The term Gothic, as applied to the architectural period dating from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century, is purely conventional.

The expression is clearly misleading as indicating the architecture of the Goths or Visigoths; for these tribes were vanquished by Clovis in the sixth century, and left no monumental trace of their invasion. Hence, their influence upon art was nil. The term is radically false both from the historical and the archÆological point of view, and originates in an error which demands the strenuous opposition due to persistent fallacies. By a strange irony of fate the term Gothic, used in the last century merely as the opprobrious synonym of barbaric, has been specialised within the last sixty years in connection with that polished epoch of the Middle Ages which sheds most lustre upon our national art. And this, in spite of its Germanic origin.

Romanesque architecture, or to be exact, that architecture which, by virtue of the archÆologic convention of 1825, we agree to label Romanesque, undoubtedly borrowed its essential elements from the Romans and Byzantines, modifying and perfecting them by the genius of Western Europe; but the architectural period which began in the middle of the twelfth century, and is so unjustly dubbed Gothic, was of purely French birth; its cradle was the nucleus of modern France. Aquitaine, Anjou, and Maine were the provinces in which it first took root. The royal domain, and notably the Ile-de-France, witnessed its most marvellous developments, and it was from the very heart of France that its splendour radiated throughout Europe.

But the tyranny of usage leaves us no choice as to the title of this volume. We are compelled to style it Gothic Architecture, though we would gladly have registered our protest by naming it French MediÆval Architecture.[1]

The term Gothic is, however, purely arbitrary, as is also that of pointed, which has been introduced by writers who admit the principle of the broken arch as the characteristic of so-called Gothic architecture.

The broken or pointed arch, which is formed by the intersection of two opposite curves at an angle more or less acute, was known to architects long before its systematic application. It occurs in buildings of the ninth century in Cairo, and was used prior to this in Armenia, and still earlier in Persia, where indeed it superseded all other forms of span from the times of the last of the Sassanides onwards. It is an expedient which gives increased power of resistance to the arch by diminishing its lateral thrusts.

The pointed arch is a form which admits of infinite variations. The one law which governs its construction is expediency. It frankly abandons those rules of classic proportion which are the canons, so to speak, of the round-headed arch. Thus we shall find the pointed approximating to the round-headed form in the twelfth century, only to diverge from it more widely than before, till, towards the close of the thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth century, it took on the acute proportions necessitated by a perilous disposition to prefer loftiness to solidity.

Fundamentally, it is of little moment whether the architecture of the twelfth to the sixteenth century be termed Gothic or pointed, when we recognise these terms as equally inexact. The point to be really insisted upon is that the filiation we have already demonstrated in our book on Romanesque Architecture continued slowly, but surely, in the wake of civilisation, of which architecture is ever one of the most striking manifestations.

So-called Gothic architecture was not the product of a single generation; it was the continuous logical development of the Romanesque movement, just as the latter in its time had been the outcome of a gradual adaptation of old traditions to new-born exigencies. Thus our Aquitainian forbears, by their successful translation into stone of the eastern cupola, prepared the way for the groined vault, the embryo of which is clearly traceable in the pendentives of the dome at St. Front.

The great churches which, towards the middle of the twelfth century, rose throughout the rich Western provinces that cluster about Aquitaine, were all constructed with groined vaults. In these examples we can discern no halting, tentative application of newly adopted principles. The work is that of consummate architects, who brought to their labours the assurance born of experienced skill, and in the later part of the twelfth century, the new system had replaced all others for the construction of vaults throughout Western Europe.

The architects of the royal domain, and notably those of the Ile-de-France, had been the first to adopt the groined vault. Towards the close of the twelfth century their assimilation of the new principles, their native ingenuity, and professional hardihood alike urged them to its further development. They became the inventors of the flying buttress.

The substitution of the groined vault for its parent, the cupola, was the direct consequence of the old tradition. The development was merely a stage in the march of ideas, a consummation logically arrived at in the track which the Romans, constructors not less bold though more prudent than their artistic progeny, had marked out for them. The groined vault, in short, is simply the growth of Roman principles perfected by continuous experiment. But the flying buttress, or rather the system of construction based on its use, caused a radical change in the art of building of the twelfth century. Stability, which in the ancient buildings was ensured by solid masses at the impost of vaults and arches, was replaced by the balance of parts. From this daring system some of the most marvellous of architectural effects have been won; but the innovation had a dangerous inherent weakness, inasmuch as it involved the exterior position of those essential vital organs for whose preservation the ancients had wisely provided, by keeping them within the building.

It is therefore not surprising that though fifty years after its introduction the groined vault was generally adopted throughout Western Europe, and even in the East, the success of the flying buttress was infinitely more gradual and restricted. Thus, in the North, the multiplication of great religious monuments built, or even rebuilt on the new lines, was simultaneous with the construction in the South of vast churches on the old principles. The adventurous builders of the North had eagerly adopted the new division of churches into several aisles, all with groined vaults, the vault of the great central nave relying upon exterior flying buttresses for resistance to its thrust.

In the South, on the other hand, architects were prudent, either through instinctive resistance to, or deliberate reaction from, the innovating influence, or by way of fidelity to an ancient tradition. They built with a single aisle, wide and lofty; the vaults were indeed supported by ribs, but their thrusts were received by powerful buttresses inside the walls, the projections thus formed being further utilised for the construction of chapels in the intervals.

This latter system, which has the incontestable merit of perfect solidity, recalls the construction of the Basilica of Constantine, or of the tepidarium in the Baths of Caracalla. The stability of the edifice was ensured by the resistance of masses at the imposts, and the whole principle of construction formed, as it were, a protest against the miracles of equilibrium so much in favour among the Northerners.

The new system of vaults supported by flying buttresses made very slight way in the South. It appears but rarely, and in the few instances where it is used has entirely the air of a foreign importation. Even in the cradle of its origin, it took root slowly and with difficulty, for its first applications were not without disaster. Lacking that mathematical knowledge which is the mainstay of the modern architect, the experimental skill shown by the thirteenth-century builder in constructing his vaults, and then in neutralising their thrusts by flying buttresses reduced to the legitimate function of permanent struts, was little short of miraculous. For it must be borne in mind that the thrust of these vaults, and the strength of the flying buttresses, varied of necessity according to their span, and the resisting powers of their materials. It was only by dint of long gropings in the dark that the necessarily empirical formulÆ of the innovators were gradually transformed into recognised rules, and this knotty problem of construction received no positive solution till the last years of the thirteenth, or more emphatically, the first years of the fourteenth century. While even then the solution could claim no universal acceptance, for what was comparatively easy in countries where stone abounds became difficult, if not impossible, in districts where such a material as brick was the sole resource of builders.

Nevertheless, the growth of Gothic architecture was rapid, so rapid that even in the fourteenth century it began to show symptoms of that swift decadence which is the Nemesis of facile success. The abuse of equilibrium, the excessive diminution of points of support—defects often aggravated by insecurity of foundation and exaggerated loftiness of structure—the poor quality of materials, and the faulty setting thereof due to empirical methods, the over-rapidity of execution caused by mistaken emulation, the dearth of funds consequent on social and political convulsions complicated by the miseries of war,—all these things joined hands for the extinction of a once resplendent art. But the initial cause of its ruin must be sought in its abandonment of antique traditions. These traditions had persisted uninterruptedly throughout the so-called Romanesque period, only to pave the way for a seductive art in novel form, which, casting aside the trammels of the past in obedience to the dictates of the moment, fell on decay as rapidly as it had risen to eminence. Dawning in the France of Louis the Fat, it reached its apogee under St. Louis, and was in full decadence before the close of the fifteenth century.

The narrow limits assigned to us forbid not only detailed discussion of our great monuments, but even a summary of the most famous. We must be content to work out that theory of evolution already put forward by us in L'Architecture Romane. We propose merely to offer a synthesis of that architectural development which succeeded the so-called Romanesque epoch, from its birth in the twelfth to its extinction in the fifteenth century.

And as the groined vault is, broadly speaking, the essential characteristic of so-called Gothic architecture, and the flying buttress one of its most interesting manifestations, we shall make a special study of their origin, their modifications, and their principal applications in connection with religious, monastic, military, and civil architecture. We shall dwell more particularly upon religious architecture as presenting the grandest and most obvious evidences of artistic progress, not in its admirable buildings alone, but in those masterpieces of painting and sculpture to which it gave birth in France.