Edouard Corroyer

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CHAPTER I
MONASTIC ARCHITECTURE: ITS ORIGIN

The origin of monastic architecture is of no greater antiquity than the fourth century of the Christian era. The hermits and anchorites of the earliest period made their habitation in the caves and deserts of the ThebaÏd; their sole monument is the record of their virtues, which have outlived any buildings they may have raised during their years of solitude. But the first Christians who banded themselves together under a common rule, and discarded anchoritism for the cenobitic life, marked their worldly pilgrimage by monuments, traces of which are still to be found in historic records or fragmentary remains.

The history of abbey churches is identical with that of cathedrals.[43] The architectural evolutions and transformations which succeeded each other in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries manifested themselves in both. Like the cathedrals, the abbey churches were the creation of monkish architects, and were carried out either under their immediate direction or that of their pupils.

[43] See Part I., "Religious Architecture."

But a kindred field of study offers itself in the
abbeys themselves, their organisation and adaptation to the domestic needs of their be-frocked inmates.

132. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. CLOISTER (THIRTEENTH CENTURY. FROM A DRAWING BY ED. CORROYER)

Monastic institutions date from the Roman era. The first abbeys were those established in France in the fourth century, by St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of Tours. These religious associations or corporations, which eventually became so powerful, by reason not only of their numbers, but of the spirit which animated them, must be reckoned as among the most beneficent forces of the Middle Ages. Even from the philosophical side alone of the religious rule under which they flourished, by virtue of which enlightened men wielded supreme power, they were admirable institutions.

To instance one among many, the so-called Rule of St. Benedict is in itself a monument, the basis of which is discipline, the coping-stone labour. These are principles of undying excellence, for they are the expression of eternal truths. And from them our modern economists, who so justly exalt the system of co-operation, might even in these latter days draw inspiration as useful and as fruitful as that by which men were guided in the days of Benedict.

Three great intellectual centres shed their light on the first centuries of the Middle Ages. These were LÉrins, Ireland, and Monte Casino. Their most brilliant time was from the fourth century to the reign of Charlemagne, by which period they may be said to have prepared the way for successive evolutions of human knowledge, by assiduous cultivation of the sciences and arts, more especially architecture, in accordance with the immutable laws of development and progress.

LÉrins.—St. Honoratus and his companions, when they landed in the archipelago, built on the principal island a chapel surrounded by the cells and buildings necessary for a confraternity. This took place about 375-390 A.D. The members of the budding community were learned monks, who had accepted the religious rule which had now become their law. They instructed neophytes sent them from the mainland, and their reputation grew so rapidly that LÉrins soon took rank as a school of theology, a seminary or nursery whence the mediÆval church chose the bishops and abbots best fitted to govern her.

The school of LÉrins was so esteemed for learning that it took an active part in the great Pelagian controversy which agitated Christendom at the time,[44] and zealously advocated the doctrines of semi-pelagianism, but this tendency was finally subdued by St. Vincent of LÉrins, whose ideas were more orthodox. The theological teaching of LÉrins seems to have dominated, or at least to have directed religious opinion in Gaul down to the sixth century.

[44] Pelagianism was the heresy of the monk Pelagius, who flourished in the fourth century. He contested the doctrine of original sin, as imputed to all mankind from the fall of Adam, and taught that the grace of God is accorded to us in proportion to our merits. Semi-pelagianism taught that man may begin the work of his own amelioration, but cannot complete it without Divine help.

Ireland.—So early as the sixth century Ireland was the centre of art and science in the West. The Irish monks had followed the oriental tradition as modified by its passage through Scandinavia; they exercised a considerable influence on continental art by their manuscripts and illuminations, and prepared the way for the renascence of the days of Charlemagne, to which such importance was given by the monuments of the Romanesque movement.

St. Columba was a monk of the seminary of Clonard in Ireland, whence towards the close of the sixth century he passed over to the continent, founding the Abbeys of Luxeuil and Fontaine, near BesanÇon, and later that of Bobbio, in Italy, where he died in 615. His principal work was the Rule prescribed to the Irish monks who had accompanied him, and those who took the vows of the monasteries he had founded. In this famous work he did not merely enjoin that love of God and of the brethren on which his Rule is based; he demonstrated the utility and beauty of his maxims, which he built upon Scriptural precepts, and upon fundamental principles of morality. The school of Luxeuil became one of the most famous of the seventh century, and, like that of LÉrins, the nursery of learned doctors and famous prelates.

Monte Casino.—In the sixth century St. Benedict preached Christianity in the south of Italy, where, in spite of Imperial edicts, Paganism still prevailed among the masses. He built a chapel in honour of St. John the Baptist on the ruins of a temple of Apollo, and afterwards founded a monastery to which he gave his Rule in 529. This was the cradle of the great Benedictine order.

The number of St. Benedict's disciples grew apace. He had imposed on them, together with the voluntary obedience and subordination which constitute discipline, those prescriptions of his Rule, which demanded the partition of time between prayer and work. He proceeded to make a practical application of these principles at Monte Casino, the buildings of which were raised by himself and his companions. Barren lands were reclaimed and transformed into gardens for the community; mills, bakehouses, and workshops for the manufacture of all the necessaries of life were constructed in the abbey precincts, with a view to rendering the confraternity self-supporting; auxiliary buildings were reserved for the reception of the poor and of travellers. These, however, were so disposed that strangers were kept outside the main structure, which was reserved exclusively for the religious body.

The great merit of St. Benedict, apart from his philosophical eminence, lies in his comprehension of the doctrine of labour. He was perhaps the first to teach that useful and intelligent work is one of the conditions, if not indeed the sole condition, of that moral perfection to which his followers were taught to aspire. If he had no further title to fame, this alone should ensure his immortality.

"The apostles and first bishops were the natural guides of those who were appointed to build the basilicas in which the faithful met for worship. When at a later stage they carried the faith to distant provinces of the empire, they alone were able to indicate or to mark out with their own hands the lines on which buildings fitted for the new worship should be raised.... St. Martin superintended the construction of the oratory of one of the first Gallic monasteries at LigujÉ, and later of that of Marmoutier, near Tours, on the banks of the Loire. In the reign of Childebert, St. Germain directed the building of the Abbey of St. Vincent—afterwards re-named St. Germain-des-PrÈs—in Paris. St. Benedict soon added to his Rule a decree providing for the teaching and study of architecture, painting, mosaic, sculpture, and all branches of art; and it became one of the most important duties of abbots, priors, and deans to make designs for the churches and auxiliary buildings of the communities they ruled. From the early centuries of the Christian era down to the thirteenth century, therefore, architecture was practised only by the clergy, and came to be regarded as a sacred science. The most ancient plans now extant—those of St. Gall and of Canterbury—were traced by the monks Eigenhard and Edwin.... During the eleventh and twelfth centuries there rose throughout Christendom admirable buildings due to the art and industry of the monks, who, bringing to bear upon the work their own researches, and the experience of past generations, received a fresh stimulus to exertion in this age of universal regeneration, by the enthusiasm with which their kings inspired them for the vast ruins of the ninth century."[45]

[45] Albert Lenoir, L'Architecture Monastique; Paris, 1856.

From the earliest centuries of the Christian era communities both male and female had been formed with the object of living together under a religious rule; but it seems evident that the greater number of monasteries owed their fame and wealth, if not their actual origin, to the reputation of their relics. These attracted the multitude. Pilgrimages became so frequent, and pilgrims so numerous, that it was found necessary to build hospices, or night-refuges, in various towns on their routes. A confraternity of the Pilgrims of St. Michael was formed in the beginning of the thirteenth century in Paris, where the confraternity of St. James of Pilgrims had already built its chapel and hospital in the Rue St. Denis, near the city gate.

From the seventh to the ninth century important abbeys flourished in nearly all the provinces now comprised in modern France. Later, under the immediate successors of Charlemagne, great monasteries were founded in all the countries which made up his dominions. Charlemagne himself had greatly contributed to the development of religious institutions by his reliance on the bishops, and more especially the monks who represented progress, supported his policy, and enforced his civilising mission. But after his death the study of art and science declined so rapidly that a radical reform became necessary in the tenth century, a reform which seems to have had its birth in the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, established in Burgundy about the year 930.

From this hasty sketch of monastic organisation some idea may be gathered of the importance of religious institutions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and of the immense services they had rendered the State by diligent and useful toil, among the chief fruits of which must be reckoned the revival of agriculture, and the development of the sciences and arts, more especially architecture.

Monastic architecture exercised a great and decisive influence upon national art by its vast religious buildings, the precursors of our great cathedrals.

Until the middle of the twelfth century science, letters, art, wealth, and above all, intelligence—in other words, omnipotence on earth—were the monopoly of religious bodies. It is bare historic justice to remember that the Middle Ages derived their chief title to fame, and all their intellectual enlightenment, from the abbeys, and that the great religious houses were in fact schools, the educational influence of which was immense. It must be borne in mind that if the great cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not actually constructed by the monks, their architects were nevertheless the pupils of monks, and that it was in the abbey schools, so generously opened to all, that they imbibed the first principles of the art they afterwards turned to such marvellous account.

The study of architecture in particular was not merely theoretical. It was demonstrated by the monks in their important monastic buildings, the crowning point of which was the abbey church, a structure often larger and more ornate than contemporary cathedrals.

On the plan commonly adopted, the cloister, a spreading lawn adorned with plants, adjoined the church on the north, and sometimes on the south. An open arcade surrounded the cloister, by means of which communication with all the necessary domestic offices was provided. Of these the principal were: the refectory, generally a fine vaulted hall, close to the kitchens; the chapter-house, a building attached to the church, the upper story of which was the dormitory of the monks; the vaulted cellars and granaries, above which were the lodgings provided for strangers; the storerooms were connected with stables, cattle-stalls, and various outdoor offices, often of great extent. All these dependencies for the service of the community were kept strictly separate one from another, thus all necessary measures were taken to provide for the needs and duties of hospitality without any disturbance of the religious routine.

The abbeys of the Romanesque period were largely used as models in their day. They were modified by lay architects or monkish builders who, however, were careful to abate nothing of their perfection; they partook of the developments which marked the middle of the thirteenth century, and were subjected to that progressive transformation, the great feature of which was the adoption of the Angevin intersecting arch, the distinguishing characteristic of Gothic architecture.

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CHAPTER II
THE ABBEY OF CLUNY—CISTERCIAN ABBEYS

The Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Augustinians, the Premonstrants, and notably the congregation of Cluny were all energetic builders, and the vast and magnificent structures of their creation were reckoned the most perfect achievements of their day. The study of their buildings—the church, the dwelling-places of abbot and monks, with all their dependencies—is most instructive. It fills us with admiration for the learning and judgment of the monkish builders who, accepting the limitations imposed by climate, locality, material, the numbers of their inmates, and the resources of their order, turned them all to account as elements of beauty and harmony.

The architects of the first abbeys undoubtedly adopted the constructive methods of the period, and built in the Latin, Roman, or Gallo-Roman manner. The double gateway of the Abbey of Cluny, the architect of which was probably Gauzon, sometime Abbot of Beaune, who laid the foundations of the famous monastery, is an interesting proof of this assertion. But monastic architecture underwent the same modifications to which ecclesiastical architecture had been subjected under those various influences which manifested themselves in the glorious monuments built from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, when Gothic architecture reached its apogee.

The abbots of the many abbeys of various orders built throughout this period were too enlightened to disregard the progress of their contemporaries, and they promptly applied the new principles to the construction or embellishment of their monasteries.

133. ABBEY OF CLUNY. GATEWAY

The Abbey of Cluny was founded in 909 by William, Duke of Aquitaine, and declared independent by Pope John XI., who in 932 confirmed the duke's charter. Its rapid development and growth in power is sufficiently explained by the social and political circumstances of its origin. At the beginning of the tenth century Norman invasions and feudal excesses had destroyed the work of Charlemagne. Western Christendom seemed to lapse into barbarism after the havoc made by the Saracens and Northern pirates among towns and monasteries. Civil society and religious institutions had alike fallen into the decay born of a conflict of rights and a contempt of all authority.

Cluny rapidly became a centre round which all the intelligence which had escaped submersion in the chaos of the ninth century grouped itself. Its school soon attained a distinction equal to that which marked the first great seats of learning at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Thanks to the Rule of St. Benedict, on which the Benedictines of Cluny had grounded their community, the abbey developed greatly in extent and wealth. Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries it seems to have been the prolific nursery-ground whence Europe drew not only teachers for other monastic schools, but specialists in every branch of science and of letters, notably architects, who aided in the expansion of Cluny and its dependencies, and further practically contributed to the construction of the numerous abbeys founded by the Benedictines throughout Western Europe, and even in the East, the cradle of Christianity.

While this struggle of intelligence against ignorance was in progress, a social revolution had accomplished itself by the enfranchisement of the communes, a development of the utmost importance in its relation to science, art, and material existence, in a word, to the whole social system.

Architecture, that faithful expression of the social state which had its origin in Pagan civilisation, became Christianised by its culture in the abbeys, and in its new development rose to that pre-eminence the marvels of which we have already studied in the first part of this work. But though the successes achieved by the architecture of this period were rapid and dazzling, its decadence was profound, for it was induced by too radical an emancipation from antique principles, the superiority of which had been established in the first centuries of the Middle Ages.

The Abbey of Cluny soon became too small for the increasing number of monks. St. Hugh undertook its reconstruction in the closing years of the eleventh century, and the monk Gauzon of Cluny began the works in 1089 on a much more extensive plan, indeed on a scale so magnificent that the church of the new abbey was esteemed the first in importance among Western buildings of the kind.

The plan (Fig. 134) shows the arrangement of the abbey at the close of the eleventh century, when the monastic buildings had been reconstructed some time previously. The ancient church was intact; the choir had been begun in the time of St. Hugh, but the building had not been consecrated till 1131. The chapel which precedes it on the west was completed so late as 1228 by Roland I., twentieth abbot of Cluny.

134. ABBEY OF CLUNY. PLAN

At A on the plan stood the entrance, the Gallo-Roman gateway which still exists. At B, in front of the church, a flight of steps led up to a square platform, from which rose a stone cross; a flight of broad steps gave access to the chapel entrance at C, an open space between two square towers. The northern tower was built to receive the archives; that on the south was known as the Tower of Justice. The ante-church or narthex at D seems to have been set apart for strangers and penitents, who were not allowed to enter the main building. Their place of worship was distinct from the abbey church, just as their lodging was separated from the buildings reserved for the brotherhood, who were permitted no intercourse with the outer world. At E was the door of the abbey church, which was only opened to admit some great personage whose exceptional privilege it was to enter the sanctuary.

At Cluny, as at VÉzelay, one of the dependencies of Cluny, the Galilee, which is found in all Benedictine abbeys, was built with aisles and towers on the same scale as an ordinary church. It communicated with the buildings set apart for guests over the storehouses of the abbey to the west of the cloister at F on the plan. From the Galilee access to the abbey church was obtained at E, by means of a single doorway, which from descriptions seems to have resembled the great door of the monastery church at Moissac in arrangement and decoration.

135. ABBEY OF CLUNY. INTERIOR OF NARTHEX, WITH DOOR LEADING INTO ABBEY CHURCH

The special characteristic of the Abbey Church of Cluny is its double transept, an arrangement we shall find reproduced in the great abbey churches of England, notably at Lincoln. According to a description written in the last century, the Abbey Church of Cluny was 410 feet long. It was built in the form of an archiepiscopal cross, and had two transepts: the first nearly 200 feet long by 30 feet wide; the second, 110 feet long and wider than the first. The basilica, 110 feet in width, was divided into five aisles, with semi-circular vaults supported on sixty-eight piers. Over three hundred narrow round-headed windows, high up the wall, transmitted the dim light that favours meditation. The high altar was
placed immediately beyond the second transept at G, and the retro-choir and altar at H. The choir, which had two rood screens, occupied about a third of the nave. It contained two hundred and twenty-five stalls for the monks, and in the fifteenth century was hung with magnificent tapestries. A number of altars dedicated to various saints were placed against the screens and the piers of nave and side aisles. At a later period chapels were constructed along the aisles and on the eastern sides of the two transepts.

Above the principal transept rose three towers roofed with slate; the central, or lantern tower was known as the lamp tower, because from the vaults of the crossing below it were suspended lamps, or coronas of lights which were kept burning day and night over the high altar.

To the south of the abbey, at F on the plan, was a great enclosure, surrounded by a cloister, some vestiges of which still remain. K and L mark the site of the abbatial buildings which were restored in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; M and N the structures raised last century over the primitive foundations. To the east lay the gardens and the great fish-ponds which still exist, with portions of their enclosures. Another surviving fragment is a building of the thirteenth century, said to be the bakery, and marked O on the plan.

The abbots who succeeded St. Hugh were unable to preserve the primitive conditions of the foundation. The excessive luxury resulting from over-prosperity brought about demoralisation, and by the end of the eleventh century discord was rife at Cluny.

Peter the Venerable, who was elected abbot in 1112, restored order for a time, and established a chapter general, consisting of two hundred priors and over twelve hundred other monks. In 1158, at the time of Peter's death, these numbers had increased by more than four hundred, and the order had founded monasteries in the Holy Land and at Constantinople.

The Abbey of Citeaux.—The reform of the Benedictine orders became a pressing necessity, and St. Robert, Abbot of Solesmes, entered upon the task about 1098. St. Bernard continued it, after having quitted his abbey, with twenty-one monks of the order, to take refuge in the forest of Citeaux, given him by Don Reynard, Vicomte of Beaune. His main achievement was reorganisation of such a nature as to deal effectually with the decay of primitive simplicity throughout the order, which had completely lost touch with monastic sentiment.

"Frequent intercourse with the outside world had demoralised the monks, who attracted within their cloister walls crowds of sightseers, guests, and pilgrims. The monasteries which, down to the eleventh century, were either built in the towns, or had become centres of population in consequence of the Norman and Saracen invasions, retained their character of religious seclusion only for a certain number of monks, who devoted themselves to intellectual labours. Besides which, the brethren had become feudal lords, holding jurisdiction side by side with the bishops, and St. Germain-des-PrÈs, St. Denis, St. Martin, VendÔme, and Moissac owned no over-lordships but that of the Pope. Hence arose temporal cares, disputes, and even armed conflicts, among them. The greed and vanity of the abbots at least, if not of their monks, made itself felt even in religious worship, and in the buildings consecrated thereto."[46]

[46] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France.

St. Bernard, in an address to the monks of his day, reproves their degeneracy, and censures the exaggerated dimensions of the abbey churches, the splendour of their ornamentation, and the luxury of the abbots. O vanity of vanities! he exclaims, and folly great as vanity! The Church is bedecked in her walls, but naked in her poor! She overlays her stones with gold, and leaves her children without raiment! The curious are given distractions, and the miserable lack bread! It was to suppress such abuses that the Cistercian order was founded by St. Robert and St. Bernard, and also to put an end to the disputes arising from ecclesiastical jurisdiction by making the new abbeys dependencies of the bishoprics. They were to be built in solitary places, "and to nourish their inmates by agriculture. It was forbidden to found them over the tombs of saints, for fear of attracting pilgrims, who would bring worldly distractions in their train. The buildings themselves were to be solid, and built of good freestone, but without any sort of extraneous ornament; the only towers allowed were small belfries, sometimes of stone, but more usually of wood."[47]

[47] Ibid.

The Cistercian order was founded in 1119, and St. Robert imposed the Rule of St. Benedict in its primitive severity. To mark his separation from the degenerate Benedictines, whose dress was black, he gave his monks a brown habit. After determining their religious duties he gave minute instructions as to the arrangement of the buildings. The condition chiefly insisted upon was that the site of the monastery should be of such extent and so ordered that the necessaries of life could be provided within its precincts. Thus all causes of distraction through communication with the outside world were removed. The monasteries, whenever possible, were to be built beside a stream or river; they were to contain, independently of the claustral buildings, the church and the abbot's dwelling, which was outside the principal enclosure, a mill, a bakehouse, and workshops for the manufacture of all things requisite to the community, besides gardens for the use and pleasure of the monks.

The Abbey of Clairvaux was an embodiment of the reforms brought about by St. Robert, and later by St. Bernard. The general arrangement and the details of service were almost identical with those of Citeaux, just as Citeaux itself had been modelled upon Cluny in all respects, save that a severe observance of the primitive Benedictine rule was insisted upon in the disposition of the later foundation. All superfluities were proscribed, and the rules which enjoined absolute seclusion as a means towards moral perfection were sternly enforced.

The result is undoubtedly interesting as a religious revival; but we may be permitted to regret that the intellectual impetus given to art progress by the great Benedictine lords spiritual of Cluny should have been checked by the frigid utilitarianism to which architecture—then an epitome of all the arts—was reduced by the purists of Citeaux in its application to the monasteries of the reform.

The Cistercian monuments are not, however, wanting in interest.

Of Clairvaux and Citeaux little remains but fragments embedded in a mass of modern buildings, for the most part restorations of the last century. As records these are less to be relied upon than the historical and archÆological documents which guided Viollet-le-Duc in his graphic reconstruction of famous Cistercian abbeys, an essay not to be bettered as a piece of lucid demonstration (see his Dictionary, vol. i. pp. 263-271).

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CHAPTER III
ABBEYS AND CARTHUSIAN MONASTERIES

In the eleventh century a large number of monasteries had been built throughout Western Europe by monks of various orders, in imitation of the great monastic schools of LÉrins, Ireland, and Monte Casino. Among the famous abbeys of this period may be mentioned "VÉzelay and FÉcamp, sometime convents for women, afterwards converted into abbeys for men; St. Nicaise, at Rheims; Nogent-sous-Coucy, in Picardy; Anchin and Annouain, in Artois; St. Étienne, at Caen; St. Pierre-sur-Dives, Le Bec, Conches, Cerisy-la-ForÊt,[48] and Lessay, in Normandy; La TrinitÉ, at VendÔme; Beaulieu, near Loches; Montierneuf, at Poitiers, etc."[49]

The Abbeys of Fulda, in Hesse, and of Corvey, in Westphalia, the latter founded by Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Corbie, in Picardy, were in their day the chief centres of learning in Germany.

In England St. Alban's Abbey, in Hertfordshire, was built in 1077 by a disciple of Lanfranc, the illustrious abbot of the famous Abbey of Le Bec, in Normandy. A large number of monasteries were
founded later on by various orders, notably the Benedictines—Croyland, Malmesbury, Bury St. Edmund's, Peterborough, Salisbury, Wimborne, Wearmouth, Westminster, etc., not to mention the abbeys and priories which had existed in Ireland from the sixth century.

The mother abbey of Citeaux gave birth to four daughters—Clairvaux, Pontigny, Morimond, and La FertÉ.

The importance of Clairvaux was much increased in the first years of the twelfth century by the fame of her abbot, St. Bernard, that most brilliant embodiment of mediÆval monasticism. His influence was immense, not alone in his character of reformer and founder of an important order, but as a statesman whom fortune persistently favoured in all enterprises tending to the increase of his great reputation.

St. Bernard distinguished himself in the theological controversies of his century at the Council of Sens in 1140, and in successful polemical disputations with AbÉlard, the famous advocate of free will, and other heterodox philosophers who heralded the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Somewhat later he took an active part in promoting the hapless second Crusade under Louis VII., and in 1147, a few years before his death, he entered vigorously into the ManichÆan controversy as a strenuous opponent of the heresy which was then agitating the public mind and preparing the way for the schism which, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, brought about the terrible war of the Albigenses, and steeped Southern France in blood.

The monastic fame of St. Bernard was established not only by the searching reforms he instituted at Clairvaux among the seceding monks of Cluny and Solesmes, but by the success of the Cistercian colonies he planted in Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark, to the number of seventy-two, according to his historians.

During his lifetime the poor hermitage of the VallÉe d'Absinthe (which name he changed to Claire-VallÉe, Clairvaux) had become a vast feudal settlement of many farms and holdings, rich enough to support more than seven hundred monks. The monastery was surrounded by walls more than half a league in extent, and the abbot's domicile had become a seignorial mansion. As the fount of the order, and mother of all the auxiliary houses, Clairvaux was supreme over a hundred and sixty monasteries in France and abroad. Fifty years after the death of St. Bernard the importance of the order
had become colossal. During the thirteenth century, and from that time onwards, the Cistercian or Bernardine monks built immense abbeys, and decorated them with royal magnificence. Their establishments contained churches equal in dimension to the largest cathedrals of the period, abbatial dwellings adorned with paintings, and boasting oratories which, as at ChaÂlis, were Stes. Chapelles as splendid as that of St. Louis in Paris. The very cellars held works of art in the shape of huge casks elaborately carved.

Thus, by a strange recurrence of conditions, the settlements founded on a basis of the most rigorous austerity by the ascetics who had fled from the splendours of Solesmes and Cluny to the forest, became in their turn vaster, richer, and more sumptuous than those the magnificence of which they existed to rebuke. With this difference, however: the ruin brought about by the luxury of the Cistercian establishment was so complete that nothing of their innumerable monasteries was spared by social revolution but a few archÆologic fragments and historic memories.

The influence of the Cistercian foundation extended to various countries of Europe. It was manifested in Spain, at the great Abbey of Alcobaco, in Estramadura, said to have been built by monkish envoys of St. Bernard; in Sicily, in the rich architectural detail of the Abbey of Monreale; and in Germany, in the foundation of such abbeys as those of Altenberg in Westphalia, and Maulbronn in Wurtemberg. In 1133 Everard, Count of Berg, invited monks of Citeaux to settle in his dominions, and in 1145 they founded a magnificent abbey on the banks of the Dheen, which was held by the Cistercian order down to the period of the Revolution, when it shared the fate of other religious houses.

The Cistercian Abbey of Maulbronn is the best preserved of those which owed their origin to St. Bernard throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The abbey church, the cloister, the refectory, the chapter-house, the cellars, the storerooms, the barns, and the abbot's lodging, the latter united to the other buildings by a covered gallery, still exist in their original condition. More manifestly even than Altenberg does the Abbey of Maulbronn prove that simplicity marked the proceedings of the Benedictines during the first years of the twelfth century, under the rule or influence of St. Bernard. From this period onward Cistercian brotherhoods multiplied with great rapidity in the provinces which were to form modern France.

In the Ile-de-France the ruins of Ourscamp, near Noyon, of ChaÂlis, near Senlis, of Longpont and of Vaux-de-Cernay, near Paris, bear witness to the monumental grandeur of once famous and important abbeys. The monasteries and priories of the twelfth century are numerous in Provence; we may name SÉnanque, Silvacane, Thoronet, and Montmajour, near Arles, at the extremity of the valley of Les Baux. Among the abbeys founded in the thirteenth century were Royaumont, in the Ile-de-France; Vaucelles, near Cambrai; Preuilly-en-Brie; La Trappe, in Le Perche; Breuil-BenoÎt, Mortemer, and Bonport, in Normandy; Boschaud, in PÉrigord; l'Escale-Dieu, in Bigorre; Les Feuillants, Nizors, and Bonnefont, in Comminges; Granselve and Baulbonne, near Toulouse; Floran, Valmagne, and Fontfroide, in Languedoc; Fontenay, in Burgundy, etc.

Towards the close of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century other fraternities had been formed in the same spirit as that of Citeaux; "in the first rank of these was the Order of the Premonstrants, so named from the mother abbey founded in 1119 by St. Norbert at PrÉmontrÉ, near Coucy."[50]

To this order the monastery of St. Martin at Laon, and others in Champagne, Artois, Brittany, and Normandy owed their origin.

In the early part of the twelfth century Robert d'Arbrisselles founded several double monasteries for men and women, on the model of those built in Spain in the ninth century; that of Fontevrault was not more successful as a monastic experiment than the rest, but it gave rise to a number of superb buildings. The abbey itself contributed in no slight degree to the progress of architecture, which developed in Anjou at the dawn of the twelfth century, and manifested itself principally at Angers in works the supreme importance of which we have dwelt upon in the early part of this volume.

The episcopal churches also owned claustral buildings for the accommodation of the cathedral clergy who lived together in communities according to the ancient usage which obtained down to the fifteenth century. The Cathedrals of Aix, Arles, and Cavaillon, in Provence, of Elne, in Roussillon, of Puy, in Velay, of St. Bertrand, in Comminges, still preserve their cloisters of the twelfth century.

The Abbey of La Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, founded in the eleventh century, was one of the monastic schools which rose to great importance, mainly through the talents of its monkish architect and sculptor, Guinamaud, who established its reputation as an art centre. By the close of the twelfth century La Chaise Dieu was turning out proficients in sculpture, painting, and goldsmith's work.

The buildings of La Chaise Dieu were reconstructed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The order of preaching friars, founded by St. Dominic in the early part of the thirteenth century, is noted rather for its intellectual than for its architectural achievements; the fame of the Dominicans rests upon their preaching and writings, not upon the number or magnificence of their monasteries.

About the same period St. Francis of Assisi founded the order of minor friars, who professed absolute poverty—a profession which, however, did not prevent their becoming richer at last than their forerunners. These two orders—preaching and mendicant friars, apparently formed in protest against the supremacy of the Benedictines—were strongly supported by St. Louis, who also protected other orders, such as the Augustinians and Carmelites, by way of balancing the power of the Clunisians and Cistercians.

To the preaching friars St. Louis granted the site of the Church of St. Jacques, in the Rue St. Jacques, Paris—whence the name Jacobin as applied to monks of the Dominican order,—and here they built in 1221 the Jacobin monastery, the church of which, like those of Agen and Toulouse, has the double nave peculiar to the churches of the preaching friars.

From the thirteenth century onwards the arrangement of the abbeys diverges more and more from the Benedictine system in the direction of secular models. The daily life of the abbots had come to differ but little from that of the laymen of their time, and as a natural consequence, monastic architecture lost its distinguishing characteristics.

The Rule of the Carthusian Order, founded towards the close of the eleventh century by St. Bruno, was of such extreme austerity, and was so persistently adhered to down to the fifteenth century, at least, that we need not wonder to find no vestiges of buildings erected by this community contemporaneously with those of other great foundations. The Carthusians clung longer than any of their brethren to the vows of poverty and humility which obliged them to live like anchorites, though dwelling under one roof. Far from living in common, on the cenobitic method, after the manner of the Benedictines and Cistercians, they maintained the cellular system in all its severity. Absolute silence further aggravated the complete isolation which encouraged them to scorn all that might alleviate or modify the rigours of their religious duties.

In time, however, the Carthusians relaxed something of this extreme asceticism in their monastic buildings, if not in their religious observances. Towards the fifteenth century they did homage to art by the construction of monasteries which, though falling short of the Cistercian monuments in magnificence, are of much interest from their peculiarities of arrangement.

The ordinary buildings comprised the gate-house, giving access by a single door to the courtyard of the monastery, where stood the church, the prior's lodging, the hostelry for guests and pilgrims, the laundry, the bakehouse, the cattle sheds, storerooms, and dovecote. The church communicated with an interior cloister, giving access to the chapter-house and refectory, which latter were only open to the monks at certain annual festivals. The typical feature of St. Bruno's more characteristic monasteries is the great cloister, on the true Carthusian model—that is to say, rectangular in form, and surrounded by an arcade, on which the cells of the monks open. Each of these cells was a little self-contained habitation, and had its own garden. The door of each cell was provided with a wicket, through which a lay brother passed the slender meal of the Carthusian who was forbidden to communicate with his fellows.

The Rule of St. Bruno, as is commonly known, enjoins the life of an anchorite; the Carthusian must work, eat, and drink in solitude; speech is interdicted; on meeting, the brethren are commanded to salute each other in silence; they assemble only in church for certain services prescribed by the Rule, and their meals, none too numerous at any time, were only taken in common on certain days in the year.

The severity of these conditions explains the extreme austerity of Carthusian architecture. It had, as we have already said, no real development until the fifteenth century, and then only as regards certain portions of the monastery, such as the church and its cloister, which were in strong contrast with the compulsory bareness of the great cloister of the monks.

The ancient Chartreuse of Villefranche de Rouergue, either built or reconstructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, still preserves some remarkable features. The plan, and the bird's-eye view (Figs. 145 and 146) from L'EncyclopÉdie de l'Architecture et de la Construction, gives an exact idea of the monastery. Some of the cells are still intact, also the refectory, and certain other portions of the primitive structure.

In spite of the rigidity of the Rule of St. Bruno certain foundations of his order became famous, notably the monastery established by the Carthusians on the invitation of St. Louis in the celebrated castle of Vauvert, beyond the walls of Paris, near the Route d'Issy. The castle was regarded with terror by the Parisians, who declared it to be haunted by the devil, whence the popular expression: aller au diable Vauvert, which later was corrupted into aller au diable au vert. The Carthusians, nevertheless, took up their quarters in the stronghold, and enriched it with a splendid church built by Pierre de Montereau, the foundation stone of which was laid by St. Louis in 1260. The Chartreuse of Vauvert developed greatly, and became one of the most famous of the order. It was in the lesser cloister of this monastery that the artist Eustache Le Sueur painted his famous frescoes from the life of St. Bruno in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The most famous Carthusian monasteries of Italy are those of Florence, which dates from the middle of the fourteenth century, and is attributed in part to Orcagna, and of Pavia, founded at the close of the fourteenth century by Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti.

The French Carthusian monasteries of greatest interest after Vauvert, which had the special advantage of royal protection, are those of Clermont, in Auvergne, Villefranche de Rouergue (Figs. 145 and 146), Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, and Montrieux, in Var. The Chartreuse of Dijon is one of the most ancient, not only as to its buildings, which are the work of the Duke of Burgundy's architects, but in respect of its famous sculptures of the tomb of Philip the Bold, and his wife, Margaret of Flanders, and those of the Well of Moses, carved by the Burgundian brothers, Claux Suter, who flourished at the close of the fourteenth century, and had much to do with the revival of art at that period.[51]

But the most imposing of all, and the most famous, if not the most beautiful, is that in the mountains near Grenoble, universally known as La Grande Chartreuse.

The original monastery is said to have been founded by St. Bruno. It consisted merely of a humble chapel and a few isolated cells, which are supposed to have occupied the site in the Desert, on which the Chapels of St. Bruno and St. Mary now stand. The existing buildings were reconstructed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the manner of the day, of which the arcades of the great cloister are good examples. The present church, which is extremely simple in design, has preserved nothing of its sixteenth-century decoration but the choir stalls. The great cloister consists of an arcaded gallery, on which the sixty cells of the monks open. It is arranged in strict accordance with the Rule of St. Bruno as regards its connection with the main buildings, the chief features of which we have already pointed out.

CHAPTER IV
FORTIFIED ABBEYS

The monasteries built throughout the twelfth century were provided with outer walls, by means of which the claustral buildings, offices, workshops, and even farms of the community were enclosed. Thus all the necessaries of life were produced within the precincts, and all communication with the outside world was avoided.

But by the end of the century the great abbeys had become feudal castles; and fortified walls were raised around them, often embracing the town which had grown up under their protection and shared their fortunes. This was the case at Cluny, and the town acknowledged its obligations to the monks by the payment of tithes.

In the reign of Philip Augustus and St. Louis the abbots were not only the heads of their monasteries but feudal chieftains, vassals of the royal power, and as such obliged to furnish the sovereign with men-at-arms in time of war, and to maintain a garrison when required.[52]

The Abbey of Tournus was, like Cluny, surrounded by walls connected with the city ramparts.

The Abbey of St. Allyre, in Auvergne, near Clermont, was defended by walls and towers, which seem to have been added to the original structure of the ninth century at some period during the thirteenth, when such fortification of religious houses became necessary.

In many other monasteries a system of defence more or less elaborate was adopted; but the most famous of all the abbeys built by the Benedictines was unquestionably Mont St. Michel, which, for boldness and grandeur of design, is unique among military and monastic monuments from the eleventh to the close of the fifteenth century.

The Abbey of Mont St. Michel was founded in 708 by St. Aubert, according to tradition. At the

close of the tenth century it was restored by Richard Sans Peur, third Duke of Normandy, with the help of the Benedictine monks from Monte Casino, whom he had installed at St. Michel in 966. It increased greatly in wealth and extent in the eleventh century, and by the end of the twelfth was in the full tide of its prosperity. Its buildings, however had not yet that importance to which they attained in the following century.[53] In the twelfth century they consisted of the church, which was built between 1020 and 1135[54] and the monastic buildings proper (lieux rÉguliers), with lodgings for servants and guests to the north of the nave, at G, G´, and F on the plan, Fig. 152. To these, which were restored or reconstructed in a great measure by the Abbot Roger II. at the beginning of the twelfth century, additions were made on the south and south-east by Robert de Thorigni from 1154 to 1186.

The monastery was not then fortified.

Built on the summit of a rock, the impregnable steepness of which provided a natural rampart north and west, it depended solely upon the advantages of its position for defence. Its situation in the midst of a treacherous sandy plain—a position which gave rise to the mediÆval name, Le Mont St. Michel au PÉril de la Mer—secured it against attempts at investiture, and even to a great extent against sudden assaults. Enclosures of stone or wooden fences surrounded it at those points on the east where the less rugged nature of the surface rendered access comparatively easy, and where stood the entrance, with the various habitations which had grouped themselves round it. The so-called town had been founded in the tenth century by a few families decimated by the Normans, in their raids upon Avranches and its neighbourhood after the death of Charlemagne. In the thirteenth century it consisted of a small number of houses which, by way of security against the vagaries of the sea, were built upon the highest point of the rock to the east.

In 1203 the greater part of the abbey, the church excepted, was destroyed during the wars between Philip Augustus, King of France, and John, King of England.

Historic records prove conclusively that the abbey had no defensive works properly so-called in the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth century.

From this period onwards abbeys, more especially those of the Benedictine orders, were transformed into regular fortresses capable of sustaining a siege. The abbots, in their character of feudal lords, fortified their monasteries to ensure them against disasters such as had marked the early years of the thirteenth century. Mont St. Michel is one of the most curious examples of such fortification.

The original architects of the abbey seem to have been unwilling to diminish the height of the mount by levelling. Resolving to detract in no degree from the majesty of so splendid a base for their church, they set about their work on the same principle as the pyramid builders. Our illustrations show how the buildings were raised partly on plateaux circumscribing the apex of the mount, partly on that apex itself. The result is that the monastery, as we see it, has a core of rock rising at its highest point to the very floor of the church. The ring of lower stories rests upon walls of great thickness, and upon piers united by vaults, the whole forming a substructure of perfect solidity.

The section made through the transept (Fig. 153) gives an exact idea of the portion which dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and of the buildings which gradually grouped themselves round this nucleus, such as the so-called Merveille (Marvel) to the north, and the abbot's lodging to the south.

The longitudinal section (Fig. 154) shows the crypt, or lower church. This was not, as has been frequently asserted, actually hollowed out of the rock; it was, however, very ingeniously contrived in the fifteenth century over the ruins of the Romanesque church in the space between the declivity of the mount and the artificial plateau of the earlier architects. The substructures of the Romanesque church which were enlarged by Robert de Thorigni in the thirteenth century are indicated in this diagram. They are of gigantic proportions, especially towards the west.

Fig. 155 shows the so-called Galerie de l'Aquilon (Gallery of the North Wind), one of the upper stories of the claustral buildings to the north of the church constructed by Roger II., eleventh abbot (1106-1122).

After the fire of 1203, when the abbey had become a feof of the royal domain, the Abbot

Jourdain and his successors rebuilt it almost entirely, with the exception of the church.

As the peculiarities of the site made it impossible to adhere strictly to the Benedictine system of direct communication between the main buildings and the church, the lieux rÉguliers, or accommodation reserved for the monks, were disposed above the magnificent building to the north of the church, which, from the time of its foundation, was known as La Merveille (the Marvel).

This vast structure fairly takes rank as the grandest example of combined religious and military architecture of the finest mediÆval period.

The Merveille consists of three stories, two of which are vaulted. The lowest contains the almonry and cellar; the intermediate story the refectory and the knights' hall; the third the dormitory and cloister. The building consists of two wings running east and west; the apartments are superposed as follows:—In the east wing the almonry, the refectory, and the dormitory; in the west the cellar, the knights' hall, and the cloister.[56]

This splendid structure is built entirely of granite. It was carried out by one continuous effort, under the inspiration of an incomparably bold and learned design of the AbbÉ Jourdain, to which his successors religiously adhered.

The undertaking was entered upon in 1203 and finished in 1228, the final achievement being the cloister, the architects or sculptors of which are commemorated by an inscription in the spandril of one of the arcades in the south walk.

To fully appreciate this stupendous monument, we must realise the extraordinary energy which enabled its architects to complete it in the comparatively short space of twenty-five years. We must take into account the conditions of its growth, its situation on the very summit of a rugged cliff, cut off from the mainland at times by the sea, at other times by an expanse of treacherous quicksand. We must consider the enormous difficulties of transporting materials, seeing that all the granite used was quarried by the monks from the neighbouring coast. It is true that an unimportant quota of the stone was dug from the base of the rock itself. But though the passage across the sands was by this means avoided, the difficulties of raising great masses of stone to the foot of the Merveille, the foundations of which are over 160 feet above the sea-level, had still to be met. It seems certain that the east and west buildings of which the Merveille consists were built at the same time, for though certain differences are perceptible in the form of the exterior buttresses, they evidently result from the interior formation of the various apartments. A study of the plans, sections, and faÇades of the buildings is convincing on this head, and the general arrangements, notably that of the staircase, all point to the same conclusion. This staircase is a spiral in the thickness of the buttress which, with its crowning octagonal turret, forms the point of junction between the two buildings. It winds from the almonry of the eastern ground-floor to the knights' hall on the west, passing through the dormitory of the eastern block to terminate in the northern embattlement above.

The eastern and northern faÇades of the Merveille are models of severe and virile beauty; a massive grandeur characterises them, especially striking and impressive in the northern front as viewed from the sea. The vast walls of granite (the material used throughout, save in the inner walk of the cloister) are pierced with windows varying in shape according to the character of the rooms they light. Those of the dormitory are very remarkable. They are long and narrow, and affect the aspect of loopholes, deeply splayed outwards; the peculiar form of the honeycombed window-heads suggests a reminiscence of Arab types seen by the French Crusaders in Palestine. The thrusts of the interior vaulting are met on the exterior by massive buttresses, the vigorous profiles of which contribute greatly to the nobility of the general effect.

These formidable faÇades were practically fortifications, but the Merveille was further defended to the north by an embattled wall, flanked by a tower which served as a post for watchmen, to which the covered ways running round the base of the western buildings converged.

In the middle, on a level with the north-west angle of the Merveille, a chÂtelet, or miniature keep, now destroyed, guarded the rugged passage between embattled walls which led to the Fountain of St. Aubert, and was known as the Passage du DegrÉ (passage of the stairway).

The various buildings of the abbey which were added in the fourteenth century, after the construction of the Merveille, are: the abbot's lodging, with its offices on the south, and certain military works which completed the defensive system. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these were gradually extended to the walls of the town, as we shall see in Part III., "Military Architecture."