Roman Architecture Essay, Research Paper

A

great deal of conjecture has been expended on the question as to the genesis of

the Roman basilica. For present purposes it may be sufficient to observe that

the addition of aisles to the nave was so manifest a convenience that it might

not improbably have been thought of, even had models not been at hand in the

civic buildings of the Empire. The most suitable example that can be chosen as

typical of the Roman basilica of the age of Constantine is the church of S.

Maria Maggiore. And this, not merely because, in spite of certain modern

alterations, it has kept in the main its original features, but also because it

departs, to a lesser extent than any other extant example, from the classical

ideal. The lateral colonnade is immediately surmounted by a horizontal

entablature, with architrave, frieze, and cornice all complete. The monolithic

columns, with their capitals, are, moreover, homogenous, and have been cut for

their position, instead of being like those of so many early Christian churches,

the more or less incongruous and heterogeneous spoils of older and non-Christian

edifices. Of this church, in its original form, no one however decidedly his

tastes may incline to some more highly developed system or style of architecture

will call in question the stately and majestic beauty. The general effect is

that of a vast perspective of lines of noble columns, carrying the eye forward

to the altar, which, with its civory or canopy, forms so conspicuous an object,

standing, framed, as it mere, within the arch of the terminal apse, which forms

its immediate and appropriate background. S. Maria Maggiore is considerably

smaller than were any of the other three chief basilicas of Rome (St Peter’s,

St. Paul’s, and the Lateran). Each of these, in addition to a nave of greater

length and breadth, was furnished (as may still be seen in the restored St

Paul’s) with a double aisle. This, however, was an advantage which was not

unattended with a serious drawback from a purely esthetic point of view. For a

great space of blank wall intervening between the top of the lateral colonnade

and the clerestory windows was of necessity required in order to give support to

the penthouse roof of the double aisle. And it is curious, to say the least,

that it should not have occurred to the builders of those three basilicas to

utilize a portion of the space thus enclosed, and at the same time to lighten

the burden of the wall above the colonnade, by constructing a gallery above the

inner aisle. It is true, of course, that such a gallery is found in the church

of S. Agnese, where the low-level of the floor relatively to the surface of the

ground outside may have suggested this method of construction; but whereas, in

the East, the provision of a gallery (used as a gynaeceum) was usual from very

early times, it never became otherwise than exceptional in the West. Taking East

and West together, we find among early and medieval basilican churches examples

of all the combinations that are possible in the arrangement of aisles and

galleries. They are the single aisle without gallery, which is, of course, the

commonest type of all; the double aisle without gallery, as in the three great

Roman basilicas; the single aisle with gallery, as in S. Agnese; the double

aisle with single gallery, as in St. Demetrius at Thessalonica; and finally, as

a crowning example, though of a later period, the double aisle surmounted by a

double gallery, as in the Duomo at Pisa. These, however, are modifications in

the general design of the building. Others, not less important, though they are

less obviously striking, concern the details of the construction. Of these the

first was the substitution of the arch for the horizontal entablature, and the

second that of the pillar of masonry for the monolithic column. The former

change, which had already come into operation in the first basilica of St. Paul

without the Walls, was so obviously in the nature of an improvement in point of

stability that it is no matter for surprise that it should have been almost.

universally adopted. Colonnaded and arcaded basilicas, as we may call them, for

the most part older than the eleventh century, are to be found in the most

widely distant regions, from Syria to Spain, and from Sicily to Saxony; and the

lack of examples in Southern France is probably due to the destructive invasion

of the Saracens and Northmen and to the building of new churches of a different

type, in the eleventh and succeeding centuries, on the ruins of the old. The

change from column to pillar, though in many cases it was no doubt necessitated

by lack of suitable materials — for the supply of ready-made monoliths from

pagan buildings was not inexhaustible — proved, in fact, the germ of future

development; for from the plain square support to the recessed pillar, and from

this again to the grouped shafts of the Gothic cathedrals of later times, the

progress can be quite plainly traced. Mention should here be made of a class of

basilican churches, in which as in S. Miniato, outside Florence, and in S.

Zenone, Verona, pillars or grouped shafts alternate, at fixed intervals, with

simple columns, and serve the purpose of affording support to transverse arches

spanning the whole width of the nave; a first step, it may be observed, to

continuous vaulting. ROMANESQUE TYPES Something must now be said of the very

important alterations which the eastern end of the basilican church underwent in

the process of development from the Roman to what may conveniently be grouped

together under the designation of "Romanesque" types. When, in

studying the ground-plan of a Roman basilica, we pass from the nave and aisles

to what lies beyond them, only two forms of design present themselves. In the

great majority of instances the terminal apse opens immediately on the nave,

with the necessary result, so far as internal arrangements are concerned, that

the choir, as we should call it, was an enclosure, quite unconnected with the

architecture of the building, protruding forwards into the body of the church,

as may still be seen in the church of S. Clemente in Rome. In the four greater

basilicas, however, as well as in a few other instances, a transept was

interposed between the nave and the apse, affording adequate space for the choir

in its central portion, while its arms (which did not project beyond the aisles)

served the purpose implied in the terms senatorium and matroneum. Now it is

noteworthy that the transept of a Roman basilica is, architecturally speaking,

simply an oblong hall, crossing the nave at its upper extremity, and forming

with it a T-shaped cross, or crux immissa, but having no organic structural

relation with it. But it was only necessary to equalize the breadth of transept

and nave, so that their crossing became a perfect square, in order to give to

this crossing a definite structural character, by strengthening the pieces at

the four angles of the crossing, and making them the basis of a more or less

conspicuous tower. And this was one of the most characteristic innovation or

improvements introduced by the Romanesque builders of Northern Europe. In fact,

however, before this stage of development was reached, the older basilican

design had undergone another modification. For the simple apse, opening

immediately to the transept, church builders of all parts of Europe had already

in the eighth century substituted a projecting chancel, forming a fourth limb of

the cross, which now definitively assumed the form of the crux commissa, by

contrast with the crux immissa of the Roman basilica. The earliest example of a

perfectly quadrate crossing, with a somewhat rudimentary tower, appears to have

been the minster of Fulda, built about A. D. 800. It was quickly followed by St.

Gall (830), Hersfeld (831), and Werden (875); but nearly two centuries were to

elapse before the cruciform arrangement, even in the case of more important

churches, can be said to have gained general acceptance (Dehio and v. Bezold,

Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes, I, 161). The differences which have

already been mentioned were, however, by no means the only ones which

distinguished the Romanesque from the Roman transept. The transept of a

Romanesque church, especially of those which were attached to monasteries, was

usually provided with one or more apses, projecting from the east side of its

northern and southern arms; and from this it appears, plainly enough, that the

purpose, or at least a principal purpose, of the medieval transept, was to make

provision for subsidiary altars and chapels. A pair of transept apses,

projecting eastwards, already makes its appearance at Hersfeld and Werden. At

Bernay, Boscherville (St- Georges), and Cerisy-la-Forкt

(St-Vigor), each arm of the transept has two eastern apses, corresponding

respectively to the aisle and to the projecting arm. The same arrangement is

found also at Tarragona. At La Charitй,

a priory dependent on Cluny, each arm had three apses, so that there were seven

in all, immediately contiguous to one another, and varying in depth from the

central to the northern and southern members of the system. The plan of Cluny

itself was that of a cross with two transverse beams. Of the western transept

each arm had two apses; of the eastern each had three, two projecting eastwards

and one terminal. Saint-Benoоt-sur-Loire

had likewise a double transept, furnished on the same principle with six

subsidiary apses. Among English cathedrals — it may here be mentioned — both

Canterbury and Norwich have a single chapel projecting from each arm of their

respective transepts; and at E1y the "Galilee" porch, which has the

form of a western transept, opens eastwards into two apsidal chapels, contiguous

on either side to the main walls of the cathedral. Far more important in their

bearing on the later history of architecture than these developments of the

transept were certain changes which gradually took place in connection with the

chancel. It is not unusual in Romanesque churches, to find the chancel flanked,

like the nave, with aisles, terminating in apsidal or square-ended chapels. But

in more considerable edifices especially in France, the aisle is often carried

round as an ambulatory behind the chancel apse; and when this is the case, the

ambulatory most commonly opens into a series of radiating chapels. These are, in

the earliest examples, entirely separate from one another, being sometimes two

or four, but more usually three or five, in number. In later examples the number

of chapels increases to seven or even nine; and they are then contiguous,

forming a complete corona or chevet. The first beginnings of this system go back

to so early a date as the fifth century. De Rossi has argued, apparently on good

grounds, that some early Roman, Italian, and African basilicas were furnished

with an ambulatory round the apse. This form of design, however, was soon

abandoned in Italy, and in the Romanesque pre-Gothic period it cannot be said to

have been usual anywhere except in France, where it proved a seed rich with the

promise of future developments. The earliest instance of its adoption there was

almost certainly the ancient church of St-Martin of Tours, as rebuilt by Bishop

Perpetuus in A. D. 470. This edifice, as Quicherat has shown, had a semicircular

ambulatory at the back of the altar, in which, a few years later, was placed the

tomb of Perpetuus himself. From Tours the type seems to have passed to Clermont-Ferrand

(Sts. Vitalis and Agricola), and thence, many centuries later, to Orlйans

(St-Aignan, 1029). Meanwhile, in 997, the church of St. Martin had been rebuilt,

and in the foundations of this edifice, which can still be traced, we find what

is probably the earliest example of a chevet or corona of radiating chapels. It

served, in its turn, in the course of the following century, as the model, in

this respect, of Notre-Dame de la Couture at Le Mans (c. 1000), St-Remi at Reims

(c. 1010), St-Savin at Saint Savin (1020-30), the cathedral at Vannes (c. 1030),

St-Hilaire at Poitiers (1049), and the abbey church at Cluny, as rebuilt in

1089. Shortly before 1100 the church of St. Martin was once more rebuilt, on a

scale of greater splendour; and once more the new building became the model for

other churches, chief among which were those of St-Sernin at Toulouse (1096), of

Santiago at Compostela (c. 1105), and of the cathedral at Chartres (1112).

ROMANESQUE VAULTING The history of ecclesiastical architecture in Western Europe

during the relatively short period which alone deserves to be regarded as one of

more or less continuous and steady advance, and which extends, roughly speaking,

from 1000 to 1300, may be described as the history of successive and progressive

attempts to solve the problem, how best to cover with stone vaulting a basilican

or quasi-basilican church, that is to say, a building of which the leading

feature is a nave flanked with aisles and lighted with clerestory windows (Dehio

and v. Bezold, op. cit. I, 296; Bond, op. cit., 6). It was the conditions of

this problem, and the failure, more or less complete, of all previous attempts

to solve it satisfactorily, and by no means a mere aesthetic striving after

beauty of architectural form, which led step by step to the development of the

Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century in its unsurpassed and

unsurpassable perfection. The advantages of a vaulted, as compared with a

timber, roof are so obvious that we are not surprised to find, dating from the

tenth century or at latest from the beginning of the eleventh, examples of

basilican churches with vaulted aisles. Indeed these first attempts at

continuous vaulting would probably have been made much earlier, but for the

invasions of Saracens and Northmen, which delayed till that period the first

beginnings of a steady development in ecclesiastical architecture, but which by

their wholesale destruction of pre-existing buildings may be said to have

prepared the way for that same development. The vaulting of the nave, however,

in the case of any church of considerable size, was a very different matter; and

it was not until the eleventh century was well advanced that the problem was

seriously faced. And when at last it was definitely taken in hand, this was done

under pressure of dire necessity. Everyone who is at all conversant with

medieval chronicles, or with the history of the cathedrals of Western Europe,

must be aware how extremely frequent were the disasters caused by

conflagrations, and it was natural enough that the church-builders of the later

Middle Ages should aim at making their buildings, at least relatively,

fire-proof. The simplest form which the vaulting of a rectangular chamber can

take is, of course, the cylindrical barrel-vault; and this is, in fact, the form

which was adopted in many of the earliest examples of vaulted roofs, especially

in the south of France; a form, too, which was extensively used in Italy during

the age of the Renaissance. But, though simplest alike in conception and in

construction, the cylindrical barrel-vault is in fact the least satisfactory

that could be devised for its purpose; and the objections which militate against

its employment are equally valid against that of the barrel-vault whose cross

section forms a pointed arch. Of these objections the chief is that the

horizontal thrust of a barrel-vault is evenly distributed throughout its entire

length. Theoretically, then, this thrust requires to be met, not by a series of

buttresses, but by a continuous wall of sufficient thickness to resist the

outward pressure at any and every point along the line. Moreover, the higher the

wall, the greater is the thickness needed, assuming of course that the wall

stands free, like the clerestory wall of an aisled church. Much, too, will

depend on the cohesiveness of the vaulting itself; and as the Romanesque

church-builders were either unacquainted with, or unable to use, the methods by

which the Romans and the Byzantines respectively contrived to give an almost

rigid solidity to their masonry, it is no matter for surprise that in two large

classes of instances they should have been content to sacrifice either the

clerestory or the aisles to the advantages of a vaulted roof and to the

exigencies of stability. Of aisleless churches indeed, we must forbear here to

speak. But of an important group of buildings which German writers have

designated Hallenkirchen (hall- churches) a word must be said, as they

unquestionably played a part in preparing the way for the final solution of the

problem of vaulting. The most rudimentary form of hall-church is that in which

the nave and aisles are roofed with three parallel barrel-vaults, those of the

aisles springing from the same level as those of the nave. Examples are found at

Lyons (St-Martin d’Ainay), at Lesterps, at Civray, and Carcassonne (St- Nazaire).

An improvement on this design, in view of the illumination of the nave, consists

in giving to the vaulting of the aisles the form of a "rampant" arch,

as at Silvacanne, and from this it was but a step to the arrangement by which

the section took the form of a simple quadrant as at Parthenay-le-Vieux,

Preuilly, and Fontfroide. This method of quadrant vaulting, as Viollet-le-Duc

and others have observed, provides a kind of continuous internal "flying

buttress", though it is by no means certain that the idea of the flying

buttress in the Gothic architecture of Northern France was actually suggested by

these Southern buildings. In point of stability. the hall-churches of the

eleventh century leave nothing to be desired. Their great defect is want of

light. And this defect almost equally affects a class of buildings which may be

described as two-storied hall-churches, and which are found principally, if not

exclusively, in Auvergne and its neighbourhood. These are furnished, like a few

of the Roman basilicas and certain Byzantine churches, with a gallery, which is

not a mere triforium contrived in the thickness of the walls, but a chamber of

equal dimension with the aisle. This arrangement not only affords additional

spaces but also, by reason of the greater height of the edifice, might seem to

facilitate the provision of a more liberal supply of light, unimpeded by

neighbouring buildings. This last mentioned advantage is, however, almost

entirely negatived by the circumstance that, in this class of buildings, each

bay of the gallery is subdivided by means of coupled or grouped arches, so that

the additional obstruction offered to the passage of the light almost entirely

counterbalance the possible gain through additional fenestration. We say

"the possible gain" because, in fact, the galleries of these churches

are but sparingly provided with windows. In these churches (which to the English

reader should be of special interest by reason of their affinity in point of

construction to the Westminster cathedral) the aisle is usually cross-vaulted,

while the gallery has a quadrant vault abutting in the wall of the nave just

below the springing of the transverse arches. The most noteworthy examples are

found at Clermont-Ferrand (Notre Dame du Port), Issoire (St-Paul), and Conques.

To the same family belongs moreover, the great church of St-Sernin at Toulouse

already mentioned, which is distinguished from those previously named by having

a double aisle. At Nevers the church of St-Etienne resembles those at Clermont,

Issoire, and Conques, except that it is provided with a range of upper windows

which break through the barrel-vaulting, somewhat after the fashion which

afterwards became so common in Italy in churches of the Renaissance period. The

inherent shortcomings of the barrel-vault, especially when used as a roof for

the nave of an aisled church, have been sufficiently illustrated. These

disadvantages, so far as structural stability and fenestration are concerned,

might indeed be overcome by adopting the system of a succession of transverse

barrel-vaults, such as are seen in the unique instance of the church of St-Philibert

at Tournus. Such a construction is, however, "ponderous and inelegant, and

never came into general use" (Moore, Gothic Architecture, 42). The system

of cross-vaulting, which has now to be considered, may be regarded as a

combination of longitudinal with transverse barrel-vaulting, inasmuch as it may

be described as consisting of a central barrel which is penetrated or

intersected by a series of transverse vaults, corresponding of course to the

successive bays or compartments of the nave. The advantages of cross-vaulting

are threefold. In the first place the total amount of the outward lateral thrust

is very greatly diminished, since one half of it is now replaced by longitudinal

thrusts, which, being opposed in pairs, neutralize one another. Secondly, all

that is left of the lateral thrust, as well as the longitudinal thrusts, and the

whole of the vertical pressure instead of being distributed throughout the whole

length of the building, is now collected and delivered at definite points,

namely the summits of the columns or pillars. Thirdly and lastly, a perfectly

developed system of cross-vaulting makes it possible so to heighten the

clerestory windows that their archivolts shall reach the utmost interior height

of the building, and so to broaden them that their width between reveals may

approximate very closely to the interval between column and column below. By

these improvements (as ultimately realized in the perfected Gothic of the

thirteenth century) the somewhat rudimentary design of the ancient Roman

basilica may be said to have reached the highest development of which it is

capable. The gradual development of cross-vaulting it is to be observed, did not

take place in those districts of Southern and Central France which had already

become the home of the barrel-vault and to a less degree of the cupola, but

first in Lombardy then in Germany, and finally in Northern France and in

England. In these countries the evolution of the Romanesque timber-roofed

basilican church had — with local variations of course — reached a far more

advanced stage than was ever attained in these regions in which the adoption of

barrel-vaulting at a relatively early date had in a manner put a check on

architectural progress. And it is noteworthy that in Lombardy and Germany, when

cross-vaulting was first adopted, its development was far less complete than in

Northern France, and that in like manner the advance towards perfection was both

less rapid and less complete in Normandy than in Picardy and the Ile-de-France.

These two districts were the last to adopt the system, but it was here that it

was within the brief space of less than fifty years (1170-1220), brought to its

final perfection. The reason may probably have been, as Dehio and von Bezold

suggest, that the architects of the Ile- de-France, in the days of Philip

Augustus and St. Louis, were less trammelled than those of Normandy by the

traditions of a school. The comparative lack of important architectural

monuments of an earlier date left them, say these writers, a more open field for

their inventive enterprise (op. cit. I, 418). The simplest form of

cross-vaulting is of course that which is formed by the intersection of two

cylindrical barrel-vaults of equal span. And this, without the use of ribbed

groining, was the method mostly adopted by the Roman builders in their civic

edifices. In the case of a pillared or columned church, however, this method had

its disadvantages. In particular, having regard to the dimensions of the aisle

and its vaulting, the builders of Northern Europe had all but universally

adopted the plan of so spacing the columns and pillars which flank the nave that

the intervals between them should be one-half the width of the church. Now the

only means by which an equal height could be given to vaults of unequal span was

the use of the pointed arch; and so it came about that the pointed arch was

adopted, not primarily for aesthetic reasons, but rather for constructive

purposes. And the same is to be said of the use of ribbed groining. The medieval

builders, who, as has been said above, possessed neither a tenacious mortar nor

the command of an abundant supply of rough labour, and who therefore could not

– even had they wished it — have adopted the massive concrete masonry of the

Romans, were driven by the very necessities of the case to aim at the same time

to depend for stability not on the cohesion of the materials, but on the

reduction of thrusts to a minimum, and on their skilful transmission to points

where they could be effectively resisted. It was, then, plainly desirable to

substitute for a vaulting of uniform thickness a framework of ribs on which a

comparatively thin layer of stones (cut to the requisite curvature) could be

laid, and as far as possible to lighten the whole construction by moulding the

ribs and likewise the columns which supported the vaulting. The same principle

of aiming at lightness of construction led to the elimination, as far as

possible, of arches of the nave. This was done by the enlargement of the windows

and the development of the triforium, till the entire building, with the

exception of the buttresses, and of the spandrels below the triforium, became a

graceful framework of grouped shafts and interlacing ribs (Moore, op. cit., 17).

The final stage in the evolution of architecture of the pointed arch was not,

however, reached, until, for the solid Romanesque buttresses, which rested on

the vaulting of the aisles, and which were not only clumsy but often proved

inadequate for their purpose, the genius of the Gothic builders hit upon the

epoch-making device of the flying buttress. By means of this device the thrust

of the main vaulting was not, indeed, as has been too often said, "met by a

counter-thrust", but was transmitted to the solid buttresses, mostly

weighted with pinnacles, which were now built outwards to a great distance from

the aisles, and the spaces between which were sometimes utilized, and might with

advantage have been more often utilized, for a range of lateral chapels. The

subject of Gothic architecture in its details is, however, one that needs

separate treatment, and for present purposes this very inadequate indication of

some of the general principles involved in its development must suffice. THE

CIRCULAR CHURCH AND ITS DERIVATIVES It was stated at the outset of the article

that all ecclesiastical architecture may be said to have been devel- oped from

two primitive germs, the oblong and the circular chamber. Of those very numerous

churches, principally, but by no means exclusively, Eastern or Italian, which

may be regarded as the products of the second line of development, we shall

speak very briefly. That a circular chamber without any kind of annex was

unsuitable for the ordinary purposes of public worship is plain enough. And the

most obvious modification of this rudimentary form was to throw out a projecting

sanctuary on one side of the building, as in St. George’s, Thessalonica, or in

the little church of S. Tommaso in Limine, near Bergamo. It was hardly less

obviously convenient to build a projecting porch or narthex on the opposite

side, as in St. Elias’s, also at Thessalonica, and to complete the cross by

means of lateral projection, as in the sepulchral chapel of Galla Placidia at

Ravenna. Thus it was that churches having the form of a Greek cross, as well as

other varieties of what German authors call the Centralbau, may be said to owe

their origin to a very simple process of evolution from the circular domed

building. Among the almost endless varieties on the main theme may be here

enumerated: buildings in which a circular, or polygonal, or quadrilateral aisle,

whether in one or more stories, surrounds the central space, buildings in which,

though the principal open space is cruciform, and the whole is dominated by a

central cupola, the ground- plan shows a rectangular outline, the cross being,

as it were, boxed within a square; and buildings in which one of the arms of the

cross is considerably elongated, as in the Duomo at Florence, St. Peter’s in

Rome, and St. Paul’s in London. The last-named modification, it is to be

observed, has the effect of assimilating the ground-plan of those great

churches, and of many lesser examples of the same character, to that of the

Romanesque and Gothic cruciform buildings whose genealogical descent from the

columned rectangular basilica is contestable. Among ecclesiastical edifices of

historical importance or interest which are either circular or polygonal, or in

which the circular or polygonal centre predominates over subsidiary parts of the

structure, may be mentioned the Pantheon in Rome, St. Sergius at Constantinople,

S. Vitale at Ravenna, S. Lorenzo at Milan, the great baptisteries of Florence,

Siena, and Pisa, and the churches of the Knights Templars in various parts of

Europe. St. Luke at Stiris in Phocis, besides being an excellent typical

instance of true Byzantine architecture, affords a good example of the

"boxing" of a cruciform building of the Greek type, by enclosing

within the walls the square space between the adjacent limbs of the cross.

Practically, however, the full development of cruciform from circular buildings

became possible only when the problem had been solved of roofing a square

chamber with a circular dome. This has in some cases been done by first reducing

the square to an octagon, by means of "squinches" or "trompettes",

and then raising the dome on the octagon, by filling in the obtuse angles of the

figure with rudimentary pendentives or faced corbelling. But already in the

sixth century the architect and builder of Santa Sophia had showed for all time

that it was possible by means of "true" pendentives, to support a

dome, even of immense size, on four arches (with their piers) forming a square.

The use of pendentives being once understood, it became possible, not only to

combine the advantages of a great central dome with those of a cruciform church,

but also to substitute domical for barrel- vaulting over the limbs of the cross,

as at S. Marco, Venice, St-Front, Pйrigueux,

and S. Antonio, Padua, or even to employ domical vaulting for a nave divided

into square bays, as in the cathedral at Angouleme and other eleventh century

churches in Perigord, in S. Salvatore at Venice, in the London Oratory, and

(with the difference that saucer domes are here employed) in the Westminster

Cathedral. Nor should it be forgotten that in the nave of St. Paul’s, London,

the architect had shown that domical vaulting is possible even when the bays of

nave or aisles are not square, but pronouncedly oblong. Indeed, if account be

taken of the manifold disadvantages of barrel-vaulting as a means of roofing the

nave of a large church, it may safely be said that the employment of some form

of the dome or cupola is as necessary to the logical and structural perfection

of the architecture of the round arch as ribbed groining and the use of flying

buttresses are necessary to the logical and structural perfection of the

architecture of the pointed arch. SYSTEMS AND STYLES OF ARCHITECTURE IN RELIGION

TO MODERN NEEDS A word must now be said, in conclusion, as to the merits of the

several systems and styles of architecture, more especially in relation to the

needs of our own day. Of systems, indeed, there are in truth only three, the

trabeate or that of which the horizontal lintel may be regarded as the

generating element, and which of necessity postulates a timber roof; that of the

round arch, which by virtue of the law of economy postulates, as has been said,

the use of domical rather than barrel-vaulting and that of the pointed arch,

which, if carried to perfection postulates ribbed groining and the use of the

flying buttress. The second system, however, admits of two methods of treatment

which are sufficiently distinctive to be classed as two "styles", viz.

the neoclassical, or Renaissance, and the Byzantine, and which shall be

particularized presently. Now the trabeate system, or that of the timber roof,

may be very briefly dismissed. In the great majority of cases we must, indeed,

of necessity be content with such a covering, for our churches; but no one would

choose a wooden roof who could afford a vaulted building. Again, the various

types of Romanesque architecture, with their imperfect and tentative methods of

vaulting, though historically of great interest, should be regarded as finally

out of court. On the other hands of the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth

century as exemplified in the great cathedrals of Northern France and of

Cologne, it mas be quite fearlessly asserted: that every single principle of

construction employed therein was the outcome of centuries of practical

experience, in the form of successive and progressive attempts to solve the

problems of church vaulting; that the great loftiness of these buildings was not

primarily due (as has been sometimes suggested) to any mere Emporstreben, or

"upward-soaring" propensity, but was simply the aggregate result of

giving to the windows of the aisles and of the clerestory a height in suitable

proportion to their width, and to the triforium a height sufficient to allow of

the abutment of the aisle roof; and that every subsequent attempt to modify in

any substantial particular, this perfected Gothic style, was of its nature

retrogressive and decadent, as may be illustrated from the English perpendicular

and the Italian and Spanish varieties of Gothic architecture. Nevertheless it

must be admitted that thirteenth-century Gothic, though perfect of its kind, has

its limitations, the most serious of which — in relation to modern needs — is

the necessarily restricted width of the nave. When the architect of the Milan

cathedral attempted to improve on his French predecessors by exceeding their

maximum width of fifty feet, and to construct a Gothic building with a nave

measuring sixty feet across it was found impossible, as the building proceeded,

to carry out the original design without incurring the almost certain risk of a

collapse, and hence it was necessary to depress the clerestory to its present

stunted proportions. Now under modern conditions of life, especially in the case

of a cathedral of first-class importance, a nave of far greater width is by all

means desirable; and in order to secure this greater width it is necessary

either to fall back on the unsatisfactory compromise of Italian or Spanish

Gothic, as illustrated in the cathedrals of Milan, Florence, or Gerona, or else

to adopt the principle of the round arch, combined, by preference, with domical

vaulting. This, as everyone knows, is what Mr. Bentley has done, with altogether

conspicuous success, in the case of the Westminster Cathedral. Of the design of

this noble edifice it is impossible to speak here. But it may be worth while to

indicate one main reason for the choice of the Byzantine rather than the

neoclassic or Renaissance treatment of the round-arch system. The principal

difference between the two is this: that, whereas the neoclassical style, by its

use of pilasters, treats every pier as though it were a cluster of huge,

flat-faced columns; the Byzantine boldly distinguishes between piers and

columns, and employs the latter exclusively for the purposes which monolithic

shafts are suited to fulfil, for instance the support of a gallery while the

piers in a Byzantine building make no pretence of being other than what they

are, viz., the main supports of the vaulting. The Byzantine method of

construction was employed at Westminster has the further advantage that it

brings within the building the whole of the spaces between the buttresses

thereby at the same time increasing the interior dimensions and avoiding the

awkward appearance of ponderous external supports. Nor is the Byzantine style of

architecture suitable for a great cathedral alone; and one may venture to hope

that the great experiment which has been tried at Westminster will be fruitful

of results in the future development of ecclesiastical architecture.