the Rhine, and thence'
spread right and left, and in these border provinces of
France influenced to a greater extent than is generally
supposed the French architects. On their part there was
a peculiar skill and art displayed which soon enabled
them to develop from the germ which they received;
but the Romanesque work out of which they developed
their buildings was of a different order from that which
was the ground-work on which the architects of Poitiers,
Bourges, and Chartres had to work; the latter having
in Italy a Byzantine origin, whilst that of the Rhine
churches was rather Romanesque. Something therefore
of the magnificent character of the best early French
Gothic is owing to Germany, and it was the situation
of the lie de France, the meeting point as it were of
these two developments, which made it the centre from
which the best Gothic architecture of the world naturally
sprang. But whatever was the history of Laon cathe-
dral, no one can doubt the excessive grandeur of the
result. No doubt the magnificence of the situation,
which recalls forcibly some of the most interesting of
Italian cities, such as Siena and Perugia, has something
to do with the colouring of memories of Laon; but in
the church itself there is but one point on which it is
possible to feel that there is any serious shortcoming,
and this, as an Englishman, I am almost afraid to say
is the absence of an eastern apse. It is only when one
travels from church to church finished with apsidal
choirs, that the eye sees the whole evil of the square
east end as the termination of the vista in a large church.
But there can be no doubt that there is less completeness
[176]
and unity of effect, fewer fine effects of light and shade,
and altogether less skill and architectural ingenuity in
the English plan than in the other: and though I should
be sorry to see the apse commonly introduced in small
churches, yet I think it fortunate that attention has
been a good deal drawn to this matter of late years,
and that men have not been slow to recognize the ad-
vantage of importing this one foreign practice at any
rate into our own country. Both externally and inter-
nally the east end of Laon is deficient in effect, and gives
the impression of being low and awkward in proportion.
There is an eastern triplet which comes down very near
to the floor, and a large rose window over it; an arcade
of open arches, flanked on either side by a pinnacle,
conceals the lower part of the gable. This elevation is
indeed the worst thing in the whole church, and contrasts
unfavourably with that of the north transept. This is
perhaps a little later in date and owes much to the
irregularity of outline caused by the completion of one
only of its steeples. It has the peculiarity of two double
doors; and the large rose window composed of eight
octofoiled circles surrounding a ninth, is of rare beauty.
It is to be prized the more, too, because in the fourteenth
century there was a plan for its removal, of which we
have curious evidence: one of the side jambs and part
of the arch of a large middle-pointed window having
been inserted by cutting away the wall close to a but-
tress in such a way as to disturb very little of the orig-
inal work, and yet to afford us a very curious evidence
of the way in which alterations of this kind were made
by the mediaeval masons, without the introduction of a
single shore or support of any kind. Fortunately the
[177]
alteration was stopped just where it ought to have been,
after it had afforded evidence of the customs of the
masons, but before it had destroyed a perfect first-
pointed facade; and I suppose that by this time we
have outlived the rage for middle-pointed work so far
that it would be difficult indeed to find any one so wrong-
headed as not to be grateful for the stoppage of the al-
teration at the point at which we see it now. Of the
western fagade I can say but little. It has been my
fortune to see it twice, but an evil fate has so covered
it with scaffolding at one time, and taken down and
rebuilt so much at another, that I have only been able
to guess at its general effect. The western doorways
are adorned with sculpture, and this is almost the only
place in the church in which figure sculpture still re-
mains; but the whole exterior of the church is remark-
able for the fine architectural character of the sculpture
of foliage, which is used with special lavishness along
almost all the string courses. I hardly know any finer
work of its kind, but it is altogether conventional in its
treatment, and arranged with very particular reference
to architectural effect, the foliage in each bay being
very nearly identical in its design. A peculiarity in
the external effect of the church is the lighting of the
triforium with separate windows, so that we have three
heights of windows in the elevation belonging to the
aisle, triforium, and clerestory.
Of the various steeples which adorn the church, and
whose character is generally very similar, the most
beautiful is, 1 think, that of the south transept. The
lower stages are lighted with couplets of lancets, and
have buttresses at their angles; above the roof line
[178]
square pinnacles are set diagonally at the angles, and
in the topmost stage the tower is an octagon in plan with
octagonal angle pinnacles resting on the square pinnacles
below, and lighted by lancet windows of very light pro-
portions. The octagonal pinnacles are composed en-
tirely of shafts supporting arches, and are of two stages
in height; and within them are contrived some newel
staircases of exquisite design. They consist of a series
of delicate shafts — one on each step, supporting
another above: the capitals of these shafts are all well
carved and with great variety: the effect of this winding
cluster of shafts, seen through and behind the shafts of
the pinnacles, is a great lesson in the beauty of shafts
and the value of scientific construction. Much of the
beauty of the design is owing to the very light and airy
character of these angle pinnacles, and it is much to be
deplored that the spires shown in du Sommerard's view
no longer exist.
The small cloister on the south side of the nave is
one of the features to which it would be unpardonable
not to refer. It forms only one side of the enclosure,
the east and west ends being occupied by the chapter
room and a groined chapel projecting from the south
wall of the nave, whilst the wall of the aisle forms
the north side. The merit of this cloister is, there-
fore, not its extent, but the beauty of its design. The
windows are of two lights, and above these is a quatre-
foil opening enclosed within a circular moulding, round
which are pierced sixteen small circles. The tracery
was glazed, though the lower part of the windows
appears to have been always open as it is at present.
The whole design is a very good example of plate
[179]
tracery. The outer wall of the cloister abuts on the
street, and though only pierced with small square win-
dows, is yet so skilfully buttressed and finished with a
cornice so finely sculptured, as to be a very successful
architectural feature. At the angle of this wall near
the south transept doorway, a buttress is brought out
from the transept, and against it is placed, standing on a
corbel under a canopy, a grand angel which now holds a
sundial; and though the dial is not old, I suppose, to
judge by the position of the hand, that it takes the
place of one coeval with the fabric. The angle of this
buttress, coming forward rather awkwardly in front of
the door, is cut back in a very skilful manner, and has
two recessed shafts with capitals and bases, affording a
capital example of angle decoration.
There is not much of which I need make special
mention in the interior. The main columns are gener-
ally plain cylinders, with very large capitals from which
the groining shafts rise; these are banded very fre-
quently in their height with bad effect. There is the
fourfold division in height to which I have already ad-
verted, and considerable matter of study in the sculp-
ture of the capitals, which is however in some cases
rather too rude and early in its character.
There is some very fine early glass in the eastern
windows of the choir. In the transept there are two
arches across next the wall, supporting a floor on a level
with and connecting the triforia, the spaciousness of
which is quite wonderful. They are groined throughout,
and the views of the church obtained from them are
very good. I found some middle-pointed screens divid-
ing the several bays of the triforium in the nave, and
[180]
there was a good deal of thirteenth century glass lying on
boards, and about to undergo restoration. Considerable
alterations were made in the last century by the inser-
tion of chapels between the buttresses of the choir, but
these do not detract much from the general effect of the
church, which exhibits a degree of general uniformity
hardly to be paralleled save at our own Salisbury.
I think it admits of a fair doubt whether such a cluster
of similar great steeples at regular intervals around one
building, as we have here, could ever be perfectly sat-
isfactory; but of the beauty of their design, taken
separately, there cannot be two opinions. It is possible
that if the central lantern had been carried up to a great
height, whatever defect there is might have been recti-
fied, but there is no sign of any such intention.
To the east and north of the cathedral are very large
remains of buildings of the same date as the cathedral,
and fairly perfect in their external effect. Towards the
interior they all rest on open arcades, whilst on the
exterior the outline is well and picturesquely broken by
a series of turrets projecting from the walls of the great
hall of the palace, said to have been built by Bishop
Gamier in a.d. 1242.
The bishop's chapel, a groined building with nave
and aisles, and of two stages in height, still remains. It
is of slightly earlier date than the cathedral, is covered
with a roof of one span, and has a very small apse at the
east end.
There seems to have been a communication directly
from the bishop's palace to the eastern part of the
cathedral; and if the people of Laon were as turbulent
as they are said to have been, the bishops were wise so
[181]
to place their palace, and so to connect it with the cathe-
dral as to enable themselves to stand a siege if need be.
After the cathedral, the church of S. Martin, at the
opposite end of the town, is the principal architectural
relic still left in Laon. Like the cathedral, it is remark-
able for its square east end. It is cruciform in plan, and
consists of nave and aisles, choir without aisles, and
transepts with chapels on the east side. Two towers
are placed in the angles between the transepts and nave.
The general foundation of the fabric is Romanesque
work, but the choir and transepts are of a rather ornate
early first-pointed, much more German than French
in its character, and the western fagade is one of the
best examples that I know of a middle-pointed front
to a church of moderate pretensions. The early-
pointed work at the east is remarkable for the very
heavy character of its mouldings and string-courses,
the use of both round and pointed arches, and the very
ingenious arrangement of the chapels in the east wall
of the transept, and of the buttresses above them.
Three chapels are formed under two bays of vaulting,
so that the vaulting shaft and buttress come over the
point of the arch. The church is well groined. The
steeples are poor in character and rather insignificant,
but they appear never to have been completed, and in
the neighbourhood of the cathedral it was dangerous to
venture upon any but the most careful and noble work.
The west front is very ornate, and is marked chiefly
by the fine octangular pinnacles at the angles of the
clerestory and by the large sculpture of S. Martin in a
quatrefoil which fills the gable. The three western
doorways are composed of a succession of small reedy
[182]
mouldings, and against the buttresses beyond the cen-
tral doorway are figures of saints considerably mutilated.
Almost the only other interesting church is a small
building attached now to an educational institution for
boys, A priest told me it had belonged to the Templars,
and at any rate it is an octagonal building with a small
chancel on its eastern side, and a smaller circular apse.
At the west end there is a small porch. The whole is in
a late Romanesque style, and very small, the external
measurement of each side of the octagon being only
about eleven feet.
Here and there are to be seen remains of houses and
gateways, but there is nothing of sufficient interest to
require a special note here, and the only other building
I need mention is the very curious church at Vaux-sous-
Laon, a village at the foot of the hill below the citadel
and cathedral. This has a western porch or narthex,
nave and aisles of five bays, transepts and low central
steeple, and a choir and aisles of three bays, groined,
and both loftier and wider than the nave. The east
end is square, and has a triplet and a large rose window
above, very similar in design to the east end of the
cathedral. The columns are cylindrical, with simply
carved caps of bold design. The choir is all first-
pointed, the nave of earlier date and much simpler
character and not groined.
I must conclude this brief notice of Laon and its
buildings with just mentioning two of the existing build-
ings in the neighbourhood which ought to be seen and
examined. These are the magnificent granary of the
abbey of Vauclair near Laon, and the still more inter-
esting hospital for lepers of Tortoir: both of these are
[183]
figured by M. Verdier in his Architecture Civile et
Domestique, and appear to be of rare beauty and
interest.
V
The cathedral of Rheims is most unquestionably
a very noble, I might almost say, a perfectly noble,
piece of architecture, and nevertheless it seems to
fail in producing so great an effect on the mind as
many other French churches of smaller dimensions
and less architectural pretension. The truth is, that it is
a work conceived and executed at two periods and by
two (if not more) architects; and though the ground-
plan, some portion of the walls, and a little of the sculp-
ture, of the first architect have been preserved, the gen-
eral aspect of the church at the present day savours
more of the later artist than of his predecessor. It was
in the year 1212 that Robert de Coucy (a friend of Wilars
de Honecort) commenced the erection of the present
cathedral, and it was after his death and from circa a.d.
1250 to circa a.d. 1300 that the whole of the upper portion
of the building, the western portion of the nave from the
ground, and the elaborate western fagade were in course
of erection. There remains to us, therefore, little of
genuine first-pointed work, for it has been clearly shown
by M. Viollet-le-Duc that the lower stage only of the
building was the work of Robert de Coucy. He seems
indeed to have contemplated a building of greater height
and grandeur than the present, since his work is remark-
able for the great size of the buttresses and the thick-
ness of the walls, which were diminished at once, and
abruptly, by the architect who followed him, and whose
[184]
work is nevertheless amply solid and massive for the
existing edifice.
It will be seen from what I have said, that we must
not go to Rheims expecting to see a work of the best
period of the thirteenth century. We shall find a small
portion of sculpture in one of the doors of the north
transept, and the plan and basement story of the build-
ing throughout, of this early date, but the bulk of the
structure and almost the whole of the decorative fea-
tures are purely middle-pointed work of the end of the
thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth century.
There is exquisite grace about most of this work, but
an entire lack of that stern character which makes Char-
tres the grandest of French churches; there is prettiness
where there should have been majesty; and in parts a
nervous dread of leaving a single foot of wall free from
ornament, which reminds one much more of the work of
an architect of the nineteenth century than of one of
the thirteenth. The west front, on which all the greatest
efforts of the later architects of the church were lavished,
can thoroughly please none but those who see in elab-
orate enrichment of every inch of wall the evidence of
art, whilst I need hardly say that to those who have
studied the best examples of architecture in whatever
style, such elaborate ornamentation is in itself an evi-
dence of weakness. There is a kind of sacredness about
the simple breadth of wall and buttress which must be
reverenced by all who would produce really grand work.
But for this the later architects of Rheims had not the
slightest feeling, and their work seems therefore to me
to be more really allied to the debased art which fol-
lowed it, than to the pure early work which had imme-
[185]
diately preceded it. As at Laon, so here, the original
design was to have a grand group of towers and spires,
six for the three grand fagades, and a seventh over the
crossing. Some of these spires were, I believe, actually
erected, and in lead; and whether this was the first
intention or not it is certain that the plumber's work
was in great request in this church and city, as there
still remains a very fine fleche on the point of the apse
roof of the cathedral, some good detail of lead work on
the roofs, and a much modernized leaded steeple in the
church of S. Jacques; whilst in the west front of the
cathedral we see large gurgoyles of lead simulating
enormous animals. The interior of the cathedral is
very noble in its proportions (though the triforium
might well have been more dignified), and is remarkable
for the immense size of the capitals of the piers in the
nave; they are very closely copied from natural foliage,
and fail to satisfy me that such work is the best fitted
for architectural enrichment. The decoration of the
west end is not confined to the exterior, the whole inside
face of the wall being divided into panels and niches
filled with foliage and single figures. The stone imita-
tion of hangings in the lower part of this wall ought to
be recorded, though hardly without a protest.
On the south side of the cathedral is the archbishop's
palace which still retains its thirteenth century chapel
of two stages in height, and good, though simple, char-
acter. It is a parallelogram of five bays in length with
an apse of seven sides.
And now that I have ventured to say so much in the
way of criticism upon what I believe most Frenchmen
consider their most glorious church, and without any
[ 186 ]
attempt at a detailed account either of its general archi-
tectural arrangements or its sculptures (the latter ex-
ceedingly rich and suggestive), I must take my reader
with me along the dreary dirty road which leads to the
squalid quarter of the city in which still stands as a
rival to the more modern cathedral the enormous church
of S. Remi. The exterior, with the exception of the apse,
has been much modernized, and presents accordingly
but few features of much interest. The south transept
has been all remodelled in flamboyant, whilst the nave
is simple Romanesque, and the west end — recently
almost entirely rebuilt — is a singular agglomeration of
anomalous work, half classic or Pagan, and half Roman-
esque or Gothic and Christian. In the apse we have
flying buttresses supported on fluted shafts, a clerestory
of triple lancets, and a triforium also lighted with three-
light windows. The proportions of the buttresses, roofs,
and walls are however heavy and unskilful, and give
evidence of the early date of this nevertheless very
grand attempt. It is on entering by the transept,
through a doorway covered with fine flamboyant sculp-
ture, that we see how grand the attempt was, and how
fine the internal effect. I think I know no church whose
whole interior gives a greater idea of spaciousness and
size, whilst the beauty of the design of the apse and the
aisle and chapels round it is extreme. And indeed the
appearance of size does not belie the facts, for the dimen-
sions of the building are singularly fine. It has a Roman-
esque nave and aisles (groined with a pointed vault) of
thirteen bays, transepts, and a choir of three bays with
an apse of five. Round the apse is the procession-path
aisle, and opening into this a series of chapels, whereof
[187]
the five eastern are very noticeable. The Lady-chapel
is of three bays in length, with an apse of seven bays,
whilst the other four are very nearly circular in plan,
and each of the chapels opens into the aisle with three
arches supported on delicate detached shafts. The
groining of each of the four smaller chapels forms a
complete circle in plan, with eight groining ribs, whereof
two are supported on the columns opening into the aisle.
Each chapel is lighted by three windows, recessed so
much as to allow of openings being pierced in the groining
piers to admit of a passage all round the interior.
This arrangement (as well as the beautiful planning of
the chapels) is a distinct feature of the churches of
Champagne. The chapels of Notre Dame, Chalons-sur-
Marne, are similarly planned, and in those of the cathe-
dral at Rheims it is clear that Robert de Coucy had the
same plan in his eye, though he gave up the triple-arched
entrance from the aisle; whilst at S. Quentin we see an
almost similar plan at a rather later date. The whole of
the nave retains the original very simple Romanesque
arcades, and lofty groined triforia; but its groining
throughout is fine early-pointed work and of grand
dimensions, the width in clear of the vault being about
forty-five feet. It is a curious fact that in this nave the
triforium compartment is absolutely more lofty than
that below it which contains the arch opening into the
aisle. In the choir there is a sort of fourfold division in
height such as I have described at Soissons and Laon, an
arcade of pointed arches being introduced between the
clerestory and the triforium; but as this arcade is in
part a continuation of the lines of the clerestory windows,
and as there is no string-course to divide the stage in
[188]
two, the effect is better than in other examples of the
same arrangement.
There is much matter for careful study in the interior;
among other things may be noticed the remarkably fine
and large corbels supporting the groining shafts in the
eastern part of the nave, adorned with figures of the
prophets bearing scrolls and still retaining traces of
their old colouring; and again, the very beautiful sculp-
ture of some of the early capitals near the western end
of the nave, and on either side of the great western
doorway. In the windows of the apse are some small
remains of fine early glass.
Among the other architectural remains in Rheims is
the church of S. Maurice, consisting of a Romanesque
nave and aisles, and a lofty groined flamboyant choir,
the west front of good character, having small buttresses
supported on shafts on each side of the central door,
and separating the western triplet of broad lancets
above the doorway. The rest of the church is very
uninteresting.
There is also the church of S. Jacques, whose west
front has the unusual feature of a sham gable on either
side of the real central gable.^ These gables are above
the aisles, and completely conceal their roofs and the
clerestory. The nave is of early-pointed date, but very
much altered; only the two eastern bays appearing to
retain the original triforium and clerestory, — the latter a
lancet with internal jamb-shafts, which are continued
into the triforium and form a portion of the arcades of
four pointed arches which occupy each bay, — an arrange-
» The arrangement of these gables recalls to mind the very similar
arrangement at Salisbury and Lincoln.
[189]
roent very similar to that of the clerestory of S. Rem!.
These two bays are groined with a sexpartite vault,
which is slightly domical in its longitudinal section. The
alternate piers in the nave consist of coupled columns
of very solid character, and with very deep capitals.
Some of these columns are regularly fluted. The rest of
the nave has been much altered in the fourteenth cen-
tury, whilst the choir is flamboyant, with aisles of
Renaissance style, but groined in stone. The crossing
is surmounted by a very large fleche of timber covered
with lead, almost completely modernized, but showing
still some large three-light windows of middle-pointed
style.
The Maison des Musiciens, in the Rue de Tambour, is
a well-known example of excessively good domestic
architecture of the thirteenth century.
From Rheims I made my way by railway to Chalons-
sur-Marne, where I was rewarded by the sight of one
of the most interesting churches I have ever seen, that
of Notre Dame, and of a cathedral of inferior interest.
It was the more gratifying to find such really fine work
just on the extreme borders of the country to which
French influence extended, and beyond which to the
eastward the churches appear to be entirely German in
their style.
The points of resemblance between Notre Dame de
Chalons and the church of S. Remi at Rheims are too
obvious to be overlooked. The planning and the gen-
eral design and detail of their chevets are precisely
similar, though the scale of Notre Dame is considerably
smaller than that of S. Remi. The former church has
however the great advantage of being of the same char-
[ 190 ]
acter throughout, wonderfully little damaged by tim*,
and singularly fortunate among French churches in being
under the care of a priQst, M. Champenois, whose zeal
and enthusiasm for his beautiful church is equalled by
the care and skill with which he has himself carried out
its restoration. It is the most conservative restoration
I have as yet seen in France; it could not be more con-
servative, and hence it is impossible that it could be
better. M. Champenois feels that every stone is a
deposit entrusted to him, and I would that we saw signs
of such zeal as his rather oftener in the French clergy.
Unfortunately, it seems to be too generally the case
that they take no interest whatever in the churches
which they serve. They have been taught to look to
the government as the owner and restorer of all religious
buildings, and they have ceased to concern themselves
about either the security of their fabrics or the character
of their fittings and decorations. Fortunate indeed is it
for us in England that the State is not so careful for us
as it is in France, for then we should see here, just as
we do there, a people utterly careless of the noble build-
ings which surround them, in place of — as we do here
— a people whose love for their old monuments is en-
hanced and in part created by the fact that they are
themselves perpetually invited to help in their restora-
tion and repair.
The church of Notre Dame consists of a nave and
aisle of seven bays in length, transepts, and a very short
apsidal choir (an apse of seven sides), with an aisle and
chapels planned like those of S. Remi, beyond it. There
are four towers, two at the west ends of the aisles, and
two in the angles between the transepts and the choir.
C 191 ]
Tlje triforium throughout is large, lofty, and groined.
As at S. Remi, the external effect of this church is much
inferior to the internal effect. It is rather too heavy and
ungainly, and savours much of the character of German
Romanesque work. The four towers have the defect
of being almost exactly alike, of four stages, richly adorned
with round-arched arcades, and rising hardly at all above
the level of the ridges of the roof. The south-west tower
retains its fine leaded spire, with four tall pinnacles at
its base, and a cluster of eight spire-lights about midway:
it is an exquisite example of lead-work, and still more
precious to us as affording evidence of the extraordinary
extent to which decoration was sometimes carried in
the Middle Ages. The pinnacles at the base still retain
distinct traces of decoration on the lead, each side hav-
ing a large crocketed canopy, below which is a gigantic
figure, in one case of an archer with a bow. The whole
is done in white and black only, the ground being the
dark lead on which the white lines seem to have been
marked by a process of tinning or soldering. It is a
kind of decoration which we may well attempt to revive.
A spire very similar to the other has recently been
erected on the north-west tower, and the western front
is now therefore quite in its old state, and singularly well
does it look. I almost doubt whether the addition of
similar spires to the two eastern towers, for which the
Cure is now collecting funds, will really improve the
look of the church. With four steeples, it is well that
two at least should be pre-eminent, which is the present
state of the case; whilst the completion of the others
would reduce all to the character of mere turrets — a
result not to be desired. The variety of string-courses
[192]
and cornices throughout the exterior of this church,
all filled with sculpture of foliage, gives a very ornate
character to the external detail.
The principal entrance is by the south door of the
nave. This has been cruelly damaged, indeed nearly
destroyed, but what remains is of great interest, owing
to its very close resemblance to the noble western door-
ways of Rouen cathedral ; the doorway is double, with
eight shafts in each jamb, the alternate shafts having
figures in front of them, as in the west doorways of
Chartres; whilst the tympanum is similar also, having a
figure of our Lord, surrounded by the emblems of the four
Evangelists. Portions of archivolt enrichments and other
sculpture have been dug up in the neighbourhood of this
doorway and carefully preserved, and they appear to
me, by their vigour and grandeur of character, to be
undoubtedly the work of the same artist, and possibly
portions of this once magnificent but now woefully
mutilated entrance.
It is in the interior, however, of this church that the
effect is finest and the architecture most noble. The
whole is very uniform in character throughout, marked
by great solidity of construction and proportion, and by
the boldness and distinctness of all its architectural de-
tail. The triforium throughout opens with two arches
enclosed within another, the spandrels being unpierced,
and throughout the church it is groined; nor must I
forget to say, that at the present day the spacious area
it affords is turned to some account; for, when I was
there, on one side they were making the organ pipes, on
the other constructing the organ, and in another part
the carpenters were busy upon the organ case; and the
[193]
Cure assured me that he not only had the satisfaction of
seeing everything executed in the best possible way, but
at the same time there was no inconvenience, and no
want of reverence, on the part of the workmen. The
clerestory consists throughout of lancet windows, the
lower portions of which are filled in with an arcade in
the manner I have described in the choir of S. Remi,
at Rheims. The sculpture throughout this church,
though almost entirely confined to foliage, is very in-
structive, and at the same time a little puzzling; for
we see almost side by side work of the best Byzantine
character — almost rivalling the sculpture we see in
Venice — and distinctly thirteenth century French work,
whilst the building itself shows no corresponding diver-
sity, and I can only suppose, either that the sculpture
was in hand much longer than the building of the church,
or that two sets of sculptors were at work, the one edu-
cated in a Byzantine school, the other influenced by the
more developed school of the lie de France.
I have said enough, I trust, to induce others to ex-
amine carefully this very interesting church; it is val-
uable as being a little in advance of the most perfect
period of the French pointed style, and as being much
more instructive, therefore, than a building which, like
the cathedral at Rheims, is in the main a little after the
most perfect period, and full, therefore, of symptoms of
decline, instead of promise of advance.
From Notre Dame to the cathedral it is a descent
from the finest early first-pointed to commonplace
middle-pointed, full of German character in its detail.
The west front and the whole of the apse have been
much modernized, and the finest remaining portion of
[194]
the exterior is the north transept front. The windows
are geometrical middle-pointed of four lights, and the
flying buttresses on a large scale, double, and sur-
mounted by pinnacles. There is some good stained
glass of late date in some of the aisle windows.
Another church, dedicated, I think, to S. Alpin, has a
nave and aisles of six bays groined, without a triforium,
and of the same date as Notre Dame. There are tran-
septs and a central tower, and a choir in flamboyant
style, and of a most unusual plan; the two arches east
of the tower diverge from each other, so that the width
of the choir gradually increases up to the point at which
it is finished with an apse of three sides. An aisle sur-
rounds the whole, the windows of which retain some
very rich stained glass. This choir is the most remark-
able example that I have met with of a very late revival
of, perhaps, the earliest type of chevet. There are a
great many altars in this church, pews throughout with
doors, and no sign whatever of any improvement. In
Notre Dame, where pews had disappeared and every-
thing was being restored, all the side altars had dis-
appeared, and there was only one altar left besides the
principal altar in the choir.
And here I might well conclude these notes of French
architecture. From Chalons I went to Toul, and thence
by Metz to Treves, and I found, as might be expected,
nothing but German work. At Toul there are two
churches, the cathedral and S. Gengoult, both of some
interest, and with good cloisters; but it is very remark-
able how we find here, not only German detail, but the
favourite German ground-plans also; S. Gengoult is a
cruciform church, with an apsidal chancel, and a small
[195]
apsidal chapel on each side opening into the transepts;
whilst the cathedral has an apsidal choir without aisles,
and a square-ended chapel on each side opening from the
transepts. The window tracery in S. Gengoult is per-
haps the ugliest ever devised even by German ingenuity,
and yet of early geometrical character (circa a.d. 1300),
and still retaining much very beautiful glass of the same
date. The nave of the cathedral has been recently seated
with very smart fixed open seats, of the kind which
might have been erected fifteen or twenty years ago in
England.
Of Metz I can say but little more than of Toul. The
cathedral is undoubtedly magnificent in its scale and
general proportions; but its detail throughout is mis-
erably thin and meagre, and the church appears to me
to be utterly undeserving of the praise I have heard
bestowed on it by some English authorities. Of course,
however, the degree of admiration felt for such a build-
ing depends very much upon the standard of perfec-
tion which each man sets up for himself. If he comes to
Metz strongly possessed with a sense of the noble char-
acter of German Gothic, of course he will admire this
extremely German edifice; if, however, he have the
slightest feeling for early French art, I imagine that he
will turn away with disappointment and sorrow from
this church, so vast, and yet, as compared with fine
French churches, so tame, poor, and weak.
The best of the other churches in Metz is that of S.
Vincent, a work of better style than the cathedral, and
with a well-planned German east end, showing undoubt-
edly marks of the same hand as (or at least of imitation
of) the famous Liebfraukirche at Treves.
[196]
V\-
v/
4-
NAVE AND TRANSEPT, THE NEW CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA
(
From Metz I made my way by Sierck (whose small
church has a groined roof forty feet in clear width) to
Saarburg; here the church is noticeable for a tower
oblong in plan, and roofed with two thin octagonal
spires which unite together at the base; and from Saar-
burg I went to Treves.
Treves well deserves a long notice. Its churches are
full of interest, the cathedral for students of early art,
and the Liebfraukirche, as being (I think) the most
beautifully planned thirteenth century church in Ger-
many. The close juxtaposition of these two churches is
singularly effective in all points of view. Then there
are the very fine Roman remains, and finally a really
enormous number of houses of the thirteenth and four-
teenth century, all in very fair preservation. From
Treves, by the interesting abbey of Laach, I reached
Cologne, and at once made my way to the cathedral,
anxious to see whether the opinions which have grown on
me more strongly the more often I have visited it would
remain unshaken now that so great progress has been
made in the new work. It is impossible to overrate the
excellence of all the new constructions; nor are they
obviously open to any hostile criticism in regard to their
conformity with the general character of the old work;
but it is at the same time useless to conceal the fact,
that the work is of a poor kind, and that it certainly
does not improve as one sees more of it. The only com-
fort is that the interior will be much finer than the ex-
terior, and that it is worth while therefore, to put up
with some shortcomings in the latter in order to obtain
what will, no doubt, be the sumptuous effect of space,
height, and (I hope) colour, which the former promises
[197]
to afford. It is much more difficult to spoil the interior
than the exterior; it must of necessity be simple and
uniform, and it admits of less attempt at enrichment
with such crockets and pinnacles as cover the exterior.
The south transept front, which is the most conspicuous
portion of the new work finished, is, I think, thoroughly
unsatisfactory. The crocketed gable over the great
window, repeated again just above up the roof gable,
is perhaps the most unhappy repetition of a leading
line that could have been hit upon. If a gable was nec-
essary over the window, it should have been different
in its pitch from the other; and then again, however
much the old architect indulged in reedy mouldings
and endless groups of crockets, it does seem to be a sad
thing that a nineteenth century artist should feel bound
to emulate his enthusiasm for such worthless things. I
grant at once, that he has done no more than follow
precedents. In the old west front of the cathedral, there
is. scarcely a moulding three inches in diameter, whilst
the central doorway between the steeples is very small,
and made up of a repetition usque ad nauseam of orders
of reedy mouldings and small flowers, and admits not
for one instant of comparison with any good examples of
French doorways; and, it is indeed very striking how,
as one comes fresh from French churches, all this work
looks thin, petty, and wanting in expression.
In the sculpture of foliage in the new works, the sys-
tem seems to be to take sprigs of two or three leaves and
fasten them against a circular bell, with no evidence of
any kind of natural growth, and no proper architectural
function to perform. They seem to require a piece of
string or a strap round them to attach them to the bell.
[198]
The copying of the foliage is perfectly naturalesque,
even to the marking of the fibres on leaves which are to
be elevated to a great height in the building. I have
heard all this sculpture so often referred to in terms of
the highest praise, that unpleasant as it is to criticize
work executed at the present day, I feel that I am bound
to express my dissent from those who so speak of it.
The whole work is so famous that all the world is inter-
ested in it. English tourists, year after year, going in
great numbers on their travels, admire thoughtlessly
everything that they see, and architects even seem to
me to follow in their wake, forgetting that our true
function is not simply to admire the work, because it is
a vast and noble enterprise, but to weigh and compare
it with the most perfect work we can find, and to en-
deavour, if the faults we see in it are great, to point
them out by way of warning for ourselves and others.
Indiscriminate admiration of such a building does enor-
mous mischief, just as a wild enthusiasm for the four-
teenth century work which we see throughout Germany
would be fatal to the eye and taste of the enthusiast.
Undoubtedly the architect of Cologne has had an
office of enormous difficulty. The national enthusiasm,
which has raised the funds hitherto expended, must
have needed very cautious treatment. It would prob-
ably indeed be indispensable that the steeples, if ever
completed, should be built exactly on the old plan so
curiously preserved and discovered, but the elevation
of the transepts, on which so very much of the externa!
effect of the whole church depended, was just one of
those points on which the architect might have ven-
tured (one would have thought) to step out of the old
[ 199 ]
path a little, and — just as the old architect when he
wanted a perfect ground-plan went to Amiens for his
example — he might at this day have gone to Chartres
or Amiens, Rouen or Paris, and grafted something of
their grace and grandeur on the otherwise merely Ger-
man conception of fa^de which he has given us. That
this might have been done without detriment to the old
portions of the building is I am sure unquestionable;
and that if well done it must have resulted in great gain
and increased beauty is equally certain. If (as we all,
with insignificant exceptions, admit) it is well for us to
study early French art as well as English, surely some
attention to it must be even more necessary in Ger-
many, whose national art was inferior, in the thirteenth
and fourteenth century, not only to that of France, but
almost as much to that of England.
[200]
SOME CHURCHES OF LE PUY EN VELAY
AND AUVERGNE
(From the Transactions of the R. I. B. A. 1889)
IN the course of last autumn,^ after having spent
three weeks in climbing Swiss mountains, I was
able to devote a few days, on my way home, to a
district which, as far as I had been able to gather from
books, appeared to contain a mine of interest for the
architect, not less than for the geologist and the lover
of natural scenery. From Lyon I went by Monistrol to
Le Puy, which was the grand object of my tour; thence
by Brioude into Auvergne, and through Issoire, Cler-
mont-Ferrand and Nevers, to Bourges and Paris. I was
so much struck by what I saw, that, though I am well
aware that my visit was too hurried to be at all exhaus-
tive, I think I cannot do better than give you the results
of my journey, in the trust that what was full of interest,
novelty, and instruction for myself, may be of some use
also to others who have not been able to make this
journey for themselves. The complete-Gothic archi-
tecture of Velay and Auvergne is not, it is true, to be
compared to the best work in the north of France. I am
not, however, going to tell you about it, but about an
^ The autumn of 1860. The original paper, which has under-
gone considerable revision since it was read on 7th January, 1861,
will be found in the First Series of Transactions, 1860-61, pp.
97-119. -A. E. S.
[201]
earlier style, which, as I hope to show, has special value
as illustrating, among other things, the way in which
French Gothic was developed from Romanesque and
Byzantine buildings; and our attention will, therefore,
be almost entirely devoted to buildings which are either
Romanesque or Romano- Byzantine in their character,
or belonging to the period of transition from those styles
to first-pointed. The complete-Gothic buildings are
comparatively few, and have no special value; and I
shall, probably, not have time now to refer to them
even in the most cursory manner.
I will begin with Le Puy, the ancient capital of Velay.
The city is crowded up the side of a volcanic rock, one
end of which is crowned by the picturesque mass of its
Eastern-looking cathedral. It consists of a network of
narrow streets not passable by carriages, and reminds
one forcibly of some such city as Genoa. Above the
rock on which the cathedral is perched rises another,
called the Corneille, on which are some old fortifica-
tions, and which has just been crowned by a monstrous
image of the Blessed Virgin, made of the metal of guns
taken at Sebastopol, to whose charge I may fairly
lay much of the imperfection of my account of the build-
ings beneath her feet; for I had the ill-luck to arrive at
Le Puy only three days before the inauguration of this
statue, and I found the whole city so entirely occupied
with the preparations for the fete, that it was with the
greatest difficulty that I examined the cathedral at all,
and into some portions of it I was quite unable to pene-
trate; whilst the only condition on which I could obtain
rooms at an inn was that I should not stop for more
than two days, and should make room for some bishop,
[202]
prince, or cardinal (of whom there were a legion on the
road), before the great fete-day. I had to work very
hard, therefore, to do as much as I did, and I make no
doubt that a more leisurely and uninterrupted examina-
tion would have enabled me to discover and do much
more. Separated from the great volcanic rock I have
already mentioned by one or two furlongs only, is the
smaller, but even more striking rock, called the Aiguille
de S. Michel, and crowned with a little chapel dedi-
cated to that Archangel. It rises, in the most abrupt
and precipitous manner, to a height of about 265 feet.
The distant background includes a series of truncated
conical hills, evidently ancient volcanoes, and from almost
every point of view a landscape of the most picturesque
and extensive description is seen. Rarely have I en-
joyed a more charming ride than that which, for the last
twenty miles into Le Puy on the road from S. fitienne,
made me generally acquainted with the remarkable
physical formation of this mountain district; beautiful
throughout, it was at its best just when, some twelve or
fifteen miles before I reached the city, I first saw the
"angelic" church, as it is styled, standing up boldly on
its rock, the centre of an almost matchless landscape.
The story of its claim to this style of "angelic" is
this. Bishop Evodius, at the end of the sixth century,
on being made first bishop of Le Puy, wished to construct
a church; the Virgin, who had before shown to S. George
the place where she wished one to be built, appeared to a
sick woman on the Mount surrounded by a crowd of
angels, and desired her to tell Evodius to proceed at
once with his work. After much prayer he went to
Rome, and the Pope sent back with him an architect and
[203]
senator named Scutarius, under whose auspices the
church was soon built, and whose tombstone is still to
be seen near the transept door. Evodius and Scutarius
then started for Rome again, but on the way met two
old men, who gave them two boxes of relics, and de-
sired them to return to Le Puy, saying that as soon as
they arrived with the relics before the church the doors
would open, the bells would ring of themselves, the
whole interior would be bright with torches and candles,
and they should hear divine melodies, and smell the
sweet perfume of the heavenly oil which had served for
the consecration of the church by the angels. Every-
thing happened just as had been foretold, and Evodius
felt it unnecessary again to consecrate his church, which
from that time to the present day has been called the
"angelic" church. No doubt you all know how curious
a parallel to this legend the history of our own Abbey
of S. Peter at Westminster affords.^ But in searching
^ I give an extract from "La Estoire de Seint Edward le Rei,"
MS. Bibl., Publ. Cambridge. Ee iii. 59:
" Seint Pere, du del claver, " La nuit quant dedient I'iglise
" Va sa iglise dedier, " Tant ja du ciel luur
" Des angeles mut grant partie " Ke vis est au pescliur,
" Li funt servise e grant aie. •' Ke li solailz e la lune
" Li angele chantent au servise, " Lur clarte tute i preste e dune."
This is the rubric descriptive of the illustration, whilst in the
f)oem itself is the following passage:
" E cist si tost cum arive " Tant ja partut odur,
" Entrez est en sun muster; " Ke vis est a eel pescur
" Li airs devint lusanz e clers, " Ke li solailz la lune
" N'out en muster tenegre ne " Sa clarte tute preste u dune
umbre; "Angles pu eel avaler
"Atant des angres grant " Regarde e puis remunter;
numbre, "Teu joie a, ke li est vis
" Ki s'en venent a sum servise " Ke raviz est en Parais,
"A dedier cele iglise. "Pur I'avisium k'apert."
[204]
for information about the churches of Auvergne, I came
upon a continuation of the Le Puy legend, to which the
Westminster story affords no such parallel. This second
legend tells how, when the seraphic basilica of Le Puy
had been thus dedicated, S. Anne descended from
heaven to visit the palace of her daughter. Not content
with this human work, she seized the hammer of the
master-mason, and, taking wing, descended on the sum-
mit of a hill, and, turning towards Auvergne, which to
her mind offered no church worthy of the Queen of
Heaven, she threw the hammer, saying as she threw it,
"On the place where the hammer falls a church shall
rise." The hammer fell on the right bank of the Allier,
and immediately there rose from the soil like a flower
the church of Les Chases, which was dedicated forth-
with to S. Mary.^
Let us now leave legends, and direct our attention to
the ground-plan of the cathedral. Its architects have
ingeniously contrived to cover the whole of the summit
of the rock on which it stands. It consists of a nave
with aisles, transepts, a choir, and choir-aisles, and a
steeple at the east end of the north choir-aisle. To the
south of the cathedral is the modern bishop's palace,
whilst to the north are the cloisters, two grand halls,
some ruins, and to the north-east a chapel dedicated to
S. John and other buildings. There are entrances in
the east walls of each of the transepts, but these were
rather intended, I suppose, for the exit than for the
entrance of the people, and the mode in which they
were admitted forms one of the most striking features
^ UAuvergne au Moyen Age, by M. Dominique Branche.
Clermont-Ferrand, 1842.
[205]
of the whole scheme. I said that the church was built
on a rock, and its western face, forming one of the prin-
cipal streets of the city, is so steep as to consist alter-
nately of steps and inclines, until, at a short distance in
advance of the west front, it is changed to an almost
interminable flight of steps. The grand west entrance is
an open porch, like an enormous crypt, beneath the
three western bays of the nave and its aisles, whose
walls and piers it reproduces in its plan. The steps ^
formerly rose in a straight line, until they came up in
the very centre of the church, in the fifth bay of the
nave, and in front of the roof-loft, and of the miracle-
working image of the Blessed Virgin, which, brought
from the East and given to the church by S. Louis, was,
until its destruction in a.d. 1789, the greatest attraction
for pilgrims in France.^ This singular entrance, and the
mode of exit by the eastern doors of the transepts, gave
rise to an old saying, "In Notre Dame du Puy one
entered by the navel and went out by the ears." Un-
fortunately, however, the central entrance has been
diverted, and after ascending a hundred and two steps,
and arriving at the Golden Gate, as it was called, the
passage branches right and left — on the left ascending
into the cloister, and on the right winding round the
south side of the church, until the hundred and
thirty-fifth step lands the weary pilgrim in the south
1 The steps are arranged in successive groups of eleven, with
platforms between them.
2 As evidence of the popularity of Notre Dame du Puy this may
suffice: — in Amiens cathedral, until a.d. 1820, there existed a
series of pictures given by the " Confrerie de Notre Dame du Puy."
A similar confrerie existed at Limoges. — G. E. S. There is an image
and a devotion of N. D. du Puy at Estella in Navarre, carried thither
by French pilgrims. — G. G. K.
[206]
aisle, near the transept.^ This, then, is the general
scheme of this most singular church. Let me now
go on to describe it in detail, beginning with the oldest
portion. This comprises the choir, the transepts, and
crossing, and the two easternmost bays of the nave.
The choir is completely modernized, and I am unable to
say whether any portion of the internal arrangement is
old. It presents the peculiarity of a square exterior and
a circular interior. This is a not uncommon arrangement
in the earliest Italian examples of the apse, and is seen at
St. Mark's, Venice, and elsewhere. The arches opening
into the choir-aisles are old, and I believe that we may
venture to say that the original plan must have been very
nearly the same as that of the church of S. Martin
d'Ainay, at Lyon, in which the choir-aisles are shorter
than the choir, and all are terminated with apses.^ I
shall have other occasion to point out that at a later date
the architects of Ainay and of Le Puy must have been the
same. The date of the foundation of Ainay is some time
in the ninth century, and it was carried on until the end
of the eleventh; but the apse and capitals of the columns
of the crossing — for the columns themselves are Roman
— cannot, I think, be later than about a.d. 940 to a.d.
1000, which latter would, I think, be the date generally
accepted for this portion of the work at Le Puy. To
proceed with my notice. The crossing is surmounted
^ The passage to the right is evidently modern, that to the left
looks as though it were ancient, but a protest against the removal
of some ancient work, in the course of constructing it, which I
have found in the Bulletin Monumental [A. de Caumont], seems
to show that it is not so.
* S. Martin d'Ainay, at Lyon, is a parallel triapsidal church,
with a central dome, and a western tower of unusual and pictur-
esque outline, adorned largely with inlaid tiles and bricks.
[207]
by a quasi-dome, carried up as an octagonal lantern,
much of which has been modernised in restorations,
whilst much is quite new; though the universality of
the raised central lantern in the churches of the district
makes it probable that it is, to some extent, a proper
restoration.^ The transepts are covered with barrel-
vaults, strengthened by tranverse ribs of a square sec-
tion below them; the small apses in their end walls have
semi-domes, and the tribunes which cross them are
groined with quadripartite vaults without ribs. The
whole of the nave is covered in the same way as the
crossing, each bay being divided from the next by bold
transverse arches, and having a quasi-dome, supported
by arches across the angles of each compartment, and
all of them, in truth, being not domes, but eight-sided
pointed vaults, springing from the octagonal bases thus
contrived. There are no pendentives, properly so called,
and the construction is, I should say, that of men who
desired to erect domes, but had no knowledge whatever
of the way in which they were constructed in the East;
or — to take a more favorable and, perhaps, juster
view — of men who, desiring to give a small building
the greatest possible effect of space, to roof it with
stone (not knowing anything yet about flying-buttresses),
and to light it from a clerestory, actually solved all
these points in a successful way. Where this kind of
roof was first attempted I am quite unable to say.
Certainly the central lantern at Ainay is so identical in
character with some of those at Le Puy, that the same
^ At present the exterior of the lantern is covered with a domical
roof; but an illustration that I have seen shows it finished with a
low-pitched tile roof, and without any of the inlaid mosaic which
is now upon it.
[208]
workmen must have executed both; but there seems
to be no other example in the same district as Ainay,
whereas at Le Puy, and in Velay and Auvergne, every-
thing is more or less roofed on the same principle. The
second portion of the cathedral at Le Puy consists of
the third and fourth bays of the nave, and the third por-
tion of the fifth and sixth bays.^
The latest portion is of early pointed character, and
not later in date than circa a.d. 1180 to 1200, and it was
at the same time that this was erected that the greater
part of the enormous substructure forming the porch
was also completed. The aisles throughout the church
are vaulted with quadripartite vaults, the three western
bays alone having ribs. In the two western bays there
are engaged shafts both in the porch and above it in the
nave, but the rest of the piers are of the simplest plan,
large and generally cruciform in their section, save at
the crossing, where the arches are carried on coupled
detached shafts. There is much elaborate sculpture
introduced in the capitals of the pilasters and columns
of the nave, but it is nowhere of any very high merit,
and is so inferior in delicacy and beauty to the sculpture
of the same age to be seen on the banks of the Rhone,
that I should attribute it to a native school of sculptors
acquainted, probably, with none but inferior Roman
sculpture, from which they endeavoured to develope
a style for themselves, A clerestory of wide and rude
round-headed windows, one in each compartment,
lights the series of domes in a very effective manner.
The arches across the nave are very bold, and, in the
1 The division of the building into work done at various epochs
is beyond question, though there may Ije some question as to the
date I assign.
[209]
wall above them, an opening is pierced under each of the
cupolas. As is generally the case, however, in churches
covered in this way, very little is seen of the real vault
in any general view of the church, these transverse
arches only, with the quasi-pendent ives above them being
seen. The pendentives are true semi-domes, construc-
ted in alternate courses of dark and light stone, and the
difference between their plan and the square angle in
which they are placed is skilfully concealed by detached
shafts, with capitals placed under the pendentives.
I think you will agree with me that considering its
early date (no part probably later than circa a.d. 1150
or 1180), it would be difficult to find a grander or
more nervous scheme, or one which, with such small
dimensions, conveys nevertheless so great an im-
pression of size and importance. The choir-aisles
were altered at various times. That on the south has
been rebuilt in second-pointed of poor character, and
is now a mere passage-way to the modern sacristy, and
that on the north was probably interfered with not very
long after its first construction, when the great steeple
which now abuts upon it was commenced. M. Meri-
mee,^ in his very interesting description of the church,
suggests that the base of the tower was originally a bap-
tistery, but I see no reason whatever for this suggestion
and it is impossible to doubt, when we carefully examine
the whole design, that though the steeple was long in
building, the main feature in its design was from the
first just what we now see it to be. Moreover, the
chapel of S. Jean close by is said to have been the
baptistery for the whole city until within the last sixty
^ Merimee, Notes d'un Voyage en Auvergne, p. 226.
[ 210 ]
years. The design of the steeple is very bizarre and
unusual. It consists of a long series of no less than nine
stages on the exterior, and it diminishes rapidly in
diameter, and is, perhaps, on the whole, more curious
than pleasing in its outlines. If you look at the ground-
plan you will see that its construction is most remark-
able. The internal diameter of the tower at the base is
twenty-four feet six inches, but this is reduced to only
twelve feet by four detached piers, one foot ten and
one-half inches square. These piers are carried up from
the base to the very summit, detached in the three
lower stages, and forming part of the thickness of the
wall in the portion above. The highest stage of the
steeple, twelve feet in internal and sixteen feet in ex-
ternal diameter, is therefore, as nearly as possible,
carried up on these four piers, and the rapid decrease
in the external dimensions, from thirty-six feet to six-
teen feet, was only rendered possible by this very ingen-
ious mode of construction. So far as I know there is
only one other example of the same scheme, viz. in the
steeple of the cathedral of S. Etienne at Limoges.
Here, however, the base is the only portion remaining
of the original work, and the columns are cylindrical in
place of being square, but it is evident that the inten-
tion was the same as at Le Puy. The steeple at Limoges
is probably the first in point of date. M. Viollet-le-
Duc dates it at about a.d. 1050, but the Abbe Arbellot,
in a learned paper on the cathedral, in the Bulletin
of the Societe Archeologique et Historique du Limousin,
maintains that it was certainly built before a.d. 1012,
when the Bishop Arnaud de Perigeux, after assisting at
the consecration of Bishop Gerald at Poitiers, accom-
C 211 ]
panied him to Limoges, and put the cords of the bells into
his hands. The lower part of the steeple at Le Puy
may, I think, safely be referred to the end of the eleventh
century, and its completion to the end of the twelfth,
whilst the planning appears to me to be thoroughly
characteristic of a Byzantine artist, the construction of
the piers in the lowest stage being almost identical with
that of the main piers under the domes of S. Mark's,
Venice, and S. Front, Perigueux.
• The arrangement of the belfry stage, with its gable
on each face, is very noteworthy, and is, perhaps, one
of the earliest examples of a type which was developed
afterwards into the well-known arrangement of the belfry
of the south-west tower at Chartres, and this, with the
influence of the churches of the Rhine,^ developed in
almost all subsequent modifications of the spire with its
gabled spire-lights; one of the windows under this pedi-
ment is planned in a most ingenious manner, presenting
externally a semi-dome pierced by two pointed arches;
another window is pierced with a trefoil head, the diam-
eter of which is much larger than that of the light it
surmounts. This is a favorite form of cusping through-
out this district. I have seen it in Lyon, at Vienne, often
at Le Puy, at Brioude, at Notre- Dame-du- Port, Cler-
mont, and in the south porch at Bourges; and there can,
I think, be little doubt that it is somewhat Eastern in
its origin, and analogous to the horseshoe form of arch.
The cloister on the north side of the church appears
to be in part coeval with the earliest,^ or, perhaps, the
^ See VioUet-le-Duc {Dictionnaire, art. "Clocher" pp. 312-18)
for a reference to this influence of the Rhine churches.
^ M. Viollet-le-Duc considers the earliest part of the cloister to
date from the tenth century: M. Merimee thinks the eleventh
century more likely.
C 212 ]
second portion of the fabric, and in part with the later
additions to it. It consists of a simple arcade of round
arches on rather solid piers, with a detached shaft on
each face. The capitals are all richly sculptured, some
with figures, some with foliage. The spandrels of the
arches are filled in with a reticulation of coloured stones;
above the arches runs a band of similar ornament, and
above this again a carved cornice, which in the later part
of the cloister forms a sort of frieze. In this portion the
arches have sculptured key-stones, a peculiarity which I
hardly remember to have met with before in work of
the same date. On the south side there are two fluted
shafts and one spiral; all the rest are circular, but
noticeable for their very considerable entasis. The
groining is all quadripartite without ribs, and executed
with rough stones, set in concrete, on a centring of
boards. The cloister was surrounded on all sides with
buildings. On the south is the cathedral; on the east,
and opening to the cloister by an arcade of open arches,
is a large hall covered with a pointed barrel-vault. This
was originally called the choir of S. Andre, and in it
masses in commemoration of the dead were said, and
services held on the feasts of the Invention and Exalta-
tion of the Cross, and on the feasts of S. Andrew and
S. Eustachius. It was also called "caemeterium," being
used for the burial of the clergy, and is now called
the chapel des Moris. On the wall are still to be
seen remains of a painting of the Crucifixion, with many
prophets and angels, S. Mary and S. John, the sun
and moon, etc. In the northern gable of this building
is a fine cylindrical chimney, built in alternate courses of
dark and light stone, and rising from a fireplace in a
[213]
chamber over the hall, and of the same date as the
hall. M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a drawing of the fire-
place, which is of a not uncommon early type, the head
projecting considerably on a semicircular plan. At the
north end of the Salle des Morts is a passage leading to
the cloister, and along the whole northern boundary
once stood a vast range of building called the Maitrise.^
Nothing now remains of this save its undercroft, which
was spanned by bold pointed arches of stone, on which
the wooden floor rested. The Maitrise was pulled down
a few years since, and, not long before, a tower close by
it, called the tower of S. Mayol, was also destroyed.
It is described as an erection of the eleventh century,
battlemented, but without machicoulis.^ It seems to
have served as part of the fortification of the church,
which was also attended to in an alteration of the
building on the west side of the cloister, in the four-
teenth century. This building contained, below, a hall
on a level with the church, which was the chapel of the
Holy Relics; above was the Salle des Etats of Velay,
with a stone barrel-roof, now both thrown into one room.
Above these again was an open space under the roof,
protected on the side towards the town by a magnificent
overhanging battlement and machicolation of the four-
teenth century, and quite open on the side towards the
cloister save for the stone piers supporting the roof.
The machicoulis are some of the finest I have ever seen,
and project from the buttresses as well as from the walls.
The only access to this stage of the building seems to
^ The Mattrise was, I believe, the school attached to the
cathedral.
^ Merimee, Notes d'un Voyage en Auvergne, p. 232.
[214]
I
have been from the roof of the cathedral. Le Puy was,
in the first instance, selected as a site for the cathedral
because it afforded so secure a refuge from attack, and
in later days it seems to have been not less necessary to
provide against danger: for among other enemies the
Lords of Polignac, whose magnificent castle is visible
from the steeple of the cathedral, only some four miles
distant, were the most conspicuous as they were also
the most powerful. M. Viollet-le-Duc supposes, indeed,
that the tower of the cathedral was meant in part for
defence; but I see no evidence of this, and possibly he
had in his mind the destroyed tower of S. Mayol,
which, as well as the double wall of enceinte which
formerly surrounded the whole cathedral, was no doubt
a purely military construction. Fortified churches are
by no means uncommon in this part of France. At
Brioude is a painting showing the church entirely sur-
rounded by a crenellated and turreted wall in a.d. 1636;
and Royat, near Clermont, and the abbey church of
Menat, also in Auvergne, still retains provisions for de-
fence. The Salle des Etats contained formerly the
archives of Velay, and in removing them a few years
since (about a.d. 1850) portions of a hanging of blue
wool, "semee" with fleurs-de-lys, and adorned with the
armorial bearings of Jean de Bourbon, Bishop of Le
Puy from a.d. 1443 to 1485, were found.^ At the same
Mt is very difficult to understand precisely where these hangings
were found. M. Aymard, a distinguished antiquary at Le Puy, in
the Album Photographique d' Archeologie Religieuse, speaks of the
painting on the wall of the Salle des £iats, and then, in another
place, says that the tapestries given by Jean de Bourbon served
to decorate the Salle des £lals of Velay, and after the regrettable
destruction of that hall the remains of them were preserved part
in the cathedral and part in the museum. Possibly he refers to
[215]
time a curious painting on the east wall of the lower
chamber was discovered under the whitewash. It rep-
resents four liberal sciences — Grammar, Logic, Rhet-
oric, and Music — as females seated with ancient
worthies at their feet. Priscian sits below Grammar,
writing; and two boys, with open books, are on her
other side. Logic holds a lizard in one hand and a
scorpion in the other, and Aristotle is arguing below.
The inscription underneath is — "Me sine doctores
frustra coluere sorores," and each figure has a corre-
sponding leonine verse inscribed below. Rhetoric holds
a file in her left hand, and Cicero sits at her feet. Music
plays an organ, whilst Tubal, with two hammers, plays
upon an anvil. There used — according to the "Chro-
nique des Medicis" — to be a second painting here with
figures of young demoiselles gorgeously clothed, and
from the same chronicle it appears that Messire Pierre
Odin, official of the Bishop Jean de Bourbon, who died
in 1502, presented both: — "II estait si grant orateur
que, par son mellifere et suaviloquent langage, fust
commis plusieurs fois estre ambassadeur devers le
Pape a la requette du tres-excellent et redoute Prince
Louis XI. roy de France, lequel dudict Pape obtint
grande louange et avoir, ce que il employa en divers
fagons et moyens en aulmosnes et a la decoration de
cette saincte eglise du Puy." The picture has consid-
erable merit; its detail is a mixture of Renaissance and
Gothic, and the Gothic portion — as for instance, the
chair on which one of the figures sits — is not Italian,
and I should be inclined to suppose that it was the
the removal of the floor below the Salle des Etats, for the hall itself
has not been destroyed.
[216]
work, therefore, of a French artist. Its date must be
between 1475 and 1502. Louis XI. came to Le Puy on
a pilgrimage in 1475.
The external side elevation of the church is best seen
from the cloister, and, with a few words upon this, I will
leave this portion of the building. Here, even more
clearly than inside, the division of the building into
work of different epochs is seen. The two bays nearest
the crossing have large coupled windows in the aisle^
with parti-coloured voussoirs and jamb shafts. The
clerestory is very peculiar in its treatment, and undoubt-
edly very effective; the windows are of one light in each
bay and round-headed and on each side of them above
the springing there is a recess in the wall, in the centre
of which a detached shaft is placed to carry the cornice.
A similar recess and a smaller shaft occur immediately
over the arch of the window, and the window-arch being
built of alternately dark and light stone, and all the
sunk panels being filled in with geometrical patterns,
composed in the same way, an extremely rich effect is
obtained. Recesses of the same kind in the upper part
of the walls occur all along the eastern face of the transept
at Le Puy; and between the clerestory windows of
Notre- Dame-du- Port, Clermont; S. Paul, Issoire; and
commonly in Auvergne. But so far as I can judge from
the portion of the cathedral in which they occur, and
from the early and simple character of the work itself^
I am inclined to believe that it is earlier here than in
any of the other examples. It would be of great interest
to have some more positive evidence on this and other
similar questions of date. But, so far as I have been
able to discover, there is no such evidence, and we are
[217]
left in doubt, therefore, whether this portion of the
architecture of Velay came from Auvergne, or whether
the reverse was the case; as also whether this external
decoration of the fabric is coeval with its first erection,
or is a subsequent addition.
The two central compartments of the nave have cir-
cular windows (sixteen feet in diameter) to light the
aisle, and round-headed windows in the clerestory; and
between the arches of the latter windows are small
arched recesses. In the two western bays the clerestory
is similar, save that the intermediate recessed arch is
omitted. In both the voussoirs are counter-charged,
and the wall from the springing u p to the eaves is coursed
with stone and lava. The transept gables are only
noticeable for the courses of inlaid patterns with which
they are enriched. All these patterns are formed with
white stone and lava. The latter, indeed, forms the
whole ground of the walls, and varies in colour from a
greenish grey to black; and the patterns are formed with
the darkest lava and stone. The cloister is similarly
inlaid above the arches, but it has almost all been re-
stored in a most injudicious manner. They have struck
and ruled (I believe that is the technical phrase for this
most abominable of inventions, is it not?) an enormous
red mortar joint between all the stones,^ and wherever
this has been done the diaper appears to be formed with
a chequer of black and red; wherever the cloister has
not been retouched the diaper is black and white.
I have left, almost until the last, that which is after
all the crowning wonder of this singular church — the
^ M. Mallay, of Clermont, says that the mosaic work of the
church of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, was all set in red mortar
originally.
[ 218 ]
western porch. I have already referred to its position
and plan. The majesty, I may say the awfulness, of
this entrance, can hardly be exaggerated. It owes
little to delicate detail or enrichment of any kind, for,
though these have been, they are no longer; but it is
the gloom and darkness, the simple, nervous forms of
arch and pier, the long flight of steps lost in obscurity
and crowded constantly (when I saw them) with a throng
of worshippers, which constitute the strange charm of
this strangest of entrances. I told you that in the nave
the two western bays of the aisle alone had groining
ribs; in the porch below it is only in the western bay
that they are used, and this affords interesting evi-
dence of the very gradual yet regular development
of our art.
The spaces below the aisles in the third bay from the
west form chapels — that on the right dedicated to
S. Martin, and that on the left to S. Gilles. Be-
fore the last extension of the building these chapels
were at the extreme west end. They have western door-
ways, which still retain the wooden doors. Each of
these doors was of four divisions in height, covered with
subjects carved in low relief. They are executed either
in cedar or oak (I am uncertain which, for they are
covered with paint), and the subjects, inscriptions, and
borders are all obtained simply by sinking the ground
three-sixteenths of an inch. The figures are, of course,
only in outline, but it is still evident that they were care-
fully painted with draperies, etc., so as to be thoroughly
distinct. There is some appearance of the ground hav-
ing been painted with broad horizontal bands of colour,
but the traces are so indistinct that it is difficult to speak
[219]
positively.^ The doors are hung folding, and those to
the chapel of S. Gilles contain subjects from the
early life of our Lord, whilst those in the chapel of
S. Martin contain subjects from His Passion. The
meeting-rail in the former fortunately contains an in-
scription of extreme value: "Gaulfredus : me: fct:
Petrus : epi"; after which some letters are lost. If
my reading of the last letter but one as "p" is correct, I
think it leads to a most important inference. No one who
looks at the design of these gates can doubt that they
are thoroughly Eastern in their character; and, upon
searching for the lists of bishops of Le Puy since my
return, I was delighted to find that the first bishop of
the name of Peter ^ was consecrated at Ravenna by
Leo IX. in a.d. 1043, and died at Genoa a.d. 1053, as
he returned from the Holy Land. Gates of the same
description are said to exist in the churches of Cha-
mailleres and of Lavoulte-Chilhac in the same district,
whilst other evidence of intercourse with the East is
afforded by fragments of Hssus preserved at Monestier,
at Pebrac, and at Lavoulte-Chilhac. These Hssus are
all extremely Eastern in their character, and very similar
to the famous cope at Chinon described by M. de Cau-
mont in the Abecedaire, and to the Le Mans tissu de-
scribed byM. Hucher in i\\e Bulletin Monumental (1846,
p. 24). The date ordinarily attributed to them is the
middle of the eleventh century, which exactly tallies
with the return of Bishop Peter from the Holy Land. I
dwell on this the more because, if the inference I have
^ See further observations on this subject, page 223.
^ The predecessor in the See, Stephen II., uncle of Bishop Peter
I., was buried at Lavoulte-Chilhac.
[220]
drawn from the inscription be true, it gives tlie date
also to tlie second portion of the construction of the
cathedral, to which the chapels in the porch undoubt-
edly belong; and the result would be that whilst I
should date the earliest portion of the church at about
the end of the tenth century, or quite the commence-
ment of the eleventh, the second portion would be dated
at about a.d. 1050; and, finally, there is little doubt as
to the whole having been completed in the course of
the twelfth century.^ These dates are, as in all such
cases, of course only approximate; and it is pretty clear
that there was seldom any long pause in the works, and
the development in their architectural features is there-
fore very gradual.
The external elevation in the west front is similar in
style to the clerestory on the north side, and mainly exe-
cuted in alternate courses of lava and stone. The aisle-
roofs are masked by walls with pediments. Throughout
this part of the work you will observe that its early
date is proved by the fact that the round arch is almost
invariably used for ornament, and the pointed arch only
where great strength was required. A great buttress,
which had been built against this vast front, was removed
during the recent restorations.
I observed before that there are doorways on the
east side of both transepts — the "ears" referred to in
an old saying. The south transept door is in itself re-
markable for the peculiar form of the cusping of its
arch, and still more for the magnificent porch built over
^ A diploma of a.d. 1146 is dated from the "Ville d'Anis"
(i.e. Le Puy) and fixes the date at which this "cite" received the
name of "ville."
[221]
it. The date of this is the latter part of the twelfth
century. It is open on the south and east sides, and
abuts on the church on the west and north, occupying
the re-entering angle between the transept and choir
aisle. The arch is remarkable for a rib detached below
the arch, and connected at intervals with it by columns,
so as to have the appearance of being suspended. My
impression is that the architect feared that his arch had
not sufficient abutment, and hoped by bringing some of
the weight on to the lower rims of the arch to remedy
this defect. The whole detail of this porch is a very
rich kind of pointed, full of half- Romanesque and half-
Byzantine detail. The groining, in alternate coloured
courses, is quadripartite, but has the very rare feature
(in France) of ridge ribs. Above the porch is a room or
chapel, to which I omitted to gain access. Over the door
of the other (north) transept a great arch, thrown from
the cathedral to the chapel of S. Jean, carries another
chapel, lighted with a first-pointed triplet. This door
is square-headed, and covered with rich though rude
ironwork. The door-handles have a resemblance to one
in the cathedral at Treves made by Jean and Nicholas
of Bingen, which struck me, and was remarked on also,
I find, by M. Merimee. The lintel of the door is deeper
at the centre than at the sides of the door, pediment-
like, and has figures of our Lord and the Twelve Apostles
carved on it, whilst above, under a circular arch, is
another figure of our Lord, with an angel on either side.
The whole has been very much mutilated and all the fig-
ures are hacked to pieces. The ground was painted, and
no doubt the figures were also, and the woodwork of the
door was covered with linen or leather under ironwork.
[ 222 ]
The very ancient chapel of S, Jean is close to this
door, and by its side is a fifteenth century archway.
The chapel is arcaded on its south side and pierced with
very simple windows. Some antiquaries assert that it is
a piece of Roman construction, and it is not impossible,
though I should be much more inclined to call it tenth
century work. The chapel has a rude quadripartite
vault, and its apsidal chancel is roofed with a semi-dome.
I must conclude my long notice of this church by
some mention of the extensive remains of painted deco-
rations still visible. During the late restorations of the
cathedral, I understand from M. Aymard, the greater
portion were destroyed. The vaults of the north tran-
sept and the semi-domes of its apsidal recesses are still,
however, covered with paintings, though they are scarcely
intelligible, owing to darkness and dirt. In one of them
occurs a figure of our Lord giving the benediction in the
Greek fashion, and it is one of the many evidences
which may be adduced of the Eastern influence visible
here in so many respects, though I am not disposed to
lay so much stress upon it as some of those did who
engaged in the controversy it occasioned.^ In the
^ See M. Aymard's Album Photo graphique d' Archeologie Re-
ligieuse, and a communication from the same gentleman in the
Bulletin Archeol. vol. ii. p. 645. M. Aymard mentions one other
example, a diptych, figured in Montfaucon (L'Antiquite Expliquee)
vol. iii. p. 89, which dates from about a.d. 900. The hand at
Le Puy is larger than life, and has a double nimbus round it, the
inner yellow, the outer dark red; the hand is white and the ground
within the nimbus dark blue. The Secretary of the Comite His-
torique des Arts et Monuments considers that this representation
of the Greek mode of giving the benediction makes it certain that
the work at Le Puy is Byzantine in its origin. But one may, I
think, be allowed to doubt whether this conclusion is to be abso-
lutely depended on.
western porch there are also extensive remains of paint-
ing; the soffits of the arches in the third bay from the
west are ail painted, and so too are the walls over
the altars in the chapels of S. Martin and S. Gilles.
The painting was executed on a thick coat of plaster,
and the nimbi are of gold with lines incised on them.
No doubt the whole church once glittered with gold and
colour, and, seeing how fine its effect still is, we may,
aiding the indications still left with our recollections of
Assisi, of Venice, and of Padua, people the bare walls
once again, and bring before our eyes an interior of the
most gorgeous magnificence.
I may conclude what I have to say about the cathe-
dral with a few words about the sacristy and its contents.
The building itself is not more than a hundred and fifty
years old, and most of its treasures have been lost. The
most precious relic still left is a Bible, which, by a note
at its end, is stated to have been written by S. Theodulf ,
Bishop of Orleans, in the ninth century, and sent by him,
in accomplishment of a vow, to the shrine of Notre Dame
du Puy. It is a quarto of 347 leaves of very fine vellum,
some white with black letters, and others purple or violet
with gold or silver letters. It contains the Old and New
Testament, commentaries on the text, interpretations
of Hebrew, Greek and Latin words, and some poems by
Theodulf. The pages are interleaved with excessively
delicate tissues of various colours and patterns, which
appear to be of the same age as the book, and of East-
ern manufacture. They are made of china crepe, cotton,
silk, linen, poil-de-chevre, and camel's hair, of extreme
fineness, and of various colours and patterns.^ The
^ M. Aymard. See footnote on preceding page.
[224]
binding is, however, later, and of red velvet on cham-
fered oak boards, with good simple metal knobs. There
are also preserved here some wax candles, tapering con-
siderably in their length, and stamped with a pattern
made by a pointed instrument; and, finally, there is a
tippet embroidered with a tree of Jesse, said to have been
of Charlemagne's time. It is not so old as is said, but
may possibly be (though I very much doubt it) of the
twelfth or thirteenth century, but it has been much
damaged by removal from its original ground and by
partial re-working. The sacristy also contains a reli-
quary of very late sixteenth-century date, of which a
photograph has been published by M. Aymard, but
which was not shown to me; and an almost endless roll
of vellum illuminated with a chronological tree of the
history of the world.
How much has been lost may be guessed from some
statistics which I have come upon as to the number of
silversmiths and specimens of their work in Le Puy in
the Middle Ages: in a.d. 1408 there were no less than
forty resident in the city, whilst as to their work I find
in A.D. 1444 there were in the sacristy 33 chdsses and
reliquaries, 26 chalices, 11 statues of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, angels, and other figures, 10 candelabra, 9 crosses,
9 lamps, 9 mitres, crosses with their stems, episcopal
rings, crowns for the Virgin, censers, paxes, basins,
plates, books with covers adorned with chasings, pearls
and precious stones, and many like things; and in a.d.
1475 I find that Louis XI. gave 30 silver marks for a
canopy over the miracle-working figure of Notre Dame
du Puy, which was made by Frangois Gimbert, a silver-
smith of Le Puy. Other churches in the neighbourhood
[225]
have been more fortunate in retaining some of their old
plate, and a fair list might be made out, if I had time,
of their possession, many of which have been photo-
graphed by M. Aymard.
The building of the greatest interest, after the cathe-
dral, is the little church of S. Michel, which crowns
the rock fitly called the Aiguille. It is reached by steps
winding irregularly round the rock, to the shape of the
summit of which it has been most ingeniously adapted.
The oldest portion of the building is the square choir,
covered with a dome, under which stands the principal
altar. To the (ritual) east and north of this are apsidal
projections, and to the south an archway, which as it
agrees exactly in dimensions with the others, opened,
no doubt, into a third apsidal chapel, like the others,
whilst the entrance was at the west. This archway now
leads into a chapel of very irregular form, part of which
extends over the porch of entrance, in the arrangement
of which one may trace a certain kind of analogy to that
of the cathedral, though it is perhaps older. West of the
choir is a nave, somewhat like a cone in plan, and sur-
rounded by an aisle, from which it is divided by arches
supported on slender shafts. The choir has a square
domical vault, and the chapel over the porch a true dome,
the pendentives under which are just like those of S.
Fosca at Torcello. The apsidal chapels have semi-domes
and the rest of the church has a waggon-vault of very
irregular outline. An arcade against the walls of the
side corresponds with that between the aisle and the
nave. At the end of the nave is the tower, which was
probably built at a slightly later date than the main
building. The whole interior appears to have been
[226]
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richly painted, but faint indications only of this portion
of the decoration remain. In the central dome there is
a sitting figure of our Lord on the east side; emblems of
the evangelists are at the angles, and angels and sera-
phim around our Lord. Below these is a line of single
figures, six on each side — the four-and-twenty elders
— and below this again are subjects, the whole combin-
ing together to make a very interesting example of the
treatment of the Last Judgement. The dome of the
chapel over the porch is also painted with our Lord,
angels, and the evangelists.
The walls generally are built of lava, though a little
white stone is used in the steeple and for the sculptured
capitals.
The columns are very small, averaging eight inches in
diameter, and decrease considerably in diameter from
the base to the capital. The dimensions are exceedingly
small, the central choir being only thirteen feet six
inches in diameter, and the spaces between the princi-
pal columns in the nave varying from four feet to four
feet nine inches. The effect is rather that of a crypt,
but, in spite of its small size, it is solemn and religious.
The steeple suggests comparison, in some respects,
with that of the cathedral; the arches are built with
alternately light and dark voussoirs, and there is a
peculiar spire-light rising out of the parapet, as to the
antiquity of which I have my doubts.^
The only part in which any rich decoration has been
introduced is the front of the porch. It has a semicir-
cular arch, trefoiled above a horizontal lintel. The walls
^ The spire-lights in the cathedral steeple are very similar, and
the same form is seen in the steeple of the church of S. Marie des
Chases, in Auvergne.
[ 227 ]
are richly inlaid, and there is also a good deal of sculp-
ture. In the centre division of the trefoiled tympanum
is an Agnus Dei, and there are figures kneeling and
holding chalices within the cusps on either side. In the
five divisions of the arcaded cornice are — in the centre
our Lord, on His right S. Mary and S. John, and on
His left S. Michael and S. Peter. The mosaic is exe-
cuted with black tufa, red and white tiles, and a light
yellow sandstone. I know no other example in this dis-
trict of the use of tiles for inlaying, though M. Mallay
mentions one at Merdogne in Auvergne, which he says
is of the seventh century, though his dates are not al-
ways to be implicitly trusted; but at Lyon, in the ex-
tremely beautiful Romanesque domestic building called
the Manecanterie, and at a slightly later date in the
church of Ainay, in the same city, they are freely used
and with admirable effect. Odo de Gissey, in his history
of Le Puy, published in a.d. 1619, states that the first
stone of S. Michel was laid in a.d. 965, and that the
church was completed in a.d. 984, when Guy II. was
bishop of Le Puy, "as one may learn from the ancient
charter of its foundation, and from other manuscripts
which I have read." Brother Theodore, in his Histoire
de VEglise Angelique de Notre Dame du Puy, a.d. 1693,
says that the first stone was laid in August, 962, and that
his statements are "derived from the deed for the foun-
dation of the church, and from the book of obits in
the cathedral." These dates, if they refer to the existing
building, can only do so to the central portion with its
apses; the nave may have been added some time in the
eleventh century, and the steeple, perhaps, in the course
of the twelfth.
[228]
At the foot of the flight of steps which leads up to the
picturesque entrance of this little chapel are the remains
of a small detached building, probably a residence for a
sacristan or priest.
Very near the Aiguille of S. Michel is a curious
chapel. It is an octagon, with an apse projecting from
the eastern face, the octagon covered with an octagonal
domical vault, and the apse with a semi-dome. The
walls are arcaded inside and out below the vault, the
internal arches springing from engaged shafts in the
angles. Some of the arches outside are cusped in the
usual way, the cusping not starting from the cap with a
quarter-circle, but with a half-circle, the same as all the
rest. There are doors in the west and north sides, with
tympana filled in with mosaic, and the wall in the span-
drels between the arches outside is also inlaid. The ex-
terior of the apse is not visible, but I found, on making
my way into the cottage and barn built against it, that
it is perfect and undamaged. The popular opinion at
Le Puy is that the chapel is an ancient temple of Diana,
a fiction which a minute's examination destroys. M.
Didron maintains that it was a mortuary chapel, and he
refers to the chapel of S. Croix, at Montmajour, as
an example akin to this. M. Merimee, on the other
hand, says that the Templars had property in the Fau-
bourg de I'Aiguille, and compares it to the similar
oratory of the Templars at Metz, and he might have
added the curious Templars' church at Laon as another
case in point.^
This concludes my notice of early buildings in Le
1 Also the octagonal church, surrounded by an octagonal cloister,
of the Templars at Eunate in Navarre, and the church of Vera Cruz
at Segovia. — G. G. K.
[229]
Puy, and I have no more than time to catalogue the
church of S. Laurent, famous for the monument
of the Constable Duguesclin, a large second-pointed
building of poor character, and very Italian in its plan
and design,^ and with an enormous sham front; the
gabled end of the hospital chapel, with its fifteenth-
century bell-turret; a pretty little fountain, and a
large number of picturesque houses of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries; and a very scanty remnant of
a gateway at the bottom of the town, called, I think,
the Porte de Panessac, against the proposed destruction
of which I find M. Aymard protesting only a few years
back in the Bulletin Monumental.
About four miles to the north of Le Puy, close to the
ruins of the magnificent castle of Polignac, is the Roman-
esque church of the village. This is parallel-triapsidal
in plan, and the piers are planned, as are those in the
cathedral, in the shape of a cross, with columns in the
re-entering angles. The little church at Monistrol is a
good example of the Le Puy style applied to a very
small building; and the church at Le Monestier, which
has many features of similarity to the cathedral at Le
Puy, and is rich in early plate, ought not to be forgotten,
but I am unable to speak of it from personal inspection.
I will now turn to the churches of Auvergne. Though
numerous, they are so much alike in their character,
details, and design, that a description of their peculiar-
^ The elevation of one bay of the nave of this church is almost
exactly the same as that of S. Petronio, Bologna, though of course
on a very reduced scale. The plan is Italian also, the nave groining-
compartments being square, whilst those of the aisles are very
oblong; the contrary arrangement is, as I need hardly say, almost
invariable in northern Gothic plans.
[230]
ities need not be so long as might be supposed. These
churches all lie in a group together, Clermont-Ferrand
being their geographical centre,^ and to its north are
Riom, Volvic, Menat, Mozat, and Ennezat; to the
east Chauriat; to the west Royat and Orcival; and to
the south S. Nectaire, S. Saturnin, and Issoire.
Beyond the bounds of the province, at Brioude, at
Conques, at Toulouse, and in the church of S.
Etienne at Nevers, there are, among many others,
examples of precisely the same description of design
and construction.2
It will be well to describe the general type of these
churches, and then give a few notes as to particular
examples. In plan they consist of a nave and aisles,
western narthex and steeple, central dome and steeple,
transepts with apsidal chapels on the east, and apsidal
^ The cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, a fine fourteenth-century
church, is said to have been originally on the same plan as Notre-
Dame-du-Port; excavations have proved this to have been the case.
The present cathedral is almost precisely similar in plan to those
of Narbonne and Limoges (see Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire), and
is said to have been commenced in a.d. 1248 by Bishop Hugues de
la Tour.
^ I give a list of some of the churches which either belong to or
illustrate the Auvergnat type, with their dates, as nearly as I can
ascertain them: —Conques, completed by a.d. 1060. S. Etienne,
Nevers, commenced a.d. 1063, consecrated a.d. 1097. S. Eutrope,
Saintes, consecrated in a.d. 1096. S. Genes, a.d. 1016-a.d. 1120.
S. Front, Perigueux, A.D. 984 to a.d. 1047. Angouleme, A.D.
1109-1136. Fontevrault, a.d. iioo. S. Hilaire, Poitiers, a.d.
1049; Moustier-neuf, ditto, a.d. 1069-1096; S. Radegonde, ditto,
A.D. 1099. Riom (S. Amable), A.D. 1077-1120. S. Sernin, Tou-
louse, circa A.D. 1150. Cluny, commenced A.D. 1089; consecrated
A.D. 1131. Dorat (Hte. Vienne) and Benevent (Creuse), circa
A.D. 1150-1200. S. Germain-des-Pres, Paris, consecrated A.D.
1163. Le-Moutier (suburb of Thiers), A.D. 1016. S. Saturnin,
Volvic, Issoire, S. Nectaire, N.-D.-du-Port, Clermont, circa a.d.
1080-1160. Brioude, circa A.D. 1200. Orcival.
[231]
choirs with the aisles continued round them, and four
or five apsidal chapels round the aisle. Under the choir
is sometimes a crypt, in which, in addition to the columns
under the columns of the apse, are four shafts which
were intended for the support of the altar, and whose
presence certainly seems to suggest that it must have
bfeen a baldachin and not merely an altar that they
were designed to support.^
The naves are roofed with waggon-vaults, either with
or without cross ribs below them. The aisles have
quadripartite vaults without ribs, and the triforia above
them are roofed with a continuous half barrel-vault,
which resists the thrust of the vault of the nave, and is,
in truth, a continuous flying-buttress. The triforia
galleries are lighted with small windows, and this, the
only light analogous to a clerestory, being entirely inade-
quate, the effect of the nave roof is generally very gloomy.
The transepts are vaulted with barrel-vaults like the
nave, and in one or two instances are divided in height
by a sort of tribune level with the triforium. At Brioude.
where this arrangement is seen, there is an original
thirteenth-century open fireplace in the tribune, and M.
Merimee ingeniously suggests that the noble canons of
Brioude, for they all had the rank of Count, were in
the habit of hearing mass before a good fire; but it is
fair to them to say that the fireplace is in the east wall,
and that I saw no signs of an altar near it. The cross-
1 St. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Francorum) says that in a.d. 440
a church was erected in Clermont by the Bishop Namacius, 150
feet in length, 60 feet wide, 50 feet high from the seat of the bishop
to the vault; a circular gallery surrounded the choir, and on each side
were two aisles elegantly constructed. The church was in the
form of a cross, had 42 windows, 70 columns, and 8 doors. — L'Au-
vergne au Moyen Age.
[232]
ing under the tower is generally roofed either with an
octagonal vault or with a circular dome with an opening
in the centre. To resist the thrust of this dome on the
north and south sides the upper vaults of the triforia are
continued on between the transepts and the crossing, or
else vaults of the same section are introduced at a higher
level, where the central dome is raised (as it often is)
higher than the barrel-roof of the nave. The western
steeple, as well as the centre lantern, was sometimes
domed; and that at Brioude is a most valuable example
of the best type of dome in the district. The choirs are
vaulted with waggon-vaults terminating with semi-
domes, and the apsidal chapels are also each covered
with a semi-dome. The columns are generally square,
with half-columns engaged on three, and sometimes on
four sides, the latter only when the main vault of the
nave has transverse ribs below it. The columns round
the apse are circular, and detached shafts against the
apse walls carry the groining, and occasionally shafts
are introduced inside and outside the window-jambs of
the choir. In the nave and triforia, the windows are
generally very plain with a label containing a billet-
moulding, though the latter have sometimes, as at
Notre- Dame-du -Port and Issoire, jamb-shafts. The
capitals of the columns are carved with great richness,
sometimes with foliage, but often with Scripture sub-
jects. At S. Nectaire, for instance, perhaps the most
elaborate of all these churches in this respect (M.
Didron is my authority), the capitals round the apse
have subjects from the New Testament, four on each
capital. Frequently griffins and other animals are carved,
and in one case, at Brioude, is a demon holding an open
I 233 2
book on which is written the sculptor's name, which
does not seem to be a very complimentary arrangement.
It is in the earlier examples that sculpture of subjects
and figures is commonly seen, and, as the style developed
more towards Gothic, foliage took the place of subjects.
The arcades are remarkable for their generally lofty
proportions. They are of course not so lofty as pointed
arcades, but they have seldom, if ever, the heavy
and low proportion commonly found in the arcades of
Romanesque buildings. The arches are generally semi-
circular, and in the apses stilted.
The walls were probably covered with paintings of
Scripture subjects. At Brioude there is some of this
decoration remaining in a chapel dedicated to S. Michael
in the gallery over the narthex. The semi-domes of the
apsidal chapels in this church were also richly painted,
and in one of them traces of colour exist all over the
window-jambs. At Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, in
cleaning the nave, after removing seven or eight coats
of whitewash, considerable traces were found of gild-
ing on the capitals, and if this portion of the church
was thus highly decorated, there can be no doubt
that the colouring of the choir was at least equally
sumptuous.
A stone seat is in some cases continued all round the
walls of the apse and its chapels inside and out, and in
one or two cases the iron grilles still remain. The only
instance of the old pavement that I saw was at Brioude,
where it is composed of black and white stone in cheq-
uers; but this is a mere fragment and of poor design.
The entrance to the crypts is by stairs from the
transepts or crossing. The staircases to the upper
[234]
portion of the building are variously placed. At Notre-
Dame-du-Port they are in the middle of the north end
of the aisles; at Brioude, in the transepts, and also at
the west end; and in this church, an enormous wooden
stair leads from the south door up to the chapel of S.
Michael over the narthex.
On the exterior the designs are as much alike as in
the interior. The aisle- walls are divided into bays by
pilasters, above which arches are turned over the aisle
windows, and then above are the windows lighting the
triforia, which are generally more richly decorated than
those below, and form part of an arcade with carved
capitals and moulded bases. The walls are finished by
a boldly-projecting cornice supported on large corbels.
The transepts are buttressed at the angles, have a heavy
engaged column in the centre, from which two arches
spring, within which are pierced two windows; above
these are other windows, either two or three lights, and
the gable is either filled in with mosiac or pierced with
more windows. It is on the exterior of the apse that
the main effort at display is made, and the more ornate
examples of the style, as Notre-Dame-du-Port, Issoire,
and Brioude, are singularly rich in their effort. The two
former examples are of very nearly the same date (about
A.D. 1080 to A.D. 1130) ; the latter is considerably later
(probably circa a.d. 1200). I will describe Notre-Dame-
du-Port first. Here the transept-chapels are much
lower than those of the chancel, and the latter (four in
number) have cornices below the cornice of the aisle,
and gable walls are raised on the aisle walls to receive
their roofs, which would otherwise run back to the
clerestory. There are windows between each of the
[235]
chapels, and a great part of the beauty of the effect,
both internally and externally, is to be attributed to
this fact. I am not sure that the whole arrangement is
not a modification of the original plan, for on close ex-
amination I found that the labels of the large windows
between the chapels are returned and mitre with another
label against which the chapels are built, and which
might very well have formed part of an arcade pierced
at intervals with windows. In the neighbourhood,
about half-way between Clermont and Issoire, at S.
Saturnin, there is a church precisely similar to what this
would have been without its chapels, and the eccentric
position of the chapels at Notre-Dame-du-Port, there
being none opposite the centre,^ would be just such as
would have been rendered necessary if it had been de-
sired to add them after the work had progressed some-
what towards completion. In any case, however, there
could not have been any great interval of time between
them, and probably the chapels and the clerestory are
of exactly the same age. The whole of this apse is full
of beautifully inlaid patterns, made with red and black
scoriae and white stone. The enrichment is always con-
fined to the walls above the springing of the windows,
and does not generally extend quite to the cornice.
The spaces between the corbels under the cornice are
inlaid and the under side of the cornice is carved with a
sunk pattern and in some cases appeared to me to have
been coloured. Between the clerestory windows is
precisely the same arrangement of shafts supporting a
flat lintel under the cornice that I described in the first
^ S. Hilaire at Poitiers and Angouleme cathedral have only four
chapels.
[236]
portion of the clerestory of Le Puy, and here, as there,
the recessed wall is all inlaid.
At Issoire the general scheme is precisely similar.
Here, however, a square chapel juts out from the centre
of the apse, and the question arises whether this is an
original arrangement. The suggestion I should throw
out here, as at Clermont, would be that this is the only
original chapel, and that the others were added, just as
those at that place may have been. In both these
churches the buttresses are alternately rectangular and
circular, and the latter are always finished with carved
capitals.
S. Julien, at Brioude, is an example of a later date»
but it adheres closely to the same type, save that there
are five apsidal chapels; and though the windows are
much more elaborate, having jamb-shafts and moulded
arches, and being arranged in a regular arcade of triplets
in the clerestory, there is much less positive effect of
decoration owing to the comparatively small amount of
inlaying.
The churches at Brioude and Issoire are both on a
much larger scale and generally finer than Notre-Dame-
du-Port.
Lastly, I come to the steeples of these churches. Of
these there were generally one or two at the west end
and one over the crossing. I believe that not one of
those over the narthex now remains, though two or
three have been recently rebuilt. Those at the crossing
were treated in a singular manner. The eastern wall of
the transept, carried up much above the height of the
walls of the apse, forms an enormous mass for the sup-
port of the steeple, and is arched and pierced with win-
[237]
dows, or inlaid. The steeples seem generally to have
been octagonal, and to have consisted of two stages
arcaded and sometimes shafted at the angles, and capped
with stone spires sloping at an angle of about sixty
degrees. The steeple at Issoire is quite modern, and I
believe no authority existed for it. That of Notre-
Dame-du-Port is also new, the finish having been a
bulbous slated erection, with an open lantern at the
top, only a few years ago. Ancient examples, more or
less perfect, still exist at S. Saturnin, Ennezat, Orcival,
and S. Nectaire, and all of these are octagonal. These
churches tally with most other early churches in this
feature of central steeples.
I have not yet mentioned the roofs. In those which I
was able to examine, they are covered with slabs of
stone, supported from the stone roofs without any use
of timber whatever. The ridges are also of stone, elab-
orately carved, and the whole construction seems to be
as imperishable in its scheme as anything I know of the
kind.
The churches of the Auvergnat type present so little
variety, and were built within so short a space of time,
that a description of each of them in succession would
be wearisome. Of course there are some variations.
S. Amable at Riom, for instance, has the main
arches pointed, whilst the triforium arcade is round-
arched, and the vault of the nave is also pointed instead
of round. The vault of the nave of Issoire is another
example of a pointed vault. At S. Nectaire the
usual piers in the nave have given way to columns. At
Brioude, the style reached its perfection, and, indeed, I
know few effects more striking in every way than that
[238]
of the aisles round the choir; the roof, constructed as a
regular barrel-vault and without any ribs, seems to be
true in principle, and to carry the eye on even more
agreeably than our ordinary Gothic vaulting of circular
aisles, in which the eye is often distracted by numbers
of conflicting lines of ribs. The wall arcades between the
chapels recall the peculiar form of trefoil to which I have
before had to refer, and it is again met in the triforium
of the south side of Notre-Dame-du-Port.
The doorways appear to be of two kinds; one enriched
with sculpture, the other with inlaid work. Of the
former the south door of Notre-Dame-du-Port is a fine
example. The opening is square, covered with a pedi-
ment-like lintel, on which are sculptured in low relief
the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the
Temple, and the Baptism of our Lord. Above the lintel
is a round arch, under which is a figure of our Lord,
seated, with a seraph on either side. Against the wall,
below the lintel on each side of the door, are figures of
Isaiah and S. John the Baptist. In the much-altered
church at Mozat,^ near Riom, is a door of a somewhat
similar kind, and both are very like the doorway in the
north transept of Le Puy. At S. Nectaire is an ex-
ample of a door with the tympanum filled in with mosaic.
The masonry is usually of wrought stones squared, but
not very neatly put together. M. Mallay, the architect
of Clermont, who has restored some of them, ascer-
tained the curious fact that the stone-masons who
wrought the stone for the arches, and wherever else
^ At Mozat is a magnificent shrine of copper, enamelled, and at
S. Nectaire a variety of precious relics, crosses, reliquaries, and
the like, of which M. Merimee has given a list.
[239]
superior work was required, marked their stones with
the usual mason's mark, whilst those who wrought the
stones for plain walling, jambs, and quoins, made no
mark; and he found that precisely the same masons'
marks occurred at Issoire and Notre-Dame-du-Port ;
whilst the details and plan of Orcival, a few miles south-
west of Clermont, are again so identical with both of
these, as to leave little room for doubt that it was exe-
cuted by the same workmen; and I found another
evidence of the way in which details were repeated, in
some fine iron-work in the south door of Brioude, which
occurs again at Orcival.
The arches are generally built with small stones of
the same size and of even number, so as not to allow of
a keystone. M. Mallay says that the mosaic work in the
walls of these churches had wide joints of red mortar,
projecting from the face of the wall. These mortar
joints in the restored work appeared to me to be a bad
modern device, and I think that the evidence in their
favor ought to be very strong to be convincing.
The proportions of these churches are very similar.
At Issoire, the width from centre of aisle wall to centre
of nave column is one-fourth of the whole width, equal
to the width from centre of nave columns, and to the
diameter of the chapels in the apse, and one-half the
height of the aisle, and one-fourth that of the nave.
The height from floor to ridge is equal to the extreme
width at base of walls. At Notre-Dame-du-Port the
same kind of proportion exists, but from the outside of
the buttress to the outside of the nave pier is one-fourth
of the whole width.
I must now, before I conclude, say a few words as to
[240]
the date of these churches, for which M. Mallay ^ is
inclined to claim rather too great an age. He dates most
of them (conjecturally) in the tenth century, though he
admits that buildings in which the pointed arch is intro-
duced may be as late as the twelfth century; and he
considers the date of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont,
as circa a.d. 863 to 868. He founds this belief on the
fact that no lava was used in its construction, and that
the mosaics in its walls were formed of scoriae found on
the surface of the soil. He considers that lava was not
used until the eleventh century, but he must also prove
(which he has not done) that stone was never used in
Auvergne after the lava had once been admitted. M.
Mallay depends no doubt to some extent on the admitted
date of the nave of S. Amable, at Riom, where the
main arches are pointed, as a.d. 1077. But the presence
of the pointed arch proves nothing as to date, for we
see it long before this in S. Front, at Perigueux; and
in every other respect there is no doubt that S.
Amable presents every evidence of being older than
Notre-Dame-du-Port, and others of these churches, in
which none but round arches occur.
On either side of Auvergne there are other churches,
of precisely the same character as to plan and mode of
construction, the dates of which are pretty certain.
One is S. ^tienne, at Nevers, which was commenced in
A.D. 1063, and completed and consecrated on the 13th
December 1097. The plan of this church is similar in
nearly every respect to that of the Auvergne churches.
But, so far as one may judge of date from style, I should
^ See M. Mai lay's Essai sur les ^glises Romanes et Romano-
Byiantines du departement du Puy-de-Ddme. Moullns, 1838.
[241]
have no hesitation in saying that this church must be
older than either Issoire or Notre-Dame-du-Port. It is
ruder in character, there is very little sculpture on the
capitals, which are mostly a sort of rude imitation of
Doric, and in the transepts there are not only round
arches, but also some straight-sided.
At Conques, south of Auvergne, is another church on
the same plan as S. Etienne, Nevers, in almost every
respect, which there is little doubt was completed in
the first half of the eleventh century, by the founder
Abbot Odalric. Then again to the west there is the
church of Moustier-neuf, Poitiers, commenced in a.d.
1069, and consecrated in a.d. 1096, which has a chevei
evidently formed upon the same type as Conques;
and at S. Hilaire, in the same city, consecrated in
A.D. 1069, whilst the ground-plan of the chevet is just
the same as that of Conques, the nave columns are analo-
gous, there, to the half barrel-vaults of the triforium
in Auvergne. Now none of these churches is earlier
than the beginning of the eleventh century, and yet it is
hardly credible that a province shut in as Auvergne was
should have received a perfect and complete new style,
or invented one and carried it to the degree of finish
and perfection at which it had arrived when Notre-Dame-
du-Port was erected, without our being able to trace,
somewhere, the source from which it was developed. I
believe, however, that its origin may be traced if we ex-
amine carefully the architecture of the church of S.
Front at Perigueux, commenced in a.d. 984 and com-
pleted in a.d. 1047. This church, founded on the same
type as, if not copied from St. Mark's, Venice,^ exercised
^ St. Mark's, Venice, was commenced in a.d. 977.
[242]
a vast direct influence on the architecture of the day.
It is seen most clearly in churches which are, like itself,
cruciform, without aisles, and covered with domes. The
churches of Auvergne, and those other examples to
which I have referred, seem to me to be clearly derived
from S. Front, or from the Eastern models on which
it too was founded. The east end of St. Mark's presents
a circular wall, with a succession of semicircular recesses
or apses in its thickness. S. Sophia contains the
same feature, though differently treated. The Roman
circular buildings which have so much in common with
early Byzantine architecture have the same feature;
and S. Vitale, Ravenna, whether it is Romanesque or
Byzantine in its origin, is planned in a similar way. The
architect of S. Front evidently copied his apses from
these models, only converting the recesses of St. Mark's
into chapels projecting from the walls.^ The Auvergne
architects attempted to combine the plan of the basilica,
with its nave and aisles, with the features which were
seen at S. Front. They retained its external wall
and projecting chapels, therefore, but placed within
them the cluster of columns round the apse forming an
aisle between the chapels and the choir. By this simple
and natural modification of the S. Front plan to
meet the necessities of their triple-aisled churches they
at once invented, one may almost say, the perfect
French chevet. I know no other churches in France
of the same age which appear to have suggested so
much in this respect; and you will realize it if you
compare their plans with, among others, those of
^ Plans (to a uniform scale) of S. Mark's Venice, and of S.
Front, Perigueux, are given in Transactions, Vol. IV. n.s. Illustn.
xxviii., pp. 172-173.
[243]
Bourges cathedral, S. Pierre at Bourges, S. Martin at
Etampes, Chartres cathedral, the destroyed church of
S. Martin at Tours, and finally what is, I think,
almost the best complete Gothic plan, that of Rouen
cathedral. In every one of these we see the surrounding
aisle lighted by windows between the chapels, and the
chapels are distinct and well-separated on the exterior,
precisely as in these older churches in Auvergne. These
buildings, therefore, have great value, not only as illus-
trating a chapter of the history of our art, but because
the chapter which they do illustrate is just one of the
most interesting I can conceive; being that which ex-
plains how and by what steps Gothic architecture, of
which, as our national style, we are so justly proud, was
developed from the noble architecture of the old Romans
and Greeks, an architecture to which we owe, among
other things, this great debt of gratitude, that it natur-
ally led up to, and rendered possible, a Westminster, a
Chartres, an Amiens, and all the other glories of our
Christian architecture.
You will have gathered that there are many similar
features in the churches of the two provinces which I
have been describing. They are shortly these: vaults
and quasi-domes alike, and carried on the same kind of
squinches or pendentives; the decoration with mosaics
and its detail; the design and treatment of doors, either
sculptured or inlaid; the form of trefoil cusping of
arches, character of mouldings, sculpture, and decora-
tion with painting, all of these are the same throughout
both districts. The only marked difference, and it is
important, is in the ground-plan, the cathedral of Le
Puy having no chevet, but an east end derived from
C 244 ]
Romanesque rather than Byzantine precedents; and the
other churches in its neighbourhood are generally simi-
lar in their plan.
There are two important heads of my subject to be
shortly discussed before I conclude. One of them refers
to roofing; the other to coloured decoration. First, as
to roofing. I have already explained how this was exe-
cuted; let us now consider why the modes which we
see were adopted. At S. Front the experiment was
tried of covering a nave and transepts with a succession
of domes resting on pendentives, and supported on
pointed arches spanning the nave. These domes were
the only covering of the church, and were visible on the
outside as well as on the inside. At Conques, the archi-
tect, unable to carry domes on the comparatively deli-
cate piers which were all that were required for the
division of a nave from its aisles, contrived a barrel-
vault for his nave, the thrust of which was resisted by the
half barrel-vault of the triforium; a device not improb-
ably obtained from Byzantine churches: for if we com-
pare the section of S. Sophia with that of the cross-
ing and central dome of Notre-Dame-du-Port, we shall
find the semi-domes affording abutments for the great
domes in the former, absolutely identical in their section
with the half barrel-vault, which forms the abutment
on the north and south sides of the central dome of the
latter.^ But it was impossible to obtain any light for a
^ Mr. Fergusson gives a section of a cliurch at Granson on the
Lake of NeufchStel, in which the aisles and nave are roofed in
the same way as at Conques and in the Auvergne churches. He
says that the date of this church is the end of the eighth or beginning
of the ninth century, but I do not know what his authority for
this very early date is.
[245]
clerestory roofed and supported in this fashion, and one
is rather disposed to wonder how it was that so many
churches should have been built on the same gloomy
scheme. It was, no doubt, because in that part of
France wooden roofs were thought to be undesirable, and
no other economical way was seen of combining the
nave and aisles with what was intended to be an indes-
tructible stone roof. I need hardly say that at the same
period, in the north of France, in Normandy, and in
England, the nave was seldom, if ever, roofed with any-
thing but timber, and the aisles only were vaulted in
stone.
At Tournus, on the Saone, another device was adopted
to serve the same end as the Auvergne roof, but admit-
ting of a clerestory: this was the covering of the nave
with a succession of barrel-vaults at right angles to the
length of the church, and supported on bold transverse
arches. But I doubt whether it was ever repeated on
a nave, though there are several examples of aisles thus
roofed; ^ and it was, no doubt, ugly and ungainly. The
Le Puy architect devised yet another plan, which com-
bined to some extent all the others, and this was, as I
have explained, a succession of domical vaults, which,
while it was much lighter and more practicable (owing
in part to the difference of scale) than the S. Front
plan of a series of genuine cupolas, achieved, neverthe-
less, much of the effect that was there gained. A very
small portion only of the weight of the vault exerted a
direct lateral thrust, and it was possible, therefore, to
erect such a roof upon a clerestory; and though the
1 The Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Caen, has its aisles roofed with
transverse barrel-vaults.
[246]
transverse arches limit the height of the building in
one respect, in another there is no question that the
height is apparently much increased; for in looking
down the interior it is impossible ever to see the apex of
any of the domes, and the vault lost behind the trans-
verse arches gains immensely in mystery and infinity,
so as to produce the effect of a larger and loftier build-
ing than the reality. But, on the other hand, the dis-
advantages were great : the piers between the nave and
its aisles were so large as to render the aisles nearly
useless; and I can hardly wonder, therefore, that the
example set here was not generally, if, indeed, at all
followed.
It is doubtful where the kind of vault used at Le Puy
was first devised. The central dome of S. Michel
de I'Aiguille is, perhaps, the oldest of all, and this is,
in fact, a square dome, if one may use the expression.
The octagonal dome-vaults of the cathedral are prob-
ably a little later, but that over the crossing of the
church of Ainay at Lyon may possibly be older. A
comparison will make it evident that one is copied
from the other; and if the Le Puy vault was derived
from Lyon, it becomes possible to make the important
inference that it was an Eastern influence travelling
up the Rhone and distinct from that which is seen
at Perigueux, to which we owe this kind of domed
roof. Further evidence of this is found in the pen-
dentives of the dome at Brioude,^ which are identical
in intention with the plan of the church of SS. Sergius
* I ought to mention that this dome and the western part of
S. Julien at Brioude are much older than the choir, to which
I have before referred in speaking of the date of the church.
[247]
and Bacchus, at Constantinople, and yet quite unlike
the kind of pendentive common in churches of the
S. Front type. They are, in fact, the Le Puy and
Ainay pendentive reduced to the very simplest condi-
tions. The invention of the flying-buttress adum-
brated in, and possibly suggested by, the quadrant
vaults of Auvergne, finally stopped these various en-
deavors after new forms of roofs, and set men to work
to see how it might most readily be made to serve the
boldest and most airy system of design and construc-
tion; and in the rage for these, that old system of roof-
ing with domes, which had been, so far as is known, ^
first tried in France at Perigueux, and had afterward
spread with such rapidity over a very large district,
though with many modifications and variations, was
entirely ignored or forgotten. Is it well that we too
should ignore it? It is clear that the disciples of the
Gothic school may claim it as their own with just as
much truth as any other school can; and in some form
or other it is often so attractive, so majestic on a large
scale, so impressive even on a small scale, that few of
us who have much work to do should altogether eschew
all use of it, or treat it as though it were the exclusive
property of the architects of Classic and Renaissance
buildings. I do not feel, however, as most who write
on the subject seem to do, that our domes must invari-
1 This qualification is necessary, for the curious evidence which
M. Verneilh has given of the existence in the tenth century of a
Venetian colony at Limoges would be enough to make it probable
that, though S. Front is the earliest complete example extant of
a French domed church, others may have been built before it
and that some of those which M. Verneilh supposes to have been
derived from S. Front may really have been derived more directly
from the East.
[248]
THE WESTERN PORCH, SAUMUR
ably be supported on what are called true pendentives.
I think they are not beautiful, and I do not see that
they are especially scientific. The S. Front penden-
tives are mere corbellings out of the wall, and in truth
only imitations of pendentives. At S. Mark's they are
formed with a succession of arches of brick work across
the angle of the dome, though this construction is not
visible, and these, I suppose, are all wrong; but they are
very similar in their intention to the kind of pendentive
which I have had to illustrate to-night, and which is in
truth much more Gothic and picturesque in its character
than the true pendentive, for it admits of any amount
of decorative sculpture, and is really precisely similar
in its object to the squinches under our own English
spires.^
I will add but a few words as to the constructional
polychromy which distinguishes the exterior of the
churches throughout this volcanic district. So far as I
have seen, it was never, save in Le Puy cathedral,
admitted into the interior,^ and this is much to be re-
gretted, because it seems that the vaults of their naves,
the domes of their crossings, and the semi-domes of
their sanctuaries, would have afforded most admirable
1 There is no end to the diversity of the countries in which they
are found. In the cathedral at Worms there are squinches formed
by semi-domes. In S. Nicodime at Athens they are identical
with those of S. 6tienne at Nevers, and the same form is re-
peated in the domical vault of the steeple at Auxerre cathedral.
At Notre- Dame-du-Port, Clermont, the dome is circular, but the
squinches below are octagonal in plan, and the circle (which is not,
however, a true circle) is set upon the octagon.
' This statement must of course be made with caution, inas-
much as the invariable whitewashing of the interior makes it very
difficult to say what was the exact nature of the decorations with
which they were adorned.
[249]
fields for this kind of decoration. As I have stated, the
walls were once covered with painting, and as long as
this existed a mosaic of black and white and dull red
would have been valueless; but now that the iconoclast,
the whitewasher, and the restorer have done their worst,
the want of some decoration on the otherwise bald sur-
face of the vaults is painfully felt everywhere. Exter-
nally the coloured materials are used in two ways;
sometimes the whole of the wall is built of the dark
volcanic products, and patterns are obtained by the
occasional use of white stone or by alternate courses of
this and the darkest scoriae that can be found. Or else
the walls generally are built of stone, and the patterns
only formed with the dark material. Here, too, as is
the case in all old examples of coloured constructions
with which I have ever met, the colours follow the nat-
ural course of the construction. At Le Puy, for instance,
the courses are alternately light and dark, producing
bold horizontal bands of colour. The arch stones are
continued generally in one line of colour all across an
arch, even when it consists of several orders, and from
the arch on into the wall. The bands of ornament are
similarly arranged in horizontal stripes, generally placed
where they will dignify and give value to some very
prominent architectural member. They never occur
below the line of the springing of an arcade, and are
richest under cornices and between their corbels. And
when we consider the date at which this inlaid work
was executed, and compare it with what we know of
our own art at the same period, or, indeed, with that of
any other portion of the country which is now France,
we cannot too highly extol its delicacy and grace and
[250]
its carefulness of design and execution. I believe that
we may regard the whole of the work in Velay and
Auvergne as that of native artists. The detail of sculp-
ture is, when compared with such work as is to be found
in Provence, exceedingly rude. It is vigorous, indeed,
but wanting in that extreme delicacy and refinement
which marks the work of the early Provengal artists.
Were I to attempt to say anything about the buildings
of a later date, it would be impossible to do more than
give a catalogue, which would be as unintelligible as it
would be tedious. I will only say, therefore, on this
head, that Clermont cathedral well deserves careful
study, and is rich in very fine glass; that at Montf er-
rand may be seen as large a collection of mediaeval
houses of all dates as in almost any small town that I
know; that Riom possesses a fine S. Chapelle; and that
in the abbey of La Chaise-Dieu is still preserved a very
rare and complete series of tapestries of the sixteenth
century. Besides these, a large number of articles of
church-plate are to be found scattered up and down
in the village churches, and all this goodly store of
antiquities is set before you in a province whose phys-
ical features are so full of interest and beauty as in
themselves to make a journey through Velay and Au-
vergne one which none will repent having undertaken.
[251]
APPENDIX
I. S. Mary's, Stone
II. Churches in Northern Germany
I. Lubeck
II. Naumburg
III. Erfurt and Marburg
IV. Munster and Soest
V. German Pointed Architecture
I
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CHURCH OF S. MARY,
STONE, NEAR DARTFORD
(From the papers of the Kent Archxological Society, in Archseologia
Cantiana, 1860)
HAVING given these preliminary notes, illustrative of the history
of the church, it will be well now to give a detailed archi-
tectural description of the fabric, illustrated, as far as may be, by the
discoveries which have been made in the course of its restoration.^
The church appears to have consisted at first of a chancel, nave
with north and south aisles, western tower with the aisles prolonged
on either side of it, and western porch. The only subsequent addi-
tions were, in the fourteenth century, a small vestry on the north
side of the east bay of the chancel, and in the sixteenth century
the Wilshyre chantry, in the space between the vestry and the east
wall of the north aisle. In the fourteenth century (probably during
the bishopric of Haymo de Hethe) the windows at the west end of
the nave and aisles, and that in the west bay of the south wall,
were inserted; and at the same time the tower-piers were altered.
Probably they were, like the other piers throughout the church,
exceedingly delicate, and were thought to be not sufficiently solid
to carry the weight of the steeple; but at any rate it is clear that
the piers, with their capitals, are not earlier than circa a.d. 1350,
whilst the arches have earlier mouldings, and are of the same char-
acter as the rest of the church. It was at the same time that addi-
tional support was given to the eastern piers of the tower, by the
addition of bold flying buttresses, spanning the aisles, and visible
only on the inside of the church. The staircase to the tower, placed
against the south-west angle, appears to me to have been added
at the same time; whilst the upper part of the tower retains nothing
1 The subject of this paper, the probable identity of the architect
of S. Mary's with that of Westminster, interested Street greatly,
and he refers to it often. The careful description of conscientious
restoration has an interest for us as well. I have therefore reprinted
the greater part of it without troubling the reader by indicating the
trifling omissions. — .(5-.<^ f^.
[255]
but poor fifteenth-century work, and was probably entirely rebuilt
at that time, if, indeed, it is not a work of the seventeenth century,
undertaken after the fire which melted the bells, in a.d. 1638.
No other alteration was made in the church before the Reforma-
tion, and in 1638 the church suffered from the fire caused by light-
ning, mentioned by Hasted and in the Petitions to Parliament.
The roofs throughout must have been burned, and, covered as
they were with shingle,^ it is not surprising that when once set on
fire no part of them was saved. Traces of the fire are very evident,
particularly on the stones of the tower arches, which are reddened
by its action. We found also in the upper part of the aisle walls
portions of molten lead, which had run into the interstices of the
stone work at the time of the fire. The Petitions of the Parishioners
of Stone give most exact information as to what happened before
and after the fire; from them we learn (1) that before the fire the
stone groined roof existed on the chancel, but was much dilapidated,
and that the glass in the chancel-windows was in a sad state of decay:
(2) " that the chauncell received little damage by the late fire," yet
that a very large part of the brief-money, raised for the repair of
the church, was "uncessantly wasted and bestowed on the same,
soe that the church is like to remayne unfynished." This was in
A.D. 1640, and I think we may gather from it the exact date of the
alterations in the chancel. Its groined roof was taken down, its
walls lowered some five feet, the tracery of the window in the north
wall of the chancel partly destroyed in order to lower the walls,
and the window then built up; the east window and probably one
in the south wall destroyed, and imitations of perpendicular win-
dows — poor in character, but nevertheless very good for their
date — inserted in the place of the original windows in the north ,
east, and south walls of the chancel. The wall was rebuilt on either
side of these windows with numerous fragments of the old groining
ribs, thus affording the final proof that the windows were inserted
and the groining taken down at the same time. This discovery was
most grateful to me, inasmuch as it had been objected to the resto-
ration of the original windows in the chancel, that those which we
had to remove were fair examples of perpendicular work, and val-
uable in their way: in truth, they were examples of Gothic work in
the years 1638-40, of no value at all in relation to the architecture
of the rest of the church, though undoubtedly affording very inter-
esting evidence of the undying love of Gothic architecture in this
country, and of a not unsuccessful attempt at its revival.*
1 Will of John Bokeland, p. 10.
* One of these windows is still left in the south wall of the
chancel.
[256]
I have been unable to learn the exact date of the repair and re-
roofing of the remainder of the church. The living was sequestered
in A.D. 1650, and Mr. Chase must, I should think, in the ten years
between the petitions and this date, have put his church into ten-
antable condition. The nave roof appears to be of about this
date, and is framed with tie-beams, queen-posts, and purlines,
with arched braces above the collars, and, though not very orna-
mental, has been re-opened, with the very best result on the
general effect of the church. Subsequently to the erection of
the new roofs, they had been churchwardenized, in the usual way,
by the addition of plaster ceilings,^ and in a less usual way, by the
addition of a second roof over the other, and supported by it to the
serious damage of the walls and piers.* The vestry seems never to
have been repaired after the fire, and the Wilshyre chantry was
roofed with a steep lean-to against the north wall of the chancel,
and ceiled with a flat ceiling, for which I cannot be too grateful, as
it made it impossible to insert a new window at this place in the
A.D. 1640 restoration, and afforded me the only chance of discover-
ing and restoring the original chancel windows. Knowing this
before making my plans, I cut into the wall at this point, and was
rewarded, even beyond my greatest expectations, by the discovery
of the window-jamb, the monials, and a sufficient portion of the
tracery to enable me to restore it exactly to its original design in
every respect.
Having thus completed the notice of the alterations in the fabric,
it is time to give a proper account of all its architectural peculiari-
ties. The church is internally a rare example of a building as nearly
as possible in the same state as when it was first built. For a village
church its character is unusually sumptuous and ornate; and per-
haps there is no example of any first-pointed building in England
in which the grace and delicacy which characterize the style have
been carried to greater perfection. It is impossible, indeed, to speak
too highly of the workmanship or of the design of every part, and
1 It appears from a note by Mr. Heathcote, a former Rector, in
the parish book, that the church and chancel were ceiled in the
year 1777. This is the only note in these books which refers to the
building, if I except an entry in regard to the erection of a western
gallery, which has been removed in the course of restoring the
church. The old parish books are all destroyed, and no record
exists earlier than the end of the last century.
* "Less usual," but not unique. The church at East Barnet
afforded another example of the same mode of spending money in
the palmy days of ample church-rates and irresponsible church-
wardens.
C 2S7 ]
close as is its similarity in many points to our glorious abbey at
Westminster, it is a remarkable fact, that in care and beauty of
workmanship the little village church is undoubtedly superior to
the minster. This might well be, for with all its beauty, and with
all its vigour, the mere execution of much of the work at Westmin-
ster is not first-rate, and hardly such as one might expect in so
important a position.
The exterior of the church is exceedingly simple. There are doors
at the west end and in the west bay of the north aisle. In front of the
former there was a groined porch, of which a small portion of the
springer for the groining on one side only remains; this was brought
to light by the removal of a brick porch which had been erected in
its place. The string-course above the door is of the thirteenth
century, but the window above it of three lights, and three other
windows of two lights in the western bays of the aisles, are of the
fourteenth century, and the work, probably, of Bishop Haymo de
Hethe. The north aisle door is remarkable for its rich detail and
peculiar character. One of the orders is adorned with a chevron on
one face and with dogteeth on the other, and the inner order is
enriched with a rose. The dogteeth and the carving of the rose
are quite consistent in character with the date of the church, and the
chevron is no doubt a curious instance of imitation of earlier work,
rather than evidence of the doorway itself being earlier than the
rest of the church. The dogteeth are well developed, and the roses
are similar in character to those in the internal jambs and arches
of the transept doors at Westminster. The windows in the side
walls of the aisles are all alike on the exterior, simply chamfered
with labels over them, save the western window of the south aisle,
where there is no label. Those at the east ends of the aisles are
more important; that to the east of the north aisle being of four
lights, and that to the east of the south aisle of two lights. The
buttresses are very simple, of two stages in height, with plain weath-
erings. The north chancel aisle is the Wilshyre chantry, a late
third-pointed work, with a battlemented parapet. The erection
of this chapel involved the removal of one of the chancel buttresses,
and in place of it a very bold flying buttress was erected, which
spans the roof of the chapel, and adds much to the picturesque
effect of this side of the church. Its erection in the fifteenth century
was good proof, in the absence of any other, that at that time at
any rate the groined roof of the chancel was standing, for otherwise
its erection would never have been required. The removal of the
high, tiled, lean-to roof of the Wilshyre chantry has exposed the
flying buttress, the fine east window of the north aisle, and the still
finer window in the north wall, restored, as I have said, in exact
accordance with the window which I was so happy as to find there.
C 258 ]
The vestry, which forms a continuation of the north chancel aisle,
is lighted with two small windows, with ogee trefoiled heads. It
was a roofless ruin, but now it has been re-roofed, and, as well as
the chantry, is covered with a lead flat roof, which seems to have
been the original covering, and has the advantage of not conceal-
ing any portion of the chancel. The east window is new, of three
lights, corresponding in all respects with the restored north window,
save in its dimensions, which are rather larger. So much of the east
wall had been taken down and rebuilt, that it was impossible to
decide exactly whether the east window was originally of three or
four lights. I am rather inclined to believe that it was of four
lights, for towards the end of the thirteenth century it is not at all
unusual to find windows of an even number of lights in the east
end; and the arcade below the window inside is of four divisions.
Still, as there was no evidence whatever that this was the case, I
thought it, on the whole, safer to repeat simply that in which I was
certainly following the old architect, and the grandeur of the two
restored windows is so remarkable that one need not wish them to
be other than they are. In the south wall of the chancel one of
the windows inserted circa a.d. 1640 still remains; it is of some value
to the antiquary, and the contrast between it and the new windows, I
hope, will amply justify the course I have adopted, in removing its
two companions. The chancel buttresses are of great projection,
but all their weatherings and finishings are modern, and for lack
of funds remain for the present unaltered. The chancel is of two
bays in length, and between its western buttress and the south wall
of the nave is a space of six feet, through which, on the south,
there appears to have been a doorway.^ This would have opened
into the western portion of the chancel, close to the chancel arch,
and serves to prove that the chancel was not originally intended to
be filled with wooden stalls.
Before the restoration of the church, the roof over the nave was
steep, and flatter in its pitch over the aisles; and the chancel roof
presented two gables towards the east, and had a gutter over the
centre of the ceiling from end to end. All this is now altered. The
nave roof has returned to its one uniform slope, simple and dignified
in its effect; and the chancel walls, raised to their old height, so as
to admit of the restoration of the groining, and surmounted by a
high-pitched roof, finished with gable-copings and crosses, presents
again the outline which no doubt it presented before the fire in a.d.
1638. The chancel roof is now much higher than that of the nave.
^ John Bokeland, in his will, talks of the chancel door: I believe
he means the door in the Rood-screen, from the nave into the
chancel.
[259]
but I hope some day to remedy whatever defect there is in the ex-
ternal proportions of the building, by the removal of the poor modern
battlements, and the erection of a wooden spire, shingled after the
common Kentish fashion. The roof of the steeple was burnt in
A.D. 1638, and the heat having been so great that the bells melted,
it is fair to assume that the roof so burnt was rather a spire than a
flat roof, and, indeed, Hasted's expression that the "steeple" was
burnt, refers, it can hardly be doubted, to a timber spire.
I will now proceed to give a detailed description of the interior.
The nave is entered by the west door, under the tower. The piers
of the tower arches were re-cased in the fourteenth century, and the
capitals, carved with poor stiff foliage at the same time, afford a
marked contrast to the workmanship and design of the earlier cap-
itals. The three arches under the north, south, and east walls of
the tower are unaltered, of the same character as the arches in the
nave, and evidently earlier than the piers which support them.
The nave and aisles consist, in addition to the engaged western
steeple, of three bays. The most remarkable feature in the design
of this interior is the way in which the whole of the work gradu-
ally increases in richness of detail and in beauty from west to east.
This will be seen immediately on an examination of the building
itself. It is a very charming feature, and though one might have
supposed that it would not be so very uncommon, suggested as it
seems to be naturally by the respect which in almost all ages has
been paid to the altar end of the church, I believe I may affirm
that Stone church is unique in the studied way in which it has
been done. At the risk of being very tedious, I give a detailed
description of the interior, which will explain the variation of the
design to which I have referred:
Western Bay {north side). — The window is of two lancets, with
quatrefoil above: the inside arch chamfered, with a simple label
returned, without any carving at bottom. The jambs are simply
splayed: arches between nave and aisles moulded.
Middle Bay. — Windows of same shape, but the inside arch and
the quatrefoil are richly moulded, and the internal jambs are fin-
ished with a moulding and stone shaft, with moulded base and
carved capital. The label is enriched with dogteeth (it is the only
label in the church in which they occur), and is terminated with
heads of a queen on the right, and a king on the left, the latter
much defaced.
The arches between the nave and aisles are moulded, but more
richly than those in the western bay.
Eastern Bay. — Tracery of windows as before; the quatrefoil is
not moulded. Jambs have two shafts (one stone and one marble)
on each side, and a detached marble shaft in the centre. From
[260]
these a richly-moulded rear-arch springs, with tracery of two lights
corresponding with that of the windows. The whole composition
of this window is of extreme beauty.
The arches between aisles and nave in this bay are richly moulded,
and the centre of the soffit is enriched with a large dogtooth, mak-
ing it much more ornate in character than the other arches.
The windows in the south wall correspond generally with those
in the north, and exhibit the same graduation of enrichment. In
the window in the eastern bay there are two circular bosses of foli-
age in the spandrels of the internal tracery;^ in the opposite window
these circles are plain sunk circles without any sculpture: and it
appears that the architect, wishing to avoid the expense of sinking
the whole surface of the stone, so as to leave the sculpture in ad-
vance of it, let in his bosses into a rebate in the stone work. This'is a
very rare mode of construction, but appears to be perfectly lawful.
The east window of the north aisle is richer than any of the others
in the nave. It is of four lights, with two marble shafts in each
jamb, and one in the centre monial. The tracery has quatrefoiled
circles over the side-lights, under enclosing arches, and a large
cusped circle in the head : the arch is extremely pointed. The mould-
ings throughout are more delicate than anywhere else in the church,
and the large circle has a dogtooth enrichment. Externally this
window is exceedingly simple: the rich mouldings of the interior
being changed to a plain chamfer and broad flat tracery bars, very
peculiar in their effect. This window was entirely blocked up,
the cusping in the tracery concealed, and a four-centred brick arch
under it connected the aisle with the Wilshyre chantry. We have
taken away this brick arch, restored the old jambs and sill, and
supported them on a flat stone arch. The flat roof of the chantry
crosses the window just below the springing, and the portion above
is to be glazed with stained glass, whilst that below is open through
to the chantry. This was the best arrangement that could be made
with the double object of preserving the old window in all its in-
tegrity and yet making the chantry available for use by the congre-
gation.
The east window of the south aisle is much less magnificent than
that last described: it is of two lights, with two marble shafts in
each jamb, and an engaged stone shaft in the monial. Externally
this window is remarkable for the curious freak by which the outer
chamfer is gathered in with a curve some six inches on each side
just at the springing.
The chancel arch Is more richly moulded on the west face than
^ The central shaft and part of the internal tracery of this win-
dow are destroyed, and we have been unable yet to restore them.
[261]
any of the others, and has a band of foliage enrichments of very
magnificent character, very elaborate developments of the dog-
tooth; each being the general shape of a dogtooth, but filled up
with intricate and beautiful foliage. Above the chancel arch on
either side are two quatrefoils, within which are carved exquisite
compositions of foliage, arranged in the form of a cross. Brilliant
traces of red colour remain on these carvings. These quatrefoils
were completely concealed by plaster before the restoration, and
their re-opening has amazingly improved the effect of the wall above
the chancel arch. The side walls of the nave are finished at the top
with a moulded string-course, which is returned for about a foot on
either side at the east, and was probably continued all round the
church.^
The whole body of the church was covered with a coat of plaster.
Most fortunately this had been put up by some pious plasterer,
who, though he loved plaster well, loved the church better, and had
no heart for hacking holes in its walls to afford a key for his plaster.
The consequence was, that in an hour or two the whole of the walls
were stripped of their covering, and displayed their old masonry
fortunately intact. The walls above the arcades are faced with
chalk, regularly squared and coursed on the side towards the nave,
and built roughly on the sides toward the aisles, and are finished
with a course of Gatton stone below the string-course at the top.
The aisle walls are built of rough flint at their base; above this a
course of squared chalk below the principal string-course, and on this
there are traces of a thirteenth century pattern, painted in red.
Above the string-course the walls are built entirely with coursed
chalk, with quoins and dressings of Gatton stone.
The removal of the plaster between the two eastern windows in
the south wall disclosed a portion of an arcade. This seems never
to have been completed, for whilst the lower stone has the dog-
tooth enrichment of the arch finished, the upper stone has it simply
blocked out in the square: we found a corresponding fragment of
arcading built into the upper part of the chancel wall, and whilst
that which exists in the south wall appears to have been always in
the same place, it seems pretty clear that the other piece was never
fixed near it. The conclusion at which I arrive is, therefore, that
these are fragments of a work commenced but abandoned for another
scheme at the very time the work was going on.
Before going to the chancel a note should be added here, as to
the painted decorations which have been discovered. A portion of
^ I see no evidence of the existence of a clerestory; and the col-
umns are so delicate that I think it is impossible that it can ever
have been intended to erect one.
[262]
these are architectural in their character, the rest pictorial. Among
the former, is the running pattern forming a border under the
string-course in the south aisle. This I hope to continue all along
the wall, it being sufficiently clear in the one place where it occurs
to warrant restoration; and I have no doubt of the importance
attached by the old architect to decoration on a line so marked as
that of the principal string-course. There is also a faint border
round the chancel arch, painted in red, but rather later in its char-
acter than the string-course. The pictorial decorations are all on
the north aisle wall. Between the first and second windows is a
large sitting figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary nursing our Lord:
S. Mary has a veil, and is not crowned, and has a red robe and a
blue cloak. She is seated on a throne with shafts at the angles,
and the canopy is a gabled trefoil with triple pinnacles on either
side. As far as I can judge, this work appears to be very late thir-
teenth century or early fourteenth century work, and was evidently
rich in colour. The painting between the two next windows is so dam-
aged that I have been unable to decide what it represents. On the
wall east of the eastern window is another figure of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, also nursing our Lord, and seated under a trefoiled
canopy. No other traces of painting remain, save the colour, already
mentioned, on the sculptured crosses over the chancel arch, and
some painted crosses on the east wall of the chancel.
From this description it will be seen how systematically all this
portion of the work has been designed: subject to the carrying out
of the general scheme there are, however, some small peculiarities
which may point, either to the Gothic love of variety on the part of
the architect, or (and as I think, more probably) to the fact that
portions of the work may have been special offerings or donations
from different persons. Certainly I see no other way of accounting
for the repetition within a few years of two copies of the same painted
subject on the north aisle wall.
It is to be noticed that there is no sign of a piscina in either of
the aisles. I thought it possible at first that the arcade we discov-
ered in the south aisle might have formed a portion of the sedilia
for an altar in the aisle, but I hardly think now that this could have
been the case.
The chancel consists of a western bay of seven feet in depth, from
east to west, and east of this of two bays each 21 ft. 2 in. wide and
16 ft. 3 in. long, from centre to centre of the groining shafts. The
west bay has no windows, but there is, as I have said, a trace of a
doorway in the south wall. The other bays have each three divi-
sions of wall arcading on marble shafts, and the east wall has four
divisions of the same arcade. The spandrels of these arcades are
filled in with sculptured foliage, so beautiful and delicate in its exe-
[263]
cution, and so nervous and vigorous in its design, that I believe it
may safely be pronounced to be among the very best sculpture of
the age that we have in this country. I shall have to enter again
upon the subject of this portion of the work, in comparing it to the
sculpture at Westminster. The work at Stone appears to me to
be all by one man, and he seems to have been, if not the best of the
Westminster sculptors, at any rate equal to the best.
There are in this chancel twenty-one of these spandrels, all dif-
ferent in design, but all nearly equal in merit. The aggregate amount
of work bestowed here is as nothing compared with that which has
been lavished in scores of cases on sculpture in our new churches:
yet is there any one modern work which possesses a titheof the value
of this work? And would it not be far better to limit our nineteenth
century carvers of foliage to work rather less in amount, and consid-
erably more in merit, than that which they are wont to give us?
The sculpture at Stone was no contract work: no exhibition of the
greatest skill in covering the largest possible number of stones with
the greatest possible quantity of carving: and it was executed with
a delicacy of hand, a fineness of eye, a nervous sensibility so soft,
that no perfunctory imitation can ever be in the least degree likely
to rival its beauty. The small bosses of foliage which adorn the
smaller spandrels in this arcade are very well carved; and it is
worthy of remark that the same design is repeated several times.
No. 1 is repeated four times. No. 2 six times, and No. 3 seven
times; besides which the same design is used, simply reversed. It
looks as though a model had been cut, and then copies made of it.
The walls of the chancel are only 2 ft. 3^ in. thick, but the great
size of the buttresses amply compensated for this, and preserved
them from suffering at all by the thrust of the groining. Before
the restoration the state of the chancel was a sad falling off from its
old state. The arcade at the base of the walls was perfect all round.
The lower part of the groining-shafts remained, as also did the
whole of a cluster of shafts on each side between the short western
bay already mentioned and the next. The groining was all de-
stroyed, but marks of it remained against the wall, and it was easy
therefore to obtain its exact section. The treatment of the western
bay was peculiar. It was clearly never covered, as the rest of the
chancel was, with a quadripartite vault. The mark of a vault re-
mained against the wall above the chancel arch, whilst the side
walls showed that a barrel vault had sprung from them. The cluster
of three shafts between this bay and the next remained to be ex-
plained. One of them only was the groining-shaft answering to
the others; but upon a very close examination of a fragment of the
wall above them and of the marks on the caps themselves, I was
able to ascertain beyond doubt that the two other shafts had
C 264 ]
carried an arch moulded on the east face, the soffit of which,
continued westward, formed the pointed barrel-vault over the west-
ern bay. This has now been all restored, and with so much certainty
as to all its parts, that I trust it will not be opened to the criticisms
to which too many restorations are liable, of being rather ingenious
than true. I should mention that the new groining-ribs are of the
same section as the old. The window in the north wall has been
exactly restored after the old remains, some of which have indeed
been incorporated with the new work. It is of three uncusped
lights, with tracery composed of three cusped circles. The cusping
was let into a groove, and a sufficient number of fragments remained
to give the exact number of cusps, etc. On the exterior the jamb
has two engaged shafts, with caps and bases, and on the inside the
monials are well moulded and have each a detached marble shaft,
whilst the jambs have two marble shafts and are richly moulded.
Internally the arch and tracery mouldings are very delicate, whilst
externally they consist of bold chamfers and hollows only. The
detail of the sculpture of the capitals of the monials was managed
with rare skill, as seen by a fragment found in the north wall. This
window is now treated in the same way as that at the east end of
the north aisle, being partly below the roof of the Wilshyre chantry.
An old arch existed behind the arcade under it, and this has been
replaced by one of stone, so that the chantry is now sufficiently
open to the chancel for the purpose of use by the congregation.
On the south wall of the chancel is the old piscina, under one of
the divisions of the arcading. The arcade is continued across the
east wall of the chancel, in four divisions; and treated exactly in
the same way as at the sides; it is pretty clear, therefore, that it
can never have been intended to place the altar against the wall,
and it was no doubt brought forward a few feet (with perhaps
a low wall or reredos behind it) in the way so common in the case
of apsidal chancels, and of which we have examples at Arundel and
at Warfield in the case of square-ended chancels. In the two divi-
sions of the arcade we found, on removing the whitewash and plaster,
a painted cross pattee, enclosed within a circle: it was red on a
white ground, and outlined with black. Whether this was a dedi-
cation cross, or only painted in connection with the altar, it is
impossible to say.^
^ I cannot express my vexation at finding that in spite of my
earnest injunctions to the workmen to be careful, this painted cross
was destroyed. It is often absolutely impossible for an architect
to stop wilful destruction of this kind. I have sometimes thought
that it might be a good plan to draw up a contract for church resto-
rations, inflicting a heavy fine on the contractor for any such de-
struction of any old feature.
[265]
In the chancel floor are some ancient grave-stones, among which
those of John Lumbarde, Rector, a fine brass cross of the fourteenth
century, and the little brass of Sir John Dew, are well known, and of
much value. They have been carefully relaid in connection with
a new pavement round the altar. The altar-rail has also been brought
forward; the altar set on a foot pace about three feet from the east
wall, with a low stone perpeyn wall at its back, capped with marble,
and showing the old arcade above it.
It remains to mention a few ancient fragments which have been
discovered during the progress of the works.
They are:
1. A fragment of very richly cusped thirteenth-century tracery,
very delicately moulded. This has not formed part of a window,
and perhaps belonged to the reredos, if there was one.
2. A fine head of a monk (small).
3. A half-destroyed carved capital of a large shaft clustered of
three: it looks like the capital of a groining-shaft, but agrees with
nothing in the church.
4. One moulded marble capital, and two fragments of a marble
monial, with engaged shaft inside and out. There is no existing
marble monial in the church, and the only suggestion I can make is,
that possibly the same increase of enrichment that I have noticed
was carried on to the east end, and the east window executed with
monials entirely of marble; but on the other hand, this monial,
though of marble, is not so rich in detail and moulding as the stone
monial, with its detached marble shaft in the north window of the
chancel.
5. A portion of the lower part of a sitting figure of our Lord.
This figure is that of a man about four feet six inches in height.
The feet are naked and pierced with the wounds. There is no sign
of any place from which such a figure could have been moved. Its
date is about that of the church,
6. A spandrel of an arcade, sculptured with a portion of the resur-
rection of the dead. It very nearly fits the spandrel of the arcade
discovered in the south wall of the south aisle, and, in order that it
may be preserved, I have had it placed there. The treatment of
the bodies coming out of the coffins is good, and the work is about
the date of the church.
7. A large number of fragments of the groining-ribs of the chan-
cel, of the windows, etc. etc., were also found. The bulk of all
these were built into the upper part of the chancel walls, and into
the gable wall above the chancel arch, and were no doubt placed
there at the time of the alterations of the building, after the fire
in the seventeenth century.
[266]
Of the works recently executed in the church, it will be sufficient
to say, that the nave has been re-seated with open seats, and paved
with the best red, black and buff tiles. The eastern part of the
chancel floor has been repaved with marble and encaustic tiles, and
want of the necessary funds alone has prevented the re-laying of
the remainder of the chancel floor and the completion of the seats.
The lectern for the Bible is of oak. The whole of the chancel has
been groined in stone and chalk: the groining-ribs being of Caen
stone, and the filling in of the vault of chalk. I have been unable,
on account of the cost, to introduce any bosses at the intersection of
the groining-ribs; we found no remains of any, but as they were used
in the groining at Westminster Abbey, I should have preferred their
introduction. On the same account the wall-ribs are chamfered,
not moulded. The other ribs are exactly copied from the old frag-
ments found in the chancel wall, and I was also able to obtain the
exact height of the vault, and as nearly as possible the mouldings
of the bold arch on the eastern face of the waggon-vault at the en-
trance of the chancel. The east and north windows of the chancel
are both new, and copied from the old fragments found by me in
the north wall. A pulpit of stone, alabaster and marble, carved by
Mr. Earp, and the gift of the family of the late Archdeacon King,
is placed in the north-east angle of the nave. The window in the
east bay of the north aisle is filled with stained glass, and is to form
one of a series, those in the north aisle illustrating the miracles of
our Lord, and those in the south aisle the parables. This window is
the gift of Mrs Cooper, and is executed (as are the others) by Mr.
Wailes, of Newcastle. The east window of the north aisle is a me-
morial window to the late Archdeacon King, erected by his parish-
ioners: and the subject is, our Lord in Majesty, with angels on
either side. The east window of the chancel is also a memorial to
the Archdeacon, and erected by his family; it contains a long series
of subjects from the life of our Lord, in medallions, and is richly
treated in Mr. Wailes's usual style; and it is only to be regretted
that in brilliancy of colour and nervousness of drawing he does not
yet by any means equal the old school of painters on glass. The
altar-cloth is of red velvet, embroidered in the old manner by Mrs.
G. Murray.
I referred, in the earlier part of this paper, to the similarity be-
tween the detail of the work at Stone and that of the earlier por-
tions of Westminster Abbey; and before I conclude I will, as well
as I can, explain the extent of this similarity. Few subjects are of
more interest to me, and I suppose to all students of our ancient
architecture, than this of the extent to which the work of the same
artist may be traced in different buildings. I have been able, in a
considerable number of cases, to prove pretty clearly what I now
[267]
wish to prove about Stone and Westminster;^ but I need hardly
say that the evidence is always of a kind which it is extremely diffi-
cult to give in writing; though it is difficult to resist its force if the
two works are examined one after the other, and their special pecu-
liarities carefully noted. I will endeavour however to show the exis-
tence of something more than the ordinary likeness of all works of
the same date and style, between Westminster Abbey and some
portions of Stone church.
I. The Arcades round the Chapels of the choir at Westminster
are almost identical in shape and design with that round the chancel
at Stone. The proportions of their trefoil cusps are very peculiar,
and as nearly as possible the same. The spandrels are filled with
foliage carved exactly in the same spirit. The labels are termi-
nated upon small corbels level with the capitals: a very unusual
arrangement. The arcades rest upon a stone chamfered seat; and
the arch-moulds, though not the same, are of the same character,
and both of them undercut at the back.
II. Window Tracery. — The original window tracery at West-
minster is the same as at Stone. The windows in the south triforium
of the nave (four eastern bays) are of precisely the same character
as the window discovered in the chancel at Stone. The latter are
remarkable for the great width of the light (3 ft. 1 in. and 3 ft. 10
in. in the clear), and this is very characteristic of the Westminster
windows. The Stone windows are remarkable also for very broad
chamfered tracery-bars on the outside, corresponding with very rich
mouldings on the inside. The triforium openings at Westminster
are treated just in the same way on the side next the triforium, and
a comparison of the triforium of the choir and north transept there
with the east window of the north aisle at Stone would well illus-
trate the identity of character. The stone cusping in both is let
into grooves in the way common in early tracery.
III. The Sculpture of Foliage is very similar in both churches.
The spandrels of arcades are treated just in the same way: at West-
minster sculptures of subjects are introduced here and there in place
of foliage; at Stone all the spandrels are filled with sculpture of
foliage; but we found in the thickness of the wall one spandrel
sculptured with figures, which appears never to have been used.^
^ See particularly papers by me on Some Churches in Kent,
Surrey, and Sussex, in the Ecclesiologist of 1850, and On the Middle-
Pointed Churches of Cornwall, in the Transactions of the Exeter
Architectural Society, vol. iv.
2 There are one or two points which appear to me to make it pos-
sible that the sculpture of foliage was not done at Stone, but wrought
elsewhere and sent there to be fixed. The northernmost spandrel
in the east wall should be examined with a view to this point.
[268]
The foliage of capitals is generally similar, and the very remarkable
bosses of foliage in the chancel arch at Stone, arranged in something
of the outline of an enormous dogtooth, are all but repetitions of the
similar archivolt enrichments in the triforium of the north transept
at Westminster. The roses round the archivolt of the south door
at Stone are of the same kind as those round the inside arches of
the north transept doorways at Westminster.
The foliage carved in the form of crosses in the quatrefoils over
the chancel arch at Stone are repeated in a quatrefoil over the door
in the cloister at Westminster, leading to the private apartments of
the abbat. The crosses are, of course, not identical in their treat-
ment; but the idea is the same, and one of rare occurrence.
IV. The Materials used in the Abbey and at Stone are as nearly
as possible the same. The wrought stone work is executed in Caen
stone and Gatton stone, and a great deal of chalk is used for wall-
lining and groining, and all the shafts are of marble.
V. Finally, the same general system of proportion is observed
in the minster and the village church. In both, the width from the
aisle walls to the centre of the columns is equal to half the width of
the nave. At Westminster the height is given by three equilateral
triangles, whose base-line is the width across the nave from centre
to centre of the columns; and two of these triangles give the height
for the springing of the groining, and the third the height of the
groining to its apex. At Stone, if we erect triangles on the same
base-line, the first gives the top of the capitals of the nave arcade;
the second, within very little, the height of the top of the wall; and
the third may very well be supposed to have marked the height of
the ridge of the timber roof. The width of the bays in the nave of
Stone is equal to the diagonal of half the width of the nave; and
the width of the bays in the chancel is equal to the diagonal from
the centre of one column to the centre of the nave or aisle opposite
the next column; whilst the height of the chancel is given by two
triangles similar to those in the nave, whose base is the width from
centre to centre of the groining-shafts.
I do not wish to lay too much stress on any one of these points
of resemblance: it is not to be expected that two churches, built
by the same architect, so unlike in size, in position, and in dignity,
should show anything more than some general resemblance of char-
acter; but I cannot help thinking, that when I have pointed to such
a general agreement in the proportions, the materials, the sculp-
ture, and the details, as we find at Stone and Westminster, it would
be almost enough to decide the question, even without the final
and (as it appears to me) conclusive evidence afforded by the all
but exact identity of the cusping and the general similarity of design
in the wall-arcades in the two churches, which must either have
been copied one from the other, or designed by the same architect.
[269]
11
CHURCHES IN NORTHERN GERMANY
{From the Ecclesiologist, 1854-1857)
I
THE CHURCHES OF LUBECK
Three old cities far apart, across the whole breadth of a conti-
nent, enable us to form a fair judgement of what the whole of Europe
may have been in the palmy days of the Middle Ages. They are
Lubeck, Nuremberg, and Verona; each telling its own tale, each
marked with the impress of national peculiarity, and each remark-
able, among other things, the one as the city of brick work, the next
as that of stone, and the last as that of marble. In Lubeck nothing
but brick was ever seen; in Nuremberg, stone was used with an
excellence seldom rivalled; whilst in Verona, though brick was
most beautifully used, the great aim of its architects was ever to
introduce the marbles in which the district around it is so rich.
Each of these cities deserves a full and ample study, for each teaches
its own lesson, and that a lesson scarcely to be learnt elsewhere;
and if this evening I give you such notes as I was able to make in
the course of a short sojourn last autumn in Lubeck, it is not be-
cause I do not value Nuremberg and Verona much more, but be-
cause it would seem that if one were to write of all three, this is the
one with which one should commence, as nearest to and most con-
nected with our own country and style of architecture, and because
its features of interest are in some degree less remarkable than
those of the others, and one would wish to reserve the best for
the last.
In one respect, moreover, two of these cities may well teach us
a lesson. Nuremberg and Lubeck were to the world in the Middle
Ages what London, Liverpool, and Manchester are to the world in
this age: the very centres of all commerce for all Europe; and we
may surely not do amiss if we take to ourselves, and ponder well
upon, the lesson which the singular difference between their earnest-
ness in matters of religion and ours ought to teach us. There was
in these two old cities such an appreciation of the value of religious
ordinances, and evidently so very great a readiness to provide places
[270]
fe-.--^-..j^^l^
for their due celebration, that one cannot without a blush think
upon the vast difference which such a city as Manchester displays,
with its almost countless thousands of poor wretches uncared for and
unthought of, and without any power of putting foot even in the
sanctuaries of their God.
In the great Middle Age cities this never could have been the
case, for apart from the fact that their churches stood with their
doors ever open, while ours are ever jealously kept shut, they were
so vast and spacious, and so crowded together, as it seems to us,
that there never could have been a real difficulty in finding some
home for the feet of the weary, how poor and how miserable soever
they might bel
And Liibeck still shows this most grandly: you approach by a
railway through an uninteresting country, passing one of those
lakes which give much of its character to this dreary part of Ger-
many, and suddenly dashing through a cutting, and under the
shade of fine patriarchal trees which adorn on all sides the out-
skirts of the old city, you find yourself in such a presence of towers
and spires as can scarce be seen elsewhere in Christendom. A suc-
cession of great churches standing up high and grand above the
picturesque tall old houses which fringe the margin of the Trave,
two of them presenting to us their immense west fronts of pure red
brick, each finished with two great towers and spires, whilst others
on either side rear their single spires and their turrets high against
the sky, and here and there detached turrets mark where stands
some other old building soon to be made acquaintance with; and
all of these forming the background, as you first see it, to the most
picturesque and grand old gateway — I am bold to say — in Europe,
gives one a wonderful impression, vivid but dreamlike, and remind-
ing one of those lovely cities with which Memling and his contem-
porary painters so often delight our eyes.
The plan of the city is simple enough. One great street runs the
whole length of the peninsula on which it stands, from north to
south, finished by the Burg-Thor, a fine old gateway, on the north,
and by the cathedral and its close to the south. Right and left of
this main street are a multitude of streets descending to the water
which almost surrounds the whole town, and on the other side of
the water are immense earth-works, rising really into respectable
hills, and said to be the largest earth-works known; happily these
great mounds— no longer useful for purposes of defence— are
eminently so for ornament, and planted with great trees and laid
out with walks and gardens form one of the most pleasant features
of the place; on the outer side of those earth-works another line of
water gives one certainly a very watery impression of the whole city.
The main features of interest to an architect are in the principal
[271]
street. Beginning at the extreme south is the cathedral with its
two towers and spires standing alone and forlorn in the most de-
serted part of the town, and even in the busiest days of Lubeck
scarcely so near to the bulk of the people as a cathedral should ever
be; then on either side we pass the churches of S. Giles and S. Peter,
and going along under the walls of the picturesque old Rathhaus
find ourselves close to the east end of the Marien-Kirche — a cathe-
dral in dignity of proportions and outline, and here superior to the
cathedral in its central position and in its greater height and general
magnificence; next, the Katerinen-Kirche is left a few steps to the
right, then S. James's is passed, another tall spire, and then the
west front of the very interesting Heiligen Geist Hospital; and a
hundred yards further on we are in front of the relics of the Burg-
Kloster, and close to this find ourselves at the Burg-Thor, a pic-
turesque gateway second only in effect to the Holsteiner gate which
I have before mentioned as terminating one of the cross streets
which lead to the railway. The Burg-Thor stands just at the neck
of the peninsula, and beyond it is the Burg-Feld, a wood intersected
with paths, and looking rather like the Thier-Garten outside the
Brandenburg gate at Berlin.
And now to describe the architectural beauties of the town we
must go back to the cathedral, and as in duty bound begin with
what is at once the oldest and the chief in rank of the ecclesiastical
buildings.
The tradition is that this church, dedicated in honour of SS.
John Baptist and Nicolas, is built on the spot where Henry the Lion,
when engaged in the chase, fell in with a stag having a cross grow-
ing between its horns and a collar of jewels round its neck, with the
produce of which the church was first in part built. There is some
account of a church older than this, and octangular in form, having
existed near the cathedral about the middle of the seventeenth
century; it cannot however have been older by many years than
some parts of the cathedral, as the first foundation of the present
city seems to have been laid in the middle of the eleventh century,
and the cathedral was consecrated in a.d. 1170 by Henry, the third
Bishop of Lubeck, having been founded by Henry the Lion, who in
A.D. 1154 translated Gerold, Bishop of Oldenburg, and made him
the first Bishop of Lubeck; possibly the destroyed octangular
church may have been the baptistery of the cathedral, as at this
date baptisteries of this shape are not unfrequently met (e. g. at
Cremona and Pisa), and I know of but one case of a church of such
a plan.
Of the present cathedral, the most ancient portions appear to
be the lower part of the steeples and the main arcades throughout.
These are all Romanesque, though under the original arches pointed
[272]
arches have been since inserted. The piers are heavy and square,
and the whole effect is poor and ungainly.
Next in date is a magnificent porch on the north side of the north
transept, which is altogether about the best piece of architecture in
LiJbeck, and remarkable as showing much more freedom in the use
of stone than is found elsewhere. The shafts are of marble, and the
arches and groining-ribs are all of stone, and, on the exterior, stone
capitals and shafts are also used, whilst the brick work is far superior
to that in any of the later examples. I fear I must say that this
one remnant of the art of the thirteenth century is by far the most
beautiful thing now left in the city. The sculpture on the inner
door is very masterly in its character, but unfortunately the whole
porch is now most neglected and uncared for.
Besides this porch there is little to notice in the exterior, save
that the brick work of the transept front over the porch savours of
the Italian mode of treating gables with deep cornices and traceries,
and that the two great brick steeples at the west end are fine examples
of a kind of steeple of which the city possesses however others much
finer. The spires are not ancient; the whole exterior is of red brick.
In the interior of the church the most interesting features are
the choir-screen and loft, and the rood. The screen stands at the
east side of the transept crossing, whilst the rood is supported on
an elaborately carved beam, which spans the western arch of the
crossing, and the effect is most singular and certainly very piquant;
the whole being in a very late but good style, with figures remark-
ably well sculptured. Under the screen is an altar, and on either
side still remains another. They are of stone supported on brick
work, and there is no mark of piscina, or of lockers, or places for
relics in them. The rood, and the figures of SS. Mary and John,
are on a very large scale, so that altogether, with their supports, they
reach nearly the whole height of the arch under which they stand.
There are also throughout the nave of the cathedral a number of
very curious seats; they vary a good deal in detail, but their out-
line is similar, and their effect rather striking; I confess, however,
that I was sorry to see examples of fixed seats of such a date in a
cathedral church. In the nave there are some pendents for candles;
one an angel holding a light, and strongly reminding one of those
beautiful angels with candles above the stalls in the choir of S.
Laurence at Nuremberg; and the other, a much more elaborate
composition, and coloured richly in gold, red, and blue; it has two
sitting figures of Bishops under canopies, and bears three very large
candles. One of the great treasures of this church is the magnifi-
cent brass to Bishop Johann von Mull, and Bishop Burchard von
Serken, who deceased in 1350 and 1317. I was unable to make so
careful a rubbing of this magnificent brass as I could have wished,
[273]
but I have done enough to show how grand it is, and how very simi-
lar in its details to the famous Flemish brasses which remain at
Lynn, S. Albans, North Mymms, Wensley, and Newark. Like two
of these, of which we fortunately possess rubbings, it is remarkable
for being one great engraved plate, and not, as was the English cus-
tom, a plate cut out to the shape of the figure, and then inserted in
an incised slab; and compared with the S. Albans brass, which
hangs by its side, it will be seen that the detail is so exactly similar,
that there can scarcely be a shadow of a doubt that they were both
engraved by the same man. It is perhaps altogether the finest of
the whole, and if so, perhaps the finest brass in Europe. It is appre-
ciated by the sacristan, who demands a fee for lifting up a cover
which he keeps on it, and whose temper was of so difficult a kind
that I almost despaired being allowed to rub it. However, by per-
severing, I at last succeeded.
Lastly, there is in a chapel on the north side of the nave a most
magnificent triptych by Memling, almost unequalled by any work
of his I have ever seen. It has double shutters; on the outer, figures
of SS. Blaise, Giles, John, and Jerome, and inside are painted the
Crucifixion, and a number of subjects from the Passion of our Lord,
all worked together into one grand picture in a manner favourite
with painters of Memling's time, and not to be contemned because
no longer the custom of our artists, inasmuch as Memling, Van
Eyck, Giotto, and their contemporaries all did it, and what they
did we may well believe not to have been done without good reason.
The expression of all the faces is most careful, and the skill with
which portraits are preserved throughout all the subjects, as e. g.
of S. Peter, of Judas, and of our Lord, is very marvellous. They
were obviously painted from actual faces, and not imagined. The
colour of the whole is generally very rich and deep, the drawing very
vigorous, and the whole forms one of the most magnificent speci-
mens it is possible to imagine of the early German school.
I have forgotten to say that the font in the cathedral is of metal.
It is a bowl arcaded and supported on four figures of angels; but
it is not very good in its character; perhaps we might think much
of it here, but in northern Germany, where I had just been seeing
the wonderful fonts at Munster, Brunswick, and above all at Hil-
desheim, the metal fonts at Lubeck struck me as looking very poor.
I happened to come in for the end of a week-day sermon here,
and was rather amused, after it was finished, to find the Prediger
descending from the pulpit, and directing his steps towards me,
whilst the people went on singing: however, he turned into a great
sort of glazed pew in the choir-aisle, and there, having shut himself
in, he enthroned himself in a comfortable chair, waited for about
ten minutes until the sound of singing and music had died away,
[274]
and then stole back and out of the church at the west. It is curious,
in northern Germany, to observe how entirely, in public ministra-
tions, the Lutheran ministers seem to consider preaching their only
work; going in after the preparatory hymn is sung, and going away
as soon as their sermon is finished, without regard to the hymn
which always winds up their functions. In Liibeck there was a
curious madness about preaching: every morning, between eight
and nine, there seemed to be sermons going on; and as the congre-
gations are infinitesimal, they do all they can to keep a stray lis-
tener, when they can have him within their walls, by locking the
doors. Happily, I escaped, by judicious management, the sad fate
of listening to a sermon from any of these divines in black cloaks
and immense white frills, who look like so many repetitions of their
great prototype, Luther.
And now I must leave the cathedral, and getting over the diffi-
culties of the horrible pavement which distinguishes this end of the
city as well as may be, take you to the Marien-Kirche; the church
which, in one's first view of Liibeck, one naturally takes for the
cathedral, from its central position and general grandeur. The
whole church is built of red brick, though unfortunately, internally,
it has been daubed all over with a succession of coats of whitewash.
I was able to measure the ground-plan, which may be taken as a
type of the ground-plan most in favour in Lubeck, and indeed gen-
erally in this part of Germany. All the columns, arches, groining-
ribs, and even the window tracery, are built of moulded bricks;
and, as will be seen from the detail, the piers and arches are partic-
ularly well moulded and good. Not so the window tracery, which
is very plain, and like all brick window tracery, most unsatisfactory,
consisting as it does of three arched heads within the window arch,
without cusping or ornament of any kind to relieve its baldness.
The transepts hardly show on the ground-plan, and externally they
are finished with two gables instead of one, and are so insignificant,
consequently, as hardly to deserve notice. Between the buttresses
all round is a row of chapels, their external walls being flush with
the face of the buttresses. Among other good features in this church
are the Lady-chapel to the east of the main apse, and the late turret
over the intersection of nave and choir; and lastly, the two grand
steeples at the west end. This kind of steeple was not an invention
peculiar to Lubeck, but is a kind of which one finds many examples
throughout northern Germany. The earliest with which I am ac-
quainted are at Soest and Paderborn cathedrals, both of them very
fine, and much earlier in date than the Lubeck examples; and these
clearly have some affinity to the Lombard churches on the Rhine,
save that the continual repetition of stage above stage, exactly alike,
is a feature of their own, and one which the builders of the great
[275]
brick steeples in tlie fourteenth century always had before them.
Certainly, the two western steeples of the Marien-Kirche are very
noble, and make one admire immensely this kind of spire, which, as
you will see, rises from the angles of the tower and the points of the
gables, which are so great a feature as a finish to each face of the
tower. These great gables are generally filled in with tracery, with-
out much regard to uniformity or symmetry, but sometimes, as
in the noble steeple of S. John, Liineburg, most effective: the spires
in this case, and indeed almost always, are of timber covered with
copper.
It will be seen from the plan that the dimensions of this church
are very grand. The length is 280 English feet; height to vault,
108 ft.; height of aisles, 59 ft. ; the spires, 344 ft.
The church was founded circa a.d. 1276, the north-west tower in
1304, and the south-west in 1310; and the whole may, I think,
from its mouldings, etc., be taken as an example of Lubeck middle-
pointed.
In the interior arrangement there is no very distinct triforium,
though the clerestory windows have their inside arches lengthened
down to a string-course above the main arcade, and in the choir
there is a pierced parapet above this string.
The east window of the main apse, and the east windows of the
eastern chapel, are filled with exceedingly brilliant stained glass,
said to be the work of an Italian; it was brought in 1818 from the
Burg-Kloster church, which was destroyed at that time, and which,
judging from what still remains, and from the relics of its art treas-
ures, preserved here and elsewhere, must have been one of the
most interesting churches in the city. The three windows contain
the legend of S. Jerome, the legend of the finding of the Cross,
and the legend of S. Peter. They are said to have been done by
the son of Dominic Livi, of Ghambasso, near Florence, who, after
he had learnt his art and long practised it in Lubeck, went back
in 1436 to Florence, where he executed the celebrated windows in
the Duomo. I have never seen these Florentine windows, but,
judging from my knowledge of the very mediocre character of
Italian glass generally, I should say that there could be no improb-
ability on the face of a story which would account for really beau-
tiful glass being done at Florence. Certainly, this Lubeck glass is
very good and brilliant, and valuable, as being, with a little still
preserved in one of the windows of the Katerinen-Kirche, the only
old glass preserved in any of the churches in Lubeck.
The nave of S. Mary is pewed throughout, and encumbered at
the west end with a prodigious organ; but the choir is fairly per-
fect. It is screened in on all sides; to the west by means of a rood-
screen, similar in plan to that at the cathedral, but of earlier date,
[276]
and at the sides with screens mainly composed of brass. These
screens are very common in all the churches here, but these are the
best I have seen: they are very late in date, not at all satisfactory
in their design, and in all cases the cornices and the lower part of
the screens are of oak, the brass-work being confined to the uprights
and the tracery, if tracery it can be called.
In the choir there is a magnificent metal Sakraments-Haus, very
elaborate, and full of most delicate work; it has been shamefully
damaged, but enough remains to make one class it with the best
of these often beautiful pieces of church furniture. About twenty
feet in height, it stands on lions* backs, and finishes at the top with
the Crucifixion.
One of the relics still preserved in this church is a Dance of
Death, in a series of twenty-five paintings round the walls of a chapel
which forms part of the north transept; it is a very complete paint-
ing, and its date, which is said to be a.d. 1463, makes it one of the
earliest paintings of this very curious subject. Mr. Douce, in his
treatise on the Dance of Death, mentions older examples at Minden,
in the churchyard of the Innocents at Paris, in the cloister of the
S. Chapelle at Dijon, and that at Basle, which is the most famous
of all. Most, if not all of these, are, however, now destroyed,
and the interest of this painting becomes therefore the greater. It
is certainly very valuable; if for no other reason, for the variety of
costume, of every rank and order of men, which it contains, begin-
ning with the pope, the emperor, empress, cardinal, king, bishop,
duke, abbat, and so on to the young woman and the little child.
Besides these paintings are two by Overbeck: one in the Lady-
chapel, finished in 1824, of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem, is cer-
tainly very beautiful, in its calm simplicity and purity of colour,
reminding one much of Raffaelle's early style, or of some work of
that great Christian artist, Perugino; and therefore most grateful
to me, and far more pleasing than the other, which is a Piet^, painted
in 1847, and in a thoroughly different and much more naturalistic
style. In the first painting the Lubeck people recognise and point
out, with no little pride, Overbeck's father, mother, and sisters, all
of them — as also the great artist himself —natives of Lubeck,
and perhaps fairly enough introduced in this his offering to his
native town. A lion of the Marien-Kirche is the clock — one of
those clumsy pieces of ingenuity which so often annoy one on the
Continent. There is also a metal font, said to have been made in
1337 by one Hans Apengeter; but like that at the cathedral, not
very satisfactory.
After these two great churches, certainly by far the most inter-
esting church is that of the Minorite convent, S. Katharine, which
is in many ways so remarkable, as to leave perhaps a stronger im-
[277]
pression on one's mind than anything else in the city. It is a dese-
crated church, but desecrated happily in a quiet way; unused, and
not much cared for, but as yet not destroyed, and serving now only
as a kind of museum of old church furniture, great store of which,
from the Burg-Kloster church and elsewhere, is accumulated in
its choir.
The date of the foundation of this church is given on an inscrip-
tion near the door as a.d. 1335, and its founder Bishop Henry Bock-
holt; but an old chronicler, Reimar Cock, says that the guardian
of the church. Brother Emeke, pulled down the church in 1351,
and rebuilt it in three years more beautifully than before, with the
alms which, during the time of the plague, were given to the monks.
I have drawn out the plan of this church, and, with the help of
my sketches, this may, I trust, explain its extraordinary arrange-
ment. This consists in the elevation of the choir, with a kind of
crypt below it, above the floor of the rest of the church; the floor
of the crypt being level with that of the nave, and divided into
three widths with slender shafts, the whole groined, and when
seen from the nave, presenting certainly one of the most striking
and curious interiors I have ever met with. The west end of the
under church opens to the nave with three arches, looking just like
the ordinary arrangement of rood-screens in Liibeck; and this is
just what it is: the whole choir is simply a prolongation eastwards
of the rood-loft, and at the west end there is a raised screen sur-
mounting the three arches, out of which rises a most magnificent
and perfect rood, with SS. Mary and John on either side. The
entire absence of seats in the nave, the great height of the church,
the darkness of the long vista of arch and column under the choir,
and the magnificence of the rood, make this interior one of the
most satisfactory and least altered things I know; and if its arrange-
ment is not absolutely unique, it is certainly not far from being so.
In England I know nothing at all like it, unless such an example
as the little church at Compton, near Guildford, be taken, in which
there are indeed some points of similarity— the low sanctuary,
with its groined roof, and the chapel above opening to the church,
and fenced in with its low Romanesque screen-work; all this,
though on a far smaller scale, certainly tallies curiously with this
Minorite church at Liibeck.^
^ I need not say, to those who know the north of Germany, that
the arrangement of this church is, after all, only an exaggeration of
a not uncommon plan. The cathedrals at Hildesheim and Naum-
burg, the Liebfrauen-Kirche at Halberstadt, and many others, have
crypts, whose floor is but little lower than the floor of the church,
whilst the floors of their choirs are raised immensely, and so shut in
[278]
An iron grill shuts off the chapels at the east end of the under
church, and in the centre of these is a fine brass, of which I obtained
a rubbing. It is to a member of the Liineburg family, and contains
the figure of the burgomaster John Luneburg, who died in the
last quarter of the fifteenth century. The inscriptions are curious,
the name, etc., all in Latin, ending with " Bidde God vor em"; and
another ending "Orate: ah werltdu hest mi bedragen!" It will be
seen from the drawing of the interior that the whole detail is of a
very severe kind, — all brick, and alas! all whitewashed. The
access to the choir is by a staircase in the south aisle, which did not
appear to me to be old. There is a space of some ten or twelve
feet between the west side of the rood-loft and the choir-stalls, which
are returned; and into this space the staircase leads. The stalls
are old, and very good; and the whole pavement of the upper choir
is of tiles, of a peculiar and interesting kind, if only for its novelty.
The only pattern tiles are in the borders, the remainder are green,
black, red, and light red, made in various shapes, and very good in
their effect. One of the chapels in the Marien-Kirche is similarly
paved, but not on so grand a scale, or with so many patterns. The
only pavements at all approaching to the same kind which at the
present moment I can call to mind, are that which has been so
strangely — as it were providentially — preserved in the footpace
on which once stood the high altar at Fountains Abbey, perfect
and untouched, where all else is ruin and desolation; — and in those
most lovely marble pavements in S. Anastasia, at Verona. Some
of the arrangements of the patterns approach very near to these,
but how much more beautiful the marble of Verona is than the
tiles of Lubeck one can hardly say.
And with this ends all that one knows as positively belonging to
S. Katharine; for in this unused choir is now a store of triptychs of
that kind which, after some acquaintance with German churches,
one learns to tire of, covered with carving, quaint, and richly col-
oured, or painted in Scripture story or strange legend, well enough
in their proper place, and giving once doubtless great dignity to the
altars they adorned, but here — collected and set out for view as
a gallery of paintings— if not worthless, at best very unsatisfactory.
But besides all these triptychs, there is a large aumbrye, with its
old iron gates and locks still perfect, in which is a large collection of
portions of monstrances, chalices, crosses, and the like: many of
with solid stone screens and parcloses, that little can be seen of
them from the naves. The crypt at Wimborne Minster Is a rare
instance of the same kind of thing in England; but this is a middle-
pointed contrivance for creating a crypt in a first-pointed church,
which was never intended to have anything of the kind.
[279]
them very beautiful, but all damaged and in fragments. Among
other things I saw a curious leather bag for carrying books, with
an ingenious pocket for money contrived in its folds and very se-
curely fastened.
But what is most rare and curious is a collection of ancient linen
altar-cloths, which I had great trouble in getting a sight of, and
which I could not draw, as the curator of the museum insisted on
showing them himself, and when I wished to draw them, told me
that he had already himself drawn them: this, as may be imagined,
was a very poor source of comfort to me.
There was a corporal about 2 feet square, and fringed; along the
edge of which was worked an arcade with figures of saints, the
dresses stitched in a regular pattern all over, and the folds left
plain: the date of this was about A.D. 1280. There was another
embroidered corporal which I managed to get a drawing of: this
was 2 feet square, with a large cross in the centre and four smaller
crosses in the corners; the whole worked in a cross-stitch with blue
and red on the white linen. Date, I think, about 1450.
Then there were two linen cloths for the altar: one, 14 ft. long by
3 ft. 10 in. wide, with a great number of figures of prophets sur-
rounded with branching foliage; from the character of the figures,
I date this at about A.D. 1400. All the outlines of the figures, leaves,
etc. were marked with coloured ink borders on the linen before the
work was done: the hair and points of the dresses here and there
were marked with bright colour, but generally the work was all in
white thread, — the stitches rather long, and arranged in regular
patterns and diapers.
Another linen cloth of the same size has the whole history of
Reynard the Fox: a curious subject, it may be thought, for an altar-
cloth; but I may remark that I found the same subject in the bosses
of the under church.
Besides this there was a magnificent linen dalmatic with apparels
beautifully worked and fringed with white, red, white, blue, alter-
nately. The orphreys had been taken off. The apparels of the
sleeves were a succession of medallions, six to each sleeve, con-
taining the Twelve Apostles, and the apparel at the bottom of
the dalmatic had in front our Lord and two saints, and at the back
S. Mary the Virgin, SS. Peter and Paul. The work was most beau-
tiful, and, I have no doubt of the end of the thirteenth century.
I believe there were other things of the same kind, but I fear my
curiosity rather disgusted the curator, who was not very anxious
to let me see very much of these precious and invaluable relics.
The exterior of S. Katharine will be best understood by my
sketches. The most noticeable fact is that some of the tracery in
the eastern part is of stone enclosed within a brick arch, and ex-
[ 280 ]
ceedingly good in its effect; proving satisfactorily that this is the
real way to use brick and stone together. There is no comparison
between these windows and all the other windows in Lubeck. The
rest are all ugly: these quite beautiful.
The transept has a double gable, as in the Marien-Kirche, and
internally is arranged like an aisle rather than a transept. The west
front is curious and indescribable: an irregular assemblage of ar-
cades and windows without order or definiteness, but withal very
effective. And as will be seen from the ground-plan, the north aisle
being much narrower than the south produces of necessity a great
irregularity in the whole elevation, and this irregularity is so care-
fully managed as really completely to conceal the awkwardness
which would otherwise be very apparent. There is no tower, only
a turret on the roof, at the intersection of nave, choir, and transept
roofs.
In buildings connected with the church is a large library, some
cartoons of Overbeck's, and some work of Godfrey Kneller's, he,
as well as Over beck, having been born here.
The other churches are not very remarkable. S. Peter's has a
good steeple with metal turrets at the base of the spire, and I believe
there is a fine brass there, but I failed to see it.
S. James has a very plain brick tower, and a good triapsidal east
end, very much like that of S. Katharine. The steeple is crowned
with a modern spire: inside there is a late metal font, of the kind
popular in Lubeck— a large vat-like vessel standing on the backs
of four kneeling angels, and covered with small and ineffective
arcading with figures and subjects. There is a large organ of rather
early date, and two curious standard lanterns for carrying lights
in procession: they are of very late date, but still so rare as to be
worth notice.
S. Giles has no one feature of interest, save its very fine tower
and spire.
Of the hospitals the most curious is the Heiligen-Geist-Spital:
the ground-plan and general arrangement of which are most re-
markable. The chapel is the oblong building at the west end, only
two bays in length, but of great width: against its east wall is a
rood-screen and loft, under which is the altar, and, on either side of
the altar, doors which admit every one under the loft into the hos-
pital. This, like many of our old hospitals (S. Mary's, Chichester,
and Higham Ferrers, are cases in point) is one immense hall, 250 ft.
long by 40 ft. wide, and has down its length two passages, and four
rows of cubicles for the inmates, and accommodates no less than 150
poor people: truly a most royal provision for the poor. There is
an entrance at the sides, but the main entrance is through the
chapel, through which there is a constant passing, and it is there-
[281]
fore more like a great hall than a chapel. How much better is the
ordinary English arrangement (of which I saw a grand example at
Luneburg), in which the chapel is at the east end of the hall.
There the chapel sanctifies the whole, instead of being itself pro-
faned, as is the case at Lubeck.
The hospital was founded by one Bertram Mornewech, in a.d.
1286, and is similar in plan, I believe, to the great Gothic Hospital
della Scala at Siena.
In the chapel are some brass screens like those in the Marien-
Kirche, but inferior to them. The west front is remarkable and
certainly very picturesque, with its three gables and its multitude
of turrets.
The most interesting building left to be described is the ruin of
the Burg-Kloster. This was a Dominican convent, and at the
Reformation was converted into a hospital for the poor. In 1818,
a portion of the vaulting of the church fell in, and then they pulled
down the rest of the church, sending their stained glass and the organ
to the Marien-Kirche, and their triptychs and altar furniture to the
Katerinen-Kirche. The north wall only of the church now remains,
but this shows traces of stone windows enclosed within brick arches,
like those in the apse of S. Katharine, and its destruction is there-
fore specially to be deplored. The foundation dates from a.d.
1229. The rest of the conventual buildings still in great part re-
main, but so mixed up with other and modern erections, that it is
rather difficult to understand them..
There is, however, a fair cloister on the north side of the church,
groined throughout and tolerably perfect: out of this, on one side,
is a kind of open groined stall, which looks something like the am-
bulatories which are so beautiful a feature of our own abbeys; and
out of this ambulatory, one enters a large hall once apparently
divided by a row of columns down the centre. North of these
buildings is a room which seems to have been part of the refectory,
remarkable for an exquisite pavement of small tiles— red, black,
and white — arranged in an ingenious and intricate pattern, of
which I made a careful drawing. My drawing shows the entire
remaining portion of this pavement which, it will be seen, contin-
ued on beyond the present partition-wall. A central shaft is still
left, with an old oak sideboard framed round its base in a most
effective manner. In another part of the Burg-Kloster there is a
small fragment of similar pavement, which looks as if it had been
the hearth under a fire.
Near S. Giles's church there is another ruined conventual build-
ing, S. Anne's Kloster. This was originally a nunnery of "Claris-
sernonnen" (I suppose these were nuns of S. Clare, an order who
had a few houses in England), but has been converted intoa work-
[282]
house. Unfortunately a great fire in 1843 consumed the church,
and left nothing but the outer walls standing, and when I was there
it was used as a place for the workhouse men to break stones or
the roads. The church is said to have been designed and built by
one Synsingus Hesse of Brunswick, who came to Lubeck in 1502
with five assistants, and completed the work in 1510. With this
date the work tallies very well, though I confess there is no mark
of the peculiarities of a Brunswick architect, which, as must be known
to any who have ever seen that very remarkable city, are decided
enough. Part of the west front of the church of S. Anne was built
with courses of stone and brick, a most unusual arrangement in
Germany, though common enough in Italian pointed, and always
very striking in its effect; the domestic buildings retain a good many
groined rooms, and a simple cloister in very perfect condition.
We come now to the Rathhaus, whose long line of picturesque
front is so great a feature in the principal street of the city. Its
history is so confusing and its style so peculiar, that it is very diffi-
cult indeed to affix any certain date to its various portions. It was
burnt down in a.d. 1276, and there was another fire in a.d. 1358.
In A.D. 1389 there were considerable works executed, including the
famous cellars, whose still more famous wine was all cleared out by
the French, when they sacked the good city in A.D. 1806. The
portion of the Rathhaus to the south of the market-place seems
to have been built in 1442-44, and the alterations of the Borse
towards the street in 1570 and 1673; so that we may well expect a
confusing and picturesque mixture of works of various dates. The
earliest external portion appears to me to be the screen on the
north side in front of the two gabled roofs; and this and the other
great screens or parapets towards the market-place and towards
the street are the most picturesque portions of the building. They
are entirely executed in red and black brick, the cusping being
all done in moulded brick. As a rich piece of colour this work is
very valuable, but architecturally its sole merit is a kind of pictur-
esqueness, which it certainly has in great force.
The fact is that in northern Germany all the domestic archi-
tecture was very full of faults; the fronts of the buildings were very
seldom at all ruled by the roof line, and their stepped gables, tra-
ceried, mullioned, and pinnacled, had no reference to anything save
a desire to look well; and so here some of the most striking portions
of the old Rathhaus are done without any regard to constructional
wants, and simply as masks of the construction; the fronts are built
up to conceal the roofs, arcaded and pinnacled without meaning,
and in a style very elaborate as compared with the other brickwork
throughout the city.
A sketch of perhaps the most magnificent example remaining of
[283 ]
north German domestic architecture — the Rathhaus at Munster —
will show you how, even with the most beautiful detail and
the best possible sculpture, this faulty mode of designing was
always persisted in; from Munster in the fourteenth century
one may trace it going into the brick districts to the north and
— as at LiJneburg — filling entire towns with its extravagancies,
and then settling down, as we find it at Lubeck, into a regular sys-
tem of stepped gables and panelled facades, beyond which the dream
of house-builders never went. I confess to having been sorely dis-
appointed in the street architecture of Lubeck. In the first place
everything except the churches, hospitals, Rathhaus, and gate-
ways, is painted white, or whitewashed in the most ruthless man-
ner, and the architectural merit of the houses before they were
whitewashed must have been very small. The houses at the side
of the Heiligen-Geist-Spital are the best specimens of the kind of
elevation most in favour, and will, I think, quite justify my stric-
tures, though they are less objectionable than most, in that the
gables follow the roof line instead of being sham.
I have left until the last the town gateways, which are certainly
two of the most effective I have ever seen. The Holsteiner-Thor
has two spire-like roofs at its extremities, which are very effective,
and its front towards the town is really a magnificent specimen of
the good effect of a great quantity of arcading. The outer front of
the gate is much less ornamental. In the string-courses there is a
great deal of inlaid terra-cotta ornament. The date of this gateway
is about A.D. 1477. The Burg-Thor and the buildings on the town
side form about as picturesque a group as can well be imagined. It
has all been lately restored, and, I fear, painted: the colour of the
red and black bricks savouring to my eye uncommonly of artificial
colour; but one can scarce imagine anything more strikingly pic-
turesque than the whole group. The other side of the gate is
almost exactly the same; but standing by itself, without the
picturesque buildings on either side, is not nearly so effective.
All that I had heard of Lubeck made me promise myself a great
treat in the study of the old brick buildings and the old treatment
of brick. I must confess, however, that this was not so good or so
satisfactory as I had expected, and that it is certainly very inferior
to the Italian brick work. It is generally coarsely done, and there
is but little attempted in the way of tracery, and that little is never
very effective. I saw nothing, for instance, at all comparable to
such brick work as one sees at Verona, Mantua, and Cremona; and
I doubt much whether Germany produces any which can be com-
pared to it. Except in one instance, and then only to a very slight
extent, there is no attempt at all at mixing stone with brick, save
at the quoins of the towers, where there are always immense blocks
[284]
of stone, intended for strength, but contributing, I susp»ect, to the
weal<ness which is quite a characteristic of all the churches in
Lubeck, Hamburg, Luneburg, and generally throughout this brick
district. The brick churches of Italy are remarkable in that they
owe much of their beautiful effect either to the mixture of stone with
brick, or to the exquisite moulding of the brick, and the care and
delicacy with which it was built; and one observes that whilst in
Italy all the buildings have an air of refinement, in northern Ger-
many they have an air of great coarseness, to which, perhaps, the
entire absence of what can fairly be called window tracery in a
great degree conduces.
Something may, however, be learnt even from the failure of
other men, and so some points may well be attended to in this Ger-
man brick work. And first it teaches us, distinctly and unmistak-
ably, that brick is no material for window traceries; the necessity
of using it ends either in the repetition of very simple and ugly win-
dows, such as are almost universal in Lubeck; or, as in the Stadt-
Haus, and again in the very remarkable church of S. Katharine, at
Brandenburg, in the eternal repetition of the same small piece of
moulded tracery, which, of necessity not very good in itself, be-
comes, by much repetition, quite hateful. And the effect is painful
in the extreme upon the whole practice of art: in all cases, without
any exception, I believe, where men have condescended to attempt
to execute traceries or carvings in brick moulded in this way, the
tendency has been, naturally enough, to repeat for ever things which
by repetition become cheap. One moulded piece of brick tracery
would be dearer than one like it in stone; but multiply it a hundred
or a thousand times, and it becomes infinitely cheaper, but who can
say by how much more infinitely tedious and unartistic! So at
Brandenburg, crockets, crocketed gablets, component parts of tra-
cery, and the like, are repeated over and over again, in a manner
which is really marvellous; and because it was necessary to do this,
immense sham fronts, sham parapets, and the like, must be raised,
in order to display all the resources which were at their command.
Now this is very poor architecture, very vile art; and it requires
no argument to prove that it is only the natural and certain result
of the attempt to use materials out of their proper place, and in a
way in which it was never intended they should be used. Far worse
would be an attempt to mould clay, so that it should counterfeit
the work of nature; and so, in addition to the destruction of all art
by its endless repetitions, insult God's handiwork by counterfeiting
stone quarried from the bowels of the earth.
The Lubeck churches show us, however, in other respects, what
great things may really be done, and done well and naturally, in
brick. You may form mouldings to any extent, because each
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moulded brick tells its own tale, does its own work; and mouldings,
so far from not bearing repetition, gain by it. All the windows in a
noble church require varied traceries, but it were as well that no
two of them should vary in their mouldings. Here, therefore, the
reproductive power of the moulder is most valuable; so, too, is it
in all forms of ornament (as, e. g., the billet, chevron, and the like)
which become ornamental only by repetition, and not in any way by
reason of art or skill in the man who works them. These are abso-
lutely better in brick than in stone, because, as no thought and no
taste are necessary in the man who carves them, it were better the
human intellect should be as little as possible deadened by working
upon them. The windows of S. Katharine, Liibeck, show how these
moulded bricks may be used in conjunction with stone traceries,
and with admirable effect, when compared with the attempts at
tracery in brick which this and other churches here exhibit.
But one of the most important facts which we can learn here is,
that brick is not only good outside, but just as much inside a church.
All the Liibeck churches are built, inside and out, with red brick;
most unfortunately, this has all been whitewashed, but I think we
may have faith enough in the men who built them to be sure that
they would not have been built with brick had not the effect been
good. For myself, I am persuaded that they were right in so doing;
because I have seen in Italy the wonderfully solemn effect produced
in this way, and have since tested it myself. In truth, no red brick
building should ever be plastered inside, save where it is intended
to introduce paintings of some kind more brilliant than the colour
of the bricks.
On the whole, therefore, though the brick work of Liibeck is far
inferior, in delicacy and beauty, to that which I have seen in Italy,
there is much to be learnt from it, and much proof to be obtained, if
proof be needed, that brick is really a most noble and serviceable
material, and one which, wherever it is the material of the district,
ought invariably and unhesitatingly to be used.
But I feel that, in criticising its brick work, I have been led into
abusing old Lubeck almost too much. Perhaps I ought only to
express my grateful recollection of all the treasures which she still
possesses, — of her screens, her church furniture, her spacious
interiors, and her many picturesque features of antiquarian and ec-
clesiological interest, her triptychs, her brasses, and her gateways,
— rather than attempt to draw a parallel between her and Italy;
between the stern ruggedness of the north, and the sunny softness
and delicacy of the south; between, moreover, a city built as it
were in a day, — for Ltibeck's rise was sudden almost beyond all
precedent, without a history, and without older days to teach and
to correct her, — and a land whose memories of the past and asso-
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ciations with old art were, even in tlie Middle Ages, well nigh as
great, and as valuable in their influence on the mind of her people,
as they can be even at the present day. More just it is, perhaps,
only to be thankful for all the pleasures with which my three days'
sojourn in this noble old city was full even to overflowing; and
(forgetful of the faults of her architects) to dwell more upon the
lessons which their works cannot fail to teach us, if we will only
lovingly and patiently study and examine them.
II
NAUMBURG CATHEDRAL
I reached Naumburg late at night in a tremendous storm; but
the sun rose cheeringly, and I started early for the cathedral fearful
of disappointment, as I had spent half the previous day in a mis-
taken attempt to find something interesting at Merseburg, — a
place against which it is only right to warn all ecclesiologists. At
Naumburg my fate was happier. The first view of the exterior is
not very striking. A fair apsidal choir with a tower rising on either
side, Romanesque at the base, and finished in late third-pointed,
does not rise above the picturesque, and gives but small promise
of the excessive interest of the interior. The plan is curious. A
late Romanesque, or very early-pointed nave finished with eastern
and western apsidal choirs, and separated from both of them by
rood-screens; that to the eastern choir Romanesque, that to the
western of most exquisite early pointed, and both of them coeval
with the portions of the main fabric to which they belong. The
eastern choir extends across the transepts, and is raised consider-
ably above them, with solid stone parcloses, arcaded on the faces
towards the transepts with semicircular arches, a kind of parclose
not uncommon in the churches in this part of Germany.
Under the whole of the choir is a crypt entered from the tran-
sept, and in the angles between the transepts and the choir are
towers, the lower stages of which are open to the transepts and form
chapels, whose altars stand in small apsidal projections on the east
face of the tower. A door on either side of the sanctuary leads by a
staircase in the thickness of the wall to rooms above the chapels in
the tower. The entrance to the choir is through the old rood-screen
by doors on either side of the altar, and by doors in the parcloses,
reached by long flights of steps in the transepts. The nave is divided
into three groining bays, each bay subdivided and having two arches
into the aisles. The western choir has one bay and a five-sided apse.
On either side of it is a narrow passage leading to staircases which
lead to rooms above some chapels, which have now to be mentioned.
[ 287 ]
They form the base of towers at the west end of the aisles, but pro-
ject considerably beyond them: only one of these towers has
been built; the other is carried up and finished externally as though
it was a transept, and produces at first some confusion when seen
from the exterior. These tower chapels are very curious. That on
the south side has a circular central shaft, decreasing in size to the
capital, and the vaulting has four ribs springing from corbels in the
angles of the chapel in a semicircular arch to the cap of the column,
and there are no other ribs. In the east wall is a small semicircular
recess, in which still stands the original altar with a double foot-
pace. The north tower chapel is almost exactly like the other,
save that it has a polygonal central shaft, and the recess for the altar
is rectangular. Both chapels are lighted with small round-headed
windows in their western faces. From this description it will be
seen that the ground-plan of this church is so curiously alike at its
eastern and western ends, as to be somewhat confusing at first.
And now to describe this most interesting church in detail. The
eastern choir-screen is most remarkable. It has admirably carved
capitals, and its three western arches (which are semicircular) rest
on delicate clusters of shafts. The original doorways still remain,
and in front of them steps, arranged in semicircles radiating from
the centre of the door, which lead up into the choir. No doubt an
altar once stood under this screen, but this has been destroyed in
order to convert it into a pew I The front of the screen too is so much
obscured by a modern gallery, and by the reredos of the Lutheran
altar, that it is impossible to say how it was finished: there seemed
to be traces of a vesica with sculpture just over the centre arch.
Entering the choir by this screen, one finds all the old arrangements
undisturbed. Between the two western doors there are three stalls
with canopies, and on either side against the stone parcloses eleven
stalls and ten subsellae. In the midst stand three ancient, heavy
square desks for office books, and upon these five most magnifi-
cent books, well bound and of astonishing size, still maintain their
old place. They are all manuscript on vellum, and two of them
have very large illuminations of subjects, and foliage of very ad-
mirable and bold character. I never saw such magnificent books
on their own proper desks, — never, I think any of such grand size
anywhere. The stalls are not particularly good, and are of late
date, with immense finials, of a kind I had met before at Halberstadt.
A rise of several steps divides the choir from the first bay of the
sanctuary, which is long and without furniture, save some late stalls,
which do not seem to have any business where they are placed.
This bay of the choir terminates the transitional work, which is
carried throughout the whole church, with the exception of the
eastern apse and the western choir. It is of the earliest pointed,
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very simple and bold in all its details; the piers looking rather
like Romanesque in their section and capitals, carved in the
most admirable manner. The foliage is all disposed in circles,
being regular and geometrical and invariably kept severely and
carefully to a regular outline; it is an example of the very perfec-
tion of that kind of conventional foliage, of which some of the early
capitals at Venice are such admirable specimens, and I think in
no way inferior to them. The groining throughout is very simple,
with diagonal and transverse ribs. The eastern apse is an addition
in most admirable middle-pointed, and (save the upper stages of
the towers) the latest work in the whole fabric. The section of the
groining shafts is particularly elaborate and good; corbels of foli-
age inferior to the rest of the carving throughout the church sup-
ported figures under canopies at a height of about eight feet from
the floor, but the figures are all gone. A very bold string runs round
the apse at this point under a passage-way in the wall, which is
reached by a staircase between the choir and the tower-chapel apses.
The windows are of three lights, and have good geometrical tracery,
and the apse is well groined with boldly moulded ribs, the boss in
the centre being four ivy leaves. In the sanctuary stand four oak
sedilia of the thirteenth century, with open arcaded backs and
carved ends, the carving peculiar, but the whole a very remarkable
work and very perfect. The chapels in the towers on either side of
the choir are not in the old state, one being used for rubbish, and
the other as a vestry: above the former a room in the tower is used
as a receptacle for hardware! Perhaps the Prediger deals in it! The
crypt under the choir is very perfect and fine. We had an illumi-
nation of it, and consequently a careful examination. The capitals
are all carved, and the arches all semicircular. It is divided by
shafts, some of which are clustered, into three spaces in width, and
in the length there are two bays under the choir, then a solid wall
with a doorway, and then five bays, and an apse of three bays. The
old altar still remains.
In the transepts there is little to notice, save that there is an
old altar in each. The well-like effect of these German transepts,
in which the choir is continued across with heavy stone parcloses
of great height, is most unpleasant. In this case the parcloses are
no less than 16 feet high from the floor of the transept; and, owing
to the great elevation of the choir, the floor of the crypt is only 4 ft.
6 in. lower than the transept floor.
No one, going into the nave of the church as now arranged,
would believe that he was in a church of more than very mediocre
interest. Between all the columns are small tenements, painted
white, carefully roofed in and glazed, and papered with whatever
paper the fancy and good taste of their several proprietors suggest.
C 289 ]
In front of these are rows of pews, arranged longitudinally, and all
painted white; and as the aisles are by this arrangement practically
lost to the church, galleries are built in them, to supply the created
want.^ A white wooden screen behind the Lutheran altar conceals
the eastern rood-screen; whilst another white wooden partition, out
of the centre of which projects the pulpit, serves also to conceal
the rood-screen of the western choir. The whole arrangement is,
in short, just the most judicious that could possibly be imagined
for the entire annihilation of the architectural effect of the interior.
This western choir-screen is certainly the most striking I have
ever seen even in this land of screens. No description can, however,
do justice to its exquisite beauty, dependent as this is, to a great
extent, on the exceeding originality and beauty of the foliage, which
is all varied, and all executed from natural models. The doorway
is double, and rather narrow; the doors of iron, cross-framed; and
they form the only openings in the screen, the rest being quite solid,
arcaded on the eastern side, and on the western (that is, on the inside,
or choir side), remarkable chiefly for the exquisite open staircases
on each side of the door leading to the loft. On the eastern side,
against the doorway, are a Crucifix and SS. Mary and John; but
these seemed to be of later date than the door. The figure of our
Lord seated in the tympanum above is no doubt original; it is
very curious, being partly painted, partly carved, and reminded
me of an early picture, managed in the same way, which I saw in
the gallery at Berlin. Above the arcading, on either side of the
doorway, are a series of subjects, the execution of which (with the
exception of the two last, which are not original) is marvellously
good. They are, beginning at the south— the Last Supper, the
Betrayal, ditto (S. Peter smiting Malchus), the Denial of S. Peter,
our Lord before Pilate, the Scourging, Bearing the Cross. The
open staircases on the western side of the screen are remarkable
for the beauty of the succession of detached shafts, with finely carved
capitals, which support them.
There are no fittings in this western choir save the altar, the
mensa of which is 8 ft. 5 in. long, by 5 ft. 11 in. wide, and 3 ft. 8 in.
high; and this faces west, as all the altars throughout the church
do: so showing its back (in the centre of which is the usual closet)
to any one entering through the door of the screen from the nave.
It has a double footpace. The detail of this choir is earlier and
bolder than that of the eastern choir; the windows of two lights.
^ It is owing to this arrangement of the nave, and the conse-
quent uselessness of the aisles, that several of the old altars still
remain, one in each bay, against the north aisle wall, and one or
two against the south aisle wall.
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with very bold monials, and circles sexfoiled, witli soffit cusping in
the head. The groining-shafts are good; and, as in the other choir,
there is a very bold string under a passage-way in front of the win-
dows, at about 8 feet from the floor. The windows do not fill up
the whole width of the bays, and on each side have small open arches,
which add very much to the richness of the whole effect. Against
the groining-shafts are figures, very well sculptured, and standing
under canopies of very varied design, finished at the top with what
seem like models of churches. Some of the windows retain some
exquisite stained glass. The mouldings throughout this apse are
exactly like those of the screen, and the foliage was evidently carved
by the same hand, — that of as great a master in his day as was
the artist who carved the early capitals in the nave. I think I
have now described the whole of the interior.
On the exterior there is a large cloister (partly ruined) on the
south of the nave; half of this is pointed, the other half late Roman-
esque, It opens into the church with a small round-arched door, in
the third bay from the west; and on its east side into a large kind of
porch or narthex, south of the south transept, from which there is
a particularly grand doorway, with five shafts in each jamb, into
the transept. This porch is groined in two bays, and communicates
with other buildings to the south, one of which seems, by its apse and
pointed windows, to have been a chapel. These old buildings group
picturesquely with the east end of the church. The southern was
not, however, the only cloister; the good men of Naumburg seem
to have been specially fond of duplicates, and as they had two
choirs, two rood-screens, and two towers at each end, so they thought
right to have two cloisters. The northern cloister seems to have
tallied in size with the southern; but all that now remains of it are
the groining-ribs against the north wall, and the springers of the
groining throughout. The base-mould of the western tower is con-
tinued all along this north wall, and the groining springs from
corbels; all which makes it look as though it were a subsequent
addition: but its arches are nevertheless round, whilst, as we have
seen, pointed arches are used throughout the main arcade. There
are two doors from this destroyed cloister into the church — one
into the north aisle, the other into the north transept.
The western apse is remarkable, on the exterior, for the exces-
sively beautiful carving of its cornices; these are varied in every bay,
and, 1 think, the best I have ever seen. They are of that exquisite
imitation of natural foliage, springing upwards, and filling a large
hollow with its ramifications, which commends itself to my mind
as the most perfect type of cornice foliage. There is a somewhat
sitpilar carved string under the windows, equally good, but much
more simple. The buttresses finish at the top with delicate pinnacles.
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At the east end the detail is also good, the windows being well
moulded, and the buttresses finished with good simple niches and
figures. The apsidal projections on the eastern face of the towers
finish with pyramidal stone roofs against the towers, at a low ele-
vation.
The north-west tower is late, and has open turrets at its angles,
beginning at the second stage; it is picturesque, but not very good.
The upper stages of the eastern towers are also octangular, but
without pinnacles; and what ornament they have is of a very late
kind, and not effective.
Such is the cathedral of Naumburg — little known to, and scarce
ever visited by, English tourists; and yet undoubtedly one of the
most interesting and least altered churches in Germany: its two
rood-screens would be alone sufficient to give it high claims upon
our admiration, since they are, so far as I know, the two earliest
examples remaining, and certainly older than any quoted by Mr.
Pugin in his work on Screens. Besides this, the architectural value
of some parts of the building is so pre-eminent, as in itself to repay
a long journey.
Ill
ERFURT AND MARBURG
At Naumburg there was little, save the cathedral, to detain an
ecclesiologist. The Stadt-Kiiche deserved little more than a hur-
ried visit, though the singularity of its plan deserves a note. It has
an immense apsidal west end, a vast semicircle on the plan, em-
bracing both nave and aisles, and its choir is also terminated with
an apse. Beyond this the only remarkable features are the large
multifoiled arches which occupy the space between the windows and
the plinth in each bay of the eastern apse.
From the railway station one obtains a good view of the cathe-
dral steeples over the vine-clad hills on which Naumburg stands —
refreshing sight after the dreariness of the country generally in which
I had been journeying. From Naumburg to Erfurt the railway runs
through a really pretty, often very picturesque, country, with hills
and rocks by the river-side, ever and anon capped by those feudal
keeps in which all German rivers seem to be so rich; as picturesque
now as they were formerly advantageous to their predatory chiefs.
I had but two or three hours at Erfurt, but this was enough to show
me that much was to be seen. The Barfusser-Kirche was the first
that I saw — one of those immensely long churches of which Ger-
mans were rather fond; a nave and aisles, and an apsidal choir,
all groined at the same height, with windows of the same size and
character throughout, and the whole "restored" in that peculiarly
[292]
chilling fashion, which Lutherans are so singularly successful in
achieving, which makes one's recollection of such a church not
very grateful. There is, however, some old glass in the choir win-
dows, and a most prodigious carved and painted reredos behind the
altar, which, though apparently to some extent modern, is neverthe-
less striking in its effect. The entrance to this church is by double
doors on the south side which run up into and form part of the
windows, the same jamb mould being continued all round.
I had some difficulty in finding my way to the cathedral —
strangely enough too, for when at last I reached the Dom-Platz,
there, rising high into the air, and approached by an almost endless
flight of steps, stood the magnificent choir of the cathedral, sur-
mounted by its singular triple arrangement of central steeples, and
by its side, and on the same high plateau, the church of S. Severus
emulating, I should almost say, aping, the cathedral both in height
and design very curiously. The east end of the cathedral, built on
the precipitous edge of a rock, has been under-built with a terrace
supported upon arches, which, concealing the natural rock, gives
it an effect of extraordinary height. These arches have been all
modernized, but there are traces here and there which prove the
arrangement to be original.
Let us mount the flight of steps which lead by the entire length
of the north side of the choir to the porch, and we shall see reason
to class one at least of the architects of Erfurt, with the greatest
of his race. No position can be conceived which would present more
difficulty to one who wished to show the doors of his church to the
people who might gather in crowds in the Dom-Platz, and seeing
nothing but the tall east end of their church and the sharp per-
spective of its side, shrink from the attempt to find a door at the
end of the long flight of steps before them. Every one must have
felt how those great foreign doorways call upon all to enter; they
are always open, guarded on either side by kings, and saints, and
martyrs, and revealing glimpses, precious because vague, of glorious
interiors and worshippers within on their knees. They call upon
all to enter, and who can refuse? At Erfurt, however, one might have
deemed it impossible that people should be made to feel this, but
yet it has been done, and done nobly and magnificently. There
are no transepts, and so against the eastern bay of the north aisle
of the nave is set a triangular porch of grand size and lovely design
and detail. Its base rests against the church, and its two sides,
jutting out at angles of sixty degrees from the wall, show both from
the west and from the east the whole width of its two glorious
doorways. So, as one gazes up from the Dom-Platz, and wonders
at the singularity of the position of the church and the beauty of
the choir, one's eye follows up the track of those who ascend the
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toilsome flight of steps till it rests upon the doorway at their sum-
mit, and one is led at once to find one's way through its great open-
ing into the nave of the church. Sad to say, wanton havoc has
destroyed much of the more delicate ornaments of this most noble
piece of early fourteenth century architecture. Of the nave little
can be said, save that it is entirely unworthy and unsatisfactory;
between it and the choir is a great mass of wall, pierced only by a
narrow arch opening into the choir, and supporting a curious com-
bination of towers — a central tower rising from between one on
either side— in a singular and rather picturesque fashion of which
I recollect no other examples than the imitation of it here in S.
Severus, and the cathedral at Constance. The interior of the choir
is very noble; its elevation very great, and its windows of rather
late middle-pointed, full without exception of brilliant though late
glass; too rich in colour however for the traceries, which it quite
conceals, giving a useful warning to architects in dealing with
stained glass.
The only piece of old furniture in this choir of which I made a
note, is a curious figure in brass, supporting three branches for
lights, one in either hand, and one growing out of his back. The
effect of this is not at all satisfactory.
This cathedral is Catholic, as also is S. Severus and some of the
other churches, the Lutherans holding about an equal number.
S. Severus imitates the cathedral very curiously; it is within
some thirty or forty feet of its northern side, and has in the same
transeptal position a great mass of tower, the outer flanks of which
are crowned with tall spires, whilst from the intermediate wall,
and raised above the others, rises the central spire; the mass of
tower is smaller, but nevertheless by dint of its slated spires, S.
Severus manages to rise higher than the cathedral. As may be
imagined, the whole group is one of most picturesque character.
S. Severus has some very good middle-pointed detail, especially in
its window traceries.
It was late in the evening when I left the Dom-Platz, but I saw
hurriedly the exteriors of some eight or ten pointed churches.
They were mostly of the same date, circa 1320 to 1400, and of very
various degrees of merit. One — the Prediger-Kirche is the not
pleasant dedication by which it is now known — is of enormous length
as compared to its width and height: fifteen bays to a church consist-
ing of a not very lofty nave with narrow aisles is an excess of this
proportion; its length cannot be less than about 225 feet. Near it,
but apparently having no connection with it, is a detached campanile.
In one of Erfurt's many squares or market-places, is a good
pointed house, with a large bay window, and three traceried win-
dows, one on either side, and one above it in its gable end.
[294]
In another Platz is a church with two western steeples, one with
a spire rising from the gabled sides of the tower. Another church
occupies a triangular piece of ground, the tower being at the west-
ern angle, between two streets. It is desecrated, and I could not
get into it, but its internal arrangement must be most singular.
These hurried notes are all that I could make. I was homeward
bound, and obliged to travel all night to Marburg. So I did what a
pilgrim to the shrine of S. Elizabeth of Hungary ought, I suppose,
not to have done— I slept as the train passed Eisenach, and
neglected therefore, even to get a glance through the starlight of
the castle on the Wartburg, her residence and the scene of most of
the beautiful story of her life.
It was early morning when Marburg was reached. Under high
hills, covered with vine and picturesque in their outline, stands the
noble church, conspicuous as one first sees it by its two completed
and nearly similar towers and spires rising in all the beauty of their
deep-coloured stonework against the green hillside which rises so
precipitously close behind them. On the summit of the hill are the
tall walls of the fine old castle, and to the left of the church and
below the castle the town covers the hillside with the ramifications
of its old steep and narrow streets. The church is perhaps rather
too much outside the town for the use of the townspeople; but
then it was not built for them, and in the general view it certainly
gains much by being placed where it is.
And now, before I say anything about the church, two or three
dates, which seem to be settled beyond dispute, may as well be
mentioned.
S. Elizabeth of Hungary was born, then, in the year 1207, was
married when but fifteen years old, and ere she was twenty left a
widow, her husband having laid down his life in the third Crusade:
three years and a half of widowed life were all she saw before an
early grave received her; and from thence forward year after year
saw fresh fervour excited by the contemplation of her virtues,
and fresh enthusiasm awakened about the old city of Marburg,
in which the last years of her life had been spent in the practice of
austerity and self-denial such as the world has seldom seen. She
was canonized in a.d. 1235; and in the same year the church as
we now see it was commenced, and completed by about a.d. 1283.
More I need not say; for the life of her whose memory gave rise
to this grand architectural effort is foreign to my present purpose,
and moreover is too well known to need repetition.
Judging by the evidence of style — which is not however very
strong, as the whole work has been completed carefully upon a uni-
form plan — I should say that the work commenced at the east,
and was continued on westward, so that the west front, with its
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two towers and spires, was the latest portion of the work. I am
inclined to think, too, that the sacristy, a large building of two
stories in height, filling the angle between the north transept and
the northern side of the choir, is an addition to the original fabric,
but probably earlier than the steeples.
The plan shows a very regular cruciform church, the choir and
transepts all having apsidal ends, a large sacristy, and two western
steeples; the whole very regular and similar in character throughout.
The exterior of the church is perhaps, with the exception of its
west front, more curious than really beautiful. Throughout its
whole extent every bay is similar, and consists of two stages, the
upper an exact repetition of the one below, each lighted with a simple
two-light window with a circle in the head, and divided by a great
projecting cornice, the top of which is on a level with the bottom of
the upper windows. The nave and aisles are all groined at one height
without triforium or clerestory; and the outer walls are, therefore,
the full height of the groining of the nave. Now this endless repeti-
tion of the same windows in a manner so apparently unnecessary
was at first most perplexing to me, inconsistent as it seemed with
the delicate taste exhibited elsewhere by the architect; but I was
not long perplexed. The cornice between the windows was, in fact, a
passage-way extending all round the church in front of the windows
and, by openings, through all the buttresses: whilst in front of the
lower windows a similar passage, not corbelled out, but formed by
a thinning of the wall from this point upwards, again encircles the
church. The sacristy is the only portion of the building not so
treated. The church has not and never had cloister, chapter-house,
or any of the ordinary domestic buildings of a religious house, at-
tached to it; it stood on a new piece of ground, away from houses,
and with an open thoroughfare all round, and all this helps in the
solution of its singular arrangements. We have but to recall to mind
that the relics of S. Elizabeth were visited by more pilgrims for some
two or three centuries than any other shrine almost all Europe
could boast of, to see the difficulty accounted for. It was built from
the first to be a pilgrimage church, and carefully planned with an
especial view to this. No doubt it was a great shrine, round which
thousands of pilgrims congregated in the open air, to watch as pro-
cessions passed with the relics they came from so far to see, passing
by these ingeniously contrived passages round the entire church
again and again, seen by all, but unencumbered by the pressure ot
the multitude.
The whole arrangement is so curious that I have dwelt at some
length upon it, feeling that it certainly shows well how boldly a
thirteenth century architect ventured to depart from precedent
when he found a new want to be provided for, and when a before
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unthought of necessity had arisen. I need hardly say, that the
effect of the corbelled-out passage is to divide the height distinctly
into two parts, a division perhaps more difficult of satisfactory treat-
ment than any other that one can imagine. The only variety in
the tracery of the windows throughout the body of the church is,
that the centre window of each apse has a sexfoil in the circle in its
head, none of the other windows having any cusping whatever. The
moulding of the windows is very simple, — a very bold roll and cham-
fer; and it is noticeable that in the tracery the roll-moulding does
not mitre with the same moulding in the arch, but is just separated
from it, an ungraceful peculiarity; the roll-moulding of the tracery
is treated as a shaft in the monial and jambs, and has corbelled bases,
the effect of which is not at all good. The buttresses run up to the
eaves, but finish abruptly without pinnacles, nor is there any para-
pet. It seems probable that something must have been intended,
but px)ssibly never done; and I confess I should shrink from ventur-
ing now ufXDn the introduction of either pinnacles or parapet, and
I cannot but trust that in the extensive repairs now in progress,
restorations of this conjectural kind will not be attempted. Better,
in such a case, let well alone, rather than run the risk of destroying
everything by some monstrous mistakes!
The west front is quite a thing to be considered apart from the
rest of the church, later in character, and the work, I am inclined
to think, of another man, who did not only this but all, or nearly
all, the magnificent fittings of the interior. The first man worked
under the trammels of a transitional style, endeavouring after yet
not achieving the beauties which the second man was able, in all
that he did at a more advanced day, so completely to realize.
The west door at once fixes one's attention. It is very lovely:
the jamb perhaps too plain, and lacking mouldings between its
shafts, but the arch absolutely perfect; it has two rows of the fresh-
est and brightest stone foliage ever seen, and the tympanum —
diapered over one half with a trailing rose, and on the other with a
vine, both creeping naturally upwards with exquisite curve and
undulation, regular in their irregularity, — is certainly of a degree
of exquisite and simple beauty such as I have never seen surpassed.
In the midst of this bower stands a fine figure of S. Mary with our
Lord in her arms, and on either side an angel censing. As one
looks at the carving, one thinks of the prettiest perhaps of all the
legends of S. Elizabeth, and it may be that the sculptor, as he struck
out the bold and beautiful work, which even now surprises by its
beauty and its sharpness, thought of those roses of paradise with
which S. Elizabeth in the legend surprised her doubting husband.
Above this doorway a pierced parapet carries a passage in front
of the fine and thoroughly geometrical west window of six lights.
[297]
Another parapet, and then a row of traceries and canopies which
masl< the roof gable. On either side the great buttresses of the
steeples give an air of solidity and plainness to the whole elevation,
which I think very satisfactory. A two-light window on the same
level as the great west window, and very long narrow belfry windows,
also of two lights, are the only openings in the towers. The but-
tresses finish with pinnacles, and the towers with pierced parapets,
above which, on the cardinal sides, are gables with windows, and at
their summit an octangular open parapet, from which the spires
then rise without further break or ornament. The composition is
unusual and very good.
Besides these western steeples there is a turret of poor and mod-
ern character over the intersection of the transept and other roofs.
And now let us enter, and we shall find ourselves in what seems
like a very lantern; windows everywhere, tier above tier, and ad-
mitting a flood of light which is bearable only when — as happily
still in the choir — all the windows are filled with the richest stained
glass.
The architectural peculiarities of the exterior are as marked
but not as intelligible in the interior; and one cannot cease to
regret the effect of the reiteration of the same window everywhere:
otherwise, however, the interior is full of beauty; the nave piers
very simple— large circles with four en^ged shafts — very lofty
and with finely carved capitals. The transept piers are clustered,
and the groining throughout is very simple, but of exquisite pro-
portions.
And now I must go on to describe the fittings and arrangements
of this interior, which are so perfect as to make it, perhaps, the
most interesting and complete church in Germany.
The choir extends to the western side of the transepts, and is
finished towards the nave with a high stone screen, against the
western side of which is a large people's altar. The screen is tra-
ceried and panelled over its whole western surface, and surmounted
by a delicate open arcade finished with pinnacles and gablets; the
portion over the altar being elaborated so as to form a reredos
rather than a screen. The only openings in this screen are a row
of small windows (as one may almost call them), opening just
above the backs of the stalls, which in the choir are continued not
only on the north and south sides, but quite across the west side
also. The only entrance to the choir, therefore, is on either side
from the transepts to the east of the stalls. On the eastern face of
the screen, a kind of large ambon is corbelled forward in the centre,
just the width of the people's altar; and above this rose— I say
"rose," for when I was there, it was lying on the floor, as a first
step to "restoration," which may not, I trust, mean "destruction,"
[298]
— a grand tref oiled arch of timber, covered with very boldly carved
natural foliage, and flanked by two massive pinnacles. All trace
of the figures is gone, but there can be no doubt that this arch and
the pinnacles bore on their summits the Crucifix with the figures of
S. Mary and S. John; and, indeed, the marks of their having once
been affixed still remain.
In the choir there is a double row of stalls round three sides, the
subsellae having low original desks in front of them. These are per-
fect all round, and, as I need hardly say, valuable for their rarity.
The stalls are finely treated, and the upper row is well raised. The
effect of the whole is most singular and very new to an English eye,
for though, as I had occasion to show at Naumburg, and as I saw
elsewhere in the same part of Germany, stalls against the centre
of the eastern side of a screen are not uncommon, I have nowhere
else seen such a complete shutting-off of the choir from the
church as has from the very first existed here. There is a space
between the back of the stalls and the rood-screen, in which probably
an entrance was originally contrived to the ambo under the rood,
though of this no trace now remains.
There are no parcloses between the choir and the transepts, whilst
between the latter and the aisles of the nave there are only rude and
modern screens, without any trace of the original arrangement.
And now that we are in the choir, the most noticeable feature is
the altar with its reredos, and its great standard candles on either
side.^ The reredos is elaborately decorated with colour, and con-
sists of three very fine trefoiled arches with crocketed gables above,
and elaborate and lofty pinnacles between them. The spaces within
the three arches are much recessed, and ornamented at the back
with sculpture of figures in niches, and tracery; the whole very full
of delicate taste in its execution. The altar is perfectly plain and
solid, with a moulded mensa, and footpace of three steps in front
and at the ends. It stands, of course, on the chord of the apse.
The arrangement at the back of the reredos is most singular: there
are two lockers on either side, and in the centre a doorway, which
when opened discloses steps leading down to the space under, and
enclosed by, the altar. In this space there are five square recesses
below the level of the floor: three on the west side, and one at each
end; the dimensions of this chamber are 8 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in., and 7 ft.
3 in. to the under side of the mensa of the altar; the recesses in it
are 1 ft. 8| in. wide by 1 ft. 7 in. deep. But one of the most singular
^ I have given a drawing of these candlesticks for the Inslru-
menta Ecclesiasiica. They are not movable candlesticks, but reg-
ular fixtures to the pavement, and made in some kind of white
metal.
[ 299 ]
features in it is, that there were evidently originally sliding shutters
in front of each of the three recessed niches which form the front
of the reredos. These are all gone, but the grooves remain both
above and below, and leave not a shadow of doubt as to their former
existence. There are two grooves in front of each division, and of
course there are corresponding openings in the mensa of the altar.
The arrangement is so new to me, that it is difficult to say exactly
for what specific purpose it may have been made; but it seems
obvious that it might allow of great variety of decoration or illus-
tration of subjects suited to the varying seasons of the Christian
year, supposing the sliding shutters to have been decorated with
paintings.
To the south of the altar are oak sedilia — a long seat undivided,
but with five canopies above: the work all good, but defective in
not having its divisions marked through the whole height.
The windows in the choir are, as I have before observed, full of
fine stained glass, some of which is of very early character. The
lower tier of windows is filled with subjects in medallions, the upper
with two rows of figures and canopies — a satisfactory and common
arrangement in old work.
Some old lockers in the walls, and banners suspended round the
apse, serve to complete a most striking and long-to-be-remembered
toul ensemble.
Unfortunately there are no signs of any ancient pavement, un-
less we take for old the wretched gravestones of the Landgraves of
Hesse and their family, which almost cover the floor. They are
effigies of recumbent figures in not very low relief, but partly sunk
below the proper level of the floor and partly raised. One stumbles
over these wretched man-traps at every step, and wishes heartily
that such a device for damaging ankles had never been invented.
In the south transept there are a number of high tombs with recum-
bent effigies, beginning with one of early date and fine character.
The north transept, however, contains something better than these
monuments, and one of the greatest curiosities of the church — the
chapel, as they call it, of S. Elizabeth. It never had an altar, and
was not a chapel, but simply a very beautiful kind of tabernacle,
within which was deposited the marvellously beautiful shrine in
which were preserved the relics of the saint, and which — now re-
moved to the sacristy — is still the great treasure of the church.
The relics were all dispersed, I believe, at the time of the Refor-
mation, though the church is still held by the Catholics. This
tabernacle, if I may so call it, is a rectangular erection, narrow at
the east and west, and with its principal front towards the south.
A trefoiled arch on each face, supported upon clusters of shafts at
the four angles, forms the design, the arches inclosed within a square
[300]
projecting moulding, with their spandrels not carved but bearing
marks of painting. The great beauty of the work is the exquisite
foliage which is carved in such masses all round the arches and
elsewhere as quite to take the place of mouldings. All this foliage
is natural, much varied, and undercut with such boldness as to stand
out in very great relief. I would that every carver in England could
have the opportunity to study this exquisite work, and still more,
the sense to profit by it. All the openings are filled in with iron grilles;
and the whole is just large enough to contain and protect the shrine.
It stands upon double steps, which are prolonged to form a foot-
pace for an altar which has been built against its west side, and
which, on the south, are worn into hollows by the knees of pilgrims.
Above the stone work is an open wooden railing, apparently of
the same date; and this incloses a space which is reached by a
staircase from behind. In the reredos of the altar erected against
the shrine are some sculptures from the life of the saint, her death,
her burial, and the exaltation of her relics after canonization, etc.,
whilst on the shutters are paintings representing some of the more
remarkable subjects in her story.
The shrine has been removed for safety to the sacristy, and is
carefully guarded and fenced about with iron-work, as well it may
be. It is an exquisite work of the best period —circa 1280-1300 —
covered with the most delicate work in silver-gilt and adorned
profusely with jewels and enamels, and on the whole I think the
finest shrine I have ever seen.
The doors in the sacristy and elsewhere throughout the church
are of deal, and were originally covered with linen or leather, which
as far as I could make out was always coloured a bright red; it is a
most curious evidence of the extent to which colour was introduced
everywhere, and must have been most effective. It is not, however,
the only instance with which I have met; and I may mention the
magnificent north transept doors of the cathedral at Halberstadt as
examples of the same thing.
Between the north transept and the sacristy is a passage, which
leads to the external passages which I have already described as
surrounding the whole exterior of the church.
My notice of Marburg has already extended far beyond what
I purposed, though not beyond its deserts; and yet 1 cannot con-
clude without saying a few words about the castle, which so grandly
towers over the old tower and church.
The climb up to it is really a serious business; and when I
reached the summit I had to exhibit no little adroitness in passing a
sentinel who obstinately wanted to send me back, in order that
I might ascend by some more tortuous and more legal path than I
had chosen.
[301]
I went first into the chapel. This is raised to a considerable height
upon other buildings, and approached by a newel staircase. It is a
very curious and very satisfactory little building, its entire length
39 ft., and its width 18 ft. 6 in. There is a three-sided apse at
either end, and one bay only between them; this central bay has
projections on either side, which inside have the effect of very
small transepts, and externally are treated as bay windows. The
windows are all geometrical, of two lights, and very good detail.
Externally, there are buttresses at the angles of the apse, which
rise out of the much thicker walls of the rooms below the chapel,
and do not go down to the ground. In the eastern apse there are a
piscina and a locker. The old pavement still remains; it is all of
red tile, arranged in large circles, with tiles generally triangular in
shape and of various sizes. Unfortunately, this little chapel is full
of galleries and pews.
From hence I ascended to the Ritter-Saal, a fine large groined
hall, somewhat like the well known hall in the Stadt-Haus at Aix-
la-Chapelle. It is divided by a row of columns down the centre,
from which the groining-ribs spring, and is about 100 feet long by
42 feet wide. Each bay has a very fine four-light transomed window,
and the whole is of early date. Below it, on the ground floor, is a
smaller hall, the groining of which springs from a central shaft,
and the windows in which are of three and five transomed lights, and
of very early character.
The interest of both these halls is very great, as they are quite
untouched, and of a rare date for domestic work on such a scale.
The exterior of this portion of the buildings is very fine, boldly
buttressed, with great angle turrets, and occupying just the edge
of the cliff.
The castle stands upon a narrow prong of hill, very precipitous
on three sides, and all around its base the town clusters; on one
side is the grand church of S. Elizabeth, looking most admirable in
this capital bird's-eye view, and on the other a long flight of steps
leads to a church which from above looks very well, but which did
not repay examination, its only interesting feature being an old
Sakraments-Hduslein.
I walked back from the castle by a roundabout path all through
the old town, and reached my inn too late to get on to Frankfort
by the train I had fixed on; but I was not sorry, as I had an excuse
for getting some more sketches of the exterior of the cathedral, and
had all the more pleasant thoughts wherewith to solace myself as
I travelled through the dark night to Frankfort.
I think I have said enough to show that ecclesiologists may
depend upon pleasure of no ordinary kind in visiting such churches
as those of Naumburg, Erfurt, and Marburg. They are remarkable,
[ 302 ]
not only for their generally fine character, but more especially for
their exquisite sculpture and for the extent to which they have
preserved almost untouched and undamaged their extraordinarily
beautiful furniture and fittings; and are, therefore, of especial
value to us, who have so little of the same kind of thing left in our
own churches.
IV
MONSTER AND SOEST
In the course of the autumn of last year, I spent a short holiday,
not unprofitably, I hope, in the examination of some of the old
towns in the north of Germany; and, as the interest of the archi-
tectural remains in this district is very great, and our acquaintance
with them too slight, I cannot help thinking that a mere transcript
of my diary during the time that 1 was examining them may be of
some use and interest. I have already printed notices, drawn up
from the same journal, of the churches of Lubeck, and the cathe-
dral at Marburg; and I shall now employ myself in giving shorter
descriptions of the other chief features of this journey.
Crossing by Calais, and taking hurried glances only at S. Omer,
with its noble cathedral, and the fine relic of the abbey of S. Bertin,
remarkable among great French churches for its single western
tower, I went on to Lille, — a town whose interest to architects
just now is rather in the future than in the past, but whose church
of S. Maurice is a striking example of the difference in the concep-
tion of a town church on the Continent and in this country in the
Middle Ages. It has two aisles on each side of the nave and choir,
and is groined throughout. Here we should look on such a church
almost in the light of a cathedral; there, on the contrary, it is a not
very remarkable parish church. Some old brick work at the back
of the Hotel de Ville is the only other old feature which I re-
member in Lille; but its streets and market-place are busy and
picturesque.
From Lille, passing by Courtrai, I reaciied Ypres in time to
spend the afternoon in sketching and studying what is perhaps the
noblest example of the domestic work of Germany. Les Halles, as
this great pile of building is called, seems to have been a great
covered mart, rather than a mere town hall; and when I was there,
a fair was being held within its walls, and, filled with picturesque
groups of people, and stalls for the sale of every conceivable kind
of merchandise, the grandeur of its size and design was well seen.
The main portion of the building is of uniform early middle-pointed
date, and forms an immense and rather irregular parallelogram, en-
closing some long and narrow courts. The principal front towards
[303 ]
the market place is, by a rough measurement which I made, about
375 feet in length; very uniform in its design, but broken in the
centre by a fine lofty engaged tower, surmounted with a spire,
finishing in a sort of louvre, of modern character. The whole effect
of the building is inconceivably grand, leaving behind it in point of
general effect even (I am bold in saying it) the Ducal Palace at
Venice. In elevation the main building is divided into three stages.
The ground stage consists of a succession of openings with square
heads, trefoiled; the next of a long series of two-light windows with
quatrefoils in the head, the openings in which are square, the tra-
cery not being pierced; and the third stage has again an immense
succession of traceried openings alternately glazed and blank. The
whole is surmounted by a lofty traceried parapet corbelled out, and
the steep and original timber roof is surmounted with a ridge-crest
of stone, of more delicate character than I have ever seen elsewhere.
The front is finished at the angles with immense octangular pin-
nacles, corbelling out at their base from the wall, and the tower,
which rises two stages above the ridge of the roof, has also at its
angles similar pinnacles. The general motif of the entire front is
continued happily in the steeple, the faces of which are occupied
with rows of lofty windows of two lights. From the belfry, and from
within another corbelled parapet, springs the spire, which, at first
square, becomes, below the tourelle on its summit, an octagon.
Immediately behind Les Halles, stands the cathedral. This has
a fine western tower, built circa a.d. 1380, and remarkable for the
triple buttresses at its angles. The west door is double, and set
within an enclosing arch with the west window, in a common Ger-
man fashion. The interior is lofty and spacious, with cylindrical
shafts, whose capitals have simple foliage of the thirteenth century.
The triforium is good, and some of the clerestory (e.g. that in the
south transept) is also early and good; but the whole church is not
by any means of the first order. The south transept has recently
been very creditably restored, the new carving being executed with
much spirit. The east end is remarkable externally for its tall but-
tresses, without weatherings, and for the deep arches under which
the windows are set, and which give the building too much of a
skeleton effect to be pleasing. A rather graceful turret (of Renais-
sance character) surmounts the crossing.
The cathedral and Les Halles, though close together, are not
absolutely parallel, but the combination of the two buildings, with
their towers and turrets, and two other towers, is very good, and
gives an imposing effect to the general views of the old city.
It is to be observed, that though in Les Halles the pointed arch
and the very best window-tracery are everywhere used, there is no
possibility of mistaking it for a church, or even for a religious building.
[304]
There are many old houses in the town, generally of the sixteenth
century, with stepped gables, and four-centred window-heads with
carved tympana; but their effect generally is not satisfactory.
Between Ypres and Courtrai (whither I next journeyed) are
some large churches, of which that at Comines would, I think,
repay examination. Courtrai has not much to call for remark;
though its market place is quaint, picturesque, and irregularly
grouped, with a clock-tower, turreted at the angles and with a
spire-like capping, rising suddenly out from among its houses,
out of whose windows sound forth constantly those cheery chimes
which give so much colour to the recollection of all the towns in
this chime-loving part of the world. At the back of the market
place a fine middle-pointed church tower rises, capped with a most
picturesque slated tourelle. The church to which it is attached is
the largest in Courtrai, but not remarkable. It has an apsidal pro-
jecting chapel in the second bay from the west, noticeable in that
the axis of the apse is north and south. The other churches are of
little value, and much mutilated. Notre Dame has a western tower,
and a chapel added on the south side of the choir which has pinnacles,
and a bell-turret on the gable, of very good character.
Perhaps the most interesting building in the town is the town-
hall. It is of late date, and the tracery of the windows, and the fig-
ures which once adorned the front between the windows, are all
destroyed. The doors are original, and an old staircase with panelled
sides, and partly old metal balustrade, leads to the hall on the first
floor. This has a fine simple open roof of timber, with double collar-
beams and arched braces: this, I fear, is no longer visible, as, when I
was there, workmen were just about to begin the erection of a ceil-
ing under it, to make the room fit for the reception of the King of
the Belgians. In two side rooms there are very remarkable fire-
places, one of which is well known by Haghe's drawing. The finer
of the two is adorned with a profusion of sculptures representing
the Vices and Virtues and very striking in their treatment.
From Courtrai, a short journey by railway brought me to Tour-
nai — a town not, I think, so well known as it ought to be for its
magnificent cathedral — doubtless the finest, by very far, in Bel-
gium. The nave and transepts are Romanesque. In the former,
there is that quadruple division in height so frequent in the thir-
teenth century churches in the neighbouring part of France. The
transepts are very noble, and ended with grand apses, and both they
and the choir are very much more lofty than the nave. They owe
much of their grandeur to the number of detached shafts of great
size, and to the fact that the aisle, triforium, and clerestory, are all
carried round the apses. The choir is all of the thirteenth century,
and very lofty and light in its proportions. The windows are being
[305]
carefully restored; but some bad stained glass has been recently put
up. In the sacristy there is a little old plate, of which I may men-
tion a fine monstrance, and two shrines; one of which, of the thir-
teenth century, is one of the most exquisite I have ever seen, being
adorned with a great deal of enamelling and silversmith's work, of
most delicate character. There is also here a fine cope-chest; but I
found only one old vestment, — the orphrey of a chasuble, with figures
of saints; date about A.D. 1450; the rest were modern, and generally
very tawdry. But they possess here, in addition to these vestments,
an altar frontal, of great interest; it is embroidered on a white silk
ground, with a tree of Jesse: the figures are well executed in high
relief, and the effect of the whole, with the stiff conventional arms
of the tree encircling the figures, is very striking. The embroidery
is executed in the same way as our old English work; but I never
saw any figures worked with so much spirit or so much character
in their faces. The old fringe of red silk over gold thread remains.
The external view of the cathedral presents one of the most sin-
gular, and, at the same time, most grand assemblages of steeples I
have ever seen. There are two tall towers, richly arcaded and
capped with square slated spires, to each transept, and over the
crossing a much lower though larger lantern also capped with a
spire. These five spires are well seen from the market place, and
with a tall campanile at its upper end, of the thirteenth century, com-
bine in a very grand group. I should have mentioned that the cen-
tral spire is octagonal with four square slated turrets at the angles.
The east end of the cathedral deserves notice; its scale is great,
and its flying buttresses and detail generally very good. Chapels are
formed between the buttresses and roofed with gables running back
to the aisle walls.
The Maison de Ville was formerly a convent and still retains a
few old portions built up in the more modern additions.
In the market place is a small church, the entrance to which is
at the east, and the altar at the west end. Over the east door are
two triplets, quite first-pointed in their character. There are
round turrets at the west angles and to the transepts, and a pic-
turesque slated spire over the crossing; the whole is groined, and
reminded me of the style of the transepts of the cathedral, though
it is not very effective.
Another church on the way to the railway station has an eastern
apse, and a tower and slated spire over the crossing. The nave has
a continuous clerestory, with two or three windows in each bay;
the effect of which is satisfactory. Across the nave, one bay west
of the choir, there is an arch with a kind of triforium gallery across
it, pierced on each side, and serving apparently for a passage-way
only. It is not continued up to the groining.
[306]
THE GREAT S. MARTIN, COLOGNE
Nearer the railway there is another large church with a con-
tinuous clerestory and large unfinished-looking tower at the
south-west angle.
There are some other churches, but not, I think, of great interest.
This, however, is amply afforded by the magnificent cathedral
towering so grandly over the town, whose only defect in the
distant view is the low height of the nave as compared with the
choir and transepts.
A sluggish train took me in five or six hours to Namur to sleep,
and thence early the next morning by a strikingly beautiful line of
railway along the banks of the Meuse; and passing by the picturesque
old town of Huy, with its fine church and castle, I found my way
to Liege.
The churches here are really too often visited and too well known
to require any description from me. I think the little church of S.
Croix, with its gabled aisles (the gables running back into the main
roof), pleased me as much as anything; it is just the kind of special
town church which we want to see more in fashion in our own large
towns, adapting itself boldly to every variation in the boundary of
the land on which it is built, and giving a very considerable effect
of height without extravagant expense.
The metal font in the church of S. Bartholomew is a very admi-
rable work of art, and most interesting in every way.
In the cathedral is a new pulpit, by Geefs, much praised in guide
books, but not a favourable specimen of his powers, 1 trust.
S. Jacques, S. Martin, and other churches in Liege are remark-
able for the richness of their internal polychromatic decorations.
They are all, however, of very late date, quite Renaissance in their
design and colouring, and very tawdry in effect and in detail. The
east end of S. Jacques is, however, very impressive owing to the rich
colour of the glass in the windows, which carries the decoration
down from the roof to the fioor, whilst elsewhere, the roof only being
painted, and the whole of the walls left in the coldest white, the
effect is heavy and unsatisfactory. We have, in short, here a good
practical proof — worth a thousand arguments — that colour to be
successful must be generally diffused and not confined to one part
of a building.
From Liege to Aix-la-Chapelle, of which too I shall say but little.
The choir of the cathedral, which had been entirely despoiled of its
tracery, is being gradually and well restored. It is both a noble
and a very peculiar church, and perhaps the best view of it is to be
obtained from the staircase in the old Rathhaus. How striking is
the immense height of the choir as compared to its length, and how
thoroughly fine and picturesque is the kind of dome, surrounded
at its base with gables, which crowns the polygonal nave.
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No one who visits Aix should omit to see the treasures in the
sacristy of the cathedral. I have never seen anywhere so fine a
gathering of mediaeval goldsmith's work, and a little study of these
old remains would immensely improve the work of the few men
who are attempting to revive the old glory of their craft.
The Rathhaus contains in its upper stage a fine large groined
hall, called the Kaiser-Saal, divided down the centre by columns
and arches; it is approached by a good groined staircase, and is
now being restored and decorated in fresco, by a Dusseldorf artist,
with subjects from the life of Charlemagne.
Near the cathedral is a valuable remnant of good domestic work;
it has windows with plate tracery, and above them a row of niches
or arcading, the divisions of the arcade being filled in with figures
of kings in a very effective manner. It reminded me of the famous
Maison des Musiciens, at Rheims.
At Aix I was too near Cologne to omit the pleasure of spending
another day among its crowd of architectural treasures, and so,
instead of going to Dusseldorf direct, I gave myself a holyday, and
renewed all my old recollections of its many glories.
I cannot think that the new works at the cathedral are so satis-
factory as they are generally said to be. When I was there the
scaffolding had just been removed from the south transept, and
the effect was very far from good; there was a degree of poverty in
the execution which is not felt in the old work; it looks thin, " liney "
and attenuated, and makes me doubt very much, first, whether it
is a fair reproduction of the old design; and next, whether the
following out of an old design drawn to a small scale is possible
without very great powers of designing. So much depends upon
detail.
I believe that the building in Cologne which above all others
ought most to be studied, is that wonderful church of S. Gereon,
the interior of which is so fine, and so unlike what we ever think of
doing in our new work. Its nave consists of an irregular decagon,
entered from a western narthex, and surrounded by chapels, from the
east of which runs a long and spacious choir, approached by a great
flight of steps. This nave is about 65 feet from east to west,
and slightly more from north to south; forming a very grand un-
broken area, all within easy reach of any one voice, and, from its
height and rich character, very impressive. The choir is of consid-
erable length, and raised on a crypt. A large modern altar placed
on the steps leading to it from the nave, completely conceals it in
the general view, and much mars the whole effect.
The filth of the church when I was there was extreme, and the
noble crypt which extends under the whole length of the choir was
thoroughly desecrated. I noticed an original altar in a side chapel
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in the crypt, used as a receptacle for candle-ends! The sacristy of
S. Gereon is a noble middle-pointed addition, fitted with old presses,
and with some very beautiful glass in the windows. This, in the
tracery, is very light in colour, spotted with ruby.
Next in grandeur, perhaps, to this church, is the east end of S.
Martin's. Seen from the street below the east end, its great height,
and the combination of the apsidal transepts and choir with the
fine central steeple produce very great effect. It is worthy of notice,
how completely similar all these apsidal terminations are in Cologne,
and how like those of the same date in the north of Italy. The
apses here, for instance, are almost exactly like that of the choir of
S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo.
Cologne is rich in metal-work and early stalls. In S. Cunibert
is a fine brass standard for lights, with a crucifix; in the choirs of
S. Pantaleon and S. Andrew, some good thirteenth century stalls; S.
Gereon has also some old candlesticks, and some woodwork worth
notice, as also have some of the other churches.
Perhaps the best example of later work in the city is the fine
church of the Minorites, a good fourteenth century building, with a
lofty and elegant lead turret rising out of the centre of the roof.
I found in several of the Cologne churches services in the morning,
attended exclusively by children. They had no seats, but a succes-
sion of boards, with small kneeling-stools at regular intervals, were
provided for them. The singing was uncommonly good and hearty,
and after one of the services (at S. Maria in Capitolio), I asked the
children about it, and they told me that they went every day before
school. I looked at some of their school-books, and found that they
had a rather full Scripture history abridgment; and among other
books one full of songs and hymns, which seemed to be particularly
good and spirited — hearty, merry songs, which would be sure to
take with children. We should do well if we could have such a
service and such books for our English children.
There was an exhibition of early German pictures of consider-
able interest in the old hall called the Gurzenich. I found that it
was organized by a Christian Art Society, which has a large number
of members, and seems to be very actively at work. In the great
hall of the Gurzenich is a magnificent fire-place, of late middle-
pointed date, and much like the Courtrai fire-place in general idea;
there are some very spirited figures in armour in its niches. This
building is well known on the exterior by its general ancient char-
acter, and particularly by the lead canopies over the figures in its
lowest stage.
But Cologne is too well known to make any more of my notes
(which might be extended to tenfold length) palatable; and I
shall, therefore, hurry on to what is, I believe, newer ground
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to most ecclesiologists than are its time-honoured and well known
buildings.
From Deutz (the bridge to which place from Cologne affords the
best general view of the city) a few hours of railway took me to
Hamm, and thence by a branch I reached Miinster. The country
here is cheerful and English-looking; though rather flat, it is woody
and well cultivated, and thickly populated, — at least, so I gathered
by the multitude of passengers who swarmed at every station, all
in blue smocks, and all smoking vehemently.
The churches and domestic buildings at Munster are almost
equally interesting. Of the latter, the Rathhaus is the most re-
markable. It is very elaborate and beautiful in all its details, but
(like most of the house-fronts here) boasts of a regular show front.
The ground stage consists of four open arches; the next, of four
richly-traceried windows, divided by figures in niches, carved with
great spirit; and above this is an immense stepped gable-end, divided
into seven panels in width, and rising to about twice the height of
the real roof. It is pinnacled, and filled with open traceries, which,
being pierced above the roof, show the sky through their openings.
The lower part of the building is of the best middle-pointed, but
in the gable some of the tracery is ogee and poor.
This front was followed in Munster throughout the rest of the
Middle Ages, as also by the Renaissance school, so that the whole
town is full of arcaded streets, like an Italian town, and all the
houses have more or less exaggerated fronts, stepped and pinnacled
high above the roof-line. The tout ensemble of such a town, it may
be imagined, is picturesque in the extreme, though not so valuable
as at first sight it seems likely to prove to the architectural traveller.
The endless repetition of the same — and that a bad — idea, is
very tiresome, and so, beautiful as is the Rathhaus in some of its
detail, and striking as it certainly is in its general effect, I have not
forgiven it as being the first example with which I am acquainted of
a long series of barbarisms.
The only old apartment in this building, so far as I could dis-
cover, is a room called the Frieden-Saal. It is a low council-chamber,
of late date, which has been most elaborately restored, and renovated
with much rich colour. There are some very good hinges and locks
on a series of closets here.
Of the churches, there are some five or six old, besides some
modern. The cathedral is very curious. Its plan shows two western
towers, then a transept; a nave of two (I) very wide bays; transept
again; and an apsidal choir, with several apsidal chapels round its
aisle. The internal effect of the nave is singular. It is very simple,
but from the great width of the bays rather bold-looking. The most
notable things here are, — a very noble brass font; a brass corona in
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the choir; a stand for eleven candles, also in the choir; a magnifi-
cent stone rood-screen of late date ; a very good Sakraments-H'duslein,
and some niches for relics, etc., with their old doors; another stand
for lights, something like that at S. Cunibert, Cologne; and some
stalls of the seventeenth century, founded very closely upon medi-
aeval examples. The brass font is circular, supported upon five
lions, the two eastern of which are standing, the others recumbent.
The stem is covered with tracery and moulding, and the bowl has
five large quatrefoiled circles, the eastern containing the Baptism of
our Lord, and the other four the emblems of the four Evangelists,
with scrolls and inscriptions in red letters; above them, a trefoiled
arcade contains half-figures of the twelve Apostles. The corona is
large, containing fifty candles in one row; but it is of late date, and
frittered away in elaborate tracery and crocketing. The rood-
screen has two doorways — one on each side of an altar in the centre
of its west front. This altar still remains, with a sculpture of the
Crucifixion at its back, but is not used now, a modern altar having
been put up in front of it. Two very light open staircases on the
eastern side of the screen lead to the Gospel and Epistle sides of
the loft. There is also a very fine and large crucifix against one of
the nave piers.
The main entrance to the cathedral is through a sort of Galilee
of Romanesque date adorned with a number of fine statues: this
is at the south-west of the church, whilst on its north side are some
fair middle-pointed cloisters.
Next to the cathedral in importance is the Oberwasser-Kirche, a
late middle-pointed building; it has a large south-west tower very
much of the same type as the great tower at Ypres, having four
windows of two lights in each stage, and four stages all exactly alike,
and above them an octagonal belfry stage of later date. The first
example of this kind of design is seen in the four belfry windows of
the cathedral at Soest, and still more remarkably in the steeple of
Paderborn cathedral, but here it is developed into even greater regu-
larity. This design, however, is poor in kind, and only respectable
when characterized as at Soest and Paderborn by massive simplicity.
The south door of the Oberwasser-Kirche is good, being double with
square openings within an arched head. Internally the church is
very lofty and light, but of no great length, and has an eastern apse,
and some traces of old wall painting. A very good brass water vat
hung from a small crane by the north door and served as a stoup
for holy water; this is a common plan in the Munster churches.^
This church was being scraped of paint and whitewash; so also
^ I have given a drawing of this \it in the Instrumenta Ecclesi-
astica.
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In the cathedral they were removing some trumpery work of the
last century, and indeed generally in this district a good deal is
being done to the finer churches, and in most of them a box is pro-
vided for offerings for the restoration of the fabric: in most, I
should say, which are not " evangelical ": — for in these, save where
the government is repairing the stone work, they seem to be satis-
fied to put up pews and galleries, to keep the doors well locked, and
to make their interiors look as cold, miserable, and repulsive as
possible. Happily, however, the "evangelical" church is not very
actively mischievous in architectural matters, and so one sees altars
and reredoses still standing with candles and crucifixes, and curtains
of white muslin or silk on each side, sometimes, as in the Petri-
Kirche at Soest, double, first, on each side of the altar, and then the
same height as the altar, and coming forward the full width of the
footpace!^ In the old altars, there are always arrangements for
closets — generally at one end — whilst in the middle of the back
of the altar is often an opening, which I fancied might have been
made for the reception of relics, but which seldom seems carefully
enough fastened; the ends of the super-altars have also, very fre-
quently, closets; generally speaking, the altars in this district are
solid masses of masonry with a projecting and moulded mensa.
This, however, is a digression, and I must now say somewhat of the
Lamberti-Kirche, which is next to the cathedral the best church in
Munster. Externally it has a western tower ^ of considerable dimen-
sions dwarfed in appearance by the immense size of the roof which
covers both nave and aisles; this is a not uncommon arrangement in
this district, and has a parallel, as will be remembered, in the noble
choir of S. Laurence at Nuremberg. Its main result is the great
internal effect of height in the aisles and the opportunity it affords
of obtaining what Germans were so fond of — an immense length
of window opening. The entrance to S. Lambert on the south side
is by a very beautiful doorway; the doorway itself is not very large
but its jamb mould runs up to a great height and encloses a fine
sculptured tree of Jesse; the branches of the tree form a series of
medallions, in each of which is a half figure; the whole is very rich
in its effect, and the sculpture quite exquisite. Internally the only
remarkable piece of furniture I noted was a very fine rood. The
proportions and arrangements of the church are very similar to
^ It must be understood that these are not the original curtains;
but that the Lutherans have here preserved an old arrangement is
very evident.
' On the south side of this steeple still hang the iron cages in
which John of Leyden and his confreres were suspended before their
execution.
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those of the famous Wiesen-Kirche, at Soest, which I shall have
presently to describe, and mainly noticeable for the great effect of
unbroken space, owing to the large span and great height of the
arches, and the small number of piers supporting the roof.
Two other churches near this afforded little worth notice. One
of them was Protestant, and as a consequence, was elaborately
pewed and galleried ; it was seven or eight bays in length, and groined
throughout, and entered by a good double door. The other was
very similar, and had a curious kind of narthex under the western
tower.
The Ludgeri-Kirche is of more interest, having a fine octagonal
belfry of late date; this was undergoing repair, as was also the
church, whose nave is of simple Romanesque with a good middle-
pointed apse. There is another church of small size with an eastern
apse, and a very low gabled tower at the north-west angle. This
is near the railway station.
For two things besides her domestic buildings Munster is cer-
tainly to be remembered: these are the brass work and the sculp-
ture; the latter is generally remarkably good, and I think I have
seldom seen more spirited figures than I saw there.
In a silversmith's shop, opposite the Lamberti-Kirche, I found a
magnificent old monstrance, of the fourteenth century, and of very
elaborate detail; it belonged to a church some miles distant, the
name of which I have forgotten; this man was making church plate
in very fair fashion, copying old examples with some care and with
a good deal of feeling and enthusiasm; I need hardly say that such
men are as rare on the Continent as they are here.
From Munster I returned to Hamm, and thence by another
branch railway to Soest, travelling through a country without any
feature by which to remember it save its interminable rows of poplars.
The first view of Soest from the railway is striking; several
steeples, of which that of the cathedral is the grandest, stand up
well behind a bank of trees, and a great extent of picturesque and
half-ruined old town walls.
The town itself is very curious, much more like some large
Swiss village, such as one remembers in the Upper Valais or the Has-
li-Thal, than any other cathedral town that I know in northern
Europe. The streets are all absurdly irregular, bending and twist-
ing about in every possible direction, and full of half-timbered houses,
which are all corbelled forward and seem generally to be very an-
cient. I think, indeed, that I have never seen more picturesque
grouping of old buildings, but it is difficult to imagine how they can
have preserved their old character so intact; there is absolutely,
I believe, not one shop with a shop front or display of its wares of
any kind, and hardly more than one modernized house, and this is a
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smart little inn with a nice garden, and a large Speise-Saal whose
walls were literally covered with English prints, many of them old
and very good. The population of the place consists nevertheless
of some seven or eight thousand persons.
The churches have some very remarkable features, of which the
most singular is a kind of narthex at the west end, not forming
part of the fabric, but built within the churches, the main groining
extending on over it to the west end, and a large gallery being formed
above it. The best example of this is in S. Peter's, and I shall leave,
for the present, a detailed description of it.
The cathedral is a great, rude, desolate-looking church with but
few remains of any interest, save at the west end, out of the centre
of which rises a fine simple Romanesque steeple. This has five
single-light windows in the stage above the roof, and four three-light
windows above them. Then above this belfry-stage is on each face
a steep gable, filled in with openings of varied shapes — on one
side, a large circular window, with three other small openings, and
on another side three large windows of three lights, and a very
small circular window. These gables are not the full width of the
tower, and from the angles between them rise four tall and massive
pinnacles, slightly ornamented with corbel tables under the eaves,
and covered with steep pyramidal metal roofs. The spire is of metal,
octagonal in section, — the angles of the octagon springing from the
apices of the four gables, and from the internal angles of the four
pinnacles. The size and solidity of this remarkable tower give
great grandeur to it, and whilst in the treatment of its lower part we
see the type of so many of the towers of later date in this district, in
that of the spire we see the precursor of those noble spires rising from
simple gabled towers which are the glory of Liineburg and Lubeck.
In addition to an internal narthex, the cathedral has, in front of
its tower, another groined sort of passage-way, opening to the west
with six arches, and to the north and south with one arch. There
is a second stage above these arches, and then from behind this
mass rises the steeple. The whole of this part of the building is
Romanesque, as, indeed, is the substance of the entire church
though it has been much mutilated by modern additions and alter-
ations. The interior is painfully neglected and dirty, though it is,
I believe, the only Catholic church in the place. The eastern apse
has upon its groining some painting, which seems to be ancient
and very good, having figures of saints etc., on a large scale, but it
is very much hidden by an odious modern reredos. There is a good
wooden crucifix against one of the piers, and some fine very early
glass in the transepts windows. Early in the morning, when I went
again into the cathedral I found it full of people singing well and
very heartily.
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The church of S. Peter stands close to the cathedral; and its choir
and aisles, ending with three apses and steep slated roofs, its windows
filled with middle-pointed traceries, with the old steeple at the west
end capped with a modern bulbous spire, group very picturesquely
with the stern and grand steeple of the cathedral. In plan it con-
sists of a nave and aisles, of four primary bays (each bay being
subdivided by two arches opening into the aisles), transepts, choir
and apsidal choir-aisles, opening into the transepts. The two west-
ern bays of the nave are again subdivided into three divisions north
and south, and four divisions east and west; all this space being
groined over at a low level, and having a floor above, forming a
gallery level with the triforium, which also is large and spacious.
The internal effect of this low, dark entrance-way is most peculiar.
In S. Peter's, its length from east to west is nearly 46 feet — just
half the whole length of the nave! The architecture of the church
generally is not otherwise very interesting; though the east end is
good, and has some fragments of fair glass still remaining. I have
already mentioned the curious arrangement of the curtains on each
side of the Lutheran altar here.
S. Paul's is another church of precisely the same type. It has a
good western steeple, with a very steep square roof, or rather, I
should say, a low spire. The stages of the tower are repetitions of
each other. Both this church and S. Peter's are disfigured by a
wonderful accumulation of pews and galleries; there is still, how-
ever, in the sacristy, a very good press, of three divisions in width
and two in height.
I come, last, to the Wiesen-Kirche, a most remarkable building,
of whose history, I am sorry to say, I know absolutely nothing. It
appears, however, to have been all erected at one period — in the
first half of the fourteenth century, — and its scale is so fine, and its
character throughout so good, that it is certainly one of the most
noticeable churches in the north of Germany. Moreover, in internal
effect, I think I know no church of the same size which can vie with
it for exquisite grace and elegance and, at the same time, boldness
and grandeur of conception.
The plan may be described as a nave and aisles, of only three
bays in length, about 76 feet in width, and 100 feet in length; the
nave and aisles each terminating in an apse at the east, whilst at
the west end there is an unfinished front, which seems to have been
intended to have two towers. It is difficult to conceive how such a
west front could ever have been suitable for a building which was
in no other respect more than a mere chapel. It was never, however,
at all nearly completed; and now a tall slated spire finishes one of
the stunted towers in a fashion which is picturesque in the distant
view, but very unsatisfactory when seen close at hand. The nave
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and aisles are covered with one great roof, and groined at the same
level. The four nave columns are very lofty, and without any
capitals; the mouldings being continuous to the groining; there
being no more than four points of support in a square of about 76
by 120 feet, it may be imagined that from every point the whole
interior is visible. The windows are of immense height, but judi-
ciously treated, as in the clerestory windows at Cologne, by the ar-
rangement of colour in the glass; besides which, a kind of transom
of quatrefoils runs through all the windows at about one-fourth of
the whole height. Below this transom, the glass is very rich and dark
in colour; above the transom, for about half its height, there are
figures under canopies, also dark with colour, and then a long sweep
of beautiful grisaille runs up to the head of the windows, the pat-
terns being all geometrical, and defined by delicate lines of colour:
the whole is very jewelly and brilliant, and fortunately a good deal
remains. This is, indeed, just one of those buildings which depends
very much for its proper effect upon all its windows being filled with
coloured glass. All the old altars remain, though the church is
Protestant. There is one in each apse, and one against the west
side of the two easternmost of the nave columns. All the altars
have closets in their ends, and the one against the south-east column
of the nave has a portion of a very good middle-pointed stone rere-
dos and is itself richly panelled below the mensa. Behind another
altar in the north-eastern apse, there is the remnant of a very fine
middle-pointed rood of wood, which is now nailed up behind a
late triptych. There is a very good early Sakraments-Hduslein in
the north wall, and a good locker in the south wall of the principal
apse, both with old iron doors. On two side altars in the nave,
there have been erected some very fine pieces of late tabernacle-
work. They have been brought from elsewhere; and I saw no place
in the church from which they can have been taken. Another
similar piece of stone work has been set up in the midst of the choir,
and a door pierced through it leads into a pulpit, which grows out
of and rests on the Lutheran altar! The north and south doorways
are very fine; the latter having a window above it within the same
arch, in the common German fashion. The whole church has an
open parapet and lofty buttresses, with rather small pinnacles.
The view from the east is certainly very striking; and though the
idea is completely that of a chapel, rather than of a more ambitious
church, it is certainly one of the finest chapels of its size that I have
ever seen. The whole building is being restored at the expense of
the King of Prussia, and at, I should think, very great cost, as it
had suffered much from decay.
[316]
GERMAN POINTED ARCHITECTURE
Some apology is necessary for venturing to attempt to grapple
with so large a subject as is that of pointed architecture in Germany.
My only excuse for making such an attempt must be the vivid
recollection of the journeys I have at different times made in that
country, and the desire to help cordially in explaining to those
who have still the journey before them, the features which char-
acterize its architecture,
I have unfortunately been unable to hear what Mr. Parker has
told you of pointed architecture in France; but no doubt he has
dilated with sufficient enthusiasm upon the exquisite art there seen,
upon the skill in the disposition of the ground plans— never equalled
elsewhere — upon the beauty and vigour of the sculpture, and upon
the nervous manliness and at the same time delicacy of the^art in
nearly all the buildings of the best period, at least in the old Ile-de-
France, in Picardy, and in Normandy. I grieve to say that I shall
be able to give no such commendation to German architecture, and
that, delightful as the recollections of what I have seen there are, I
cannot nevertheless shut my eyes to the fact that in most respects
it is entirely inferior to the development of the same style in France
and England.
There are at the same time some peculiarities in the dates of old
German work which are rather striking in comparison with English
and French works.
You have, then, first of all, a few buildings, such as the convent
at Lorsch, which are said to be and perhaps are of Roman design.
Then next there is an immense group of churches of which those of
Cologne and the Rhineland are the most distinguished examples,
which, whilst it is entirely unlike anything in the rest of northern
Europe, has a most remarkable affinity to the Lombard churches in
the north of Italy, at Pavia, Bergamo, and elsewhere. These
churches date from the early part or the middle of the twelfth cen-
tury and continue with but little alteration of importance down to
the end of the thirteenth, when the strange spectacle is seen of a
style almost completely Romanesque in its character suddenly sup-
planted by another style which, so far as I can see, in no way grew
out of it, and which is distinguished from the first by peculiarities of
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a most marked kind, and by the perfect and complete form which it
at once assumed. Then after this style, which again in its turn re-
tained its hold longer than our styles ever did, and which to a late
period is altered only slightly in its detail, you will find another
essentially German style answering in point of date to our later third-
pointed and to French flamboyant. The Germans have therefore
less natural growth to show in their architecture than we have.
Instead of our beautiful gradations from Romanesque to third-
pointed in which the germ of each development is to be discovered
in the antecedent work, you have there a series of breaks or gaps
in the chain which it is very difficult to account for, and which make
the study of the style highly interesting, and at the same time
somewhat perplexing.
The question seems naturally to arise whether each of these new
styles, thus wanting in evidence of natural growth one out of the
other, is to be looked at as a German invention in the true sense of
the word, or as the result of the sudden conversion of a slow and
sluggish people to the beauties of foreign work, and then their reso-
lute and hearty earnestness in the attempt to make the style their
own by some infusion of national peculiarities.
I incline to this last opinion because I believe that no style was
ever invented. Architecture has always grown gradually and sys-
tematically, and it is quite possible to imagine that Germany may
have refused to follow the lead of France and England in art until
their superiority was so great as to make it an absolute matter of
necessity, and that then an attempt would be made to give a national
character to what they had in the first place borrowed.
A slight comparison of dates of a few buildings will explain my
grounds for speaking as I do of German architecture.
Of the Rhine churches the most remarkable are the work of the
thirteenth century. S. Gereon at Cologne was commenced a.d.
1200 and vaulted in a.d. 1227. S. Cunibert was in building from
A.D. 1205 to A.D. 1248, when it was consecrated. Naumburg has a
nave of a.d. 1200. Limburg is early in the thirteenth century; and
Bamberg the same; whilst Gelnhausen was in building from a.d.
1250 to a.d. 1370. Now all these churches are of such a character
that were we to see them in France we should at once put them
down as the work of the end of the twelfth century, and we should
look for another class to fill up the period between a.d. 1200 and
A.D. 1270, when Cologne was commenced or the nave of Strasburg
completed. You will see how important these dates are when you
consider that at the same time that S. Gereon and S. Cunibert at
Cologne, the choir of Magdeburg, and Gelnhausen, were being built,
Amiens cathedral, S. Denis and other churches of the same kind
were rising throughout France, whilst in England Westminster and
[318]
a host of other churches of late first-pointed were built at the same
time. I do not mean to say absolutely that no transitional build-
ings are to be found, but only that they were of extraordinary rarity
and do not afford the same evidence of natural growth that our
own do.
Of work really similar to our own first-pointed I can hardly
give you more than one example, and that at Lubeck in the north
porch of the cathedral, where — to say the least — the paternity of
the work may well be doubtful. Of a later style and almost unique
in its character, is the fine church of S. Elizabeth, at Marburg, a
church whose date is well known (a.d. 1235 to a.d. 1283), and
which affords us one of the few German examples of a style inter-
mediate between the work at S. Gereon and that of Cologne
cathedral. This will be seen by the sketches i which I have here, in
which, however, it is to be observed that the design of the nave and
apsidal terminations of the choir and transepts are the early por-
tions of the work, and that the fittings and west front date nearer
the end of the century. In the still beautiful reredos I think we may
see the traces of an incipient departure from the style of the earlier
work, and an approach to identity with what I must consider as
the inferior art of the thorough German Gothic, as it is seen in its
perfection in the cathedral at Cologne.
The aisles of the nave of Magdeburg cathedral seem also to me
to be vastly superior to any other German work of the date that
I know, whilst the western rood-screen and some of the details
of the western choir at Naumburg are also of a degree of beauty
which it would be very difficult to surpass elsewhere. The aisles
of Paderborn cathedral, too, are of a peculiar but exceedingly
good character. But these are, as I think, only exceptions which
serve to prove the rule, and cannot in any degree be taken as
evidence of the same kind of growth and gradual development
that we trace with so much interest in every church and building
of the Middle Ages in England. It was an architecture of fits
and starts and conceits, not of growth, and full therefore of the con-
tradictions and eccentricities which such a condition necessarily
involves. And now having so far paved the way by a short state-
ment of what is really the great peculiarity of German architecture,
I will go on to consider and describe the several varieties of the
style rather more in detail.
And first of all, as to the ground-plan. It is a curious fact, that
each national style of pointed architecture has been distinguished
by its adherence to some peculiarity of ground-plan, as well as by
1 This paper was read before the Oxford Architectural Society,
inl857. — G.G. K.
[319]
other distinctive features. In England, we all know how great was
the love for the square east end, and how strong the desire to extend
the length of the nave to a sometimes almost unreasonable extent.
In France, you know how steadily the apsidal termination was
adhered to, and how completely it was the rule to have an aisle and
chapels round the apse, making, in some of the finer French churches,
an approach to absolute perfection of effect. You know, too, how
very rare the square east end was in France, and yet how equally
rare was any but a square end to the transepts. In Italy, again,
there are peculiarities. Either you have immense halls, wide and
long beyond all other examples, and borrowed, no doubt, from the
ancient basilica; or apsidal churches, in which the aisles do not
extend round the apse, and a series of apsidal chapels are sometimes
added to the east of the transepts.
In Germany, as I shall show, we have an equally distinct class of
ground-plans. The apsidal termination, though most general, does
not altogether supplant the square end; but it is remarkable, that
unlike the beautiful chevets of the French churches, the German
apses are rarely surrounded with aisles or chapels. They are either
simply apsidal, or parallel triapsidal, or transverse triapsidal, and
the main difference between early and late examples, is to be found
in the introduction of that angularity which gradually became the
great feature of all German work. The early apsidal terminations
were all circular: as, for instance, in the Apostles' church, at Cologne;
whilst in Marburg, and later, in the little chapel of S. Werner, at
Bacharach, though the transverse triapsidal plan is identical in
other respects, it differs in that the apses are polygonal, instead of
circular. At Bonn, the eastern apse is circular, the transeptal apse
polygonal; and you may always take this as one of the certain evi-
dences of later date, in works which may otherwise very nearly
correspond.
Of parallel triapsidal churches, the church at Laach, and S.
James at Ratisbon, are early examples; whilst Ratisbon cathedral,
S. Catherine, Liibeck, the Marien-Kirche at Muhlhausen, and the
Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are examples of the same plan angularized
at a later day. And you should note, that this parallel triapsidal
plan is by far the most common of German plans in all ages, and is,
moreover, one of which scarcely any examples exist out of Germany.^
Sometimes, as in S. Nicholas, Lemgo, whilst the choir is apsidal,
the east end of the aisles is square; but this is a rather rare and
very bad plan. In all these varieties of arrangement, there is no
1 Street was not yet familiar with the Spanish churches, in which
it is the dominant native form. Cf. Gothic Architecture in Spain,
new edition, I, 58. — G. G. K.
[320]
comparison for a minute with the beauty of the French chevet;
but it is right to observe, that there are some examples of imitation
of this better type.
One of the earliest and most interesting, is the church of S.
Godehard, at Hildesheim, in which we have the aisle round the apse,
with three apsidal chapels, as well as apsidal chapels east of the tran-
septs. This plan was imitated in the grand parish church of S. James,
also at Hildesheim, at a much later date. The apse of Magdeburg
cathedral is very much like that of S. Godehard, but of rather later
date, and remarkable for the profusion of dogtooth in its cornices.
In both, it is to be observed that the small chapels round the apse
are mere excrescences, and finish with stone roofs below the para-
pet of the aisle. The Marien-Kirche at Lubeck is a later example
of a chevet, whilst at Cologne cathedral, in emulation of Amiens,
a plan of the best kind was adopted, and again wrought out on a
smaller scale at Altenberg. There can be little doubt that it was not
only in emulation but also in imitation of a French church, that this
plan was designed. Scarcely another German church is at all like
it, whereas its plan was the common one in France. In the Marien-
Kirche at Lubeck, where there is an aisle round the apse, it is formed
in the most clumsy manner, by enlarging the chapels; whilst S.
Giles, at Brunswick, illustrates another and unsuccessful plan, viz.,
an apse, with the surrounding aisle, but no chapels.
I believe one of the reasons for this difference between French
and German plans is to be found in the very remarkable objection
which the Germans always exhibited to any departure from correct
orientation of any of their altars. In the French chevet, it is im-
possible to attend to this; and hence, in a country where the feeling
was strong on the point, it would be felt to be an unsuitable form.
I believe that it was so felt in England, where, to the present day,
the prejudice in favour of strict orientation is stronger than in any
other country in Europe.
In Germany, we have most remarkable evidence of the feeling.
At Magdeburg, for example, the altars in the apse of the cathedral
are all placed with their fronts facing due west, and cutting, there-
fore, in the strangest way across all the main architectural lines of
the building. It was for this reason that the parallel triapsidal plan
was so popular.
But there is another most curious arrangement of plan, to which
I must refer; that, namely, of which Laach, Bamberg, Worms,
Mayence, S. Sebald, Nuremberg, and Naumburg, are remarkable
examples, in which both east and west ends have apsidal choirs.
The object of these western choirs is not very intelligible; but in
that at Naumburg, we have most curious evidence of what I have
before referred to: for the original altar in the western apse faces
[321]
west, and has its back, therefore, towards the nave, so that the
face of the priest at the altar would be seen by the congregation in
the nave.
I ought to have observed, in speaking of some examples of apses
with aisles, that even in these, the treatment was essentially German.
The two churches at Nuremberg are examples which, as the aisles
are of the same height as the choir, and the whole roofed over with
one immense roof, present the appearance on the exterior of immense
apses without aisles. And certainly there is great grandeur of effect
in such a termination, though less structural truth, and less internal
variety and beauty. Still, they are admirable departures from or-
dinary rules. The churches at Munster, S. Stephen at Vienna,
Munich cathedral, Landshut, and the Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are
examples of the same kind of design. They have a very fine effect
of simple unbroken height, but the absence of the triforium and
clerestory is not forgiven, whilst the plan helped to develop that
German extravagance of proportion in the length of the window
monials which we so often have to deplore.
And here I must not forget to tell you of the cathedral at Aix-
la-Chapelle, and the church of S. Gereon, at Cologne, in which the
naves are circular and decagonal, of great size and grand effect,
with long choirs running out to the east.
In the earlier churches western transepts are also not uncommon,
as at S. Cunibert, S. Andrew, and S. Pantaleon at Cologne, S. Paul
at Worms, Mayence, and many other examples; whilst towers of
small size were commonly placed in the re-entering angles, between
the nave, and choir, and transepts, as well as over their intersections.
Lastly, there is a plan of common occurrence, especially among
smaller churches, in which the main building is a large and lofty
parallelogram, with a small apse tacked on at the end, without any
regard to proportion. There are two or three of these churches in
Nuremberg, and many elsewhere.
I have detained you for a long time on the subject of ground-
plans, but it is one of importance to the right understanding of
any style of church architecture, and it was not possible therefore
to pass it over.
I will now ask you to consider, a little in detail, the characteristics
of the early German work. I do not intend to go thoroughly into
the question of pure Romanesque work, for which I have no time.
I am dealing with p'ointed architecture, and must confine myself
as much as possible to it only. We may take the early churches at
Cologne, and along the banks of the Rhine, as examples of the kind
of work which is perhaps the most interesting, and very thoroughly
German in all its characteristics. It was derived, as I have no doubt,
from the churches in Lombardy, with which it has very many fea-
[_322^
tures absolutely identical. The churches at Pavia are beyond all
question the prototypes of those at Cologne; but it is to be observed
that their scale is smaller, and, their effect certainly not so fine.
S. Castor at Coblentz, at the end of the twelfth century, Ander-
nach a little later, Zinzig, S. Gereon and S. Cunibert, Cologne, at
the beginning of the thirteenth century, give us a fairly complete
evidence of the succession of styles. After these we have Limburg
and Gelnhausen, taking us on to the time at which the German
complete Gothic was in other places in full perfection.
In the early churches there are many features worthy of remark: —
First, the curiously early development of a kind of heavy cusp-
ing, of which Worms, Zinzig, Boppart, Andernach, and S. Gereon
at Cologne, are good examples. It is essentially German, and I
know nothing like it out of the Rhine district.
Secondly, the treatment of the apsidal terminations is very
remarkable. S. Castor at Coblentz, e. g., at the end of the twelfth
century, has three stages in its apse, whereof that next the ground
has a trefoiled arcade, the next is pierced with round-headed windows,
whilst under the eaves is a recessed arcade and a cornice, which, in
one form or other, was almost the invariable finish of these early
apses. Zinzig has the same kind of apse, but it is polygonal, and
each side is gabled. The eaves-cornice has a row of square sunk
panels below it; and this singular feature we see reproduced very
often, as at S. Gereon. The apse at Andernach is nearly identical
with that at Coblentz, as also is that of Bonn. The fine cathedral
at Worms has a very singular arrangement. The apse is polygonal,
with the eaves-cornice and ground arcade as at Coblentz, but in
the intermediate stage it has circular windows, filled in with quatre-
foils and sexfoils. The apse and steeple of S. Martin, at Cologne, are
extremely noble examples of these portions of the early German
churches. Generally speaking, these early apsidal terminations are
most remarkable for their similarity of design, but their external
effect is, nevertheless, always striking.
The third and chief feature of the early German churches is the
treatment of their steeples. They are square or octangular in plan,
without buttresses, arcaded or pierced with windows pretty regu-
larly all over thei*; surface, and roofed in the most varied manner.
You are all, no doubt, familiar with some examples of these really
striking towers, and you will feel, I think, that in their whole com-
position they generally look too much like turrets, and are often too
uniform in their height to be perfectly satisfactory. The towers
were often gabled, and had square spires rising from the points of
the gables; or, as in the fine example at Soest, they had octag-
onal spires. This Soest example has great interest: it is the first
perfect example, so far as I know, of a long series of very remark-
1323 2
able steeples. At Paderborn, indeed, there is no doubt that the
tower had a spire; but it is destroyed, and Soest is therefore
the more interesting. At a later date, this kind of steeple was re-
produced at Luneburg and Lubeck, in the steeples which adorn their
churches.
The variety of ornamental moulding is less, I think, in Germany
than in either England or France; but there are some fine examples
of carving in capitals and string-courses of early date at Naumburg
and Magdeburg.
The groining of early German churches is generally simple.
The lanterns, where central, are covered in with a plain kind of
domical vault; and the apses have generally hemispherical groin-
ing, sometimes marked with ribs. The vaulting is first of all plain
waggon-vaulting, then simple quadripartite, and sometimes — es-
pecially where (as is often the case in Germany) one bay of the groin-
ing covers two bays of the nave — it is sexpartite, and generally
then very much raised in the centre.
Doorways are almost invariably square-headed, under pointed
arches. In the north porch of Lubeck cathedral, as also at Ander-
nach, and at S. Cunibert, and again at S. Gereon, Cologne, is a very
peculiar doorhead, formed by two straight lines sloping to the
centre at a very obtuse angle.
The windows are generally of a very simple and rude kind.
There was no approach in their treatment to that delicacy which is
such an especial characteristic of our English first-pointed; and
this mainly because the science of mouldings was never worked out
thoroughly by the early German school. It is true that no school
of architects has ever rivalled the English in this particular; and
one reason, perhaps, for this is to be found in the resolute way in
which foreigners resisted any modification of the square abacus,
whose only fault was, no doubt, the limitation it imposed upon the
outline of mouldings.
One other feature of these churches must not be forgotten, viz.,
the great size of their triforia. This was usual all over Europe in
Romanesque buildings; but in Germany in this, as in other things,
the early tradition was long adhered to, and you have nowhere
else such elaborate constructional galleries as theirs. Even in works
of the latest date they are found, — as, for instance, in the curious
church of S. Andrew, at Frankfort, where the outer aisles are gal-
leried all round with a triforium, the arches in front of which are
about twice the height of the main arches below them. The interior
of Andernach cathedral will explain how grand the treatment of
this feature was in the earliest buildings.
I trust I have said enough now to show you, at any rate, the
general characteristics of early German work. Its great marks of
C 324 ]
distinction from French and English work are to be seen mainly in
its planning, the treatment and number of its towers and spires,
and in the peculiarly Italian character of its apsidal terminations;
and, as I have said, this style prevailed, with but little modification,
up to the very time at which the completely developed German
middle-pointed made its appearance.
I suppose the characteristics of this later work must be known to
most of you. Cologne cathedral is in fact so competely an embodi-
ment of nearly all the essential features of the style, and is so well
known to most people that I suspect less description is required of
it than of any other foreign style. It has been often said — and
that by no mean authorities — that the German middle-pointed
was identical with our own, and indeed that this one style prevailed
for a time all over Europe. The theory would be pretty if it were
true: the gradual working up to the same point in various ways,
and the gradual divergence of art again in different directions, would
certainly be a strong ground for giving in our adhesion to this one
perfect and universal style. But I confess that though there is some-
thing of a similarity, I have not been able to trace anything like
an identity between German and French and English work at any
time. I am thankful for this because, with all its beauty, the best
German middle-pointed style is not a great style, and has many
and obvious defects. From the very first is conspicuous that love
of lines which is so marked and so unpleasant a peculiarity in Ger-
man art, and that desire to play with geometrical figures — I know
not how else to express what I mean — which in time degenerated
into work as pitiful and contemptible as any of which mediaeval
architects were ever guilty.
I have here a large collection (which should have been larger
had I had time to select all the examples which I have scattered
through my sketch-books) of German window traceries, which will
enable you to judge whether I am too severe in my opinion of their
demerits. And you may observe, by the way, that whilst in the
earlier styles we have very many points for consideration in study-
ing the characteristics of the style, in this work there is a sacrifice
of almost everything else to the desire to introduce in every direc-
tion specimens of new and ingenious combinations of tracery. The
windows at Paderborn are some of the finest and purest examples
of early tracery. They are genuine and noble examples, and quite
free from any tinge of the faults of later examples, and worthy of
comparison with the best of our own early traceries. The mould-
ings of these windows are simple, but composed mainly of a suc-
cession of bold rolls, and so entirely free from any lininess. In the
cupola of S. Gereon at Cologne, and a little later in its sacristy are
also some good early traceries, whilst most of the windows at Mar-
[ 325 ]
burg are also examples of the same character. So too are the tra-
ceries in one of the Brunswick west fronts, and in the apse of the
church of S. Giles in the same city. From these look to the windows
of S. Mary, Lemgo, and you have the commencement of the new
style, though these are fine windows, boldly and simply conceived
and carried out. Next to these come the marvellous series of tra-
ceries in Minden cathedral; a series, I suppose, quite unmatched for
variety, and indeed, I must own, for a certain grandeur of effect,
by those in any church in Europe. You will be struck, I think, by
the curious desire for variety of arrangement which these traceries
evidence. They are a series of aisle windows, placed side by side in
a cathedral church of very modest pretensions. S. Martin in the
same town has a great variety of traceries of a later type — good
examples of the kind of tracery which henceforward is to be found
for a long time predominant throughout nearly the whole of Ger-
many, in which, whilst one admires and wonders at the ingenuity
which has devised so many combinations of spherical triangles and
circles, one is tempted to think that the men who excelled in this
sort of work would have been admirably fitted for designing chil-
dren's toys and puzzles, but had much better have been kept away
from church windows. Among the other sketches of traceries, those
from Ratisbon are of the best kind, whilst those from the cloister
at Constance (essentially German work) are almost as interesting
as the Paderborn examples in their ingenious variety of form.
They show too, occasionally, a tendency to ogee lines in the tracery,
which leads me to say a few words on the curious fact, that whereas
in England the ogee line was always seen in the later middle-pointed
work, this was by no means the case in Germany. The tracery in
the staircase to the Rathhaus at Ratisbon, though of late date, is
noticeable for the almost entire absence of any but pure geometri-
cal figures, but then these are thrown about in a confused and irreg-
ular manner, and are entirely wanting in due subordination of parts.
When, however, the ogee line does show itself in German work, it
is always a certain evidence of debasement.
But to leave the question of traceries and to justify my denial
of the virtues of German pointed architecture, let me ask you to
compare the effect of French and German work side by side in some
of these most valuable evidences of facts which photography so lib-
erally affords us. You have here side by side a west door from Amiens
and from Cologne; and again here, some door-jamb sculpture from
Amiens between similar works from Strasburg. Now striking as these
German examples are, do you not see how entirely the Germans
sacrifice all nobility and simplicity of expression, all that we call
repose, to the vain desire to arrest attention by some tricky arrange-
ment of a drapery and some quaint speckiness or lininess of detail ?
[326]
The German love of tracery is evidenced by the fondness for
such spires as that of Freiburg, which, striking as it is, is not alto-
gether a legitimate kind of thing, and is certainly inferior in its
effect to the much simpler spires of which we are so justly proud.
I can only say a few words as to the plans of German complete
Gothic, and this only to repeat what I have before said as to the ex-
tent to which they contrived to build on the same plans as in
earlier days. The parallel and transverse triapsidal plans were as
popular in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as
they were in the twelfth and thirteenth, of which the little chapel
in the castle at Marburg is a curious example. It is apsidal at the
east and west ends, and the bay between has the window-splay so
contrived as to make another apse north and south. It was in detail
more than in plan that the later architects developed.
But I feel that time will not allow me to go into the features of
the style with more minuteness, or to do more than direct your
attention to the strange eccentricity which characterizes the last
phase of German Gothic, of which the design for the spire of Ulm
(never carried out) is one of the most curious examples. In the short
time that still remains to me, I would rather prefer to call your at-
tention to the local peculiarities which you will meet with in differ-
ent districts of this great country — a part of my subject which
would, if I had time for it, be of more value perhaps to those who
are going to explore German churches for themselves than any
other.
I have said so much about the churches of Cologne and the
Rhine, that I need say no more than that they are very much a
class by themselves. You have there the best specimens of early
churches; whilst in Cologne cathedral, in Altenberg abbey, in the
church of the Minorites at Cologne— an admirable example— in
the very interesting church at Oberwesel, and in S. Werner at Bach-
arach, a church at Andernach, and Frankfort cathedral, you have
a series of examples within a short distance of each other of the best
complete German Gothic.
Then leaving this district and going in a north-easterly direc-
tion, you will find a series of towns full of local peculiarities, quite
unlike those of the Rhine: — Miinster, for instance, with its churches
of great height and without distinction between nave and aisles;
or Soest, where the beautiful Wiesen-kirche affords one of the finest
evidences of what Germans could do in their palmiest days: whilst
in the other churches in the same little known city you would see
examples of Romanesque of the most grand kind in the remarkable
steeple of the cathedral, and of a very curious kind in the low
groined entrances which support a continuation of the triforia round
the west end of the naves. In towns like these, and Paderborn,
[327]
Lemgo, Herford, Minden, and Hildesheim, you will find a rich store
of architectural matter; and then if you will venture so far, you will
find at Lijneburg, and Lubeck, and Ratzeburg, abundant examples
(as I have once before explained in this room) of the German mode
of building in brick developed in a group of churches quite unlike
any others in Germany, and most interesting in every point of view.
Then again there are those curious churches at Brunswick and
Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Burg, whose west fronts, contrived
apparently solely for the sake of obtaining space for the display of
immense window traceries, are so completely local and so thoroughly,
I suppose I may say, an invention! Here too you will see the
churches almost invariably with gabled aisles, —sometimes, as in
the cathedral at Lemgo, so gabled at the sides that one doubts which
is the side and which the end, and sometimes, as in a church at
Brunswick, filled with tracery and panelling of extreme beauty.
Then again at Halberstadt, Erfurt, Naumburg, and Marburg, you
may see some of the most excellent work in all Germany of the best
period. And if you go further south, to where Nuremberg takes
you back in almost all externals to the sixteenth century, or where
Ratisbon to the thirteenth, you will find yourselves again in the
neighbourhood of brick churches, at Landshut and Munich: and
lastly at Freiburg you may see one of the very best of German
churches, eclipsed though it undoubtedly is by the unequalled (in
Germany) nave of the thoroughly German cathedral of Strasburg.
I can but give you a hurried list of names, but not without a
warm recommendation to you to go and see for yourselves how very
much is to be learnt in all these churches, not only in architectural
matters, but even much more in ecclesiological. Germany is the
one part of Europe in which the furniture of the Middle Ages still
remains. There where in Protestant Nuremberg every altar still
stands with its white cloth, and candles, and crucifix; where the great
rood still hangs aloft in the churches; where in one church, as at
Brandenburg, one may see some thirty or forty mediaeval vestments
still hanging untouched in their old presses; where you may see
screens of every date, from early Romanesque to the latest pointed;
where coronae, and all kinds of metal furniture and ancient work
of a date far earlier than any other country in Europe can
show are still preserved; where, as in the choirs of Halberstadt and
Hildesheim, the old illuminated office books still rest upon the old
choir desk; where hangings of quaint and gorgeous patterns still
hang round the choirs, and where triptychs and carved retables are
so common that one forgets to take note of them ; — there it is, I
say, that you must go if you would wish to study and to understand
fully the ecclesiology of the Middle Ages. It is indeed a country
full of the most wonderful interest to the ecclesiologist in all ways,
[ 328 ]
and I am anxious to say that though I have been asked by your
committee to give a second paper on Italian architecture, I feel
very strongly that I should be doing their work much better by tell-
ing you somewhat of all those things to which I have just referred.
In the first place, I have said my say on Italy, and have nothing new
to tell you; and secondly, I have been obliged to avoid saying one
word either on the furniture or glass of German churches, or on the
domestic architecture in which the country is so rich, — and on all
these points I should be only too glad at some future day to give
you some notes of what I have seen.
[329]
INDEX
INDEX
Abbeville, 33.
Abbot Odalric of Conques, 242.
Abbot Peter de Wesencourt of
S. Germer, 156.
Ah^Udaire, 155, 158, 220.
acanthus, 95.
Aesthetic Movement, 13, 32.
Agnolino of Orvieto, 94.
Ainay, church of, 35, 39, 207,
228, 247; V. Lyon.
Aix-la-Chapelle, 302, 307, 322.
Album Photo graphique de
VArcMologie RSligeuse, 215,
223, 224.
Alcala, 43.
Alengon, 33.
All Saints, Clifton, 30.
Alps, 36, 49, 65, 89.
Altamira, Rafael, 48.
Altenberg, 321, 327.
Amalfi, 51, 53.
American attitude, 32, 33.
Amiens. 16, 32, 33, 129, 131, 151,
158, 163, 195, 206, 318, 321,
326.
Ancona, 50.
Andalusia, 42.
Andernach, 175, 323, 324, 327.
Angelico, Fra, 8, 9, 52.
Angers, 134.
Angevine type, 45, 128.
Angouleme, 231, 236.
Anjou. 128. 129.
Antiquite ExpliqiUe, L\ 223
Apengeter, Hans, of Lubeck,277.
Apennines, 76, 82, 86.
apsidal choirs, 19, 89, 137, 176,
320, 325.
Aragon, kings of, 42.
Arbellot, Abbe, cited, 211.
Archaeologia Cantiana, 255.
Archbishop Maurice of Rouen,
133, 135.
architect, the same, at Ainay
and Le Puy, 207 sqq.; Bayeux
and Norrey, 123; Chalons-
sur-Marne and Rouen. 193 ;
Orcival and Issoire and Bri-
oude, 240; Rouen and Genoa,
133; S. Germer and Paris,
156 ; S. Mary Stone, and
Westminster, 255, 264, 267;
Soissons and Noyon, 165.
architects, mediaeval. 23, 32. 73,
131, 136. 149, 151, 293, 296,
297.
architects, modern, 21, 26, 28,
40, 41, 54, 57. 100, 294,
303.
architecture, the experience, 28,
29; growth slow, 318; regular,
40 ; height first requisite, 18,
142; mouldings the test, 99;
sculpture, 99, 264.
Architecture Civile ei Domestique,
161, 184.
Arezzo, 76, 80.
Aries, 128.
Arnold, Matthew, 8, 49.
Arts Somptuaires, Les, 153.
Arundel church, 158, 265.
Assisi, 51, 76, 77 sqq., 224.
Asti, 51, 65.
Astorga, 44.
Asturias, 42.
Athens, 249.
[333]
Auvergne, dates, 241 ; type, 39,
201, 211, 231 sqq., 238, 244.
Auvergne au Moyen Age, L\
205, 232.
Auxerre, 34, 35, 249.
Avranche, 124.
Avila, 44, 45, 46.
Aymard, M., cited, 215, 223.
224, 225, 226, 230.
Bacharach, 320, 327.
Baedecker, 37.
Bamberg, 175, 318, 321.
baptistery, 210, 272; at Cremona,
272; Pisa, 66, 272; Pistoja,
84; Siena, 72.
Barcelona, 38, 43, 44.
Bardonnecchia, 90.
Barnstaple, 4.
Basle, 277.
Bayeux, 43, 122, 163.
Bayonne, 43, 44.
Beauvais, cathedral, 16, 17, 33,
131, 144, 150 sqq.; S. Etienne,
152 sq. ; bishop's palace, 153 ;
Bishop F. de la Rochefoucauld,
152.
Belgian towns, 34, 48, 303-307.
Bell Scott, William, 57.
Benavente, 40, 44.
Benevent, 231.
Benevento, 50.
Bergamo, 309, 317.
Berlin, 48, 290.
Bernese Oberland, 39, 48.
Bertaux, femile, 51.
Bideford, 4.
Bingen, John and Nicholas of,
222.
Biscay, Bay of, 42.
Biscovey, 6.
Bishop Arnaud of Perigueux,
211.
Bishop Burchard von Serken of
Lubeck, 273.
Bishop Evodius of Le Puy, 203.
Bishop F. de la Rochefoucauld
of Beauvais, 152.
Bishop Gamier of Laon, 181.
Bishop Gerald of Poitiers, 211.
Bishop Gerold of Oldenburg,
272.
Bishop Guy 1 1 of Le Puy, 228.
Bishop Henry of Lubeck, 272.
Bishop Henry Bockholt of Lu-
beck, 278.
Bishop Hughes de la Tour of
Clermont, 231.
Bishop Jean de Bourbon of Le
Puy, 214, 215.
Bishop Johan von Mull of Lu-
beck, 273.
Bishop Namacius of Clermont,
232.
Bishop Peter of Le Puy, 220.
Bishop Stephen II of Le Puy,
220.
Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, 224.
Bishop of Beauvais, 161.
Bishop of Gibraltar, 96.
Bishop of Oxford, 7, 23.
Boletin de la Sociedad Castellana
de Excur stones, 47.
Bologna, 86; S. Petronio, 86 sq.,
230; S. Francesco, 87.
Bonn, 320, 323.
Bonport, 138.
Boppart, 323.
Botticelli, 29.
Bourges, cathedral, 137, 163, 176,
201, 212, 244; S. Pierre, 244.
Bourgtheroulde, 118.
Boyce, George, 57.
Branche, Dominique, cited, 205,
232.
Brandenburg, 285, 328.
brasses, 6, 38, 274.
Brenner, 51.
'Bretteville I'Orgueilleuse, 120.
Breuzeville, 131.
[334]
brick building, 30, 37, 38, 46, 72,
86, 270, 284, 285, 286, 328.
Brick and Marble in the Middle
Ages, 21, 27, 32, 34, 36, 46, 49
sq., 88.
Brioude, 39, 201, 212, 215, 231,
234, 235, 237, 238, 240, 247.
Bristol cathedral, 27, 30.
Brown, Madox, 57.
Browning, Robert, 2, 52.
Brunswick, 274, 283, 321, 326,
328.
Buckinghamshire, 25.
Bulletin Archeologique, 223.
Bulletin de la SociSte ArcMo-
logique et Historique du Li-
mousin, 211.
Bulletin Monumental, 207, 220,
230.
Burg, 327.
Burgos, 43, 44, 118.
Burgundian March, 34; style,
128.
Burne-Jones, Edward, 13-18,
33, 57.
Burne-Jones, Lady, 14, 17.
Butler, Dr., 7.
Butterfield. 15, 28.
Byzantine influences, 84, 132,
135, 194, 202, 243, 245.
Caen, 33, 119 sqq.; Abbaye
aux Hommes, 246; S. Pierre,
119, 120, 121.
Calvados, 16.
Cambridgeshire, 5.
campanile at Assisi, 80 ; Bo-
logna, 87 ; Erfurt, 294; Flo-
rence, 82; Lucca, 70; Pistoja,
83; Siena, 72; Siena cathedral,
73; Susa, 64; Verona, 72.
Carlisle. 54, 55.
carvers, 132, 135, 168, 300-01.
carvings, 186, 199, 303, 313, 317.
Castile, 42.
Castilian, 47.
Catalonia, 30, 45, 47.
Caudebec, 16.
Caumont, de, cited, Abecedaire,
155, 158, 220; Bulletin Monu-
mental, 207.
Cavallini, 78.
Chaise-Dieu, La, 251.
Chaions-sur-Marne,Notre Dame,
134, 175, 188, 190; cathedral,
190, 194; S. Alpin, 195; the
cure, 144, 191.
Chalvour, 171.
Chamallieres, 220.
Chambery, 50, 63, 89.
Champagne, style, 188.
Champagne, village on the Oise,
144-5.
Champenois, M., 191.
Chantilly, 100, 149.
Chartres, cathedral, 16, 19, 29,
33, 52, 114, 129, 130, 134, 163,
176, 185, 195, 212. 244.
Les Chases, S. Marie, 205, 227.
Chauriat, 231.
Chichester, 5, 281.
Chinon, 220.
Christian Year, The, 20, 31.
Church of England, 1, 11, 21.
Church of Rome, 11, 21.
Churches in Kent, Surrey, and
Sussex, Some, 268.
Churches in Northern Germany,
270.
Churches of Lubeck, The, 270.
Churches of Velay, The, 39, 201.
Cimabue, 78, 79.
Cino da Pistoja, 83.
Clermont-Ferrand, 39, 128, 201;
cathedral. 231. 251; Notre-
Dame-du-Port. 212. 217, 231,
233-242 passim, 245, 249;
Bishop Hughes de la Tour,
231; Bishop Namacius, 232.
Clifford, W. K., 49.
[335]
Clovelly, 5.
Cluny, 45, 231.
Coblentz, 175, 323.
Cock, Reimar, 278.
Cologne, 34, 151, 308, sqq., 319,
Z22, 327; cathedral, 173, 197
sqq., 316, 321, 326, 327; SS.
Apostles, 320; S. Cunibert, 309,
311, 318, 323; S. Gereon, 308,
318 sq., 323, 324, 325; S. Mar-
tin, 309, Z2Z\ S. Mary in the
Capitol, 309; others, 322.
Como, lake of, 36.
Compiegne, 159; S. Antoine, 160;
cloister, 159; Hotel-Dieu, 161;
Hotel de Ville, 161.
Compostela, Santiago de, 43,
44, 45.
Compton, near Guildford, 278.
Conques, 231, 242, 245; Abbot
Odalric, 242.
Constance, 33, 294, 326; lake
of, 36.
Constantinople, 30, Crimean Me-
morial, 22; S.Sophia, 243, 245;
SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 247.
Corneto, 94.
Cornwall, 6, 79, 128, 268.
Cortona, 75.
Corufia, La, 44.
Coucy-le-Chateau, 162, 171.
de Coucy, Robert, 58, 184, 188.
Coudray, 158.
Courtrai, 303, 305 sqq.
Coutances, 124, 163.
Cram, R. A., cited, 28.
Cremona, 38, 272, 284.
Crepy, 107.
Crimean Memorial, 22, 30.
Cuddesden, 7, 21, 22.
Cuenca, 42.
Culoz, 62, 89.
Dante, 3, 83.
Devonshire, 128.
Dictionnaire de V Architecture,
174, 212, 231.
Didron, cited, 229, 233.
Dijon, 34, 88, 277.
Divine Comedy, 3.
domestic architecture, 105, 106,
107, 110, 119, 124, 138, 158,
17Q, 183; Romanesque, 124,
153, 228; Gothic, 92, 96, 139,
153, 167, 170, 181, 186, 190,
230; north German, 281, 283,
294, 308, 310; v. also Gothic,
domestic.
Donatello, 52, 87.
Dorat, 231.
Douce, Francis, cited, 277.
Dresden, 48.
Dublin, 27.
Duguesclin, 230.
Durham, 5.
Dalmatia, 32.
Dance of Death, 277.
East Grinstead, 22.
East Meon, 160.
Eastern influence, 212, 220, 223,
243, 247; course along the
Rhone, 247; v. also Byzantine.
Ecclesiologist, The, 32, 37, 38,
127, 268.
Edinburgh, 54.
Egypt. 58.
Elizabeth of Hungary, S.. 295.
embroidery and vestments, 6,
8, 152, 220, 280, 306, 328-9.
Emperor of the French restoring,
143, 145.
Empoli, 91.
Engadine, 48.
England, 3, 10, 32, 42, 55.
English, 1, 10, 11, 21, 32, 45, 54;
influence, 128, 130, 136; stone,
30; work, 122.
Enlart, Camille, 41.
Ennezat, 230, 238.
[336]
entasis at Pisa, 67 ; at Le Puy , 213.
Erfurt, 292, 328; architects, 293;
Barfusser-Kirche, 292; cathe-
dral, 293; Prediger-Kirche,
294; Stadt-Kirche, 292; S.
Severus, 294; others, 295.
Erfurt and Marburg, 292.
de la Escosura, Patricio, 46.
Espana ArtisHca y Monumental,
46.
Essaisurles Eglises Romanes et
Romano-Byiantines du dSparte-
ment du Puy-de-Dome, 241.
Estoire de S. Eduard le Rey, 204.
Estella, 206.
Estremadura, 42.
fitampes, 244.
Eunate, 229.
Evreux, cathedral, 116; S.
Taurin, 116.
Exeter, 4, 12.
Fergusson, J., cited, 245.
Fiesole, 82.
Florence, 51, 52, 82, 83, 276;
Or S. Michele, 52, 83; S.
Miniato, 84.
Foggia, 50.
Fontevrault, 231.
Fonthill, 151.
fonts, 84, 161, 274, 276, 277, 281,
310.
Ford, Richard, 41.
fortified churches, 215.
Fountains Abbey, 32, 279.
France, 3, 30; landscape and
architecture, 88; Spain's debt
to, 47; Italy's, 51; v. also
Gothic, French, and painting,
early French.
Francia, 52.
Francis of Assisi, S., 76.
Franco-Prussian war, 21, 48, 120.
Frankfort, Z3, 324, 327.
Freiburg, 33, 328.
French towns, 33, 34, 39, 131;
cathedrals, 163.
Furka pass, 36.
Galicia, 40, 42.
Gassiecourt, 142.
Gaulfredus, 220.
Gelnhausen, 318, 323.
Geneva, 89.
Genoa, 65, 67, 76, 90, 91, 133 sq„
200, 220; English church, 30,
90.
German Gothic, 174, 175, 190,
192, 196, 199, 200, 283, 326;
influence, 128, 174, 182, 192,
sqq., 195, 196; v. also Gothic,
German; Painting, early Ger-
man.
German Pointed Architecture, 317.
Germer, S., legend, 158.
Gerona, 43.
Gimbert, Francois, 225.
Giotto, 52, 78, 83, 274.
Giulianuova, 51.
glass, early, 79, 94, 101, 109,
116, 139, 142, 152, 180, 195,
196, 251, 276, 291, 293, 294,
298, 300, 309, 314, 315, 329.
Glastonbury, 154.
Gloucester, 55.
Gothic, 46, 176; revival of, 1,
13, 28, 31, 248; study of, 6,
37, 244; lectures on, 27, 201,
317; power of, 3, 4, 23. 5^
modern, 8, 13, 22, 54, 55.
Gothic, domestic, 139, 183, 283,
303; at Aix, 308; at Beauvais,
153; in Belgium, 303 sqq.; at
Erfurt, 294; at Genoa, 91; at
Laon, 112; at Lisieux, 119; at
Meaux, 115; at Monf errand,
251; at MiJnster, 310; at
Pisa, 68; at Le Puy, 230; at
Rheims, 190; at Siena, 68, 72;
at Trdves, 197; at Ypres, 305.
[337]
Gothic, English, 3, 21, 130, 131,
160, 255, 320, 324; styles, 45,
128; comparison with, 122,
128, 129, 159, 165.
Gothic, French, 18, 21, 30, 32, 45,
47, 51, 79, 127, 176, 192, 244;
styles, 39, 40, 128, 167, 231
sqq.; sources, 202, 244; in
Italy, 77-8.
Gothic, German, 32, 174, 190,
195 sq., 200, 270 sqq., 289,
292, 304, 317, 319, 323; in-
fluence of, 128, 174, 175, 182,
194, 195; judgement on, 196,
199, 200, 317, 319.
Gothic, Italian. 30, 32, 51, 66, 70,
72, 78, 91, 207, 309, 320; in-
fluence of, 131, 133, 175;
characteristic plan, 207, 309;
Lombard, 32, 275, 322.
Gothic, Savoyard, 63, 65.
Gothic, Spanish, 32, 37, 39, 40,
43, 46 sqq., 320; in Catalonia,
38, 45.
Government restoring, 143, 145,
312, 316.
Granson, on Lake of Neuf-
chatel, 245.
Grauenfels, 36.
Greece, 32.
Gregorian music, 18, 119.
Gregory of Tours, cited, 232.
Grisons, the, 36.
groining, 74, 130, 222.
ground-plans, 130, 136, 195, 205,
207, 229, 230, 244, 309, 317,
319, 327.
Guadalajara, 44.
Guardian, The, 129.
Guercino, 52.
Guido da Como, 84.
Halberstadt, 278, 288, 301, 328.
Hamburg, 33.
Hambye, 124.
Hanover, 48.
Havre, 16.
Heidelberg, 33,
height an element of Gothic, 18,
142, 150, 197.
Heir of Redely ffe. The, 13.
Henry the Lion, 272.
Herford, 328.
Hesse, Synsingus, 283.
Hewlett, Maurice, 45, 83.
Higham Ferrers, 281.
Hildesheim, 274, 278, 321, 328.
Histoire de l'£glise Angelique de
Notre Dame du Puy, 228.
Historia de la Arquitectura Es-
panola Cristiana, 41.
Holland, Jessie, (Mrs. G. E.
Street), 10, 53, 57, 88.
Holmbury S. Mary, 28, 30, 55.
Homer, 3.
Howells, William Dean, 49.
Hucher, M., cited, 220.
Hueffer, Ford Madox, 57.
Huelgas, Las, 45, 118.
Huesca, 44.
Hunt, Holman, 46, 57.
Hutton, Edward, 45, 49.
Huxley, Thomas, 23.
Huy, 307.
Ififley, 32.
!le-de- France, 45, 128, 194, 317.
Iliad, 3.
Inchbold, J. W., 57.
Inland Voyage, An, 39.
risle Adam, 144.
Issoire, 201, 217, 231, 233, 235,
236, 237, 238, 240.
Italian influence, 131, 133, 175,
230; arcades, 310; gables, 273;
workman, 276.
Italy, 22, 34, 38, 48, 49, 50, 51, 65,
80, 89, 176.
Jaca, 42.
Jean and Nicholas of Bingen, 222.
[338]
Jervaulx, 5.
Joanna the Mad, 46.
Keats, John, 2.
Keble, John, 13, 31.
Kent, 255, 260, 268.
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 281.
Laach, 197, 320, 321.
Lagny, 113.
Lake Country, 5.
Landshut, 322, 328.
Lanercost, 20, 52, 142.
Lamp^rez y Romea, Vicente, 40
sqq., 48.
Laon, 38, 108 sqq., 129, 131, 162,
163, 172 sqq., 186, 188; S.
Martin, 112, 172, 182; Tem-
plars' church, 183, 229; Bishop
Gamier, 181.
Latin-Byzantine style, 42.
Lausanne, Anglican church, 30.
Lavoulte-Chilhac, 220.
Law-Courts, London, 27, 46, 55.
lay vocation, 2; fraternity, 12, 15-
LemgO, 320, 326, 328.
Leon, 42, 44.
Leonardo, 29.
Lerida, 43, 44.
Liberal Arts, 39, 216.
Liege, 307.
Lille, 21, 38, 112, 303.
Limay, 142.
Limburg, 318, 323.
Limoges, 206, 211, 231, 248.
Lincoln, 31, 129, 172, 189.
Lincolnshire, 5.
Lisieux, 118; S. Jacques, 119.
Livi, Dominic, of Ghambasso,
his son, 276.
Lombard churches, in Italy, 317;
on the Rhine, 275, 322.
Lombardy, 32.
London, 2, 5, 6, 17, 21, 24, 26,
27, 54, 67.
Longpont, 162, 170.
Lons-le-Bourg, 64, 90.
Louis IX, S., 170, 206.
Louis XI, 216, 217, 225.
Louviers, 117.
Lorsh, 317.
Lubeck, 37, 38; 270, 286, 314,
319, 324; Burg-Kloster, 272,
276, 278, 280; cathedral, 272;
S. Giles, 272, 281; S. James.
272, 281; S. Katharine, 272,
276, 278; S. Mary, 275, 321;
S. Peter, 272,281; Burg-Thor,
271, 272; Heiligen-Geist-Spital,
272, 281; Holsteiner-Thor, 271.
272, 284; Rathhaus, 283;
Bishop Burchard von Ser-
ken, 273; Bishop Johann von
Mull, 273; Bishop Henry, 272;
Bishop Henry Bockholt, 278;
Hans Apengeter, 277.
Luca della Robbia, 85.
Lucca, 69, 76; campanile, 70;
cathedral 69; S. Giovanni,
71; S. Maria della Rosa, 71;
S. Michele, 69.
Lucera, 50.
Lucerne, lake of, 36.
Lugo, 44.
Luneburg, S. John, 276, 314,
324, 328.
Luther, 275.
Lynn, 274.
Lyon, 201, 212; S. Martin
d'Ainay, 207, 228, 247 ; Manl-
canterie, 228.
MUcon, 62, 88.
Madrid, 43.
Magdeburg, 318, 319, 321, 324,
328.
Maggiore, lake, 36.
Magione, 76.
Mai lay, M., cited, 218, 228,
239-41.
[339]
Mancha, La, 42.
Manresa, 44.
Mans, Le, 220.
Mantes, 131, 134, 137, 139 sqq.,
147, 149.
Mantua, 284.
Marburg, S. Elizabeth, 38, 169,
296, 319, 320, 328; castle,
302, 327.
masons, mediaeval, 32, 240.
Mayence, 33, 321, 322.
Meaux, 115, 131, 162, 163, 165.
mediaeval architects, 32, 131,
136, 151, 293, 296, 297.
mediaeval workmen, 58, 156, 220,
222, 225, 234, 240,276, 277, 308^
Memling, 274.
Memoir by A. E. Street, 6, 10,
24, 27, 30, 37, 50, 56, 57, 58.
Menat, 215, 231.
Merdogne, 228.
Meredith, George, 49.
Merim^e, Prosper, cited, 210,
212, 214, 222, 229, 232, 239.
Merseburg, 287.
Metz, 195; cathedral, 196; S.Vin-
cent, 196; Templars' church,
229.
Middle-Pointed Churches in
Cornwall, On the, 268.
Minden, 277, 326, 328.
Miranda, 44.
Modern Painters, 36.
Mohammedan, 42.
Monestier, 220, 230.
Monistrol, 39, 201, 230.
Montereau, Pierre de, 60, 156.
Montfaucon, cited, 223.
Montierender, 165.
Montmajour, 229.
Moorish, 42.
Morris, William, 3, 13-17, 21, 31,
38, 57; first abroad, 16; work
under G. E. S., 17.
Moiitier, Le, near Thiers, 231.
Moustier-neuf, Poitiers, 231, 242.
Mozat, 231, 239.
Mudejar, 42, 46.
Muhlhausen, 320.
Munich, 33, 48, 322, 328.
Munster, 37, 274, 310, 312, 327;
cathedral 310, Oberwasser-
Kirche, 311; S. Lambert, 312;
S. Ludger, 313; Rathaus, 284,
310.
Miinster and Soest, 303.
Murray, 34, 41, 49; guide, 91,
125.
Miirren, 30.
Naples, 53.
Narbonne, 231.
National Gallery, 46, 48, 54.
Naumburg, 287 sqq., 299, 318,
319, 321, 324, 328.
Naumburg Cathedral, 287.
Navarre, 42, 206, 229.
Neale, John Mason, 13.
Nevers, 35, 39, 201, 231, 241,
242, 249.
Newark, 274.
Newman, 3.
Norfolk, 5, 45, 128; middle-
pointed, 45.
Normandy, 38, 128, 130, 317.
Norrey, 120, 121.
Northampton, 5.
North Mymms, 274.
northern race, 1, 10.
notebooks of G. E. S., 5, 20, 22,
32, 34, 38, 50, 53, 96.
Notes d'un Voyage en Auvergne,
210, 214.
Notes of a Tour in Central Italy,
59.
Notes on French Churches, 97.
Notre Dame de la Treille, 112.
Notre Dame du Puy, 206.
Noyon, 105, 109, 114, 131, 162,
163, 164 sqq.
[340]
Nuremberg, 33, 270, 322, 328;
S. Laurence, 273, 312; S.
Sebald, 321.
Odalric, Abbot of Conques, 242.
Odo de Gissey, cited, 228.
Oldenburg, Bishop Ceroid of, 272*
Orcagna, 66.
Orcival, 231, 238, 240.
Orders, Holy, 2.
Order of Sir Galahad, 15.
Orense, 42.
Orleans, Theodulf, Bishop of, 224.
Or S. Michele, 52, 83.
Orvieto, 51, 73, 91, 92.
Ourscamp, 162.
Overbeck, 277, 281.
Oxford, 2, 13, 14, 18, 57, 58;
Union, 14; Merton college, 15;
New college, 15.
Oxford and Cambridge Magaiine,
The, 16.
Oxford Movement, 7, 13, 14, 31.
Paderborn, 275, 311, 319, 324,
327.
Padua, 224.
Paestum, 95.
painting, early English, 262, 263.
painting, early French, 39, 126,
136, 158, 189, 215, 216, 223
sq., 227, 234.
painting, early German, 274, 277,
279, 290, 299, 301, 309.
painting, early Italian, 53, 67, 70,
74, 78, 91, 94.
paintings, by G. E. S., 4, 8, 37.
Palencia, 43.
Palestrina, 9.
Palladio, 49.
Pamplona, 44.
Paris, 16, 33, 61; American
church, 28, 30; Cluny,33, 157;
Louvre, 33 ; Notre Dame, 4,
33, 116, 131, 134, 137, 141, 149,
163, 200; S. Chapelle, 116,
156; S. Germain-des-Pres, 58,
156, 231.
Passion according to S. Matthew,
The, 28.
Pater, 29.
Pavia, 317, 323.
Pebrac, 220.
Pennell, Joseph, 49.
Pere Hyacinth, 95.
Perigueux, 212, 231, 241, 243,
245, 246, 248, 249; Bishop
Arnaud, 211.
Perpignan, 43.
Perugia, 76, 80, 133, 176.
Perugino, 28, 52, 277.
photography in architecture, 35.
Picardy, 317.
Pierre de Montereau, 58, 156.
Pierrefonds, 162.
Pisa, 66, 76, 77, 272; style of,
85, 93; baptistery, 66, 84;
Campo Santo, 66-7; cathedral,
67, 69; domestic Gothic, 68;
Spina chapel, 71.
Pisano, Giovanni, 68.
Pistoja, 83, 85; baptistery, 84;
cathedral, 83; S. Bartolomeo,
84; S. Giovanni Evangellsta,
84.
plain-song, 24, 119.
Poblet. 42, 126.
Pointed Architecture in Germany,
317.
Poitiers, 176; Moustier-neuf,
231, 242; S. Hilaire, 231,
236,242; S. Radegonde, 231;
Bishop Gerald, 211.
Poitou, 129.
Polignac, 230.
Pont de I'Arche, 139.
Porretta, La, 86.
Port Vendres, 44.
Prague, 48.
Premontr^, 171.
[341]
Pre-Raphaelite Movement, 13,
32, 46, 135.
Priests in England, mediaeval,
20; in France, modern, 121,
143, 144, 191.
Proctor, Marquita (Mrs. G. E.
Street), 7, 10, 12, 13, 21, 26,
38, 45, 51, 57.
Prynne, Mr., 6.
proportion in architecture, 168,
240, 269.
Provence, 251.
Pugin, A. W. N., 292.
Pusey, Edward, 13.
Pustertal, 36.
Le Puy, 39, 201, 202 sqq., 212,
221, 246; cathedral, 205 sqq.,
239; chapel, 229; S. Laurent,
230, S. Michel, 203, 226 sqq.,
247; paintings, 216; Bishop
Evodius, 203; Bishop Guy,
228; Bishop Jean de Bourbon,
214-16; Bishop Peter, 220;
Bishop Stephen, 220; Fran-
cois Gimbert, 225.
Quakers, 11.
Raphael, 28, 277.
Ratisbon, 33, 320, 326, 328.
Ratzebourg, 328.
Ravello, 51.
Ravenna, 220, 243.
Rayham abbey, 125.
Recanati, 51,
religious feeling, 11, 12, 19, 20,
21, 24, 49, 54, 114.
Renaissance, 42, 49, 52, 68, 71,
73, 76, 95, 187, 216, 307.
Reni, Guido, 52.
restoration, 21, 30, 51, 54, 66,
121, 129, 140, 191, 208, 255,
265, 298; his own, 30 sq., 54.
Rheims, 58, 108, 113, 129, 131,
162, 163, 184; cathedral, 113,
184; S. Jacques, 186, 189;
S. Maurice, 189; S. Remi, 134,
170, 187; archbishop's palace,
186; Maison des Musiciens,
190, 308.
Rhineland, 36, 38, 174, 176, 275,
317, 318, 322, 323,327.
ringhiera, 86.
Riom, 231, 238, 241, 251.
Ripoll, 42.
Ripon, 55.
Robert de Coucy, 58, 184.
Robinson, H. Crabbe, 26.
Romanesque, 42, 45, 67, 70, 88,
103, 176, 187, 202, 222, 244,
245, 317, 322.
Rome, 51, 53, 95; American
church, 30; English church, 30.
Rossetti, 14, 16, 46, 57.
Rouen, 16, 33, 114, 117, 132, 135,
163, 193, 209, 244; S. Ouen,
117, 173; Archbishop Mau-
rice, 133, 135.
Royal Academy, 27, 57.
Royal Institute of British Archi-
tects, 27; Transactions of, 27,
201, 243.
Royat, 215, 231.
Ruskin, 36.
Russia, 32.
S. Albans, 54, 274.
S. Croix, Montmajour, 229.
S. Denis, 318.
S. Georges de Boscherville, 134,
137 sq., 156.
S. Gemignano, 91, 92.
S. Genes, 231.
S. Germer, 131, 134, 154 sqq.;
Abbot Peter de Wesencourt,
156.
S. Gervais, 58.
S. Gothard, 36.
S. James the Less, Westminster,
28.
[342]
S. Jean de Maurienne, 64.
S. Leu d'Esserent, 102, 104, 131,
141, 146 sqq.
S. L6, 124.
S. Loup, 124.
S. Margaret, Liverpool, 30.
S. Mary, Stone, 255 sqq.
S. M^dard, 170.
S. Nectaire, 231, 233, 238.
S. Nicodime, Athens, 249.
S. Omer, abbey of S. Bertin, 99,
303; Notre Dame, 100 sqq.,
137, 303.
S. Quentin, 106, 107, 131, 162,
188.
S. Saturnin, 231, 236, 238.
S. Sophia, 243, 245.
Saarburg, 197.
Saintes, 231.
Sakraments-Haus, 277, 302, 311,
316.
Salamanca, 44.
Salerno, 51.
Salisbury, 55, 128. 181, 189.
San Sebastian, 44.
Saragossa, 38, 44, 46.
Savona, 91.
Scala, 51.
Scott, Gilbert G., 5, 28, 31;
Scott and Moffatt, 6, 59.
Scott, G., 54.
Sedding, Edmund, 21.
Seez, 163.
Segovia, 44.
Senlis, 102, sqq., 108, 116, 131,
147, 149; cathedral, 103; S.
Frambourg, 104; S. Pierre,
102.
Sens, 34.
Shelley, 28, 52.
shrines, 158, 239, 306; of S.
Taurin at Evreux, 116; of S.
Elizabeth at Marburg, 300.
Siena, 11, 51, 71 sqq., 76, 176;
Academy, 74; baptistery, 72;
campanile, 72 ; Campo, 72 ;
cathedral, 73; hospital, 282.
Sierck, 197.
Sierra Morena, 42.
Siguenza, 44.
Soest, 37, 275, 311, 313. 314, 323,
327; cathedral, 314; S. Paul's.
315; S. Peter's, 312, 315;
Wiesen-Kirche, 312, 315 sqq.,
320, 322.
Soissonnais. 38. 162, 169.
Soissons, 131, 162, 163 sqq.,
188; cathedral, 164; S. Jean
des Vignes, 163. 166; S.
Leger, 168; S. Pierre, 169.
Some Account of Gothic Archi-
tecture in Spain, 27, 22, 37,
39, 40, 41 sqq., 46, 51, 320.
Some Account of the Church of
S. Mary, Stone, near Dart-
ford, 255.
Some Churches in Kent, Surrey,
and Sussex, 268.
Some Churches of Le Puy en
Velay, and Auvergne, 201.
du Sommerard, cited, 173, 179.
Soria, 42.
Southampton, 160.
Southwell, 54.
Spain, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 118,
206, 229.
Spain's debt to G. E. S., 45; to
France, 47.
Spanish towns, 42, 44 ; travel, 45.
Splugen, 36.
Spoleto, 51.
square east ends, 137, 173, 176,
265, 320.
Stephen, Leslie, 49; Sir James
Fitz-James, 49.
Stevenson, 39.
Stone Church, 255 sqq.
Strasburg, 33, 162, 318, 326.
Street, Arthur Edmund, 6, 24,
57.
[343]
street, George Edmund, life:
born, 2; goes to London, 5;
again, 21; to Wantage, 7; to
Oxford, 13; abroad, 21; to
Italy, 34; to Spain, 41; mar-
ried, 13, 57; died, 27; buried,
27, 57. London, 21, 24, 26;
competitions, 21, 22, 46, 54;
controversies, 54 sq.; commis-
sions, 6, 7, 21, 22, 27; appoint-
ments, 7, 55 ; honours, 27 ;
books, 27, 34, 41 sq., 49 sq.;
papers, 32, 37, 39, 201,
268. His buildings, 28, 30;
drawings, 35; note-books, 34;
travel, 21, 27, 31, 32; way
of life, 24; knowledge, 31, 37,
40 ; character, 3, 23, 25, 26;
energy, 3, 8, 9, 23; enthusiasm,
13, 25; wit, 25; genius, 13, 26,
35, 41; religion, 1, 9, 24, 53, 54,
114; affections of the hearth,
9, 12, 57; friends, 26, 52, 57;
relation toother architects, 10,
24, 26, 27; eye for landscape
and the picturesque, 36, 62,
65, 75, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 108,
137, 171, 172, 292, 295, 307,
313. Family: his father, 2;
mother, 9; sister, 6; brother, 4,
5, 6; son, 6, 24, 57; first wife,
7, 38, 45, 124; second wife, 10,
53, 57; father-in-law, 10, 51.
Street, Thomas, the elder, 2.
Street, Thomas, the younger,
4, 5, 6.
Suffolk, 128.
Surrey, 268.
Susa, 64, 90.
Sussex, 5, 268.
Swinburne, A. C. S., 48.
Switzerland, 36, 37, 39, 48, 245,
313.
Tarrazona, 44.
Templars, at Eunate, 229; at
Laon, 183, 229; at Metz, 229;
at Le Puy, 229 ; at Segovia, 229.
Thames, 7, 21, 58.
Theodore, Brother, cited, 228.
Thrasimene, 74.
Timbered houses, 118, 119, 154,
313; roofs, 118, 160, 246, 305.
iissus, 220, 224.
Toledo, 43, 45, 92.
Torcello, 226.
Toro, 42.
Torrington, 5.
Tortoir, 193.
Toscanella, 94.
Toul, 195; cathedral, 195; S.
Gengoult, 195-6.
Toulouse, 38, 231.
Touraine, 129.
Tournai, 175, 305.
Tournus, 62, 246.
Tours, S. Martin, 244.
Transactions, 32; of the R. I.
B. A., 39, 201, 243; of the
Exeter Architectural Society,
268; of the Kent Archaeologi-
cal Society, 255.
tree of Jesse, 139, 225.
Treves, 175, 195, 196, 197, 221.
tribunes, 165.
Trinidad, 30.
Troyes, 34, 131.
Tudela, 44.
Turin, 65, 89-90.
Tuy, 42.
Tyndall, 49.
Tyrol, 36, 48.
Ulm, 33, 327.
Umbria, 51, 53, 75-81.
University, 2, 7.
Urgell, Seo de, 43.
Tarragona, 44.
Val d'Aosta, 48.
[344]
Val di Chiana, 75.
Valencia, 43, 44.
Valladolid, 43, 47.
Van Eyck, 274.
Vauclair, 183.
Vaux-sous-Laon, 183.
Velay, le, 39, 201, 202; Etats
de, 214; archives of, 215.
Vendome, 148.
Venice, 133, 194, 224, 248, 289,
304; S. Marco, 4, 27, 212,242
sq., 249.
Verdier, cited, 161, 184.
Vergato, 86.
Verneilh, cited, 248.
Verona, 71, 133, 270, 279, 284.
Vevey, English church, 30.
Vezelay, 35.
Vienna, 48, 322.
Vienne, 212.
village churches, 22; French,
131, 143, 145; English, 257.
Viollet-le-Duc, cited, 144, 150,
156, 162, 173, 184, 211, 215,
231.
Viterbo, 94.
Vitoria, 43, 44.
Volvic, 231.
Vosges, 36.
Wales, 1.
Wallenstadt, lake of. 36.
Wantage, 7.
Warfield, 265.
Webbe, the elder, 13.
Webbe, Philip, 21.
Wellington, Duke of, 41.
Wells, 128.
Wensley, 274.
Westminster Abbey, 27, 32, 58,
204, 244, 255, 258, 318.
West of England, 4.
wheel of Fortune, 153.
Wilars de Honecort, 184.
Wilberforce, Samuel, 13.
Wimbourne, 279.
Winchester, 5, 9, 12, 55 ; font,
160.
Worcester, 2.
Wordsworth, 4.
workmen, mediaeval: masons,
240 ; sculptor, Gaulfredus,
220, another (Robert), 234;
architects, Pierre de Monte-
reau, 58, 156; Robert de
Coucy, 58, 184; metal-work-
ers, 274, Hans Apengeter, 277,
John and Nicholas of Bingen,
222; silversmith, 225, Francois
Gimbert, 234 ; glass painter,
Dominic Livi, 276.
Worms, 249, 321, 322.
Wurtzburg, 33.
York, 27, 32, 55.
Yorkshire, 4, 128.
Ypres, 303 sq., 311.
Zamora, 44, 46.
Zaragoza, 44, 46, v. Saragossa.
Zinzig, 323.
Zurich, lake of, 36.
[345]
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