CHAPTER I
BARNS, HOSPITALS, DWELLING-HOUSES, AND "HÔTELS" OR TOWN-HOUSES OF THE NOBILITY
Civil architecture could boast no special characteristics before the close of the thirteenth century. Its earlier buildings bore the impress of religious and monastic types, as was natural at a period when architecture was practised almost exclusively by monks and by the lay disciples trained in their schools.
It was not until the following century that domestic architecture threw off the trammels of religious tradition, and took on the character appropriate to its various functions. Artists began to seek decorative motives in the scenes and objects of daily life, no longer borrowing exclusively from sacred themes, and convention in form and detail was abandoned in some degree for the study of nature.
Barns.—Throughout the Romanesque and Gothic periods, barns, hospitals, and houses were constructed in the prevailing style. We propose, of course, to deal only with buildings possessing real architectural features.
200. TOWN-HALL AT ST. ANTONIN (TARN ET GARONNE). THE UPPER PART OF THE BELFRY WAS REBUILT ABOUT 1860
The barns or granaries of mediÆval times were rural dependencies of the abbeys, but were built outside the enclosure of the monastery proper, and formed part of the priory or farm. The entrance of the barn was a large door, opening upon the yard in the centre of the front gable end; access was also obtained by means of smaller doors in the side walls, and often a postern was constructed beside the main entrance for ordinary use. The great central doors were then only thrown open for the passage of carts, which, entering at the front, passed out through a similar door in the opposite gable end, as at the barn of PerriÈres, which, though situated in Normandy, was a dependency of the Abbey of Marmoutier, near Tours.
201. BARN AT PERRIÈRES (CALVADOS). END OF TWELFTH CENTURY. (AFTER CAUMONT)
Such barns were generally large three-aisled buildings, the central aisle divided from those on either side by an arcade, or pillars of wood or stone, which supported the pointed timber roof covering the whole.
201A. BARN AT PERRIÈRES. SECTION
201B. BARN AT PERRIÈRES. PLAN
In some of these barns it was the practice to pile wheat, barley, or rye in the centre and in one of the side aisles; in others the central aisle was kept free for passage, and the grain was stored in the sides.
The faÇades differ only in unimportant details. They consist of vast gable ends, following the lines of the roof, and strengthened by pilasters. A large doorway, with a small postern to the side of it, occupies the centre of the base, and the apex is pierced with narrow openings to light, or rather to ventilate, the interior.
Tithe-barns were very generally constructed on this plan. When large and important they had two stories, as at Provins.
These were not as a rule vaulted, but the granaries, or greniers d'abondance, were often built with three stories, that of the ground-floor, and even the one above it, being vaulted. The granary of the Abbey of Vauclair, in the department of Aisne, built towards the close of the twelfth century, is a very interesting example of such structures.
202. TITHE-BARN AT PROVINS
203. GRANARY OF THE ABBEY OF VAUCLAIR
Some idea of the importance of religious establishments at this period may be gathered from the foregoing details. The great abbeys were miniature towns, and their dependencies, the priories, consisted of vast farms, round which large villages soon grew up. The cultivators of these great holdings combined agricultural labours with their religious exercises, and the priors in especial were not only priests, but perhaps even in a greater degree stewards or bailiffs, whose duty it was to collect payments in kind, such as tithes or other revenues, to store these, together with the crops of their own raising, and finally to administer the wealth of every description—lands, woods, rivers, and ponds—belonging to the abbey.
Hospitals.—A large number of charitable institutions, called in the Middle Ages maisons dieu, hÔtels dieu, hospices, hospitals, and lazar-houses, were founded in the eleventh century, and greatly developed in the twelfth and thirteenth.
A hospital was attached to most of the large abbeys or their dependencies. The cities also owned hospitals founded or served by monks.
Lazar-houses had multiplied throughout Western Europe by the end of the twelfth century, from Denmark to Spain, from England to Bohemia and Hungary; but these buildings gave little scope to the architect. They consisted merely of an enclosure surrounding a few isolated cells, and a chapel, attached to which were the lodgings of the monks who tended the lepers.
204. HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN AT ANGERS (TWELFTH CENTURY). GREAT HALL, AS RESTORED BY A. VERDIER
But many of the hospices or hospitals built from the end of the twelfth to the fourteenth century are magnificent buildings, in general arrangement much resembling the great halls of the abbeys.
It must be borne in mind that hospitality in the Middle Ages was obligatory; each monastery, therefore, had its eleemosynary organisation, which included special buildings for the accommodation of monks whose business it was to tend the sick and to distribute alms to them and other travellers and pilgrims.
205. ABBEY OF OURSCAMPS (OISE, THIRTEENTH CENTURY). HOSPITAL. AS RESTORED BY A. VERDIER
We learn from Viollet-le-Duc that so early as the Carlovingian period taxes were levied in aid of the poor, the sick, and pilgrims. Charlemagne had enjoined hospitality in his ordinances and capitularies, and it was forbidden to refuse shelter, fire, and water to any suppliant.
206. LAZAR-HOUSE AT TORTOIR (AISNE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY). FROM DRAWINGS BY A. VERDIER
The communes vied with kings, nobles, abbots, and citizens in the discharge of such duties. Hospices and hospitals were founded on every hand, either in deserted buildings, or in specially constructed edifices.
Refuges were also built on roads much frequented by pilgrims to shelter belated travellers, and hospices were constructed outside the walls and close to the city gates.
Pilgrimages were much in vogue in the Middle Ages, especially throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The sanctuaries of St. Michael in Normandy, and of St. James of Compostella in Spain, were the most frequented. At the beginning of the thirteenth century a hospice was founded outside Paris, near the Porte St. Denis, which was dedicated to St. James. This hospice, with its chapel, was served by the confraternity of St. Jacques aux PÈlerins (St. James of Pilgrims), and offered gratuitous shelter each night to pilgrims bound for Paris. Its buildings covered two acres; they included a great hall of stone, vaulted on intersecting arches, and measuring some 132 feet by 36, for the accommodation of the sick.
In a file of accounts of the fifteenth century, concluding with an appeal for funds, it is stated that, for the convenience of pilgrims—y a lieu pour ce faire XVIIJ liz qui depuis le premier jour d'aoust MCCCLXVIIJ jusques au jour de Mons. S. Jacques et Christofle ensuivant on estÉs logÉs et hebergÉs en l'hospital de cÉans XVm VIc IIIIxxX pÈlerins qui aloient et venoient au Mont Saint Michel et austres pÈlerins. Et encore sont logÉs continuellement chascune nuict de XXXVI À XL povres pÈlerins et austres povres, pourquoy le povre hospital est moult chargÉ et en grant nÉcessitÉ de liz, de couvertures et de draps.[69]
In the first years of the fourteenth century several hundreds of hÔtels dieu, hospitals, and lazar-houses received help from the King of France. St. Louis founded the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts for the blind, and in many towns hospitals were erected for the insane, the old, and the infirm, in addition to the usual lazar-houses. Special hospitals had already been established for women in labour, and a chapel was founded for their benefit in the crypt of the Ste. Chapelle of Paris, dedicated to Our Lady of Travail, of Tombelaine, in Normandy.[70]
207. HOSPITAL AT TONNERRE. SECTION OF THE GREAT HALL
Several hospitals of the Gothic period still exist. That of St. John at Angers is one of the most remarkable. It comprises a great hall, divided into three aisles, and vaulted on intersecting arches, and a chapel dating from the close of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century. The fine barn at Angers is of the same period; the plan and details of construction are very curious, and resemble those of the barns and granaries already described.
The HÔtel Dieu of Chartres dates from about the same period.
The hospital of Ourscamps, near Noyon, is very similar as to the scheme of construction which seems to have been one generally adopted by the religious architects of the twelfth, and more notably of the thirteenth century. The grandiose proportions of the vast building recall the great vaulted halls of contemporary abbeys, such as those of St. Jean des Vignes at Soissons, and of the merveille at Mont St. Michel. Certain individual features characterise it as a hospice specially designed for the sick, the poor, and pilgrims.
The Hospice of Tonnerre appears to have been rebuilt in the fourteenth century. The vast design is very impressively carried out. The great hall, over 60 feet wide by some 300 long, is covered with an open timber roof, boarded in so as to form a semi-circular vault, which is singularly effective.
The internal arrangements are very ingenious. A wooden gallery in the half-story commanded a view into each unceiled cubicle, by means of which it was possible to keep constant watch over the patients without disturbing them.
The hospital of Beaune has been so often described as to call for little comment. The painted timber vault of the great hall seems to have been imitated from that of Tonnerre. Its distinctive character has unfortunately been destroyed by the construction of a ceiling, the joists of which rest on the tie-beams of the original skeleton. But the inner court is intact, with the arcade and well and wash-house so familiar from descriptions and illustrations. Another picturesque and often described feature is the great roof on the south side, with its double row of dormer windows surmounted by a rich ornamentation of hammered lead.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the practice of vaulting the great halls of hospitals with stone was abandoned. It became usual in France and in Flanders to cover the vast aisles with timber roofs, the boarded vaults of which were either pointed or barrel-shaped.
The term maladrerie was applied to the small lazar-houses, numbers of which were built in France in the neighbourhood of abbeys or of priories remote from towns and great religious centres.
The Maladrerie du Tortoir, not far from Laon, on the Route de la FÈre, is a type of such rural hospitals. Both in plan and in the details of construction it recalls the hospital of Tonnerre, more especially in the ingenious arrangement of the interior.
In the planning of these charitable institutions mediÆval architects exhibited the same skill and ingenuity which distinguished their treatment of religious monuments. Viollet-le-Duc has pointed out the strange illogicality of such a theory as that which would make artists who showed extraordinary subtlety in religious buildings responsible for so much coarseness in civil structures. We must not hold them accountable for the destruction of their well-planned hospitals from the sixteenth century onwards, and the substitution of buildings, the main preoccupation of whose architects was to provide accommodation for as many patients as possible. Louis XIV. endowed the hospitals built in his reign with the revenues of the lazar-houses and maladreries, for which there was no further occasion, leprosy having disappeared from his dominions. But his hospitals leave much to be desired from the hygienic point of view; the mediÆval hospitals, on the other hand, have a monumental simplicity of appearance, and offer a liberal supply of light, air, and space to their patients. We do not assert the superiority of the cellular system commonly adopted in hospitals from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, over that of the open wards of our own times, but we may be permitted to point out its great moral advantages. And, as our learned authority remarks, the system owed its adoption to a noble delicacy of charitable feeling in the mediÆval founders and builders of our maisons dieu.
Houses and HÔtels, or Town-Houses of the Nobility.—The history of human habitations is a subject of such interest that to treat it adequately a special work would be necessary. Such an undertaking has, moreover, been admirably carried out by a famous architect.[71]
We must refrain from discussion of prehistoric or Merovingian dwellings, or of those rural hovels, the typical variations of which, in different countries and climates, offers so wide a field for study. To keep within the limits assigned us by the arbitrary term Gothic Architecture, we must confine our rapid sketch to the architectural period which dates from the middle of the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth century.
208. HOUSE AT CLUNY (TWELFTH CENTURY)
Nothing remains of habitations constructed in France before the twelfth century, save the vague and scanty records of ancient texts, manuscripts, and bas-reliefs. But we may reasonably infer that the houses of the period were built of wood, as was natural in a country containing great tracts of forest. We know that most of the important buildings were timber structures, which explains the fact that numbers of twelfth-century churches were founded on the sites of earlier buildings destroyed by fire.
Roman, Gallo-Roman, and Merovingian houses were arranged to suit the habits of the times; they were lighted by windows opening upon an inner courtyard, in accordance with the ancient custom of separating the women's apartments from the rest of the habitation.
208A. HOUSE AT CLUNY (TWELFTH CENTURY)
But by the end of the twelfth century the urban dwelling was adapted to the needs of a family. The doors and windows of the house were made to overlook the street. The building consisted generally of a hall or shop, in which a handicraft was carried on, or manufactured goods were offered for sale. It was lighted by a wide arcade of round or pointed arches, and was either on a level with the street, or raised above it by the height of some few steps. A back room, opening upon a courtyard, served for kitchen and dining-room. To the left of the faÇade a little door gave access to a staircase which led to the first floor, where was a large solar or living-room and an apartment overlooking the courtyard. Above these were the chambers occupied by the inmates of the house.
209, 210. HOUSES AT VITTEAUX (CÔTE D'OR), AND AT ST. ANTONIN (TARN ET GARONNE, THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
The architecture of such houses varies according to the climate, the materials of the country, and the customs of the inhabitants. The houses had no special individuality as long as the windows were treated merely as apertures for the admission of light; but directly these began to take on a certain elaboration, and such features as mouldings or sculptures were introduced in the faÇades, a system of decoration was borrowed from the neighbouring churches or abbeys of monkish architects, a consequence either of the far-reaching influence of monastic schools, or of the spirit of imitation and force of habit.
Certain houses at Cluny, which date from the twelfth century, exemplify the style. They are built almost entirely of stone. The arcading recalls various details of monastic buildings which the constructors very naturally took as models.
211. HOUSE AT PROVINS (FOURTEENTH CENTURY)
212. HOUSE AT LAON (FOURTEENTH CENTURY)
213. HOUSE AT CORDES. ALBIGEOIS (FOURTEENTH CENTURY)
The same may be said of the other houses, of which we give drawings as illustrating the urban type of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is easy to trace the successive developments of religious and monastic architecture in the domestic buildings of the period.
It is not until the close of the fourteenth century, and more notably in the fifteenth, that such influences gradually die out, and change, if not progress, becomes evident in the altered form of the arcades, which no longer resemble those of cloisters or churches, but have elliptic or square apertures. These, in the windows, are no longer subdivided by a stone tracery of ornamental cusps and foliations, but merely by plain mullions and transoms, forming square compartments which it was possible to fill with movable glazed sashes of the simplest construction.
The faÇades are generally of durable materials, such as stone or brick, and the use of wood is restricted to the floors and the roofs.
Houses of the fifteenth century in the Northern departments, where stone is scarce, were built mainly of wood, the more solid material being used only on the ground-floor. The overhanging upper stories were of timbers, the interstices being filled in with brick. The principal members, such as corbel tables, beams, ledges, and window-frames, were decorated with mouldings and sculptures. The faÇade usually terminated in a gable, the projecting pointed arch of which followed the lines of the timber roof. In other cases it was crowned by richly decorated dormer windows. In rainy districts the roof was covered with slates or shingles.
214. HOUSE AT MONT ST. MICHEL (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
215. WOODEN HOUSE AT ROUEN (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
216. WOODEN HOUSE AT ANDELYS (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
It was usual in the North to detach each house at the upper story, even when it was not practicable to allow a narrow passage or space between. This was not merely a concession to the vanity of the citizen, to his desire to make his independent gable a feature of the street. It was also a pre
cautionary measure against fires, which were frequent and disastrous in cities built mainly of wood, and possessing but very rudimentary appliances wherewith to meet such a catastrophe.
217. HÔTEL LALLEMAND AT BOURGES (END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
The fifteenth and notably the sixteenth centuries were marked by the building of a new class of dwellings, the maisons nobles, or town-houses of the nobles, who, down to this period, had lived entirely in their fortified castles. These great seignorial mansions differ essentially from the houses of the citizens. The hÔtel occupied a considerable space, in which a courtyard and even gardens were included. The house of the citizen or merchant was built flush with the street, whereas the hÔtel was placed in an inner court, often richly decorated, and the street-front was devoted to stables, coach-houses, servants' lodgings, and the great entrance which gave access to the court and the main building.
218. JACQUES CŒUR'S HOUSE AT BOURGES. VIEW FROM THE PLACE BERRY (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)
The names at least of some famous Parisian hÔtels of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have survived, such as the hÔtels des Tournelles, de St. Pol, de Sens, de Nevers, and de la TrÉmoille, the last destroyed in 1840. The HÔtel de Cluny, which dates from 1485, is a very curious example, and of remarkable interest, as having been preserved almost intact.
Several great houses of the same period still exist at Bourges. Among others, the HÔtel Lallemand, built towards the close of the fifteenth century, the inner court of which is especially noteworthy, and the still more famous hÔtel or chÂteau of Jacques Coeur.
This beautiful structure dates from the second half of the fifteenth century, and is built in part on the ramparts of the town. It is so well known that it will be unnecessary to describe or illustrate the famous portals and inner court. But the faÇade on the Place Berry, though less sumptuous, is hardly less interesting. Here we have the two great towers of the fortified enceinte, with their Gallo-Roman bases, and between them the corps de logis or main buildings of the mansion, which retain many features of the feudal castle, and bear witness to the wealth and power of Charles VII.'s ill-used favourite, the famous banker, whose splendid fortunes suffered such undeserved eclipse.
CHAPTER II
TOWN-HALLS, BELFRIES, PALACES
The social evolution which resulted in the enfranchisement of the communes had its origin in the eleventh century, though the consummation of this great political change was of much later date.
Down to the fourteenth century the efforts of the communes to exercise the rights conferred on them in charters wrung from their feudal lords received incessant checks. The opposition they encountered is hardly to be wondered at, seeing that every concession in their favour tended to diminish the despotic authority of those from whom it had been won. No sooner, therefore, was a charter rescinded and a commune abolished than the instant demolition of the town-hall and belfry was demanded. Hence very few town-halls of earlier date than the fourteenth century have survived.
Town-halls.—A few of the great Southern cities owned town-halls so early as the twelfth century, among them Bordeaux, where the building was of the Roman type, and Toulouse, whose town-hall was practically a fortalice.
219. TOWN-HALL OF PIENZA, ITALY (END OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY)
But by far the greater number of the infant communes were sunk in poverty, and so overwhelmed with dues and taxes that they had no margin for communal buildings.
In the fourteenth century even the commune of Paris could boast only the most modest of town-halls. In 1357 Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants, bought from the collector of the salt-tax a small two-gabled building which adjoined several private dwellings. We may, therefore, conclude that down to this period the town-hall was in nowise distinguished from an ordinary habitation.
At the close of the century Caen possessed a town-hall of four stories.
During the thirteenth century many new towns and communes had been founded by the Crown, the nobles, and the clergy, the depositaries of power in the Middle Ages.
In the North, Villeneuve le Roi, Villeneuve le Comte, and Villeneuve l'ArchevÊque owed their existence, material and communal, to these powers respectively.
In the South the war of the Albigenses had devastated and even destroyed many cities. The authorities recognised the necessity of repeopling the districts so cruelly decimated. The great nobles, spiritual and temporal, reconcentrated the scattered population by grants of lands for the building of new towns, and sought to establish them permanently by apparently liberal concessions in the form of communal franchises.
According to Caumont and Anthyme St. Paul, these new towns or bastides may be identified by their names, or by their regularity of plan, or by both combined.
Certain names indicate a royal foundation or dependency, as RÉalville or MonrÉal; others point to privileges conferred on the town, as Bonneville, La Sauvetat, Sauveterre, Villefranche, or even La Bastide, and Villeneuve.
220. TOWN-HALL AND BELFRY AT YPRES (BELGIUM)
A third class borrow the names of French and occasionally of foreign provinces or towns. Anthyme St. Paul gives a list of such in the Annuaire de l'archÉologie franÇaise,—Barcelone or Barcelonnette, Beauvais, Boulogne, Bruges, Cadix, Cordes (for Cordova), Fleurance (for Florence), Bretagne, Cologne, Valence, MiÉlan (for Milan), La FranÇaise and Francescas, Grenade, Libourne (for Leghorn), ModÈne, Pampelonne (for Pampeluna), etc.
A new town or bastide is usually rectangular in plan, and measures some 750 by 580 feet. Sauveterre d'Aveyron is an example. In the centre is a square, into which a street debouches on each side, thus dividing the town into four parts. The square is surrounded by galleries or cloisters, of round or pointed arches, covered with a timber roof or vault, with or without transverse arches, whence the term Place des Couverts, still common in some Southern towns.
In the centre of the square stood the town-hall, the ground-floor of which was used as a public market. MontrÉjeau is one of the towns in which this regularity of construction is observed, also Montpazier, the streets of which are lined with wide arcades of pointed arches. Other examples are to be found at Eymet, Domme, and Beaumont, Libourne, Ste. Foy, and Sauveterre de Guyenne, Damazan, and Montflanquin, Rabastens, Mirande, Grenade, Isle d'Albi, and RÉalmont, etc. Several bastides in Guyenne were founded by the English. Finally, the lower town of Carcassonne, founded in 1247, and Aigues-Mortes, founded in 1248, also belong to the class of bastides or new towns.[72]
"The series of Southern bastides, inaugurated in 1222 by the foundation of Cordes-Albigeois, was brought to a close in 1344 by a petition of the town-councillors of Toulouse, in answer to which the king forbade any further settlements. Two hundred at least of the bastides still exist in Guyenne, Gascony, Languedoc, and the neighbouring districts. Several of these were unprosperous, and are still small villages. In some cases their close proximity tended greatly to their mutual disadvantage."[73]
221. MARKET AND BELFRY AT BRUGES (BELGIUM)
222. TOWN-HALL OF BRUGES (BELGIUM)
It is worthy of remark that civil architecture had so greatly developed by the fifteenth century as to react in its turn upon the religious art to which it owed its birth. It gave to religious architecture certain new forms, such as the elliptic arch, adopted at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the following century, at which period civil architecture reached its apogee.
The Southern communes preserved their franchises till the sixteenth century, that disastrous era of religious warfare which involved the destruction of innumerable buildings.
The town-hall of St. Antonin (Tarn et Garonne) is perhaps the only surviving one of the period. With the exception of the belfry, it is an almost perfect type of the architecture of this class in the thirteenth century, to which date it may probably be assigned (Fig. 200).
The little town of St. Antonin, which had obtained its communal charter in 1136, suffered much for its fidelity to Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse. During the war of the Albigenses it was twice taken by Simon de Montfort, whose son, Guy de Montfort, sold it to St. Louis in 1226. It was at this period, no doubt, that the present building was erected. It has the characteristic feature of the civic monument, the belfry, which, in the Middle Ages, was the architectural expression of municipal authority and jurisdiction.
The building is a simple rectangular structure, over which the square tower rises to the right. The ground-floor is a market, communicating with an adjoining market-place, and with the narrow street which passes under the belfry. The grande salle or municipal hall occupies the first story, together with a smaller apartment in the tower. The second story is divided in the same manner.
223. TOWN-HALL AT LOUVAIN (BELGIUM)
We have already called attention to the far-reaching influence of French art as manifested in religious architecture so early as the close of the twelfth century. Such influences were no less paramount in developments of civil architecture, and we find municipal buildings of the fourteenth century in Italy—at Pienza and other towns—in which not only analogies but points of identity with the thirteenth-century example of St. Antonin are distinctly traceable.
The municipal buildings of the North, the most perfect types of which are those of Germany and Belgium, are nearly uniform in plan. A belfry rises from the centre of the faÇade, flanked right and left on the first story by the great civic halls. The ground-floor is a market for the sale of merchandise.
The cloth-hall of Ypres (so named since the construction of a new town-hall in the seventeenth century) is one of the most beautiful of such examples. The building was begun in 1202, but was not completed till 1304. The faÇade measures 440 feet in length, and has a double row of pointed windows. It terminates at each angle in a very graceful pinnacle, and the centre is marked by a noble square belfry of vast size, the oldest portion of the building, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Baldwin IX. of Flanders in 1200.
The belfry of Bruges, which was begun at the close of the thirteenth century, and completed some hundred years later, is another most interesting example of the civic buildings of its period.
The structure consists of a market and the usual municipal halls, crowned by the lofty belfry, the original height of which was 350 feet.
224. BELFRY OF TOURNAI (BELGIUM)
225. BELFRY OF GHENT (BELGIUM)
The hÔtel de ville or town-hall of Bruges, which replaced an earlier municipal building in the Place du Bourg, dates from between 1376 to 1387. Its architectural character differs entirely from that of the belfry. Its elegant design and the richness of its ornamentation give it the appearance rather of a sumptuously decorated chapel than of a civic building.
We may close the list of Belgian town-halls of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with that of Louvain. The design and general scheme of elaborate decoration are akin to those of the hall of Bruges, and it bears the same ecclesiastical impress.
It was built between 1448 and 1463 by Mathieu de Layens, master mason of the town and its outskirts, and is a rectangular building of three stories. The gable ends are pierced with three rows of pointed windows, and adorned with a rich profusion of mouldings, statues, and sculptured ornament. The steep roof has four tiers of dormer-windows. The angles are flanked by graceful openwork turrets, with delicate pinnacles, and similar turrets receive the ridge of the roof at either end. The lateral faÇades are adorned with three rows of statues and allegorical sculptures, covering the whole with a wealth of exquisite tracery. Its lace-like delicacy has suffered considerably from the action of weather, and it was found necessary to renovate a considerable portion of the ornament in 1840.
Belfries.—In the early days of the enfranchisement of the communes, it became customary to call the community together by means of bells, which at that period were confined to the church towers, and which it was unlawful to ring without the consent of the clergy. It may easily be conceived to what incessant broils the new order gave rise, the clergy as a body being strongly opposed to the separatist tendency of measures which attacked their feudal rights. The municipalities finally put an end to internecine warfare in this connection by hanging bells of their own over the town-gates, a custom which was superseded towards the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century by the erection of towers for the civic bells. Such was the origin of the belfry, the earliest material expression of communal independence.
The structure usually formed part of the town-hall, but was sometimes an isolated building. The isolated belfry was a great square tower of several stories, crowned by a timber roof protected either by slates or lead. The great bells hung in one story, and above them the little bells of the carillon.
A lodging, opening upon a surrounding gallery, was constructed in the upper story for the accommodation of the watchman, whose duty it was to warn the inhabitants of approaching danger and to give notice of fires. The bells rang at sunrise and curfew.
The chimes (carillon) marked the hours and their subdivisions, and at festival seasons mingled their joyous notes with the deep and solemn voice of the great bell.
The custom of tolling the great bell to give notice of a fire still obtains in many villages of the North, the greater number of which have preserved their belfries in spite of the modifications they have undergone at different periods.
The belfry tower usually contained a prison, a hall for the town-councillors, a muniment room, and a magazine for arms. It was long the only town-hall of a commune.
226. BELFRY AT CALAIS (FRANCE)
We shall find examples of these early municipal buildings among the isolated belfries of Belgium, such as that at Tournai, founded in 1187, and rebuilt in part at the close of the fourteenth century, and that of Ghent, the square tower of which dates from the end of the twelfth century. Its spire is a modern addition.
A few buildings of this particular class still exist in France. Such is the belfry of Calais, the square tower of which was built during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is crowned by an octagonal superstructure, begun at the close of the fifteenth century, and completed in the early years of the seventeenth. The belfry of BÉthune, which dates from the fourteenth century, is another. It consists of a square tower reinforced at three of its angles by a hexagonal turret, corbelled out from the wall. The fourth turret is of the same shape, but here the projection is carried up from the ground-floor, and contains the spiral staircase which communicates with the various stories of the tower, and terminates on the embattled parapet above. The building is completed by a pyramidal spire of great elegance, crowned by the watchman's tower. The plan and details of this superstructure proclaim it the source whence the gable turrets of Louvain were derived. The great bells hang in the uppermost story, the smaller ones of the carillon in the story below. On each faÇade at the summit of the tower a great dial marks the hours, as was customary from the fourteenth century onwards, when town-clocks first came into general use.
The towns of Auxerre, Beaune, Amiens, Évreux, and Avignon still possess their belfries.
To the belfry of Amiens, which dates from the thirteenth century, a square dome was added some hundred years ago. But the great bell of the fourteenth century has been preserved.
227. BELFRY OF BETHUNE (FRANCE)
The belfry of Évreux retains its fifteenth-century character almost in its entirety. That of Avignon, a monument of the close of the fifteenth century, was happily spared when the town-hall was replaced by a modern structure.
The gate-house of the hÔtel de ville at Bordeaux, known as the grosse cloche, is an example of the more ancient usage. Here we find the bell hung over the gateway, as already described. The belfry of Bordeaux, which appears to date from the fifteenth century, is very remarkable. It consists of two towers connected by a curtain through which is an arched passage. A second arch protects the great bell in the upper story, and the whole is surmounted by a central roof, flanked right and left by the conical crowns of the lateral turrets.
230. BELFRY GATE AT BORDEAUX, KNOWN AS LA GROSSE CLOCHE
Markets, warehouses, and exchanges were often annexes of the town-halls. A few examples of such buildings have been preserved, but those of the third class are extremely rare. A specimen, remarkable both for construction and decoration, which recall the Spanish architecture of the fourteenth century, still exists at Perpignan. It is a house known as La Loge, built in 1396, which originally served as exchange to the cloth merchants of French Catalonia and Roussillon.
Palaces.—In the Middle Ages the name palace was given to the dwelling of the sovereign. Its chief feature was the basilica or judgment-hall.
The great nobles followed the royal example and constructed palaces in the capitals of their feofs, as at Dijon, Troyes, and Poitiers, which are the most important of such examples.
The town-houses of archbishops and bishops were also called palaces.
The courts, parliaments, and tribunals of the executive were held in the palace of the suzerain or the bishop, where certain of the buildings were open to the public. The important feature, the great hall (grand salle), occupied a vast covered space in which the plenary courts were held, the vassals assembled, and banquets were given. It communicated with galleries or ambulatories. A chapel was always included in the plan of the palace, which consisted of the lodging of the lord and his followers; offices, often of great extent; rooms for the storing of archives; magazines, prisons, and innumerable auxiliary buildings, divided by courtyards, and in some cases by gardens.
231. CLOTH HALL AT PERPIGNAN, KNOWN AS LA LOGE
In Paris the palace proper, which was in the Île de la CitÉ, consisted of buildings constructed from the time of St. Louis to the reign of Philip the Fair. From the reign of Charles V. it was specially devoted to the administration of justice.
The only remains of the buildings of St. Louis are the Ste. Chapelle, the two great towers with their intervening curtain on the Quai de l'Horloge, and the square clock tower at the angle of the quay.
The best examples of seignorial castles are: Troyes, which was built by the Counts of Champagne, and inhabited by them till they removed to Provins in the thirteenth century; and the palace of the Counts of Poitiers at Poitiers, one of the most interesting of such buildings; it was burnt by the English in 1346, and repaired or rebuilt at the close of the fourteenth century by the brother of Charles V., Jean, Duke of Berry, to whom we owe, among other architectural works, the curious fireplace of the great vestibule, called the Salle des Pas Perdus, in the Palais de Justice.
232. BISHOP'S PALACE AT LAON
The bishops' palaces were differently planned. They usually adjoined the cathedrals, with which they communicated either on the north or the south, according to the facilities afforded by the site. The characteristic symbol of episcopal power which, in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, claimed jurisdiction both in spiritual and temporal matters, was the great hall, in later days the synod house and the council chamber of the executive. The bishop's palace in Paris, rebuilt by Maurice de Sully in 1160, preserved this mediÆval feature, which is even more conspicuous at Sens, in the magnificent annexe known as the salle synodale (synod house).
233. ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE AT ALBI. PLAN
The canons' lodgings were also in close proximity to the cathedral, but on the side opposite to the bishop's palace. They were surrounded by an enclosure, the gates of which were fastened at night. It was the duty of the canons to aid the bishop in his ministrations. They lived together in annexes which communicated with the cathedral by means of galleries and cloisters.[74]
The bishops' palaces were often remarkable for their elaborate construction. Fragments of the primitive buildings are still preserved in the palaces of Beauvais, Angers, Bayeux, and Auxerre.
234. ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE AT ALBI. GENERAL VIEW
The ancient episcopal palace of Laon[75] marks a development in thirteenth-century architecture. It is a good example of that system of construction by which the palace was connected with the city ramparts and formed a secondary line of defence.
This system was also adopted at Narbonne. At the close of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century the palace was transformed into a fortress, the importance of which bore witness to the power of its bishops. After Avignon, it is perhaps the most imposing of episcopal dwellings.
From this time onward the bishops' palaces increased greatly in size, their dimensions extending proportionately with those of the great cathedrals of the period. The importance of the episcopal buildings and their dependencies was on a par with the wealth and power of their owners. Some idea of their magnificence may be gathered from the private chapel of the archbishop at Rheims, which dates from the middle of the thirteenth century.
235. PALACE OF THE POPES AT AVIGNON. PLAN
The archbishop's palace at Albi has all the character of a feudal castle. Its buildings are protected by a keep, and encircled by walls and towers connected both with the ramparts of the city, and with that more important fortalice, the cathedral itself, the tower of which is, in fact, a formidable keep.[76]
The transformation of church and palace into fortresses by an elaborate system of defence was necessitated by the wars which ravaged the district, and from which Albi suffered more cruelly than any other town.
The palace of the popes at Avignon which Pope Benedict XII. began to build in the fourteenth century, and the bishop's palace at Narbonne, are among the finest specimens of ecclesiastical fortification in the Middle Ages.[77]
The Popes, having established themselves at Avignon in the fourteenth century, built a huge mansion on the rock known as the Rocher des Doms, which overlooks the Rhone. In 1336 Benedict XII., having destroyed his predecessor's palace, laid the foundations of the immense fortified pile now in existence. The plans were the work of the French architect, Pierre Obrier. The building was added to by the successors of Benedict XII., Popes Clement VI., Innocent VI., and Urban V., and was completed, or at any rate made efficient for defence, by 1398, when Pedro de Luna, who became pope under the title of Benedict XIII., sustained a memorable siege therein.
The whole building, which covers a very considerable area, was completed in less than sixty years. Its formidable mass was further strengthened by the fortified enceinte of the town, some three miles in circumference.
In general conception, in the architectural skill of its construction, and in its tasteful decoration, the Palace of the Popes at Avignon bears away the palm from all contemporary buildings in Germany and Italy, where French influences were paramount.
236. PALACE OF THE POPES AT AVIGNON. GENERAL VIEW
This noble monument is absolutely and entirely French. No finer combination of religious, monastic, military, and civil types could be desired in illustration of the art we have agreed to term Gothic Architecture, but which might be more truly entitled: Our National Architecture in the Middle Ages.
Justice indeed demands this tardy homage. Our vast churches, our superb cathedrals, our mighty castles and palace fortresses, the masterpieces that fill our museums—manifestations of artistic power which should move us, not to servile imitation but to fruitful study,—all were the creations of native architects.
That expansive force which made our national art the great civilising medium of the Middle Ages was derived from our own early architects, civil and religious. The principles and practice of monumental art were carried by French architects into all countries, though the results of their teaching are more conspicuous in Italy and Germany than elsewhere. Native builders and artists established the supremacy of French art throughout Western Europe, and even in the East. And though the foreign evolution, which marked the sixteenth century, did indeed exercise a transient influence in France, it must be remembered that the way had been prepared for this apparently novel movement by those French artists who have carried the fame of our beloved country throughout the civilised world.
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