Plotting Gothic 022619180X, 9780226191805

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Three Eyewitnesses of Gothic
1 Villard de Honnecourt: Ymagier and Interlocutor
2 Gervase of Canterbury: Cronicus and Logistics Man
3 Suger, Abbot of S-Denis,and the Rhetoric of Persuasion: Manipulating Reality and Producing Meaning
Part II: Staking Out the Plot
4 Interlocutor and Monument
5 Material Contexts: The Means of Production
6 The Production of Meaning
Part III: Animating the Plot
7 Picturing the Three Agents of Construction
8 The Cathedral as Object of Desire
9 Conclusion: Gothic Plots—Synchronic, Diachronic, and Spatial
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Plotting Gothic

Stephen Murray

Plotting Gothic 

University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

Stephen Murray is the Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History at Columbia University and the author of many books. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2014 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2014. Printed in the United States of America 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­19180-­5 (cloth) ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­19194-­2 (e-­book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226191942.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Murray, Stephen, 1945– author. Plotting gothic / Stephen Murray. pages ; cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-226-19180-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-19180-X (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-19194-2 (e-book) 1. Architecture, Gothic. 2. Architecture, Gothic— Social aspects. I. Title. NA440.M87 2014 723′.5—dc23 2014019940 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1

Pa rt I Th ree E y ewi tness es of Goth ic  

1

15

Villard de Honnecourt: Ymagier and Interlocutor  17 Possessing Villard 17 The Role of the Interlocutor in the Villard Enterprise 23 Animating the Artifact 24 Animating the Beholder 32 Controlling the Artifact 37 Conclusion: Deceit and Desire in the Villard Enterprise 45



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Gervase of Canterbury: Cronicus and Logistics Man  47 Storytelling 50 Mnemonics: Remembering the Old 53 The Means of Production: Controlling the New 57 Old and New Reconciled 62 Apocryphal Storytelling: A Building That “Speaks” 63 Conclusion: Signs, Miracles, and Illusionism 70

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Suger, Abbot of S-­Denis, and the Rhetoric of Persuasion: Manipulating Reality and Producing Meaning  73 Rhetorical Structure of De consecratione: Manipulated Dialectic 79 Production of the Text: From Oral to Written 83 Making Connections 86 Production of the New Church, Production of Salvation 88 Apocryphal Stories 90 Conclusion: The Abbot Who Spoke the Building 92

Part II S tak ing Out the Plot 

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4

Interlocutor and Monument  99



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Material Contexts: The Means of Production  113 How on Earth Did They Do That? 114 Economic Means 127 Reading the Signs: Construction History 129



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The Production of Meaning  133 Similitude to Nature; Local Roots 138 Similitude to Other Buildings 149 Modernism and Reason 153 An Image of Heaven 164 Conclusion 174

Part III A nim at ing the Plot 

17 7



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Picturing the Three Agents of Construction  179



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The Cathedral as Object of Desire  189 Triangulating Desire 197 The Gap between Vision and Realization 199 Compression and Expansion: Plotting 200 My Desire 203



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Conclusion: Gothic Plots—­Synchronic, Diachronic, and Spatial  205 Notes 221 Bibliography 265 Index 283

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CONTENTS

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Preface and Acknowledgments

The author, at the end, struck by the apparent gap between the length and complexity of the gestation period and the appearance of the final product, may want to offer some kind of commentary of explanation and thanks . . . My earlier scholarly production focused upon a series of intense case studies of Gothic cathedrals: Troyes, Beauvais, Amiens, and Notre-­Dame of Paris. To these buildings I wish to express my first and most heartfelt thanks. It has been the greatest privilege to live in and with them, to carry them in my head, and to have made a small contribution to the understanding of the way that each of them was conceived and built. I continue to believe that, counter to prevailing wisdom, the archaeological/architectural monograph still has a vital place in scholarly discourse. Yet, unsatisfied with the limits of the traditional means of representation (the pages of a book), I found myself tugged away in the early 1990s by the challenges and promises of the so-­ called new media, particularly cinematography and three-­dimensional animation, as it became clear that the digital media, combined with the Internet, had the potential to radically change the mission of the art historian. The Amiens Project (1993) was intended to harness the digital media to make this great cathedral more accessible to the thousand or more students engaged each year in the Columbia Core Curriculum. My work was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and I was helped by Maurice Luker, Rory O’Neill, Eden Muir, and Andrew Tallon. The successful vii

completion of the Amiens Project led to the foundation of the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University, supported by a challenge grant from NEH and subventions from the Andrew Mellon and the Samuel Kress Foundations as well as other sources. New combinations of three-­dimensional modeling, digital imaging, and Internet databasing allowed us to work toward liberation from the tyranny of the interlocutor’s diachronic narrative, with new interactions between databasing (now digital) and storytelling. Our project, Romanesque Architecture of the Bourbonnais (2002–­7, www.learn.columbia.edu/bourb/php), brought together a hundred churches on the map and provided an intense initiation to the study of medieval architecture for dozens of students. My thanks go to Prince Charles-­Henri de Lobkowicz, gracious host of our summer program in his Château de Bostz, and to Andrew Tallon, inspired and endlessly resourceful colleague. Yet at the same time, the brave new world of the digital media brings its own tribulations. The means of delivery may become obsolete in a twinkling—­thus, our interactive disk The Amiens Project, part 3, created to run on Macintosh OS9, is now unusable. Worse, a team of collaborators may quickly disperse, causing a loss of vital expertise and momentum. We have yet to test the long-­term viability of ambitious Internet-­based databasing projects. It is clear, finally, that we must learn from our experiences in the media both to continue to push ahead to the new and to bring new ways of thinking to the old. The digital revolution was the second challenge to the way that we do business. The first profound change had come with the infusion of new ways of thinking derived from literary criticism, linguistic theory, anthropology, and Marxist thought in the decades between 1960 and 1990. The exciting potential of the “literary turn” and the “spatial turn” was to take us beyond the old rhetoric of “style,” “development,” and “influences” to a story of architectural production based more fully upon models in the study of linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. How to combine such a broad range of approaches with the specificity of the archaeological case study? Without the focus of the building itself or the primary written source, broad surveys of the sociological context of cathedral building may quickly become vapid and boring. The idea of summoning a succession of witnesses of Gothic (Villard de Honnecourt, Gervase of Canterbury, and Suger, abbot of S-­Denis) to help us escape the linearity of the Vasarian narrative and to focus and organize our encounter with the human dimensions of medieval architectural produc-

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tion came to me during the year of my fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (2000–­2001). Other than one’s mother, the cathedral is, after all, the most powerful mechanism of behavior modification. And, of course, the cathedral is one’s mother. As in a novel, my three characters have shouldered their way into this book and have shown every sign of wanting to entirely take over my project with their compulsive talking and plotting. I wish to thank Bob Scott and the staff and fellows of the Behavioral Center for the intellectually stimulating environment in which the present project was conceived. As is so often the case, however, my year at the Behavioral Center was overwhelmed by the need to complete overdue older projects, notably my Gothic Sermon (2004) and the institutionalization of the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University. It was thus during a second year’s research leave at the National Humanities Center (­2003–­4) that the present project took its definitive shape: thanks to Kent Mulligen and the fellows for their help and encouragement. It was during this year that readings in Peter Brooks’s Reading for the Plot provided the link between building space, human conspiracy, and story line. Brooks led to Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, and I began to see ways to correlate my joy in looking with my joy in representing the building, matching architecture with rhetoric. My notions of space owe much to readings in Mary Carruthers, Pierre Bourdieu, and Henri Lefebvre. These ideas lay behind the formulation of a new Internet project, Mapping Gothic France (www.mappinggothic.org). This project locates hundreds of Gothic churches, represented in tens of thousands of high-­resolution images, on a Google map of France. The user is encouraged to experience the space of each building and the spaces between buildings. Historical maps take us back to the geopolitical space of the period of construction, and the user is led not to a single master narrative but to the multiple stories of Gothic. I would like to thank the Andrew Mellon Foundation, particularly Don Waters, as well as Andrew Tallon, my co–­principal investigator, Rory O’Neill, visionary, and collaborators Nicole Griggs, the late James Conlon and Caleb Smith, Pilar Abuin Peters, Jim Hall, Cassie Juhl, Jordan Love, Zachary Stewart, Gabriel Rodriguez, Emily Shaw, and Rob Stenson. Mappinggothic. org and Plotting Gothic have advanced side by side, each feeding the other. My exploration of the literary turn gained much from conversations with Robert Hanning, Richard Brilliant, Paul Strohm, and Matt Kavaler. Paul Papillo was a most helpful reader of early versions of these pages. Thanks also go to Michael Davis, Paula Gerson, and Peter Fergusson for their helpful suggestions. Readers will see how much I owe to my own teacher, Peter Kid-

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son, who has provocative things to say about each of my three witnesses. I learned about the rewards to be derived from the careful study of medieval account-­keeping from Eric Stone, my tutor at Keble College, Oxford. I want to close with thanks to all the students with whom I have worked and the intellectual stimulation they have provided. My Columbia University Department of Art History and Archaeology, especially under the enlightened leadership of Chairman Robert Harrist and Holger Klein, provided a wonderful environment in which to work; Lisa and Bernard Selz, generous friends of Columbia University, endowed the chair in which I now happily sit. I would not have brought my project to a close without the encouragement of Susan Bielstein of the University of Chicago Press; thanks, also, to Anthony Burton and Ruth Goring at Chicago. The two readers engaged by Chicago made invaluable suggestions and contributions. Emily Shaw and Nicole Griggs helped with the images. My wife Grainne, finally, has seen to it that the distractions of country living, university teaching, and the hundred miles of driving that lie between have not entirely pulled me away from writing, and has given me the reason to go forward.

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Introduction

Gothic may be said to live “out there” in the forms of thousands of churches, cathedrals, and other buildings and artifacts—­including extraordinary edifices that appear to speak directly to the visitor, moving him or her to the core. Today our great cathedrals—­Chartres, Notre-­Dame of Paris, Florence—­ are overwhelmed by a continuing flood of tourists and pilgrims. No mode of artistic production—­other than, perhaps, music and modern media, especially film—­has anything like this kind of direct impact on so wide an audience. Yet the phenomenon was not created through the media of masonry, wood, and glass alone: “Gothic” is also a rhetorical construct. Far from being content to allow the great church to communicate directly through architectural form, space, light, and liturgical performance, visitors continue both to demand and to provide rhetorical responses: verbal explanations delivered by an interlocutor who interposes self between building and audience, pointing and speaking for the building. We are all familiar with the sight of the group of weary tourists struggling through the crowded cathedral, led by one who pauses periodically to point and talk as they dutifully look and listen.1 By extension, interlocutors can also provide mediation in the pages of books, classroom lectures, or media productions. While popular consumption of cathedral architecture has boomed, scholarly publication of the Big Story of Gothic has faltered: the last attempts 1

to achieve a “master narrative” belong to the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s, including Erwin Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism and his Abbot Suger, Otto von Simson’s The Gothic Cathedral (1956), Paul Frankl’s The Gothic and Gothic Architecture, and Henri Focillon’s Art of the West, volume 2, Gothic, edited and introduced by Jean Bony (1963). Jean Bony’s French Gothic Architecture, although it appeared in 1983, resulted from the Columbia University Mathews Lecture, delivered in 1961, and his teaching at Berkeley. These synthesizing works mostly met with intense disapproval on the part of members of the scholarly community. Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale’s Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich (1985), while it offers exciting new insights and approaches, deliberately setting out to counter the older tradition of the narrative of style, remains untranslated into English and has had less impact than it deserves.2 In the meantime, scholars have continued to debate whether the Gothic cathedral was a portrait of the heavenly city or a cynical means of terrestrial domination; whether it projects a modernistic attitude or a backward-­looking one; whether we should be continuing to apply intense archaeological analysis to individual buildings or focus on the reception, function, and context of those buildings. Historians of Gothic architecture have embarked upon the pursuit of the most seductive yet elusive concept of “integration” (Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings) and an emphasis on liturgical and devotional practice (Willibald Sauerländer, “Gothic, the Dream of the Un-­classical Style”) and “holism” (Paul Crossley, “The Integrated Cathedral: Thoughts on ‘Holism’ and Gothic Architecture”). We have learned much recently about how the spaces (sacred topography) of a great church, lined with shrines, tombs, and images, might be animated by the passage of the devout visitor or procession.3 However, such devotional passage might equally well take place in a wide range of different kinds of architectural space and does not necessarily provide information or enlightenment about “Gothic.” While an older generation of scholars devoted much effort to establishing the formal patterns in Gothic buildings and artifacts that we categorize as “style,” to locating architectural production in the context of medieval society, and to providing explanations of how the forms of the edifice were actually produced and what they meant to builders and users, little attention has been paid to mapping the rhetorical commonplaces—­the topoi—­that result from the interlocutor’s mission to translate the forms, spaces, functions, and meanings of Gothic architecture into words. And still less thought has been given to the question of how words, conversations, rhetorical constructs, and stories shared by the builders were instrumental in the very creation of Gothic. Do the characteristics of post festum rhetorical accounts 2

INTRODUCTION

woven around the completed edifice have anything at all to do with the intentions of the builders and the responses of early users? We might hope to find out about those intentions from written sources left by builders and witnesses. Yet the construction of the great Gothic cathedrals took place without the rhetorical intervention of a Giorgio Vasari, who in Lives of the Artists told the Big Story of the Renaissance.4 The rhetoric of Gothic that developed in the postmedieval period may be understood in terms of three interwoven strands. First, the application of the word Gothic originally involved animus and name-­calling: for a fifteenth-­ century Italian, Gothic might have conveyed the meaning of something that just looked wrong or inappropriate, something that lacked proper maniera or style. Goofy has been proposed as equivalent.5 Reference to the despised and hated Northerners, the Goths, held responsible for the destruction of Rome and still all-­too-­present on Italian soil, brought additional layers of cultural disapproval. However, as with other such epithets applied to a despised “other,” the term was quickly turned to positive use by those to whom it had been applied and has enjoyed a fabulous afterlife, built particularly upon romantic notions that flowered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and later.6 Second, of course, the notion of “Gothic” involves periodization and categorization: the definition of a common set of characteristics found in a group of artifacts from a given period of time and located in a given geographical area.7 Still quite sketchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Raphael and Vasari), that understanding was later systematized, gaining quasi-­scientific status in the encyclopedic movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The desire at that time to collect, control, and classify artifacts ran parallel to and interacted with the classification of natural phenomena, fossils, flora, and fauna, and the rhetoric of “progress” or “evolution.” The encyclopedic spirit led scholars to search for the “essential” features of different kinds of artifact or building and to associate them with a unity of time and place: the term Gothic, although obviously anachronistic (with a seven-­century gap between the historical Goths and the buildings that bear their name), was then widely accepted as a conventional and “value-­free” label to designate buildings with pointed arches, ribbed vaults, flying buttresses, and a lightweight skeletal system constructed in northwestern Europe and beyond between the 1130s and circa 1500. In a Hegelian spirit, the common language (koine) of architecture was understood in symbolic or synecdochal relationship to the wider culture: the “Gothic World.” I want in the following pages to focus on what I consider the third strand in verbal representations: the notion of “Gothic” depends upon narration, INTRODUCTION

3

or storytelling.8 Interlocutors may begin with the essential question “What does it—­the great church or the phenomenon in a wider sense—­look like?” We may then propose explanations of the “essential” visual characteristics of this mode of architecture in cause-­and-­effect relationships, constructing what we might call etiological myths. Thus the earliest written accounts of “Gothic” sought to explain the pointed arches and the essential fibrousness of that Gothic “look” with stories of primitive Germans creating their sacred spaces in the forest by tying the tops of trees together to form the characteristic lacy, pointed shape of the Gothic interior. Despite deep-­seated Italian prejudice against Northern cultural phenomena, such natural origins could not be entirely despised: Vitruvius, like so many other tellers of the Big Story of Architecture, invoked Nature as the ultimate source for architectural form. The Genesis story of Creation provides the great prototype for all architectural stories: just as God created the world with material elements, eliciting form from substance through the power of his word, so humans imitate natural forms (rocks, caves, trees, forests) in the creation of artifacts and buildings. Linkage with the great Creation story reinforces the appearance of inevitability in the story of art: such is the power of the finished cathedral that the casual visitor may find it hard to imagine that the edifice did not have to look the way it does. It was in this spirit that Giorgio Vasari created the story of the Renaissance as an inevitable unfolding of human creativity in the image of divine creativity. The artists of the Renaissance, in a triumphal procession culminating with Michelangelo, rediscovered what had already existed: the perfect relation between art and nature already known by the ancient Greeks. The builders of the great Gothic cathedrals of the twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, on the other hand, struggled to create what had not existed. How they did this is explored in the second kind of story, as sketched below. The second, and the most common rhetorical mechanism for stories of Gothic—­popular down to the present day—­is that of a continuous problem-­ solving process driven by critical dissatisfaction with the immediate past.9 If the Creation story can be understood in terms of manifest destiny or entelechy, the problem-­solving approach is based upon dialectic.10 The notion of the dynamic interaction of thesis and antithesis was applied by Jean Bony to the desire of builders in mid-­twelfth-­century Île-­de-­France to combine skinny, thin-­walled structures with the newly fashionable masonry ribbed vault that exerted outward thrust.11 The rational underpinnings of the story are simple—­even simplistic: necessity is the mother of invention. Thus the

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INTRODUCTION

desire to avoid structural failure resulting from the combination of two antithetical architectural systems, one muscular, the other fragile, stimulated the creativity necessary for the invention of the flying buttress and the lightweight superstructure. Such architectural invention in multiple well-­ funded building sites in close proximity in northern France produced an architectural revolution in the half-­century between the 1130s and 1190s. Here the story of Gothic may be told as a triumphal procession of buildings that become progressively taller, lighter, brighter, and more beautiful. Thus, for example, the nave of Amiens Cathedral (1220–­30s, fig. 1) could be seen as an updated and improved version of Soissons Cathedral (chevet begun ca. 1190, fig. 2). We will encounter in the following pages a multitude of other stories: that Gothic was the expression of the emergent kingdom of France; that it resulted from the industry and vision of a new kind of urban artisan; that it resulted from the application to architectural form, space, and light of some great philosophical system: Neoplatonism, Aristotelian rationalism, or the theology of light developed by the mystical writer known as Pseudo-­ Dionysius. How can we escape from the diachronic and deterministic tyranny of the creation story translated in art history as the Vasarian narrative and begin to reconcile the multiple stories I have sketched above?12 Inspired by the synchronic and interactive potential of the space of the computer desktop, I propose in the following pages to lay out a spatial mechanism capable of reconciling the various kinds of story. I will seek to establish an interactive space in order to facilitate the correlation and coordination of four notions: (1) the self-­conscious recognition of the role of the interlocutor who represents the building and who seeks to shape our perceptions, our responses, and our thoughts; (2) the continuing presence and overwhelming power of the monument itself, inscribed in time, extending from the construction period down to the present, and still able to communicate directly with the visitor; (3) the material and social contexts of the original production of that monument; and finally, (4) the production of meaning understood as an agenda programmed into the edifice by the initial builders and modified by subsequent users, down to the present, who have generated their own levels of meaning based upon their own responses. Let me emphasize that I have not sought here to write a unified “Story of Gothic.” Nor does my book set out to provide a survey of architectural production over a given period of time and geographical space.13 I wish, rather, to find a way to correlate and to recognize the patterns in multiple verbal

INTRODUCTION

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Figure 1. Amiens Cathedral, south side of the nave, looking west. Photograph by permission of Andrew J. Tallon.

Figure 2. Soissons Cathedral, north side of the nave, looking east. Photograph by permission of Andrew J. Tallon.

representations, each of which may provide vital elements of understanding, yet none of which presumes to offer us the “holistic cathedral.” This can never be entirely recaptured. In the absence of the Gothic master narrative corresponding to Vasari’s story of the Renaissance, modern art historians have tended to curse the darkness, lamenting the laconic character of the written accounts left by the medieval witnesses of Gothic and scolding the authors of such narratives INTRODUCTION

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for their inadequate powers of observation, crass errors, lack of comprehension, and for not providing the information that the modern student might consider important. Yet the stories left by eyewitness accounts provide us exactly what we need to escape from the tyranny of the master narrative based on the Vasarian model. The written accounts left by our medieval eyewitnesses invite us to locate multiple stories in a spatial and synchronic, rather than linear, environment. Let us begin, then, in part I, “Three Eyewitnesses of Gothic,” by concentrating on what our witnesses did say about the relationship between words and architecture—­about talking, writing, and building. Our three witnesses are the most obvious and prolific ones: Suger, abbot of S-­Denis; Gervase, monk, sacristan, and chronicler of Canterbury Cathedral; and Villard de Honnecourt, image-­maker or ymagier. Despite their prominence, little effort has been made in existing scholarship in the English-­speaking world to correlate their rhetorical strategies and their stories. For reasons that will, I hope, become clear in the following pages, I will bring them on in reverse chronological order. Let us first entertain Villard de Honnecourt and his collaborators, Picards, who in the 1220s and 1230s created new combinations of images and words, leaving for us a unique little book now preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (see figs. 6–­17 in chap. 1). In some ways the modern student may find Villard most “like us.” His interests are wide ranging; he wants to point and to inform; he will therefore serve as our principal interlocutor. Then comes Gervase, an Englishman, probably born in Kent, choir monk of Canterbury Cathedral (ca. 1141–­ca. 1210), who brought the concerns of an administrator to his account of the construction of the Gothic chevet of Canterbury Cathedral (see figs. 18–­20, chap. 2); who provides invaluable information on the process of architectural production, and whose seductively polished narrative has been considered a massive cover-­up of covert political machinations. Finally, I will bring on the famous Suger, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of S-­Denis, indefatigable storyteller, wordsmith, and mystic (see figs. 21–­23, chap. 3). Despite Suger’s considerable output as “author,” he remains in some ways the most enigmatic of our three witnesses. My principal interest is to correlate the characteristic patterns or tropes that emerge as each author sets out to create a verbal skein intended to capture Gothic architecture—­the process as well as the thing—­and represent it on the written page. I will suggest that the best mechanism to facilitate the correlation of storytelling and the actual business of building can be found in the concept of plot. Having interviewed our three witnesses, in part II, “Staking Out the Plot,” 8

INTRODUCTION

I want to build upon the recognition—­already well established in antiquity and well known in the Middle Ages—­of the structural analogues between rhetoric and architectural space. Thus Quintilian defined topoi, or commonplaces (loci communes), as “storehouses for trains of thought.”14 Writing in the middle years of the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus echoed such thoughts to convey the idea of mnemonic places as cognitive schema that the mind makes for remembering: Place is something the soul makes for itself for storing images.15 More than storehouses, spatial thinking can provide mechanisms to allow for the correlation of old stories and the development of new; the processes of thinking and learning (edification) are like constructing a building.16 My objective may best be pursued in relation to the stories of Gothic by invoking the multiple meanings of the word plot. Etymological dictionaries recognize three principal meanings of the noun: first, and most ancient, a controlled lot or parcel of land (a building plot); second, a covert plan pursued by a group of individuals to achieve a desired end, ambushing the future, as it were; and third, a series of events and relationships linked dynamically to form the rhetorical mechanism of a composition or story.17 Plot, then, implies control and manipulation of space—­the imposition of meaningful bounds upon terrain vague; an intention to impose form upon formlessness, to serve a purpose (a building plot; a burial plot; a cabbage plot), to fix an outcome, to inveigle the reader or viewer into the illusionistic “reality” of a complex narrative. Every great building project in the Middle Ages began with the delineation of space achieved through the business of stretching ropes on the ground. The famous image of the monk Gunzo shows the vision of ropes as a means to comprehend the compressed image of the unbuilt abbey church of Cluny (fig. 3). Building manuals to this very day have continued to provide directions for the laying out of a plot that resembles the one used by the medieval builders of a great church (fig. 4). Modern readers may be troubled at my next step—­I propose not just to visualize such a controlled space but actually to employ that space as a means to correlate and organize stories of Gothic, using it as a mechanism of thought. Authors both ancient and medieval might have recognized my strategy as a familiar one.18 The modern person wanting to find a comparable mechanism might consider the synchronic power of the computer screen as a counterpart to such a space or the schemes proposed by structuralist and poststructuralist thinkers.19 As we consider spatial plotting, we will look for the linkages between the physical process of plotting of the building (marking out the site with ropes) and the story lines established by interlocutors, both medieval and postmedieval, to realize the object of their desire. I will propose a spatial enINTRODUCTION

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Figure 3. Gunzo’s vision of Sts. Peter, Paul, and Stephen with ropes plotting the new church of Cluny. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 17716, fol. 43.

Figure 4. The building plot. From Wood-­Frame Construction, Craftsman Book Company, www.craftsman-­book.com.

vironment for understanding the relationship between talking, writing, and building. The discovery of that space may help us transcend the division between accounts of cathedral construction made during the period of the production of Gothic and subsequent responses, through the recognition that postmedieval witnesses of Gothic, like their medieval counterparts, might enter into an affective relationship with the building as an object of desire. In part III, “Animating the Plot,” we will explore the sociological sense of plotting as a means to control and direct human interactions toward a desired goal by means of covert manipulations. Soteriologically, medieval theologians might seek to read the world as a book, looking for signs of God’s plot: the salvation of humankind. Reading for the plot may imply a critical and skeptical reevaluation of “history” to recognize the appearance of unanimity imposed upon real struggle, making a predetermined sequence and desired outcome seem inevitable.20 It is, of course, through the authority of the finished cathedral that such a (false?) appearance of unanimity may be most powerfully expressed. Plotting brings the notion of conspiracy—­derived both from the inherent meaning of a “scheme” as a means of exercising control and from the similarity of the English word plot to the French complot.21 Reading for the plot also implies recognition of the power of narrative to pull the reader forward, laying out a story line, both revealed and concealed, which the intelligent reader can follow by looking for clues and anticipating the outcome as a dialectic between destiny and the power of the indiINTRODUCTION

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vidual or group to turn aside the “inevitable.”22 More than merely pleasurable, reading for the plot can become entirely compulsive. Are we all familiar with the detective story where readers are compelled forward to test their wits against the ability of the writer to conceal as well as to reveal and to surprise, and with the sense of bitter loss felt when the story finally comes to an end?23 Such is the force of a well-­constructed story of this kind that Susan Sontag has spoken of the “erotics of the narrative.”24 Many of us in the business of representing medieval architecture have had exactly this kind of relationship with a beloved building: living with it, carrying it with us, and compulsively worrying it to death, as we think it through in all its stages of becoming. For many of the students and interlocutors of Gothic (including myself) the process of looking at the great Gothic cathedral and “reading” it as a narrative may become utterly compulsive. The exploration of the sociological dimensions of the plot will lead us to look for underlying mechanisms binding together the various agents responsible for cathedral construction—­agents who left written accounts of their stewardship. These agents fall into three categories: first, churchmen (abbots, bishops, parish priests, etc.); second, artisans, including principally the master masons responsible for the design and construction of the new edifice; and, third, the providers of necessary resources or logistical organizers. In the early Middle Ages the king, emperor, or local secular seigneur might act as patron and benefactor of the enterprise. In the Gothic churches and cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, this third agency might be fulfilled by the cathedral sacristan or proviseur, who organized the flow of cash and coordinated payments to artisans and purchases of materials. The frontispiece of Viollet-­le-­Duc’s Architecture raisonné offers a most engaging visualization of the three typical agents (fig. 5). The churchman (to our left) checks off his list of programmatic requirements; the knightly patron (right), his slimly elegant body turned away from us, remains enigmatic. The master mason who dominates the center is clearly the hero of the scene: the doer and speaker. I will suggest that we can understand the role of the three witnesses introduced in the first part of the book in relation to these three agents. Each agent clearly has an agenda to achieve; each of them will bring to the table different ways of envisaging and achieving the common object of desire: the great church. With the gift of hindsight, the Creation story might be told as God’s plot: the problem-­free unfolding of a narrative where the end had been clearly envisaged at the beginning, just as God created the world in six days, and at the end of each day the product of the day’s labor was seen to be good. 12

INTRODUCTION

Figure 5. E. E. Viollet-­le-­Duc, the Three Builders. Frontispiece of the Dictionnaire raisonné.

Human salvation is, then, facilitated by growing awareness of this Plot. But in fact, in cathedral construction the relations between the controlling agents were certainly not so smooth but were characterized by continuing verbal interactions—­disagreements, struggle, and resolution to allow the work to go forward.25 This was a dialectic that lay not in some transcendent realm or fictional narrative but in the very real and onerous problems faced on a daily basis when vision is rendered material through human effort, conflict, and artistic production. Critical to the process was the ability to image (imagine) the completed cathedral through reference to known prototypes (that is, the compression of a cathedral, in all its spatial complexity, into mnemonic images). The master mason would be the one to translate these images graphically into project drawings, and eventually into the templates and material forms; compression was followed by expansion as the building was deployed in time and space. I hope, in the end, to have provided spaces for alternative stories of Gothic—­told not as in the book of Genesis, where all is anticipated in the INTRODUCTION

13

mind of the divine Creator, but as a dangerous affair involving human struggle and risk-­taking, with architectural production worked out under local conditions of intense institutional rivalry—­and cooperation. I want to lead the reader forward with a kind of compulsion to look systematically, to think critically, and to read with pleasure. Just as the building itself took on the power to energize its builders, pulling them forward with a combination of challenges, rewards, and frustrations, so the beholder who comes later may apply himself diligently to looking and thinking systematically, searching for signs, entering into the past in order to tease out the plot of the initial builders.26

14

INTRODUCTION

Part I

() Three Eyewitnesses of Gothic

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1

() Villard de Honnecourt Ymagier and Interlocutor

Imagine traveling from city to city in early-­ thirteenth-­ century France and beyond, witnessing the astonishing spectacle as thousands of artisans labored on the walls, supports, vaults, and windows of great cathedrals and churches rising above city walls and rooftops, dominating the surrounding country. Notre-­Dame of Paris and Laon Cathedral substantially complete, Reims well under way, Amiens and Beauvais recently begun. Would our experiences in visiting these sites and interviewing the builders lead to new ways of looking at each church and a clearer understanding of the human circumstances of its construction and meaning? And beyond the individual monument, would we finally discover a means of plotting the relationships linking multiple buildings and discovering the force lying behind what we call the Gothic “style”? Our dream is, of course, unrealizable—­but are we able to summon a witness with direct personal experience of Gothic in the thirteenth century, one who actually left a graphic record?

Possessing Villard Because it was clearly cherished by its early users and owners, a little book with a unique combination of images and words has survived the centuries and now resides in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.1 We read in 17

the opening colophon: “Villard de Honnecourt greets you, and beseeches all those who will work with these devices that you find in this book that they will pray for his soul and that they will remember him. For in this book you can find good advice in the great craft [or law] of masonry and carpentry devices, and you will find the great craft [or law] of portraiture, the outlines thereof, just as the art of geometry commands and teaches.”2 Although this greeting, penned on the reverse side of the first folio (fol. 1v), promises three chapters dealing with matters of masonry, woodwork, and portraiture or figure drawing, the user of the book is in for a surprise. Already on the front surface of the same folio we find an astonishing combination of seemingly random images: a seated bishop, a pelican, an owl, and a magpie teasing a crouching hybrid devil. And, turning the pages, we encounter a continuing procession of unforgettable images: mostly human beings, some frozen in the recognizable iconography of church art (the crucifixion on 2v, for example), but many others who are far from frozen: strange, funny, or even shocking, for example, the lifelike male nude on folio 11v (see fig. 12), who engages us directly with an enigmatic stare. The images, rendered in pen and ink with occasional addition of chiaroscuro in ink wash, are imbued with a kind of “reality effect.”3 Heavy linear emphasis and the application of rudimentary “perspective” cause some of the architectural images to fold into, or to pop out of, space (Reims Cathedral chapels, fols. 30v and 31r, see fig. 9). We are startled to find some images entered upside down or sideways. Animals scuttle across the pages or turn to confront us (the knight and his horse, fol. 23v; the lion, fol. 24r and v). Then there are extraordinary combinations of geometric and human forms, foliage that turns into faces, bits of buildings and carpentry, as well as an unlikely selection of automata and arcane-­looking geometric drawings that seem to promise some kind of hidden code: the “secrets” of the medieval mason?4 To top it all, at the end of the little book we read a recipe for an elixir of cannabis. The reader is surely entitled to wonder whether this substance facilitated a new and more intense way of seeing. This unruly collection of vibrant images that refuse to obey the retroactively superimposed three-­chapter organization exercises an immediate, visceral power that belies the small size of the pages, mediocre quality of the parchment, and haphazard arrangement. Such was the force of the project that it soon began to transform itself as the originator, joined by co-­ conspirators, manipulated and redefined the mission, adding (perhaps with the help of a scribe) written explanations, imposing “order” upon formlessness, word upon image, storytelling upon databasing. In this way the identity and intention of the presumed originator, Villard, has become irretriev18

CHAPTER ONE

ably blurred. By identifying differences in handwriting and language, an earlier generation of scholar/connoisseurs had discovered two additional “masters” who added texts and drawings.5 Most recently, however, Carl Barnes, through painstaking detective work, has extended that number to eight, three of whom followed soon after Villard.6 Thus the “Villard Enterprise,” as I would like to call it, changed from an intensely personal project—­ the collecting of favorite images on loose parchment leaves probably folded as bifolia—­to the propagation of a didactic agenda claiming to deal with masonry, carpentry, and “portraiture,” conveyed within the authoritative framework of a book where the bifolios are gathered together and sewn into a leather binding.7 These ambiguities, coupled with the power of the images themselves, made the appropriation of the identity and creative force of "Villard" both desirable and easy. Thus, beyond the additional “masters” who added content soon after the inception of the project, we find on the opening page a half-­obliterated inscription (the date, 1482, is a falsification) in which the writer announces that his ancestor Alexis Félibien had made the drawings in the book, and asks the user to remember him and all his family of engineers.8 The Félibien family was in possession of the book by the seventeenth century; members of that family did not hesitate to claim the illustrious author of the drawings as one of their own. The little book, as far as we know, then fell into oblivion in the libraries of S-­Germain-­des-­Prés and the Bibliothèque royale/nationale, where it received call numbers and pagination, then to be “rediscovered” in the mid-­ nineteenth century, when we find a new kind of desire to possess. Instead of wanting to appropriate the identity of the author or to join the “Villard Enterprise,” nineteenth-­century interlocutors desired a kind of possession that would turn the identity and “mission” of Villard de Honnecourt to serve their own purposes. Jean-­Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­ Duc were at this time attempting to convince the wider French public that French medieval architecture, especially Gothic, was more appropriate than Italianate forms to express le génie français.9 What was needed was a Gothic Vitruvius—­a document to provide an “encyclopedic” validation of the forms of Gothic. This was found in Villard, and seduced by the combination of fluent prose, wide-­ranging interests, and engaging images of architectural projects then current, proponents have until quite recently continued to argue that Villard was an architect or master mason: one who not only built Gothic churches but also theorized in the pages of a book.10 Hans Hahnloser, author of the authoritative edition of the mid-­twentieth century, interpreted the engagement of Villard’s followers and the presence of the architectural V I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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images as evidence that this was a “lodge book” that actually found continuing service in the training of young masons.11 This belief was perpetuated by Hahnloser’s former student François Bucher.12 Where are we now with Villard scholarship? It seems to me that here are two continuing problems. The first is the scholarly compulsion to proceed directly to the role of detective, reading between the lines in order to address what are considered the “essential” questions: who was Villard de Honnecourt, why did he gather his collection of images, and what were his sources?13 If we could only strip away the later layers of added texts and images, some have believed, we could discover the genius and mission of the original author and the problem would be solved. Following clues in the pages of Villard’s little book, art historians have detected “special knowledge” of the close connections between the builders of the cathedrals of Cambrai and Reims: if elements of the former project are completed correctly, Villard tells us, Cambrai will resemble Reims Cathedral.14 Villard promises us drawings of Cambrai but instead shows us Reims—­are these intended to indicate the appearance of Cambrai?15 Such inside knowledge is also found in the renderings (though imperfectly understood) of masonry coursing of the piers and the templates necessary for production of the tracery elements of the windows of Reims Cathedral as well as the resemblances (more or less) between details given in his drawings and elements in real buildings (Villard’s rose at Chartres and an engraved rose in one of the radiating chapels of the collegiate church of S-­Quentin, for example).16 If Villard and his followers were indeed attempting to establish a kind of textbook for masons, an Academy of Gothic, then the little book would provide prime evidence of how the essential principles of Gothic were communicated.17 More than forty years ago, however, many of us, on both sides of the Atlantic, had already questioned the notion of Villard de Honnecourt as a practicing master mason and the carnet as a lodge book. A procession of indignant scholars has pointed to the ways in which Villard’s architectural drawings depart from the “truth” of the buildings themselves, arguing that no person who had ever built a cathedral could possibly have slipped into errors as gross as, for example, placing the capitals of the clerestory windows of Reims at the top of the clerestory wall, where they are much too high to receive the enclosing arch of the window (fol. 32v, fig. 6).18 But the strongest evidence against the idea that Villard was the master mason of Cambrai can be found in the opening colophon.19 The title maistre maçon, maistre de Notre Dame de Cambrai would be a proud one, and it is most unlikely that a master mason who held this position would have neglected to add his full title it to his name.20 20

CHAPTER ONE

Figure 6. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 32v, Reims Cathedral, section of flying buttress. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

I propose to move the old debate forward with the following thoughts. Given the corporate nature of the Villard Enterprise, we must recognize the limits of our ability to respond to the questions “who was Villard?” and “what was the function of the ‘book’?” The former question has focused upon what Villard did for as a job: this we can never know. Rather than continuing to pursue unattainable certainty, we should embrace abundant ambiguity; V I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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rather than seeking the individual, we should reflect on the corporate nature of the Villard Enterprise, which provides access to what Pierre Bourdieu would call the field—­a human interactive environment so closely knit that it is difficult to discern the distinct identity of a professional master mason or a clerical administrator.21 Gothic architecture may be understood in social terms as the product of conversations projected beyond the isolated group or class to bring together the churchmen who initiated the project, the artisans who conducted it, and the members of the urban community (bourgeois) who supported it—­entities that might also be locked in bitter conflict.22 The designation magister operis, or master of the work, might be applied either to the master mason who directed construction or to the person who organized logistics and budgets (the proviseur).23 And then there were certainly other members of the clergy and layfolk who were privy to the “secrets” of each building.24 It was precisely this “field” that formed the creative forum for Gothic, providing a cognitive framework and appropriate language and appreciation and ensuring the “triumph” and “spread” of the phenomenon. The probability that “Villard” was not a master mason, paradoxically, allows us to see the power of Gothic more clearly: what we find is imperfect understanding on the part of a contemporary enlightened beholder, an amateur, who was nevertheless overwhelmed with admiration of these extraordinary buildings, which he wanted to collect, to possess, and to propagate.25 Thus Villard tells us that he collected the image of the window at Reims “because I liked it best”; he had traveled in many countries, he tells us, but never seen a tower like that of Laon Cathedral.26 This was a compulsive looker and recorder of works of art and nature—­works that became objects of desire to be collected as “virtual reality” surrogates of the original. The author’s eyes have caressed the surfaces of the buildings and other objects and may have also passed over project drawings that presumably would have remained in the hands of the master mason (hence his “inside information”). The individual who drew and gathered the images was an ymagier: an epithet that can be applied to any kind of image maker regardless of medium or employment. We know of the activities of such image makers mainly through the existence of carefully programmed illustrations in the pages of illuminated manuscript and sculptured figures in the Gothic portal. Astonishingly, in the Villard Enterprise we find the work (and pleasure) of ymagiers who have escaped the tyranny of the commissioned project and, for a while, the power of the written text. But images were not enough: the little book bears witness to the final necessity of adding words to images. The initial ymagier, “Villard,” probably came to see the need for explanations of images that he may have ini22

CHAPTER ONE

tially thought self-­explanatory: he grew increasingly aware of the fact that images and buildings do not speak. The “eloquence” of architecture, in particular, needs the intervention of the rhetoric of an interlocutor. In this way, a project that may have begun as a few drawings made as a result of the author’s compulsive desire to look, to possess, and to collect was turned into a “book” with “chapters” and organization intended for didactic purposes and a wider (although still very limited) audience. Storytelling was, in this way, imposed upon databasing. We must now move our conversation beyond the positivistic expectations of a previous generation (yes, he was a master mason; no, he was not . . .), and beyond the stultifying hunt for sources, to an exploration of the dynamics of the word-­upon-­image imposition in the Villard Enterprise and how, in speaking the artifact (or building), the interlocutor makes that artifact directly available to the comprehension of the viewer.27

The Role of the Interlocutor in the Villard Enterprise The key strategy in the Villard Enterprise, to impose the ymagier’s process of looking and drawing upon the looking/responding/comprehending of the user, is expressed with the word vesci, or the phrase ves ent ci, repeated more than twenty times. The translator tends to slip into the colorless “Here is . . . ,” but we should remember that the word voici comes from the combination of voire, “look,” and ci, “here”: “Look here!” or “Look at this!” The words may be left separate, ves aluec, “look here,” or ves ent ci.28 Echoes of oral delivery are preserved in the exhortation to the reader to “listen well” (entendez bien) and “remember what I’ll say to you” (retenez ce que je vous dirai ).29 As user of the book, you may feel that the ymagier/interlocutor wants to take you by the arm and, pointing forcibly, direct your attention to his object of interest as the work of art is “performed.”30 The image becomes a medium or bridge to the real thing as the interlocutor emphatically inserts himself, with repeated use of the first-­person singular, into the relationship between members of the audience and the objects they are invited to consider.31 Whether the architectural images actually resulted from an ymagier sitting in front of the building and sketching what presented itself to his eyes, whether he had access to project drawings, or whether the image has anything at all to do with “reality” is immaterial here. The combination of text and image creates slippage in the mind of the user, who conflates the “portrait” with the subject of that portrait; signifier with signified.32 It might be noted that this kind of sleight of hand and the eloquence that invites the audience to participate with all the senses, ear, eye, and memory, are the standard tricks V I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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of the medieval preacher anxious to grasp and to retain the attention of his congregation.33

Animating the Artifact Making It Real; Making It “Grow” While we may ridicule the claim in the text attached to the famous image of the lion (fol. 24v) that “it was drawn to life,” we should take seriously the interlocutor’s desire to persuade the viewer to accept the image as a “true” surrogate of the original. Let us examine two of the strategies—­sleights of hand—­employed in order to lend an illusion of reality to what are, after all, nothing more than scratchy networks of inky lines and washes on inferior parchment. The first trick was the ability to make the beholder read a set of rhythmically interacting tightly curved lines not as mere scratchings on the page but as three-­dimensional crinkled drapery (fol. 28r, fig. 8). I am referring, of course, to the famous “hook-­fold,” the Muldenfaltenstil. Villard at his best is very good indeed—­his rhythmically interacting hooked lines create the illusion of corrugated drapery, making you want to pass your fingers over the surface of the page to gauge the extent to which the hollows sink and the folds project. This particular trick was ubiquitous in northern France and beyond in the later twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries—­ in monumental sculpture as well as the two-­dimensional arts, metalwork, glass, and manuscripts.34 In some of Villard’s images, the effect is enhanced by an ink wash applied to the depth of the folds and heavy black outlines that project the figure toward us, into our own space.35 The illusion of three-­ dimensional depth can also be found in some of the architectural images, for example the interior and exterior elevations of Reims Cathedral (fol. 31v, fig. 7) or the interior of the radiating chapel in the same building (fol. 30v, fig. 9). The rhythmic repetition of multiple colonnettes transforms architectural elements that express “support” into fantastic texture—­just as with the draperies, you want to run your fingers over the corrugated surface of Villard’s interior elevations. The use of heavy dark lines limning the colonnettes in the Reims chapels is comparable to the similar technique in some of Villard’s figurative renderings. Millard Fillmore Hearn seized the sense of the thing when he suggested that this apparent projection creates the illusion of architectural orders superimposed one atop the other.36 And the illusionistic effect is extended across the spaces of the windows in the form of the new-­ fangled tracery. The second reality trick is a rudimentary kind of perspective. This is par24

CHAPTER ONE

Figure 7. Villard de Honncourt, fol. 31v, Reims nave elevation. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

Figure 8. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 28r, two standing figures (bound into the book upside down). Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

ticularly apparent in the interior and exterior views of the Reims chapels (fols. 30v and 31r, fig. 9). In the interior view, the angling of the lateral upper walls conveys the illusion of depth; with heavy dark lines indicating the projection of the arcades, the dark cavities of the passages suggest relief, just as the wavy lines in the area of the vaults indicate unfinished masonry, placing the viewer in the building at a particular moment (perhaps toward 1220).37 Similarly, in the elevation drawing of the Laon tower (fol. 10r, fig. 10), the 26

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Figure 9. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 30v, Reims Cathedral, interior of radiating chapel. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

voided buttresses that project out from the central octagonal core of the edifice are shown in an angled position to convey depth. References to nature contribute to Villard’s “reality effect.” Raphael and Vasari explained the essential characteristics of Gothic as evidential signs of forest origins; Paul Crossley has suggested that the arboreal look was quite deliberately introduced by the builders to construct a myth of cultural/national roots in primitive German forests.38 Older accounts of Gothic archiV I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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Figure 10. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 10r, tower of Laon Cathedral. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

tecture often claimed that builders and ymagiers went directly to nature for their inspiration—­this dimension had subsequently been largely neglected until a series of recent publications.39 Villard emphatically brings one’s attention to the essential links between foliate forms in nature and the foliate “decoration” applied to the voussoirs of an arch. Here we encounter the mythical green man (l’homme vert) who, sprouting a foliate beard and hair, trembles on the brink of becoming: man to tree, or tree to man (fol. 5v).40 Man and building alike sprout foliage. At the bottom of the page are two deceptive images of “live” foliage sprigs—­their apparent reality belies the fact that with their cluster of fruit, fleurs-­de-­lys, and generic lobed leaves, they come from Villard’s structured imagination and not from natural sources. But the “living” forms of nature crowd everywhere onto Villard’s pages in the form of multiple bugs and animals and foliate elements that sprout from furniture and monumental architecture alike, conveying the force of organic growth.

Lending Eloquence to the Image In addition to wanting his human figures look real, our ymagier desired to make them speak. Many of the figures gesture with outstretched hand(s) and long, delicately articulated curving fingers with upraised index.41 If we can talk at all of common codes of signification in medieval imagery, this is the gesture of speech.42 Figures turn in conversation, sometimes appearing to be involved in some kind of collaborative enterprise or plot. The image of the “king and his court” may provide the best example (fol. 13r, fig. 11). In the center sits a king, knees splayed, ankles crossed, crowned, and holding a scepter. His expression is sad and his posture insecure. His drapery is crinkled and shaded in an attempt to project “reality.” The illusion of speech is induced by the way he turns and inclines his head, while extending an eloquently articulated hand with upraised palm to a kneeling man, who reciprocates by reaching out a hand to his lord while his other hand remains respectfully cloaked. But just look at the groups on either side: three figures on the king’s right and two to the left. Turning, with malevolent, caricatured, profiled faces, they appear to whisper to each other and to reach into each other’s garments (to grasp or steal?). Compelled to explain the unwonted image and to unravel the plot, the beholder may be led to the role of interlocutor with the story that the surrounding men are plotting against the king, while the king attempts to foster the support of his one faithful retainer.43 It is impossible to fix the significance through reference to any particular “iconographic” source, yet these are surely not discrete and unrelated figures thrown together by accident. There lurks a story waiting to be told. V I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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Figure 11. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 13r, king and court. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

Particularly eloquent is the figure of the prophet standing with that reversed contrapposto pose peculiar to Gothic (fol. 28r, fig. 8). In medieval allegorical thought, prophets were the preachers of the church. Sure enough, our prophet (on the right) longs to preach: he holds a banderole or speech scroll, which, for the real sculptured figure, might contain his painted text, and his right hand is upraised in speech. Villard provides an image that will allow us to make a transition from the eloquence of the figurative image to that of architecture (fol. 16r). Below the enormous rose window of Lausanne Cathedral sits a cross-­legged figure whose beard, thinning hair, and voluminous drapery suggest advancing age. He raises his left hand toward the rose in the characteristic gesture of speech while with the right he grasps his ankle. While he is thus earthbound, his signifying gesture and the added words “This is the window of Lausanne Cathedral” reach up to the height of the rose window. The beholder may, if he likes, see a self-­portrait: Villard, the interlocutor, animating the work of architecture with his words. 44 The architecture and figurative images of the first generation of Gothic have often been “explained” in terms of the concept of “Antique Revival.”

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However, whereas in the world of figuration Gothic art could never transcend or trump the antique, in architecture it was otherwise. The prodigious skeleton of buttress uprights (culées) and flyers that Villard captured so impressively from Reims Cathedral (fig. 6) provided a rigid armature allowing vaults to appear to hover at unprecedented heights, and the interior forms of the cathedral, cloaked in a veil of multiple colonnettes, to become an architecture of illusion (fol. 31v, fig. 7).45 The colonnette with its little base and its capital alludes to the forms of antiquity, but those elements are then transformed. The magic of transformation comes with the seemingly endless extension of the column, stretched like chewing gum, so that an astonishing distance opens up between base and capital. The language of the texts insinuated around the edges, eloquent though it might be, cannot compete with such images. Much of the above commentary can also be applied to the beautiful image of the Laon tower, where an octagonal structural core is clad in an elegant cage of colonnettes projecting into diagonally placed aediculae, lending an undulating, rippling effect like the Muldenfalten drapery (fol. 10r, fig. 10).46 Generations of visitors and students of Villard’s book have puzzled over the oxen, which project from the upper story, looking out over the surrounding countryside.47 It is intriguing to find Villard describing them as “leaping” (sauter). The beasts have normally been “explained” in relation to the bulls bearing the sea of bronze in front of the Temple of Solomon (1 Kings 7:23–­ 26) or as a reference to the miraculous ox that, in the story told by Guibert de Nogent (d. 1124), appeared in order to provide dépannage for a stone cart stuck on an arduous ascent up a steep hill.48 I would propose that the principal role of the oxen was to elicit the wonder and astonished questions of the spectator: what on earth are such massive earthly creatures doing up there where the wind whistles between the fragile cage of shafts and the openings catch the passing clouds? Is this improbable combination of heavenly tower and stolid earthly creature a metaphor for the essential improbability and dangerousness of Gothic? And in this way the interlocutor can demonstrate his wisdom with an appropriately informed response—­whether alluding to Guibert de Nogent’s miracle, or to Cretan bulls and the myth of the prototypical architect, Daedalus, who constructed the labyrinth, den of the Minotaur.49 This is the forum for storytelling. And what of the hand that projects from the tower, holding a flowerlike object so lightly that it almost slips from the elegantly curved second finger and thumb, while the index finger extends in the eloquent sign of communication familiar to us from Villard’s figures?50 Is this is a building that speaks the divine Word?

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Animating the Beholder In the following paragraphs we will explore three strategies employed by Villard to engage the attention of the beholder—­though a kind of collusion of creativity, through laughter, and through a search for hidden meaning. Villard makes you look by fabricating his own experience of the thing, direct or indirect, true or false, providing an engaging image and encouraging you to think of making it yourself (even though in reality this might be quite impossible).51 Thus, “if you want to make a clock housing, here is one that I once saw” (fol. 6v).52 In this way he invokes what might be called the co-­creativity of his audience, directing attention not just to the finished product but also to the process by which the thing was made.53 However, the sometimes sketchy, sometimes improbable architecture embodied in the image—­impossible to make—­certainly calls into question the sincerity of the author(s). An extended “objective” formal description of a work of art can be the most dispiriting thing to read, as the joy of the author/interlocutor in looking and discovering is transmitted to the reader/audience as unbearable tedium.54 In Villard, the force of the image on the page, seeming to elbow the added text aside into the margins, brings delight to the eye and relief to the mind. In the Villard Enterprise we find a trick familiar to the teacher of art history: the interlocutor becomes enthusiastic about the object in front of the eyes and ears of the reader/audience. The audience is moved by the passion of the interlocutor.55 And any doubts that you might feel about Villard’s judgments are dispelled by his boast about how many places he has visited: the author assumes the lofty stance of a cognoscentus or connoisseur, which qualifies him for his role as interlocutor and entitles him to the respect of his audience. There is no doubt that the task of the interlocutor is lightened and his ability to communicate is enhanced if he can rivet the attention of members of the audience, making them laugh.56 Some of Villard’s animals look a lot like the “drolleries” that crowd into the pages of illuminated manuscripts in the thirteenth century; some may express popular stories, fables, or riddles—­particularly the crouching devil who grimaces up at a magpie who offers him an unidentified cross-­shaped object (fol. 1r). Amusement is produced by juxtapositions—­for example, the armed foot soldier who appears to be taken aback at the appearance of a fearsome snail (fol. 2r); the sublime, super-­sized swan with its elegant curves limned with smooth outlines juxtaposed to the clumsy furry bear (fol. 4r); the cat, licking her private parts,

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whose body, curved in a perfect circle, echoes the circle of the adjacent labyrinth (fol. 7v); the rabbit whose crouching posture mirrors that of the two dice players tracked by the savage boar (fol. 9ro); the two wrestlers whose struggle illuminates Villard’s own alleged debate with Pierre de Corbie in the design of the plan (opposite page) of the double-­ambulatory church (fols. 14v and 15r) that he and his colleague had designed inter se disputando; the juxtaposition of the enormous docile lion and the tiny ferocious porcupine (fol. 24v). Existing scholarship has sought to solve the puzzles of Villard’s imagery through a hunt for prototypes; in the case of pages with multiple images, scholars have tended to relate each figure to its “model” but have done little to explore entire combinations of figures. Thus we explain or “normalize” images like Pride and Humility (fol. 3v) or Ecclesia (fol. 4v) by juxtaposing them (problem solved!) with the sculptured virtues and vices of the Chartres north transept or the Ecclesia image of the Strasbourg south transept. But more striking than Villard’s dependence upon such sources is how he has transformed whatever prototypes he may have seen, forcing the beholder to puzzle over intended meaning.57 Villard’s three male nudes are among his most enigmatic images (fols. 11v; 22r). Hahnloser sought to establish a prototype for one of them (fol. 22r) in a little bronze statuette of Alexander.58 In the putative original a smoothly articulated body stands firmly upon the right leg while the left leg swings away, free of structural engagement, heel lifting from the ground. The upper body curves over the weight-­bearing leg; the curve is continued into the right arm, raised in acclaim. A swathe of crinkled fabric drapes over the right shoulder—­continuing behind the back, it wraps over the left forearm. Comparison with the Villard figure (which is reversed) suggests that our ymagier might have seen something like this. But what a transformation! Instead of the elegant contrapposto, we find the weight of the upper body placed equally on both legs, with splayed feet. The drapery and the raised arm are there, but the triumphant stance is transformed to an enigmatic gesture pointing to the head. The other male nude (fol. 11v, fig. 12) stands only in distant relationship to antiquity—­there is no contrapposto here.59 His drapery serves to conceal—­ but mostly to reveal, a body heavily modeled with an ink wash conveying a sculptural effect.60 The left hand gestures with upraised index finger, while the right clutches a vase with volute handles from which springs a triple-­sprouted plant. Our hero engages the viewer’s attention with a knowing stare, while his eloquent gesture clearly signals his desire to communi-

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Figure 12. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 11v, male nude with altar and icon. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

cate. In the background we see a framed iconlike image of an enthroned and heavily draped king. The crenellated crest of the icon with its conical architectural crown is draped with an elegant swag, articulated with the characteristic hooked folds. There are two worlds here: the semiclad figure, emphatically rendered to achieve the illusion of “reality,” appears to want to be in our world, communicating directly with us; the enthroned king, on the 34

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other hand, belongs to the world of the picture.61 Yet the two worlds are spatially and dynamically linked. Occupying the middle space of the picture, extending forward from the icon in illusionistic reversed perspective and almost touching the standing figure, is a monumental altarlike table; a drape has been discarded on its front edge. Our hero wants to direct our attention back toward the altar and the icon (is the vase an offering?), while the enthroned king projects out in front of his frame as if about to exit his picture space. Will he step out on to the altar, discard his drape, and become the real hero? If the king wants to pass into our world, our hero, conversely, wants to bring you into the world of the picture. Is this a pictorial allegory for the role of illusionistic images and the agency of the interlocutor? While we may puzzle over what the artist might have seen or what meaning he intended to convey, medieval beholders may have responded with astonishment to an image that was quite unlike anything they had ever seen; the shock of encounter might serve to jolt the little gray cells (in the spirit of Hercule Poirot) to unwonted activity as they attempt to unscramble the meaning. Such unwonted or “rogue” images play a critical role in mnemonic activity—­the experience of Villard’s little book would have been rendered unforgettable by the challenge to enter a picture and to decipher a puzzle.62 There can be little doubt of the artist’s intention to achieve the memorable through shock, teasing the brain of the user with the appearance of a secret half revealed and half concealed. There is a similar puzzle in the image (fol. 6r, fig. 13) labeled with the colophon “In such a manner was the tomb of a Saracen that I once saw.”63 Despite the best efforts of Hahnloser and others, nothing similar has ever been found: this is clearly a rendering of a new composition—­one where we recognize the now-­familiar theme of half-­revealing and half-­concealing.64 The page is framed by flanking uprights composed of square supports that turn into columns in their upper parts. At the point of transition from square support to column, a drapery swag provides an improbable throne for a half-­ clad regal-­looking figure with a scepter. This figure is flanked by two standing, semiclad males each holding a staff in one hand while with the other they together hold a foliate wreath over the head of the central seated figure. The image clearly represents a triumphal instatement or investment of some kind—­though the half-­clad, bareheaded principal figure is no king. In the lower register a projecting altar provides a footstool for the enthroned master. The altar is flanked by two standing clothed figures, pointing upward. These lower figures have each placed one foot on a pediment that encloses a polygonal altarlike projecting surface bearing a chalicelike container filled with rounded objects. There is spatial hierarchy in the composition: V I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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Figure 13. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 6r, “Tomb of the Saracen.” Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

the ­enthroned figure must be understood as belonging to the same plane as the flanking supports; the two half-­clad upper figures are set back from this plane, while the altar/footstool and the two lower figures project out in front. Since the artist could not possibly have seen an Islamic tomb that resembles this image, the claim made in the accompanying text (“this is the tomb of a Saracen that I have seen”) must be understood as sleight of hand. Is it possible, then, to tease meaning from this unusual and apparently original composition? There are certain very clear elements: a combination of human subjects and architectural framing mechanisms. The central theme is apotheosis, enthronement, or triumph, and there is a hierarchy that takes us from the liturgical (Eucharistic?) altar with chalice and loaves upward and backward, to the second table/altar flanked by fully clothed older men, to the central partially clad enthroned figure, to the two upper half-­naked youthful figures. The image is to be taken not literally as a “picture” but rather as a pictorial allegory. Roland Bechmann has offered a seductive commentary, suggesting that this allegorical composition, originating in the rites of the masonic lodge, is intended to express the hierarchical structure of master mason, older members of the lodge, and apprentices.65 Thus the two semiclad youthful figures (holding measuring staffs) represent apprentices who crown a colleague who has graduated to the rank of master, while the elders of the fraternity witness the event. The entire composition, framed inside a double square, is structured around a pentagram—­a form embodying the magic of the Golden Section and expressive of the secrets of the masons. The masons are, then, the children of Solomon, the “Saracens”—­their itinerant lives and secrets leave them outside the ordinary urban professional guilds (bakers, plasters, etc.) as a kind of “other” alternative society.

Controlling the Artifact Databasing: Categories and Names Faced with the problem of controlling this growing and unruly collection of images, someone, possibly the originating ymagier, felt obliged to attempt to impose order, to create, as it were, a search engine for the database. Thus the opening colophon promises three chapters: the first on the great craft of masonry, the second on carpentry devices, and the third on “portraiture, as the art of geometry demands and teaches.” In fact, of course, the haphazard way the images had been first entered made it quite impossible to rearrange them like images in a PowerPoint presentation to conform to the V I L L A R D D E H O N N E C O U RT

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retroactively-­imposed sequence. There are two further efforts to signal transitions in the passage through this chaotic image collection. The beginning of the chapter on “geometric portraiture” is announced both by Villard and, on the previous page, by “Master Two.”66 The four pages of geometric devices are also introduced with a colophon.67 Just as they sought to control his unruly image collection through the imposition of “chapters,” so Villard and his colleagues sought to represent ways that buildings could be controlled and made intelligible through the imposition of appropriate nomenclature. The descriptive texts include a surprisingly extended list of technical terms for the various parts of Gothic edifices, including elements generally considered to belong to the “essence” of the phenomenon: ribs, flying buttresses and tracery elements. We are thus provided the essential vocabulary of Gothic: acainte, arestes, ars boteres, ars buteret, charole, chavet, cretiau, crestes, doubliaus, entaulemens, esligement, fillole, forme, ierloge, loizons, montée, nef, nokeres, ogives, orbes arkes, penians, peignon, peignonciaus, pilier, pleins pans, plainpen, sorvol, suel, toraus, veriere, and verrere.68 By the seventeenth century the technical language of Gothic was known, if at all, only by architects.69 Antiquarians, as they sought language appropriate to describe Gothic architecture, had to own up to speechlessness, admitting that they simply did not have the words to describe what they were seeing. Here, in the age of Gothic, Villard attests to the currency of such language, even for forms that were still relatively novel in his own time. He is not reluctant to engage in level-­by-­level cataloging of what you can see, especially in his treatment of the housing for the clock, the tower of Laon, and the elevation of Reims—­like Gervase of Canterbury, he was an unabashed formalist. One finds no trace of figurative language (“it looks like . . .”; “it’s as if . . .”) to allow members of the audience to leap to the understanding of the look of the thing. Instead, “Villard” relied entirely upon the direct juxtaposition of words and images that are to be accepted as surrogates for the real thing.

The Means of Production The two great breakthroughs of Gothic architectural production are both made manifest in our little book. The first was, as we have seen, a structural envelope with extended lateral buttresses (culées) supporting flying buttresses: Villard shows us this revolutionary new structural system in his transverse section (somewhat misunderstood) of the Reims choir buttresses (fol. 32v, fig. 6).70 However, while his vocabulary includes ars bouteret, he has

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no name to assign to the great outer upright or culée and no descriptive response to the appearance of this most important Gothic structural device. Just as important as the new structural envelope was the development of a rationalized system of stone production that provided a smooth and reliable supply of building material. This permitted the rapid assembly of a complex building that embodied multiple identical units: piers, arches, ribs, vaults and windows.71 This system depended, above all, on a master mason’s ability to anticipate the forms of the building in detailed drawings that would be transformed into rigid templates made of wood or metal—­these templates would guide the chisel in the cutting of elements like window mullions, colonnettes, piers, ribs and the like.72 Thus Villard presents us (fol. 32r, fig. 14) an array of profiles from Reims Cathedral—­window jambs, mullions, tracery, formerets, ribs, and arches, together with indications (somewhat misunderstood) of the assembly marks that allow the builders to find the correct place for each stone.73 In front of this page one feels the fierce joy of a child given a plastic model kit together with an exploded image of the finished model and instructions on how to assemble it. The caption indicates that the profiles represent not the actual stones of the cathedral but surrogates: the templates (molles) that controlled those profiles.74 The actual business of building a Gothic church would begin when the mnemonic images that represented the prototypes envisaged by the builders were rendered in drawings on parchment and then into the working tools for stone production. Tracings derived from these drawings would then be rendered on a one-­to-­one scale on a drawing surface that might be laid out on plaster, on a stone surface in the crypt, in a chapel, or even on the roof terrace of the cathedral.75 Such drawings might then be transformed into rigid templates made of a metal sheet or a thin piece of wood. These templates could be applied to the stones as they were carved to lend the building absolute uniformity. The methods of Gothic stone production were not exactly “secrets,” but they demanded technical initiation, imparted during the years of apprenticeship.

Spatial Plotting Control of the land through surveying, vital for purposes of colonization, empire building, making war, defense, and building cities with a gridded street system and strategically located public buildings, had been brought to a high level of perfection by the Romans.76 The tradition of professional land surveyors or agrimensores survived in tracts of centuriated land (particularly

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Figure 14. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 32r, Reims Cathedral, sections of piers and templates. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

in southern France), in the collection of writings known as the Corpus Agrimensorum, and in Vitruvius’s Ten Books of Architecture.77 The task of the surveyor may be understood as working in two directions: the first is expansive, involving the projection of conceptualized systems of spatial control onto a given tract of land; the second is compressive, the ability to import vital data about the world and the cosmos “out there,” mimicking macroforms with microgeometry. In the broadest sense, the projection of geometric control and theorizing involves the application of squares and circles, and the importation of data is facilitated through triangulation. To impose a gridded system upon an extended tract of land demanded the application of simple optical surveying devices. The principal instrument used by the Romans was the groma (Greek gnomon), made up of an accurately assembled cross-­shaped piece with arms intersecting at ninety degrees, mounted with a bracket on a vertical staff (fig. 15).78 Plumb bobs (lead weights) were suspended from the four ends of the cross and the center point where the two arms intersect. The user, aligning his eye to the strings, could sight distant marker staffs and arrange them in such a way that their placing mimicked the right angle formed by the crosspieces; the corner of the plot was marked on the ground directly under the weight suspended from the center of the cross.79 With markers placed to signal the ninety-­ degree angle, cords could be stretched and the procedure repeated. This was a device, then, that permitted the exporting of the perfect geometric control of the small device to the expanses of the terrain vague out there.80 While Villard does not show us a groma, several of the images entered in the little book, probably by one of his immediate followers, reflect the process of plotting through the projection of a gridded system onto the ground. At the start of the construction of a great church, the land was controlled through with a great rectangular plot formed of tightly stretched cords. Villard shows us such a system applied to a “squared-­up” Cistercian church (fol. 14v).81 Internal spatial divisions (the bay system) would also be located by stretching cords to define square aisle bays and the main vessel with double-­ square bays. A drawing apparently reworked and labeled by Villard’s followers shows the plot to fix the proportions of a cloister (fol. 20r, fig. 16, third row from the top, center image). The relation between the inner and outer squares in the cloister plan has been established dynamically through a rotated square placed within the first square. We are shown how to fix the size of the smaller square in a key figure where the inner square is turned in such a way that its angles touch the midpoints of the sides of the first square (fig. 16, fourth row from the top, second from the left). The area of the second will

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Figure 15. Groma. Copyright 1999 Cambridge University Press; drawing by permission of Thomas Noble Howe.

be exactly one-­half the area of the first: the second square corresponds to the inner wall of the cloister walk.82 The rotated square (quadrature) provides one of the most important, hidden, form-­generating principles in Gothic. Quadrature is simultaneously a method of rigorous control and a means of lending the illusion of dynamic growth as rotated squares are projected upward in the design of buttresses or pinnacles in late Gothic.83 The striking of a great circle on the ground by sweeping a cord around a central stake driven into the ground (as in the hemicyles of Villard’s plans of Cambrai, Vaucelles, Meaux, and the church designed with Pierre de Corbie) can also be understood as the exportation of perfect geometric form from idea to small-­scale image (compression), then to full-­sized edifice (expansion; fig. 17). Plotting maps of earthly terrain or of the cosmos, understood as importing knowledge, was possible through triangulation. Even the business of orienting the city plan, as described by Vitruvius, depended upon the triangle formed by the shadow cast by the upright finger of a sundial, which facilitated the plotting of the path of the sun.84 The age of the first creation of Gothic saw early use of the astrolabe in the West.85 Invented by the Greeks but perfected by Islamic scholars and technicians, the astrolabe combined

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Figure 16. Villard de Honnecourt's followers, fol. 20r, geometric constructional devices. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

Figure 17. Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 14v, choir designed with Pierre de Corbie, inter se disputando. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093.

conceptual charts (of time and space) with a moving pointer that permitted astrological observations, finding one’s latitude and longitude through triangulation. Villard shows us nothing as complicated as an astrolabe but offers a highly reductive sketch to reveal the potential of triangulation in measuring the height of a feature (a tower, for example) that could not be reached directly: “In this way you take the height of a tower” (fol. 20v).86 And one of the masters who later added geometrical images shows us how to apply triangulation to the task of measuring the width of a river (fol. 20r). The triangle was thus the master figure in the reconciliation of the megadata of the real world with the mental architecture and theoretical comprehension of the beholder. The inserted texts of the Villard Enterprise stress how important the understanding of geometry is to the understanding of portraiture—­in other words, the reconciliation between conceptualized nanogeometric devices (gridded squares, circles, triangles, pentagrams, etc.) and natural forms (humans, animals, edifices, plants). This exercise embodies both the projection of ideal form and the development of a system to capture and import the fleeting accidental figures of life.

Conclusion: Deceit and Desire in the Villard Enterprise On the one occasion that he explains his intentions, “Villard” tells us that he drew the Reims window because he liked it best. Others obviously also liked Villard’s drawings, and so what had begun as a private collection of favorite images became a corporate enterprise that purported to have a pedagogical mission.87 We have seen that Villard de Honnecourt and his colleagues decided not to let the work of art “speak for itself,” and thus they allow us to “listen to” the words of some of the interlocutors of the great age of Gothic. The written texts added around the images play a critical role in creating the tension between the two-­dimensional image—­the simulacrum on the page—­and the three-­dimensional reality that it purports to represent. Villard half-­reveals and half-­conceals, allowing us to sense the magic of the elusive geometric rationale that lies behind “accidental” shape. His opening colophon refers to his images as engiens—­a word that could mean not only machines or devices but also ruses or tricks.88 In the Villard Enterprise we have encountered multiple layers of deception as identities are appropriated, missions invented, “reality” simulated, and apocryphal meanings created through the imposi-

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tion of the written word. And yet through these multiple layers of (mis)representation, we get a precious glimpse of the force of Gothic, including both the human field of production and the technology that allowed medieval artisans to achieve the magic that lends such powerful affect to the cathedral, allowing it to appear to speak to the visitor.89

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2

() Gervase of Canterbury Cronicus and Logistics Man

The Treatise on the on the Fire and Reconstruction of Canterbury Cathedral (named by William Stubbs, Tractatus de combustione et reparatione Cantuariensis Ecclesiae) by Gervase of Canterbury provides the fullest narrative of the processes involved in the construction of a Gothic cathedral available anywhere in the archives of the Middle Ages.1 Gervase (ca. 1141–­ca. 1210), probably of Kentish origin, entered the monastic community of the priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, in the mid-­twelfth century, making his vows on February 16, 1163, to Archbishop Thomas Becket (1162–­70). Christ Church was both a cathedral—­seat of an archbishop, primate of England—­and a Benedictine monastery, led by a prior (see figs. 18–­20).2 Gervase participated in a community that was simultaneously insular and cosmopolitan—­ his brothers were mostly from Kent, yet this was the principal church in England, closely linked with Paris and Rome, and often a staging point for royal and ecclesiastical departures to the Continent or arrivals in England.3 Prior Ernulf (1096–­107), formed in the Norman monastery of Bec, a fellow student of Ivo of Chartres, had assembled a rich library, including copies of the works of Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and Bede, as well as more modern writers: Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of S-­Victor.4 Under the primacy of Archbishop Theobald (1139–­61) and Thomas Becket (1162–­70), Canterbury became a gathering place for eruditi and artists from a wide range of areas, especially northern France.5 47

Parallels may be drawn between the legendary status of the monastery of S-­Denis, shrine of the apostles of Gaul, and the church at Canterbury, established by Augustine (who became St. Augustine of Canterbury), sent by Gregory the Great to convert the English (597). At Canterbury the construction of the new chevet came very soon after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Resonating with memories and images of the early Christian roots of the church, the martyrdom contributed enormously to the wealth and prestige of the monastery, but in the immediate aftermath the path forward was far from clear.6 The builders of both twelfth-­century churches, S-­Denis and Canterbury, sought architectural means to respond to and to project monastic reform as well as the cult of their resident saints, and the two choirs, essentially shrine churches, had much in common. Gervase participated in many of the dramatic events prior to the martyrdom of the archbishop on December 29, 1170, but was probably not present at that event, although he attended the burial the following day.7 In the 1180s our witness began his work of recording events that affected the life of the priory.8 He spent the late 1180s into the 1190s engaged in his writing enterprise.9 In or before 1193 he attended the new archbishop, Hubert Walter, as sacristan. All students of Gervase have agreed that his account of the reconstruction of the choir of Canterbury Cathedral, the Tractatus, was written well after the construction of the Gothic choir was substantially complete; suggestions have ranged from soon after 1185 (Stubbs) to circa 1199 (Cragoe).10 Our chronicler must have died in the first decade of the thirteenth century. Whereas the identity and occupation of our first witness, Villard de Honnecourt, remain something of a mystery—­I have dubbed him ymagier and interlocutor—­three aspects of Gervase’s identity appear to be clear: he was a choir monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, where he spent most of his life; he held, at least for a while (1193–­ca. 1197), the important post of sacristan; and he was a history writer—­he would have thought of himself as a cronicus. What Villard de Honnecourt and Gervase have most in common is their pursuit of the illusion of reality (the “reality effect”) in their graphic/ literary production, whether in images or in storytelling.11 Just as Villard’s images pop off the page and grab our attention, so Gervase, almost half a century earlier, allows the reader to experience the horrendous fire at Canterbury, providing us a glimpse of the new level of reality in English twelfth-­ century historical writing.12 This was a period when writers reached higher levels of precision in their ability to limn verbal portraits of people, artifacts, and events. Antonia Gransden associates the phenomenon with an enhanced sense of the challenge presented by contemporary insecurity and change—­ 48

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particularly the transformation of the Anglo-­Saxon church at the hands of the Normans. The anarchy of the reign of King Stephen (1135–­54) had led English churchmen to fear for their possessions and privileges.13 A particular concern was the continuity of the precious relics that lent sanctity to the churches and ensured the continuing presence of the saints. Writings like those of Gervase of Canterbury were intended partly to provide a reassuring record of the continuity of possession of those shrines and relics within the sacred topography of the great church.14 Most recently, however, Carol Cragoe has attempted to find a more specific context, intention, and audience for Gervase’s Tractatus, distinguishing between this work and Gervase’s larger history-­writing project and arguing that the treatise was prepared as late as 1199, not as part of an “objective” chronicling the past but rather in a politically charged atmosphere. In May 1199 Pope Innocent III asked the community to prepare a report on the condition of the monastery in preparation for papal arbitration over the possible transfer of the archiepiscopal seat to a new collegiate church at Hackington, outside Canterbury, or to Lambeth, near London.15 Cragoe’s work has reinforced questions that had already been asked about the reliability of this text as an “objective” historical account and architectural description. By positing a gap of a quarter-­century between the act of writing and the events described, she has also raised the question of how the chronicler was able to document the complex sequence of construction at a point so far removed from the events—­a question to which she provides no answer.16 The spectacular disaster that initiated the memorable sequence of events and stimulated equally memorable written pages on the part of our chronicler took place on September 5, 1174. A fire, having broken out in surrounding cottages, spread to the roof of the cathedral choir.17 The opening passage of Gervase’s story has the appearance of astonishing freshness, reading like the breathless eyewitness report of someone who has just witnessed the event, recording the fire’s outbreak in cottages adjacent to the cathedral close; witnesses’ supposition that the flames had been extinguished; the sense of relief as people returned to their beds; the hidden presence of sparks smoldering in the rafters under the lead roof; the horror, some little time later, when it was seen that the roof of the cathedral itself had been ignited by flying sparks—­“Vae, vae, ecclesia ardet” (See! See! The church is on fire!).18 The great church damaged by the fire in 1174 was a wooden-­roofed basilica constructed first under Archbishop Lanfranc (1070–­89) and then extended to the east under Priors Ernulf (ca. 1096–­107) and Conrad (1108/9–­26) with a magnificent new chevet (also wooden roofed) set on an elevated platform for the monk’s choir, surrounded by an ambulatory flanked by tower-­ G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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chapels on each side, and a rectangular axial chapel dedicated to the Trinity. Just as Abbot Suger of S-­Denis drew upon an earlier architectural description in the Gesta Dagoberti, so Gervase draws upon Eadmer’s description of the older building.19 In Gervase’s vivid story we see the wooden-­roofed choir with its sumptuous decoration paradoxically and tragically providing the raw material to fuel its own fiery destruction. Then comes the lively “eyewitness” account of the hiring of a master mason capable of undertaking the work of repair and rebuilding. The situation, as represented by Gervase, resembled a modern architectural competition with a procession of candidates—­French as well as English. The finalist, William of Sens, was hired, Gervase claimed, on the basis of his qualifications. He was said to excel in all the ancillary skills necessary to facilitate architectural production: he knew where to procure stone (from Caen in Normandy), how to load it, how to create the templates by which countless stones could be cut to precise specifications. Such a master mason would also need to possess the verbal skills necessary to represent the vision of the as-­yet-­unbuilt cathedral to the monks, who were in a high state of distress over the incomprehensible loss of their beloved choir. This representation would involve sharing the vision of how the final product would look and function (presumably with references to prototypes known by the builders and users, possibly with the aid of small-­scale images), as well as reassurances that the candidate was capable of controlling the logistics of construction. William at first concealed from the monks how radical a solution was really necessary. But as in so many modern architectural competitions the selection of the finalist was, according to our apocryphal storytellers (see below), stacked. What do we learn from Gervase’s account?

Storytelling As the chronicler of the monastic community of Christ Church, Gervase had certainly reflected upon the theoretical underpinnings of his métier.20 In the prologue of his Cronica, Gervase defines the critical difference between a chronicler and a historian: “The manner of discourse differs, since a historian proceeds with elegantly with a broad purview; a chronicler proceeds with simple steps, briefly.”21 The chronicler’s task is to compute the years and months after the incarnation of Christ and to briefly record the acts of kings, principal events. and portents and miracles. In his Tractatus Gervase fulfills and goes beyond his purview as a chroni-

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cler, eloquently weaving together space and time. His opening scenario is almost cinematographic as he describes the panic caused by the awful sight of the fire. While his language is generally direct and pragmatic, here he makes most effective use of allegory: “Thus, like as the children of Israel by the hidden, but just judgment of God, were ejected from the land of promise, yea, even from a paradise of delight, that it might be like people, like priest, and that the stones of the sanctuary might be poured out at the corners of the streets; so the brethren remained in grief and sorrow for five years in the nave of the church, separated from the people only by a low wall.”22 Gervase twice allows himself to reflect on the interplay between “accidental” outcomes and divine providence. Thus, in the aftermath of the fire “the people were astonished that the Almighty should suffer such things, and maddened with excess of grief and perplexity, they tore their hair and beat the walls and pavement of the church with their heads and their hands, blaspheming the Lord and his saints, the patrons of the church; and many, both of laity and monks, would rather have laid down their lives than that the church should have so miserably perished.”23 Similarly, when Master William of Sens tumbles from the scaffold, Gervase permits himself a sly question—­why was the vengeance of God (or was it the spite of the devil?) directed against only the master mason?24 Although elegant language was by no means the principal tool of the chronicler, Gervase is capable of alliterative wordplays worthy of Bernard of Clairvaux.25 The artifice that lies behind the dynamic storytelling of the early construction sequence in the Tractatus owes much to that greatest story of Creation—­the opening of the book of Genesis. Thus Gervase concludes his account of each year’s activities with the words “In istis primus annus completus est. . . . In istis annus secundus completus est. . . . In istis igitur annus tertius completus est . . .” In this sonorous way the narrative rolls forward with the inevitability of the Genesis story.26 Just as God reviewed the result of each day’s work and found it was good, so the monks were entirely satisfied with the results of the labors of William of Sens: “All which things appeared to us and to all those who saw them, incomparable and most worthy of praise. And at so glorious a beginning we rejoiced and conceived good hopes of the end, and provided for the acceleration of the work with diligence and spirit.”27 The ceremonial entry into the choir took place in the sixth year of work, matching the six days of Creation. In real life, of course, the task of building the great church was fraught with every kind of problem and disagreement—­at each stage multiple options were available to the builders. Yet the authority of the completed building will ultimately over-

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whelm the memories of uncertainty and struggle.28 Gervase’s creation narrative has the same power to convince the reader that all was foreseen in the mind of the builders. We remember the Tractatus principally for the succinct chronicle of years and actions involved in the reconstruction of the Canterbury choir—­ which I will summarize below:29

1. The breathtaking account of the fire that destroyed the Romanesque choir built circa 1096–­ca. 1110.



2. The horrified response of the monks, who install a temporary altar in the nave. They organize an “architectural competition” in which Master William of Sens emerges as the finalist. William prepares to build.



3. Description and liturgical topography of the older churches on the site, based partly on an earlier description by Eadmer: the Anglo-­Saxon cathedral (which burned in 1067); Archbishop Lanfranc’s church (ca. 1070–­77); and the “glorious” choir of Conrad (ca. 1096–­110), now badly damaged by fire.



4. Account of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom, ending with a description of Trinity Chapel at the eastern end. Becket’s virtues and miracles.30



5. The story of the construction work completed by William of Sens and William the Englishman, 1175–­80. The choir is completed down to the crossing, but after four years of work William of Sens tumbles from the scaffolding and is replaced by a second master, William the Englishman, who builds beyond the outer wall of the old cathedral to found Trinity Chapel, intended for the shrine of St. Thomas, and the eastern chapel/ tower known as Becket’s Corona.



6. The entry into the new choir, 1180.



7. The demolition of the old Trinity Chapel and construction of new outer walls, including the beginning of the eastern tower (Becket’s Corona).



8. An analysis of the characteristics of old and new choirs.



9. The near-­completion of the eastern tower (Becket’s Corona) and (in the tenth year) the completion of the upper parts of the east end of the choir. The story ends with the disastrous election in 1184 of Baldwin of Worcester as archbishop.

Gervase has a keen sense of the need to reconcile descriptive material with narrative, weaving together a blow-­by-­blow account of the work with descriptive passages.31 The most satisfying “continuity passage” comes between the analysis of the old choir of Conrad and the year-­by-­year account of the start of new work. Here the writer achieves a subtle conflation of build52

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ing and storytelling, of space and time, ending the description of the old choir in the space of the north transept where Archbishop Thomas Becket had also met his end: “And now the description, as concise as I could make it, of the church which we are going to pull down, has brought us to the tomb of the martyr, which was at the end of the church; let therefore the church and the description come to an end together; for although this description has already extended itself to a greater length than was proposed, yet many things have been carefully omitted for the sake of brevity. Who could write of all the turnings, and windings and appendages of such and so great a church as this was? Leaving out, therefore, all that is not absolutely necessary, let us boldly prepare for the destruction of this old work and the marvelous building of the new, and let us see what our master William has been doing in the meanwhile.”32 I suggested earlier that Gervase, like Villard de Honnecourt, was preoccupied with the representation of “reality.” Like Villard, Gervase had certain strategies at his disposal.

Mnemonics: Remembering the Old The deep affection that Gervase and his fellow monks felt for the material envelope of the church is everywhere apparent (“many, both of laity and monks, would rather have laid down their lives than that the church should have so miserably perished”). Let us review two of the methods employed by the chronicler to imprint upon readers’ minds the image of this longed-­for, now lost, object of desire. First, the old church is remembered as sacred topography, a sort of pilgrimage where passage is marked by tombs, shrines, relics, and altars. And second, Gervase provides us with a breathtaking means of internalizing the object of desire: compressing it; turning it, and holding it in the mind.

Sacred Topography33 Very important in Gervase’s image of the church is his mapping of the tombs, altars, relics, and ornaments in the old church and his assurance of the continuity of the precious shrines and relics that were the life of the church.34 Thus a narrative is provided of the fate of such shrines in the fire; the immediate efforts that were made to save the pallia and curtains as well as the relics, and the provisional arrangements made for the two patron saints, Dunstan and Elfege, in the “wilderness” of the nave of the church at the altar of the Holy Cross. G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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The old church (the eleventh-­century nave of Archbishop Lanfranc with the early-­twelfth-­century extension of the choir under Priors Ernulf and Conrad) is remembered as a sacred topography of altars and tombs. The crescendo was reached in the chevet, where the principal altar was flanked by the altars of St. Dunstan and St. Elfege, each with his holy body. The archbishop’s throne was elevated behind the principal altar. Above the altar was a great gold-­covered beam carrying an image of Christ (maiestas domini) in the center, flanked by Dunstan and Elfege with seven gold and silver chests containing relics of various saints. On Easter Sunday, 1180, Archbishop Richard led the procession into the new choir bearing the Eucharistic pyx which had hung over the great altar: “Thus our Lord went before us into Galilee, that is, in our transmigration to the new church.”35 Whereas at S-­Denis it is to be presumed that the liturgical life of the monks was relatively undisturbed by the construction of the new chevet, which went up outside the old apse, probably demolished only at the last moment, at Canterbury it was necessary to close the half-­completed chevet with a provisional wooden wall to the east. One can imagine the joy of the brothers as the completion of the work allowed the wall to be removed and (in Abbot Suger’s words) the bright to be brightly conjoined with the bright.

Compression What distinguishes Gervase from Abbot Suger is his skillful verbal representation of the forms and spaces of the building itself. The abbot of S-­Denis gave only fleeting glimpses of the physical appearance of the edifice; the monk of Canterbury, on the other hand, despite insisting that you really have to see it for yourself, provided the most astonishingly complete verbal picture of a building that we have from the period—­a “Homeric means of genetic exposition to lend immediacy and vividness to his account.”36 Making a systematic written description of a work of architecture can hardly be considered a “normal” undertaking. The actual physical encounter with the great church is of necessity negotiated only bit by bit, as the visitor moves around and through its spaces. To internalize such a large and complex structure, committing it to memory may be understood as mnemonic compression—­the folding of a large and complex building into sequences, images, and words, which can then manipulated in the mind and re-­presented to others.37 In the actual physical business of construction, such compression is followed by expansion, in which mnemonic images are unfolded and laid out as a plot on the ground. How does one compress a great church into words? The answer, readily 54

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available from Gervase, is just as useful today as it was then—­you work from the crossing tower outward.38 “The tower, raised upon great pillars, is placed in the midst of the church, like the centre in the middle of a circle. It had on its apex [pinna] a gilt cherub.”39 The rotational force of the central tower was emphasized by the hanging gold circular chandelier (corona) in medio hujus ecclesiae.40 You then work in a chronological and physical sense, starting with the nave (aula), borne on eight pillars, terminated to the west with twin towers, divided from the crossing by a screen (pulpitum) and an elevated beam carrying a cross with images of Mary and John the Evangelist. From the central tower was generated a cruciform space (Gervase calls it simply a “cross”) formed by the intersection of transept arms with the body of the basilica.41 Each transept arm had a free-­standing pier supporting a vaulted upper chapel at the level of the main arcade. The south arm was occupied by the organ and chapels of St. Michael (ground floor) and All Saints (upstairs). In the north transept St. Benedict was downstairs, accompanied by many tombs, and St. Blasius upstairs. Thomas Becket met his death in the north transept opposite the cloister door. We then turn to the choir rebuilt under Priors Ernulf and Conrad.42 Gervase provides a catalog of the architectural elements that form the plan (supports, arcade of the straight bays, aisles, the turning portion of the hemicycle) as well as the elements of the elevation with its “triforium” and painted ceiling. He describes the position of the archbishop’s throne—­the venerable throne of St. Augustine, the apostle of the English, placed high in the eastern hemicycle; the eight steps down from the throne to the main altar, the three steps down from altar to presbytery, and three more from presbytery to choir. Is the building described as it might be experienced? Not quite, since Gervase tends to collapse together inside and outside; upstairs and downstairs. However, he takes us around the outer northern walls of the old choir, visiting the tower-­chapel of St. Andrew, the ambulatory with its axial chapel, and the southern tower/chapel of Anselm. Millard Fillmore Hearn has suggested that the description of the choir tends to run “as an orderly viewing sequence” from west to east; from the lower levels of the elevation (piers and main arcade arches) to the upper (triforia and high vaults).43 The reader can walk through the building—­the modern student will turn to the topographic plan in Robert Willis’s book and puzzle over the chronological indications (fig. 18).44 Similarly, Gervase conjures up with his pen an unforgettable image of the liturgical setup with the altar, throne, relic boxes, and images illuminated by the brilliant circuit of the gilded corona.45 One can imagine our choir monk during the long hours of the Divine Office, lovingly and systematically scanning the building with his eyes and committing its details G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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Figure 18. Topo‑ graphic plan of Canterbury Cathedral from R. Willis, The Archi‑ tectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 136, plates 5–­6.

to memory. Reaching into that memory to animate the building, he creates cinematographic traveling sequences and a total aerial three-­dimensional simulation of the building—­inside and out—­in solemn rotational movement around the fulcrum of the great central tower that marks the heart of the liturgical choir, projecting, as it were, the monks’ redemptive offices into the wider world beyond. An extraordinary visual parallel to Gervase’s verbal description of Canterbury Cathedral can be found in the rendering of the monastic precinct and great church in the Eadwine Psalter (fig. 19). This was a sumptuous illustrated liturgical book created in the Canterbury scriptorium—­recent scholarship dates the work to the late 1150s, soon before Gervase took his vows at Canterbury.46 In older scholarship the plan had been understood in purely functional terms as a plan of the complex system of water conduits installed in the monastic precinct; more recently, however, Peter Fergusson has invited us to view the drawing as a graphic rendering of the ideal monastic life: l’idéogramme monastère, in the words of Pierre Lavedan.47 In the drawing we see the length of the basilica broken at its halfway point by the great transept—­but there is no sense here of the cruciform space described by Gervase. Just as in the famous plan of S-­Gall, we see the layout of the key buildings essential for the monastic life: dormitory, chapter house, refectory, cellar range, service buildings. The diagonal of the cloister square doubled gives the length of the nave and choir. It had actually been suggested that this “total plan” of monastic life was drafted by Gervase himself; the early dating proposed by recent scholarship has rendered this unlikely. But certainly the two images, graphic and rhetorical, testify to the compression necessary to grasp the totality of an architectural complex that expressed a system of belief and a way of life.

The Means of Production: Controlling the New Gervase appears to take pleasure in the control and rehearsal of numbers and technical vocabulary. Just as he had remembered the choir of Conrad in terms of numbers—­supports; windows and so on—­he appears to demonstrate effortless control of exactly how many and which units (supports, walls, arches, and vaults) are built year by year. Gervase described the choir as the master mason, William of Sens, had chosen to build it, working generally outward from the crossing tower.48 Having spent the first year in preparation, in the second year Master William erected four pillars, two on each side, followed immediately afterward by one more on each side, forming the first three bays of the choir. Transverse arches and vaults were then G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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Figure 19.  The Eadwine Psalter, Trinity College, Cam‑ bridge, MS R. 17 fols. 284v–­ 285r. The monastic precinct at Canterbury. Photograph: Peter Fergus‑ son. in Canter‑ bury Cathedral in the Age of Becket. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

installed—­Gervase describes spatial units crowned by stone canopies (ciboria).49 The keystone (clavis) takes on a synecdochal role in relation to the entire unit: “I put clavis for the whole ciborium because the clavis placed in the middle locks up and binds together the parts which converge on it from every side.”50 Art historians, preoccupied with the structural and aesthetic role of rib vaults, have generally neglected their ability to represent something: for Gervase this is the expression of unity over multiplicity.51 We then follow the sequence of construction into the following (third) year, when the western crossing piers with their decorative marble shafts were founded, the western bays of the upper choir built, and three high vaults installed—­all in a triumphal spirit: “And at so glorious a beginning we rejoiced and conceived good hopes of the end, and provided for the acceleration of the work with diligence and spirit.”52 At this point the tone of the narrative changes, becoming much more terse. Whereas in the early years work rolled on with an air of inevitability, we now have two major setbacks preceded by an ominous eclipse of the sun. The amazing amount of work done in the fourth year (1178) is summarized very briefly: Master William of Sens laid out the piers, arcade, and aisle vaults and built the upper wall of the presbytery. He was engaged in the preparation of the machines for the turning of the great crossing vault when the scaffolding collapsed under his feet, causing him to fall fifty feet to the pavement. During the brief interregnum that followed, William of Sens “gave charge of the work to a certain ingenious and industrious monk, who was the overseer of the masons—­an appointment whence much envy and malice arose, because it made this young man appear more skilful than richer and more powerful ones.”53 I have already cited a passage where Gervase referred to himself in the third person, and it is quite possible that the writer was himself this young monk and that he had held the position of watching over the daily progress of the work and (presumably) the payroll.54 We should distinguish between the roles of the overseer of the workers and of the sacrist who had overall charge of the fabric—­the latter was an office that normally went to a senior member of the community. Although Gervase was to hold this office some fifteen years later (1193), he was probably too young in 1178—­though he may have already been attached to that office as site manager or clerk of the works. Despite the incapacity of the master mason, work proceeded on the crossing vault and vaults on either side under the immediate supervision of the overseer of the masons. William of Sens’s serious injuries then forced him to retire to France, and he was replaced by William the Englishman—­ about whom we are told very little other than that he was small of body and G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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“in workmanship of many kinds acute and honest.”55 The Englishman completed the transept arms and the vault over the high altar before going on to lay out the foundations for the eastward extension that would form Trinity Chapel, housing the shrine of St. Thomas. At this point it may assumed that vigorous conversations must have been going on about the exact form of this extension—­whether to entirely demolish the old Trinity Chapel and how best to extend the crypt and coordinate heights and floor levels. In addition to this, the decision to leave the old chapels of St. Andrew and St. Anselm in place constricted the width of any extension to the east—­would the resultant jog in the line of the arcade and upper wall be visually offensive? Of all this Gervase says very little.56 He does, however, provide a glimpse of an extraordinary episode that jeopardized relations between the prior and the archbishop—­the second setback alluded to above. In dead of night Prior Alan, accompanied by nine trusted monks, locked the doors of the church and removed from their provisional resting place the bodies of the two principal saints, Dunstan and Elfege, rewrapped them, placed them in wood-­and-­lead chests, and reinstalled them in their final resting place in the new presbytery.57 Such a translation of relics was generally an occasion for sumptuous liturgical display and processions, as we will see shortly when we come to S-­Denis. Yet at Canterbury Gervase’s low-­key language masks the outrageousness of the action, which excluded the archbishop and community at large from this most important event. Indeed, we hear almost nothing about Archbishop Richard throughout the construction sequence—­other than that he intervened to prevent the punishment of Prior Alan and his coconspirators. In Gervase’s brief account, the triumphal entry into the choir took place on Easter Day 1180, led by Archbishop Richard. I do not have space here to summarize Gervase’s account of the operations of the remaining years of construction and the completion of the eastern termination of the chevet—­Trinity Chapel with its aisles and ambulatory and the unusual towered Corona. Suffice it to say that his prose is concise and without the tone of triumphalism that dominated in the early years. In the ninth year funds ran out and construction stopped, and the story ends with the building not quite complete and the appointment of the hated Baldwin of Worcester as archbishop. Baldwin’s tenure was marked by intense struggles with the monastic community. Despite the sketchiness of the account of the last years, this is an extraordinary feat of memory on the part of the storyteller—­how did he do this more than twenty years after the fact? Many of us have had the experience of watching a great new building go up; once it is finished, the authority of 60

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the completed structure tends to quickly erase the memory of the bit-­by-­bit way in which that edifice became itself. How can we explain such precision in Gervase? Did he depend on some kind of artificial memory to allow such complete recall? Or was it all deception? Lying behind the phenomenon that we call “Gothic” we may find various kinds of artificial memory. One such kind of memory is the ability to hold a complex building in the mind and to represent its forms and spaces in words. We have seen that Gervase could envisage and represent the complex cross-­ shaped space as an entirety and define the essential building block as the vaulted bay with its ciborium. Another kind of artificial memory was provided through the development of an administrative-­logistical machine able to keep track of the cash flow, tallying receipts and expenses for purchases of materials and the salaries of masons and carpenters. I am, of course, referring to the introduction of a system of accounting—­and, fortunately, there is ample evidence at Canterbury to show that such systems were being put in place in the mid-­twelfth century. Prior Wibert (d. 1167) brought critical changes to the monastic administration of the priory—­his work has been compared with that of Abbot Suger at S-­Denis.58 A centralized financial system was introduced, and revenues were divided between the three principal officers or obedientaries: the cellarer, the chamberlain, and the sacrist.59 The sacrist “had charge of the furniture and fabric of the church.”60 Wibert was also responsible for consolidating problematic areas of the fabric of the chevet (the flanking apse-­towers) and presiding over a period of lavish artistic and architectural production, including the famous waterworks providing water from a spring one thousand yards away at Horsefold.61 He also built the treasury to serve the needs of the sacristan and the treasurer. From the end of the twelfth century we have a series of treasurers’ accounts that provide vital information about the economic life of the community.62 The first treasurer’s account is for 1198—­this has been considered the earliest obedientary roll in England.63 Yet the maturity of the form of the earliest accounts suggests that they reflect practices that were well established in the Canterbury community. It would be the task of the sacristan periodically (normally each year) to produce a record of the days worked by the masons, carpenters, and other artisans; to perform the same task with purchases of stone, timber, and other building materials; and to reconcile the expenses of the fabric with the receipts.64 In order to do this he would need daily tallies of the men at work, and at the end of the year these records would be consolidated into a single account. Such tally keeping would presumably fall to the site overseer—­and we have seen that this may have been Gervase himself. The writer of the Tractatus probably had access to such records.65 G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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The Canterbury material thus opens a most important avenue for the understanding of the story of Gothic. Gothic buildings are not just the result of liturgical demands, devotional practices, or creative imagination; they are not just the result of technological innovations (the rib vault, the flying buttress, etc.), of standardized stone production or structural genius—­they are, above all, the result of efficient financial management that is most fully expressed in the building account. These regularized accounting procedures reflect the same mentality that lies behind standardized building parts (the templates for standardized cutting of stones) and building types. The castles of Philip Augustus were “stamped out” following a single easily reproduced type (the great circular donjon) and employing a simple protocol for fiscal management.66 It is within this context that we should begin to consider the look-­alike quality of Gothic buildings. Jochen Schröder has offered an extended analysis of the technical vocabulary of Gervase—­including not only well-­established words like murus, fenestra, columna, pilarius, and fornix but also words to match the new forms of Gothic.67 Thus the keystone of the rib vault is the clavis and the vault itself is ciborium.68 The word triforium appears to describe the middle level of the elevation—­which in the Canterbury choir actually begins as a gallery and becomes a triforium (understood in the modern sense) only as work progressed.69 Pilarius is a neologism that transforms the classical Latin pila. We also hear of the means of construction: formwork, scaffolding, and lifting gear (machina and tornamentum). The distinction between the stone and the tufa employed in the ribbed vaults implies that Gervase recognized the difference between architectural elements that were being supported and the structural elements of support. Arches and vaults in Gervase are not simply “installed”—­they are turned.70 The verb volvo, to turn, retains the idea of the design of the formwork that imposed its shape upon the arch and vault—­ that shape was created by striking arcs of circles with a pair of compasses. This operation brings the idea of compression and expansion, since the arch would be first designed on a small scale, and then it might be laid out on a one-­to-­one scale on a tracing surface—­perhaps a plaster floor.

Old and New Reconciled The Tractatus offers the reader a story of Paradise lost and regained. The allegory of the expulsion from Paradise (the loss of the glorious choir of Conrad) is countered by Gervase’s meticulous language of esteem for the forms of the new choir, the work of Masters William of Sens and William the Englishman. The most extraordinary part of Gervase’s account is the juxtaposition of the 62

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visual characteristics of the old choir and the new.71 Old and new pillars have the same form and thickness, but the new were elongated by twelve feet; there the capitals were plain, here they are exquisite in sculpture. There the ambulatory had twenty-­two pillars, here, twenty-­eight. There everything was plain or carved with an ax, here there is appropriate (finely chiseled) sculpture. There, no marble; here there are innumerable marble columns. There the vaults were plain (groin vaults), here they have arches (ribs) and keystones.72 There was a ceiling of wood decorated with excellent painting, here is a vault beautifully constructed of stone and light tufa. The organizational structure of Gervase’s rhetoric is based here upon his alternation of ibi (there, the old, what we can no longer see) and hic (what we can see before our eyes). As we saw with Villard’s repeated use of the word voici, there are powerful echoes of oral performance here as the interlocutor tells the audience what they can see and what they cannot see, at the same time insisting that you really have to see it for yourself: “all of which may be more clearly and pleasantly seen by the eyes than taught in writing.”73 The juxtaposition of old and new was certainly a trope that might be learned from Roman authors, but the notion of “decline” might bring negative connotations to the “new”; Gervase, on the other hand, rejoices in the glorious new, made possible through the technology of what we call Gothic.74 The potential of the old decorated wooden ceiling to project meaning though its painted programs is not as desirable at the new rib vault appropriately constructed with stone and lightweight tufa.75 Similarly, Gervase rejoices in the openness of the crossing space, contrasting it with the old transept arms, which were subdivided by an arcade. Not only does the dialectical structure adopted by Gervase in this part of the Tractatus play to the advantage of the modern, but it is in itself inherently modern, anticipating the practice of art historians to juxtapose two images, demonstrating what a thing is by showing what it is not: what we call “Gothic,” as opposed to “Romanesque.”76 Gervase did not have any such language—­yet he certainly did display an acute interest in the phenomenon of newness and oldness as well as a remarkable knowledge of technical words that went well beyond the vocabulary of a layperson. He was clearly not just any choir monk.

Apocryphal Storytelling: A Building That “Speaks” I invoke the notion of “apocryphal” stories not in order to disrespect those stories as “spurious” but to convey the idea of narration undertaken well after the events described, where the veracity of the author is open to chalG E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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lenge. In this sense, the Tractatus itself may be considered “apocryphal,” but I want to focus here on the very rich literary and scholarly output provoked by the events at Canterbury and by the interpretation of the Tractatus. The writings of Gervase, coupled with the unscrambling of the archaeological evidence of the forms of the building itself, still remarkably intact, have stimulated continuing gloss, beginning notably with Robert Willis and continuing down to the present.77 The colorful life and tragic death of Thomas Becket, the archbishop with his secular clerks, court connections, and French taste; a mysterious fire (was it arson?); the “arrival” (accidental?) of a foreign master mason; his fall from the scaffolding (was he pushed?); the infighting of the monastic community; and, finally, tales of miracles, pilgrims and a repentant king—­this is the stuff of which drama is made.78 In Gervase’s story the work of construction was launched and progressed, at first, with remarkable unanimity and with no major setbacks except the fall of Master William of Sens: a problem that was promptly resolved through the intervention of a young monk (Gervase himself?) and the speedy appointment of a new master mason, William the Englishman. There is an obvious lack of correspondence between the smoothness of the narrative and the irregular forms of the building itself (fig. 20)—­signs of shifting intentions that have encouraged a procession of interlocutors to engage in the task of retelling the story. In 1981 Francis Woodman offered the first of a succession of recent revisionist interpretations of the changing intentions of the builders.79 Woodman asks us to reflect upon the confused situation immediately after Becket’s martyrdom, when members of the monastic community at Christ Church were at odds over how to handle the story of the death of Becket, who was rapidly becoming a saint, as well as what to do with the site of his martyrdom in the north transept and where to place the tomb.80 After King Henry II’s troubled interaction with Becket, he allowed a delay to elapse before the appointment of a new archbishop; his choice finally fell upon Richard, prior of Saint Martin’s at Dover, a cell of Canterbury. This was not the choice of the monks, who had picked Prior Odo. The fire occurred on September 5, 1174, the day after the unpopular Richard of Dover returned from papal consecration in Rome—­it is certainly easy to see more than an accidental coincidence. The fire provided the means to unite the community around the task of creating a new chevet that would enshrine the martyr’s tomb—­a shrine church like S-­Denis. Woodman suggested that the appointment of William of Sens as master mason was not the result of an open competition but expressed the triumph of the pro-­Thomas party, since Becket had found refuge in Sens, where the 64

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Figure 20. Canterbury Cathedral, general view of choir. Photograph: author.

cult of the martyred archbishop later flourished. We begin to sense the possibility that Gervase’s creation account was a cover-­up—­a plot.81 The fall of William of Sens from the scaffolding in 1178 corresponded in time with the passage of work from the body of the choir to the eastward extension, crimped inward by the flanking chapel/towers of St. Anselm and St. Andrew.82 Does the form of this eastward extension correspond to William of Sens’s original plans? Gervase reported a smooth year-­by-­year building sequence, yet Woodman observes, “The building tells a different story.”83 Are we dealing with extraordinary architectural arrangements responding to the growing realization that in the cult of Thomas Becket the community had a powerful asset? Woodman proposes an initial plan with a square-­ended eastern termination to enshrine the martyr’s tomb.84 His use of archaeological evidence was limited, but his suggestions unleashed a succession of studies by architectural historians, each intent on allowing the building to “tell its own story.”85 Peter Kidson is perhaps the most ingenious storyteller, disarmingly telling his readers that he simply wanted to “let the building speak for itself.” 86 Kidson self-­consciously assumes the role of attorney or trial lawyer: “Much of what follows is quite frankly presented in the spirit of an advocate urging his case. . . . It is for the readers, not the participants, to weigh the merits of contributions to the debate.”87 If Kidson appoints his readers as judge and jury, he places our witness, Gervase, in the dock, accused of perjury: “The charge against Gervase is that he was the perpetrator of a very skillful historical cover-­up.” Kidson’s case against Gervase is a subtle and paradoxical one—­based upon the very same evidence that led other art historians to praise the chronicler for being “transparently honest.” Kidson argues that the extraordinarily vivid “reality” of Gervase’s account of the fire was intended to dazzle and to obscure, ensuring that certain skeletons remained firmly enclosed in the closet.88 He suggests that it is simply not normal to indulge in an extended descriptive architectural narrative of this kind: “This is what is odd and peculiar about Gervase: he is doing something absolutely out of the ordinary in order to show that there was nothing at all out of the ordinary about what occurred. Any experienced insurance assessor would sense that something was amiss.”89 Like Woodman, Kidson reflects on the timing of the fire: September 5, 1174, two days after the newly elected Archbishop Richard of Dover had returned from Rome. Richard of Dover was not popular with the monks, since he favored the transfer of the archiepiscopal seat to a new collegiate church dedicated to St. Thomas (Becket) at Hackington, outside Canterbury, 66

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founded with resources wrested away from Christ Church. With the archbishop no longer chosen by the monks but elected by a resident college of secular canons (just as the cardinals of the Vatican elect the pope), the new church would replace Christ Church, which, deprived of its extraordinary privileges, would revert to the role of an ordinary Benedictine monastery. Like Woodman, Kidson suggested that the 1174 fire provided an ideal way of unifying the monks in their opposition to the Hackington church and in their response to the Becket phenomenon.90 The manifestation of miracles, carefully orchestrated by the monks, together with the speedy canonization (February 23, 1173), did much to achieve this purpose.91 It is but a short step to the suspicion that the fire itself might have been deliberately set. Certainly the outpouring of energy and devotion for Thomas that followed the fire, the magnificent new space for the tomb and shrine of St. Thomas, and the ensuing cult of miracles were a major setback for the Hackington project.92 The last event recorded in the Tractatus was the election of Archbishop Baldwin (1184–­90), who revived the plan to remove the archbishop’s seat from Christ Church Priory to Hackington.93 Gervase then became spokesman for the disaffected brothers.94 It was at this time that he began his great writing enterprise. Most important of all is Kidson’s skepticism about the veracity of Gervase’s account of the selection of Master William of Sens in an open architectural competition—­Kidson believed that during his exile in France, Becket had already met the master mason and had recruited him to build the new collegiate church at Hackington.95 The hiring of this mason after Becket’s death and the 1174 fire, then, was not at all the result of a disinterested architectural competition but rather a brilliant political act on the part of the monks, intended to trump Hackington by kidnapping both architect and shrine and ensuring the continuing status of Christ Church with “a smart new choir in the latest French fashion, which in a manner of speaking might be said to be Becket’s own idea, coupled with a splendid chapel for Becket’s shrine.”96 The hiring of William of Sens thus “had the backing of a substantial party among the monks who were determined to have the sort of cathedral choir that only a Frenchman could build, that is, something in the manner we call Gothic.”97 Certainly the very form of the new cathedral is consistent with such struggles—­what we have here is a French Gothic inner and upper cathedral grafted on to an English Romanesque outer and lower structure (fig. 20). Kidson’s reading of the Canterbury choir leads him to conclude that the first plan pursued by William of Sens between 1175 and his fall from the scaffolding already included an eastern extension to enshrine the body of G E R VA S E O F C A N T E R B U R Y

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Becket. This eastern extension (Trinity Chapel) and the axial chapel beyond that (Becket’s Corona) are both planned around an unusual nine-­sided polygon (an enneagon). Since he found a similar figure in the hemicycle of Sens Cathedral, Kidson proposes that William of Sens was, indeed, familiar with Sens Cathedral and might have already been recruited by Thomas Becket. After 1179 this plan was streamlined to form a more unified building with an elevated eastern choir (Trinity Chapel) over a spacious crypt. This moment probably marked the point when the monks, who had been hesitating, finally threw their lot in with the pro-­Becket group and agreed to go forward with a magnificent shrine for the martyr. For Kidson the changes were relatively small and the original architect, William of Sens, retained the major role in conceiving the shrine built by his successor William the Englishman: Trinity Chapel is manifestly the most French part of the entire project, owing much to the shrine-­church of S-­Denis and to Sens Cathedral.98 Paul Binski’s extraordinarily rich recent work on Canterbury Cathedral opens exciting new dimensions and raises new questions about the power of the cathedral to project itself into the hearts and minds of its users through color, light, architectural form, and allegory, as well as the role of Gervase as eyewitness and interlocutor.99 Whereas Kidson had accused our chronicler of sins of commission (a cover-­up), Binski decries his sins of omission; while accepting the historical usefulness of the Tractatus, he describes it as “in important respects strikingly blank.”100 Gervase now finds himself accused of having failed to observe the critical arrangements incorporated into the new eastern termination of the Canterbury choir, including the role of the four stations intended to serve the cult of Becket (tomb downstairs, shrine upstairs, Corona at the head, and place of martyrdom in the great west transept). Binski alleges that Gervase tells us nothing of the shifting intentions of the builders as they struggled with the problem of equipping Canterbury Cathedral as the center of a popular (and lucrative) pilgrimage. Whereas Woodman, Draper, and Kidson had read the building principally in terms of evidential signs—­archaeology—­permitting deductions about the changing intentions of the builders, Binski concentrates upon conventional signs that allow the building to speak to the informed user. Such signs include, above all, color: the rose-­colored marble (representing Becket’s blood) employed in the eastern area of the chevet in the vicinity of Becket’s shrine. The shrine itself (of which only tiny fragments allegedly survive) was made of the same material, as were parts of the columns on the hemicycle. Gervase says nothing of all this, leading Binski to lament that “Gervase did not write about colour” and, “Gervase was not a symbolist.”101

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I will argue later that we may understand the production of meaning partly in terms of a shifting scale of verisimilitude: some signs point to the thing signified by sharing some essential visual quality of that thing, while others may share only a structural analogy. For Binksi, the rich, mottled red marble used in the columns of the hemicyle allows the building to re-­ present the critical event it was built to enshrine by incorporating the very color of martyrdom—­Becket’s blood. The mixing of red marble and creamy white limestone may be seen as the scattering of blood and brains in Becket’s death. More than this, the colors point to the roses and lilies of Canticles 2:1, ego flos campi et lilium convallium, a text much used in twelfth-­century Cistercian exegesis.102 Becket’s real presence was in this way embodied in the church. Stephen Langton, consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in 1207, in his sermon on Becket given in Rome in 1220, took as his texts Canticles 2:3–­4 and Ecclesiasticus 50:1, 8: the lily understood as symbolizing Becket’s suffering and martyrdom.103 Binksi reflects not only upon the anthropomorphic quality of the columns but also on the similarity in shape between the eastern Corona and the severed crown of Becket’s skull.104 The reader of Binski’s compelling argument is left with the awkward question of how Gervase, who was clearly devoted to his mother church and probably directly involved in its construction, could have possibly remained unaware of such things. The problem, of course, is that Gervase has fallen victim to expectations that arise precisely because of his resemblance to a modern art historian with his seemingly accurate “diary” of construction and his dialectical Romanesque and Gothic this-­and-­thatness. We need to return to Carol Cragoe for an emphatic reminder us that the Tractatus was propaganda designed to meet the purposes of papal arbitration of the struggle over the possible transfer of the archiepiscopal seat: “It is a record of what the monks thought was really important about their church: its liturgy, its saints, its links to the past, and its splendour in comparison to anything which had preceded it.”105 We should also remember that the surviving texts of the Tractatus are not in the hand of Gervase—­Cragoe suggested that they were put together by a compiler at a time not distant from Gervase’s death and that they may have been abridged. Let us, then, not expect too much from “Gervase.”106 Beyond Binski, Sandy Heslop has pointed to the monastic agenda (intellectual and spiritual) at Canterbury, driven, above all, by the continuing power of the thought of Archbishop Anselm, who understood the dialectic between old and new as well as the force of imagery, beauty, and art in the task of winning souls.107

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Conclusion: Signs, Miracles, and Illusionism Our apocryphal stories share two characteristics. First, they are based on the premise of Gervase’s failings: the chronicler is accused of dishonesty (Kidson) and of blindness, failing to see and to record the most important features of the new shrine church (Binski). Several of our apocryphal interlocutors disarmingly attempt to persuade their readers that they are simply “letting the building speak” for itself. This is, of course, one of the most common rhetorical tropes in the repertoire of the wily interlocutor, since a building cannot speak at all. What the interlocutor must do is to unscramble the signs. Woodman, Hearn, Draper, and Kidson, playing the role of detective, focus upon “evidential” signs as archaeological evidence, allowing them to tell their own variations on the story of the construction of the great Gothic church. The story of the narrowly averted catastrophe—­the plot to transfer the archiepiscopal seat to Hackington—­adds a dramatic element to what is already an exciting story of martyrdom and fire. In unscrambling the plot from the evidence (signs) of the building itself, our interlocutors follow in the Aristotelian track of Sherlock Holmes. Binski, passing over this tradition of Anglo-­ Saxon empiricism with a nod, focuses upon conventional signs that allow the building to “speak” imaginatively of ancient roots, martyrdom, and the real presence of Thomas Becket. Yet Binski, too, intimates a kind of deliberate cover-­up on the part of Gervase, suggesting that the rebuilding of the choir in an up-­to-­date French style reflected the initiative of the secular clerks in the entourage of the archbishop, while Gervase clearly wanted to give the monks all the credit.108 Can we conclude in more positive terms, reading Gervase for what he does achieve rather than scolding him for what he is omits?109 His literary efforts must obviously be set in context—­the last third of the twelfth century was a dangerous and potentially uncontrollable episode in the history of Canterbury and of the English Church in a broader sense. I refer not only to the chronic tensions between monks and archbishop and the threat of removal of the seat of the archbishop from Christ Church, and not only to the struggles between the archbishops of Canterbury and York for the primacy of England, but to the phenomenon of miracles and popular devotion. The established church had to move quickly to absorb and control potentially dangerous manifestations of popular devotion, or else to suppress them. Control is best exercised when oral accounts are selected, edited, and turned into written texts. Miracles began to be reported very soon after Becket’s martyrdom, and two texts were compiled between 1172 and 1179 by William and Benedict to recount the miracles of Becket.110 These stories were later 70

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read in chapter and provided the tituli for the famous stained-­glass roundels in the aisle windows that tell the story of Becket to the increasing numbers of visiting pilgrims. As prior in the critical years 1174 to 1177, Benedict would have played a key role in the initiation and even the form of the new work. The great achievement of Gervase, it seems to me, was to respond to the dangers of the potentially uncontrollable situation with a written narrative whose polished surface and Genesis structure lent to his story the same appearance of inevitability that the finished cathedral would possess. Gervase’s Tractatus was a masterpiece of illusionistic art. This level of illusionism was possible only through the appearance of extraordinary control over history “as it actually happened.”111 If Gervase had access to the building accounts for the construction of the new choir, or if he had actually helped prepare those accounts himself, he would know exactly what purchases of stone had been made and when; the records of salaries paid to the masons might record what work was being done in any week of the year. This level of recall, based on what I have called artificial memory, facilitated the seductive illusionism of Gervase’s text, which matches the seduction of the work of Gothic architecture that persuades us that this was the only possible outcome—­when we know that in the push and shove of real life it actually might have been otherwise.

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3

() Suger, Abbot of S-­Denis, and the Rhetoric of Persuasion Manipulating Reality and Producing Meaning

Our three witnesses have led us back in time over the formative century of Gothic, from the 1230s to the 1130s. Although we know very little about the identity of our first witness, Villard de Honnecourt, other that what can be surmised from the study of his little book of images, he has taught us much about the role of the interlocutor in the age of the creation of Gothic. Information about the life of our second witness, Gervase of Canterbury—­choir monk, chronicler, and sacristan of the principal church in England—­is also sparse; yet Gervase has provided vital information about Gothic architectural production as well as the dynamics of storytelling. And now we come to that figure central to our understanding of twelfth-­century France and Gothic, one who was an administrator, statesman, builder, mystic, and consummate storyteller—­the Abbot Suger of S-­Denis. In the mid-­twelfth century the monastery church of S-­Denis was transformed from a modest-­ sized, decaying, early medieval structure (with sundry additions) into the “first” Gothic building, one intended to trump the greatest Romanesque “pilgrimage churches—­especially S-­Martin of Tours.”1 S-­Denis was located in the vicus Catul[l]iacus (also Catul[l]iacum and Catolacus), close to the River Seine as it loops northwest of Paris. It was here, we are told, that Denis, the apostle of Gaul and bishop of Paris, found his final resting place.2 The myth was extended with the story of the three decapitated saints—­the cephalophores, Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius—­who 73

picked up their heads and walked, and with the fabrication of apostolic roots: in the ninth century Abbot Hilduin claimed that this same Denis was none other than Dionysius the Areopagite, converted by Paul in Athens (Acts of the Apostles 17:34), to whom had been attributed a body of mystical writing, including works given to the monastery of S-­Denis by Charles the Bald and translated by Abbot Hilduin (abbot 814–­40).3 The church, believed to have been consecrated in a miraculous visitation by Christ, also enshrined famous relics of Christ’s passion, reportedly brought back from Constantinople by Charlemagne and given to the abbey by Charles the Bald.4 Kings as early as the seventh century described Denis as “our special patron”; Merovingian, and Capetian kings, including Dagobert (d. 6­39), Charles Martel (d. 741), Pepin the Short (d. 768), Charles the Bald (d. 877), Hugues Capet (d. 996), and Robert the Pious (d. 1031) were buried here.5 Under abbots Fulrad and Hilduin in the eighth and ninth centuries, the abbey was an important center of artistic production with an active scriptorium and large library. This was, then, a church aspiring to high mythic status: a sacred site with apostolic roots, touched by Christ, a place of holy relics and miracles, and a resting place of kings.6 Yet in the early twelfth century the architecture of the monastic church hardly matched this exalted “history.” Modest in its overall dimensions, with slender columns, decorated upper walls, and wooden roof, the eighth-­ century nave, the church constructed during the time of Abbot Fulrad (750–­ 84) and consecrated in 775, yet commonly attributed to the patronage of King Dagobert, probably resembled basilicas like those of Ravenna and Monte Cassino.7 The original structure had been modified to facilitate the veneration of the relics through the addition of an early-­ninth-­century crypt, western twin towers, and a porch to shelter the tomb of Pepin (or Pippin), father of Charlemagne.8 This old church was transformed in campaigns of construction undertaken under Abbot Suger between the 1130s and 1144: first a twin-­towered, triple-­portal western frontispiece (fig. 21), then an eastern chevet or retrochoir forming a elevated lantern to enshrine the tomb of the saints, surrounded by a cosmos of other saints whose relics were placed in the altars of the radiating chapels (fig. 22).9 The old nave was left intact: refurbished and extended, it linked the newly constructed western and eastern extremities (see fig. 23).10 Suger’s authorship is associated not only with architecture and liturgical equipment but also with a body of writing including three “books” documenting the abbot’s contributions to the administration, construction, and consecration of the abbey church: the Ordinatio, the book on the consecra74

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Figure 21. S-­Denis, abbey church, western frontispiece. Photograph by permission of Andrew J. Tallon.

tion, and the book on the administration.11 Historians have found in these writings evidence of an abbot of unusual abilities: one who advanced from a regional monastic administrator to abbot and regent of France—­the most powerful person in the realm other than the king himself, and one who played a key role in the actions and theories that led to the formation of France as a centralized monarchy.12 The newly constructed Gothic church of S-­Denis, enshrining the tomb of the national apostle, lies at the heart of the myth of French cultural identity—­with “nation” and “Gothic” architecture S U G E R , A B B O T O F S - D E N I S, A N D T H E R H E T O R I C O F P E R S U A S I O N

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Figure 22. S-­Denis, abbey church, interior of chevet. Photograph: author.

Figure 23. S-­Denis, abbey church, mid-­twelfth-­century state. Copyright French Ministry of Culture / M. Wyss; A-­B. Pimpaud; M-­O. Agnes.

emerging not just in the same place and time but also in immediate relationship.13 With S-­Denis, Gothic emerges as the logical expression of le génie français and the creation of a society unified under monarch and church. Why has the church of S-­Denis assumed a position of such enormous importance in the historiography of Gothic architecture? There are three possible avenues of explanation. The first is related to the Darwinian developmentalism that had, in older scholarship, been such a feature of the study of style in art history and especially the study of Gothic: a compulsive search for the origins of the species. To demonstrate what the thing is, you take a “mature” specimen—­one that embodies all the “essential” elements; for Gothic, this would be a coherent combination of pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, and skeletal structure.14 The historian/interlocutor will then look back in time, seeking the building that “first” brought these elements together. Finally the story of “development” is turned back into a forward-­moving mode. Since the outcome is already known at the start, the process takes on an air of inevitability. And for the last two centuries the abbey church of S-­Denis generally has taken pride of place as the first firmly dated building with all the requisite features.15 The church may take on a synecdochal relationship with “Gothic” as a larger phenomenon. The tendency to think organically of “style” as a living organism leads to the notion of the “birth” of Gothic—­a momentous moment many have discovered at S-­Denis.16 Second, the writings of Abbot Suger provide information to “fix” the chronology, context, and functioning of what was, in purely architectural terms, undoubtedly an extraordinarily innovative church. One longs to have the same kind of information for the other great monuments of “early Gothic”: Sens, Senlis, and Noyon Cathedrals, the priory church of S-­Leu d’Esserent, or the monastery church of S-­Germer-­de-­Fly—­information that would allow them to be firmly placed in the unfolding story. Third, and most important, it has proved quite impossible to escape the assumption that the great work of architecture must in some way embody or express a coherent philosophical, theological, or metaphysical system of thought, an idée dirigeante.17 In the mid-­twentieth century, at the height of the age of modernism, Erwin Panofsky, that great proponent of perennial humanism, told a compelling story of an edifice where architectural form, light, liturgical performance, and transcendent meaning were perfectly unified.18 Panofsky believed that this new light-­filled architecture drew directly upon the Neoplatonic writings of Pseudo-­Dionysius, identified with Denis, bishop of Paris, whose body was thought to lie in the church and whose writ-

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ings were preserved in the monastic library. Panofsky argued seductively that Abbot Suger responded to Bernard of Clairvaux’s stinging accusations of materialism with the creation of a new kind of architecture.19 This is what we now call Gothic, in which, Panofsky thought, light-­filled spaces provided a visual analogy to the image of the Celestial Hierarchy described by Pseudo-­ Dionysius, where the vision of God is transmitted downward through the levels of the hierarchy (nine ranks from seraphim to thrones, dominions, powers, authorities, principalities, archangels, and angels) though the medium of radiant light. Panofsky did not hesitate to ascribe to the abbot a major role in the inception of a new way of thinking and a modern mode of architecture: “It was as if a President of the United States were to have had the White House rebuilt by Frank Lloyd Wright.”20 Further developed by Otto von Simson and Hans Sedlmayr, these ideas had an enormous impact on the way that Gothic was explained for half a century.21 Panofsky’s grand narrative was whittled away in a steady stream of criticism starting with Peter Kidson, who found in Suger’s writings no direct reference to, nor dependence upon, the writings of Pseudo-­Dionysius.22 Kidson also challenged traditional assumptions about the direct involvement of the abbot in design and construction: masons, after all, not churchmen, build churches. I do not have time here for a comprehensive rehearsal of the prolific and continuing post-­Panofskian debate. 23 In 2006 Jeffrey Hamburger called into question the way that the work of art can be “explained” through recourse to the written word embodied in systems of philosophy or theology.24 Yet the understanding of the architecture of S-­Denis as a “manifesto” and the Hegelian notion of key ideas linking multiple branches of cultural production will not go away.25 Dominique Poirel has recently returned to the idea that in its forms, space, and light, Gothic architecture can be understood as the visual expression or analogy of a philosophical/metaphysical system.26 However, in all of this little attention has been paid to the correlation of underlying rhetorical structures and ideological intentions of the abbot’s storytelling with the production of “real” architecture in the reconstruction of the abbey church: rhetoric with building. Let us start, then, with a reconsideration of the abbot’s writing and proceed with some new thoughts on talking, writing, representing, and building, as well as the compulsive need to connect things: signifier with signified, Alpha with Omega, the author and his ultimate object of desire: personal salvation. Is it a coincidence that the mythic role of S-­Denis as the cradle of Gothic architecture, sculpture, stained glass, and liturgical arts should match its mythic (fabricated)

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roots as the bridgehead for Christianity and the principal church of all Gaul? How does architectural production relate to storytelling? What was the relationship between the invention of “Gothic” and the invention of France?27 What is the role of rhetoric, deceit, and illusion in the production of myth, architecture and cultural identity?

Rhetorical Structure of De consecratione: Manipulated Dialectic The prologue of De consecratione sets up a syllogistic interaction where the thesis of divine harmony is countered by the antithesis of corporeal vexations and inner struggle: reconciliation is possible only through the intervention of the incarnate Christ and the charity of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Trinity is projected in this three-­part rhetorical structure.28 This opening mechanism provides the pattern for what follows: a series of short tripartite rhetorical unities in each of which a pressing problem necessitates intervention (tanta exigente necessitate), justified by signs of divine approval (a miracle) or by due process (monastic consent). After three such units, a triple crescendo is reached in the manifestations of divine approval in the spectacular laying of the foundation of the chevet, amazingly rapid completion, and, finally, consecration and relic translation. My reading of De consecratione leads me to propose the following skeletal structure: • Problem 1: the old church, known as Dagobert’s basilica, founded on the tomb of the saints, is not big enough; its entrance, narrow and ruinous, is overwhelmed by crowds. Intervention: fulfilling youthful hopes, we laid foundations for twin towers and extension of the nave. Justification: funding, at first in short supply, becomes abundant; a skillful crowd of artisans arrives; a quarry for the columns is miraculously discovered near Pontoise; a column is miraculously retrieved. • Problem 2: the new frontispiece must be joined to a nave threatened with “gaping cracks” and damaged capitals and bases; appropriate beams are not to be found. Intervention: preparations are made to repair walls and rebuild roof; the search for beams is renewed. Justification: miraculous discovery of wooden timbers of appropriate length to serve as tie beams; signs of divine approval in the spectacular dedication of the western frontispiece and its chapels. • Problem 3: a dangerous crush of people around the relic chamber in the crypt in the east end of the church. Intervention: postponement of the completion of the upper towers of the western frontispiece; plans

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for the enlargement of the east end. Justification: monastic assent is expressed as the construction and form of the new chevet is anticipated. • Crescendo 1: the spectacular foundation-­laying of the new chevet with royal participation; the due provision of ample funds. • Crescendo 2: rapid completion of the chevet; creation of the châsses and special altar for the use of dignitaries. The gold and gems, presented by pontiffs and the king, are procured with the aid of the martyrs themselves; miracles of the preservation from damage from the windstorm and provision of the mutton. • Crescendo 3 (climax): the consecration of the chevet with a controlled liturgical spectacle contrasted to the uncontrolled milling of the mob; translation of the relics; châsses opened and bodies inspected; spontaneous self-­insertion by the king; spectacular consecration of all the altars; liturgical representation of heaven upon earth.

Thus the book on the consecration is characterized by a succession of three discrete rhetorical units followed by three crescendos.29 A unifying strategy is provided by the writer’s layered thought processes—­any incident alluded to might provoke reference to a matching scene in the scriptures or other written sources. There is powerful synchronicity and moralizing (tropological) force in such writing, but little real sense of causation or the day-­to-­day construction work on the site. What a contrast to the story of day-­ to-­day construction told by Gervase! Yet like Gervase, the abbot at times employs prose that is vividly descriptive, as if he wants to make his audience really see the scene described and imagine that they are actually there. I think particularly of the description of the thronging mob attempting to worship and kiss the holy relics, the Nail and the Crown: that no one among the countless thousands of people because of their very density could move a foot; that no one, because of their very congestion could [do] anything but stand like a marble statue, stay benumbed, or a last resort, scream. The distress of the women, however was so great and so intolerable that you could see with horror how they, squeezed in by the mass of strong men as in a winepress, exhibited bloodless faces as in imagined death; how they cried out horribly as though in labor; how several of them, miserably trodden underfoot [but then] lifted by the pious assistance of men above the heads of the crowd, marched forward as though upon a pavement; and how many others, gasping with their last breath, panted in the cloisters of the brethren to the despair of everyone.30 80

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A similarly vivid passage, bringing the scene directly to the eyes of the audience, describes the consecration of the chevet: this text is quoted below. This language forms part of the abbot’s rhetoric of persuasion.31 The book on the administration, De administratione, while it embodies some of the same tripartite rhythms, is a more traditional work, more dependent upon existing written sources.32 Andreas Speer has characterized the actions described by this book in terms of three undertakings. First, acquisitio, recuperatio, and augmentatio: the acquisition, recuperation, and augmentation of old properties; second constitutio and institutio, the construction and institution of buildings; and third, repositio and augmentatio, investment and augmentation of treasures of gold and silver, precious stones and vestments.33 In Suger’s Life of Louis VI, written 1143/44, Gabrielle Spiegel found in the procession of stories a tripartite rhetorical structure very similar to the one I have found in De consecratione: “Study of these narrative units [in the Life of Louis VI], moreover, discloses a virtually identical internal structure in which historical action is inaugurated by a disturbance to an existing situation, followed by the king’s attempt to deal with the consequences of that disturbance and concludes with the restoration of ‘correct’ order, viewed either as a return to the previously existing situation or as the institution of a new, and ethically more just, arrangement.”34 The application of this tripartite mechanism bears a superficial resemblance to a syllogistic structure but in fact differs in the most important respect that the first and second elements (with the existing state of things understood as the thesis, and the “problem” or disturbance to divinely ordained order as the antithesis) are run together as pressing circumstances and presented in such a way as to preclude any outcome other than intervention. The third part of the sequence is then presented as divine approval in the form of a miracle or else as a “payoff ” in a lavish and most satisfying liturgical event.

Syllogism

Suger’s “Event Unit”



1. Status quo

Pressing threat to status quo

2. Problem

Intervention

3. Resolution

Payoff/justification

In this context, then, the famous building miracle stories recounted by the abbot may be considered not as autonomous “events” in terms of their plausibility and “reality” (or lack of it) but as part of the rhetorical mechanism of persuasion. They counter the appearance of the accidental through their outcome, projecting a result achieved through divine grace.35 The S U G E R , A B B O T O F S - D E N I S, A N D T H E R H E T O R I C O F P E R S U A S I O N

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stories not incidentally also foster the image of a resourceful and ever-­ engaged abbot. Thus the discovery of a new quarry appropriate for the work and the arrival of a skillful crowd of masons were understood as signs of God’s favor, as with Solomon’s temple. It followed implicitly that the same Author must lie behind both abbey church and temple. The miraculous discovery near Pontoise of a quarry for the columns made it unnecessary to procure them from Rome.36 That discovery provoked a “spontaneous” demonstration of popular support, with ordinary folk acting as draft animals to drag the columns. Then, despite the problem of deforestation, appropriate beams were discovered in the forest of Ivelines—­casting a miraculous glow upon the process of construction.37 And the surprising appearance of a flock of sheep provided the mutton necessary for the court feast.38 Conrad Rudolph has suggested that the miracle stories provide palpable demonstration of God’s approval of the construction operation; by appropriating stories of miracles, Suger established relationships with venerable prototypes. Thus the story of the storm and the miraculously avoided destruction of the upper choir at S-­Denis (averted through the intervention of St. Simeon) was derived from a story from Monte Cassino of a monk crushed by a falling wall who was brought back to life through the intervention of St. Benedict. And the story of miraculously found roof beams had already been told by Gregory of Tours. Buildings can carry meaning by making visual references to other buildings, and the same is true of stories—­it is not just the internal content of the tale told but the external associations that can be established through mythic resonance. Like the miracle stories, the abbot’s accounts of spectacular liturgical events served to consolidate the sense of divine approval of the work. Suger’s most vivid accounts refer to the animation of the building through the movements, gestures, equipment, and apparel of liturgical celebration. Led by a triad of prelates—­Archbishop Hugues of Rouen and two other bishops—­ the gathered clergy performed a great loop around the west end of the basilica, passing in front of the three portals through a “huge throng of chanting clergy and exulting people.”39 The tripled forms of the frontispiece were complemented by the movements of the three prelates.40 Suger’s description of the triple celebration of the new chevet, embellished with vivid detail, is the climax of De consecratione.41 First, on the Sunday before the Ides of July a procession carrying the relics of the Passion, the arm of St. Simeon, and other relics descended into the excavation prepared for the laying of the foundation. The chanting of Psalm 87 transformed the terrestrial church into the heavenly city: “Glorious things are spoken of thee, 82

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O city of God . . .”42 The king descended into the trench to lay the foundation stone as gems were deposited in the foundations. The second great public celebration took place three years later: the consecration of the new church on the second Sunday in June, the feast of the apostle Barnabas.43 A massive number of invitations was sent out. Present were King Louis VII with Queen Eleanor, peers of the realm, and archbishops and bishops of Reims, Rouen, Sens, Bordeaux, Canterbury, Chartres, Soissons, Noyon, Orléans, Beauvais, Auxerre, Arras, Châlons, Coutances, Evreux, Thérouanne, Meaux, and Senlis. Absent, as far as we know, was the bishop of Paris. In the vigil before the event Suger invited Christ himself to participate. The bodies of saints were taken out and placed, in draped tents, in the entrance to the monks’ choir. The consecration was done with water from the great vat in the upper choir between the tombs of the martyrs and the altar of the Savior. You might have seen—­and those present did see not without great devotion—­how so great a chorus of such great pontiffs, decorous in white vestments, splendidly arrayed in pontifical miters and precious orphreys embellished by circular ornaments, held the crosiers in their hands, walked round and round the vessel and invoked the name of God by way of exorcism; how so glorious and admirable men celebrated the wedding of the Eternal Bridegroom so piously that the King and the attending nobility believed themselves to behold a chorus celestial rather than terrestrial, a ceremony divine rather than human.44

In the third spectacle, directly afterward, the transfer of the relics, Denis and his companions were, in a sense, animated through words, “for these are the holy men who gave over their bodies as a testimony to God; who for our salvation, burning with the fire of charity, left their land and kin; who with apostolic authority taught the faith of Jesus Christ to all Gaul.”45 Then came the consecration of the multiple altars with a named prelate assigned to each one.

Production of the Text: From Oral to Written Let us now return to the linkages between the abbot’s authorship of material artifacts and his authorship of written texts. Scholars of twelfth-­century literature have been struck by the difference between Suger’s written style and that of learned abbots of the time, including Peter the Venerable, Bernard of Clairvaux, and William of S-­Thierry. Contrasting the abbot’s role as patron of S U G E R , A B B O T O F S - D E N I S, A N D T H E R H E T O R I C O F P E R S U A S I O N

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innovative architecture with the rhetorical style of the books on the administration and consecration, Robert Hanning concluded, “His prose . . . seems remarkably resistant to analogous innovations in twelfth-­century French intellectual, educational and literary expression.”46 Hanning observes that the way Suger writes does not reflect new ways that twelfth-­century thinkers might apply systematic thought to resolving problems of cognition or faith; its unifying force is the writer’s manifest “impulse to gather together in one record the entire spectrum of his interests and accomplishments.” Suger’s role as author of written text and building goes beyond solitary acts of creation by an individual in a vacuum: spaces and narrative were both, in a sense, produced as corporate undertakings where references to known prototypes and deployment of known architectural forms and rhetorical strategies would meet the needs of different members of the group.47 De rebus in administratione gains authority from its references to a literary genre (gesta) recording the deeds of bishop, abbot, or pope, including the reorganization of church property, victory over predators, and reconstruction of physical plant.48 De consecratione, on the other hand, although drawing upon the Vita Dagoberti and written sources from Monte Cassino, visited by Suger in 1123, is unusual in shape, content, and rhetorical style, displaying little philological connection to existing texts.49 A most important source was, of course, the liturgy itself, with movements, gestures, vestments, and music providing references to the miraculous events that accompanied the founding of the church and anticipation of the conjoining of material and immaterial, the earthly with the heavenly, at the end.50 Indeed, if one simply takes the abbot at his word, the need to create a permanent written record of the ceremony of the translation of the relics of the saints provided the principal causa scribendi for the book on the consecration.51 The rehearsal and commemoration of the flashy and ephemeral liturgical performances, so dear to the abbot as a generating force for the written texts, may suggest a similar performative background for the “event units” that we found in the book on the consecration. In each of these units the dynamic interaction of problem, intervention, and justification, together with the interspersed “payoff ” accounts of liturgical events, provided ideal oral gobbets to be presented to visitors or to the assembled monks as the stories of S-­Denis.52 Brother William, Suger’s biographer, described the abbot as one who enjoyed readings from the fathers and church history and as an indefatigable storyteller who kept his monks up into the night, recounting the deeds of

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great men he had seen or heard of.53 William also noted that the abbot’s spoken word might make his audience think he was reading and that the same facility and velocity of expression manifested itself in his writing.54 With this recognition of the dynamic linkage between talking and writing, we may complicate the notion of the abbot as author. Suger may have transformed his oral storytelling into written form with the help of aides-­mémoire: written accounts made by himself or by his brothers to form a book where the dynamic structure of oral narrative is still predominant—­narrative resulting from the repeated telling and tailoring of stories to meet the needs of multiple audiences.55 Perhaps Suger had the help of a clerk in the final assembly and manipulation of these stories into a sophisticated three-­part structure. The small number of surviving copies of his “books” suggests that the audience was a limited one, principally members of the monastic community itself.56 Suger might have intended the written version of his stories about the construction and consecration of the church to be read from the pulpitum in the refectory during the brothers’ meals.57 One can imagine the intense pleasure that the abbot must have derived from his role as interlocutor, representing a church upon which he had fixated since his youth. How many times must he have repeated the stories of the appearance of the three shining apostles, clothed all in white, the rebuilding of the church by Dagobert, and its miraculous consecration by Christ? Did the young monk indulge in what I would call “compulsive looking”—­ systematic visual scanning of the building, vertically, horizontally, embracing and constructing the building in the mind? The singing of the Psalms during the Divine Office with their underlying anticipatory message provided a particularly conducive environment for such activity. The frequent use of the first person and preoccupation with personal salvation lend to the abbot’s writing the quality of a confession. Robert Hanning concluded, “I see Suger engaged in a lifelong attempt . . . to objectify his perceptions and desires by consciously manipulating the uniquely significant physical environment of which he found himself the custodian as abbot of S-­Denis.”58 We have seen that this manipulation involved the employment of the three-­part “event unit” device that resembled a classic syllogism, but where the thesis-­antithesis-­synthesis dynamic was modified for the purposes of persuasion. Such event units provided forceful oral gobbets intended not just to inform and to entertain but also to persuade. The rhetoric of persuasion worked by establishing immediate connections between the present state of things, with all its troubles and anxieties, and the desired outcome.59

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Making Connections: Signifier with Signified, Old with New, Alpha with Omega, Bright with Bright, Material with Immaterial The prologue of De administratione emphasizes the need to make stories about the building permanent through the medium of pen and ink; the author returns repeatedly to problems of intelligibility and making connections, linking beginning with end; signifier with signified. “And because the diversity of the materials [such as] gold, gems and pearls is not easily understood by the mute perception of sight without a description, we have seen to it that this work, which is intelligible only to the literate, which shines with the radiance of delightful allegories, be set down in writing. Also, we have affixed verses expounding the matter so the [allegories] may be more clearly understood.60 The most important architectural linkages (old with new; building with writing) were recorded in an inscription located in the eastern addition: Once the new rear part is joined to the part in front, The church shines with its middle part brightened. For bright is that which is brightly coupled with the bright And bright is the noble edifice which is pervaded by the new light; Which stands enlarged in our time, I, who was Suger, being the leader while it was being accomplished.61

The vision of the new chevet, as brilliant as a lantern, was, Suger tells us, anticipated in the planning meeting of the monks that took place after the dedication of the chapels of the western frontispiece (June 9, 1140), where the abbot communicated to his brethren his plan to proceed directly to the enlargement of the sanctuary. His account of this meeting offers some of his most specific language about the constructional logistics and visual appearance of the new work: “Moreover, it was cunningly provided that . . . the central nave of the old nave should be equalized, by means of geometrical and arithmetical instruments, with the central nave of the new addition; and, likewise, that the dimensions of the old side-­aisles should be equalized with the dimensions of the new side-­aisles except for that elegant and praiseworthy extension, in [the form of] a circular string of chapels, by virtue of which the whole [church] would shine with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the interior beauty.”62 The monks participating in the planning session were invited to envisage the visual impact of the elevated pavement of the new retrochoir, placed atop the vaults of the old crypt, offering the shrine of the saints directly to the 86

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visitor’s gaze, silhouetted in half-­darkness against the refulgent light of the chapel windows behind. In his planning meeting (“deliberating under God’s inspiration”) the abbot applied three kinds of persuasive mechanism in order to win the support of his brothers: the work was, he told them, reserved for him by divine condescension; second, it was impelled forward under “pressing need”; and, third, it would be beautiful. In this way the abbot hoped to project the image of the new work as an object of desire to be shared by the entire community, “whose hearts burned for Jesus while he talked them by the way.” Suger’s description of the impassioned response of the brethren through this quotation from Luke’s Gospel 24:32 is a brilliant touch, conflating the disciples’ longing for the resurrected Christ with the longing of the monks for the renewal of the church that had originally been dedicated by Christ.63 This was the moment prayed for by Suger with his monks, who had “implored Divine mercy that He Who is the One,” the beginning and the ending, Alpha and Omega, might join a good end to a good beginning by a safe middle.”64 However, despite the abbot’s preoccupation with making specific connections through descriptive narrative, including reference to the role of the patron, there remained a most important way in which the work of art might provide a wordless medium or vehicle to the ineffable: this was the invocation of the anagogical, or upward-­leading, passage from the material to the immaterial. Such passage was, Suger tells us, facilitated by protracted contemplation of the glistening surfaces of the precious gems and metals incorporated in o the liturgical equipment—­and, indeed, the architectural envelope of the monastic church: Thus, when—­out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God—­the loveliness of the many-­colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth not entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical ­manner.65

Peter Kidson suggests that we should see in this most-­quoted passage a kind of “personal confession of someone trying to describe a complex experience for which the ordinary vocabulary of his day made no adequate provision” (my italics), rather than the language of conventional Christian PlatonS U G E R , A B B O T O F S - D E N I S, A N D T H E R H E T O R I C O F P E R S U A S I O N

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ism.66 Dominique Poirel has pointed out that the abbot is guilty of a critical misunderstanding of the word anagogical as used by theologians like Hugh of S-­Victor.67 Hugh took pains to distinguish the adverb symbolice (symbolically) from anagogice (anagogically): a symbol is a visible sign manifesting an invisible reality; anagogical, on the other hand, suggests ascension of the spirit revealing the invisible without the intervention of any visible sign. “Suger’s use of the many-­colored gems as a medium to facilitate his passage to the ineffable is, by definition, not an anagogical exercise—­it is, rather, a demonstration of the somewhat conventional nature of the abbot’s own aesthetic susceptibility.”68 A similar heavenly passage is stimulated by liturgical celebration in the space of the upstairs chapel of the western frontispiece: “How secluded this place is, how hallowed, how convenient for those celebrating the divine rites has come to be known to those who serve God there as though they were already dwelling, in a degree, in Heaven while they sacrifice.”69

Production of the New Church; Production of Salvation We have seen how Suger’s rhetoric of persuasion runs together thesis and antithesis into an imperative of pressing need that makes intervention absolutely unavoidable, precluding the normal reconciliation of thesis and antithesis. There was also a powerful personal dimension to the abbot’s preoccupation with connecting Alpha and Omega. In establishing his own salvation history Suger longed to connect a good beginning (his youth) with a good ending (redemption at death) through an appropriate middle—­his life. Did this soteriological mechanism become conflated with his program to rebuild the church, where he considered his new western frontispiece the beginning and the chevet the end? The nave, like the abbot’s life, was left unresolved and unredeemed in the middle:

Suger’s Church

Suger’s Soteriology

Frontispiece

Youth



Nave

Sinful life



Chevet

Hope of redemption at death

While Suger was master of rhetorical manipulation in the representation of actual events, reality seems to have caught up with him in his last years. As a result of their abbot’s lavish spending on the architectural projects and the crusade, members of the monastic community had become seriously disaffected.70 Suger was in his sixties; his life had spanned a period of rapid and 88

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dramatic change—­including the transformation of society and the means of social interaction through the increasingly powerful medium of the written page. It is significant that the decade of the 1150s is precisely the moment represented by Brian Stock as the period initiating the greatly accelerated impact of the written record.71 Changes had also come about in expectations concerning the appropriate life of a monk or an abbot. Suger had been directly involved in bloody military encounters, even serving as a military engineer; by the mid-­twelfth century, however, such activities were no longer considered appropriate for an ecclesiastic.72 Reformed monastic orders increasingly challenged traditional Benedictine monasticism as practiced in the community at S-­Denis. There is much to suggest that such changes seriously affected Abbot Suger, and that toward the end of his life he became preoccupied with the question of his own salvation.73 The abbot faced death with an overwhelming sense of his sins and the alarming coincidence between his desire to redeem his life (the middle) and his desire to “renew the central body of the church which is called the nave, and harmonize and equalize it with the two parts [already] remodeled,” thus connecting beginning to end with middle.74 Yet circumstances at the end of his life blocked such connection/redemption. After a decade of intense work and an outpouring of enormous treasure, the church remained in a most unsatisfactory state, more like three buildings than one (fig. 23). The glittering nave with its elegant columns spoke the language of romanitas, miraculously transporting the visitor to the early Christian and Merovingian past.75 What an extraordinary and disturbing contrast with the new western frontispiece! Here, interior spaces are lavishly sculptured with heavy architectural articulation: multiple colonnettes and new-­fangled ribbed vaults speaking a new and different language, one associated with the cultural flowering of the North. The building actually projected a dialectic quite different from the abbot’s rhetoric: the romanitas of the nave was the thesis, countered by an antithesis, the modernitas of the western frontispiece.76 The upper chevet, finally, spoke a “postmodern” synthesizing language, resulting from the program of reality manipulation associated with the glorification of the saints, which demanded extraordinary space.77 Sitting atop the extended crypt, with its encircling crown of seven shallow chapels and double ambulatory, the new chevet provided a spectacular platform—­elevated and brilliantly lit—­for the shrine of the apostles. The abbot sought to counter the striking lack of harmony in his unfinished project with a rhetoric of continuity between the old and the new—­the fact that the old church, like the new, also possessed twin towers, “neither high nor very sturdy but threatening ruin.”78 Similarly, in the chevet, the S U G E R , A B B O T O F S - D E N I S, A N D T H E R H E T O R I C O F P E R S U A S I O N

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dimensions of the new work—­central vessel and aisles—­were to be “equalized” with the old.79 Today we may look to the chevet of S-­Denis as the fountainhead of Gothic; in 1151, at the moment of Suger’s death, the outcome was by no means so clear. And so the abbot resorted to the rhetoric of persuasion in order to patch things over, representing the desired outcome.

Apocryphal Stories I ended my chapter on Gervase of Canterbury with an exploration of “apocryphal storytelling:” Peter Kidson, assuming the role of trial lawyer, put Gervase, our interlocutor, in the dock accused of perjury. With S-­Denis, it is hard to know where to start our exploration of apocryphal storytelling—­ perhaps with the mysterious Pseudo-­Dionysius the Areopagite himself, who appears to have deliberately conflated his identity with his Athenian namesake. The most systematic challenge to the incredible stories of decapitated saints walking, head in hands, away from Paris, north across the Plaine S-­Denis, in order to find their preferred resting spot was mounted by Anne Lombard-­Jourdan, whose extraordinary and provocative work, while greeted with cautious enthusiasm by some historians, appears to have been largely ignored by art historians and archaeologists.80 Anne Lombard-­Jourdan noted the recurring pattern or topos found in stories of the saints (like St. Firmin of Amiens): execution in the city, burial in some suburban necropolis, rediscovery (invention) with miracles and a triumphant translation of the bodies back into the city. What we have at S-­Denis is exactly the opposite: movement away from the city. With a critical rereading of the principal texts and a rigorous examination of local history, topography, and place names, Lombard-­Jourdan has suggested that the story of the cephalophores was invented to lend legitimacy to a place (Catulliacus: S-­Denis) that was not, in fact, the original site of the burial of the saints. This she locates at La Chapelle, just to the north of Paris.81 However, a variety of reasons—­principally the rivalry (concathédralité) between the metropolitan clergy of the cathedral on the Île-­de-­la-­Cité and the clergy of the martyrium of the bishop of Paris, St. Denis, as well as the inconvenience of the original martyrium as pilgrimage site—led to the transfer, which probably took place in the early seventh century. The conflation of Denis bishop of Paris and Dionysius the Areopagite mystic theologian, and the story of the cephalophores, was elaborated by Hilduin (d. 840), abbot of S-­Denis.82 What were the objectives of this manipulation of history? Nothing less than a massive transfer of power and authority from two dominant pre-­Christian cultural domains to the church, and more specifically to S-­Denis. The first and 90

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more obvious transfer involved the appropriation of the powerful stream of Neoplatonism that had energized early Christian thought and that was embodied in Hilduin’s Areopagitica, the assembled works of the great theologian Dionysius the Areopagite, thought to be buried in S-­Denis. The second gain is less obvious and more controversial. Lombard-­Jourdan’s work has focused on the topography of power and the appearance of continuity that resulted from Christian appropriation of ancient sacred sites in order to transform them into holy places associated with the saints. Thus she suggests that the story of St. Denis locates his martyrdom close to an ancient tumulus (like the tomb of Childeric) that enshrined a legendary ancestor god—­the one who protects the country (protége-­pays)—­an association that allowed St. Denis to appropriate this role. She conjectures that the ancient name for such a place/ deity, mund-­gawi, was transformed into Montjoie, the battle cry of the French kingdom. The plain to the north of Paris had played a vital role in the economic and religious life of the pre-­Roman Celtic peoples, the Parisii, who assumed a priestly role, with the mund-­gawi as an umbilical center in intertribal exchanges. This was the reason for the choice of Catulliacus, where a great Merovingian necropolis and church (S-­Pierre) already existed. To these two layers of appropriation—­intellectual and topographical—­ Suger added a third: political, economic, and architectural. His critical tools included storytelling, writing, fabricating key charters, and building (“facts on the ground”). Suger did not actually initiate the tradition of faking charters at S-­Denis—­for example, Dagobert’s charter giving the town of S-­Denis to the monks (resonating with Constantine’s endowment of the church), which purported to date to 631–­32, was actually fabricated shortly before 1008.83 Already during the abbacy of his predecessor, Abbot Adam, Suger had set his hand to continuing this tradition of faked charters—­the sequence of forgeries included the charter, dated 813 (actually 1124, under Suger) and attributed to Charlemagne, giving S-­Denis primacy in Gaul, making France a fief of God, and exacting four besants to be paid each year in recognition of this subjection. Lombard-­Jourdan has dubbed this systematic adjustment of history, which included the beginnings of the great chronicle-­writing tradition, une entreprise san-­dionysienne pour accommoder l’histoire.84 I would suggest that architectural production, including the construction of an overwhelmingly impressive new church, should be seen as part of that enterprise.85 But the more interesting question is whether some of the tricks that facilitated the forgery program were carried over into architectural production. In order to fake a charter it is necessary to respect enough of the “facts” of the past to give it the appearance of authenticity—­the writer may then tweak the content in order to achieve the object of desire. The sheer audacity of S U G E R , A B B O T O F S - D E N I S, A N D T H E R H E T O R I C O F P E R S U A S I O N

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the faking operation at S-­Denis is quite extraordinary. Obviously, the combination of historicism and modernism in the architectural forms of S-­Denis may be understood in the same way—­Suger talks much about his respect for the older forms of the church while offering us something strikingly (audaciously?) modern. More difficult to grasp is the notion of fabricated etymologies. Lombard-­Jourdan quotes Paul Valéry in suggesting that “a consonance can sometimes make a myth.” This includes the deliberate confusion of semantic values as well as sounds: the bruit des mots.86 In architectural forms, columns with their bases and capital look like “support” and may symbolize the apostles; but transformed into multiple slender shafts, while their form still resonates with their original structural role, they create fictive architecture that, paradoxically, helps to validate the building. The new ribs, which look like “support” but do not necessarily perform that function, are a vital part of the newly deceptive architectural system. A final question: is it to be expected that the sheer audaciousness of the entreprise . . . pour accommoder l’histoire will carry over into extraordinary architectural decisions?

Conclusion: The Abbot Who Spoke the Building What have we learned from the correlation of writing and building understood as corporate production? First, that conventional ideas of authorship may be too narrow and too simplistic. The abbot did not necessarily sit in his solitary cell with pen and parchment and complete his “books” on the administration and consecration at a particular moment, any more than he designed and built the abbey church by himself. Writing and building both came from talking—­both were corporate enterprises, layered in time, linked and empowered by well-­established mechanisms of reality manipulation. I have suggested that the abbot’s writings incorporate content and rhetorical structure derived from oral narratives that predate the business of construction and the visual availability of the finished edifice. Such oral narratives were intended principally to focus the attention of the community upon an object of desire—­the vision of the as-­yet-­unbuilt church—­and to sustain that focus until production was complete. It is not surprising, then, to find the abbot making his case for pressing circumstances and immediate intervention, sanctified by divine approval, preempting reasonable debate—­this is the rhetoric of persuasion intended to impel the community toward a predetermined conclusion, avoiding accidents or alternative paths of action. With the passage of time and the completion of the abbot’s building projects, these stories were assembled, and, no doubt, tweaked in relation to actual

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outcomes, lending to the written text the appearance both of reason and of divine providence.87 The purpose of writing was to make connections between sources and objects that were ephemeral or hidden: orally delivered stories pitched in-­ between-­times, liturgical performances, written sources hidden in the archive, and new written accounts that might be read for years to come in the refectory or in the choir. This would establish the “correct” story of the great enterprise together with the heroic and pious role of the author and instigator. Through the agency of the written text, the abbot sought to secure the links between means and ends, signifier and signified, material and immaterial, visible and invisible, a sinful life and final redemption, a new frontispiece and a new chevet. The written word, then, was not intended to provide an accurate representation of what was seen, but to modify, correct, and anticipate. In 1150 the church itself was a mess: a bricolage composed of three completely disparate architectural blocks (fig. 23). The written text, on the other hand, emphasized unity and harmony. The inscriptions, placed in a long line from western portal to axial chapel, also helped unify the edifice, providing the essential links between signifier and signified, bright and bright, as they invited the user to pray for the salvation of the author of the work. The building was, then, an object of desire, and it was a medium: a bridge or means of transport to something beyond. Art historians and philosophers may argue whether Suger had fully grasped the concept of the anagogical, or upward-­lifting elevation of the soul to a contemplation of the ineffable. But for the abbot it little mattered whether such ascent was triggered by a visual symbol or by the absence of such a symbol, provided that he himself could continue to exercise some level of control as mediator of the experience and interlocutor. While it is certainly possible to manipulate “reality” through rhetoric and through the illusionistic forms of Gothic, there are two vital operations that cannot be controlled in this way. The first is a secure sense of having achieved personal salvation. We should not underestimate the abbot’s growing dread as he approached his last days and the prospect of final judgment. Only God, who is Alpha and Omega, controls the prebeginning and the postend: man finds himself, for the brief interlude of his life, in a muddle in the middle. We have seen how the abbot’s rhetoric led him, willy-­nilly, to associate the unredeemed middle of the church (the old nave) with his own unredeemed life, so that he faced death with a double burden. While the building and its sumptuous furnishings would impinge directly upon the senses

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of the visitor/pilgrim, without the inscriptions one would have no idea of the identity and agency of the patron. The “books” on the administration and consecration provided additional identifiers for the monastic community. Then I have emphasized the tension between the abbot’s manipulated “dialectic” and the real push and shove of building. Art historians have seen the process of Gothic construction as a rational and dutifully applied step-­ by-­step process of solving engineering problems, without paying enough attention to the way that an extraordinarily resourceful and creative patron like Abbot Suger in “speaking the building” might initiate a paradigm shift.88 I would suggest that just as in his rhetoric and his building the abbot projected the end before the middle had been realized, so the dynamic “development” of Gothic was not, in fact, entirely a result of careful and extended trial and error: the ends were envisaged and spoken before their means of realization were fully available. This was a kind of ambush. This notion is particularly significant in the context of a construction project—­the chevet of S-­Denis—­that clearly pushed the limits of contemporary structural expertise. The best-­laid building plots may fail to take into account the potential impact of two potentially unstoppable mechanisms: first, the social distress that accompanies financial stress and, second, structural deformation resulting from inadequately buttressed thrusts, exacerbated by the force of wind buffeting. That the upper chevet of S-­Denis was rebuilt within a century of its construction (1231) suggests that unexpected structural problems may have been encountered, resulting perhaps from the deployment of novel and untested structural forms. The light-­filled elevated relic platform with its clerestory like a lantern and its high vaults may have embodied an experimental support system, perhaps employing flying buttresses.89 The archaeological evidence is entirely ambiguous, but textual evidence is more suggestive. I refer to the abbot’s account of the storm that shook the unfinished chevet in January 1143, when the “principal arches, turned separately, not yet held together by the bulk of the vaults,” were shaken by a violent wind.90 Here is the entire text: Nor do we think it proper to be silent in regard to the following fact: when the work on the new addition with its capitals and upper arches was being carried forward to the peak of its height, but the main arches—­turned separately—­were not yet held together by the bulk [or top] of the vaults, there suddenly arose a terrible and almost unbearable storm with an obfuscation of clouds, an inundation of rain, and a most violent rush of wind. . . . At this time on a certain day (the anniversary of the glorious King Dagobert) when the venerable Bishop of Chartres, Geoffroy, was solemnly celebrat‑ 94

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ing at the main altar a conventual Mass for the former’s soul, such a force of contrary gales hurled itself against the aforesaid arches, not supported by any scaffolding nor resting on any props, that they threatened baneful ruin at any moment, miserably trembling and, as it were, swaying hither and thither. The Bishop, alarmed by the strong vibration of these [arches] and the roofing, frequently extended his blessing hand in the direction of that part and urgently held out toward it, while making the sign of the cross, the arm of the aged St. Simeon; so that he escaped disaster. . . . Thus [the tempest], while it brought calamitous ruin in many places to buildings thought to be firm, was unable to damage these isolated and newly made arches, tottering in mid-­air, because it was repulsed by the power of God.91

It seems unlikely that these “main arches” were the transverse arches or window arches of the high chevet, since the upper edifice would probably have been sheltered by the roof (already built) and by wooden screens installed provisionally in the relatively small upper windows.92 It is most improbable that the wooden centering for the transverse arches would be removed before the installation of the diagonal ribs and vault severies. The “main arches” referred to by Suger may in fact have been flying buttresses, exposed to the violence of the wind around the exterior of the chevet.93 I have proposed elsewhere that the chevet of Notre-­Dame of Paris, begun just over a decade later, had astonishingly bold flying buttresses similar in form to the present ones; the abbey church of S-­Denis, some six miles (about nine kilometers) away, may have provided the builders of the metropolitan cathedral with their inspiration.94 Such ambitious architectural programs were expressions of endemic rivalry between the metropolitan cathedral and the abbey church. Gothic architecture was not only the result of trial and error or a careful reconciliation of thesis and antithesis. In this early realization it was the product of a creative forum dominated by an abbot who pushed impetuously toward the end before appropriate means had been fully put in place, one who “spoke” the building before he saw it.

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() Staking Out the Plot

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() Interlocutor and Monument

We have entertained the stories of our three witnesses of Gothic, Villard de Honnecourt, Gervase of Canterbury, and Suger of S-­Denis—­is it possible now to find a way to correlate their testimonies? Three things they clearly have in common. First is the hard realization that despite its immediate somatic and sensory impact, the work of art does not actually “speak” for itself—­if by “speaking” we mean communicating verbally by means of a common language shared and understood by multiple recipients. Viewers of the great church may come away with a “message” of some kind, but the message received might differ wildly from viewer to viewer.1 Second, each of our three witnesses spoke of his lively sense of delectation or enchantment. And third, they all stand accused by our “apocryphal storytellers” of deception or plotting. Villard certainly never saw a “tomb of a Saracen” as he alleged, and his gross mistakes in architectural drawing undermine his implied claim of inside knowledge of Gothic architectural production. The “Villard Enterprise” brought usurpation of the identity of the originator and the imposition of a deceptive pedagogical mission not intended at the start and impossible to actually accomplish (much of the added “geometric” material would be of little real help to the mason). Gervase, with his smoothly unfolding, God-­ordained creation story, has been accused of a cover-­up to conceal dissensions in the monastic community at Canterbury. Abbot Suger, finally, is

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clearly implicated in faked charters, and there can be no doubt about the intention of his manipulation of reality and his rhetoric of persuasion. I promised in the introduction to draw upon the multiple meanings of plotting in order to correlate the testimonies of our three witnesses and to open up new meanings in the stories of Gothic. Issues of narration and conspiracy will occupy us in the third part of this book; for the moment, let us turn to the understanding of the plot as an area of controlled space (the cabbage plot; the burial plot; the building plot). A building plot results from the desire on the part of one or more agents to appropriate, to define, and to control a piece of land as yet unformed: terrain vague. Most Gothic church construction plots, however, were already encumbered with existing buildings. Physical control over the land, whether encumbered or virgin, would be established by means of tightly stretched cords or ropes pegged to the ground.2 A first rope would be intersected by a second one fixed at an angle of ninety degrees, and then a third and fourth to establish the basic square or rectangle that encloses and defines the building plot (fig. 4).3 That the rectangle or square was indeed geometrically correct with perfect right-­angled corners and equal sides was ensured through control over the diagonals, which had to correspond exactly in length.4 The process left few direct written records.5 Mention of the stretched cord as a means to establish rectitude finds it way into the written sources mainly as a tropological, mnemonic, or visionary metaphor or figure.6 Every major medieval building project began in this way: first the overall shape of the building plot would be determined using arithmetic and geometric methods, and then the space would be subdivided and fixed in order to determine the shapes of the crossing, choir, transept, and nave; the relation between main vessel and aisles; and the bay divisions.7 I want to invite the reader to join me in envisaging such a plotting enterprise in order to realize a mnemonic creative space where the borders can be clearly defined, yet where many shifting internal alternatives may be simultaneously entertained.8 In order to contain and correlate the stories of our three witnesses, I shall propose a plot that corresponds to the space defined in the initial phase of laying out a building. Such a plot may provide a most valuable space for collecting and reconciling diverse stories, as well as, in the spirit of Mary Carruthers, a “machine for thought.”9 How should this space be formed, and what would constitute the boundaries and corners? How would such a space facilitate a clearer understanding of the respective roles of our three witnesses? Let us first rehearse the laying out of our building plot before going on at greater length to consider and define and the significance of each edge and corner. 100

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Plot I Intersection of interlocutor with monument: present time

The essential story line in our exploration of Gothic is provided by the building itself, animated by the presence and words of the interlocutor. Let us begin with any Gothic cathedral—­say, Amiens (fig. 1). Although we may experience the building at a given moment (or limited period), we quickly recognize that this is an edifice with a life extending from a starting point (soon after 1220, when construction of the Gothic cathedral commenced) down to our own fleeting presence in the building. Even at its starting point in 1220, the Gothic cathedral of Amiens pointed back in time to a “prehistory” (the early history of the site; stories of the saints; the older churches, including the one destroyed in the fire of 1218). Then, in the eight hundred years of its “life” the building experienced every kind of incident and accident: near disaster, multiple interventions, its fabric modified and elements replaced in multiple ways the casual visitor cannot even begin to ascertain.10 Let us simplify our story with the notion that the edifice has a “life” that can be represented diachronically (left to right) as a line or a rope stretched on the ground to form the first edge of our plot (plot I). However, although the power of Gothic architecture depends partly upon the illusion (repeatedly recognized by visitors: mystics and scholars alike) that that the building can actually speak to them, it hardly seems necessary INTERLOCUTOR AND MONUMENT

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to insist that a cathedral, being an inanimate artifact, cannot speak at all. In a literal sense Amiens Cathedral is dumb; it cannot tell the story of its own eight-­hundred-­year life.11 The generation of the story of our Gothic cathedral, then, may be located at the point of intersection, the angle, between the monument itelf and the interlocutor, endowed with the gifts of vision, thought, memory, imagination, and speech.12 The force of the operation is generated as the interlocutor undertakes the task of representing the monument to an audience, whether present or absent.13 Although the interlocutor may live at a time much later than the construction period of the monument, he is able to approach and enter it, to comprehend it, to represent it using a range of media including images and words, both spoken and written. The first two sides of our plot are thus formed by the monument itself, with a life extending diachronically, forward in time, to the moment of the intervention of the interlocutor; in this way the building, which has projected itself into our own time and space, may be animated and rendered eloquent (plot I). Amongst our witnesses, it is above all with Villard de Honnecourt and his collaborators that we can best experience the agency of the interlocutor. Let us then locate the Villard Enterprise in the bottom right-­hand corner of our plot. The third (left) side of the plot results from the recognition that although we experience it as part of our own time and space, it is impossible to ignore the fact that a Gothic church has already existed for some eight centuries: it belongs to a past (material and social) that we can never enter nor fully comprehend—­only represent (plot II).14 We are thus led to introduce the material contexts of the monument, including the economic resources that made its construction possible, the institutional and devotional needs that it served, and the human agents responsible for its creation. We recognize, to use Marxian language, the means of production. Even in the absence of written sources, the skilled interlocutor/archaeologist can “read the signs” of the building to make deductions about the circumstances of construction, leading the audience to see, for example, that the upper parts of the chevet of S-­Denis do not belong to the same campaign as the radiating chapels (fig. 22). The Villard Enterprise provides invaluable information on the means of production, but Gervase of Canterbury was, as we have seen, sacristan and “logistics man”; I therefore assign him pride of place as a producer of Gothic in the bottom left-­hand corner of our plot. The interlocutor engaged in the task of representing the monument realizes quite quickly that his task is more difficult than initially anticipated. Words and narrative cannot be entirely contained by the material structure

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Plot II Material contexts: the past

as it presents itself to the eyes and comprehension of the visitor. Truly “objective” description is impossible: all descriptions and explanations must acknowledge aspects of the hidden life of the building: the story behind the story. That story involves not only the means of production and material context as defined above but also layers of meaning that may vary and overlap in the minds of multiple audiences over the centuries of the monument’s life. Modern audiences may be preoccupied with the power of the “Gothic” character of the edifice to express the cultural identity of the civilization of the builders in a synecdochal sense. The very designation Gothic forces one to recognize the tension between the particular specimen before our eyes and the thousands of other edifices that make up the “Gothic” corpus. Without this tension there can be no “Gothic.” Moreover, many other levels of meaning must be considered. A church is a medium, a vehicle leading to worlds beyond itself. The fourth and last edge of the plot, then, should be formed by the production of meaning on the part of multiple interlocutors and multiple audiences over the life of the monument from the time of its initial conception to our own intervention (plot III). Of our three witnesses, Abbot Suger was most concerned with negotiating the passage from the material forms of the great church to the transcendent, from the material

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Plot III Production of meaning

monument to the spiritual. The abbot’s testimony, therefore, will lead us to the most challenging side of our plot: the ways that the Gothic cathedral may generate ­meaning(s). Let us stand back, finally, and survey the logic of our plot. To the right: the present, us, and the business of verbal representation after the fact; to the left: the material past, production; at the bottom: the life of the material building extended over time and linking past and present; at the top left: what the builders intended the church to mean; and top right: what it means to us. I propose now to explore our edges and corners. Although the testimony of each of our three witnesses will help establish three of the corners of the plot, it is impossible to prevent the invasion of our space by postmedieval interlocutors—­this is particularly true of interpretations of the meaning of Gothic.15 I have suggested that the story of Gothic may begin at the point of intersection between the monument(s) and an interlocutor who, for some reason, feels compelled to address an audience (plot I). One might, of course, choose to tell stories with only the most generalized image of Gothic in mind; for the purposes of this book, however, I invite readers to engage with me in imag-

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ining the excitement, the vision, that may generated by the intersection, at a particular moment, of a perceptive and eloquent interlocutor with a particular monument.16 Amongst our three witnesses, it is especially with Villard de Honnecourt that we find echoes of this kind of experience. As we have seen, Villard’s “realistic” images served as surrogates for the real thing, allowing him to take you by the elbow, as it were, and direct your attention to the monument with the exclamation (if I might adapt Villard’s words just a little), “Just look at this . . . I drew it because I liked it best.” Some of the same intense engagement with the physicality of the building is also found in Gervase of Canterbury. The role of the interlocutor as the one who represents should never be taken for granted. In my treatment of Gervase of Canterbury we saw that Peter Kidson, as interlocutor, self-­consciously assumed the role of an attorney. How should we distinguish attorney from interlocutor? In the former case, powers of representation have been formally ceded by a principal to a second party, one who speaks with the consent of his client. The work of art or architecture can never cede such powers of representation, for the role of interlocutor is assumed or arrogated. The interlocutor may set out to exercise power over an audience; that exercise, whether undertaken at a time close to construction or whether in our own time, may involve deception. Let the listener/reader beware!17 In his summing up of the evidence at the end of the trial, Peter Kidson, in a less self-­conscious mood, proposed that we finally “set Gervase aside and let the building speak for itself.”18 This familiar rhetorical topos on the part of the wily interlocutor opens another dimension—­much more fruitful than the attorney metaphor. By making the building appear to speak, the interlocutor assumes the essential characteristics of the ventriloquist.19 When we compare the verbal performance of the work of art or architecture to ventriloquism, we open up ancient rhetorical strategies going back to Plato and beyond, and we also encounter a wonderful kind of ambiguity. Is the interlocutor the author, and the work of art the dummy that is made to “speak”? Or is the work of art able to animate the interlocutor, who is moved by forces outside himself to make utterances he would otherwise be incapable of? This ability to go beyond oneself (or stand beside oneself) involves the ancient notion of ecstasis, a well-­established attribute of Greek rhetorical and theatrical practice attributed by Plato to Socrates.20 And a further dimension of ambiguity involves the role of the master mason who designed the cathedral in the first place and who still speaks to us through the building that makes

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us speak. Does the interlocutor become the master mason? And then, in the mind of medieval Christians, there is the role of God, who speaks through the agency of the master builder just as he speaks through Creation. Our problem as students and scholars, then, is that we should have every reason to be skeptical of the “magic” that makes the inanimate object appear to speak. Yet the testimony of our three witnesses may convince us of the need for the interlocutor who points and speaks in order to convert his personal discovery of the monument(s) into a narrative intended to empower the audience to see and to understand.21 More than merely representing, the gifted interlocutor has the power to re-­create or animate the work, giving the audience the illusion of finding again the freshness of the original creation and unscrambling the hidden messages of the builders. In the most basic sense the interlocutor, it seems to me, engages the attention and piques the interest of members of his audience first by telling them what they can see and then by inviting them to engage with what they cannot see. With the first operation the interlocutor gains the confidence of his audience (“yes, I can see it!”); with the second, he builds upon that confidence to project them into the unknown. In the case of the Villard Enterprise, the value of the image in front of your eyes is enhanced by the author’s assurance that he has traveled in many countries and has seen many things that you have not. The specimen presented on the page is the one he likes best—­a privileged token for a larger category, reinforcing Villard’s status as cognoscentus. In recounting what can be seen, the interlocutor may invite systematic exploration of the way the forms and spaces of the building are disposed—­like Villard’s description of the housing for the clock. Thus the modern interlocutor might point, for example, to Amiens Cathedral (or to an image of that cathedral, fig. 1) and say, “Look, here we have a three-­story elevation made up of arcade, triforium, and clerestory; here we have a plan with nave, crossing, transept arms, and choir with ambulatory and radiating chapels; here we have rib vaults; here pointed arches; here flying buttresses.” In order to achieve this the interlocutor is led to name names. The technical nomenclature of architecture—­beautifully controlled by both Gervase of Canterbury and Villard de Honnecourt—­is often the greatest obstacle for the modern student. The interlocutor may exercise his or her position of power to force members of the audience to engage in a kind of compulsive looking.22 Such activity involves a systematic moving of the eyes over the surfaces of the edifice from bottom to top, or from one end to the other, in the attempt to commit the forms of the building to the memory and to make sense of them.23 The building becomes a unicum—­a one-­of-­a-­kind, a universe surrounding and 106

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dominating viewers and forcing them to move not only their eyes but also their bodies through and around its spaces in the attempt to comprehend the whole.24 On the other hand, the interlocutor may invite his audience to join him in a very different kind of response to the overwhelming scale and formidable complexity of the great monument, with its bewildering light and color—­ the sense of awe, or of well-­being, that a visit to the Gothic cathedral might induce. We have found this in Abbot Suger’s delectation in his “anagogical” passage from the material to the immaterial. Viollet-­le-­Duc recorded in the Entretiens his own ecstatically swooning response (experienced as a child) to the interior of Notre-­Dame of Paris.25 Paul Binski has recently brought our attention to the ecstatic response to Gothic sublimity.26 There is a well-­established literary genre relating to responses to objects or people considered particularly difficult to represent that has been called the inexpressibility topos. 27 Thus in front of the great church the beholder, having encountered the unprecedented vision, throws up his hands and avows that words are not adequate to the task of describing what is seen. Of our three witnesses Gervase does it best: “Who could write all the turnings, and windings, and appendages of such and so great a church as this was?”28 The inexpressibility topos—­real or feigned—­allowed educated northerners, aware of the disapproval of Gothic that they might have encountered in their humanistic readings, to nevertheless respond with admiration. Writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Gothic was supposed to be held in low esteem, Canon Adrian de La Morlière composed a love poem for the cathedral of Notre-­Dame of Amiens, “ma toute belle au front doré.” Overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, our interlocutor was rendered quite breathless: “Impossible to encounter a greater masterpiece, and one which is more difficult to represent than this church. We find descriptions of more superb edifices from Antiquity in the books, but here [at Amiens] there is no pen that can describe it. You have to see it to be aware of its perfections; you have to go around its galleries in order to understand them. . . . [The building] is beyond anything that can be said or written—­ entirely admirable, both in its overall body, as well as in its details of every sort.”29 In composing a verbal representation, the interlocutor may thus pass from a state of speechlessness, real or feigned, to the point where architectural elements and spaces are matched by words. We may thus imagine a triangle with the three angles formed by the eloquent interlocutor who points and talks, the feature of the building being pointed at, and members of the audience who follow the pointing finger and the words. But no matter how INTERLOCUTOR AND MONUMENT

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hard he tries to tease out the essential character of any building or part of the building, translating it into words, the interlocutor is led beyond that particular building to extraneous things—­the story beyond the story. Among the centripetal forces is the powerful cognitive tool that allows the interlocutor to express what the building looks like. That tool is, of course, figurative language: metaphors and similes. In this way the first triangle is followed by a second with angles formed of interlocutor or interpretant, the feature of the building he or she points to, and the extraneous thing it points to with the notion that “it looks like . . . it’s as if . . .”30 Recent studies on cognition have enhanced our understanding of the critical role of figurative language as a means of seizing and representing the essential character of a thing or event.31 This is particularly true of architecture, where abstract (nonmimetic) forms challenge the rhetorical inventiveness of even the most perceptive and experienced interlocutor. In fact, with Gothic architecture it is at times impossible to find a clear line of demarcation between “literal” and figurative language. Thus in using the word nave to designate the main space of the body of the church designated for the use of the layfolk, we implicitly acknowledge similitude to a boat (navis; German Schiff, French nef ). The idea of the boat comes loaded with meaning through analogies with Noah’s ark, a vehicle of salvation. We may then refer to the central vessel, or to the aisles (wing: ala, aile). Such figurative language was certainly employed by the creators of our buildings: Villard de Honnecourt calls the ambulatory (with its potential for circular movements) a charole (a type of repetitive song known as a round or carol).32 The writers of the building accounts of Troyes Cathedral acknowledge the similarity of the rose window to the letter O when they refer to the rose window of the north transept as “l’oo.33 For the author of the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, the rose windows of the transept facades were the cathedral’s eyes.34 The word vault conveys the image of a form generated dynamically through the turning of a curved trajectory around a center point—­we have seen that Gervase of Canterbury talks about turning (volvere) a vault. The dynamic image is enhanced through the description of the zone where the masonry curves away from the vertical as “springers.” The airborne look of the Gothic vault is beautifully conveyed by the author of the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln with the image of the wings of a soaring bird.35 Perhaps the most amusing descriptive figure can be found in the word culée applied to the great pylons that surround the Gothic church to bear up the flying buttresses. This word comes from cul, meaning arse or backside. Culée might be applied to the unyielding masonry piers that framed a bridge, holding a wooden span

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securely or, in the case of a masonry structure, resisting the outward thrust of the arch(es). Such use of figurative language should not be understood in terms of compensating for a deficit of “objective” words. On the contrary, in the hands of a master the figure of speech provides a most efficacious tool, allowing the essential “look” and “feel” of the thing to be communicated to the audience and to provoke new reflections on meaning. Among modern interlocutors of Gothic, Jean Bony was the greatest master of such figurative language employed to make his audience see and experience the cathedral. In his 1943 essay on Notre-­Dame of Paris and Bourges, in order to convey the impression of the spatial configuration of the nave of the Parisian cathedral (figs. 24 and 25) Bony wrote, “This great volume of space, vertically squeezed between its walls, gives the impression above all of marching towards the choir, like a great river in a deep bed.” Bony here uses three different figures to convey affect: the idea of walls squeezing space, the rhythm of the steps of a forward-­moving (marching) person, and the great groove gouged out by a river. Yet the reader, it seems to me, is unlikely to be offended by this mixed metaphor; on the contrary, Bony’s creative use of figurative language allows him to animate the image of the building, insinuating it into the mind of the reader. Bony’s essay was generated in the context of a presentation to inmates of a Nazi internment camp. Through the power of remembered images animated by figurative language, Bony was able to bring the cathedral into the prison and into the minds and spirits of his fellow inmates. I have suggested that in performing the monument the interlocutor, in order to get his audience to see what is actually visible, will find himself forced to represent what is not seen. The most basic verbal recognition “This is a Gothic cathedral” depends upon the realization that the artifact belongs to a larger genus made up of hundreds of other buildings that share a more or less definable set of characteristics.36 To define what those characteristic are depends upon stating what they are not (pointed arch versus round arch; rib vault versus groin, etc.). Then, to understand the significance of the three-­story elevation of Chartres Cathedral, we have to consider the implications of a four-­story (Laon) or two-­story design (S-­Germain of Auxerre). To understand what is special about a rib vault, we need to think about the implications of a barrel vault. Whether one likes it or not, the introduction of absent buildings leads one to deal with issues of sameness and difference, classification and “development.” Gervase of Canterbury, with his juxtaposition of old and new, understood this quite clearly. And, of course, the

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Figure 24. Notre-­Dame of Paris, spatial interpretation by J. Bony, in French Gothic Architecture, with permission of University of California Press.

Figure 25. Notre-­Dame of Paris, interior, northeast crossing into choir. Photograph by permission of Andrew J. Tallon.

story of construction calls for a recognition of the existence of a vast array of unseen elements—­not only the sociological and religious environment in which the edifice was built but also the physical devices or tricks (engiens)—­ scaffolding, lifting gear, templates, formwork, and so on—­that made the “miracle” of Gothic possible. I have begged the reader to indulge me with the notion of an intersection between a monument and an eloquent interlocutor who might be led to contrast the ephemeral nature of our own fleeting presence in the cathedral and the life of the monument, extending back over a period of eight hundred years or so. The power of the monument to point to the past will lead us to the third side that defines the space of our plot: it will represent the means of production.

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5

() Material Contexts The Means of Production

Villard de Honnecourt and his colleagues (the “Villard Enterprise”) with their deceptive combinations of words and surrogate images have served as interlocutors in our plot, but we have seen that few scholars today believe that Villard was a master mason who actually built a great church. The witness who conveys the clearest inside information about the means of production in Gothic is Gervase, with his remarkable understanding of the forms and spaces of Canterbury Cathedral and his grasp of building technologies, materials, and construction sequence. This level of control was, as we have seen, facilitated through the writer’s own experience (possibly as site overseer and certainly, for a while, as sacristan in charge of the cathedral fabric) and probably through reference to written records of purchases of materials and payments to masons collected and collated as part of the accounting process. Let us, then, appoint Gervase our producer and mediator of the intersection between the monument and its material contexts (plot II).1 Gervase’s account of Gothic construction at Canterbury, supplemented with information provided by the other witnesses and readings in the secondary sources, will allow the interlocutor to begin to respond to the astonished question “How on earth did they do that?”

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How on Earth Did They Do That? The Gothic cathedral is more than a text that reveals fragments of information about the past—­patches to be stitched together by the student to create the fabric of “history.” The cathedral is not a portable object detached from the physical and functional environments in which it once existed. The material fabric of the monument does not merely stand for the past in a figurative sense, as in synecdoche or metonymy; in the great medieval church the very substance of the past is experienced as present. Thus in entering Amiens Cathedral we may feel that we can actually transcend time and enter the past (fig. 1).2 The totality of the building—­with its architectural and figurative programs—­seems to convey a kind of story where the visitor feels intuitively that the various parts are bound together into a whole by a meaningful system of some kind—­an idée dirigeante, a plot.3 The unscrambling of that plot, the visitor might conclude, promises a vital key to understanding the past. The simplest level of unscrambling comes when the interlocutor responds to the astonished question “How on earth did they do that?” What kind of person or people could have envisaged such a building? With the limited technological means of the day, how did builders erect arches and vaults that appear to hover a hundred or more feet above us, while interior spaces are flooded with light? How did the builders maintain such control over the production of the multiple parts of an enormous and complex edifice whose construction would extend over a half-­century or more—­probably beyond the lifetime of any of the initiators of the project? How were the financial resources procured for such an enterprise?

Human Agency: The Master Mason4 Assessments of the role and status of the master mason have veered enormously in the stories of Gothic told over the centuries. On the one hand, we have the image of God as architect found in the Bible moralisée and the romantic attribution to the master mason of a kind of divine genius and creativity.5 More recently, however, scholars have tended to focus, in an entirely pragmatic and “Marxian” spirit, upon the administrative, financial, and logistical framework within which the master operated; enormous amounts of information about conditions of work can be extracted from the primary written sources, particularly contracts and fabric accounts.6 However, in our search for the master mason at the dawn of Gothic we face a problem in the gap in time between the period of the architectural revolution that transformed 114

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the forms and the means of production of churches in the second half of the twelfth century and the availability of informative written sources.7 It is only from a later date that we begin to know some of the master masons of the thirteenth century by name and have some information about their work.8 Witten evidence documenting masonic organizational structures begins in the mid-­thirteenth century and becomes prolific in the fourteenth and fifteenth. Let us briefly consider three kinds of organizational structure: municipal or royal; institutional and professional (the Lodge); and local or site-­ specific. The Livre des métiers of Etienne Boileau (prévot of Paris, 1261–70) provides an insight into the first kind of structure.9 However, the plasterers, mortar makers, and masons regulated by the code would probably have served the urban construction industry by building houses and public buildings rather than great churches. As might be expected, the tone of the code’s twenty-­ four ordinances is restrictive. Although it begins with the premise that any mason can pursue his profession in Paris, it specifies “provided that he knows his business and that he works according to the practices and customs of the discipline, which are these . . .”10 Entrance into the discipline is controlled: a master may have one apprentice who serves six years, but after five years of that term, the master may take on a second apprentice. The passage of information and expertise is also controlled: although a master can take on additional help in his project (aides and vallés), he cannot teach these artisans, who are not his apprentices. A mestrise des maçons is established—­the master has the prerogative of collecting amends for all the infractions and certifies the graduation of each apprentice at the end of his term. While the ordinances provide important general information on the terms of apprenticeship and control of masonic knowledge, the elite master masons who built the great churches of Gothic moved in a different world. We learn about the status of such masters from commemorative labyrinths set in the floors of Amiens and Reims Cathedrals where their names are recorded; from the image of the master mason of S-­Nicaise of Reims, Hugues Libergier, with his cape and measuring stick; from the inscription commemorating the work of Jean de Chelles which occupies a prominent position at the foot of the south transept of Notre-­Dame of Paris; and from the epitaph of Pierre de Montreuil, where the master is called a doctor lathomorum.11 Then there are the often-­cited words of the Dominican preacher Nicolas de Biard: “The masters of the masons, holding in their hands [measuring] rod and gloves, say to the others, ‘Cut it [the stone] in this fashion’ [par ci me le taille], and they do not work; yet they receive greater pay than many experienced men do.”12 And in his Distinctiones Nicolas de Biard noted: M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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“Some work only with words. Note well: In these great buildings it is the custom to have a chief master who only directs thing by word, seldom or never lays hand to the work himself, and yet draws larger stipends than the others.” Here we encounter the master mason “speaking the building” just as we saw with the Abbot Suger. It is easy to understand how some members of the clergy might be offended by the transgression of an artisan, who ought to conform to the order of those who work with their hands, into the domain of the clergy or, even more outrageous, into the domain of God, who spoke the world.13 The epithet doctor lathomorum (applied to Master Pierre de Montreuil, d. 1267) suggests similar transgression—­this time into the world of the masters, or doctors, of the university. Our second kind of masonic organizational structure also makes significant borrowings from the church. The first evidence we have of a transregional lodge comes from Strasbourg where, we are told, a lodge was organized in 1275 under Erwin von Steinbach, who assembled “the most illustrious masters of the work and artificers from Germany, and from Italy . . . and from England as well.”14 In 1277 Strasbourg assumed the role of master lodge for Germany. This geographical preeminence is reminiscent of the role of Cluny or Cîteaux as a center of reformed monasticism. The masons, like their clerical counterparts, had periodic assemblies (comparable to church synods), a tightly controlled hierarchy, ritual, and canonical texts.15 The central status of the Strasbourg Lodge was consolidated in the fourteenth century with the 1459 Regensburg Statutes (probably worked out in Strasbourg), which laid out the working code of masons and which were to be read out at a meeting in each lodge once a year. These statutes defined the three levels of the masonic hierarchy (apprentice, journeyman, and master), with a fourth rank, the foreman (Parlier), who may represent the master, the one who speaks the building. The journeyman, to become Parlier, was obliged to wander, experiencing other workshops. The master mason was required to respect the initial drawing (Vysierung) that he himself had submitted at the beginning of work. He was responsible for all aspects of the work from beginning to finish—­in other words, there was no distinction between the architect (in the modern sense of the word) and the contractor.16 As in the Paris ordinances, the flow of knowledge was restricted: “If someone wants to undertake stonework with measure [Mass] or an extrapolation device [Auszug], which he does not know how to take out of the base plan [Grund ] and he has not served a workman nor enjoyed lodge promotion, then he should not in any way undertake the task.”17 Similarly, “Item: no workman, master, undermaster, or journeyman should instruct anyone on how to take the extrapolation device from the base plan.”18 It has been suggested that the 116

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category of artisan named the Kunstdiener included those receiving special training (perhaps from the Parlier) in the higher levels of Gothic design and draftsmanship.19 One of the most famous early texts regulating the masonic profession is the Regius Manuscript from fourteenth-­century (ca. 1390) England.20 Some of the ordinances concerning the control of knowledge and terms of apprenticeship resemble (with variations) those found in the Ordinances of Paris. What is quite different, however, is the evidence of a masonic tradition and organization that was not dependent upon any city (though it was allegedly founded originally by King Athelstan). The Middle English poem was clearly intended to be read aloud to the assembled masons in their periodic meetings and appears to reflect an older oral tradition. It tells a story of lords and ladies who, in need of a way to make a living, turned to the art of geometry (synonymous with masonry), which had been “counterfeited” by clerks, principally Euclid, who taught the craft of geometry/masonry in Egypt. At the end of the poem we are told that Euclid had taught not just geometry but all of the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, astronomy, and arithmetic. The Regius poem thus gives a glimpse of the storytelling that provided the members of the lodges with their theoretical and historical underpinnings and that created identity.21 It is safe to assume that many great churches, especially in France, were built by groups of masons headed by a master whose internal command structure and organization was entirely local. In the extensive documentation of the construction of Gothic Troyes Cathedral over a period of more than two centuries, the word lodge applies only to the covered working space (heated in winter) of the masons—­never to any kind of guild with supraregional ties.22 What do our witnesses tell us about the agency of the master mason? The Villard Enterprise clearly wanted to associate itself with the masonic tradition; its insistence on the importance of geometry is matched in the much later Regius poem. The originator of the project, “Villard,” had visited Gothic cathedrals under construction and probably had access to key personnel and to preparatory drawings. His images provide the best evidence we have of the “compression” of the great building into the small drawing or template. Villard’s “Tomb of the Saracen,” moreover, may hint at the levels of obfuscation with which masons cloaked their professional identity. The later contributors (traditionally called Masters 2 and 3 but renamed by Carl Barnes), who were probably active at a time close to the Paris Ordinances, clearly wanted the user to believe that their drawings and captions would be of some use in training masons. Given the restrictions the Ordinances imposed upon the M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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imparting of masonic information, it was impossible for some scholars to resist the conclusion that the Villard Enterprise had prepared a “lodge book” for the training of future master masons.23 Our second witness, the Abbot Suger, while he communicates something of the sense of awe and astonishment induced by Gothic space and of the precariousness of the unfinished Gothic structure, shaken by the windstorm, says absolutely nothing of his master mason and very little of the artisans or the means of production. Modern scholars have deduced the presence of two successive master masons at work in the western frontispiece, the second master possibly continuing into the chevet, but of all this the abbot says not a word.24 We may wonder whether this silence reflects an inherent tension between the representative of the higher clergy and the potentially Godlike agency of someone who was, after all, an employee. We may suspect that Suger’s intention was to deceive: to lead his audience to the belief that the abbot—­or God himself—­designed the church. Conversely, Gervase talks much about the master mason William of Sens but very little about the agency of the prior or the archbishop of Canterbury. His account at first appears to provide all the information we need to understand the circumstances that led to the appointment of a master mason, William of Sens, after the fire that damaged the old choir in 1174: French and English artificers were therefore summoned, but even these differed in opinion. On the one hand, some undertook to repair the aforesaid columns without mischief to the walls above. On the other hand, there were some who asserted that the whole church must be pulled down if the monks wished to exist in safety. . . . However, amongst the other workmen there had come a certain William of Sens, a man active and ready, and as a workman most skilful both in wood and stone. Him, therefore, they retained, on account of his lively genius and good reputation, and dismissed the others. And to him, and to the providence of God, was the execution of the work committed.25

However, while some may feel that Peter Kidson went too far with his accusations of perjury, he was surely right to point to the contrast between the wealth of circumstantial details offered by the chronicler and his silence on the most important aspects of the conversations that must have taken place between Master William of Sens and members of the Christ Church community.26 William did not get the job just because of his skills in building winches and procuring stone and his ability to allay the fears of the monks, but also, Gervase tells us, because of his lively genius and good reputation. 118

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He was probably known to the monks, having come from a background familiar to key members of the Canterbury community (perhaps through connections with Becket, as suggested by Woodman, Kidson, and others) and he must have presented a coherent plan for a church that conveyed authority through its otherness (references to prestigious French prototypes, principally Sens and S-­Denis) and provided spaces to accommodate the potential needs of a burgeoning pilgrimage cult.27 The architectural plan, or plot, might be represented in words or in images. The church plans of the Villard Enterprise or the magnificent plan in the Eadwine Psalter (fig. 19) may provide a clue of what such an image might look like. For all its shortcomings, Gervase’s account of the appointment of Master William does provide us with a glimpse of what might be called an expertise.28 At critical moments in the construction of a great church, the way forward was often resolved within the framework of meetings with multiple outside masters invited to come and give their opinion. In the well-­documented history of the fabric of Troyes Cathedral, the bishop and chapter (not just the administrator of the fabric or proviseur) might evaluate the advice offered by visiting master masons and might hire the outsider, letting the local master(s) go.29 At any such moment multiple options were entertained, and the event might lead to minor revisions of the building program or to an entirely new direction. The appointment of a particular master implies that some kind of consensus had been reached—­whether imposed or voluntary. In the narrative of Gothic, this was the moment that transformed dialectic (the reconciliation of opposing opposites) into entelechy (the forward-­moving creation story with all its appearance of inevitability).30 If Master William of Sens shared with the monks of Canterbury any kind of big picture or vision of the entirety of the Canterbury choir, Gervase chose not to tell us about it, focusing rather on logistics: the identification of an appropriate supply of stone, the mechanical problems of shipping, and the day-­to-­day direction of building operations on the site which unfolded bay by bay from west to east. But after four years of construction work (1179), the master met with a nasty accident: And having, in the next place, completed on both sides the triforia and upper windows, he was, at the beginning of the fifth year, in the act of preparing with machines for the turning of the great vault, when suddenly the beams broke under his feet, and he fell to the ground, stones and timbers accompanying his fall, from the height of the capitals of the upper vault, that is to say, of fifty feet. . . . Against the master only was this vengeance of God or spite of the devil directed. . . . As the winter approached, and it was M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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necessary to finish the upper vault, he gave charge of the work to a certain ingenious and industrious monk, who was the overseer of the masons; an appointment whence much envy and malice arose because it made this young man appear more skilful than richer and more powerful ones.31

Gervase supplies us here with a vital piece of information relating to the human dimensions of Gothic architectural production. We must not think of the “clerical patrons” as detached from the work, providing only initial direction and then sitting back passively and allowing the “workshop” to get on with its business. We have seen that the monastic community of Christ Church Canterbury had appointed one of their own—­possibly Gervase himself—­to work closely with the masons, presumably watching over the hours worked by each artisan, looking after payroll, and purchasing materials. Medieval architectural production was a corporate undertaking, with members of the clergy directly involved in ways the modern student might find surprising. The proviseur or sacristan, normally a member of the cathedral chapter or monastic community, would maintain daily oversight of the work, and all major decisions would be made in chapter. Conversely, the master mason would enjoy status and earning power that matched those of the clergy, sometimes even living in the episcopal manse.32 Martin Chambiges, the last great French master of Gothic (d. 1532), was able to control three major cathedral construction projects simultaneously (Beauvais, Sens, and Troyes) and at times to snub his clerical employers.33 We must, then, be careful not to assume that the “workshop” was an entirely unified group. The elite masons and carpenters might have lucrative contracts and interact closely with the clergy; laborers would be hired on a day-­to-­day basis.34 A master would form around himself an elite group of masons including son(s), son(s)-­in-­law, apprentices, and former apprentices—­forming an extended family or clan.35 We must consider the dynamic relationships between the master mason(s) of the project and his apprentices and subordinate masons. We have seen that the Paris and Regensburg Ordinances provide details on the system of apprenticeship that would permit all younger masons to learn the methods and absorb assumptions and techniques of their master, whose authority would make him into a surrogate father. After the period of apprenticeship he might continue to work as lieutenant of his former master, hoping eventually to replace him.36 This was a framework that simultaneously brought pressure to conform to existing practices and norms and offered inducements to the adventurous young man to transcend those norms.37 This potent generational mechanism was the most important force behind the phenomena of continuity and “change” in Gothic. 120

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Gervase provides no information about the relationship between the first Canterbury master, William of Sens, and his successor, William the Englishman, leaving archaeologists to deduce from the forms of the eastern parts of the choir that the second master had been closely associated with William of Sens, whose vision continued to dominate the image of the new chevet, and that the second William, although called “English,” had a thoroughgoing knowledge of architectural production derived from northern France.38 He may have originally worked as an apprentice with William of Sens, later becoming his lieutenant and colleague.

Stone Production But he [Master William of Sens] went on preparing all things that were needful for the work, either of himself or by the agency of others. . . . And now he addressed himself to the procuring of stone from beyond the sea. He constructed ingenious machines for loading and unloading ships, and for drawing cement and stones. He delivered molds for shaping the stones to the sculptors who were assembled, and diligently prepared other things of the same kind.39

The “stone from beyond the sea” used at Canterbury was calcaire de Caen, a wonderful creamy-­yellow Jurassic limestone widely used in Normandy, northern France, and southeastern England in the Middle Ages.40 The story of medieval stone production is known both from the written sources (accounts and contracts), which survive in large numbers from the fourteenth century and later, and from archaeological investigation of the sites themselves.41 Available in thick banks (up to twenty-­five meters) close to the surface, calcaire de Caen is even grained, of high compressive strength, and, when first cut, relatively easily to work, hardening only on exposure to the air. Worked in open quarries—­especially in river valleys—­from Roman times, the upper strata of the quarries yielded small blocks appropriate for use in rubble masonry or various forms of petit appareil. However, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries increasing demand for ashlar masonry led to extensive subterranean exploitation, with horizontal galleries cut into the lower levels of the banks of stone in order to extract the highest-­quality large blocks.42 The pressure behind the transition from rubble to ashlar construction came both from the surge in castle building in the eleventh to twelfth centuries and from the massive ecclesiastical commissions associated with the patronage of Duke William of Normandy and his entourage. And of course, the Norman Conquest of England and subsequent production M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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of castles and churches extended the range of Caen stone exports to southeastern England and beyond, where many churches (including Archbishop Lanfranc’s Canterbury) and castles (including the Conqueror’s White Tower in London) were built of this material. The highly developed early-­industrial extraction techniques in the Norman quarries—­not to mention the excellent quality of the stone—­by far surpassed anything produced at that time in England, and transporting the stone by boat was less arduous than lengthy land passages by ox cart. The ready availability of large blocks of this fine material certainly helped produce a revolution in the construction industry—­the increasing use of prefabricated stones produced through the use of templates (formas  .  .  . ad lapidos formandos) and close collaboration between quarry workers and builders.43 The answer to the question “How on earth did they do that?” lies partly in the coordination of the shapes and dimensions of stones to be employed in the new building with blocks of stone extracted from the quarry. Transporting the stone from quarry to building site was very expensive indeed, and it made no sense to ship or to cart quantities of stone if the blocks had to be radically resized at the building site. If the masons on the site were required to cut down the incoming blocks to appropriate sizes for the work, much valuable time and material would be lost. Coordination was possible through the process of contracting and through the application of templates to fix the sizes of the rough-­cut blocks. There are, as far as I know, no contracts for stone extraction from the period of S-­Denis or Canterbury—­our knowledge of the business comes only from later documentation. The building accounts of Troyes Cathedral are particularly rich in detail and indicate that stones were carted from the quarry in Tanlay cut to three different heights—­ twelve, fifteen, and eighteen inches—­to fit with the courses of the intended work at the cathedral.44 It seems probable that many of the masons engaged in the first generation of Gothic architectural production had been formed in the context of castle construction. The geopolitical uncertainties of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had led to one of the most extraordinary revolutions of the history of architecture—­the deployment of hundreds of stone-­built castles.45 Whereas there was no inherent practical reason why the builders of churches should strive for increased height, with castles height was a matter of surviving increasingly sophisticated siege warfare. And, of course, the use of systematically coursed ashlar masonry and a secure system of buttressing with deep foundations was essential to the structural and military integrity of the castle. These features were carried over into church building. We might

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also point to the fortification of cities in northern France completed in the reign of Philip Augustus.46 The surviving fragments of the Paris wall, like the remains of the Louvre of Philip Augustus, attest to the ability to produce enormous quantities of high-­quality ashlar masonry. The French triumph in Normandy after 1204, leading to a slowing of the pace of castle construction, must have unleashed into the labor market hundreds of highly qualified masons, who might look for work in church construction and bring their expertise with them. The economic and logistical aspects of medieval stone production are in themselves an essential and altogether fascinating dimension of the “story behind the story” of Gothic.47 But what is of interests here in this study of plotting is eloquence: the expressive power of the building and the stimulus experienced by the interlocutor to tell architectural stories. Fine ashlar masonry is critical to both. In Roman, Byzantine, and Romanesque architecture, masonry was generally concealed behind a veneer of marble, mosaic, or painted plaster, and it was left to figurative mosaic and painted cycles to tell the story. In Gothic, on the other hand, finely coursed, highly articulated masonry surfaces would be visible to the eye, forming a critical element in the expressive power of a building where surfaces and elements of articulation are so perfectly controlled that they could hardly have been made by human hands, and where linear patterns lead the eye into compulsive scanning.48 The fact that Gothic interiors were lightly plastered and painted and might carry figurative cycles does not change the emphatic projection of a story of ethereal structure through a membrane of colonnettes, moldings, foliate decoration, and tracery.49 In the second half of the twelfth century, masons increasingly exploited the technique of the applied shaft: linking it to the moldings of an arch or a rib, they helped to create a kind of fictive language of support. This language could be made more emphatic through the use of spolia—­elements retrieved from the older building on the site, expressing continuity between ancient and modern and sometimes marking key transitions in the building.50 The employment of a different-­colored stone could also serve to lend eloquence to the building.51 At Canterbury the supports of the monks’ choir arcade—­ the earliest work of Master William of Sens—­are unarticulated cylindrical piers alternating with octagons, all cut from Caen stone (fig. 20). However, Gervase tells us that when the crossing was reached, a new form was introduced: piers decorated with marble columns (marmoreis ornans columpnis). The pilgrim’s passage eastward toward the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury was orchestrated not just by successive increases in the height of

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the pavement but also by intensification in the deployment of sumptuous architectural forms, until in Trinity Chapel the supports (double columns) were made up of marble drums. Visitors’ ascending gaze would lead them to encounter an upper choir whose complex, layered envelope was limned with glittering shafts. The “marble” employed at Canterbury Cathedral might also be considered stone “from beyond the seas,” since it would have been shipped from quarries in the Purbeck hills of Dorset.52 Not true marble but a fossiliferous limestone laid down in freshwater in the Jurassic period, this material came in a variety of colors (from russet red to greenish-­brown to blue-­gray) and contained numerous fossils, notably the shells of a water snail, Paludina carinifera. The quarries, which had been exploited already in Roman times, reached a crescendo of production in the later twelfth into the thirteenth century, since the material provided a cheaper substitute for marble imported from the Mediterranean or Belgium. Purbeck marble could be finely finished and polished (with beeswax) to shine, revealing the extraordinary workings of God the artist (the stratification and fossilized sea creatures) within.53 But there were problems: the material did not weather well, and it came in relatively thin banks (up to two feet). It behaved best when deployed in the building with the layering of the sediment beds matching the horizontal courses of the masonry, but the banks were so thin that columns would have to be drum built (not monoliths) as in Trinity Chapel at Canterbury. The thin banks lent themselves to the production of slender colonnettes or shafts, but of course here the stone would be laid “out of bed” (en délit) with vertically aligned sediment and, under pressure, would be prone to splitting. With Abbot Suger’s love of light-­reflective glistening objects and semiprecious stones, one wonders why de did not introduce similar architectural forms in the chevet of S-­Denis. En-­délit shafting had gained currency in France by this date, but the use of marble was restricted to England and to the extreme northeast of France into Belgium.54 The glittering interior of great churches like Canterbury and Lincoln lent multiple dimensions of meaning, evoking the appearance of a precious reliquary, the brightness of an early Christian basilica, the color (red) of martyrdom, the works of nature, and Heavenly Jerusalem.

Templates and Placement Marks55 He delivered molds for shaping the stones to the sculptors [i.e., stone carvers] who had gathered, and carefully prepared other similar things.56 124

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The “forming forms” (formas . . . ad lapidos formandos) of templates were one of the most vital mechanisms of Gothic creativity. Gothic cathedrals are composed of multiple units (piers, windows, buttresses, etc.) that repeat themselves down the length of the building. Uniformity was maintained through both the provision of a supply of stones cut to preordained dimensions, as we have seen, and the employment of rigid templates (generally cut of fine-­ grained wood or of zinc or some other metal) that would be used to cut stones to the shape required by its employment in a window mullion, molding profile, respond, or pier. Many examples of such templates still survive, and building accounts abound with references to molles or moules. The fact that William of Sens prepared formas ad lapidos formandos before work started on laying up the masonry suggests that these were templates sent to the quarry in order to fix the size of stones before they were shipped, revealing some level of rationalization in the stone coursing.57 Villard de Honnecourt urged his audience to look at the templates used on site in the construction of Reims Cathedral (fig. 14): “Look here at the templates for the chapels of [i.e., appearing on] the previous page, of the arches of the windows, the ribs and the transverse arches, and the window arches above.”58 We see what look like sections of window jambs, mullions, an element of the tracery, transverse arches, and ribs—­the profiles, in fact, are intended to represent the wooden models or templates used by the mason to ensure uniformity. Each template is marked with an indication of where the element belongs in the finished composition, and many of the marks can be matched in Villard’s drawings of the chapels and nave elevation. In this way the relationship between the multiple parts of the building and the finished edifice resembles that of a kit, with which many preformed parts are assembled into a child’s model boat or aircraft—­if the user follows instructions only one outcome is possible. This appearance of inevitability is, of course, an essential part of the plot. As with the procuring and preparation of stone, so with the deployment of templates: it is impossible to entirely separate material production from the production of meaning. What may be understood as a sign of rationalized early-­industrial technique was also a means of imbuing the edifice with meaning in a tropological or moral sense: the templates were the means of ensuring the perfect obedience of all the multiple elements of the cathedral.59

Vaults Gervase’s narrative allows us to consider the construction of vaults both dynamically and statically. His use of the verbs pono and compono signifies that M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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arches and vaults were “installed” or “put into position” on top of the supports and walls.60 However, when he comes to the accident where William of Sens fell from the scaffold, we learn that the master was engaged in the task of “turning” a great vault—­the verb is the dynamic volvo, volvere.61 We also learn that “machines” (machinas) were employed for the turning of the vault. In classical Latin a machina could be any kind of contrivance for performing work. This could refer to lifting gear (possibly a great wheel) for raising stones or, presumably, to the platform or scaffold upon which the vault was installed. Machina, like the French engien, can also mean a trick or stratagem (machination).62 The stones of the arches’ ribs and severies were laid atop curved rigid wooden formwork or “centering.”63 The shape of the curved formwork resulted from arcs of circles struck with a pair of compasses and thus “turned.” The formwork translates shapes first designed small-­scale on a flat surface (parchment sheet; plaster drawing surface) into full-­sized vertically placed ribs and arches. The curving surfaces of the vault severies are complex, and one suspects that masons would favor a lightweight and flexible support made of thin wooden boards or even wickerwork.64 Following Viollet-­le-­Duc, Fitchen proposes the use of a movable device known as a cerce, which could be fixed between arches and ribs to provide temporary support to the courses of stone as they were brought up toward the top of the vault.65 In the case of the construction of the fifteenth-­century nave vaults of Troyes Cathedral, I have documented the use of heaps of “masoning earth,” or dirt piled up on top of high-­level terraces, to shape the delicately curving severies.66 After a period of two to three months, the earth was simply allowed to drop through openings in the terrace and fall into the nave. Certainly one response to the question “How on earth did they build those vaults?” is that they actually did it on a bed of earth. Surprisingly dramatic architectural effects can be produced by equally surprisingly primitive devices or tricks. And the manufacture of vaults, just like the procuring of appropriate stone and the employment of templates, had the potential to carry meaning. The vaults have been literally impressed or printed: they remember the form of their formwork just as the convex forms of a wax seal remembers the concavity of the intaglio that impressed it.67 In addition to providing information on how a vault was “turned,” Gervase leaves us the first verbal representation of a Gothic ribbed vault. While the old choir had ambulatory vaults that were flat-­surfaced (groin vaults), Gervase tells us that in the Gothic work the vaults are articulated with arches (ribs) and keystones: “Ibi in circuitu extra chorum fornices planae, hic arcuatae sunt et clavatae.”68 Gervase specifies that two materials were used, stone (calcaire de Caen) and tufa or lightweight volcanic pumice.69 The use of 126

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volcanic tufa for the panels or severies of the rib vaults opens an intriguing window to Roman practice and reveals the concern of the Gothic builders with lightweight construction.70

Economic Means The material production of a cathedral may be understood in terms of a prodigious consumption of raw materials (stone, wood, iron), employment of hundreds of artisans over extended periods, and disbursement of large quantities of cash.71 To ask “How was the construction of a Gothic cathedral funded?” is a bit like asking “What are the main budget sources for a modern American university?” The answer will depend entirely upon which cathedral/university and which decade of which century—­funding structures are liable to change substantially, and sometimes rapidly, over time. However, common patterns may certainly be discerned.72 The construction of Gothic churches was supported in varying degrees by four kinds of funds: first, the regular income of the clergy sometimes supplemented by funds from the municipality; second, major contributions made on an occasional basis by members of the clergy, local seigneurs, and affluent members of the townsfolk (bourgeois); third, small-­scale giving by the faithful of the diocese and pilgrims; and fourth, income provided by extraneous patrons—­king, local seigneur, or pope. Let us look at each of these sources in some detail. At the start of work on the Gothic church, one or more financially responsible agent(s) would be appointed—­a sacristan, proviseur, or master of the works.73 The community—­whether the secular canons of a cathedral or the brothers of a monastic establishment—­would agree to divert a certain amount of its regular income from the great chamber to a fabric fund.74 This regular income would be derived principally from holdings of land and rights over commercial interactions and industrial production. The lands held by the clergy were mainly outside the city itself, so that cathedral construction brought a massive transfer of funds from the country to the city.75 The twelfth century saw extensive tracts of new land brought under cultivation, coupled with sharp increases in the price of grain, wine, and other agrarian produce in response to growing demand from hungry city populations. New land under cultivation coupled with increased productivity brought a substantial flow of cash in the hands of the clergy. The bishop or abbot might take initiative to set an example in making such a regular contribution, but the ongoing organization sustaining the work and the funding fell to the chapter. Second, the construction project might receive special gifts from local M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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secular or ecclesiastical authorities—­count, duke, or other seigneur. Members of the clergy, who often belonged to wealthy local families, might also make large one-­time gifts.76 The bishop might make an outright gift or commit a part of his regular income to the fabric—­in 1225 Bishop Milon de Nanteuil of Beauvais committed one-­tenth of his income for a period of ten years. I estimate that this would have provided the largest source of income for the construction of Beauvais Cathedral.77 And third comes contributions from the faithful—­principally residents of the diocese, although some construction projects could also draw funds from pilgrims. In this third category we might place regular giving on the part of the townsfolk of the city where the cathedral was located, quests conducted (generally with relics) inside and outside the city and diocese, and money deposited in collecting boxes associated with the cult of relics.78 The written evidence from the fabric accounts of Troyes Cathedral indicate that contributions from the faithful of the diocese, generally made in connection with relic quests, was one of the biggest and most reliable sources of revenue.79 Royal gifts made directly for cathedral construction, probably quite limited in France in the twelfth and thirteen centuries, were of enormous importance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A common way to help finance Late Gothic campaigns was through a concession on the royal salt tax (gabelle).80 Papal support in the form of indulgences promising relief from suffering in purgatory might greatly enhance the power of any relic to attract pilgrims. Our witnesses provide more specific information. Abbot Suger, in his book on the consecration, lists just such a combination of sources. Directly after his account of the laying of the foundations of the new chevet, he records that with the consent of the king, he had established a fabric fund yielding two hundred pounds annually, made up of receipts of one hundred pounds from the Indictum fair (commercial activities), fifty pounds from the feast of St. Denis, and fifty pounds from the estate known as Villaine in the Beauce, which had recently been brought under cultivation.81 In addition, a continuing income was anticipated from the donations of the faithful.82 The massive flow of cash enjoyed by the churches, cathedrals, and abbeys of northern France that facilitated the construction of Gothic edifices during the grand period (mid-­twelfth to mid-­thirteenth century) was sharply reduced in the late 1240s when King Louis IX began to realize his power to tax northern cities and dioceses in order to pay for his ruinously expensive crusade.83 The end of the period of construction of the gigantic cathedrals and abbey churches associated with what we call High Gothic came not with the collapse of Beauvais choir in 1284, nor with some kind of exhaustion of the 128

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style, but with the conscious decision on the part of kings to divert wealth that had gone to public works and the development of local identity (that is, to cathedral building) to the more important business of making war.

Reading the Signs: Construction History The interlocutor responding to the question “How on earth did they build this astonishing edifice?” is obviously not entirely dependent on written sources like Gervase’s Tractatus; he or she may invoke features of the building itself as clues or evidence to reconstruct the means of construction. From such an informed analysis much may be deduced about the economic, logistical, and human circumstances that attended construction. This kind of approach has, of course, roots that are deep as they are multifarious, ultimately going back to ancient theories of “natural signs,” which, while themselves are not capable of telling a story, can allow the enlightened beholder to deduce what has happened: for example, tracks in the snow will point to the passage of an animal or human, and the form of the footsteps will allow one to deduce what kind of species.84 The study of such signs, understood already in Greek antiquity as symptoms, lay behind the development of diagnostic medical knowledge and the professional physician. St. Augustine distinguished signa naturalia from signa data, the latter being understood as conventional signs given or instituted by human beings for purposes of communication.85 In the writings of Charles Saunders Pierce, the two categories are represented as indices, where the relation to the object consists in correspondence in fact or causal connection, and symbols, where that relationship is established through some observed or conventional connection.86 The story of medieval architecture has been generated by historians and archaeologists from clues in the building understood as signa naturalia, unlocking the secrets of construction. Since such signs are not, of course, “natural” but result from perceived interruptions in the anticipated regularity of forms demanded in Gothic construction, I prefer to call them “evidential signs.” The coordination of deductions made from the systematic study of the forms of the building with the written sources can yield a surprisingly complete story of construction. This approach developed rapidly in the middle decades of the nineteenth century—­one thinks of Robert Willis as a pioneer, for example, in his correlation of the forms of Canterbury Cathedral with the written account of Gervase of Canterbury, and John Bilson, with his ability to “read” the architectural forms of Durham Cathedral to reconstruct the chronology of construction.87 At the end of the twentieth century a growing number of archaeologists and architectural historians coalesced around M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T S

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the notion of l’archéologie du bâti—­the application to standing masonry of the same kind of rigorous methods traditionally applied to below-­ground archaeology.88 The clues or evidential signs that allow the interlocutor as detective/archaeologist to tease out the story of the construction, permitting the building to “speak” of its own past, are often found in anomalies or irregularities that would not be generally considered part of the principal artistic repertoire or language of the edifice—­breaks in the regularity of the horizontal coursing of the masonry, for example, or abrupt changes in the form of molding profiles or sculptural forms, which are thought to announce a “change of campaign.”89 We might compare the enterprise of the archaeologist with that of the connoisseur who, in the spirit of Giovanni Morelli, looks at details of the painting that are generally considered “trivial” yet that are capable of yielding vital information on authorship and the means of production.90 However, since this kind of study focuses on “characteristic trifles,” there is a real danger that the scholar, myopically preoccupied with molding profiles and masonry breaks, might miss the forest—­not for the trees, as it were, but for the twigs. A refreshing turn in the study of the means of production based upon such evidential signs was taken a few decades back by Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale, who focused not only on the anomalies resulting from the kind of slippage in control of the logistics of construction that might announce a change of campaign or the passage of time, but also upon the perfection of the stone-­cutting system itself. 91 The story of Gothic has too often been told exclusively in terms of a series of technical innovations (rib vaults, flying buttresses, etc.); a factor of equal importance was, as we have seen, the ability to produce prodigious quantities of stones worked to the very high specifications necessary to ensure uniformity and stability in buildings that pushed the limits of structural possibility—­and to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time. Kimpel documented continuing improvements or rationalization in stone-­cutting techniques intended to allow the forms of a unit of support like a pilier cantonné to be made as efficiently as possible out of a limited number of shapes of stone that could be cut in advance or mass produced. In this way the techniques of stone cutters could be compared with those of other artisans of the thirteenth century, particularly cloth workers, who were able to increase production by adopting standardized shapes and dimensions. Gothic architecture thus found its place among other manifestations of prefabrication in early modern industrial production. Masonry could provide signs that could be understood in a causal sense

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as resulting from the techniques of the masons, and in a social sense as providing evidence for a considerable army of qualified masons. Kimpel read the masonry signs as evidence of the process of production. It is also possible, however, to read the same signs (astonishing uniformity) as part of the essential language of the cathedral, allowing it to “speak.” A building produced in this way has, in a sense, been stamped out: all convex forms were carved from a template to ensure uniformity, and all concave forms (arches and vaults) were formed upon wooden molds.92 Vaults and arches are quite literally impressions: they “remember” the shape imposed by the formwork. An obedient building is one that stays where the master mason put it. Control over the means of production allowed highly skilled master masons to create the appearance of a perfect artifact not made by human hands.93 This control included perfect alignment of walls and supports, the multiplication of units (piers, windows, moldings) that appear to be identical and walls where the masonry courses display perfect horizontal alignment. The tropological implications of such a reading are clear—­the building has, in a sense, been obedient to the now-­vanished devices or tricks (engiens) of the builder—­formwork and template. The miracle of the vault is proof of the former presence of a device or engine that will never be seen by the visitor. In this sense, the perfection of the masonry, “not made by human hands,” is testimony to the mastery of the architect, provoking images of God the master architect who designed the cosmos. It is with this thought that we pass from the naive question “How on earth did they do that?” to more profound ones: How do ideas get put into a building? How do they communicate with the beholder?

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6

() The Production of Meaning

Now that we have considered stories of the material production of Gothic in relation to the third side of our plot, the one to the left, it is time to extend and to complete our boundaries with a fourth dimension (top of our schema, plot III): the astonishing power of Gothic architecture to generate the illusion of the ability to “speak” through a language of conventional signs, and beyond this, to become a medium, a vehicle, able to transport the visitor to a world beyond itself. The investigator here, rather than working as a detective, will proceed though the domains of iconography, semiotics, and anthropology to an awareness of the sublime.1 Just as the material building came into being through production—­ understood as the establishment of the logistical structure necessary for construction, including provision of funds, materials, and direction—­so, too, meaning is produced. Architecture brings spatial and temporal dimensions that complicate and enrich this process. Our notional plot (plot III) may help to remind us that levels of meaning are produced at multiple points and times: as the interlocutor points and talks, introducing figurative language (bottom right corner of the plot), or as the builders developed their agenda, selecting appropriate materials and establishing working practices (bottom left). The builders certainly had their own programs (religious and ideological), which they hoped the building would project (top left corner); we may assume that architectural choices were generally reached purposefully, not 133

by accident. The building might be equipped with figurative programs; once finished, spaces would be used and sometimes found inadequate and in need of modification for liturgical, devotional, and other purposes. Finally, the modern visitor/interlocutor may interrogate the edifice and begin to narrate a story to himself or herself or to others. Visitors may reach forward compulsively to grasp meaning in the same way that the reader of a particularly engaging novel wants to anticipate and to unravel the story line, half revealed and half concealed (top right corner).2 Whereas evidential signs can be offered in a court of law not just as evidence but as proof, signs considered as language are much more intractable—­the meanings that the interlocutor draws out of the building are not necessarily the same as those that the builders put in; the same signs can be construed quite differently by different individuals or audiences.3 Whereas the lowest limit of our plot, representing the building itself, is understood entirely diachronically as extending over time, the production of meaning is, at least to some extent, synchronic. Some of the levels of meaning programmed into the cathedral by the builders are not altogether lost to the modern user, just as some elements of liturgical practice (celebration of the sacraments; the divine office) have survived, though transformed. Other aspects of modern interpretation, on the other hand, might never have occurred to the medieval builder/user. This does not, of course, necessarily make them “wrong.” We coopted Villard de Honnecourt as the essential interlocutor of our Gothic quest, while Gervase of Canterbury mediated at the intersection between our monument and the material context in which it was produced. It is left to the Abbot Suger to begin to acquaint us with the problems and anxieties associated with the production of meaning in Gothic. Suger returned repeatedly to the power of the forms of his church to propel the beholder to a world beyond, from the material to the immaterial. Thus the inscription upon his golden doors: “In what manner it be inherent in this world, the golden door defines: the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material, and, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submission.”4 Similarly, the inscription on the Golden Altar Frontal invites Denis to “cause us to be received in the dwelling of Heaven, and to be sated at the heavenly table instead of at the present one. That which is signified pleases more that that which signifies.”5 Our abbot is also well aware of the power of individual architectural elements to carry meaning; his new chevet is born up by the apostles and prophets represented in the supports of the main arcade and ambulatory.6 But we have seen that Suger was no theologian. His greatest concern 134

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was whether the works he had commissioned would be intelligible to the beholder—­whether visitors would be able to connect signifier with signified—­ and, of course, he wanted them to recognize and remember the role of the abbot. To help us further with the production of meaning at the moment of (or close to) the period of construction of the Gothic cathedral, let us recruit another mediator, a professional theologian, to explain how meaning in the age of Gothic was thought to be generated by the material forms of the church and its furnishings. This is William Durand (also Durandus), bishop of Mende.7 In the 1290s Durand wrote a treatise on the symbolism of churches and church ornaments. The prologue outlines the author’s agenda. Observing that the task of professors in the liberal arts as well as practitioners of the mechanical arts (painters and builders) is to understand reasons and causes, Durand concludes that priests, too, need appropriate knowledge in order to understand doctrine. Critical for this knowledge is the distinction (drawn from St. Augustine) between natural signs (material “evidence”) and conventional signs or “figures”: “We rightly receive the sacraments as signs or figures since figures are not themselves the virtues but signs of the virtues, just as men are instructed through writing. Moreover, some signs are natural while others are posited by men.’”8 “Whatever belongs to the liturgical offices, objects, and furnishings of the Church is full of signs of the divine and the sacred mysteries, and each of them overflows with a celestial sweetness when it is encountered by a diligent observer who can extract ‘honey from rock and oil from the stoniest ground’ [Deut 32: 13].”9 Such signs or “figures” allow passage from what is seen with physical vision to deeper spiritual meanings: “For example, in white vestments we understand in a certain sense the beauty of our souls, namely the glory of our immortality which we cannot plainly see.”10 Durand then lays out the standard medieval understanding of the four levels of reading the Scriptures: historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical.11 “History is when the words describe an actual event—­as for example when the children of Israel, after their deliverance from Egypt, made a Tabernacle to the Lord. Allegory is present when what is said literally has another meaning spiritually; for example, when one word or deed brings to mind another. If what is represented is visible, then it is simply an allegory; if it is invisible and celestial, then it is called anagogy.”12 Tropology brings concern with the correction of manners, and anagogy conveys the “upward-­ leading” passage from visible to invisible things. Phenomena like the Trinity, the orders of angels, and the celestial rewards at the end of time can never be seen with human eyes—­but they can be anticipated through anagogical ascent. “Similarly, Jerusalem is understood historically as that earthly city that THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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pilgrims seek; allegorically, it represents the church militant; tropologically, any faithful soul; anagogically, the heavenly Jerusalem, or our homeland.13 Durand owns up to what the modern reader looking for a mechanically assured passage from sign to significance may find particularly frustrating in his exposition of meaning: “Often in this work different senses of interpretation are employed for the same thing, passing from one sense to another, and the diligent reader shall be able to observe how this happens.” Our author goes on to apply his concept to the meanings of the church building and its parts, beginning with the premise “The material church thus represents the spiritual.”14 The passage from the material forms of the church to spiritual meanings is then illustrated with a series of examples. Remembering Abbot Suger’s concern with intelligibility, I would suggest that while the beholder could begin to grasp some of Durand’s linkages through clues or visual signs in the form of the building, others would be unintelligible without the mediation of an interlocutor. This was, after all, the whole point of the writer’s exercise: Durand, as a good, learned bishop, had set himself the task of providing parish priests the equipment to impart to unlettered layfolk the means of understanding the allegories of the church expressed in its physical edifice. The somatic nature of the physical structure of the church is available to visitors both in its visible forms and in some of the names applied to its parts: a “rib” (as in rib vaults) is, after all, a body part—­what was originally a metaphor has become a standard designation—­as indeed was the case with so many of the names that we apply to the parts of medieval buildings.15 Durandus points to the resemblance of the plan of the church to a human body: “The arrangement of the materials of the church can be likened to the human body. The chancel, that is, the place where the altar is, represents the head; the cross, from either side, represents the arms or the hands, while the remaining part extending to the west is seen as the rest of the body.”16 The church is palpably the body of Christ—­this understanding is visually available to the audience, with the help of the interlocutor.17 However, we learn from Durand that there are also hidden aspects of the meaning of the church derived not from any kind of visible similitude but from analogy between the structural behavior of the edifice and human society. There is no direct physical resemblance between stones and human beings; we need the help of the interlocutor to grasp the idea that the stones of which the edifice is made are the faithful, placed in an appropriate position in relation to their virtues. Stones are shaped and polished by the Great Artisan and bound together with the mortar of water, sand, and lime, which

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is the spirit of charity. And the cornerstone is Christ. Ecclesia, after all, is not just the material structure but also the community of the living faithful and saints.18 But I repeat—­these meanings, powerful though they may be, will not necessarily be seen by the uninitiated visitor without the guidance of the interlocutor. We can see, then, that the passage from signifier to signifier in the mind of medieval viewers and users might be triggered (and meanings produced) both by visual clues and linkages created by visual similitude and through promptings of a structural and cerebral kind. For the second kind of passage the role of the interlocutor is critical. But in the end, of course, there can be no fully coherent system to organize the way that meaning is extracted from the Gothic cathedral by the visitor, medieval or modern.19 I propose, then, that in the following pages we entertain four of the many different ways in which the experience of the Gothic building might stimulate passage to meaning(s).20 We might envisage a shifting scale from mimesis (the building looks like something else) to abstraction (the building represents the builders or the societal values that produced it, not through resemblance but through analogy or metonymic association). Each passage is, of course, mediated by the beholder’s preparation—­including assumptions and prejudices and theories—­and by the insistent promptings of the interlocutor.21 First, the story of architecture has, at least since Vitruvius, been told in terms of the physical resemblances between tectonic and natural forms.22 Indeed, as every student of Gothic knows, the very definition of the phenomenon came through the alleged resemblance between sinuous, lacy architectural forms and a forest. Second, architectural forms may also point to other buildings. More than anything else, a building looks like another building. Through deliberately planned resemblances to prototypical architectural forms (biblical, celestial, or actually existing structures) the builders could transfer meaning and value from older to new structures and from older to current systems of societal order. Third, the forms of Gothic have commonly been explained as radical modernism: pure expressions of the application of reason to problems of structure, light, and articulation. It is through reason that builders were able to make a break with the well-­tried forms and practices of the past. It has been maintained, fourth, that Gothic cathedrals take on their principal meaning through their visual references to something never seen by human eyes but only imagined by visionaries and prophets—­the Celestial City of Jerusalem, as articulated in the liturgy of dedication. The written sources leave us with no doubt of the builder’s inten-

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tion to endow the cathedral with this meaning, but the question of exactly how the beholder responds to the visual clues of the building to effect the passage to heaven has been bitterly fought over.

Similitude to Nature; Local Roots The story of architecture in general and Gothic architecture in particular begins with the myth of natural origins.23 Such origins might be found in the great Creation story; they might invoke the first house of Adam and Eve; they might be rooted in Vitruvius’s account of the origins of the Orders; or they might be based upon the assumption (dominant in the Middle Ages and Renaissance) that human creativity is limited to mimesis: just as the images of figurative art are (more or less) simulacra of things actually seen, so humans as they create tectonic forms and spaces copy Nature.24 Viollet-­le-­ Duc, profoundly influenced by Georges Cuvier, believed that Gothic builders followed the same principles that can be discovered in the formation of the natural forms of the earth.25 Gothic is right because it is natural. In the following pages we will explore a thesis and an antithesis. My thesis is that “natural” forms, pointing to origins in Creation, might lend significance and legitimacy to a particular way of building, promising universal understanding and approval. Through the ingenuity of mason and ymagier those forms can lead the desiring beholder to prototypes in Creation, to the Garden of Eden before the fall, to the promised land, to the living tree upon which Christ died, and to Paradise. And of course the forms of nature also point emphatically to the here and now—­the trees and vegetation of the countryside surrounding the cathedral city. This thesis—­the promise of approval and comprehension—­may be countered, however, with the following questions. Does this “natural” architecture conform to our own norms of taste, and do we approve of what the building stands for in cultural and historical terms? Do we like it? Does it look right? Considered as a metonym or an index, does it represent or stand for our cultural values or might it represent theirs? The coining of an appropriate designation for what we call Gothic was, right from the start, inextricably intertwined with the construction of local identity: indeed, the very first known epithet applied to the architectural mode associated it with the Franks or French, opus francigenum.26 However, it was up to the Italian humanists of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to offer an “explanation” of the phenomenon by linking the arboreal look of the thing with forest origins in the Gothic North.

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Natural Origins of “Gothic” in the Eyes of Italian Humanists The category of artifacts that we call Gothic was, as far as we know, first so named in the writings of Italian humanists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Working in collaboration with Angelo Colocci and Baldassare Castiglione for Pope Leo X, at a date toward 1519 Raphael famously reported: This architecture [of the Germans] did make some sense, however, as it was derived from trees, not yet cut down, whose branches were bent over and made to form pointed arches when tied together. And although this origin is not wholly to be despised, it is nevertheless weak; for huts made from fitted beams arranged as columns, with gables and a covering roof, as Vitruvius describes with respect to the origin of the Doric order, would be stronger than the pointed arches with two centers. For indeed, according to the law of mathematics, a semi-­circular arch, with each part of its line related only to one center, can carry much more. And beside this weakness, the pointed arch does not have the same grace to our eye, for the perfec‑ tion of the circle is pleasing, and one sees that Nature seeks almost no other form.27

Time and space were here collapsed in the deft equation of that forest look familiar to every visitor to a Gothic church with the culture of Germans, whose ancestors were believed to have lived and worshiped in forests. The underlying reason for the animus is, of course, not mentioned: dislike of those same Germans (Goths), who had destroyed Rome, whose living representatives (especially the French) continued to humiliate Italian armies militarily, and whose alternative humanism Italians might find unacceptable.28 The cyclical theory of historical “development” linked the decline of the Roman Empire and the fifth-­century invasion of Rome by the Germans or Goths with a loss of quality in artistic production. Raphael proposed a classification system in which the style of buildings might be understood in relation to historic and cultural decline. This was not a dispassionate or detached system of classification since the word maniera, “style,” carried moral and judgmental undertones, meaning “a kind of deportment, a put-­togetherness that the ancient Romans called ‘concinnitas.’”29 Ingrid Rowland explains the maniera thing most adeptly: “The ancient Romans had had it, the barbarians had lost it, the Germans had begun to recover it, Bramante had brought it back to vibrant life, and [Pope] Leo . . . could use it to attract Christian souls to a life of virtue.”30 Thus the alleged failure of “Gothic” could not be blamed on a lack of THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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­dependence on Nature but rather with the association between the way it looked and what it represented or stood for in a metonymical sense.31 Rowland has contrasted the lofty agenda of Popes Julius II and Leo X to unite Christendom through lavish artistic patronage to the self-­defeating parochial campishness of the literati of the papal court, who spoke of the Germans (Goths) as barbarians and their architecture as an aberration.32 From the time of Pope Nicolas V (1447–­55), indulgences and pardons offered in the North had provided a copious cash flow for the Apostolic Chamber, facilitating the construction of sumptuous monuments in Rome.33 In 1517 a renegade Augustinian monk who in 1510–­11 had spent a miserable winter in Rome at the Convent of Santa Maria del Popolo published his ninety-­five theses against abuses in the Roman Church.34 Northerners, like Martin Luther, might feel that their own people had paid for lavish works of art and a hothouse culture that was openly hostile to them. In this way the very mechanism that had been proposed as a means of bringing Christians together (lavish patronage of the arts, spectacular architectural commissions) contributed to the alienation of northerners and the destruction of the unity of the Catholic Church in the Reformation. Paradoxically, the collapse of the moral base of the Renaissance church accompanied the triumph of the forms of Italian art and architecture in the North. Discussing the artistic production of the period after the decline of the Roman Empire, Georgio Vasari invoked the same combination of factors. Buildings and other artifacts from this period are associated with their German creators (maniera tedesca) and are found offensive in their appearance. References to natural forms (vines, tendrils, foliage) found in such works only served to enhance their irreparable ugliness: There is another type of works called tedeschi [German], which in their ornaments and proportions are very different from the antique and the modern. Today they are not used by the most gifted architects, who instead flee from them as monstrous and barbarous and forsaken of all that comprises order—­which should rather be called confusion and disorder—­ for they have made in their buildings, which are so numerous that they have polluted the world, portals adorned with columns that are thin and twisted like vines and do not have the strength to bear a load, no matter how light. . . . And in these works they made so many projections and breaks, little corbels and vine tendrils, that they threw their works out of proportion; and often, by placing one thing above another they reached such a height that the top of a portal touched the roof.35

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Anne-­Marie Sankovitch offered a most perceptive commentary on this text and on Vasari’s approach to categorization in general: unlike “true classical orders which imitate the rational proportions of the human body, the maniera tedesca imitates the frail forms of twisted vines. . . . Furthermore, the buildings seem to swarm with tendrils, vines, and leaves, as if overtaken by and in imitation of rampant Nature.” The phenomenon is found threatening on account of both its awesome geographical “spread” (like a weed) and its temporal persistence. However, Vasari had trouble fixing the hated maniera tedesca, which ultimately refused to be bound by temporal limits and burst out again not as a historical phenomenon (associated with the destruction of Rome and loss of architectural expertise) but as an aesthetic one.36 Thus Antonio da Sangallo’s wooden model (ca. 1540) for St. Peter’s was criticized for its “look”—­its multiple little members and projections and arches piled on arches and columns on columns imitating the “maniera et opera tedesca rather than l’antica et buona which today the best architects follow.” We may conclude by reflecting upon the potential for deception inherent in the path to meaning offered by the eloquent interlocutor: although that interlocutor may claim to derive meaning from the building through his reading of this or that visual clue (readily available to the audience) and its linkage with an extraneous meaning-­giver (leaves, foliage, tendrils, pointed arches, and the forest) or from the laws of physics (the allegation that the round arch can bear more weight than the pointed one), it is, in fact, cultural prejudice and taste that finally determine, to a great extent, what meaning is extracted.37 We must not underestimate the extent to which the personal animus of Popes Julius II and Leo X against northerners, particularly the French, might have affected attitudes to the cultural production dubbed “Gothic.”38

Gothic as “Us”: Creating Northern Identity It has sometimes been assumed that the pejorative understanding of “Gothic” proposed by Raphael and Vasari quickly found universal acceptance. However, Esmond de Beer showed that the term Gothic, applied to architecture, only gained general currency in the North as late as the seventeenth century, when it had lost its immediate association with the historical Goths.39 By the end of the same century it was applied alongside the adjective modern in a nonpejorative way as an epithet to describe pre-­Renaissance architecture in general.40 In England the term probably came into use in the

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circle of Inigo Jones and Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel; it is first documented in the diaries of John Evelyn (1641) and other English travelers from the midcentury.41 Builders, particularly in England, continued to practice in the same mode as their ancestors, and, as we shall see, French architectural writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later continued to show considerable respect and understanding for the forms and underlying sense of Gothic architecture.42 In the late eighteenth century the forest story took on “scientific” weight for northerners in an extraordinary crossover between the study of Gothic architecture and the new interest in the natural sciences. Sir James Hall was an eminent scientist whose major contribution was an understanding of how the stratified form of rocks resulted from origins forged in the crucible of the earth. In his two study trips of Europe, Hall became fascinated with Gothic architecture and the theory of its origins in nature. He set out to “demonstrate” empirically how the forms and spaces of a Gothic cathedral, including the flowing forms of curvilinear tracery, could be created though flexible living willow wands.43 He published the results of his work first in a paper delivered to the Royal Edinburgh Society in 1797 and then in a book in 1813 (fig. 26). Like Raphael, Hall took that forest look and turned it into an evidential sign, allowing one to deduce origins with positive certainty. It is easy to ridicule Hall’s naive horticultural experiment—­yet his testimony provides a cogent demonstration of the power of a building to project meaning through visual signs.44 And of course such “scientific” work served to reinforce the arboreal images already formulated by romantic poets.45 It has been suggested that the forest theory for the origins of Gothic, rather than being a gratuitous invention of hostile Italian literati, might actually reflect awareness of attempts made by German builders and their patrons to develop theoretical underpinnings for the forms of Gothic that could match the theories of Alberti and Vitruvius.46 The publication of both Vitruvius and Alberti’s De re aedificatoria in 1485 may have produced such a response on the part of German patrons and builders. One year later Matthäus Roriczer published his little book on pinnacles, laying out a Vitruvian framework for Gothic design based on squares inscribed inside squares (“quadrature,” fig. 27).47 This publication project, initiated by Roriczer’s patron, Wilhelm of Reichenau, bishop of Eichstätt (1464–­96), a humanist and first chancellor of Ingolstadt University, was an attempt to establish a cultural community (a field, in the spirit of Pierre Bourdieu) around a self-­conscious combination of practice and theory in an attempt to exploit that forest look in order to establish national roots. Tacitus, in Germania (available in published form 142

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Figure 26. James Hall’s “natural Gothic,” from J. Hall, Essay on the Origin, History and Principles of Gothic Architecture.

Figure 27. Matthäus Roriczer, quadrature applied to pinnacle design, from M. Roriczer, Büchlein von der Fialen Gerechtigkeit.

after 1473), had described Germans setting up their altars in the depths of the forest and creating a sacred precinct without firm enclosing boundaries. Increasing use of foliate vaults in German fifteenth-­century churches might be understood, then, as a conscious allusion to the natural forms of ancestral places of worship. Ethan Matt Kavaler has added exciting new dimensions to our understanding of the significance of natural forms in Gothic.48 In the aftermath of the French incursion into Italy in 1494, and the appearance of southern or “antique” decorative forms in northern France, northerners were fully aware of Gothic as a mode, a conscious choice, as against an opposing Italianate repertoire. Kavaler explores the possibility that contemporaries might have compared the “living” forms of the suspended vault ribs at Ingolstadt, for example, with “perfect” abstract geometric forms to see a kind of degeneration of the perfect laws originally built into the world by God. Such dense vegetal ornament sometimes obscures or denies architectural form to the beholder, who was “required to parse these veiled forms.”49 The process of parsing, articulated verbally, will, of course, transform the beholder into the interlocutor. Intense “reading” of the puzzling combination of half-­ concealed structure and exuberant foliage is pleasurable, inducing jouissance.50 The transformation of architectural members into seemingly natural growth suggests “a mystical manifestation of the divine.”51 Thus the notion of Gothic, with its ethnic and natural origins, considered by Italian humanists as a pejorative designation, might have drawn upon theories invoked by the very builders of Gothic edifices to justify and theorize their art in the face of invasion by an alien style.52 Is it possible that such thoughts on natural origins go back to the beginnings of Gothic?

Who Put Nature in the Cathedral? Our plot invites us to consider the production of meaning both as the response of viewers and as the intention of builders. Kavaler and Crossley have convincingly argued that late medieval (fifteenth-­century) builders and viewers in the North were aware of Gothic as opposed to Italianate, and that foliate forms were used in a self-­conscious way to convey meaning. Can the same assumptions be made about the builders and users of twelfth-­and thirteenth-­century churches?53 We have no specific testimony to match that of Raphael or Vasari, although Neoplatonic thinkers returned repeatedly to the analogies between the world’s creation and human creativity, between macro and micro.54 But the most compelling evidence can be found in the buildings themselves. More than half a century ago Denise Jalabert underTHE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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took what she considered a comprehensive study of foliate capitals, proposing a three-­stage evolution from generalized forms, not based directly upon nature (early Gothic), to naturalistic forms derived from direct observation (reaching a crescendo in the Ste-­Chapelle), to the most “realistic” foliage of late Gothic.55 Jalabert did little to set this “evolution” within a broader cultural context but returned repeatedly to what she considered the essentially French character of the phenomenon. Naturalistic foliage is seen as “developing” and “spreading” from the Île-­de-­France to contiguous areas. Jalabert’s thesis has recently been extended by Meredith Cohen and Xavier Dectot in the catalogue of the exhibition Paris ville rayonnante, where it is suggested that by the mid-­thirteenth century ymagiers were venturing beyond the trees and plants they might find in the immediate vicinity of the city to locate a wider range of prototypes from more distant forest environments. The intense interest in naturalistic forms is associated with the writing of Albertus Magnus (particularly De natura aut de rerum principiis), work presumably known by ecclesiastical patrons. In his remarkable study of Gothic naturalistic foliate capitals, The Leaves of Southwell, Nikolaus Pevsner had already made extensive reference to Albertus Magnus. But he does much more than this, dealing both with the visitor’s response to the capitals in the passageway and chapter house of Southwell and with the mentalité that lay behind their manufacture. Lifelike images of oak and hawthorn were put into the building not just to create a kind of natural history museum demonstrating the Aristotelian empiricism of Albertus Magus but to express the “inexhaustible delight in live form that can be felt with all senses” that was also articulated in rhetorical expressions ranging from the preaching of St. Francis of Assisi to the romance of Wolfram von Eschenbach.56 Each of our three witnesses, Suger, Gervase, and Villard, can be summoned to lend his testimony on this “inexhaustible delight” of the senses. For Suger the delight is not so much in the living and changing forms of plants as in the natural crystalline forms that express changelessness and eternity. His writings abound with loving references to gemstones: “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the jasper, the chrysolite and the onyx, and the beryl, the sapphire, and the carbuncle, and the emerald.”57 Gervase of Canterbury is quite clear about the references to Paradise made by the cathedral; for example, when the old choir burned down, the monks were exiled from their beloved space “like as the children of Israel were ejected from the land of promise, yea, even from a paradise of delight.” But it is, of course, in the Villard Enterprise that we find the most direct testimony of the sense of delight in the forms of nature. The pages of Villard’s 146

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little book teem with images of creatures great and small.58 He shows us foliate elements of the kind used to decorate capitals, cornices, and voussoirs. And there is the famous image of the lion, which the text assures us was drawn al vif. Most commentators on Villard have dwelt upon the gap between this claim and the schematized, sometimes misunderstood renderings of the objects, natural and artificial, that “Villard” has encountered. His architectural foliage belongs to Jalabert’s first category of generalized forms not “counterfeited” directly from nature. However, within the skeptical framework of interpretation proposed in the first section of this book, we no longer need to understand the texts in Villard’s book as entirely sincere informational notes supplied by an earnest artist; added later, they sometimes deliberately set out to obscure or deceive. But the user needs no explanations in order to experience Villard’s delectation in the world of nature. In addition to our three witnesses, we may summon a fourth, whose testimony will serve to extend our appreciation of the meaning of those forms of nature in the cathedral: the author of the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln.59 T. A. Heslop has suggested that the author with his image of the foundations of the cathedral buried in the earth, the wall soaring toward the clouds and the roof toward the stars, leads us to “see that the church is like a tree with roots, trunk and canopy.”60 The cathedral “seems to be the result not of art but of nature.” Most memorable, in relation to our concerns with nature in the cathedral, is the author’s almost ecstatic response to the colored and variegated marble shafts employed in St. Hugh’s choir. I shall quote at length: The work is supported by another costly material consisting of black stonework [Purbeck marble], as though it is not content with thus having just one colour. It is not so open and porous as the other stone but flashes with glint upon glint, firmed as it is by its rigid positioning. It does not deign to be conquered by any iron tools, save when it is conquered through a special skill, that is, when the surface is softened by heavily applied sand-­rubbing and the solid marble is penetrated by strong vinegar. On being closely inspected this stone can hold people’s minds in suspense as they wonder whether it is jasper or marble; but if jasper, then dull jasper, while if marble, an aristocrat of marbles. Of this substance are the shafts which encircle the pillars in such a way that they seem to be keeping up a kind of ring-­dance there. Their outer surface, more polished than a fresh-­growing fingernail, presents a starry brilliance to the dazzled sight, for nature has painted there so many varied forms that, if art should toil with sustained endeavor to produce a similar painting, it could hardly copy what nature has done. Thus THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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handsome jointing arranged there in seemly rank a thousand shafts which, strong, precious and gleaming, render the whole structure of the cathedral durable with their strength while enriching it with their costliness and brightening it with their gleam. For the shafts themselves stand soaring and lofty, their finish is clear and resplendent, their order graceful and geometrical, their beauty fit and serviceable, their function gratifying and excellent, their rigid strength undecayingly sharp to the touch.61

We may conclude that the forms of nature were put into the cathedral for a range of reasons: to refer both to Eden and to Paradise and to the living cross upon which Christ died; to convey legitimacy; to induce a sense of becoming or transformation; to create a sense of local identity, of the passage of time, of hereness and nowness as well as the sublime. In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance such forms may have been seen as evidential signs pointing to local and ethnic roots. In some cases, foliage can be considered as representational, as, for example, in the rich band of leaves of cress that encircles the interior of Amiens Cathedral at triforium level. This extraordinary undying garland may refer to the miracle of the leaves and flowers that accompanied the invention of the relics of St. Firmin, when a winter’s day became summer with leaves and blossoms testifying to a miraculous transformation. On the saint’s feast day members of the clergy were crowned with foliage.62 Similarly, in tympana depicting the Coronation of the Virgin (Notre-­Dame of Paris, for example) the richly exuberant foliate forms represent the images of plants and flowers in the Song of Songs.63 Tens of thousands of foliate capitals must have been produced between the mid-­twelfth and the mid-­thirteenth centuries. It is clear that as makers and users responded critically to this extraordinary output, they expressed their desire for ever more lifelike forms. This is what gives us the extraordinary impression of growth in Gothic sculpture and its geographical spread—­ almost like the natural growth of a plant or animal.64 The extreme statement of this transformational phenomenon is found in the famous leaf masks, where man appears to have changed into plant or plant into man.65 There is every reason to believe that clerical patrons, who might have read Albertus Magnus, would have been delighted with the new level of naturalism.66 We must not forget another potential audience group, the rustici—­men and women of surrounding villages who, having come into the great cathedral from the fields and forests, found familiar plants and flowers miraculously eternalized in this sacred space.67 These images would empower ordinary men and women to become interlocutors, pointing and identifying natural forms that they might know from their own environment. 148

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It was, then, not by accident that natural forms found their way into the Gothic cathedral—­such forms were put there by the builders to allow the edifice to speak and to be spoken, to tell the story of creation and to induce a sense of hereness and nowness, of growth, and of enchantment and delight.

Similitude to Other Buildings Although viewers may grasp the presences of nature in both the envelope and the details of the Gothic cathedral, in fact, of course, more than anything, a cathedral resembles another cathedral—­and this is especially true of Gothic. This obviously involves meaning put into the cathedral through the desires of the builders, who defined their agenda through references to known architectural prototypes, as well as meaning taken out of the building by the beholder who brings to the viewing experience a certain horizon of expectations.68 Our observation that Amiens Cathedral (fig. 1) is particularly tall, light, and spacious implies comparison with, for example, Noyon Cathedral, which is lower, narrower, and darker. There is a specificity in the exploration of the forms of a building in relation to previous buildings, and a satisfying element of relative certainty in the knowledge that the builders were forced, willy nilly, to define their expectations in relation to existing structures, and that references to such structures could provide a powerful means of transferring meaning from a desirable prototype that could be seen to stand for a set of aspirations derived not just from architectural form but from the total packet of circumstances associated with that older building. Conversely, lack of similitude could signify a revolt against all that older building(s) represented. To the (post)modern student of architectural history working within the clearly defined protocol of the Academy with its requirements that ideas get published and properly documented with footnotes, the pursuit of such issues has seemed much more appropriate than the exploration of Gothic “style” or vague concepts of similitude to nature or, even worse, Dionysian visions of heaven. Thus it is not surprising that the intellectual legacy of the writer who defined the concept of “the iconography of architecture” has set the gold standard for scholarship in the history of medieval architecture for more than a half-­century. In 1942 Richard Krautheimer published an essay that has arguably had more impact on the study of medieval architecture than any comparable single publication in the ensuing period.69 Drawing upon both analysis of the form of the building and written sources (especially dedications), Krautheimer explored the problem of “copies” in medieval architecture, concluding that a “copy” need not embody a high-­level formal similitude in THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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order to convey aspects of the meaning of the prototype. Krautheimer concluded that among the numerous “copies” of the Holy Sepulcher built between the fifth and seventeenth centuries—­many of them confirmed as such not just by the shape but by the dedication—­no two specimens were the same: “It would seem as though a given shape were imitated not so much for its own sake as for something else it implied ” [my italics].70 Unlike Hans Sedlmayr (whom I will consider later), Krautheimer located the desire to convey meaning to the edifice within a specific historical, political, and ideological framework. Thus in an article published in the same year as “Iconography,” Krautheimer tracked the appearance of the basilica with stubby T transept, associating the appearance of this type in the North not with any kind of disembodied desire to return to antiquity but with the very specific program of northern builders in the age of Charlemagne to articulate links with the agency of Emperor Constantine and the triumph of the church.71 The resemblance between churches and their prototypes formed part of ideological programs that were not just to establish links with some ideal image of the Forest, or the Celestial City, but were part of a very earthly struggle for structures of authority and power.72 What has this to do with Gothic? In the revisionist atmosphere of the 1980s, it became popular to challenge the old idea (associated with the work of, for example, Viollet-­le-­Duc, Panofsky, and Bony) that Gothic was an essentially pioneering, forward-­moving phenomenon, and to apply instead concepts derived from Krautheimer’s notion of the “iconography of architecture.” An important early trumpet blast came from Willibald Sauerländer, who pointed out that despite Vasari’s case that the canons of ancient art had been violated in German works, early Gothic architecture should be considered in the context of the “Renaissance of the Twelfth Century” which consciously sought a revival of classical forms and literature. 73 Though there was an inherent conflict between the elegant column beloved of the ancients and of the early Christian church and the masonry vault, important in the agenda of twelfth-­century builders, the two elements are combined in certain great monuments of the mid-­twelfth century, notably S-­Denis, S-­Germain-­des-­Prés, and Notre-­Dame of Paris. Other “early Gothic” monuments, like S-­Remi of Reims (western frontispiece), clearly drew upon local pre-­Christian Roman monuments. William Clark, like Sauerländer, argued that early Gothic should be understood essentially as a historicizing phenomenon. Many of the features normally considered “new” in early Gothic—­particularly S-­Denis—­were, in fact, deliberate appropriations and/or imitations of the Merovingian forms

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of the old abbey church.74 The conscious appropriation of architectural forms that made reference to the Merovingian past was part of a larger program to reestablish Paris as the seat of kings and to enhance the image of S-­Denis as the preferred royal monastery.75 Within the spatial framework of our notional plot, “historicism” must involve the production of meaning both at the moment of building and at the moment of reception. It has to reflect clear intentionality on the part of the builders: the desire to encode meaning in the edifice through a language of signs. The intelligibility of this language then depends upon the ability of beholders to unscramble the code and to read the message that will conduct them from the edifice before the eyes to another edifice, one endowed with profound significance. Clark offers ample evidence of the intentions of Suger—­they match the abbot’s reflections on the historical significance of the archive sources of S-­Denis, which, he claimed, provided evidence of extensive holdings that the abbey once enjoyed but that it had subsequently lost. The abbot masked his aggressive campaign of territorial acquisition under the guise of a righteous restoration of the good old past. The abbot’s repeated verbal references to Dagobert were clearly intended to help consolidate the status of S-­Denis as the monastery preferred by kings. However, as we have seen, the very loquaciousness of the abbot and his writings, together with the inscriptions he had placed in various part of the church, indicates that he realized that without direct verbal explanation (oral and written) the visitor/user would, in fact, be quite unable to unscramble the message. Indeed, modern art historians were themselves generally unaware of the hidden message of the reused elements and replicated dimensions at S-­Denis until relatively recently. It seems doubtful that a twelfth-­century pilgrim visiting the S-­Denis crypt would have spontaneously exclaimed: “My word, look at those archaic columns and capitals—­they really take me back to the days of the glorious Dagobert!” But certainly in a more general sense, the visitor to the S-­Denis crypt would have gained a direct, somatic, and dramatic experience of descent into a space, dark, moist, and mysterious, that represented a mythic past. The idea that meaning is produced principally through the transfer of value through architectural references (whether they be “copies” or “quotations”) to known prototypes has played a powerful role in the study of medieval architecture in the past half-­century.76 In 1989, I interpreted the intention of the builders of the Gothic cathedral of S-­Pierre of Beauvais in political as well as architectural terms.77 Milon de Nanteuil, founding bishop, attempting to resist the growing power of the king of France, claimed to be directly

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dependent upon the papacy; the form of his cathedral with its stepped-­up pyramidal elevation was directly dependent upon Old St. Peter’s in Rome and the third abbey church at Cluny. After the king forced Bishop Milon out of office, his successor, Robert of Cressonsac, capitulated. The parts of Beauvais Cathedral undertaken under Robert’s tenure make direct reference to Louis IX’s favorite monastery, Royaumont, and the continuation of construction at Beauvais into the upper choir points to architectural forms in use in the capital city, especially the work of Pierre de Montreuil. However, in my own work on the primary written sources for Gothic construction I have also established that references to older monuments do not necessarily carry meaning. For example, in 1455 when Master Bleuet was asked to design a western frontispiece for the unfinished cathedral of Troyes, he responded that the prototype should be found in three existing cathedrals: Reims, Amiens, and Notre-­Dame of Paris.78 The written sources (chapter deliberations; fabric accounts) do not suggest that these monuments were chosen for ideological reasons—­it is more probable that they were identified simply because they were familiar, constituting a shared habitus. As it happened, however, the scheme that Bleuet chose to follow was not derived from any of these famous prototypes; it is probable that he simply followed a parchment plan that had existed in the workshop since the mid-­thirteenth century. The force of the Gothic movement is derived partly from the fact that Gothic buildings principally resemble not faraway monuments but other Gothic buildings located in a nearby city, often, in early Gothic, Paris or the surrounding area.79 The acute sense of here-­and-­nowness of the period is thus captured by lively references to both the local built environment and, as we have seen, to the natural environment. One of our three witnesses bears precious testimony to this mechanism of imitation or sameness in Gothic architectural production. Villard de Honnecourt’s plan of the choir of Cambrai Cathedral (begun around 1220; demolished in 1796) indicates a very close connection with the cathedral of Reims (begun in 1211). The link is confirmed in the text attached to the elevation of the radiating chapel of Reims Cathedral, which asserts that this is how the Cambrai chapels will look if they are done right.80 Carl Barnes has suggested that Villard was a kind of ‘talent scout” for the chapter of Cambrai, gathering the drawings that would allow them to fix the form of the new cathedral choir. The production of thousands of lookalike buildings and the percolation of characteristic forms from monumental church architecture to secular buildings, and to the so-­called minor arts, are part of a larger cultural plot that will be examined in the last section of this book. 152

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Modernism and Reason In a continuing stream of thought, documented from the Middle Ages to the present, Gothic architecture has been interpreted as a sign of startling modernism: resulting not from slavish imitation—­neither of nature nor of other buildings—­but from the a priori application of reason and ongoing creativity.81 I cannot possibly document the full extent of all the manifestations of this mode of thought; let me, rather, provide some illustrations of the ideas of some of those who have made the most emphatic case for Gothic as modernism, and then conclude by asking our three witnesses to present their positions. As we explore the ideas of those who represent Gothic principally in terms of the application of reason, we will encounter a paradox: it was, of course, precisely the reasoning and the inventive power of the skillful artist that allowed him to rediscover the working principles of the creation of the world, especially the laws of physics, and to apply those principles to create illusionistic works of art that astonish the beholder through their similitude to natural forms “out there.” Marvin Trachtenberg has made a powerful case for “Gothic” as a kind of anticlassicism or deliberate rejection of Roman and “Romanesque” styles.82 Medieval modernism, like the modernism of our own time, rooted in the concept of the critical power of reasoning over precedent and authority, deployed radical new forms to challenge the dominance of the old order. In order to advance our understanding of the phenomenon, Trachtenberg argues, we must abandon the older criteria for Gothic that focused upon visual or formal characteristics—­skeletal form, diaphaneity, linearity, diagonal­ ity, square schematism, and the like—­and focus instead on the working out of the tension between historicism and modernism. “Romanesque,” deeply historicizing, was driven by a strongly self-­ conscious view of history; “Gothic,” on the other hand, brought a clear paradigm shift where historicizing forms progressively disappear.83 The transformative process was driven by the builders’ critical response to the limits of the groin vault; this led to “mutations”—­including the modernist pointed, or broken, arch, an “indexical sign of the revolution”—­in addition to being a fix for reconciling the heights of the arches, the ribs, and the crown of the vault. The Gothic turn to modernism did not happen all at once. The mid-­ twelfth century saw a revival, for example, of the classical column (choirs of S-­Denis, S-­Martin-­des-­Champs, and S-­Germain-­des-­Prés, as discussed above). However, such historicist forms were rapidly subverted, beginning with the adoption of steep (“anticlassical”) proportions with columns and colonnettes thinned down and extended to the point that capitals shriveled THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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to a speck and disappeared and all connections with antique sources were eliminated. With the introduction of window tracery the interior became entirely anticlassicist; flying buttresses did the same to the exterior. There is, of course, nothing new about the understanding of Gothic as the application of reason to architectural problems. Robin Middleton has provided the most complete narrative of the continuing tradition in French postmedieval writings.84 Philibert de l’Orme (ca. 1514–­70), the great arbiter of Italian taste in architecture, having been trained in the old building practices of traditional craftsmen, demonstrated a pragmatic attitude toward what worked, using the epithet modern to describe the style we would call Gothic.85 His manner of describing is factual, rational, and well-­provided with appropriate technical terms: arcs, doubleaux, liernes, tiercerons, formerets. A century later François Dérand (1591–­1644) also presented a rational image of Gothic, with what has been called the first written definition of the Gothic rib vault as a “clearly defined as a functional, structural member.”86 Construction in the Gothic style continued in projects like the seventeenth-­ century rib vaults installed in the nave of S-­Germain-­des-­Prés and the reconstruction of Ste-­Croix of Orléans. Such public visibility and the support of powerful patrons conveyed to l’ordre gothique respectability and cultural meaning. Within this positive framework, thoughts could proceed beyond the representation of single monuments to the problem of how they should be grouped and the question of how the “style” had been formed. It made no sense to derive the forms of “Gothic” from the Goths, who from their pre-­ Roman environment had left no stone architecture. Florent le Comte in 1699 proposed other points of origin, including Islamic Spain and the other countries of the Arab world.87 Accumulated knowledge of the forms of medieval buildings and the beginnings of a systematic knowledge of chronology allowed the details of the edifice, moldings, for example, to be read as an index for date—­it is said that Jean Lebeuf (1687–­1760), a pupil of Bernard de Montfaucon, was able to date moldings to within about twenty years.88 Remarkable for his ability to find appropriate words to represent Gothic was the military engineer A. F. Frézier (1682–­1773; Traité de stéreotomie, 1738). Frézier represented Gothic architecture as “a precise calculated affair, dependent upon a carefully worked out system of vaulting.”89 In a way that was not generally realized until a century later, Frézier reached an understanding of the Gothic system as a unified organism with forms conceived in relation to their function. French thinkers of the eighteenth century realized that illusionism and mimesis were possible only through the application of reason: “Gothic taste builds upon the principle of the interruption of masonry [mass], which was 154

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used as sparingly as possible in order to facilitate big windows and other openings linked together by very slender supports that seem hardly sufficient to carry the mass, in such a way that masonry, deployed almost regretfully, only serves, so to speak, as the frame for the windows and other openings.”90 Gothic was more about deception than about “truth”—­it might provide an illusionistic re-­creation of the glimmering light of the forests of the Gauls. “The effect [addresse] of a long and delicate pillar is of a beauty that is deceptive, because it does not at all support the weight with which it seems to be charged.”91 In Marc-­Anthoine Laugier’s (1713–­69) Essai sur l’architecture (1753), Gothic architecture was treated as a prime architectural model. Laugier wrote of his entry into Notre-­Dame of Paris: At first encounter my attention is seized and my imagination is struck by the extended space, the height, the openness of this vast nave; I am forced to devote some moments to the surprise evoked in me by the majesty of the ensemble. Pulling back from this first admiration, if I look carefully at the details I find countless absurdities, but I place the blame on the infelicity of the time. In such a way that having carefully picked my way through and critiqued [the forms of the building], returning to the middle of the nave I am still in admiration and the impression that remains in me makes me exclaim, “Here are plenty of faults, but here is grandeur!”92

The building makes Laugier speak—­of the affect that he has experienced. The emotional tone of this response was new for French thought. It was in the context of the conversations over the structural problems experienced during the construction of the Parisian Pantheon that we encounter the most cogent statement concerning the relationship between reason and mimesis in Gothic.93 Jean-­Rodophe Perronet (1708–­94) wrote in the Mercure de France: “The magic of these latter edifices [of Gothic] consists principally in having been constructed as some kind of imitation of animal structure: the thin extended columns, ribs with transverse arches; pointed arches with tiercerons could be compared with [animal] bones, and the vault cells of only four to five inches thickness to the section of the flesh of those same animals. Such edifices can subsist like a skeleton, or the carcass of boats which seem to have been constructed after the same models.”94 The same debate produced not only a continuing refinement of the rhetorical means of representing architecture but also the beginnings of an empirical attempt to understand in the laboratory the essential properties of stone and how it behaves under compression. THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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The end of the eighteenth century marked a turning point in the representation of Gothic in France. With the hostility of a younger generation of architects, the support of Gothic fell to romantics like A. L. Millin (1759–­1818) and François-­René de Châteaubriand (1768–­1848). The English literary tradition triumphed: in his seminal article on French rational theory on Gothic, Robin Middleton concluded, “French architects learned to think their way through the attractions and affectations of the Gothic style while the English were lost in a mediaeval dream-­world.”95 Middleton’s work has provided a glimpse of the intellectual context we need for understanding the thought of Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, probably the greatest interlocutor of Gothic of all time, who insisted that the essential qualities of Gothic were not the result of imitation—­neither of nature nor of existing buildings. In his representation of works of architecture Viollet-­le-­Duc marshaled a powerful tool—­highly innovative graphic imagery—­to depict states of architectural being and becoming. In order to animate his buildings he favored dramatically angled views, often from above; combining discursive and analytical elements (fig. 28).96 Similarly eloquent are his exploded diagrams, which invite the beholder to participate (vicariously) in the reassembly of the constituent elements (fig. 29). Such views were calculated to enhance the understanding of the building as an organic entity: similar techniques were being used at the time in the illustration of natural organisms. We might compare the new digital media’s capacity to facilitate a similar animation of architectural form and space, creating a potential for wordless representation. To represent a particular building in images and words is relatively easy compared with the formidable task of creating verbal representations not just of individual buildings but of the phenomenon of “Gothic” as a whole. Viollet-­le-­Duc first took an encyclopedic approach of the kind pioneered in the eighteenth century, where the alphabetical arrangement of entries conveyed the appearance of an “objective” tool that allowed the user to explore a phenomenon whose natural existence could be taken for granted (Dictionnaire raisonné). In the individual entries (Architecture; Cathedral; Construction; etc.), however, the reader will find the expression of powerfully held theories—­spelled out even more clearly in the latter part of his life, when he turned to a discursive rather than an analytical vehicle: his Entretiens sur l’architecture. Viollet-­le-­Duc’s argument may be summarized under three related propositions. First, that the forms of Gothic constituted a reasonable system susceptible to being explained and understood in its own terms. Second, that while

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Figure 28. E. E. Viollet-­le-­Duc, “Construction” from Dictionnaire raisonné, analytical view of a barrel vault from raking angle.

a Gothic building was not intended to be a simulacrum or copy of nature, the processes underlying the creation of the cathedral could be compared to the Creation of the earth. And third, that Gothic was comprehensible as the expression of a particular moment within the dynamics of social and national change. My three categories overlap in all kinds of ways—­but let us explore each of them as a separate entity. First, we deal with Gothic as a self-­contained and eloquent architectural system. The dictionary entries “Architecture” and “Construction” invite us to consider the forms of Gothic as a kind of palpable internal logic where beauty resides “in the judicious use of the means and the materials that the builder has at his disposition.”97 Architecture cannot be judged on the basis

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Figure 29. E. E. Viollet-­le-­Duc, “Construction: Voûtes” from Dictionnaire raisonné, analytical deconstruction of the springer of a rib vault.

of the moeurs of the builders or users—­“a building can in no way whatsoever be ‘fanatical,’ ‘oppressive,’ or ‘tyrannical’ . . . how can mute buildings really be the accomplices of those who inhabited them . . . ?”98 In his narrative of construction techniques from Roman to Gothic, our interlocutor stresses the alleged monolithic behavior of Roman vaults supported on inert and immobile walls. Gothic, on the other hand, incorporated the principle of elasticity, developed from the experiments of builders to resolve potential movement in arches, vaults, and supports. 158

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Our author then provides a series of demonstrations of the problems involved in designing and constructing groin vaults—­specifically, the difficulty of reconciling the height of the crest of the vault with the transverse arches that frame it, a problem that became particularly serious in rectangular bays. This kind of internal problem led to the adoption of pointed arches to lend greater flexibility in the relationship between spans and heights. The author invokes a chain of reasoning: “In the kinds of construction carried out by peoples who are naturally builders, logical deductions generally follow one another with a fatal rigor. One forward step can never be the last step: it is always necessary to go on. Once a principle has been established as a result of a valid chain of reasoning, reason soon becomes the slave of that principle.  .  .  . No one at all could any longer have prevented Romanesque architecture from becoming the new architecture that came to be called ‘Gothic.’”99 The new system no longer incorporated rigid monolithic vaults but a series of panels with curved surfaces resting on flexible arches. Particularly important was the introduction of wall arches that would provide support in a longitudinal direction, allegedly transferring the weight of the vault to the four supports, freeing up the wall. The elements of the building are expressive—­to the enlightened beholder they actually speak of their roles. Such a conviction is also embodied in Viollet-­le-­Duc’s drawings (figs. 28 and 29). One of the most eloquent diagrams in the entire Dictionnaire is the one that illustrates “the chain of reasonings and the process of trial and error through which the builders of the Middle Ages had to pass in order to move from ignorance to scientific knowledge” (fig. 30).100 Here Viollet-­le-­Duc presents the transverse section of a groin-­vaulted basilica, based upon La Madeleine of Vézelay. To orchestrate the combination of reading and seeing, critical parts of the building are marked with letters of the alphabet. With this most effective teaching device, our interlocutor tells the story of the building—­or, rather, he allows the building to tell its own story. The basilica has been subject to oblique forces at two levels. The high vaults tend to push outward, and in order to arrest deformation iron ties have been inserted (CD); however, the ties have broken, and outward-­leaning deformation has developed in the upper wall and sagging in the keystones of the transverse arches at H. Exterior support has been improvised through the addition of flyers, E, that sit awkwardly atop the buttresses of the outer walls. Lower down the aisle, vaults have also exerted an oblique thrust, inducing movement in those same outer walls and buttresses. Viollet-­le Duc identifies a “law”—­just like the laws governing natural science: “These effects were proTHE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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Figure 30. E. E. Viollet-­le-­Duc, “Construction” from Dictionnaire raisonné, transverse section of a basilica based upon La Madeleine at Vézelay.

duced everywhere in exactly the same fashion.” It is as if the entire story of Gothic could be told in a single diagram. Distortion is to be understood as a sign, allowing the building to speak to us. The builders’ application of reason to problems observed in our edifice led to the discovery and deployment of the pointed or broken arch. There is a triumphal certainty in Viollet-­le-­Duc’s account of the invention of the “pointed equilateral arch” that provided the breakthrough. This is an arch designed as two arcs struck from center points placed upon the baseline: “a true revolution in the art of building.” And here comes the link between the internal logic of the building and the social logic of the builders: “The pointed equilateral arch appeared precisely at the moment when the analytic spirit and the study of natural philosophy and the exact sciences were beginning to germinate within a society that had been pretty much a theocracy up to that point  .  .  . at the moment when architecture began to be practiced principally by the laity.”101 Such an arch was featured in the image on the frontispiece of the Dictionnaire, showing the three people critical to medieval building projects—­clerical patron, knight or seigneur, and master mason—­the latter demonstrating his tracing on a plaster surface of an arch of this kind (fig. 5). In this way the underlying design of the building participates in the logic of society. In a second clump of thought, our interlocutor leads us to reconsider the 160

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relationship between Gothic architecture and nature, understanding architecture as “a logical system equivalent to the workings rather than the appearances of nature” (my italics).102 Modern architects could gain not from slavish copying of Gothic as a model but from inspiration by the same rational principles. Architecture was not a language to represent existing buildings or even nature; it should be governed by the same laws as Creation: it is creation itself. To represent such a phenomenon, Viollet-­le-­Duc employed the strategy pioneered by the savants of the eighteenth century—­that of the encyclopedia. Yet his formidable knowledge of the buildings themselves, coupled with the sophistication of his means of representation, allowed him to trump previous manifestations. The alphabetical format of the Dictionnaire (a kind of deconstructive antinarrative) can be understood as a comment on the limitations imposed upon the representation of buildings or architecture in a traditional rhetorical format—­the discursive essay or treatise.103 For Viollet-­ le-­Duc the encyclopedic vehicle was intended to consolidate the underlying vision of Gothic as an entirely rational or natural phenomenon that might be understood from any of multiple points of entry. This was a scientific exploration of an organic structure allowing the interlocutor to dissect the nature of the thing and all its various parts. The working methods and conclusions of Georges Cuvier (1769–­1832) everywhere found their way into Viollet-­le-­ Duc’s verbal representation of a Gothic edifice.104 Viollet-­le-­Duc saw Creation as the reconciliation of opposites: the separation of light and dark, of water and land, of solid from air. His story of architecture reflects this dialectic: stone and wood are presented as opposites to be reconciled through a judicious combination of both. Gothic represents the third stage of this kind of development, synthesizing Roman vault with Greek frame, just as the third estate represents that last and most perfect stage of the social development of France.105 Thus we are led to the third and last body of thought: Viollet–­le-­Duc’s social theories. Our interlocutor told a tale of the simultaneous appearance of France with its new bourgeois class, its populous cities and new national monarchy, and the appearance of a new kind of “ogival” (ribbed or arched) architecture. Whereas Augustus Welby Pugin thought that Gothic resulted from a unified and harmonious Christian society, our French architect proposed that architecture developed in opposition to the structure of the society to which it belonged. Thus Gothic was not the expression of the feudal and monastic Zeitgeist but an attack on it—­hence the significance of its radical modernism.106 Gothic in its essentially lay character and its oppositional stance was seen as the counterpart of the nineteenth-­century worker’s THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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struggle for rights. In national terms, this kind of architecture corresponded to the period where French society (language, geographical extent, institutions, and customs) reached a form that was recognizably “modern.” Viollet-­le-­Duc’s writings reveal more clearly than any other writer the discursive trap into which tellers of the Gothic story may stumble. Having suggested the metaphor of an unstoppable chain reaction for Gothic, where it was not possible to break a single link of the chain and where every subsequent link had been forged by virtue of the same principle by which the first link had been forged, he continued, “And we may say that it would perhaps be easier to study Gothic architecture in its decadence, moving from its effects back to their causes, and from its consequences back to their principles, than it would be to trace its natural developments as they occurred. This, indeed, is the way most of us who have studied the origins of this kind of art have approached the subject. We took Gothic architecture in its decline as our starting point and then moved back upstream to its source.”107 Here we encounter again the same central issue in the narration of Gothic that I touched upon in the opening pages of this book—­you can define what a Gothic building is only by referring to a “mature” specimen, which will invite you to look to the past to discover how it became what it became. And in doing this you will construct that deterministic chain of necessity where only one outcome was possible—­this is entelechy, or a self-­fulfilling process. Yet architectural production is a historical phenomenon, and in the affairs of history nothing is inevitable. On the Sunday of the decisive Battle of Bouvines (1214) either side might have emerged victorious.108 Château Gaillard was not predestined to fall to the troops of Philip Augustus in 1204—­the disaster might have been avoided if Philip Augustus of France had faced King Richard of England rather than his vacillating brother John.109 Yet we are asked to believe that Gothic had to be Gothic! The deductive logic of the detective may require us to work backward in constructing causes from effect—­but we may make a mistake when we click from reverse into forward, assuming that that our etiological chain of reason somehow represents historical “reality.” Jolting the narrative back into forward mode, we might alternatively tell the story of Gothic architectural production as risk-­taking: builders trembling at the critical moment when formwork was removed and watching with uneasiness and disquietude for displacements. Such vivid experiences were the basis of the education of masons; the only models they had were the buildings themselves. In a most poignant passage Viollet-­le-­Duc addresses the unknown builders of Notre-­Dame of Paris as those who had contributed most to the liberation of architecture from worn-­out traditions: “You 162

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opened up the way to progress and bold and hardy innovations in construction; you already belonged, in short, and on many counts, to modern civilization; you were among the first to adopt, along with a desire for knowledge, a spirit of the impartial research that sought such knowledge.”110 This revolution is expedited not just through the systematic application of rib vaults but also through the introduction of massive pylons (culées) girdling the exterior: “Once they had decided to erect such great buildings with such light materials and with functional parts occupying so little of the total surface, opposing oblique thrusts with obstacles of active rather than passive resistance, the Gothic builders of the twelfth century did not require a great deal of time before they learned the lesson they still had to find some inert stability somewhere.”111 Toward the end of “Construction,” Viollet-­le-­Duc also has some poignant things to say about the role of the interlocutor. The new class of artists and artisans, “vital, active and intelligent,” tended to work in silence and not call undue attention to themselves. Our interlocutor is impassioned in his representation of these silent and gifted artisans, and he begs for your help: “If only others would undertake the task of describing the achievement of these original artists and artisans! Up to now it has hardly been told anywhere else but by us here.”112 I began this section with Marvin Trachtenberg’s case for modernism, which might appear to run entirely counter to William Clark’s case for historicism. What do our three witnesses tell us about these opposing positions? Abbot Suger insisted that the forms and dimensions of his new frontispiece and chevet respected the forms of the older building. Given the apologetic nature of the abbot’s writing, this may indicate his awareness of the extent to which the new work was actually in opposition to the old. Certainly his account of the mosaic installed in the northern portal of the western frontispiece indicates his intense awareness of the modern/historicizing dialectic. Villard de Honnecourt’s choice of images also indicates intense awareness of old and new. His figural style has been explained in terms of the historicizing “antique revival” of the decades before and after 1200; his choice of architectural prototypes, on the other hand, privileges the modern: the architecture of Reims, Cambrai, Chartres, and Laon Cathedrals, the sculpture of Chartres. But it is, of course, Gervase of Canterbury who provides the most systematic and enthusiastic celebration of the new in his extraordinary juxtaposed descriptions of the Romanesque and Gothic choirs of Canterbury.

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An Image of Heaven That arboreal, fibrous look in the cathedral; that conflicting sense of Otherness and familiarity (when you have seen one Gothic cathedral, you’ve seen them all); astonishment at architectural affect (light, space, dynamic movement) achieved through the application of human industry, ingenuity, and reason—­these aspects of the Gothic cathedral, explored in previous pages, are all readily grasped. How one proceeds to convert intuitive response into meaning will depend upon one’s own predisposition and the insistent verbal nudging of the interlocutor. This was precisely what led each of our three witnesses to add words to images in an attempt to fix meaning. There is, however, one passage from visual sign(s) to target meaning(s) that might seem more assured than the others: the sanctuary of the great church was—­ and still is—­widely understood as heaven.113 Of our three witnesses, Villard has nothing to say about this, and Gervase very little. The abbot of S-­Denis, on the other hand, wants to tell us at some length about the image of heaven envisaged and realized by the builders of the new chevet: “We made good progress with His own cooperation, and, in the likeness of the things Divine, there was established to the joy of the whole earth Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the Great King.”114 The meaning that was anticipated by Suger during construction was, the abbot declared, fully revealed through the liturgy of consecration when attendees “believed themselves to behold a chorus celestial rather than terrestrial, a ceremony divine rather than human.”115 Similarly, after the consecration of the altars as the mass was simultaneously and harmoniously celebrated both in the upper choir and in the crypt, the unified harmony “deemed a symphony angelic rather than human.” Participants exclaimed with heart and mouth, “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His Place. . . . By this sacramental unction with the most holy chrism and by the susception of the most holy Eucharist, Thou uniformly conjoinest the material with the immaterial, the corporeal with the spiritual, the human with the Divine . . . Thou invisibly restorest and miraculously transformest the present [state] into the Heavenly Kingdom. Thus, when Thou shalt have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, mayest Thou powerfully and mercifully make us and the nature of angels, Heaven and earth, into one State.”116

While the notion of the Gothic sanctuary as an image of heaven is clearly attested in medieval written sources and may be cogently felt by modern 164

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visitors, professional art historians remain troubled. How exactly the passage from the material to the immaterial is negotiated is open to different interpretations—­we have already encountered the debate about whether Suger himself fully understood the intellectual mechanism of the “anagogical” ascent.117 Let us continue to explore the ambiguities of that ascent with the juxtaposition of the commentaries of two modern scholars: Hans Sedlmayr and Otto von Simson. Both belonged to an age that had become skeptical about Viollet-­le-­Duc’s rational functionalism—­the belief that the vaults are actually carried by the ribs or that pinnacles had a purely functional role in providing vertical ballast that helped stabilize the buttresses.118 Our two modern interlocutors agree upon heavenly significance but disagree emphatically on how the passage is negotiated. Particularly intriguing is the realization on the part of the second scholar, von Simson, that images of the transcendent can serve very nicely in the real push and shove and manipulation of temporal power. As we will see at the end of this chapter, however, neither of our two modern interlocutors has fared well in subsequent art-­ historical discourse.

Hans Sedlmayr (1896–­1984) In 1950 appeared what is arguably the most controversial book on Gothic ever written: Hans Sedlmayr’s Die Entstehung der Kathedrale.119 Negatively received by specialists, the book has never has been translated into English and is known to the English-­speaking world mainly through the disparaging comments of its critics.120 A brief review of its intellectual underpinnings and sketch of its content will serve to illustrate mid-­twentieth-­century debates about the role of the interlocutor or narrator. Sedlmayr belonged to a small but enormously influential group of art historians active around 1930, known as the New Vienna School. Renewed interest in the work and ideas of these scholars may, at last, facilitate a more sympathetic evaluation of Sedlmayr’s explanation of the way the Gothic cathedral generates meaning.121 In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Otto Pächt and Hans Sedlmayr adapted ways of thinking that had originally been developed by the Viennese museum curator Alois Riegl, attempting to push the discipline from a preoccupation with connoisseurship and empiricism to an investigation of underlying aesthetic principles, not just of individual works of art but of an entire “style,” or the artistic impulse of an entire culture. The key concept was Strukturforschung: the attempt to go beyond the surface “look” of the work of art to establish the essential design principle (Gestaltungsprinzip) that informed the entire work or style. The achievement of THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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this goal, Otto Pächt tells us, is possible only through an act of re-­creation by the “art historian who is seeing like an artist.”122 Pächt was particularly concerned with the problems that result from the verbal representation of works of art, and the way such a representation itself may become a work of art; yet while he believed that the art historian had to see like an artist, he deplored “poeticizing belletristic attempts to transpose intuitive, subjective responses to works of art into language.” Sedlmayr defined his working assumptions and methods in his critical article “Towards a Rigorous Study of Art” (1931), where he proposed a two-­tier working structure.123 The first level of activity, collecting and arranging data to establish “facts” like date and provenance, should be understood as nothing more than the study of dead works of art (Kunstleichen, or “art corpses”). These corpses can be animated only through the second level of study, which involves imaginative acts of interpretation of aesthetic constructions (Kunstbilde). Sedlmayr poignantly reflected on the bitter sense of disappointment or loss on passing from the direct experience of a beloved work of art to “objective” level-­one analysis: “You come from some robust, lively thing [the work of art] that has affected you, look up the existing scholarship about it, you read and read  .  .  . and afterward you have the distinct feeling that you have accumulated a great deal, yet it all amounts to nothing. Somehow, that which had seemed most important and most essential—­the heart of the matter—­has gotten lost in the process.”124 Does the arduous process of scholarly publication indeed kill the best-­beloved ­object? The second level of research requires a certain attitude or vision for the business of looking—­Gestaltetes Sehen, “shaped vision” or “structured seeing.” This kind of art history can investigate the properties of works and their internal organization and structure; it can accurately classify works according to their natural groups and establish genetic connections among works on the basis of their properties; it can arrive at an understanding of the historical events whose products it is studying and of the forces at work behind these events. It can also accomplish tasks that belong to the “first” art history—­relative dating, attribution by establishing “natural groups” and “aesthetic personages.”125 In “Towards a Rigorous Study,” Sedlmayr developed these astonishingly (naively?) optimistic ideas into a dogmatically projected manifesto. The work of art must be re-­created each time it is viewed, and the “correct” viewing is possible only if one brings the right attitude or way of looking.126 He believed it was possible to correlate his understanding of that attitude with contemporary (medieval) viewers by establishing a strict working protocol. Given the tumultuous events of the twenty years that followed, it is re166

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markable how completely Sedlmayr’s big book Die Entstehung der Kathedrale (1950; The rise of the cathedral) fulfills the concepts mapped out in the early years. The opening pages present an image of the Gothic cathedral as a poor remnant of its former self, having lost many of the essential elements that once contributed to its totality as a Gesamtkunstwerk. For example, the cathedral was originally painted; it was equipped with liturgical furniture and filled with the sounds of music, liturgical celebrations, and drama.127 Sedlmayr’s catastrophic picture of the blackened, denuded hulk of the present-­ day cathedral is matched by his depressing account of deficiencies in the representation of the cathedral by his colleagues in previous and current scholarship.128 Sedlmayr then asked his reader to join him in putting back (in the mind’s eye) the missing elements of the cathedral—­in developing the correct vision that will allow one to experience the totality of the cathedral as it once was. He appealed for a completely fresh vision: we must see the cathedral with the eyes of someone who knows only a limited rural environment and has never seen such a thing before, or we must see it through the eyes of a child.129 The appeal for a new kind of vision—­one that does not “normalize” the forms of the existing cathedral and looks beyond the surviving disfigured or transformed remains—­provides a shrewd preparation for what comes next: the chapter titled “Die Phänomene der Kathedrale,” where the reader is asked to take an extraordinary leap to see the forms of the cathedral as resulting from the application of a single basic visionary spatial element. That element is made up of the canopy formed by a rib-­vaulted bay—­apparently floating yet linked to the ground with the attenuated shafts.130 There are no weight-­bearing walls, Tragwände, just Füllwände: “screen (or lattice) walls.” Sedlmayr finds the roots of this spatial vision in the form of the early Christian ciborium with its slender supports and vaulted canopy sheltering the altar. The form of the baldachin, multiplied and modified in scale to the bays of the main vessel and aisles, provides the single essential element of the Gothic cathedral. Reims, which is Sedlmayr’s “typical” cathedral, has sixty-­ three such cells; Cologne has ninety-­two. He goes on to enumerate the other features of the Gothic cathedral that go with this Baldachinarchitektur. Sedlmayr brought extraordinary perceptiveness to his characterization of the essential visual elements of Gothic cathedrals, including the diaphanous quality of the upper wall with its grid of stone tracery, the appearance of light that seems the result of more than just its passage through translucent screens of glass (the selbstleuchende Wände), and the way arcaded forms run together and overlap (übergreifende Form).131 However, his critics remained hostile. Paul Frankl mounted a display of deliberate obtuseness to THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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ridicule Sedlmayr’s suggestion that the quality of light leads one to question whether this is just natural light filtering through colored glass or is generated by the windows themselves and, similarly, whether vaults are supported from below or floating, whether shafts ascend or descend. Yet Sedlmayr is obviously not saying that the shafts are actually descending or vaults floating. His point is that that there is a powerful illusionism inherent in Gothic that makes things appear other than what they actually are. And how could one disagree? At the same time, the sense of intense irritation felt by Frankl and other readers (including me) is understandable in light of Sedlmayr’s dogmatic certainty. One may at times find one’s own thought anticipated in Sedlmayr, but then it is rendered absurd by being pushed too far.132 Yet we might surely all agree that the interior effect of the Gothic cathedral is denial of its own materiality. The glistening colors of the stained glass and the painted interior contribute to the impression of walls made of crystal, rubies, and sapphires. After an excursus into the links between the illusionistic forms of the cathedral and the poetic description by the younger Titurel of the Temple of the Grail, Sedlmayr concludes his treatment of the artistic intention of the builders as reflected in the forms of the cathedral. The dominant aspect is the way that the essential structural forms are hidden from the viewer of the interior of the edifice. This is the result of not only the externalized buttressing but also the diaphanous walls and the domed-­up quality of the cells of the rib vaults. Pol Abraham got it right in his interpretation of the illusionism that contributes to “un edifice idéal et aérien . . . destiné à créer une illusion.”133 The critical question is finally posed with a directness few others have dared: if this is illusionistic architecture, what, then, is being depicted?134 This question, powerfully proposed, provides Sedlmayr with the springboard to leap to his conclusion: the cathedral is a portrait of heaven—­depicted with the same visual traits as one finds in medieval poetic descriptions.135 Essential to the argument is the distinction between illusionistic depiction and symbolic representation.136 That architecture can be understood as a mimetic form of art was, Sedlmayr argues, perfectly understood in antiquity: the Pantheon, for example, could be understood as a simulacrum in miniature of the cosmos. The difference between representing a thing in purely symbolic terms (Symbol ) and depicting it (Abbild ) lies in the relationship between the image and the thing represented: the former leaves the two on different planes, while the latter imports significant visual aspects from the model into the representation—­ it lies on the same plane.137 To illustrate the medieval understanding of the relationship image and prototype, Sedlmayr offers a hierarchy derived from 168

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Pseudo-­Dionysius: likeness can be reckoned according to how much of the prototype is contained in the representation, ascending from umbra to vestigium, imago, and similitudo.138 That the sanctuary of the church represented the Heavenly Jerusalem to medieval beholders was, for Sedlmayr, self-­evident.139 The most powerful written evidence for this assertion comes from the foundation-­laying and consecration ceremonies where the singing of the hymn “Urbs Jerusalem Beata” is documented from at least the tenth century.140 Sedlmayr suggested that a part of the consecration ceremony made specific connection between the laying out of the church with ropes (plotting) and the laying out of a city by agrimensores.141 While the choir sings the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus,” a priest links together the four principal axes of the church diagonally with bands of ash.142 The bishop moving from left to right across the transept traces with his crozier the characters of the Greek and Latin alphabet. Then on the east-­west axis the bishop fixes the emplacement of the altar.143 Sedlmayr thus offers us two bodies of thought. First, the essential space-­ defining unit of the Gothic cathedral is the vaulted bay with attenuated shafts at its four corners (the baldachin); the illusionistic quality of Gothic is easily demonstrated and widely recognized.144 Second, the written (liturgical) sources indicate without doubt that the church in general and the sanctuary in particular were widely understood as the Heavenly City. Given the correspondence of aspects of the physical appearance of the cathedral and verbal representations of the Heavenly City, Sedlmayr concludes that the one is a portrait (Abbild) of the other. This portrait is most perfectly embodied in the cathedrals of the first half of the thirteenth century (Reims and the Amiens nave). It then remained for Sedlmayr to document just how the architectural elements of this image were “developed,” particularly in Norman architecture, and how variations were possible in the various regions—­a very traditional story of the “development” of Gothic, where the outcome is, in a sense, predestined at the start. In light of the almost universal dismissal of Sedlmayr’s work in the English-­speaking world, I have wanted to appeal for a more sympathetic reading. Yet in the end, his enterprise clearly falls short. The two basic principles forming the essential underpinnings of his argument are in conflict. On the one hand, he invokes a “scientific” or objective framework for fixing the meaning of the Gothic cathedral; on the other hand, he then insists that one must bring the “correct” attitude to the business of looking. One is thus asked to be objective and subjective at the same time.145 There is no doubt that someone who really desires to find the image of the Heavenly City represented in the forms of the cathedral will find just that. But our stories of THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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Gothic have revealed that the cathedral may serve as the starting point for all kinds of other interpretative responses, which might be triggered at multiple points within the notional space of our plot.

Otto von Simson (1912–­93) Otto von Simson’s book The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order has probably reached a wider audience in the English-­speaking world than any other book of its kind on Gothic—­yet it did not find favor among specialists in the field of Gothic architecture.146 Von Simson began with the premise that the cathedral was designed as an image—­but not an illusionistic one providing a direct representation of anything we may encounter in nature or in other buildings. It was designed, rather, to provide a set of visual stimuli that would allow the medieval user to effect the passage to heaven using intellectual rather than purely visual clues of a representational kind. Von Simson first broaches this idea somewhat anachronistically with reference to King Henry I’s response to the dedication of the new choir of Canterbury Cathedral (1130—­that is, Romanesque rather than Gothic), which the king declared to be more splendid than any since the dedication of the Temple of Solomon. After the chanting of the liturgical “Awesome is this place: truly, this is the house of God and the gate of heaven and will be called the court of the Lord,” Henry swore “by the death of God” that truly the sanctuary was awesome. Chronologically more appropriate for Gothic are the liturgical celebrations described by Abbot Suger (which I have outlined above) for the consecration of the new choir of S-­Denis (1144), where heaven and earth, the angelic hosts and the human community, seemed to merge into one in the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrament. For von Simson such written testimony was enough to cement the idea of a passage to a single destiny: the discovery of heaven.147 The mechanism propelling such a passage was not the superficial similarities of the forms of the cathedral with anything actually seen—­who, after all, has seen heaven? The message was, rather, encoded symbolically: “For medieval man the physical world as we understand it has no meaning except as a symbol.”148 Our author declares himself more interested in the “how” than the “what.” The outward forms of Gothic (rib vault, pointed arch, flying buttress, etc.) were the constructive means, not the artistic ends. What is important is the way the language of Gothic made itself intelligible to the audience. Von Simson emphasized analogy as the cognitive mechanism that facilitates passage from visual clue to the production of meaning: “At the basis of all medi170

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eval thought is the concept of analogy. All things have been created according to the law of analogy, in virtue of which they are, in various degrees, manifestations of God, images, vestiges, or shadows of the Creator.”149 Von Simson provides an admirably perceptive response to the question “What is Gothic?” with an exploration of what he considered its two principal features: the relationship between structural form and appearance and the unique quality of light. Whereas in Byzantine and Romanesque architecture “structure is a necessary but invisible means to an artistic end, concealed behind painted or stucco ornaments,” Gothic articulation is “entirely subordinated to the pattern produced by the structural members, the vault ribs and supporting shafts.”150 Despite one’s awareness of the critical structural role of the flying buttress, which is invisible from the interior, “we cannot enter a Gothic church without feeling that every visible member of the great system has a job to do.” “There is no inert matter, only active energy”; structural tectonics have been translated into “a basically graphic system.”151 Through the dynamics of their vertical lines the shafts express the principle of supporting; the ribs represent the statically important ridges where the “tunnels” of a groined vault interpenetrate.152 We then pass from this satisfying visual exploration of the essentially deceptive nature of Gothic articulation to the abrupt assertion that “the church is, mystically and liturgically, an image of heaven.”153 This image is created, we are told, through the two essential qualities of Gothic architecture defined at the start: the intensely linear quality of the articulation, which leads us to seek for geometric ratios and harmonies, and the unearthly quality of the light. Audible and visible harmonies derived from Christianized Neoplatonism embody vestiges of Creation and intimations of that ultimate harmony to be experienced in the world to come. Architecture, “in the solemn language of its forms, conveys insights that transcend the world of imagery.”154 For Thierry of Chartres, who sought the Divine Artist in his Creation, theology was conveyed by geometry. The mystery of the Trinity was revealed in the equilateral triangle; Christ was begotten by unity just as the square results from the multiplication of magnitude by itself. This was the train of thought that conceived of God as the elegans architectus and architecture as applied geometry. The Gothic cathedral is, then, best understood as a model of the cosmos. Luminosity was, for Otto von Simson, the second essential characteristic of Gothic—­a phenomenon that he links with metaphysical thought of the twelfth century, when light was understood as the source and essence of all beauty. Beauty was understood not purely in visual terms but as the radiTHE PRODUCTION OF MEANING

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ance of truth and the closest approximation to pure form, the creative principle in all things.155 Creation was seen as an act of illumination; all creatures as lights bear testimony to the divine light. It is through the critical cognitive tool of analogy that humans can penetrate knowledge—­corporeal light was understood as an analogy to divine light.156 This passage is facilitated through the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrament, which was understood as divine light transfiguring the opacity of matter.157 Neither Otto von Simson nor Hans Sedlmayr fared well in the sharply revisionist atmosphere of the 1980s (neither did Panofsky, nor Bony). Particularly derided were starry-­eyed notions of “luminosity,” “transcendence,” “the Gothic dream,” and social order or consensus.158 Readers may be particularly irritated by the dogmatism inherent in Otto von Simson’s assertions about “medieval man.” There is little room in his thinking for the role of the artisan or the means of production; the theologian or churchman is dominant in the business of placing meaning in the building. Yet exercise of control over the space of the site through the application of geometry was, above all, the business of artisans. The perfection of the stone cutting that creates the linear spider’s web of the Gothic cathedral resulted from the professionalism of the masons, not the intellectual predispositions of the clergy—­yet for von Simson it is as if ideal thought could be translated into stone without human agency. And as Sumner Crosby correctly concluded half a century ago, the title of the book The Gothic Cathedral is unsatisfying since he deals with one abbey church, one cathedral, and only a part of another. The promise of the subtitle, Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, is never really met. Yet despite all this The Gothic Cathedral, it seems to me, still deserves to be read. Von Simson is not actually attempting to establish a transcendent “dream cathedral”; rather, he provides the most perceptive introduction to the problem of how that Gothic “look” may help convey meaning. His critics have tended to neglect his very useful treatment of the unstable temporal context of the creation of Gothic. His valuable insights may be related to the theme of his older book on Ravenna, Sacred Fortress.159 Much of The Gothic Cathedral is actually not about issues of Christian experience or transcendence but bears more upon what von Simson calls “statecraft.” For example, it is intimated that the appearance of “order” was deceptive since Gothic articulation actually created a fictive structural reality. The appearance of legitimacy could be turned to establish the real thing. Otto von Simson’s story of Gothic contains breathtaking accidents and manipulations. It was a concatenation of circumstances that led Dionysian metaphysics to enter

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into the political bloodstream of France. These circumstances included the sending of the collection of Dionysian writings to France and the happy confusion over the identity of the Denises; the close links between Abbot Suger and Kings Louis VI and VII; the interaction of the great prelates Henry of Sens, Geoffrey of Chartres, and Abbot Suger. In von Simson Gothic was not an inevitable “development,” not the “logical sequence” to Romanesque—­it was created as anti-­Romanesque within a human dialectical process.160 For von Simson the essential mechanism for the origin of Gothic was a human one: the combination of a French-­leaning pope; intense rivalry between the French monarch, the English king, and the German emperor; a group of like-­ minded prelates; and the overwhelming appearance of legitimacy conveyed by Gothic form and light. And so the pendulum swings . . . Perhaps Panofsky, Sedlmayr, and von Simson presented their conclusions in the wrong way; perhaps they were “tainted” by their immediate cultural circumstances (as, indeed, we all are)—­ yet this has not prevented a procession of scholars (including Christopher Wilson, Dieter Kimpel, Robert Suckale, and Alain Erlande-­Brandenburg) from basing their interpretative structure upon the premise that the cathedral builders and early users found the Celestial City in the Gothic cathedral.161 More recently, scholars have returned to the problem of how exactly Neoplatonic thought might have informed the early users of the Gothic cathedral. Ann Meyer, for example, has provided an admirably cogent demonstration of how the passage from signifier to signified takes us from the material church to the Celestial City at S-­Denis—­it is, of course, through the liturgy.162 Margot Fassler, with her intense study of the liturgy of Chartres in relation to the spaces and figurative programs of the cathedral, returns repeatedly to the image of the cathedral as the Jerusalem Temple of Solomon (with Christ as the new Logos).163 And Dominique Poirel, who has looked to reestablish links between Gothic architectural form and the Neoplatonic/ Dioysian thought of the School of S-­Victor, emphasizes the role of liturgical practice as the way that meaning is produced.164 Sedlmayr’s “structured seeing,” necessary for the production of meaning, might have resulted from the repeated cycles of the Psalms, the sacraments, and special feasts like the annual celebration of the consecration of the church. The monks of S-­Denis had no need for an interlocutor to coach them in the intricacies of Dionysian or Neoplatonic thought. The essential mechanism was there in the chanting they performed each day in the choir—­where repeated glimpses of the Celestial City might allow them to find that objective in the breathtakingly illusionistic forms, spaces, and light of their own choir.

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Conclusion We have explored four commonplaces in the stories about the meanings of Gothic: that the architectural mode was derived from forests or that it signified forests; that it can be explained by the need to find legitimacy through references to other chosen buildings; that it marked a modernistic rupture from existing architectural forms and practices resulting from the rigorous application of reason to structural problems; and that it harnessed material forms to produce an earthly representation of heaven. We have seen that each of our three medieval witnesses, troubled by the problem of controlling the production of meaning, hastened to add words (spoken and written) to images and architecture in order to direct the thoughts and fix the understanding of beholders and users. Matching the anxiety of our medieval interlocutors is the negativity expressed by many (post)modern scholars about these and other passages to meaning traditionally associated with responses to Gothic architecture. A common theme found in critiques of Panofsky, von Simson, Sedlmayr, Bony, and others is that their ideas are expressive of the prevailing ideology of their own time more than of the ideas and responses of the builders and users of the great churches of Gothic.165 We have learned to be skeptical of any notion of an assured passage from architectural form to target meaning.166 Modern scholars in their debates have lived out the conundrum predicted by Bishop Durand: the same sign can lead to very different meanings. A great deal hangs on what kind of sign we think we are dealing with: where Sedlmayr saw iconic signs, von Simson found symbols. It is, of course, the property of our scholarly production to sweep and resweep the intellectual arena—­but what, finally, should we do in the resultant empty space? The organization of that space as a notional “plot” presented here provides a means of visualizing the complexity and multiplicity of passages to meaning. Such passages may begin where the figurative language of the interlocutor meets the materiality of the edifice.167 In order to translate architectural form, space, and experience into words, the eloquent interlocutor must rely upon figurative speech and allegory—­an enormously powerful cognitive and communicative tool, but one liable to spin out of the author’s control.168 Passages to meaning may continue as the materiality of the building dissolves into illusion, bringing a potential for endless storytelling. Each of our three witnesses, in addition to the information he has provided, has reminded us that deception has been a critical part of the storytelling about Gothic right from the start. In rehearsing some of the traditional 174

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stories of Gothic, I have attempted not to validate them but rather to locate them in our conceptual space where many stories, “true” and “false,” conflicting and overlapping, can exist side by side. However, our plot is by very definition a limited one: it is a static plot, unable to accommodate movement. Yet movement is essential in the generation of meaning in Gothic: in the processions and gestures of the liturgy (about which we learned much from Abbot Suger and from Gervase); in the dynamic relationships between our Gothic church and a thousand others; and in our own responses to passage through Gothic space. A cathedral is not a picture—­ a unified two-­ dimensional surface that can be scanned from a static position. To see and comprehend the cathedral the visitor becomes a pilgrim, leaving his or her normal place of abode and undertaking a journey—­an operation that generates its own peculiar meanings.169 The spatial dimensions of the cathedral preclude instantaneous comprehension. The edifice invites the visitor to approach, to enter and move through; the very passage and the encounters along the way will convey meaning. “Venés au moustier, venés au moustier!” (Come to church, come to church!) exclaimed the preacher of a sermon delivered to county folk in the vicinity of Amiens in the second part of the thirteenth century.170 Passage from the surrounding region to the great church was understood as pilgrimage, bringing forty days of true pardon from purgatory. Pilgrimage is essentially directed toward an object of desire. It is with this thought that we will pass to the third part of this book, where the static plot explored above will give way to a dynamic one.

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Part III

() Animating the Plot

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7

() Picturing the Three Agents of Construction

In the first part of this book I invited each of our three witnesses to present his story of Gothic, as seen and understood by someone actually involved, directly or indirectly, in the business of cathedral building. Each witness then found his place in the corner of a controlled space or plot, opening the way for the telling and reconciliation of divergent stories. First, Villard de Honnecourt assumed the role of interlocutor at the point of intersection of audience and monument; Gervase of Canterbury, then, as logistics man, revealed vital information about material production; and finally the abbot of S-­Denis revealed his desire to negotiate a passage from the material to the immaterial through his response to the spaces, ornaments, and liturgical performances of his church. The stories that have filled our space have taken us well beyond the Middle Ages, as nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century interpretants like Viollet-­le-­Duc, Frankl, Panofsky, Sedlmayr, and von Simson insisted on crowding in and adding their voices and their stories. Our plot, providing a common space for the multiple stories of Gothic, serves to remind us of the need to reconcile and correlate multiple potentially conflicting accounts, reconsidering the production not just of the material church but also of its meanings. The space of our plot is inclusive and synchronic. Michael Camille’s concern with “medievalism” and the response of modern audiences, for example, would be located in the upper right corner; Dieter Kimpel’s work on material production puts him in the diagonally opposite 179

corner, on the lower left; Otto von Simson’s interest in the meaning of the church is located in the upper left corner.1 While I am interested in the synchronicity of interpretations of Gothic (the treatment of “old” and “new” in Gervase’s description of the Canterbury choir, for example, anticipates modern juxtaposed images of “Romanesque” and “Gothic” on the classroom screen), I have to admit that there is an appearance of finality about the end of the period of construction of the great Gothic cathedrals.2 Recent scholarship has tended to emphasize the gap between the responses of modern visitors and those of the builders and early users.3 Thus, while the notion of Gothic has had a powerful and continuing afterlife, stories of the construction of medieval cathedrals tend to focus on a unit of time that is past and gone. The outcome is known at the start: the story finished. This predictability is compatible with the controlled space of our plot. Our medieval witnesses/interlocutors wanted to persuade their audiences that the outcome of the cathedral project was never in doubt—­indeed, we have seen that the appearance of inevitability, of “natural” growth or local roots, is among the most powerful characteristics of Gothic.4 Yet when one remembers the chaotic combination of the three completely disparate architectural blocks of the unfinished mid-­twelfth-­century church of S-­Denis (nave, frontispiece, chevet; see fig. 23, chap. 3) at the end of Suger’s life, the storm that almost brought down the unfinished upper choir, the abbot’s distraught supplications as he approached death, and the backlash that developed thereafter, it is clear that nothing was inevitable. I want in the following pages to unleash a more dangerous kind of plot—­ one where the human agents or builders are entirely unsure of their ability to control the outcome. Let us now explore “plot” as narrative or story line, allowing the interlocutor to invoke the elements of the dangerous unseen experienced by the builders. In order to achieve this objective, we will need to abandon the safe confines of our square plot and consider the more dangerous dynamics of the triangle. In order to push beyond traditional style-­based understandings of Gothic, we might entertain a sociological or anthropological approach to architectural production, one that takes account of human agency and the extent to which the Gothic building becomes an object of desire for creators and interlocutors alike.5 The production of medieval architecture was a collaborative enterprise, extended over time and space and involving the most demanding and rigorous control and manipulation of heavy materials—­stone, mortar, glass, and wood.6 The fifty or more years of arduous labor and countless human interactions that separate initial planning conversations and the ultimate completion of a building project might bring substantial modifica180

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tions of the initial vision. Architectural production interacted with all other aspects of cultural life: political, institutional, religious, as well as social and economic. Yet the story of Gothic is so often comfortably told from the vantage point of the completed cathedral, where its forms are “explained” not in relation to the push and shove of production and the dangerous decision-­ making dialectic with multiple possible outcomes but in terms of the building’s liturgical/devotional function, its symbolic meaning, or its “stylistic” relationship with other lookalike structures, producing a smoothly flowing story with concomitant notions of “development” and “change.”7 With the continuing help of our three witnesses, let us now begin to construct an alternative scenario, with the unbuilt cathedral understood as an object of desire in the hearts and minds of multiple human agents or protagonists.8 The construction project was too big for any single agency to undertake; it would necessitate negotiation and the bridging of various kinds of gap, social, economic, and intellectual. We should recognize here the importance not only of the builders but also of subsequent users—­laypersons, confraternities, pilgrims, as well as members of the clergy themselves, whose continuing use of the great church had the potential to shape and reshape architectural forms and meanings. One thinks, for example, of the addition of lateral chapels between the deeply projecting lateral buttresses of Notre-­ Dame of Paris or the nave of Amiens Cathedral, intended to accommodate the devotional activities of individuals and families rather than the corporate ritual of the entire body of resident clergy.9 Shrines, screens, and monuments of all kinds, added in response to the needs of users, had the power to redefine the physical envelope, the space, and the programs of meanings associated with the great church.10 We have already learned about the importance of the users in the decisions made by the builders to shape their structure to accommodate the flow of pilgrims from the stories of the new chevets of S-­Denis and Canterbury Cathedral. And under certain circumstances layfolk might have opportunities to participate in major decisions that steered the progress of the work.11 If the users of the Gothic cathedral played an important role in shaping its forms and meanings, what impact did the undertaking of the great project have in the shaping of the urban community? Here two opposing streams of thought may be discerned, extending over the entire period from cathedral construction down to the present. The first position maintains that great bulk of the Gothic cathedral was a sign of economic oppression and that the enormous expenses involved in large-­scale construction poisoned the relationship between clergy and townsfolk, producing social tension and fiscal crisis. The second counters with the suggestion that the very business P I C T U R I N G T H E T H R E E AG E N T S O F C O N ST RU C T I O N

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of building forced the clergy to work more closely with townsfolk and secular authorities, that the need to secure a flow of cash actually led to a liberalization of reciprocal bonds, and that the Gothic cathedral was a sign of social consensus. The first position is more easily documented and certainly finds wider acceptance today within the generally anticlerical intellectual environment of our secular Academy. We have seen that two of the great construction projects documented by our three witnesses masked intense conflicts. The enormous expense generated by the construction projects of Abbot Suger of S-­Denis appears to have provoked a sharply negative reaction on the part of the monastic community. Similarly, the Gothic construction at Canterbury, it has been alleged, masked internal conflict over the Becket scenario and the potential relocation of the archiepiscopal seat. Medieval critics of what Martin Warnke calls Überbau, including Hugues de Fouilloi, Alexander Neckham, and Peter the Chanter, drawing upon literary sources that go back to late antiquity, focused principally on tropological (moral) concerns over ostentatious buildings (especially towers), also touching upon social and economic ills generated by the economic weight of cathedral building, which forced the clergy to entertain relations with inappropriate people (usurers, for example) and distracted them from their religious responsibilities.12 These themes of conflict were enthusiastically taken up by scholars of the mid-­to later twentieth century whose work sometimes appears to reflect some disapproval of cathedral building. For example, Robert Lopez, in a study that has attracted far more attention than it deserved, suggested that the fiscal effort of cathedral construction might ruin the economic life of a northern city.13 Barbara Abou El Haj and Jane Welch Williams have dwelled on themes of local conflict and the undoubted application of spiritual authority to secure economic gains.14 Willibald Sauerländer has more recently reminded us of the links between cathedral construction and crusade.15 And I have documented the use, to some extent cynical, of preaching and relic quests to channel money from the villages of the diocese to the construction of the great Gothic cathedral of Amiens.16 There can be no doubt at all that in certain cities the overwhelming economic power of the bishop and chapter coupled with energetic fundraising produced continuing friction and occasional violent outbursts.17 The (post)modern audience has little taste for the image of the Gothic cathedral as an uncomplicated product of a unified Christian society associated, for example, with nineteenth-­century propagandists like Augustus Welby Pugin or Henry Adams.18 Such thoughts of social consensus are, in our

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own days of chronic political polarization and paralysis, almost universally derided as “romantic.”19 It is hard indeed to find conclusive documentation for social consensus in the medieval written sources, which are often self-­serving accounts dictated by the clergy. Certainly we have every reason to be suspicious of stories of layfolk harnessing themselves to the carts to drag stones to the building site, for which the clergy are our sole witnesses—­we have seen that such stories form part of the “rhetoric of persuasion” necessary to form consensus.20 On the other hand, it is equally hard to counter the evidence of an enormous and (to some extent, surely) spontaneous flood of pilgrims who brought their devotion and their gifts to shrines like S-­Denis, Chartres, and Canterbury. And from the written evidence of the later Middle Ages we can begin to document substantial contributions of layfolk to cathedral construction and the role of lay confraternities.21 We need to base our conclusions on careful case studies where the construction of a well-­documented monument may be set in an equally well-­ documented urban context. 22 Such studies will lead to the recognition that each construction site brought a different situation and that relations between clergy, secular authorities, and the townsfolk (bourgeois) in any given city were susceptible to rapid change. If there is a pattern to be recognized, it is the paradoxical one that the more power the clergy held within a particular city, the more likely they were to encounter violent opposition from the townsfolk when that power was translated into cathedral construction. At Beauvais and Reims, cities where the clergy wielded enormous power within the city, the construction of the Gothic cathedral was accompanied by violent urban insurrections. I have argued that the uprising of the townsfolk of Beauvais seven years after the start of work on the Gothic cathedral affected the form of that cathedral in the most dramatic way, even contributing to the structural problems that led to the collapse of 1284.23 In two of my other case studies, Troyes and Amiens, the relative weakness of the clergy in the city forced them to work closely with the townsfolk. At Troyes Cathedral the earliest fabric accounts reveal that the faithful of the diocese provided the largest single budget item for the fabric; Vroom has reached the same conclusions for Utrecht Cathedral.24 The townsfolk of Troyes were increasingly involved in cathedral construction, enjoying representation among the proviseurs at the time of the construction of the early-­ fifteenth-­century crossing tower; income derived from the city itself (as opposed to the surrounding diocese) rose sharply in the late Middle Ages.25 In Amiens, where the Gothic cathedral was begun in 1220, clergy and townsfolk

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had a long tradition of collaboration—­both in the struggle against the abusive power of the counts of Amiens and in the exploitation of commercial facilities necessary for navigation on the River Somme. The need to secure support for cathedral construction led the clergy at Amiens to make concessions to the townsfolk and to liberalize relationships, commuting payments that had been in kind to cash, which tended to lose its value with inflation.26 Yet within thirty years these good relations between Amiénois bourgeois and clergy had soured: by the 1250s anticlerical manifestations occurred in the region, and in 1258 leading members of the bourgeois actually attempted to set fire to the unfinished cathedral.27 The flames of the burning scaffolding licked the southeast crossing pier and parts of the southern elevation of the western bays of the upper choir. The damage, although partially repaired, remains visible to this day: evidential signs of social tension. Brigitte Bedos-­Rezak concludes her essay on the social context of cathedral construction with a paradox: “Remarkably, the Gothic cathedral acted as a symbol of Christian unity while playing a divisive role as an instrument of social control.” 28 We are left with a scenario of deceptiveness or illusion, with the Gothic cathedral understood as “a narrative in stone,” able to “cast its spell by an ability to subsume all within an order that had the form of truth,” a manifestation of the illusion of consensus that might mask real divisions.29 As we seek to animate the human context for building, we may find a most useful tool in the form of an image. The frontispiece of Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française shows us three figures engaged in conversation (fig. 5, introduction).30 The central and dominant person holds a great pair of iron dividers or compasses in his left hand, while with his right he gestures toward the outline of a pointed arch that he has struck upon a drawing surface (perhaps plaster) at his feet.31 This is the kind of pointed arch designed with two center points spaced at equal intervals across the baseline. Behind him is a drum-­built column (like those of Notre-­Dame of Paris) completed to a height of five courses. The master mason—­for such he clearly is—­appears to talk to a monk to his right. But the ecclesiastic, while half-­listening to the words of the mason, clutches a closely written scroll, which might contain writings of a liturgical, economic, or jurisdictional significance. The most enigmatic figure, the one to the mason’s left, is the chain-­mail-­clad knight, who turns away from us, his face concealed, seeming to remain outside the conversation. Elegant and slender, standing with tilted hips in a reversed contrapposto stance with chemise bloused at the waist, he looks more like Synagoga at Strasbourg than a muscled warrior able to wield heavy clouts in battle with a real sword. 184

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The three figures were intended to represent the three kinds of agent behind the production of the ecclesiastical architecture we call Gothic.32 Behind each church building project there must be one or more ecclesiastical patron(s) (abbot, bishop, dean, or parish priest), a leading artisan (master mason), and a person responsible for the economic and logistical infrastructure: a provider. The person depicted on the right appears to be a knight or seigneur, but of course a church building project might also have a royal or imperial patron. In the case of a secular Gothic cathedral, the person who ensured the resources necessary for construction and organized the fabric might be a sacristan or proviseur—­a member of the clergy given the task of organizing the budget drawn both from the income of the clergy and from external sources.33 Our image may, then, be understood as a representation of a human environment for architectural production. However, despite its seductive verisimilitude, we should not mistake this as a “true” representation—­Viollet-­le-­ Duc has loaded it with preconceptions about the role of each of the figures as representative of a class or estate playing a key role in the creation of France. While they might for a while work together on building the great church, the interests of these representatives of the three estates were historically in conflict. Thus the marginalized and feminized figure of the knight projects a clear image of the irrelevance of the aristocracy, the First Estate, not only in the production of Gothic but also, Viollet-­le-­Duc hoped, in postrevolutionary France. The monk, representing the Second Estate, is still engaged in the discourse, but it is the artisan, a member of the Third Estate, who is dominant. His key design mechanisms (engiens) are the great iron compasses and the triangle inscribed inside the pointed arch on the drawing surface at his feet. Viollet-­le-­Duc became increasingly preoccupied with the triangle as the key building block in Creation and the means of projecting the elevation of the Gothic church. The three sides of the triangle were associated both with the Three Estates and with the tripartite structure of dialectical thought. Viollet-­ le-­Duc saw Gothic as a sign of social conflict: the Gothic cathedral signaled liberation in a situation where the secular cathedral clergy had allied with the bourgeoisie against long-­established monastic and seigneurial dominance. Most intriguing is the possibility that Viollet-­le-­Duc intended the image of the mason to be a self-­portrait—­the bonnet worn by the mason apparently resembles one worn by the nineteenth-­century architect, and there is certainly a facial resemblance.34 In this way the interlocutor can become the creator of the work of art, as well as the interlocutor able to explain the mysteries of the Egyptian triangle and the triumph of a new class of urban professional masons. P I C T U R I N G T H E T H R E E AG E N T S O F C O N ST RU C T I O N

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Having first recognized the extent to which an image such as this can convey complex social messages, commingling information, ideology, and desire, let us continue to explore the interlocking roles of the three kinds of people who were essential to church building: the ecclesiastical patron, the artisan, and the logistics man or provider. The writings of our three witnesses provide vital information about the roles of the three contributors and the kinds of conversations that must have accompanied construction. Suger was the churchman par excellence, bringing his passion for liturgical performance and the synchronic or layered understanding of a building that looks to the past, is performed in the present, and anticipates the future. His awareness of the power of the written word is emphatically represented in the scroll held by the churchman in our image of the Three Builders (fig. 5). Suger was clearly interested in the power of the physical envelope of the church to project the user to a realm beyond the material—­in the church as a medium, offering a path to salvation. The Villard Enterprise, with its combination of words and images, opens a window to artistic creativity, documenting thirteenth-­century responses to natural forms as well as the created forms we call Gothic. From the energetic intervention of subsequent contributors to Villard’s collection, we have deduced that these “virtual reality” images were greeted with enthusiasm by contemporaries—­as, indeed, they have down to our own day. And, of course, the architectural drawings provide a glimpse of the medium that lay behind the spread of Gothic. Through the Villard Enterprise we are able to draw close to the drawings and “secrets” of the master mason. None of our witnesses is a knight or seigneur (as in the picture), but I have suggested that Gervase of Canterbury, while also a churchman (a choir monk), was the “logistics person” of the construction process—­one charged with keeping daily tallies of expenses and receipts and presenting the year-­ end account. This conclusion is in accord with the knowledge that the community of Christ Church Canterbury was precocious in its development of methods of accounting and that in 1193 Gervase was named sacristan, presumably with access to the tallies of days worked by the masons, which included some descriptive record of the work completed. Such accounting technology provided him with control over time in a way that had previously been impossible.35 His emphasis upon the novelty of the architectural forms deployed by the two Williams can be matched by Walter Map’s concept of modernity (modernitas) as an ever-­advancing present.36 Such thoughts countered theories of history as having reached its old age. Each of our witnesses wrote because he had a case to make; each offers us a different kind of rhetorical structure. Suger wanted badly to connect 186

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Alpha with Omega in the construction of his material church and in the fulfillment of his own cycle of salvation, to connect signifier with signified. His rhetorical strategy was to offer a series of event units—­a series narrationis, in the language of Hugh of S-­Victor.37 The modern storyteller or cinematographer might find in each of these units a classic device—­the tension created as the principal character (the abbot) takes a bold leap toward an object of desire (the unbuilt church), only to find the way forward blocked by formidable challenges and obstacles. Gervase of Canterbury transformed data recorded in the administrative records of construction (building accounts) to tell a story of the process of becoming, glossing over the uncertainty generated by struggles over the Becket crisis with the seductive force of his creation narrative and the authority of the new cathedral, built in the very latest high-­tech French style. Yet the worm was in the apple; in the story of Canterbury, threats from the Hackington Project and internal strife in the monastery lingered on, ready to cause new difficulties. The Villard Enterprise gave us special insights into the process of creating. The project began with a kind of formlessness—­a collection of randomly collected images that would tell their own story.38 The subsequent addition of explanatory texts is an indication of the power of the word to turn an image to serve a predetermined agenda. For each of our interlocutors the great church was a principal object of desire. Let us pursue this concept at greater length in the following chapter.

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8

() The Cathedral as Object of Desire

I have set out to establish a dynamic plot, like the story line of an action drama. This kind of plot is animated by the relationship between builders and potential users and the image of the as-­yet-­unbuilt church, understood as an object of desire. The principal agents who launched the work of construction on the great church were of three kinds: ecclesiastical patron, artisan, and budget provider. We found some of the essential characteristics of each agent in our three witnesses, Abbot Suger, Gervase of Canterbury, and Villard de Honnecourt, whose writings demonstrate the importance of rhetoric in the builders’ realization of the object of desire. When we study the production of the vast number of buildings that belong to “Romanesque” and “Gothic,” we should consider not just changes in the shape of the arch and the form of the molding profile but also changes in the nature of communication, oral, written, and graphic. Our witnesses have borne testimony to some of the greatest changes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including the technology of administration (written building accounts), the increasing use of the language of desire, and, in the Villard Enterprise, a glimpse of the first surviving architectural project drawings and templates of Gothic that facilitated early industrial production and prefabrication.1 None of our witnesses could be considered “objective”—­each writer was deeply implicated in the process he described; each manifestly loved the 189

thing created. Thus we have seen that Villard de Honnecourt made his image of the Reims window “because I liked it best.” He exclaimed about the incomparable Laon tower, “I have been in many lands, as you can see in this book; nowhere have I ever seen a tower like the one at Laon.”2 Villard’s desire to possess led him to internalize the beloved object and to represent it with a two-­dimensional graphic surrogate, compressing macro-­object into micro-­ image on the page of his rather small book.3 However, his love of works of architecture that we would call Gothic cannot be understood as simple binary relationship between appreciative beholder and beloved artifact; in his little book Villard and his associates created a more complicated tertiary relationship to allow them to share this delectation with an audience. The audience’s participation in the pleasure of “Villard” then opened yet another dimension: the role of the work of art as a soteriological medium. Readers are entreated to remember the author and to pray for the salvation of his soul. The language employed by our master of logistics, Gervase of Canterbury, yields similar expressions of delectation. He has to cope with the extraordinary fact that God allowed a fire to destroy the glorious choir of Canterbury Cathedral: “In this manner the house of God, hitherto delightful as a paradise of pleasures, was now made a despicable heap of ashes, reduced to a dreary wilderness, and laid open to all the injuries of the weather.”4 Gervase invokes a desire both for the Promised Land and for the paradise of Eden, lost with the expulsion: “Thus, like as the children of Israel were ejected from the land of promise, yea, even from a paradise of delight . . . so the brethren remained in grief and sorrow for five years in the nave of the church, separated from the people only by a low wall.”5 Similarly, recounting the entry of the monastic community into the unfinished choir, Gervase speaks of the longing of the monks to regain lost Paradise: “In the beginning of the sixth year from the fire . . . the monks were seized with a violent longing to prepare the choir, so that they might enter it at the coming Easter.”6 The metaphors of Eden and Paradise were sustained in the account of the entry into the new choir on Easter Sunday: the choir is the Promised Land: “Thus our Lord went before us into Galilee, that is, in our transmigration to the new church. . . . The convent was ejected by the fire from the choir, even as Adam from paradise, in the year of the Word 1174 in the month of September. . . . And returned into the new choir in the year of grace 1180 in the month of April . . . at about the ninth hour of Easter Eve.”7 Gervase’s account allows us to understand what Sedlmayr called the “structured seeing” that would cause the monks to find the image of the Heavenly City in the forms of the Gothic cathedral. It is not just through similitude but also from the longing of the exiled Israelites for Zion, the yearning of humanity for redemp190

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tion (paradise lost and regained). This longing was enhanced by apparently insuperable difficulties and by daunting passage (pilgrimage) through time and space: exile in a provisional liturgical space followed by a triumphal entry into Jerusalem (the new choir). Suger’s expressions of delectation are, of course, the best known and most widely quoted, most famously: “when, out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God . . . I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe . . .”8 Should we compare Suger’s “strange region” with the liminal state of the pilgrim, as defined by Victor and Edith Turner?9 The abbot’s pleasure in the upper chapel (of St. Romanus) of the western frontispiece is linked with similar feelings of “betwixt and betweenness”: “How secluded this place is, how hallowed, how convenient for those celebrating the divine rites has come to be known to those who serve God there as though they were already dwelling, in a degree, in Heaven while they sacrifice.”10 However, there is a way both more subtle and more powerful that the abbot’s desire was encoded both in the forms of the abbey church of S-­Denis and in his rhetoric. Directly after the construction of the new western frontispiece and the dedication of its chapels, according to the story told in De consecratione, the abbot realized that he would have to make a persuasive case for the demolition of the eastern apse of the old basilica and the work of constructing a new shrine for the apostles of Gaul. In communicating to his fellow monks his plan to move forward to the new work in the chevet even before the western towers had been completed, the abbot invoked a forceful trope.11 Paraphrasing Luke 24:32, he wrote, “We communicated this plan [for the construction of the chevet] to our very devoted brethren, whose hearts burned for Jesus while He talked with them by the way.” With this reference to Luke’s account of the encounter on the Emmaus Road, the abbot triggered a compelling mechanism of desire and the potential to transform vision from the earthly to the spiritual. In Pilgrimage of Desire, Frank Gardiner has rehearsed the life of the liturgical play Officium Peregrinorum, normally performed on Easter Monday. This work was well known in the area around and to the north of S-­Denis in the twelfth century.12 In the unfolding drama, two men in the garb of pilgrims move down the nave of the church from west to east, recounting the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. They are joined by another “traveler” in white amice and bearing a cross: “What talk is this you exchange between you as you go along, sad-­faced?” All three finally enter the “Emmaus House,” constructed in the eastern nave bays. As the stranger breaks bread and pours wine, the disciples recognize him as the resurrected Lord. The stranger disappears, and the other two sadly look for him throughout the church. T H E C AT H E D R A L A S O B J E C T O F D E S I R E

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The monastic brethren of S-­Denis would certainly have understood the significance of the postresurrection story where the discouraged disciples were unable with their earthly eyes to recognize that the pilgrim who had joined them on the road was none other than Christ. It took the breaking of the bread in the Emmaus inn that evening to activate the spiritual eyes of the disciples to recognize the resurrected Christ. Yet afterward, as they recalled the meeting with the pilgrim on the road, the disciples realized that they had known all along—­even with their earthly vision—­that this was Christ: “Didn’t our hearts burn within us?” Suger applies the desire and the anticipation experienced by the disciples to what he hoped would be the shared experience of the new choir, which was itself, in the spirit of Durand, bishop of Mende, the resurrected body of Christ. This is “structured seeing.” The ritualization of the longing, and the passage that transformed the sorrows of exile to the festal joy of reintegration, was an essential part of the Easter season; it formed a Christian topos that went back beyond the sermons of Gregory the Great to the teachings of Paul.13 Gervase and Suger both clearly understood passage into the new choir as taking the community from exile to paradise. In the larger sense, this is the passage of pilgrims to the object of their desire in the resting place of the beloved saint; it is the passage through the tribulations of life with its conflicting earthly desires toward a celestial home.14 Such a passage was empowered by Christian desire: desiderium supernum.15 The themes of pilgrimage and passage from mundane to theological vision are, of course, inextricably woven together in the story of S-­Denis. Upon entry into the great church through the golden central door, visitors were reminded that “the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material, and seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submission.” The idea of passage or pilgrimage to spiritual vision is reinforced by the image of the Emmaus scene set in the golden door, where Suger had himself represented together with the pilgrims (fig. 31). In his written accounts, Suger returned repeatedly to the theme of thronging pilgrims; he took care to model the plan the new chevet, the object of their visit, on the prototype of a “Pilgrimage Church.”16 The reader of Suger’s De administratione may experience the sequence of objects and spaces described as an itinerary through the abbey church—­a passage through sacred topography similar to that described by Gervase of Canterbury.17 The reader has already encountered the golden doors with their famous inscription. Then, when we come to the treatment of the church’s ornaments (De ornamentis ecclesiae), we are whisked directly to the abbot’s principal object of desire: the altar in the upper choir enclosing the receptacle containing the bodies of St. Denis and his companions. 192

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Figure 31a–­b. S-­Denis, western frontispiece, door of central portal, Emmaus scene (photograph: author), with inset drawing by Roger de Gaignières (1642–­1715, BnF Cabinet des manuscrits).

Suger tells us that he had embellished the altar with gold and gems given by kings, princes, archbishops, and bishops, and the receptacle containing the holy bodies with panels gilded and decorated with precious stones. In the attached inscriptions Suger begs Great Denis to open the doors of paradise and, on the tombs is written: “Here the bodies of the Saints are laid to rest in peace; may they draw us after them.” From this elevated point in the upper choir the abbot turns toward the west, taking us to his Great Cross, decorated with an abundance of precious stones, supported by the four Evangelists and bearing allegorical scenes on its pillar. Then we continue down to the west, to the main altar, bearing the precious frontal panel from Charles the Bald, which Suger had extended and embellished.18 The sight of the “wonderful cross of St. Eloy” leads the abbot to his most famous reflection on the passage from the material world to “some strange region of the universe that neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven.” Suger then continues his path westward down the central axis of the church, encountering the Holy Altar (altare sanctum), the matutinal altar in the monks’ choir.19 This altar, dedicated to the Trinity and founded by Abbot Hilduin, contained precious relics: an arm each of St. James, St. Stephen, and St. Vincent. These relics, given by Charles the Bald, were taken out and verified in august company. Between the emperor’s tomb to the east of the altar, Suger set up the great cross, which had been given to the abbey by the same emperor. We are then taken back eastward into the choir, where we admire the new stalls, the refurbished throne of Dagobert, and the regilded eagle lectern. Our visit is terminated with a prolonged, almost gloating look at the “splendid variety of new windows, both above and below”, starting with the Tree of Jesse in the axial chapel and continuing with the allegorical windows derived from St. Paul, as well as the allegories of Moses, which in mysterious ways anticipate the incarnation and passion of Christ. Finally comes a review of the precious vessels, including the vase given as a wedding present by Eleanor of Aquitaine to Louis VII, the sardonyx chalice, and the famous eagle vase, as well as an array of elegant vestments. Suger’s vivid descriptions convey not only delectation but also something of the vividly enhanced vision and the sense of “in-­betweenness” peculiar, according to Victor and Edith Turner, to the pilgrim. That this was for Suger a penitential pilgrimage is suggested by the line of inscriptions and the four images of the abbot along the central axis of the church, which present him as a humble supplicant.20 We may, if we desire, find in the visit to the church the same experience as in the reading of De consecratione, which begins with the abbot’s craving to find concordance and escape the “vexations and most 194

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grievous anxieties of corporal sensuality” and ends with the Eucharist celebrated in the new choir, where sacramental union links material with immaterial, corporeal with spiritual, human with divine, and the present state is transformed into the Heavenly Kingdom. Our three witnesses, then, have much to tell us about delectation—­in terms of both the material attachment to the artifact and the recognition of the power of that artifact to mediate the passage to a desired goal beyond. The understanding of desire as movement or passage can be located within a broad spectrum of twelfth-­to thirteenth-­century thought. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, 1266–­73), distinguished between desire for the good and desire for the beautiful. “For good (being what all things desire) has to do properly with desire and so involves the idea of end (since desire is a kind of movement towards something). Beauty, on the other hand, has to do with knowledge, and we call a thing beautiful when it pleases the eye of the beholder. This is why beauty is a matter of right proportion, for the senses delight in rightly proportioned things as similar to themselves, the sense-­facility being a sort of proportion itself, like all other knowing facilities.”21 Aquinas thus confirms that desire was understood as motion toward something; he adds something not readily available in the testimony of our witnesses—­that it may involve recognition of qualities immanent in the object (integrity, proportion, clarity), which are correlated with matching qualities in the soul of the beholder. Pursuing the idea of desire as forward movement, Richard Southern contrasted the static quality of early medieval Benedictine monastic life with the intellectual dynamism that had begun already in the eleventh century.22 Early medieval monastic life, he suggested, based upon the repeated cycles of the monastic day and year with its ever-­increasing numbers of feast days, offered security and firmly established order but little excitement to the mind or body. This static situation changed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, especially with the ideas of Anselm and of Bernard of Clairvaux. Anselm introduced a more dynamic intellectual mode: “Excita mentem tuam: stir up your torpid mind, dispel the shadows which sin has cast on it . . . chew over in thought, taste in understanding, swallow in longing and rejoicing.”23 Jean Leclercq found the roots of this kind of Christian rhetoric able to turn the hearts and desires of the audience in the writings and teaching of St. Gregory, the “Doctor of Desire.”24 The newly ardent and effusive self-­exposure conceived by Anselm was brought to culmination in the age of Gothic by Bernard of Clairvaux, who understood body, soul, and spirit as stages in the upward ascent to union with God. This passage was to be facilitated by means of a more intimate knowlT H E C AT H E D R A L A S O B J E C T O F D E S I R E

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edge of the incarnate Christ. In one of his most famous sermons, Bernard allegorized the vividly affective language of the Song of Songs: the desire of the lover for the best-­beloved leads us to the understanding of Christ’s love of his bride, the church. The theme was adapted by many a preacher of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including Jean d’Abbeville, dean of Amiens Cathedral in the 1220s.25 The loving relationship between Christ and his church, the Virgin Mary, was captured in the image of the Coronation of the Virgin. Finding wide currency in a variety of media in the second part of the twelfth century and imprinted upon the memory of the pilgrim at the moment of passage into Gothic space, the Coronation of the Virgin is, more than any other, the Gothic image.26 The desire for union with God might also lead to an intensified study of nature and an attempt to reconcile the creativity of man (Homo artifex) with divine creativity,27 Villard’s intense interest in flora and fauna forms part of a desire to understand natural phenomena in terms of their underlying laws. It was by understanding the laws of nature that man could harness the power of motion and gravity to create devices like water mills, windmills, and pulleys for lifting heavy weights.28 The wonders of architecture result from the application by men of the same rules that they had found in nature.29 Hope was restored because the world is God’s discourse with man. I want to close these reflections on desire as a kind of forward movement with a reference to the painted program of Salisbury Cathedral. Mathew Reeve has recently demonstrated how the interior of the eastern arm of Salisbury, with its extraordinary painted vaults, would serve to move the attention of the clergy forward, from west to east.30 The singing of a psalm as the introit of the mass would draw attention to the images of the prophets in the choir vaults: allegorically, the clergy became the prophets. The great image of Christ in the eastern crossing was situated directly over the altar where the elements of the Eucharist became Christ’s body and blood. The image also served to announce the adventus of the bishop, who, typologically, represented Christ. Angelic acolytes, placed in the vaults of the eastern transept arms, attended the celebration. We are pulled forward from the age of the Law, to the age of Grace, to the present time (the presbytery), where images of the Labors (and festive celebrations) of the months symbolize humanity’s redemptive toil on earth in the liturgical service of God. And on to the eastern window, where the stained glass (now lost) may have represented a Last Judgment. Reeve concludes, “The Gothic art at Salisbury was designed to envelop the worshipper in a complete devotional experience.” Yet Reeve acknowledges that Salisbury is an exceptional monument and that the role of architectural form in the experience of the mass is am196

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biguous.31 We are left to speculate about how the members of a monastic or cathedral community might respond the purely architectural forms of Gothic. Much of the monk’s day was spent in the Divine Office, chanting the Psalms.32 This was an exercise that would compel the brother to stand or sit for many hours in the choir, exercising his memory in order to recall each of the 150 Psalms that were chanted once a week, also his vocal cords and ears—­ even the rhythm of his breathing—­to pitch the chant, and his intelligence to reflect upon the layers of meaning that were hidden within the allegories of the Psalms, as grain within the husk. What was our brother doing with his eyes? Would he engage in the kind of compulsive looking where the eyes pass systematically over forms and surfaces and images are printed in the brain? Might this exercise be correlated with the psalmody in the intelligence of the participant? If this were so, then architectural envelope, figurative cycles, and book of Psalms would be understood as an armature within which the user could discern and create new linkages and new meanings: meanings both historical, having to do with the songs as a record of the life of David, and allegorical, providing vital information on the God’s creative enterprise and his plot for human salvation, full of premonitions of the incarnation of Christ, a new contract for redemption and a second coming. What a total environment for sustained and systematic looking at architecture!

Triangulating Desire33 I want now to explore more fully the notion that the relationship between builders and their object of desire—­the as-­yet-­unbuilt church—­rather than understood as a simple binary one, should be plotted as a triangle.34 Join me in imagining a group of potential church builders including representatives of the institution (like Suger), logistics man (Gervase), and master mason (Villard, while not a master mason himself, has opened a window on the profession). Our three human agents can be located in a dynamic forward-­ moving plot leading to the soon-­to-­be-­built church through the powerful force of desire (plot A). However, the church-­building project was not an end in itself—­it also served as a bridge to desired objective(s) beyond. A principal objective—­in addition to the realization of the physical envelope of the church—­might be soteriological, providing the means of achieving salvation; this is certainly what our Witnesses would like us to believe (Suger and Villard both say as much). But other more earthly goals might also come to play. Abbot Suger did not want a new abbey church only to rectify material shortcomings in the older structure or even just to secure his own salvation. He was also eager to harness the power of architecture to consolidate T H E C AT H E D R A L A S O B J E C T O F D E S I R E

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Plot A The triangle of desire

his abbey’s status as premier church, favored by kings, and burial place not just of kings and emperors but also of the apostles of France. The construction enterprise, Suger doubtless hoped, would draw attention to his monastery, reify its status, consolidate royal support and other patronage, attract a growing throng of pilgrims, and unify the monks. The declared altruistic objective (to establish an appropriate shrine for the apostles) and the hidden self-­interested goals (aggrandizement of self and monastery) are in no way mutually exclusive. At Canterbury, we have seen that the building program, organized and narrated by Gervase, may have resulted from a desire on the part of a group of the monks to unify the community around the intention to establish the cathedral as the resting place for the martyred and sainted archbishop Thomas Becket, and to foil attempts to move the seat of the archbishop from the monastic community at Christ Church to a new foundation outside Canterbury. This agenda, cleverly concealed behind a problem-­free creation story, was entirely successful. Villard de Honnecourt’s love of the look of the material manifestations of the church (and a host of other artifacts and natural objects) was a vehicle leading him to the preparation of his extraordinarily engaging drawings, which were subsequently turned to the pedagogical role of creating an educated audience and to the soteriological objective of soliciting prayers for the author’s salvation. 198

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Plot B The gap

The Gap between Vision and Realization (Plot B) In the grand narrative of Gothic there is little room for the lively debates that must have developed on each site over how to actually make a start on the new project that had been plotted in the ways we have explored above. In most cases the site was occupied by a much-­loved older building—­perhaps damaged by fire or degraded through the passage of time. Gervase of Canterbury recounts a painful debate over whether to raze the older fire-­damaged building and start afresh, or whether to incorporate parts of that older building in the new with significant budgetary savings. Abbot Suger clearly hesitated to demolish the venerable nave of the church of S-­Denis. There were so many “in-­between” decisions possible, to build parts of the old building into the new, or to make the dimensions of the new structure to match the old so the two buildings might coexist until the latter was demolished—­a demolition that might never finally happen.35 How many new construction projects were launched by builders who convinced their patrons that a fix-­up job would be possible but were inspired to greater visions (requiring greater outpouring of treasure) once work had begun?36 “Romanesque” and “Gothic” architecture were both assigned their descriptors because of the power of such buildings to “recall” earlier architectural forms, whether real (Roman buildings) or fictive (primitive “Gothic” arbors). It has been normally assumed that such “recollection” was primarily expressed in stylistic choice. However, we must remember the physical remains of older buildings incorporated in newer ones. It is sometimes assumed that such incorporation reflected an ideological agenda (the so-­called T H E C AT H E D R A L A S O B J E C T O F D E S I R E

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Krautheimer Thesis); economic concerns, however, might also be at play.37 The older building was not merely a physical envelope; it carried multiple associations for its users resulting from its venerable age (often considered to extend back to apostolic times). Suger tells us that the old church of S-­Denis was believed to have been consecrated by Christ himself; each stone was a relic. How to reconcile two such objects of desire: a much-­loved ancient building that had accommodated centuries of devotional activity, that had sheltered the most precious relics, as against a longed-­for new project whose completion, decades away, would drain the resources of the institution and possibly induce intense internal and local tensions? This is part of the dangerous gap between vision and realization that is a central theme of this chapter. Sometimes, we have learned, deception was necessary. Suger’s rhetorical trope with the pressing pilgrim story probably imposed upon reality; the story about the perilous structural condition of the older building was another rhetorical trope intended to accelerate the passage toward his object of desire.

Compression and Expansion: Plotting (Plot C) When, at an earlier point, I introduced the question “How on earth did they do that,?” it was in relation to the technical tricks (engiens) employed by the builders to frame arches and form vaults. The same question may be applied to the astonishing ability of the builders to conceptualize a building on the scale and complexity as a Gothic cathedral. To what extent were the builders able to internalize and envisage the whole thing in advance—­not just its physical forms and spaces but also the logistical processes and moral agenda (determination or force) necessary to achieve its construction? This internalization can be represented as a kind of compression involving the power to capture, share, debate, and manipulate a complex set of anticipated spaces, events, and circumstances, represented both rhetorically and with images as different alternatives were compared and assessed. Architectural production ensued when such compression resulted in some level of consensus on the part of the builders. The agreed-­upon scheme was then expanded in the laying out of the edifice on the ground in its projection upward as a space-­ containing envelope. Both compression and expansion can be understood as plotting: first in a human or sociological sense, and second as the physical control of the terrain and mastery of materials, logistics, and space. What do our witnesses tell us about cathedral production understood as compression and expansion? The abbot’s rhetoric is full of tales of physical 200

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Plot C Compression and expansion

compression. This was part of his strategy of consensus forming through insistent and repeated articulation, first orally, then in writing, of pressing need—­stories of blue-­faced women crushed by thronging crowds, of dangerously cracked walls, and then, above all, of a subtly structured unleashing of desire, where the vision of the desired choir is brilliantly conflated with the body of the resurrected Christ in the Emmaus Road story. From our logistics man (Gervase) we have learned of the preparations for construction—­ careful surveying of the damaged cathedral and the need for deception in order to form consensus. In Gervase also we catch a glimpse of the dynamics of construction (turning the arches and vaults). But it is above all from the Villard Enterprise that we learn how a large and complex cathedral can be compressed and located on the pages of a small book and in the minds of a close-­knit group of collaborators. As the builders, clergy, and master mason(s) of the Gothic cathedral exchanged ideas around the planning table, they had, at least by the thirteenth century, recourse to two-­dimensional images as indications of what had already been achieved in existing buildings.38 Villard shows us such images—­admittedly at several steps removed from the actual process of building—­and we have seen that some of his drawings provide a reflection (distant though it may be) of an episode of Gothic architectural production as Reims Cathedral was compressed into little images on the page, then to be expanded again: plotted on the ground and projected upward to form Cambrai Cathedral.39 The added T H E C AT H E D R A L A S O B J E C T O F D E S I R E

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texts stress the importance of verisimilitude and of geometry in the facilitation of design and portraiture. Most obviously, Villard shows us images of natural forms and articulates the desire to make them look lifelike.40 It should also be remembered that the most important visual characteristic of a Gothic cathedral—­one that brings essential levels of meaning—­is that it looks like another Gothic cathedral. This lookalike quality was facilitated through the increasing availability of (fairly) accurate images like the ones made by Villard and his followers. Gothic architectural creativity involved an intensified collaborative working out of technical problems—­we learn about this in the Villard Enterprise with the image of a choir plan said to be worked out in collaboration with Pierre de Corbie inter se disputando (fig. 17, chap. 1). Most important of all in Villard, we are provided a glimpse of what I want to call the “geometry of desire.” The masonic community (we have learned from the Regius Manuscript) built its identity partly around the myth that it was the guardian of a body of secret lore, going back to the ancients, which provided powerful tools (engiens) facilitating the control and manipulation of line and space.41 Knowledge of how to create a right angle though intersecting circles or through a 3:4:5 ratio and to construct equilateral triangles, squares, and polygons (especially octagons, hexagons, and pentagons), as well as ratios like the square root of 2 or the golden section—­these were clearly highly desirable tricks for artisans of all kinds. And then there was the intense joy to be had from taking the compasses and the straight-­edge to a sheet of parchment or paper and manipulating line and space in a series of geometric exercises capable of revealing the underlying principles that fix the shapes both of buildings and of living beings—­this is what Villard calls “le grant force de maconerie” and “le force de le portraiture, les trais ensi, come li ars de iometrie le c[om]ma[n]d et ensaigne.”42 It is true that in the Villard Enterprise we sometimes feel one step removed from the geometric process; the drawings in the carnet, while often controlled by the application of compass and straight edge, are sometimes drawn freehand. Indeed, Villard could make a very convincing circle without leaving the telltale prick of the compass point.43 In addition to the dynamic force inherent in the sweep of the compass arm, the pages of Villard’s little book provide a glimpse of one of the key proportional mechanisms or tricks (engiens) applied by medieval masons—­one that had an enormous impact upon the way Gothic buildings looked. I refer to the process of quadrature, or rotated squares, as already discussed in chapter 1. Students of Gothic architecture have considered this mechanism as the essential force behind Gothic design, allowing elevation to be drawn from plan conveying that look of dynamic growth which is the hallmark of Gothic (fig. 27, chap. 6).44 Lon Shelby has, however, pointed out 202

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that the quadrature belonged to a common body of procedures shared by a range of artisans; it was not the sole property of masons. Shelby has brought our attention to the essential arbitrariness inherent in the procedure, which can be applied in very different ways to fix key heights and spans in the building.45 That arbitrariness has, of course, allowed generations of eager students of Gothic to apply all sorts of nested polygons to the plans and elevations of Gothic churches in order to “explain” their design.46 There is a certain compulsion (force) in the student’s pressing desire to unravel the plot that is half-­revealed and half-­concealed by the spaces and forms of the great building. We have seen that Andreas Speer sensed cathedral visitors’ intuitive perception of an underlying idée dirigeante governing its forms.47 Eric Fernie was less kind when he described the compulsion to extract a geometrical matrix from the great building (in this case, a pyramid) as “the almost pathological condition once described as pyramidiocy.”48 Fernie was right to identify the phenomenon, but he failed to recognize that the “pyramidiot” is simply responding to the puzzle (plot) of the great building exactly as the designers intended through the obfuscation of geometric form or idea within the shell (sometimes complex) of the edifice.49 I suggest that the student who sets about untangling the geometric skein of the plot might experience a kind of jouissance. The skeptical scholar is surely correct to worry that this intense joy might cloud students’ judgment—­but it is the jouissance that propels their curiosity.50

My Desire The great Gothic cathedrals I acknowledged in my preface—­Troyes, Beauvais, Amiens, and Notre-­Dame of Paris—­were, for me, objects of desire. I had the impertinence to think I possessed them as I carried them, compressed, in my mind with their challenge to understand the way they were conceived, realized, produced, understood. In measuring them out and attempting to establish the underlying design principles, I felt a kind of cocreativity with the masons themselves.51 There was intense pleasure to be derived from unscrambling the plot of the masons encoded in the rhythm of the labyrinth, the “house of Daedalus” in Amiens Cathedral.52 The triangulation of desire? As in the Villard Enterprise, the relationship between the agent and the beloved object may soon take on a tertiary dimension—­an audience, my students and my family. I had the great good fortunate to have had a continuing series of extraordinary students—­patient as well as gifted—­who were ready to indulge me and to accompany me into the beloved buildings and engage in “compulsive looking.” And the professional scholar must, of course, triT H E C AT H E D R A L A S O B J E C T O F D E S I R E

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angulate with the demands of the academy: books, articles, conference presentations. The gap between subject and object? This comes in the gulf that divides the modern student from the medieval builders and users—­we can never know exactly what they thought they were doing. At times one wonders whether the doubt and confusion lies with us or with them. The objects of desire, moreover, lie three thousand miles from my home in New York. Compression and expansion come with the correlation of our expectations and presuppositions based on “theory” and historiography with the encounter with the monument itself and all the challenges of locating that monument within an infrastructure made up of not just other monuments but also the essential socioeconomic underpinnings. I do not believe the experience that I have briefly recounted is unique. We have already encountered Jean Bony’s impassioned relationship with his beloved Gothic churches.53 His “compulsive looking” at Notre-­Dame of Paris and Bourges allowed him to conjure up visions of these two cathedrals even in the darkest days of his internment in a Nazi prison camp, Orlag IV D. The ardent interlocutor will desire to possess the beloved object—­we have seen this above all with the Villard Enterprise. But it is not enough to possess; it is not enough to collect. The interlocutor must also tell stories—­ stories demanding dynamic structure and forward movement. Databasing and storytelling: one is synchronic, the other diachronic. The problem of how to reconcile the two will concern us in the conclusion, “Gothic Plots.”

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() Conclusion Gothic Plots—­Synchronic, Diachronic, and Spatial

Having explored in part II the limits of a static post festum plot, understood as a space to locate different modes of storytelling about Gothic, we then proceeded to entertain another kind of scenario, a dynamic forward-­moving one like the story line of a book or film. The engine is provided by desire and necessity, as our three kinds of builder—­churchman, artisan, and budget provider (represented here by Suger, Villard, and Gervase)—­forced to reconcile differences, engage in intense negotiations in order to overcome great obstacles and to define and realize a common object of desire in the soon-­ to-­be-­built church. However, we must acknowledge that Suger and Gervase were essentially one-­building men (S-­Denis and Canterbury Cathedral), and in order to understand the Gothic phenomenon we need to find a way to correlate hundreds of buildings, spread over the map and spanning centuries. And then there is the intractable problem of intentionality: what was the nature of the Gothic plot, composed as it is of thousands of more or less related churches embedded densely and widely in the map, expressing and transcending regional identities and power structures? Was this a premeditated plan to impose a kind of cultural unity, or was it an accident—­something that just happened?1 The old metaphors of “birth,” “development,” or “spread” of Gothic just do not work for us any more: here we see a map of the Gothic cathedral type apparently flying outward from the Île-­de-­France to land in England, Spain, and Germany (fig. 32). What help can our three witnesses 205

Figure 32. The "spread" of the Gothic Cathedral, from G. Westermann, Atlas zur Weltgeschichte. Copyright westerman. Braunsschweig.

provide as in these final pages we seek reconciliation between the static and the dynamic, the synchronic and the diachronic, the spatial and the temporal? Let us hear from them one last time, now in forward-­moving chronological sequence. First Suger. Analysis of the structure of the abbot’s rhetoric led me to challenge Panofsky’s notion that Gothic was conceived in an intellectual and rhetorical environment where the forward-­moving syllogistic structure de-

veloped in scholastic thought was applied to the working out of architectural problems through a bit-­by-­bit process of careful trial and error.2 The structure of Suger’s stories (“manipulated dialectic”) and his vivid descriptions provided a mechanism of persuasion—­even deceit—­intended to precipitate prompt intervention not a careful working-­out process. Yet the reader of Suger does not find the precise forward-­moving chronology characteristic of Gervase’s Tractatus. The abbot tells us of a dangerous historical environment—­the mission of the king to restore the right order that had existed but had been perturbed by misbehavior of the king’s overmighty subjects. In Suger’s Life of Louis VI we find the king battling with a series of such miscreants in the lands immediately surrounding Paris and extending south into the Berry and north toward Flanders.3 The military engagements of Louis VI may be represented on the map as arrows directed outward from the royal centers of power in and around Paris, the ground of early Gothic architecture (fig. 33). Does such projection of royal power tell us anything about the force that lay behind the early “spread” of Gothic (fig. 32)? In what way can the Gothic phenomenon express or anticipate the creation of France as the geographical and cultural unit we are familiar with? Was church construction like castle building? We know that logistical protocol and architectural templates for royal castle building were controlled and deployed centrally, producing, for example, the famous lookalike circular donjons associated with King Philip Augustus.4 Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale compared the generation of lookalike Gothic churches under Louis VI and VII with the situation in England after the Norman Conquest, where the royal desire to extend control on the ground was expressed through the construction of stone castles and great churches with a high level of similarity one to another, expressing centralized authority.5 Abbot Suger would not encourage us to espouse such an assumption about the construction of his great church—­he leaves us in no doubt about the dominance and the initiative of the ecclesiastic patron, not the king.6 Gothic did not “spread” out from the center at the behest of the king but was the result of the desires of ecclesiastical builders to reference prestigious prototypes—­often with royal associations. This phenomenon has been documented by Arnaud Timbert; my figure 35 provides a map of such architectural references made to Suger’s new chevet at S-­Denis.7 A very useful distinction was made by Donna Sadler, who argued (in relation to Louis IX) that while the king might have been the subject of artistic discourse, (think, for example of royal portals, kings’ galleries, and the enormous impact of royal churches like S-­Germain-­des-­Prés), he was not necessarily the author.8 Abbot Suger provides us with exactly what we need to know about the C O N C LU S I O N: G OT H I C P L OT S

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Figure 33. The military engagements of Louis VI (Capetian domaine in gray). Rendered by Emily Shaw.

human mechanism lying behind the establishment of what Pierre Bourdieu would call a “field” of cultural production. That mechanism was, of course, desire, envy, and rivalry on the part of the bishops and abbots invited from a remarkably wide swath of space to participate in Suger’s flashy consecration ceremonies. Those ecclesiastical dignitaries might return home with their heads filled with memories of what they had seen and with resolve to emulate or do better. I propose, then, to reverse the arrows on the map of the “spread” of Gothic and turn them to face inward, to represent the passage of 208

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Figure 34. Invitees to the consecration of S-­Denis (Plantagenet domaine in dark gray). Rendered by Emily Shaw.

Suger’s invitees from their seats to participate in the consecration of S-­Denis (fig. 34). The arrows represent not the “influence” of S-­Denis but the potential desire to build on the part of the bishops and abbots attending the consecration of S-­Denis.9 Suger has also provided vital information about three of the components of his great church that we, with our hindsight, know would be most important in “early Gothic” architecture. First, he leaves us no doubt about his preoccupation with pilgrims and pilgrimage; we may assume that the adoption of a “pilgrimage church” plan for the chevet of S-­Denis with its spaC O N C LU S I O N: G OT H I C P L OT S

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Figure 35. Quotations of S-­Denis represented as Desire. Derived from Arnaud Timbert; rendered by Emily Shaw and Nicole Griggs.

cious ambulatories and radiating chapels was at the abbot’s behest. Second, he badly wanted columns: “We endeavored to learn where we might obtain marble columns or columns the equivalent thereof. Since we found none, only one thing was left to us, distressed in mind and spirit: we might obtain them from Rome (for in Rome we had often seen wonderful ones in the Palace of Diocletian and other Baths) by safe ships through the Mediterranean, thence through the English Sea and the tortuous windings of the River Seine, at great expense to our friends and even by paying passage money to our enemies, the nearby Saracens.”10 Then, we a told, a local quarry was miraculously found, yielding appropriate stone for the columns. Why did the abbot desire columns? To some extent, no doubt, purely on account of their intrinsic beauty. One thinks of the sense of wonder and delight on encountering the lofty and complex superstructure of an edifice like Laon or Noyon Cathedral, borne aloft upon elegantly simple, sometimes

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improbably slender, cylindrical columns that invite the gaze to slip easily around into the peripheral spaces and that permit light to percolate fluidly. Then again, the anthropomorphic character of the column conveys eloquence to the building: the abbot as interlocutor speaks of the twelve columns of the chevet “representing the number of the twelve apostles (“duodecim columnae duodenorum Apostolorum exponentes numerum”), while the columns of the aisles and ambulatory signified the Minor Prophets, “according to the apostle who buildeth spiritually.”11 And modern interlocutors have hastened to add more levels of meaning, pointing to linkages created by the columns not just with Christian triumph in Rome and reformed Benedictine monasticism but also to the beginnings of kingship in France and the emergence of Paris as capital city of the Merovingians set with columnar basilicas.12 And third, the abbot tells us of his desire for spaciousness and lumi­ nosity—­we can see the results in the radiating chapels of S-­Denis, where the gaze slips around elegant monolithic columns to discover elided spaces brilliantly lit by means of enormous windows. Did the original upper choir (rebuilt after 1231) embody similar luminosity and architectural inventiveness? Is it possible that innovative structural means were applied to the creation of a light-­filled lantern to shelter the shrine of the apostles of Gaul? The abbot’s story of the violent windstorm that shook the upper arches of the unfinished chevet of the abbey church of S-­Denis conveys something of the risks and danger faced by the builders of the churches of the first generation of Gothic. We have seen that it is even possible that the “great arches” shaken by the wind in Suger’s account were exposed flying buttresses. Certainly the existence of flyers in early Gothic Sens Cathedral (begun 1130s) and the choir of Notre-­Dame of Paris (begun toward 1160) is now widely accepted.13 The low-­slung flyers of Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral (built by William the Englishman) may provide a reflection (“quotation”) of the similar units at S-­Denis. There is some reason to believe, then, that the essential architectural elements of Gothic architecture were appropriated, invented, manipulated, and integrated in a very short period in the early years of the phenomenon. Viollet-­le-­Duc would certainly agree—­his story is pitched in dramatically forward-­moving fashion: Gothic was not worked out bit by bit over half a century, but all in a rush, as a clear expression of Frenchness, the agency of a new class of urban professional artisan and the application of reason: “Developing itself with incredible rapidity, and arriving at its culmination half a century from its commencement, this art . . . did not deviate one moment from the courses it first entered upon: it brought all its practical appliances to a perfection such as no art at any time had achieved: as regards

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structure it arrived at a formula.”14 I must add, however, that Abbot Suger would have been shocked at Viollet-­le-­Duc’s suggestion that movement was led, from the start, by the professional urban artisan. Whereas Viollet-­le-­Duc thought that the essential elements of Gothic were invented by a new urban class of professional mason, Suger’s story of the columns invites us to entertain the notion of appropriation.15 Monolithic columns with their bases and capitals could be literally appropriated or acquired—­physically transported from elsewhere—­although, as we have seen, this might bring considerable logistical and financial challenges. The abbot says nothing about two of the other “essential” components of early Gothic, pointed arches and rib vaults: the (post)modern student might ask whether they were invented or appropriated and whether such forms, beyond their compelling “otherness,” might convey specific associations with putative origins. If the column was a sign of Christian triumph over Roman pagan origins, did pointed arches and rib vaults bring memories of their early use in Islamic architecture, pointing to another kind of Christian triumph? The story of Islamic origins has secured many adherents over the centuries.16 However, the traditional means of representing the connection between the manifestation of the pointed arch in northern Europe and early prototypes in the Mediterranean world remain unsatisfactory. Thus, in Jean Bony’s story we find the pointed arch somehow traveling north from the Near East from Islamic territories, into Sicily and up the length of Italy into Burgundy, where it appeared in the rebuilding of the third abbey church of Cluny, whence it “spread” to the north and west.17 Of course an arch, being made of voussoirs—­a set of geometrically controlled, wedge-­shaped stones assembled over formwork—­is not like a column; it cannot “travel.” As an inanimate object an arch cannot, as Bony expressed it, “propagate itself.” Is it necessary to insist that it is not the pointed arch that travels but the image of the arch, the desire for the arch, and the expertise necessary to get the geometry and installation right? Simply by employing appropriate language in our story of Gothic we make an enormous gain, leading us to the two kinds of people who would carry with them image, desire, and expertise. I am referring to patrons, whether secular seigneurs or churchmen, who may have seen pointed arches during their travels in the Mediterranean world and for whom the form became an object of desire, and to masons who were able to ascertain the geometric underpinnings of the arch, reproducing them first in tentative small-­scale drawings (as in Villard), then in a one-­to-­one scale tracing on a plaster surface, and finally in the arch itself, fully formed and bridging space. This is the process of compression and expansion that we ex-

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plored in earlier pages. One wonders how long it took for northern masons to fully understand the real structural advantages to be gained from the pointed arch. Similar observations may be made about the significance of the rib vault in early Gothic.18 Jean Bony notes the coincidence between the first appearance of rib vaults in the North (Durham Cathedral, begun 1093) and the Christian capture of Toledo (1085), “where could be seen—­on a reduced scale but in a rich variety of types—­some of the finest examples of Islamic rib vaults.”19 However, the appearance of the rib vault in the Île-­de-­France probably involved an intermediary. For Jean Bony, “rib vaulting seems to have entered Île-­de-­France from Normandy along two roads” from the north and west (that is, Plantagenet lands).20 Of course I will again question this kind of animistic language—­rib vaults, being complex architectural installations, do not travel. And once again, we may invoke the idea of the architectural unit’s representing an object of desire for the builders. Is it a coincidence that such desires seem to have focused the attention of our builders upon two of the great objectives entertained by the Capetians: triumph over resurgent Islam and triumph over the Plantagenet Atlantic Empire? We have seen that Suger refers specifically to the Saracens as “enemies,” and the “Saracen’s tomb” depicted by Villard de Honnecourt may refer to the appropriation of secret identity (otherness) on the part of the masons. It has long been recognized that the design of the western frontispiece of S-­Denis points very clearly to monuments that belonged to the domain of the Anglo-­ Norman rivals, particularly S-­Etienne of Caen.21 To appropriate key cultural property of one’s enemies may be a prelude to successful engagement with those enemies—­a means, as it were, to trump them.22 And what could express the triumph of Denis as national saint over Martin more clearly than the appropriation of a pilgrimage plan (ambulatory and radiating chapels of the kind used at S-­Martin of Tours) for the new chevet of S-­Denis? Such associations and meanings, while they may not have occurred to twelfth-­century viewers, certainly provide the twenty-­first-­century student with rich insights into the complexity of identity formation in twelfth-­century cultural production. S-­Denis was, of course, a special case, since Suger was quick to grasp the gains to be made by exploiting and enhancing the alignment of the interests of the monastery with the monarchy and by exploiting the tomb of the apostles of Gaul. However, other aspects of the S-­Denis situation were shared by countless ecclesiastical houses. I refer to the intense institutional rivalry between urban (and suburban) institutions in the burgeoning and rapidly

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changing economic and political context of French cities of the twelfth to early thirteenth century. Increasing royal power over the urban soil of Paris must have been seen as a threat to the authority and interests of the clergy of the metropolitan cathedral.23 It was to be expected, then, that the king would sustain his closest alliance not with the clergy of Notre-­Dame of Paris who challenged his power over his own capital city but with the monastery (S-­Denis) lying a comfortable distance away, well outside the city walls and housing the bones of some of his ancestors as well as St. Denis, increasingly seen as the patron of France. Abbot Suger’s building program was pushed forward by his desire to find an architectural expression of the supreme status of his monastery among all the churches of Gaul. The bishop of Paris does not appear in the list of those invited to the consecration of the new chevet. And conversely, that same rivalry led to the formulation of an architectural program at Notre-­Dame that dramatically leap-­frogged (dare I say, “vaulted”?) S-­Denis. The builders of the metropolitan cathedral appropriated important features of the abbey church—­the double ambulatory and cylindrical columns, for example—­but they introduced increased mass and scale (especially in the extraordinary exterior pylons or culées that secure the structural integrity of the superstructure) to create the most ambitious structure built in northern Europe at that time, dominating the urban skyline and challenging the greatest buildings of antiquity.24 The galleried elevation of Notre-­Dame of Paris brought that church into alignment with a group of similar monuments built in a variety of very different circumstances.25 Thus we find an expression of a common “family” of buildings that lent the appearance of some kind of cultural consensus that transcended the immediate milieu of the conversations between the three builders introduced earlier in this chapter. The metropolitan cathedral that has been labeled a dead end in the “development” of Gothic was, in fact, one of the greatest sources of inspiration in the propagation of Gothic form.26 How does the testimony of our second witness contribute to the dynamic, forward-­moving story of Gothic? Compared with the overheated rhetoric of Abbot Suger, Gervase’s prose may seem low-­keyed and pragmatic, yet his six-­year “creation story” provides a most effective forward-­moving rhetorical vehicle. Our chronicler provides additional information about the human and logistical dimensions lying behind the “spread” of Gothic. Master William of Sens came from overseas, as (we may deduce) did some of the masons (ymagiers) responsible for the exquisite capitals of the Canterbury Cathedral choir. The immigrant artisans clearly joined a masonic commu-

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nity able to comprehend and to extend the new concepts and techniques that we call “Gothic.” Despite clear references to antiquity at Canterbury (marble columns; tufa vault severies) the principal prototypes followed were fairly recent ones—­S-­Denis (raised relic shrine with ambulatory), Sens Cathedral, and S-­Remi of Reims—­yet the new chevet of Canterbury Cathedral was not designed around any single architectural model. Gervase’s delight in the forms of modernity provides testimony to the power of this new common architectural language (koine) to be understood, welcomed, and adapted over widely extended lands. The ability to express local identity through architectural forms appropriated (sometimes eclectically) from elsewhere is surely one of the key characteristics of Gothic. In the opening pages of this book, I interviewed Villard de Honnecourt first, because of the three witnesses he is “most like us.” As we will see, for the same reason he will render excellent service in closing, since the words and images of the Villard Enterprise anticipate and resonate with attempts to understand the Gothic phenomenon in the modern era up to our own times. The Villard Enterprise, almost a century after the work at S-­Denis, shows us a radically changed environment, pointing to the existence of the kind of cultural community that made possible the massive architectural output of the third generation of Gothic. We have seen that the Villard Enterprise, with its later additions, continued into the middle decades of the thirteenth century, when the Ordinances of Etienne Boileau provide the first written evidence for the urban regulation of professional groupings, including masons.27 By Villard’s time, the 1230s, there were great Gothic “masterpieces” to be admired, studied, and imitated—­the texts and images in Villard’s little book illustrate the power of Laon, Chartres, and Reims Cathedrals. The relationship between Cambrai and Reims Cathedrals in Villard was based upon imitation. While the builders of the first generation of Gothic may have appropriated architectural forms, sometimes to make an ideological point, those churches were remarkably disparate, and the immediate international impact of Suger’s S-­Denis or even the Gothic Chartres was relatively limited. But by the 1240s, French Gothic architectural production enjoyed extraordinary international currency.28 In this phase imitation becomes critical. We have seen that an older generation of scholars represented the phenomenon as arrows on the map spreading out from the Île-­de-­France and targeting centers like Westminster, Cologne, Léon, Burgos, and Toledo (fig. 32). In the spirit of the new means of representation proposed here, I have reversed the arrows to represent not buildings or “style” somehow passing from one region to another, but desire on the part of the builders in southern France,

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Spain, England, and Germany—­in other words, eyes turned inward, for a variety of reasons, toward paradigmatic monuments in northern France. The story must be told in terms of not stylistic “influence” but of an English king for whom the Ste-­Chapelle of Paris became an object of desire that he wanted quite literally to appropriate.29 The same kind of story can be told of an archbishop of Cologne, desiring to find an architectural expression of his freedom from the sovereignty of the emperor and the tyranny of the good old German forms through references to prototypes that were modern and French.30 And again, the same story for the creation of Gothic Clermont-­ Ferrand, Narbonne, or Toulouse after the Capetians had gained dominance in Auvergne and the Languedoc, or Toledo, Burgos, and Léon Cathedrals in Spain as expressions of Christian unity in the face of Islam.31 The attractiveness of such solutions resulted not just from what might be considered to be the inherent beauty of buildings like S-­Denis and Amiens but also from the ideological associations carried by these churches with a society where church, monarchy, and bourgeois were, apparently, working in union and where the increasing wealth of ordinary folk could be channeled into cathedral construction.32 But this was not all. The French had resolved important problems of construction—­not just of statics but also of logistics. The development of mass-­production techniques, the fostering of armies of highly qualified artisans—­all this added desirability to the French product. And of course, a well-­qualified and gifted master mason unable to get an appointment as master of the work at a great French cathedral like Reims or Amiens was easily tempted to take up employment elsewhere, whether in Germany, Spain, or England. In what ways does the Villard Enterprise anticipate the future; in what ways is Villard “like us” in our search for the story of Gothic? Unlike Suger and Gervase, Villard was a multibuilding man, not attached to any single church. His purview was geographically extended; he wanted to collect multiple buildings, artifacts, and objects of desire, and subsequently to control, organize, and explain them. In other words, Villard began with the synchronicity of multiple images side by side on the page (surrogates, realized through the magic of his “virtual reality” techniques), but he then, probably nudged by his collaborators, went on to storytelling. The desire to collect buildings, to control them, to correlate them, and to represent them in “scientific” fashion, embedding them in the pages of a book, already anticipated in the Villard Enterprise, was to have a long and glorious life. It gained momentum and stature in topographic and antiquarian studies of the seventeenth century and in the encyclopedic movement of the eighteenth and

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nineteenth centuries.33 The most characteristic manifestation of this kind of intellectual logistic, applied to architecture, may be found in the statistique monumentale, popular in the nineteenth century.34 The English counterpart would be the Victoria County History. The Voyages pittoresques—­a lavishly illustrated multivolume publication—­harnessed the most recently developed “virtual reality” technology of the early nineteenth century to represent buildings in large, sumptuous images by famous artists.35 Lithography, a newly invented means of printing from a drawing made on a stone plate, rather than etched or engraved on metal, was nimble, relatively inexpensive, and capable of conveying the effect of space, light, line, and stony surface, and of setting the building within the landscape.36 For Gothic architecture, of course, the most famous encyclopedic project was Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné.37 We have seen that the encyclopedic “formlessness” of the alphabetically organized dictionary ostensibly eschews a unifying narrative, providing multiple “objective” entry points to a body of material that appears to exist by natural dispensation.38 But without a dominant story line or plot, the user may not be motivated to interact with, or to question, the objectively arranged material. In the 1860s, feeling that his ability to make the case in favor of Gothic had been stymied by the continuing institutional power of the École des Beaux Arts, Viollet-­le-­Duc began composing a series of lectures for oral delivery in a newly founded school, in order to provide a vehicle for the Big Story of Architecture in general, and Gothic in particular. 39 The lectures, read in a monotone, fell flat; but the resultant text, published as the Entretiens sur l’architecture and translated as the Discourses, has remained among the most influential architectural treatises ever published.40 Databasing, storytelling, virtual reality, and the critical role of the interlocutor, all anticipated in the Villard Enterprise and developed further by Viollet-­le-­Duc, are now facilitated by an extraordinary range of new tools in our own age of “new media.”41 Digital data storage, cataloging, and search engines allow us to bring the notion of the architectural encyclopedia or the statistique monumentale to a new level of intensity and inclusiveness. Our own age trumps the old “virtual reality” tricks (Villard’s “reality effect” and the lithographs of the Voyages) with dazzling new technologies: high-­ resolution digital imagery, panoramic photography, laser scanning, and all kinds of three-­dimensional representation. The computer can provide a framework for alphabetical access to a thousand buildings, like a dictionary. But far more exciting is the potential to represent multiple buildings as integrated spatial envelopes within a searchable spatial environment. By “spatial

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environment” I mean not just the representation of an individual building in a way that respects the spatiality of the edifice—­rather than presenting it in “thumbnail” two-­dimensional images on a “page”—­but also spaces between buildings: the geographical and temporal world of Gothic architecture with buildings located on multilayered maps that can show linkages between individual monuments as well as the changing geopolitical situation at the time of initial production in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In recent years, in collaboration with Andrew Tallon and a team of colleagues and students I have labored to create such a program: Mapping Gothic France, www.mappinggothic.org.42 The reader of the preceding pages who feels (if I may parody Alice in Wonderland ) that there are too many conversations and not enough pictures is invited to visit the site, which permits an experience of three dimensions of Gothic architectural production: space, time, and narrative. The spatial dimension brings the buildings themselves, encountered as one would in a real visit, starting with distant views and continuing with exterior and interior views from west to east.43 Our concerns with space continue as we consider the way buildings refer to each other and the way that linkages do or do not conform to political boundaries on the map. What about time? Traditionally, as we have seen, the story of Gothic has tended to privilege chronological concerns, setting buildings in a linear sequence of “development,” beginning with the reconstruction of the abbey church of S-­Denis (1130s–­40s) and continuing to “high Gothic” Chartres, Reims, and Amiens. Such a story tends to privilege “pioneering” buildings as milestones on the plotted path, omitting edifices that do not participate in the “mainstream” or that appear to lead to a dead end. In Mapping Gothic France, a time bar at the bottom of the computer screen provides an indication of relative chronology, allowing the user to identify, for example, churches built in a certain decade and to relate them to a historical and geographical context. The presence of multiple buildings embedded in the map, together with an indication of the timing of significant campaigns of construction, serves to remind us that Gothic S-­Denis was but one of many churches simultaneously under construction, and interconnections between buildings are far from linear. And finally we come to narrative. In some respects, enhanced access to the spatial framework of the buildings themselves and the chronological tools described above may reduce the need for the interlocutor: the buildings can represent themselves. But we have seen that beginning with our three witnesses and for more than eight centuries, interlocutors have felt compelled to narrate the building, and audiences have demanded explanations. 218

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Storytelling will continue to play a vital role in the mapping of Gothic, even in our brave new world of digital media. Our three witnesses, finally, with their stories, their information, and their deceptions, have provided an extraordinary glimpse of the human dimensions of Gothic. We have heard from a networking abbot, interacting closely with the king and his colleagues, the bishops and abbots of northern France, as they sought, in a most dangerous environment, to rewrite history with new “facts on the ground”—­the great churches of early Gothic. The abbot had his list of specific desires for architectural forms capable of expressing his agenda. Then came a systematic (plotting?) choir monk Gervase, able to describe and thus to control the logistics of a complex construction process and at the same time to project a smoothly compelling rhetorical structure capable of concealing disagreements and irregularities. The Villard Enterprise, finally, provided a glimpse of the decentralized force that lay behind the propagation of Gothic. That force was the desire to collect (through “virtual reality” images) artifacts and natural objects, to delight in them, to organize them, and to explain them to an audience (databasing and storytelling). We have passed from the world of kings, abbots, and monks to a wider community of layfolk—­particularly the masons themselves with their endlessly compelling technologies and deceptions—­a world that would provide the vital creative force to propel the production of Gothic edifices forward over centuries down to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond, into our own time.

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g 

Notes

Introduction 1. Michael Baxandall made a very similar point:“In every group of travelers, every bunch of tourists in a bus, there is at least one man who insists on pointing out to the others the beauty or interest of the things they encounter, even though the others can see the things too: we [i.e., art historians] are that man, I am afraid, au fond ” (“Language of Art History,” 454). 2. The best general introduction to the state of the study of Gothic architecture is provided by Paul Crossley’s introduction to Paul Frankl, Gothic Architecture, 7–­31. 3. Mary Carruthers, “The Concept of Ductus, or Journeying through a Work of Art.” 4. On Vasari as storyteller, see especially Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art?, 67. 5. Ernst Gombrich, Norm and Form, 88, used the expression “terms of exclusion.” 6. As I wrote these pages, an exhibition titled Gothic: Dark Glamour was showing at the New York Fashion Institute of Technology: “The main gallery space will be designed as a labyrinth, featuring iconic themes such as Night, with black evening dresses; the Ruined Castle, with fashion inspired by Gothic images of the Dark Ages, ruins, and fragments from the Laboratory, where futuristic ‘monsters’ are created.” 7. Gombrich, Norm and Form, 81–­83. 8. The very formation of the notion drew upon very well-­established rhetorical tropes—­ “Gothic” may compare with the low level of literary production known as sermo humilis. See Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, 24–­49. 9. The phrase is from Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, 1. 10. In Aristotle, entelechy refers to the condition of a thing whose essence is fully realized. In other words, given the experiments of builders of Gothic cathedrals in the twelfth century, Chartres Cathedral had to be just the way it is. In working out the opposition of thesis and antithesis, on the other hand, the outcome is, in principle at least, unknown. 11. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, esp. “The Île-­de-­France Milieu,” 26–­43. 12. A question most eloquently asked by Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art?, esp. preface, ix–­xi. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 8–­9, sought a structural solution: “To think ‘structurally,’ then and now, is to reject linear chronology as the inevitable matrix of experience and cognition.”

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13. For such a book, see Robert A. Scott, The Gothic Enterprise. 14. Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 70. 15. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 13. 16. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 44. 17. R. K. Barnhart, ed., The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (Bronx, NY: M. H. Wilson, 1988), 807. See also C. T. Onions, ed., Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 689. A graphic rendering of the “footprint” of a building was a “plot”; the word plan (from Latin, planus) gained currency only in the eighteenth century. 18. John North, “Diagram and Thought in Medieval Science,” 271–­72, illustrates a plot not unlike mine, intended to represent “by its sides and diagonals, the contrary, subcontrary, subalternate, or contradictory relations between the categorical propositions.” 19. Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious, 13, reflected: “It struck me one day that it was more interesting to think of modernism as a graph or table than as a history (the history that goes from impressionism to neoimpressionism to fauvism to cubism to abstraction . . . ; the history of an ever more abstract and abstracting opticality, that there was something to be gained from exploring its logic as a topography rather than following the threads of it as a narrative.” Having brought on witnesses (John Ruskin and others), she developed a graphic coordinating device or plot (20–­22). Michael Baxandall, “The Language of Art History,” 457, also offers a spatial diagram to represent the field of artistic production, reception, and representation. 20. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: xi, “We might think of plot as the logic or perhaps the syntax of a certain kind of discourse, one that develops its propositions only through temporal sequence and progression.” 21. Ibid., 12, explores the “subterranean logic” connecting the apparently heterogeneous meanings of plot. The key connecting mechanisms (machinations) are desire and the motion of the organizing line. 22. In Greek thought this understanding of “plot” would translate as mythos; see Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 334–­67. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot, xi: “Plot as I conceive it is the design and intention of narrative, what shapes a story and gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning.” 23. Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, 34, brings corporeal and sexual intensity to his enjoyment of the text with his conflation of plaisir and jouissance: “le plaisir n’est-­il qu’une petite jouissance?” 24. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot, xv: “My aim here is in some measure to make good on the claim—­put forward by Susan Sontag some years ago—­that rather than theories of interpretation we need an ‘erotics’ of the plot.” See also 36 and 38: “Desire is always there at the start of a narrative, often in a state of initial arousal, often having reached a state of intensity such that movement must be created, action undertaken, change begun.” 25. My conclusion is based on a close reading of the primary written sources, especially in Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral. 26. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 9: “No device more effectively generates the effect of a doubling or bending of time than the work of art, a strange kind of event whose relation to time is plural.”

Chapter 1 1. The little book passed from the ownership of the family Félibien to the library of S-­Germain-­des-­Prés and thence to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. fr. 19093. Editions were published by Jean-­Baptiste Lassus, Robert Willis, and Henri Omont, but the authoritative edition was that by Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt. Roland Bechmann (Villard de Honnecourt) has brought invaluable new dimensions to our understanding and was instrumental in the production of a pioneering interactive CD-­ROM and a Web-­borne edition, Les cathédrales et Villard de Honnecourt (classes.bnf.fr/villard). Unfortunately, this digital edition, while it provides the most immediate access to the manuscript for the broadest audience, paginates consecutively, disregarding the traditional recto and verso. In refer-

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ring to pages in Villard, I have preserved the traditional method. The best critical and historiographical overview of the problem was provided by Carl Barnes, Villard de Honnecourt. A new facsimile edition edited by Barnes appeared in 2009, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt. Given the ready availability of Barnes’s careful analysis, I will offer here only a brief physical description. The pages, made up of parchment sheets of mixed quality and irregular size, average around 9.25 by 6.10 inches. The work is now composed of seven gatherings of irregular content with a total of thirty-­three leaves (making sixty-­six surfaces available). There are thirteen folded bifolios and seven folios attached along one edge; some trimming has taken place. This is not the original structure: estimates of the number of missing pages range from fifteen to twenty-­seven leaves. The leaves are sewn into a pigskin folder with a flap; although the scholars who have studied the book concur that this might be the original binding, there is no way of knowing for certain. The peculiar hooked style of drapery, generally known as Muldenfaltenstil, links the work of Villard with countless other graphic works of the first half of the thirteenth century. The dating of the Gothic buildings depicted by Villard allows us to narrow the period of his activity to the 1220s–­30s. 2. “Wilars de honecort v[os] salue et si proie a tos ceus qui de ces engiens ouverront con trovera en cest livre q[ui]1 proient por sarme et quil lor soviengne de lui. Car en ceste livre puet o[n] trover grant consel de le grant force de maconerie et des engiens de carpenterie. Et si trouveres le force de le portraiture, les trais ensi come li ars de iometrie le c[om]ma[n]d[e] et ensaigne.” Thus the “list of contents” includes three chapters: one, masonry; two, carpentry; and three, drawing according to geometric principles. It is to be noted that an alternative meaning of engien was a trick or ruse of some kind. Force is hard to translate since English usage favors the meaning “constraint.” French usage can also mean “energy” or “intensity:” “en parlant des choses, force signifie ‘intensité, pouvoir d’action’” (Le Robert, Dictionnaire historique de la langue française [Paris: Dictionnaire Le Robert, 1992], 1:812). 3. The term “reality effect” is invoked here because it invites skepticism about the “transparency” of the text and of the author; see Frank R. Ankersmit, The Reality Effect in the Writing of History, 17–­20; Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language. 4. The unscrambling of the underlying secret behind the story has fascinated audiences from scholarly to popular; see Paul Frankl, “The Secret of the Medieval Masons”; Carlo Ginzberg, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method; and Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol. 5. Scholars have disagreed on the sequence of these subsequent entries; see Friedrich Eduard Schneegans, “Uber die Sprache des Skizzenbuches von Villard de Honnecourt”; Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 194–­200; and Wilhelm Schlink, “War Villard de Honnecourt Analphabet?” 6. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 11. 7. Barnes (ibid., 2) seems certain that the leaves remained unbound until they left the possession of Villard—­yet the evidence is ambiguous. The creation of the book involved binding the bifolios together into quires or gatherings. It is evident that the sequence of images of Reims Cathedral continues from one quire to the next, suggesting that the binding might have taken place before the Reims images were entered in the collection. Similarly, the references made by the texts transcend the structure of the quires (“See here: two leaf heads,” 21v, points to two images on 22r, a different gathering)—­again suggesting that binding took place before the texts were inscribed. 8. Ibid., 13, 30–­31, and 163. The text on fol. 1r has been partially obliterated and was read in 1926 under ultraviolet light. Similarly, a text on fol. 2v and an obliterated text on fol. 23v also appropriate Villard for the Félibien family. 9. Carl Barnes, “Apparitional Aesthetics: Viollet-­le-­Duc and Villard de Honnecourt,” esp. 48: “The Portfolio became a pretext to hijack Villard’s persona . . . and to stage him as a propagandist for his own views on the primacy and merits of French Gothic architecture.” 10. For “Gothic Vitruvius,” see Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 37, and François Bucher, Architektor, 28. Attempts to locate Villard within a broadly sketched cultural context were made by Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 225–­37; François Bucher, Architektor, 15–­35; Roland N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 8 – 1 9

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Bechmann, Villard de Honnecourt, 13–­82; and Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 215–­30. 11. Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 238–­46. 12. François Bucher, Architektor, 28–­30. 13. On the role of connoisseurship in the enterprise of scholar-­turned-­detective, see Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, 95–­125. 14. In fol. 30v, an image of the interior of the radiating chapels of Reims Cathedral, we are told, “Of similar arrangement should be those of Cambrai if they are made correctly.” 15. Carl Barnes, “An Essay on Villard de Honnecourt,” uncovered new links between Cambrai, Villard’s trip to Hungary, and Reims, suggesting that Villard was a kind of talent scout: a secular agent gathering images for use at Cambrai. 16. The authenticity of the S-­Quentin engraving has been challenged; see Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 224–­26. 17. The extreme position is taken by Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 238, where he maintained that the significance of the drawings is (my translation) “as a true medieval Summa scientiae et artis, a compendium of all the knowledge and practice of the school of a masons’ lodge [Bauhüttenschule].” 18. Peter Kidson, review of François Bucher, Architector, 330: “The man who drew the elevation of Reims knew nothing of the geometrical system which determined the relations between its stages. What he drew was nonsense—­something which betrays either a garbled misunderstanding or else total ignorance of the ways in which contemporary cathedral designs were put together.” Christopher Wilson takes the thought further in The Gothic Cathedral, 141: “Unfortunately, the one extensive early 13th-­century collection of architectural drawings to have survived, the so-­called ‘sketchbook’ of Villard de Honnecourt . . . is not a representative sample [of Gothic architectural drawing]. Villard’s renderings of the eastern parts of Reims Cathedral are not merely crude but riddled with crass mistakes showing that he lacked such basic architectural skills as the ability to correlate cross sections and elevations. Equally revealing of his ‘outsider’ status is the series of diagrams showing formulas for setting out pointed arches, keystones and the like. Neither architects not executant masons would have any need of such a compilation; their procedures were enshrined in current practice and would have been transmitted orally and by example.” 19. See n2 in this chapter. 20. The building accounts for the construction of Troyes Cathedral suggest that while all masons directing operations might be “masters” of their profession, not all would enjoy the title “master mason of Troyes Cathedral.” 21. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 6–­17 and esp. 76, “Who Creates the Creator?” “Villard” identifies Pierre de Corbie as the colleague with whom he designed the peculiar double-­ambulatory choir with radiating chapels that alternate rounded and square. A third master added a text with the revealing phrase inter se disputando—­providing an intriguing glimpse of interactive creativity and the scholastic quaestio. 22. Ibid., 95, on the “power to convince.” 23. For the best recent explorations of the administrative and financial dimensions of church construction, see Denis Cailleaux, La cathédrale en chantier, and Wim Vroom, Financing Cathedral Building. 24. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 48–­54, and “The Secret of the Medieval Masons,” 46: “Also, no workman, nor master, nor parlier, nor journeyman shall teach anyone, whatever he may be called, not being one of our handicraft and never having done mason work how to take the elevation from the groundplan” (Regensburg Ordinances, 1459). 25. William Clark, “Reims Cathedral in the Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt,” 25–­26, takes a similar positive attitude, agreeing with Roland Bechmann, who saw Villard as an amateur and his drawings as un aide-­mémoire personnel. Clark suggests that Villard did indeed visit Reims and that in his drawings he offered certain “corrections” to what was actually there.

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26. Fol. 10v: “vesci une des formes de rains des espaces de le nef teles com eles sunt entre 2 pilers. Jestoie mandes en le tierre de hongrie qant io le portrais porco laimai io miex.” Fol. 9v: “Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres si co[m] v[os] pores trover en cest liv[re]. En aucun liu onq[ue]s tel tor ne vi co[m] est cele de loo[n].” 27. I am tempted to compare the role of the interlocutor with that of the ventriloquist. See David Goldblatt, Art and Ventriloquism, xi: “Ventriloquism is an act in which things talk—­in which things are made to speak by one who is present to them.” 28. The perpetual-­motion machine, 5r, ves ent ci; description of the housing for a clock, 6v, ves ent ci; the gospel lectern, 7r, ves ent ci; the tantalus cup, 9r, vesci; the Laon tower, 9v, ves ent ci and esgardés devant vos; the Reims window, 10v, vesci; woman in Solomon’s judgment, 12r, vesci; Cistercian church, 14v, vesci; Cambrai chevet plan, 14r, vesci; Meaux chevet plan, 15r, vesci; aisle roof, 17v, vesci; lantern, 17v, vesci; leaf heads, 21v, ves; wheel of fortune, 21v, vesci; Leo, 24v, vesci; porcupine, 24v, vesci; Cosmos and Damian, 27r, vesci; choir stall poppet, 27v, vesci; trebucket, 30r, ves (repeated); Reims chapels, 30v, vesci and ves; Reims stone coursing, 32r, vesci (twice). This is not to mention the istud est—­texts added by a later hand or de tel maniere. 29. Marie Odile Terrenoire, “Villard de Honnecourt, culture savant, culture orale?,” 174. 30. Richard Brilliant, “The Bayeux Tapestry,” made the same point in relation to the repeated hoc and ubi in the text of the so-­called Bayeux Tapestry. 31. “Of such a manner was the sepulcher of a Saracen that I saw one time”; “whoever wants to make a clock housing, see here one that I saw one time”; “I have been in many lands, as you can see in this book”; “I was one time in Hungary”; “note well that the lion was drawn from life.” 32. Fol. 24v, “Vesci i lion si com on le voit p[ar] devant et sacies bien q[ui]1 fu contrefais al vif.” Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 169, reflects on the negative connotations of contrefaire: to counterfeit. 33. Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon, 26–­32. 34. Carl Barnes, “The Drapery-­Rendering Technique of Villard de Honnecourt.” 35. In some cases the ink wash may have been added later. 36. Millard Fillmore Hearn, “Villard de Honnecourt’s Perception of Gothic Architecture” and “Ripon Minster.” Of the shafts and moldings of Canterbury and Ripon (p. 126), Hearn writes, “Coordinated with a rational cogency, or even applied with only an approximate formal relationship but in profusion, these shafts and moldings could create the effect of a dynamic order of architecture, an insubstantial network of plastic lines, superimposed upon an inert order, composed of flat walls.” 37. Yes, Villard has made a mistake with the springers of the ribs. 38. Paul Crossley, “The Return to the Forest.” 39. Jean Givens, Observation and Image-­Making. More recently, see the excellent 2010 exhibition catalogue edited by Meredith Cohen and Xavier Dectot, Paris, ville rayonnante, and Matt Kavaler, Renaissance Gothic, 199–­230. The problem of natural forms in Gothic will be pursued further below. 40. Fol. 22r provides a leaf in the throes of becoming a man. 41. Fol. 2r, the soldier raises two fingers to his brow; 3v, Humility’s slender upraised fingers echo the folds of her garment; 6r, in the “Tomb of the Saracen” the two elders raise index fingers to point upward; 10v, the Virgin raises a forefinger and delicately holds a flowering spherical object while the infant Christ blesses; 11v, the male nude raises the forefinger of his left hand while the fingers of his right hand hold a flowering pot reminiscent of the Virgin’s flowering sphere; 12r, the woman in the judgment of Solomon makes a gesture of entreaty; 12v, the king points and the bishop venerates; 13r, with delicately curved fingers the king reaches for the touch of his loyal follower; 14r, in the courtly couple the woman’s extended right hand indicates speech; 16r, the seated old man, earthbound, grasps his left ankle with his right hand, pointing up to the Lausanne window with his left; 22r, the male nudes both extend eloquent gestures; 25r, the seated king commands with an authorita-

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tive right-­hand gesture; 27v, “Christ” blesses; 28r, the two prophets “speak”; 29v, the elegant young man in chlamys extends his right hand while the fingers of the left curve as if to delicately grasp something. 42. Jean-­Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes, 14: “La civilisation médiévale . . . a parfois été appelée une ‘civilisation du geste.’” Schmitt warns us (22) about the dangers of attempting to codify a typology of gesture. His emphasis on the interaction between gesture and speech is echoed by Lydie Louison, “Mimetisme et sémantisme des gestes,” 393. 43. Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 62, discovered an inscription along the inner edge of the page: “cest uns roi [et] ce sont si o[m]me [et] ses iens” (“This is a king and these are his men and his people.” Attempts have been made to connect the image with some scriptural source: Paul before Agrippa, or Herod and the Three Kings. On the viewer’s compulsion to unscramble meaning from such an enigmatic image, see James Elkins, “On the Impossibility of Stories, 354–­55. 44. The window and man were drawn by “Villard,” who may also have written the colophon at the top: “Cest une reonde veriere de le glize de Lozane.” A later master (“Hand III,” according to Barnes) wrote the inscription in Latin at the bottom of the window, “ista est fenestra in losana eccl[es]ia,” thus appropriating the figure below as in image of himself, the interlocutor. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 103, allowed himself to play “frivolously” with the notion that the figure was Villard’s image of himself. 45. As already understood in French eighteenth-­century thought; see Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy.” 46. “Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres, si co[m] v[os] pores trover en cest liv[re]. En aucun liu onq[ue]s tel tor ne vi co[m] est cele de loo[n]. Ves ent ci le prem[ier] esligement, si con des p[re]mieres fenestres. A cest esligement est li tors tornee a VIII arestes, sen s[on]t les IIII filloles quarees seur colonbes de trois, puis si vienent arket et entaulemens, se resunt les filloles p[ar]ties a VIII colonbes, et e[n]tre II colonbes saut uns buef, puis vienent arket et entaulemens. P[ar] deseure sunt li conble a VIII crestes, en cascune espase a une arkiere por avoir clarte. Esgardes devant v[os], sen vereis m[u]lt de le maniere et tote le montee, et si co[m] les filloles se cangent, et si penseiz, car se v[os] voles bien ovrer de toz grans pi­lers forkies, v[os] covient avoir q[ui] ases aient col, prendes gard[e] en vostre afaire, si feres q[ue] sages et q[ue] cortois.” 47. The existing bulls were put there by the nineteenth-­century restorer Boeswillwald, who took his cue from Villard. 48. Guibert de Nogent, Autobiography, bk. 3, chap. 13, in Medieval Sourcebook, www.Ford ham.edu/halsall/basis/guibert-­vita.html: “At Laon also, . . . I have been told by a cleric of good character, who had the duty of carting wood for the repair of the fabric of the church, that in ascending the hill one of the oxen through weariness broke down. The cleric, being much vexed with the ox and unable to get another to put in his place, behold, suddenly an ox was seen running up, as if purposely offering itself to help in the work. And when he had with the others speedily drawn the cart right up to the church, the cleric was very anxious to know to whom he should return the strange ox. But as soon as the ox was unyoked, it did not wait for anyone to lead it or to urge it forward, but returned to the place from which it came.” 49. The labyrinth set in the pavement of Amiens Cathedral, which also offers a kind of puzzle for the visitor, was known in the Middle Ages as the “House of Daedalus.” See Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 170–­73, for the key to unlock the puzzle of the labyrinth. 50. The gesture is very similar to that of the Virgin Mary on the reverse side of the same folio. 51. James Elkins, “On the Impossibility of Stories,” 360, in relation to pictures as puzzles, writes: “In a way we become the creators or the coconspirators of the story—­we ‘bring the narrative about.’” 52. “Ki velt faire le maizo[n] dune ierloge ves ent ci une q[ue] io vi une fois.” The same

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formula is applied to the following page, 7ro: “Whoever wants to make a lectern for reading the Gospel, see here the best way I know.” 53. The idea can be found in Theophilus in the prologue to his first book, On Divers Arts (De diversiis artibus), 11–­13. 54. The medieval preacher was all too familiar with the problem caused by the bored audience; see Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon, 26–­32. Hans Sedlmayr articulated the same sense of bitter disappointment when the work of art is translated into words that are inadequate to convey its force; quoted in The Vienna School Reader, ed. Wood, 138. 55. Some would call this art gush. 56. Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon, 31. Similar, too, is the readiness to build upon shared experiences of the audience. On medieval laughter, see Jacques Le Goff, “Rire au moyen âge,” and Herman Braet, ed., Risus mediaevalis. Aron Gurevich has complicated the simple distinction between a serious “official” culture and humerous popular one; see Medieval Popular Culture. 57. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, 84, talked about disjunction. Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 201, dealt with relation to prototypes and transformation mostly in terms of style. 58. Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, Abb. 139; 139a. 59. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 80, concluded that the male nude was not the work of Villard. But it seems equally possible that an original drawing has been later reworked by Villard himself or one of his followers in the Villard Enterprise. 60. The figure has been so heavily limned that the ink has penetrated the parchment, rendering it visible on the reverse side. 61. The “real” man most frequently rendered nude in medieval art was, of course, Adam. Just as Adam clutched the apple as his means of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, so our hero clutches the vase as his means of passage to illusionism through the study of the artifacts of antiquity (the vase) and nature. 62. On unusual or “unwonted” and “rogue” images, see Paul Papillo, “Illuminating the Comedy” and “Rogue Images.” Also Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 133. 63. “De tel maniere fu li sepouture dun sarrazin q[ue] io vi une fois.” Roland Bechmann,”The Saracen’s Sepulchre,” pointed to the similarity between the image of the king in the “icon” and the enthroned central figure in the “tomb.” “Saracen” could apply to a range of other cultures, including Islamic, Roman, and Near Eastern. One thinks of the “Sarsen stones” of Stonehenge. In modern jargon we might say that the word was used to represent the “Other.” 64. Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 26 (my translation): “None of the Villard drawings is more unusual and more difficult to ‘read’ than this one.” He concluded that no complete prototype can be found in the art of antiquity: the prototype must have been a two-­ dimensional representation of a late Roman diptych like the Probianus diptych in Berlin. 65. Roland Bechmann, “The Saracen’s Sepulcher,” suggested that the central figure alludes to Hiram, architect of the Temple of Solomon. The two columns that flank the composition can be understood as the columns of the temple or the columns upon which the seven Liberal Arts, including geometry, were carved, according to Masonic myth—­see Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry, 216. The image was thus derived from an graphic allegorical representation of the corporate and hierarchical identity of the Compagnons de Devoir. 66. Fol. 18r. Later master: “Chi commence le mate[re] de la portraiture; Incipit materia porturature. Fol 18v. Villard: “Ci comence li force des trais de portaiture si con li ars de iometrie les ensaigne por legierem[en]t ouvrer. Et en lautre fuel s[on]t cil d[e]le maconerie.” 67. Fol. 19v.” En ces iiii fuelles a disfigures de lart de iometrie . . .” 68. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 19: “It is undeniable that Villard possessed a sophisticated architectural vocabulary, probably learned from his talks with masons in the various workshops he visited.”

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69. Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy.” 70. William W. Clark, “Reims Cathedral in the Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt.” 71. Dieter Kimpel, “Le développement de la taille en série.” 72. Lon Shelby, “Medieval Masons’ Templates” and Gothic Design Techniques. 73. Jennifer Alexander, “Villard de Honnecourt and Masons’ Marks.” 74. Fol. 32r. “Vesci le[s] molle[s] des chapieles de cele pagne la devant, des formes et des verieres, des ogives et des doubliaus et des sorvols p[ar] deseure.” 75. Claudine Lautier, “Les épures de la cathédrale de Clermont-­Ferrand.” 76. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds., The History of Cartography, 37–­38. 77. Oswold Dilke, The Roman Land Surveyors, 15–­16; J. Brian Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyers. On Vitruvius, see the recent edition, Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, ed. Ingrid Rowland. 78. Michael Lewis, Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome, fig. 5.4. 79. In order to hang a plumb from the center of the cross, it was necessary to displace it off the axis of the supporting column. 80. To form a small plot one may form the right-­angled corner through the application of a Pythagorean triangle; see Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, 107: “Likewise, Pythagoras discovered a set square. . . . If you take three rules, of which one should be three feet long, another four feet long, and the third five feet long, and these rules are arranged together so that the ends of each touch the ends of the two others in the form of a triangle, they will create a flawless set square.” 81. Nigel Hiscock, “The Two Cistercian Plans of Villard de Honnecourt.” 82. Fol. 20r: “[P]ar chu partis om one pi[e]rre que les ii moities sont q[u]areies” (in this way you can divide a stone so that the two parts are square). The master who did the drawing and wrote the colophon may have misunderstood Vitruvius, who in the early pages of book 9 (Sundials and Clocks) refers to a system Plato had discussed by which a square plot or a field may be doubled in size through the application of rotational geometry. See Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, 107. 83. François Bucher, “Design in Gothic”; Matthäus Roriczer, Buchlein von der Fialen Gerechtigkeit. 84. Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, 29–­30. 85. Michael Lewis, Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome, 39–­40. The angels of the central portal of the Chartres western frontispiece carry astrolabes. 86. Fol. 20v, “Pa[r] chu p[re]nt om le hautece done toor.” 87. That corporate enterprise still exists today in the form of the Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Technology, Science and Art and is represented on the web as Villardman.net. 88. In the same way “Kunst” may be translated not only as “art” but also as trick, artifice, or sleight of hand, as noted by Paul Frankl, “The Secret of the Medieval Masons,” 49n17. 89. I use the word force both in order to mimic Villard (fol. 1v: “le grant force de maconerie”) and also to anticipate my own plea in part III that we should give full consideration to the interplay of the builders’ desires.

Chapter 2 1. The little we know about the life of Gervase is summarized by William Stubbs in his introduction to Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, esp. 1:ix–­lvi; Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral; and Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 24–­35. For an excerpt of the Tractatus, see Teresa Frisch, Gothic Art, 14–­23; Antonia Gransden, “Realistic Observation” and Historical Writing, 253–­60; Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 269–­74. Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, provides a comprehensive historiography (1:21–­37) and summarizes what we know of the life of Gervase (1:38–­40). The Tractatus does not survive in its original twelfth-­century form but is included in other works by Gervase in three (thirteenth-­ century) copies. The writing of Gervase remained in the Canterbury library until the dissolution of 1538; it was translated into English and incorporated (with some omissions) in

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Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 32–­62. Most recently, see Carol D. Cragoe, “Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury”; Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown; and Peter Draper, The Formation of English Gothic, 13–­33. 2. The archbishop gathered a group of secular magistri (often Paris-­trained) around himself and participated in the royal court; the monks, on the other hand, were bound to the contemplative life. See Avrom Saltman, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The combination brought intrinsic tensions, exacerbated by the extraordinary character and life of Thomas Becket. 3. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 12–­23, emphasizes the very close intellectual links with Paris, particularly S-­Victor and S-­Denis. 4. Margaret Gibson, “Normans and Angevins,” esp. 51–­52. 5. Ibid., 62: “Under Becket, the archiepiscopal household became a little princely court, like those of Henry of Blois at Winchester, Count Henry the Liberal and his wife at Troyes, and Henry the Lion at Brunswick.” See also Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket, and Peter Fergusson, Canterbury Cathedral in the Age of Becket, 19–­20. 6. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 12–­23, notes the resonance between the beheadings of Denis and Becket and the continuing links between the churches. 7. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 47, omits from his English translation of Gervase’s Tractatus the account of the life and miracles of Becket. 8. In his account of the dispute with Archbishop Baldwin (1186), Gervase noted that “one of the monks” had written an account of the affair to Pope Urban III. Gervase himself might have been that monk-­historian; see William Stubbs, introduction to Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, 1:xxii. 9. Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:1. Gervase was author of a great chronicle covering the period from 1100 to 1199, the Gesta Regum; the Actus Pontificum Cantuariensis Ecclesiae; Vitae Archiepiscoporum; and a mappa mundi, a topographical work with lists of bishoprics and ecclesiastical foundations in the counties of England. 10. William Stubbs, introduction to Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, 1:xv–­xvi: “It is probable that no part of it [the Tractatus] was written until the year 1185.” Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 4, dates the writing of the Tractatus “some time after 1188.” See also Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:46–­47: the last sentences recording the accession of Archbishop Baldwin fix a date after 1184, but the body of the writing could have been accumulated over time. Carol D. Cragoe, “Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury,” 40, proposed circa 1199. 11. See Frank Ankersmit’s discussion of the notion of “reality effect” projected by Roland Barthes, understood as the piling up of apparently circumstantial detail: Frank R. Ankersmit, The Reality Effect in the Writing of History, 18. 12. Antonia Gransden, “Realistic Observation.” 13. Ibid., 30. In the case of Canterbury this sense of insecurity was enhanced by chronic struggles between the monks and their archbishop and by plans to resolve that struggle through transfer of the archiepiscopal seat. 14. In this Gervase was preceded by Eadmer (ca. 1060–­ca. 1126), biographer of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury; Eadmer provided an account of the cathedral and its relics in the aftermath of the fire that destroyed the old edifice in 1067. See Richard W. Southern, Saint Anselm. 15. Carol D. Cragoe, “Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury,” 49–­51. 16. Ibid., 51: “we do not know what sources he relied upon.” 17. It is possible that the spark that ignited the fire was generated in the forge of one Lambin Frese, moneyer, who had his workshop in the alley in front of Christ Church gate; see William Urry, Canterbury under the Angevin Kings, 153. 18. This and other passages in the Tractatus conform to the ancient rhetorical genre of ekphrasis—­not necessarily describing a work of art (this is a modern definition) but as “the use of language to try to make an audience imagine a scene.” See Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, 3. The ancient definition N O T E S T O PA G E S 47 – 49

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of ekphrasis (ibid., 1) was “a speech that brings the subject matter vividly before the eyes.” Webb, 131–­66, stresses the usefulness of the rhetorical genre as a means of persuasion. 19. The most convenient access to a transcript of Eadmer’s text can be found in Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 9–­11; see also Francis Woodman, Architectural History, 16–­17. 20. See Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 271, and Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:61–­64. Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing, 259, concludes, “As far as is known, he was the first man in England to distinguish chronicles from history.” Gervase may have been dependent upon Cicero for this distinction. 21. Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:61: “Forma tractandi varia, quia historicus diffuse et elegantur incedit, cronicus vero simpliciter graditur et breviter.” 22. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 35, gives Hosea 4:9 and Lamentations 4:1 as sources. Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:63–­64, suggests that the topos was derived from sermons. Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:5–­6: “Sic ergo filii Israel occulto quidem sed justo Dei judicio de terra promissionis, immo de paradiso deliciarum ejecti, ut esset sicut populus sic sacerdos, et ut lapides sanctuarii in angulis platearum sternerentur, per quiquentium in aula ecclesiae muro parvula a populo segregati in lacrimis et luctu permanserunt.” 23. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 34. 24. Ibid., 51. Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:20: “In solum magistrum vel Dei vindicta, vel diaboli desaevit invidia.” This passage gave Dorothy Sayers the inspiration for The Zeal of Thy House. In Sayers’s plot the fall of William of Sens resulted not just from his sexual transgressions (a love affair with the wealthy Lady Ursula) but also from his blasphemous claim to emulate the creativity of God. 25. Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:63: “Erat in hoc incendio mirabile, immo miserabile videre spectaculum.” Also, “Magister igitur turres praedictas dissipare non volens, integras autem transferre non valens.” 26. A similar conclusion was reached by Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 292, and by Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket and William of Sens,” 971–­72: “In spite of the detail, it is not a historical narrative but a demonstration of Divine Providence in action.” The same kind of demonstration of the vast sweep of Divine Providence could be seen in the sequence of splendid images of the ancestors of Christ in the choir clerestory, from the creation of Adam to the incarnation of Christ. 27. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 49; Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:20. 28. On the signs of adjustment in the architectural forms of the Canterbury choir, see Peter Draper, The Formation of English Gothic, 27–­32. 29. Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:62, comments on the lack of rhetorical unity in the Tractatus. The vivid “eyewitness” passages and the Genesis narrative provide a strategy to pull things together. 30. Carol D. Cragoe, “Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury,” 47, notes that English translations of the Latin omit Eadmer’s description of the Anglo-­Saxon cathedral and Gervase’s account of the evils of the times and the virtues of Thomas Becket from the narrative and that Gervase was principally interested in the historic space of the cathedral as container for the archbishop’s cathedra and the shrines of the saints. 31. This may be understood in terms of his awareness of the need to coordinate the very disparate elements included in the Tractatus: the descriptions of the older building drawn from an existing written source; his “eyewitness” narrative of construction and the dialectic of old and new. 32. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 47. Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:19: “Quoniam igitur descriptio ecclesiae jam jamque diruendae pro posse meo abbreviata usque ad tumbam martyris, quae in fine ipsius ecclesiae posita est, pervenit, cum ipso fine ecclesiae descriptio etiam finem sortiatur. Quae etsi paulo amplius quam proposuerim extensa est, multa tamen ut breviter diceretur ex

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industria dismissa sunt. Quis enim tantae et tam magnae ecclesiae tot diverticula tot discursus, et tot anfractus scribere vel saltem dicere valeat?” 33. On “sacred topography” see Paul Crossley, “The Integrated Cathedral,” and Claudine Lautier, “The Sacred Topography of Chartres Cathedral.” 34. As noted by Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 49–­50. Gervase is not describing the forms and spaces of the church for their own sake but as historical containers of the holy places—­the shrines, relics, and tombs. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 42: “And although my purpose is not to describe the mere arrangement of stones, yet it is impossible clearly to shew the places of the Saints and of their repose which are in various parts of the church, without first describing the building itself in which they were arranged.” 35. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 55. 36. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 25. 37. Such compression requires compulsion. 38. Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 275; Friedrich Oswald, “In medio Ecclesiae.” The point is also emphasized by Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:67, who finds a centralized structure in the description. 39. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 37; Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:9: “Turris ergo in medio ecclesiae maximis subnixa pilariis posita est, sicut in medio circumferentiae centrum. Haec habebat in pinna sua cherubin deauratum.” 40. One might compare Gervase’s rotational description with modern 360-­degree panoramic photography. 41. Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:10: “Praedicta magna turris crucem habebat ex utroque latere.” 42. Gervase alerts his readers to the fact that he had never seen the old choir that belonged to Lanfranc’s cathedral. 43. Millard Fillmore Hearn, “Ripon Minster,” 130. 44. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 136, figs 5–­6. 45. Done with modesty: “Now, therefore, that this choir of Conrad, so gloriously completed, has been in our own days miserably consumed by fire; my poor and simple pen shall attempt its description, lest the memory of so great a man and so noble a work be utterly lost.” See ibid., 42. 46. The Eadwine Psalter, ed. Margaret Gibson et al., 168–­77; Peter Fergusson, Canterbury Cathedral in the Age of Becket, 25–­46. 47. Ibid., 35. 48. I have argued that Amiens Cathedral was built as it was conceived—­from the middle outward. See Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens. Francis Woodman, Architectural History, 100, notes that at midlevel the southern flank appears to be in advance of the northern, since it has the more archaic system of transverse barrel vaults—­subsequently abandoned on the north side. See also Yoshio Kusaba, “Some Observations on the Early Flying Buttresses and Choir Triforium of Canterbury Cathedral.” 49. Although Gervase offers no suggestions about the meaning of the ciborium, his vision of the essential building blocks of the cathedral does provide some support for Hans Sedlmayr’s conclusion that the vault canopy with its attenuated “supports” was the basic space unit of the Gothic cathedral. 50. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 49; Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:19: “Clavem pro toto pono ciborio, eo quod clavis in medio posita partes undecunque venientes claudere et confirmare videtur.” Such thoughts were an obvious invitation to place images of Christ on the keystone as at Amiens Cathedral, where the resurrected Christ looks down over the principal altar where the Eucharistic sacrament takes place. 51. Paul Frankl and Hans Sedlmayr would both appreciate this notion. 52. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 49. 53. Ibid., 51. N O T E S T O PA G E S 53 – 59

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54. As already suggested by Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing, 255. Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 300–­301, explored the question without reaching a firm conclusion. He did, however, suggest that Gervase may have had access to fabric accounts in order to reconstruct the sequence of construction with such precision (293). 55. Art historians have surmised that he had probably served as lieutenant to William of Sens. 56. Although he does explain the constriction in the width of the choir. 57. Was this a preemptive strike to prevent a demotion of the revered Anglo-­Saxon saints that might have been contemplated by pro-­Becket Francophile faction? 58. Peter Fergusson, Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket, 1–­2, deals with the extraordinary twelfth-­century renewal of the monastic buildings as a response to the need to update monastic hygiene with a new “state-­of-­the-­art pressurized water system,” to enhance hospitality services, to add buildings to meet the needs of jurisprudence and care of the sick and elderly, and to update spaces of the cathedral in light of current liturgical needs. See also Margaret Gibson, “Normans and Angevins,” 58–­60. 59. Reginald Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 14–­15. 60. Ibid., 37. 61. Peter Fergusson, “Prior Wibert’s Fountain Houses,” 97. 62. We have conflicting information about which building provided shelter for the activities of the sacristan. Margaret Gibson, “Normans and Angevins,” 58, reports that it was the treasury (still extant, built ca. 1160, modified ca. 1300), on the north flank of the chevet adjacent to the chapel of St. Andrew; Reginald Smith, Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 37, believed that the center of operations was the domus sacristae on the south side of the cathedral. On the early use of systematic accounting at Canterbury, see Reginald Smith, “The Central Finance System of Christ Church, Canterbury.” 63. Reginald Smith, “The Central Finance System of Christ Church, Canterbury,” 354. The provisioning of funds for the use of the sacrist is documented as early as 1186; the office itself is mentioned already in the Statuta of Archbishop Lanfranc, see ibid., 32. 64. The office of the sacristan was the biggest administrative agency of the priory, employing more than half of the total number of cathedral servants. See William Urry, Canterbury under the Angevin Kings, 157. The role of sacristan would be held by someone of superior status and abilities. 65. As also suggested by Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 293. William Stubbs, introduction to Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, 1:xxi, deals with Gervase’s dependence on existing written sources. 66. John Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 294–­98. 67. Jochen Schröder, Gervasius, 1:52–­60; Björn Tammen, “Gervasius,” 282–­90. Gervase gives us the first written designation of a rib vault when contrasting the flat surfaces of the Romanesque vaults of the old choir and the new kind of vault articulated with ribs and keystone: “Ibi in circuitu extra chorum fornices planae; hic arcuatae sunt et clavatae.” See Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:27. 68. Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:19. 69. Yoshio Kusaba, “Some Observations on the Early Flying Buttresses and Choir Triforium of Canterbury Cathedral”; Francis Woodman, Architectural History. 70. Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:21: “Hic in anni quinti aestate crucem utramque, australem scilicet et aquilonalem consummavit et ciborium, quod desuper magnum altare est, volvit . . .” 71. Ibid., 1:27: “Dictum est in superioribus quod post combustionem illam vetera fere omnia chori diruta sunt, et in quandam augustioris formae transierunt novitatem.” Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 4, explains this dialectical passage through Gervase’s knowledge of ancient authors. 72. “Fornices clavata et arcuata”—­the first written representation of a rib vault. 73. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 61. 74. The juxtaposition of old and glorious new resonates with typological exegesis where

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Old Testament prototype is juxtaposed to New Testament enactment. Such typological thought is characteristic of St. Anselm, whose intellectual legacy lingered on at Canterbury; see T. A. Heslop, “Saint Anselm, Church Reform and the Politics of Art,” 123. 75. Malcolm Thurlby, “The Use of Tufa Webbing and Wattle Centering in English Vaults down to 1340.” 76. Deborah Kahn, Canterbury Cathedral, 9: “[Gervase] also gives . . . a comparison between Anselm’s choir and the new one which encapsulates some of the fundamental differences between Romanesque and Gothic Architecture.” 77. Comparable to the “Villard Enterprise,” where later commentators wanted to appropriate the story. 78. T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral; Dorothy Sayers, The Zeal of Thy House. Sayers already saw Gervase’s role as clerk of the building site and the resonance of his account with Genesis. And one suspects that Ken Follett paid close attention to the story of Canterbury Cathedral when writing The Pillars of the Earth. 79. Francis Woodman, Architectural History. 80. Ibid., 87–­130. 81. Ibid., 88: “Gervase was also fond of telling half-­truths.” 82. Ibid., 89. 83. Ibid., 98. 84. Ibid., 116. 85. Peter Draper, “William of Sens”; Millard Fillmore Hearn, “Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Becket.” 86. Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 991. 87. Ibid., 970. 88. In 1974 Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing, 253, had already suggested that Gervase’s writing enterprise resulted from a need to control the information attending the later struggle between Archbishop Baldwin and the monks of Christ Church. 89. Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 971. In other words, Gervase is accused of overworking the “reality effect.” 90. Ibid., 975: Prior Odo was not at first convinced that Becket should be venerated as a saint. 91. Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 89–­109. 92. Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 974: “It was the miracles that were decisive. They began within a matter of days.” 93. Of Baldwin Gervase wrote: “Qui quanta mala, quot pericula, quot adversitates in primis annis suis Cantuariensi fecerit ecclesiae, quaerenti sedulo in subsequentibus patebit.” See Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:29. 94. William Stubbs, introduction to Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, 1:xvi. Stubbs comments that Gervase “writes throughout as the champion of the cathedral convent against the whole world, and especially against the archbishop, wherever the interests of the archbishop and the convent are opposed.” 95. Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 977: “Becket returned from France in 1170 with definite plans for building a new church outside Canterbury.” 96. Ibid., 979. 97. Ibid., 978. 98. Becket, dying, commended himself to St. Denis. See Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 991. 99. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown. 100. Ibid., 6. 101. Ibid., 5. 102. The idea of the pink marble and white stones representing Becket’s martyrdom and virginity was earlier proposed by Christopher Wilson, The Gothic Cathedral, 90. The importance of this allegory in twelfth-­century devotional thought was explored by Jennifer O’Reilly, “Candidus et Rubicundus.” N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 3 – 6 9

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103. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 9. 104. Ibid., 11. 105. Carol Cragoe, “Reading and Rereading Gervase of Canterbury,” 51. 106. We clearly need a new critical edition of the Tractatus. 107. T. A. Heslop, “Saint Anselm, Church Reform and the Politics of Art,” 125, describes Anselm as “the knowing, ideologically motivated orator, prepared to use any means at his disposal to save souls.” 108. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 14. 109. Christopher Wilson, The Gothic Cathedral, 84. concludes with a appropriately positive tone: “For us his text has supreme rarity value as the only detailed contemporary account of a major medieval building project, but his work is impressive by the standards of any period. Gervase’s powers of observation were highly developed, and although laconic he is almost invariably accurate and precise; no modern investigator of the building has been able to prove him wrong on any important point.” Wilson finds Gervase’s “modernity” particularly remarkable in a clerical author where a more conservative attitude might have been expected. 110. Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, esp. 89–­109, deals with the controlling of the miracle stories by Brothers Benedict and William. See also Madeline Caviness, The Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral. 111. Wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, in the positivist spirit of Leopold von Ranke.

Chapter 3 1. The most useful accounts of the architecture of the church of S-­Denis include Sumner McKnight Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, Saint-­Denis: La basilique; Michel Wyss et al., Atlas historique de Saint-­Denis; and Philippe Plagnieux, La basilique de Saint-­Denis. 2. The best critical summary of the written sources can be found in Michel Wyss, Atlas historique, 18–­24. The Vita sanctae Genovesae (ca. 520) mentions only Denis who had been ordained by Pope Clement (d. ca. 100) and sent to convert the Parisii. Denis was martyred and buried at the vicus Catulacensis, about four leagues from Paris, and a basilica was built on the site by Geneviève with the help of Parisian priests. Gregory of Tours (d. 594), on the other hand, in Historia Francorum from the late sixth century, describes a team of missionaries that included Denis and belonged to the period of the persecutions of Emperor Decius (249–­51). The first appearance in the story of the priest Eleutherius and the deacon Rusticus comes around 600 in the martyrology known as hiéronymien. The distinction between the place of martyrdom and the place of burial of the three saints is made in the sixth-­century account of the martyrdom (passion) known as Gloriosae, which describes the martyrdom of the three saints in Paris, where Denis had constructed the first church, and the actions of a woman called Catulla who took off with the bodies and buried them in a field six miles outside the city. The full story is elaborated in the passion known as Post beatam et gloriosam (difficult to date; perhaps soon after the 825 council in Paris, where an attempt was made to reconcile Eastern and Western empires). Here we find Denis identified with Dionysius the Areopagite and the martyrdom of the three saints under Emperor Domitian (81–­96) on an unnamed “little hill” (monticule) one mile out of Paris. This is the first time we encounter the story of the cephalophores who took up their heads and walked two miles. This version of the story was then amplified by Abbot Hilduin, who had translated the works of Dionysius the Areopagite (Corpus dionysiacum), who been asked by Emperor Louis the Pious to make a new synthesis of the legend, using Greek and Latin sources. Before 840 Abbot Hilduin wrote the Third Passion, known as Post beatam ac salutiferam or Areopagitica sive sancti Dionysii vita. Hilduin maintained the identity of Denis with Dionysius the Areopagite, bishop of Athens, and elaborated the history of his mission and martyrdom. Having arrived in Paris, Denis purchased land from a certain Lisbius, father of Visbius, in order to construct a church. Domitian, alarmed by numerous conversions, ordered Prefect Sisinnius to undertake a persecution. Lisbius, betrayed by his wife Larcia, was seized and beheaded. Denis, Rusticus,

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and Eleutherius were arrested and tortured. Imprisoned on Île de la Cité, they received Last Communion from Christ himself. All three were decapitated on Mont de Mercure—­later known as Mont des Martyrs (Montmartre). Then came the story of the march of cephalophores to their sepulcher. 3. Recent accounts of the affair tend to favor the story of Gregory of Tours, a mid-­third-­ century martyrdom, and Geneviève’s construction of a basilica around 475: see Michele Rouche, “Le difficile problème des origines,” 62–­63. For a skeptical account of the affair, see Anne Lombard-­Jourdan, “Montjoie et saint Denis!,” 267–­314. We will return to this author’s provocative work at the end of the chapter. 4. For a recent discussion of the sacred topography of S-­Denis and its liturgical animation, see Andreas Speer, “Is There a Theology of the Gothic Cathedral?,” 68–­73. 5. Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-­Denis, 63; Colette Beaune, “Apôtre ou imposteur?,” 35. Intensive and sustained archaeological investigations over several decades have done much to document the importance of S-­Denis as favored burial place for the Merovingian elite; see Michel Wyss, Atlas historique, and www.saint-­denis.culture.fr/ 6. “Le bouclier celeste de la dynastie”; see Michel Rouche, “Le difficile problème des origines,” 75. Underlying these high ideological claims, I should add, was substantial and growing economic power in the critical corridor north of Paris and a mutually beneficial alliance with the French monarchy. 7. Miljenko Jurkovíc, “Quelques réflexions sur la basilique carolingienne de Saint-­Denis.” 8. Sumner McKnight Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis, 85–­101. Particularly useful for the reconstructions of the pre-­Gothic S-­Denis is Saint-­Denis, a Town in the Middle Ages, www .saint-­denis.culture.fr/ 9. For a recent critical review of the chronology of the western frontispiece and chevet, see William W. Clark and Thomas G. Waldman, “Money, Stone, Liturgy and Planning at the Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis.” 10. Abbot Suger was conflicted in his attitude to this older building. On the one hand it was glorious in its memories, associations, and allusions, but on the other hand it was too small and in poor repair. Wondering why it had not been built on a larger scale, Suger concluded that the intimacy of the spaces threw the users of the church into more direct physical contact with its sumptuously glistening decoration. 11. The titles were assigned by François Duschesne and Lecoy; see Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 141. The Ordinatio, written after the founding of the chevet, July 14 1140, dealt with administrative issues. The Libellus de consecratione ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii (refered to by Suger himself simply as Scriptum Consecratione; see Françoise Gasparri, ed., Oeuvres/ Suger, 1:2) must have been codified after the consecration of the new chevet on June 11, 1144, although I will argue that it was based on stories told long before that date. De rebus in administratione sua gestis was compiled at the request of the monks in the twenty-­third year of the abbot’s administration (i.e., 1144/45), very likely after the consecration of the choir on June 11, 1144. Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-­Denis, 21–­24, assigns a date as late as 1150 for De administratione. Although Panofsky’s book is still useful for English speakers, the best scholarly access to Suger’s writings is now to be found in Françoise Gasparri, ed., =Oeuvres/ Suger, and Andreas Speer and Günther Binding, eds., Abt Suger von Saint-­Denis: Ausgewählte Schriften; Ordinatio, De consecratione; De administratione. 12. For an overview of the historiography and the life of the abbot, see Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-­Denis, 3–­31. 13. On the emergence and role of St. Denis as the principal patron of nation, king, and crown, see Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation, France, 83–­125. 14. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, 5–­6, took the Soissons choir as his paradigmatic building of Gothic, while Paul Frankl favored the nave of Amiens Cathedral and the choir of Cologne (Gothic Architecture, ed. Paul Crossley, 119–­23, 163–­64). Louis Grodecki, Gothic Architecture, 7, called this the “componential approach.” Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 498n18, assigned the key role in fixing the primacy of S-­Denis to George Downing Whittington, An Historical Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France . . . (London, 1809). N O T E S T O PA G E S 74 – 7 7

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15. Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-­Denis, 262: “St-­Denis has by and large retained its reputation as the crucible of Gothic.” 16. Martin Büchsel, Die Geburt der Gotik; Dominique Poirel, “Symbolice et anagogice.” 17. Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis,” 59, remarks quite rightly that the visitor entering the great cathedral intuitively tends to look for some directing principle behind the great work. And the interlocutor, of course, will hasten to supply the menu of isms from which to choose: Platonism, Aristotelianism, modernism, rationalism, historicism, empiricism, and so on. 18. Erwin Panofsky, ed., Abbot Suger, 1–­37. 19. Ibid, 15–­24. 20. Ibid, 27, 36: “Did he know, or sense, that his unreflecting enthusiasm for the Pseudo-­ Areopagite’s and John the Scot’s light metaphysics placed him in the van of an intellectual movement that was to result in the proto-­scientific theories of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, on the one hand, and in a Christian Platonism ranging from William of Auvergne, Henry of Ghent and Ulric of Strassburg to Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, on the other?” This, despite his earlier comment (17) that “Suger had no ambitions as a thinker.” 21. Otto Georg von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral; Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung dber Kathedrale. 22. Peter Kidson, “Panofsky, Suger and Saint-­Denis.” 23. Key contributors include Conrad Rudoph, who challenged Panofsky’s assumption that the abbot was directly dependent on Pseudo-­Dionysius, proposing Hugh of S-­Victor as the inspiration for a program of figurative art that was deliberately “obscure”—­where the allegories were available only to choir monks, the literati; see Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at Saint-­Denis and The “Things of Greater Importance.” Yet at the same time, Rudolph argues, the saturation of the light-­filled envelope of the choir and the glistening jewels and precious metals of the liturgical equipment provided layfolk and pilgrims exactly the sort of overwhelming experience that they craved. Grover Zinn, “Suger, Theology and the Pseudo-­Dionysian Tradition,” 33–­40, adds further evidence leading us to distance Abbot Suger from Pseudo-­Dionysius and documents very specific links between the figurative programs of S-­Denis and the ideas of Hugh and Richard of S-­Victor. See also Bruno Reudenbach, “Panofsky und Suger von Saint Denis”; Christoph Markschies, “Gibt es eine ‘Theologie der gotischen Kathedrale’?”; Andreas Speer, “Is There a Theology of the Gothic Cathedral?”; and Martin Büchsel, Die Geburt der Gotik. Panofsky’s critics have generally dismissed notions of direct dependence upon Pseudo-­Dionysian writings or structures of thought and instead located the abbot in a koine of Christian/Platonic aesthetic notions. 24. Jeffrey Hamburger, “The Place of Theology in Medieval Art History,” 18, affirmed, “Panofsky’s thesis concerning the influence of the Pseudo-­Dionysius on the aesthetics of the abbey’s architecture has perhaps been definitely debunked.” 25. Andreas Speer, ““Is There a Theology of the Gothic Cathedral?”; Dominique Poirel, ed., L’abbé Suger, le manifeste gothique. 26. Dominique Poirel, “Symbolice et anagogice,” 145–­46, makes a compelling case for three convergences between the thought of Hugh of S-Victor and Gothic architecture in the search for brightness, unity, and rhythm. Françoise Gasparri, “La pensée de l’abbé Suger,” 100, returns to the coincidence between the power of divine light to effect the transition from material to immaterial and the light-­filled spaces of S-­Denis. 27. For a skeptical account of Suger as “father of the nation,” see Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-­Denis, 13–­21. 28. Hugh of S-­Victor’s principal educational theme was the image of man reconciled with himself, body and soul, knowledge and will, sacred and profane; see Dominque Poirel “Symbolice et Anagogice,” 150. 29. Hugh of S-­Victor would certainly have approved of the triune organization; see ibid., 153. 30. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 89.

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31. Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, 131–­66. 32. Suger, De administratione, invokes pressing circumstances in the derelict state of the old walls; excessive crowds; the need for secluded space for the Eucharist; the need to bring the work to an end; the danger that the link between the old and new work and the west towers would be postponed. Interventions include the repairs and painting of the nave, demolition of the old western frontispiece, and construction of new. Justification comes in the counsel and prayers of the monks. Architectural gains, less fully defined than in De consecratione, include the description of heavenly spaces animated through sumptuous liturgy; penitential benefits specified in the inscription on the west portal; anagogical gains through entrance through the golden door; the rapid construction of the chevet; inscriptions recording the consecration and linking of the new space to the old. The account ends with the justification that “under the persuasion of some,” Suger was urged to continue the west towers and renew the central body of the church. Divine favor came in the provision of sapphire glass. Finally comes a list of the sumptuous liturgical objects and the attached inscriptions—­ Speer invites us to understand this list in terms of passage through the sacred topography of the church. See Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis,” 69. See also Speer’s “Is There a Theology of the Gothic Cathedral?,” 69–­73. We might remember the similar passage taken through Canterbury Cathedral by Gervase. 33. Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis,” 66. 34. Gabrielle Spiegel, “History as Enlightenment,” 152. Spiegel’s idea of “event unit” can be related to the principle of parataxis developed by Erich Auerbach in Mimesis, 70–­95. This “low” style of rhetoric involved the juxtaposition of essentially equal elements without causal or temporal connectives and without the subordination of one element to another— ­as opposed to hypotaxis where elements are connected in subordinate relations. See Nancy Partner, Serious Entertainments, 197. 35. Conrad Rudolph, “Building Miracles.” For Suger the miracles served to counter any appearance of accident or chance in the outcome of events—­“Chance wanders aimlessly, brings and brings back events, and Accident rules all that is mortal.” Suger quotes from Lucanus’s Pharsalia; see Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 109. 36. Ibid., 90–­93. 37. Ibid., 95–­97. 38. Ibid., 110–­11. 39. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 45, and De consecratione, 96–­99. 40. The matutinal altar in the monks’ choir at S-­Denis was dedicated to the Trinity. 41. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 101–­3. 42. Psalm 87: “His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.” 43. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 111–­15. 44. Ibid., 115. The image of the clergy walking round and round is a compelling one. Villard de Honnecourt calls the ambulatory a charole—­a kind of circular dance. On such circular liturgical movement, see Philippe Plagnieux, “Le chevet de Saint-­Martin-­des-­Champs.” 45. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 115–­19. 46. Robert Hanning, “Suger’s Literary Style and Vision,” 145. 47. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 68–168. 48. See, most recently, Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis, 65: “Le De administratione relève d’un type d’écrit particulier, contenant des index et des documents et montrant un réalisme descriptif concret, systématique et comptable.” 49. Andreas Speer, “Abt Sugers Schriften zur fränkischen Königsabtei Saint-­Denis,” 35. Gerhard Lubich, “Sugers Schrift De consecratione,” 60: “Weder Inhalt noch Gliederung verweisen damit auf Vorbilder, die die Zuordnung zu einem Quellentypus ohne weiteres möglich machen.” Andreas Speer, “Zum philologisch-­theologischen Hintergrund,” 87. 50. Hugh of S-­Victor compared the consecration of the church with salvation-­giving

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baptism. See Andreas Speer, “Zum philosophish-­theologischen Hintergrund,” 90. Andreas Speer, “Is There a Theology of the Gothic Cathedral?,” 68–­69, emphasizes the “living liturgy” as animating the spaces of the church and empowering the words of the abbot. 51. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 85: “We have endeavored to commit to writing, for the attention of our successors, the glorious and worthy consecration of this church sacred to God [and] the most solemn translation of the most precious martyrs, Denis, Rusticus and Eleutherius, our Patrons and Apostles, as well as of the other saints upon whose ready tutelage we rely. We have put down why, in what order, how solemnly and also by what persons this was performed. . . . .” 52. Richard Brilliant, “The Bayeux Tapestry,” correlated visual with rhetorical narrative in the Bayeux Tapestry as a series of short units. On the transition from an oral to a literate culture see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy. 53. Andreas Speer and Günther Binding, eds, Abt Suger von Saint-­Denis, 390; Albert Lecoy de la Marche, ed., Oeuvres complètes de Suger, 389: “Lectio quidem erat de libris Patrum autenticis; aliquando de ecclesiasticis aliquid legebatur historiis. Narrabat vero, ut erat jocundissimus, nunc sua, nunc aliorum, quae vel vidisset vel didicisset gesta virorum fortium, aliquotiens usque ad noctis medium” (Readings were from books of the Fathers in original: or sometimes something taken from Church History. Truly, he would tell stories, because he was a most agreeable man—­now about his own deeds, now about the deeds of other great men, things he had seen or heard about—­until the middle of the night). See also Erwin Panofsky, ed., Abbot Suger, 13; Hubert Glaser, “Wilhelm von Saint-­Denis,” 273. 54. Françoise Gasparri, “La pensée de l’abbé Suger,” 95. Abbot Suger, Oeuvres complètes de Suger, ed. de la Marche, 382: “ut quicquid ex illius ore audisses, non eum loqui, sed legi crederes.” 55. Similarly, an amanuensis might keep notes during the oral performance of a sermon—­notes from which a written texts might later be prepared; see Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon, 148 n4. Françoise Gasparri reached a similar conclusion about the oral origins of Suger’s Vita Ludovici Grossi; see “La pensée de l’abbé Suger,” 94–­95. 56. Erwin Panofsky, in Abbot Suger, 141–­45, deals with the transmission of the texts; see also Philippe Verdier, “Some New Readings of Suger’s Writings,” and Martin Pickavé, “Zur Uberlieferung der drei Schriften des Suger von Saint-­Denis.” 57. D. Ph. Schmitz, “Les lectures de table à l’abbaye de Saint-­Denis.” Readings included not only the scriptures and the fathers but also the homilies of Peter of Ravenna and St. Ambrosius Autpertus and the De hierarchia. On the anniversary of King Dagobert, readings were from his Vita. On the day of the dedication of the church material from Pseudo-­Dionysius and the dedication of the church was read De dedicatione Ecclesiae [24 Feb] legitur in libro qui vocatur Vita et actus B. Dionysii ubi ait Incipit de dedicatione Ecclesiae Beatissimi Dionysii Areopagitae (165), while the anniversary of King Louis VI was remembered with a reading on him. 58. Robert Hanning, “Suger’s Literary Style and Vision, 149–­50.” Suger’s desire “to gather together in one record the entire spectrum of his interests and accomplishments” is characterized by Hanning as a “collector’s impulse”—­we might recall the compulsive collecting on the part of Villard de Honnecourt. 59. On storytelling as a connective medium, see John Niles, Homo Narrans, 1–­32. 60. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 63. The eloquence of the inscriptions suggest the work of younger, better-­educated monk(s), perhaps including William, secretary and biographer. While most of Suger’s writing was conceived in low style (sermo humilis), the inscriptions participate in the high rhetoric of their original source: the tituli in Italian basilicas. See Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-­Denis, 269; Erwin Panofsky, ed., Abbot Suger, 164n46; Susanne Linscheid-­Burdich, “Beobachtungen zu Sugers Versinschriften,” 112–­ 46; Martin Büchsel, Die Geburt der Gotik, 18; and Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis,” 71. 61. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 51. Clark Maines, “Good Works, Social Ties, and the Hope for Salvation,” 87n15, notes parallels with inscriptions on the triumphal arches of Old Saint Peter’s and Montecassino. See especially Susanne Linscheid-­Burdich,

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“Beobachtungen zu Sugers Verinschriften,” 114, for the very close links between the language of this text and the writing of Prosper of Aquitaine, Venantius Fortunatus, and Paulinus of Nola. Dominique Poirel, “Symbolice et anagogice,” 146–­47, notes the close linkage between the text and Hugh of S-­Victor’s introduction to the Celestial Hierarchy. 62. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 101. What is not quite clear from Suger’s language is the actual construction sequence. William Clark and Thomas Waldman, “Money, Stone, Liturgy and Planning at the Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis,” 72, arguing for an early start on the chevet, suggest that at this point “the building process [of the chevet] had begun.” See also Sumner McKnight Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis, 216. On the geometrical and arithmetical instruments, see Günther Binding, “Geometricis et aritmeticis instrumentis.” 63. More on this in part III below. 64. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 45. 65. Ibid., 63–­65. 66. Peter Kidson “Panofsky, Suger and Saint-­Denis,” 7. The experience, Kidson notes, was not really anagogical at all but rather a direct response to beauty. 67. Dominique Poirel, “Symbolice et anagogice,” 166. 68. Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 15: “The passage from aesthetic pleasure to mystical joy is virtually instantaneous, more so than the term ‘anagogical’ suggests.” 69. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 45. On Suger’s emphasis upon liturgy, see Hans Peter Neuhauser, “Die Kirchweihbeschreibungen von Saint-­Denis,” 117–­19. 70. Hubert Glaser, “Wilhelm von Saint-­Denis,” 305–­6; Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-­ Denis, 206–­7; 288; Conrad Rudolph, “The Things of Greater Importance,” 31. The backlash against Suger was so serious that his disciple and biographer Brother William was forced into exile. He wrote of the abbot’s last days, when, overcome with the awareness of his own sins, he threw himself at the feet of his monks and tearfully “asked that they should forgive him those things in which he had failed them or acted negligently.” On Suger’s disturbed state of mind at the end, see Françoise Gasparri, “La pensée de l’abbé Suger,” 105: “Pessimiste pour lui-­même, en raison des fautes graves commises dans sa jeunesse.” 71. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 17: “From about 1150, records of all sorts become more plentiful. The information they provide is more precise.” Interestingly, Stock goes on to specify the field of ecclesiastical administration as formative—­it was in such administration that Suger started out. 72. Suger is thought to have designed the fortified wooden gate-­tower of Toury. 73. Clark Maines, “Good Works, Social Ties and the Hope for Salvation,” 79, refers to the abbot’s testament of 1137, where the day of his future burial is anticipated as a day of terror, calamity, and misery. See also Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 81: “For late and scanty penance cannot atone for so many and so great [sins] as I have committed, nor for the enormity of my crimes, unless we rely upon the intercession of the Universal Church.” 74. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 51. 75. Miljenko Jurkovíc, “Quelques réflexions sur la basilique carolingienne de Saint-­ Denis,” 51, finds clear links between the sculpture of the nave of S-­Denis and the great open basilicas of Rome and northern Italy:“les sculpteurs se soient inspires de l’art ‘aulique’ romain ou même Lombard.” Suger described the nave as opus antiquum; his visits to Italy allowed him to recognize a visual community including St. Peter’s, San Clemente, and Monte Cassino where renovation projected Gregorian reform. 76. The abbot was amongst the first to employ the word modernitas. See Mediae Latinitas Lexicon Minus, 2 vols., 2:911. 77. As in the “postmodern” buildings of our own age, Suger’s chevet cunningly cites and transforms older modes and prototypes (Merovingian and early Christian basilicas; pilgrimage churches). 78. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 89. 79. Ibid., 101. 80. Anne Lombard Jourdan, “Montjoie et saint Denis!” 81. Ibid, 157. N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 6 – 9 0

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82. Ibid, 276–­79. 83. Ibid., 216–­17. For the long history of faked charters at S-­Denis and the direct role of Abbot Suger, see Gabrielle Spiegel, The Past as Text, 156; Jens Peter Clausen, “Suger, faussaire de chartes”; and Françoise Gasparri, “La pensée de l’abbé Suger,” 97. 84. Anne Lombard-­Jourdan, “Montjoie et saint Denis!,” 267. 85. Architectural validation was doubly necessary given the recent challenge to the authenticity of Hilduin’s story of St. Denis. In 1121 Abelard, then a monk at S-­Denis, had the audacity to point out that the Venerable Bede had recorded that Dionysius was bishop of Corinth, not Athens; see M. T. Clanchy, Abelard, 232. Such a challenge to the authenticity of St. Denis was considered an attack on the crown and the glory of the kingdom. It was the close identification of the saint with the king and the nation that prevented chronic suspicions from surfacing and demolishing the myth of St. Denis—­a myth that was sustained until 1722, when the bishop of Paris formally renounced aréopagitisme. See Colette Beaune, “Apôtre ou imposteur?,” 33. 86. Anne Lombard-­Jourdan, “Montjoie et saint Denis!,” 300. Examples include indictum, which becomes lendit; mundgawi, which becomes munjoie and montjoie. 87. Brian Stock, Listening for the Text, 18: “Signification results from the imposition of prior knowledge upon present meaning.” 88. Thus in Anselm’s Monologion God spoke the world. For Gothic as applied dialectic, see Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism; Charles Radding and William Clark, Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning. 89. As proposed by Christopher Wilson, The Gothic Cathedral, 42–­43, and Roland Recht, Believing and Seeing, 114. See also David Stanley, “The Original Buttressing of Abbot Suger’s Chevet,” and Andrew J. Tallon, “Experiments in Early Gothic Structure.” Tallon favored the idea of spur buttresses sitting atop the transverse arches of the choir aisles and ambulatory, as we see in the chevet of Saint-­Martin-­des-­Champs. Caroline Astrid Bruzelius, The 13th-­Century Church at St-­Denis, 82–­84, discounts the idea of structural failure despite the written sources that refer to the ruinous state of the old church, specifically the vaults. 90. Gabriele Annas and Günther Binding, “Arcus Superiores”; Günther Binding, “Beiträge zum Architektur-­Verständnis bei Abt Suger von Saint-­Denis,” 200–­207. Annas and Binding argued that the “arcus principales” affected by the storm included main transverse arches as well as the ribs (“das ganze Bogen-­Rippen-­System des Hauptschiffes,” 9) not yet consolidated by the cells of the vaults. 91. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 109. Note: I have introduced minor corrections to Panofsky's translation. 92. In the well-­documented sequence of work at Troyes Cathedral, the vaults were built under the already-­existing roof. The intention had been to build flyers and vaults simultaneously, but in fact the flyers were installed before the vaults. See Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 216–­20. 93. Kenneth Conant, “Edifices marquants dans l’ambiance de Pierre le Vénérable et Pierre Abelard,” proposed two flying buttresses reinforcing the weak points on either side at the base of the hemicycle. 94. Stephen Murray, “Notre-­Dame of Paris.” The low-­slung flyers constructed by Master William the Englishman at Canterbury Cathedral may have been inspired by S-­Denis.

Chapter 4 1. In the spirit of Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image,” 38–­39, aware of the polysemous nature of the work of art and the “floating chain” of signifieds, our witnesses felt the need to “anchor” desired meaning though recourse to narrative. 2. Suger himself in Life of King Louis the Fat, chapter 16 (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall /basis/suger-­louisthefat.asp), tells us about the use of stretched rope to fix the frontier between France and Normandy: “By an old agreement and a geometrical measurement made with measuring cords, it [the frontier] marked out the lands of the French from those of the Danes.” See also Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, chapter 6, “Orientation,” 29–­31;

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Oswald A. W. Dilke, The Roman Land Surveyors, 66–­70. Dieter Kimpel, “La sociogenèse de l’architecte modern,” 144–­45, provides a complete account of the operation in relation to a Gothic church. 3. Such low-­tech methods are still practiced today by the do-­it-­yourself homeowner wanting to construct a small domestic building. 4. The ninety-­degree angle might be established through the application of a Pythagorean triangle or with a surveying device—­perhaps a groma. 5. Nigel Hiscock, The Wise Master Builder, provides a useful compendium of written sources, including (196) this frequently cited one from Gerald of Wales, De rebus a se gestis 89: “For I seemed to myself to behold the King’s son, John, in a green plain, appearing as though he were about to found a church . . . after the fashion of surveyors, he marked the turf making lines on all sides over the surface of the earth, visibly drawing the plan of the building.” A number of useful written sources and images are provided by Günther Binding, “Geometricis et aritmeticis instrumentis,” esp. 10. Louis Francis Salzman, Building in England, 327, finds references to the purchase of ropes in the administrative sources, but mostly in connection with cranes and lifting gear. Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Mediaeval Mason, 56, cite the Vale Royal building account for the July 1278 mention of payment of 6d. “for lines for the layers of the walls,” “used no doubt to mark out the foundations of the intended structure.” Pierre du Colombier, Les chantiers des cathédrales, 85–­87, laments the paucity of written or graphic sources. See also John Harvey, The Mediaeval Architect, esp. 120–­30. The fullest treatment of the roped-­out plot comes not from the West but from the domain of Byzantine architectural production; see Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium, 58–­85 (“Drawing the Line and Knowing the Ropes”). 6. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, The Craft of Thought, and “The Poet as Master Builder.” Particularly valuable is the passage from Hugh of S-­Victor: “When the foundation has been laid, he stretches out his string in a straight line, he drops his perpendicular, and then, one by one, he lays the diligently polished stones in a row. Then he asks for other stones and still others. . . . See, now, you have come to your [reading], you are about to construct the spiritual building. Already the foundations of the story have been laid in you; it remains now that you found the bases of the superstructure. You stretch out your cord, you line it up precisely, you place the square stones in the course, and, moving around the course, you lay the track, so to say, of the future walls” (The Craft of Thought, 20). Gunzo, abbot of Baume, in a dream-­vision, saw Sts. Peter, Paul, and Stephen laying out the ropes (funiculos) to mark the edges of the great church; see Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 226; and Andrew J. Tallon, “An Architecture of Perfection.” 7. Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, plate 45; Stefaan van Liefferinge, The Choir of Notre-­Dame of Paris. 8. Contrast the pages of a book with its chapter headings and subheadings that impose linear narrative. 9. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 4. 10. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood express a very similar thought in Anachronic Renaissance, 9: “No device more effectively generates the effect of a doubling or bending of time than the work of art, a strange kind of event whose relationship to time is plural.” The authors note that the work of art points to the past, yet “at the same time it points forward to all its future recipients who will activate and reactivate it as a meaningful event. The work of art is a message whose sender and destination are constantly shifting.” In other words, the work of art “anachronizes.” For the time of the building itself, see also Marvin Trachtenberg, Building-­in-­Time, xi. 11. Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” 9, suggests that the historian/interlocutor’s authority comes from the illusion that there is no narrator: “Here no one speaks. The events seem to tell themselves.” 12. We may still talk of “getting an angle on the truth.” 13. Similar mechanisms apply to the interlocutor in the classroom with an image projected from a slide as a surrogate for the real building. N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 0 – 1 0 2

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14. As in the representation of God. 15. It is perhaps no surprise that Viollet-­le-­Duc is the most insistent intruder in our plot. 16. I cannot even begin to provide an overview here of the work of historians of art who have addressed the relationship between the work of art and the words of the interlocutor. I have learned particularly from my readings in Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing and Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium, and from my friend and former colleague James Beck, who knew how to make the work of art come alive in the classroom. Richard Brilliant, Visual Narratives, 15–­20, taught me about the role of the interlocutor. The old certainty about how to describe a medieval building is now, of course, lost (for better and for worse)—­the old way was dictated by Eugène Lefèvre-­Pontalis, “Comment doit-­on rediger la monographie d’une église?” 17. Interlocutors, while they might claim to correlate and “explain” the phenomenon within a broad overview of cultural production, will, of course, bring the limits of their own predilections, vision, and assumptions to bear upon the problem. Personal and parochial suppositions may parade as universal explanations. The question arises whether understanding a thing might lead to liking it. Ernst Gombrich (cited by David Watkin, Morality and Architecture, 5) has suggested that it is the other way around: “Apologists for certain kinds of art often plead that if we would only understand it, we would also like it. By and large, I think the sequence is inverted. Without first liking a game, a style, a genre, or a medium, we are hardly able to absorb its conventions well enough to discriminate and understand.” 18. Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 991. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­ le-­Duc, Discourses, 238, also has talking stones: “Its monuments, I say, are before our eyes: their stones speak.” And then Paul Crossley ends his “Medieval Architecture and Meaning” by invoking the power of the cathedrals to speak: “The great cathedrals, heaped up from untidy masses of stone, with their myriad figures and their endlessly unfolding vistas, speak to us of truths ramified, disruptive and many-­layered.” 19. David Goldblatt, Art and Ventriloquism, xi: “Ventriloquism is an act in which things talk—­in which things are made to talk by one who is present to them.” 20. Ibid., 90: “Toward the close of Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates relates an old practice, even old for Socrates, connected with religion and prophecy: ‘those at the temple of Zeus at Dodona said that the first prophetic speeches were those of an oak tree. Back then, since they weren’t wise the way you young people are today, people were content in their simplicity to listen to an oak tree or a rock if it spoke the truth.’” In the dramatization the priest would “throw” his voice, “making it appear as Zeus’s own.” 21. The following thoughts could apply to the interlocutor presenting the building to a group of visitors, to the teacher in the classroom representing the building with the help of projected images, or to the writer who undertakes the daunting task of putting a cathedral into a book. On the combination of pointing and talking see James Hurford, The Origins of Meaning, 205–­25, dealing with communication not just between two creatures but involving a third entity (“going triadic”). Pointing, Hurford suggests, signifies desire and the need to manipulate others to one’s advantage. He finds a close link between pointing and the development of language: “pointing is the royal road to language in babies.” 22. What begins under duress may later become the work of love. 23. The Gothic edifice, with its vertical and horizontal elision expressed in a grid of colonnettes and cornices, invites this kind of systematic optical scanning. 24. Stephen Murray and James Addiss addressed the somatic business of seeing the Gothic Cathedral; see “Plan and Space at Amiens Cathedral.” Current scholarship tends to focus more on the mediation of shrines and images in the passage through sacred space; see, for example, Paul Crossley, “Ductus and Memoria.” 25. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, Discourses, 22. 26. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown and “Reflections on the ‘Wonderful Height and Size’ of Gothic Great Churches.” 27. Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 159–­62. The examples provided all relate to people rather than artifacts or buildings.

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28. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 47. We encounter the same inexpressibility topos in the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 9: “In trying, Hugh, to describe the course of your life, my desire exceeds my ability. My limited skill will hardly suffice to impart form to the matter.” 29. Adrian de la Morlière, Antiquitez et choses plus remarkables de la ville d’Amiens succinctement traitées (Amiens, 1621), 43, cited by Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 9. Let me cite another description of the same type, this time by J.-­J. De Court, who, describing Amiens Cathedral, combines pro forma disapproval with breathless admiration: “Moreover, we can say here that this magnificent church has reached perfection—­even though it is of a Gothic order—­there is nothing in the world more complete in all its parts, for which reason it has always been a source of admiration and astonishment for all connoisseurs. We might have hoped to possess the vocabulary and the knowledge to undertake an exact description and at the same time to make all its beauty known, employing appropriate terminology, but not having [any of those skills] and since the marvels that [the cathedral] embodies are infinite, it is not easy to succeed. It is only the sight that can take in or rather admire its delicacy, its height, its grandeur, and its interior clarity, and also all the precautions, both ingenious and surprising, that have been taken against all sorts of accidents. Is there anything more agreeable than to look at those numerous pinnacles [pyramides], very high and worked with a great deal of art, which like a forest surround the church, and especially the choir, as much to protect it as for its decoration? For these pinnacles serve to keep up and consolidate the flying buttresses that support this admirable vessel.” 30. Michael Saler, As If, 8–­13, has recently explored the “as if ” mechanism as a means of propelling an audience from a disenchanted modern world to a land of enchantment and fantasy as he documented the prehistory of our “virtual reality” world in literary production of the late nineteenth century. We have seen how Abbot Suger found himself transported to “some strange land.” 31. George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, xii: “In the new view, our bodily experience and the way we use imaginative mechanisms are central to how we construct categories to make sense of experience.” 32. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, color plate 32, fol. 15r: “Deseure est une glize a double charole k[e] vilars dehonecort trova et pieres de corbie.” 33. Quoted in Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 132, fabric account for 1389–­90: “La sepmaine de la Circoncision Nostresr. que l’oo chut.” 34. The Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 59: “The twin windows that offer a circular light are the two Eyes of the cathedral; and rightly the greater of these is seen to be the bishop and the lesser the dean. For north represents the devil and south the Holy Spirit and it is in these directions that the two Eyes look. The bishop faces the south in order to invite in, and the dean the north in order to avoid; the one takes care to be saved, the other takes care not to perish.” 35. Ibid., 55: “The vault seems to converse with the winged birds; it spreads broad wings of its own, and like a flying creature jostles the clouds, while yet resting upon its solid pillars.” 36. Applying the theory of Universals, we might distinguish between the “realists” who really believe that the Gothic thing has a life “out there” and the “nominalists” who would focus upon the peculiarities and context of each building. See Ernst Gombrich, Norm and Form, 82, and David Malet Armstrong, Universals, 1–­20.

Chapter 5 1. While at the same time retaining our skepticism—­remember that Gervase stands accused of perjury: Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 970. 2. As if les neiges d’antan were forever frozen; see “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?,” the refrain in François Villon’s ca. 1461 “Ballade des dames du temps jadis.” 3. Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis, 59, already cited above in chap. 3, n17. N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 07 – 1 1 4

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4. On medieval masons, see Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Mediaeval Mason; Pierre du Colombier, Les chantiers des cathédrales; Jean Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders; John Harvey, The Mediaeval Architect; Louis Francis Salzman, Building in England; Nicola Coldstream, Medieval Craftsmen; Malcolm Hislop, Medieval Masons. 5. As in Goethe’s ecstatic and poetic response to the creativity of Master Erwin von Steinbach, to whom he attributed the entirety of Strasbourg Cathedral. See Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 417–­28; on the image of God with a mason’s compasses, see Katherine Tachau, “God’s Compass and Vana Curiositas.” 6. Denis Cailleaux, La cathédrale en chantier; Wim H. Vroom, Financing Cathedral Building; Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral. 7. On the revolution in stone production, see Dieter Kimpel, “La sociogenèse de l’architecte modern,” 140–­43. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 110–­17, has reminded us of the gap between the recognition of masonic corporate identity (magistri comacini ) in the legislation of the Lombard king Rothari (643) and the ca. 1268 Livre des métiers of Etienne Boileau. 8. From Reims Cathedral: Jean d’Orbais, Jean le Loup, Gaucher de Soissons, and Bernard de Reims; from S-­Nicaise of Reims, Hugues Libergier; from Amiens, Robert de Luzarches, Thomas de Cormont, and his son Renault de Cormont; from Paris, Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil; from Evreux and Meaux, Gautier de Varinfroy. The careful work of archaeologists has done much to correlate the fragmentary written sources with the signs of the work in the buildings themselves—­some personalities emerge with particular clarity. See Stephen Murray, “Looking for Robert de Luzarches”; Peter Kurmann and Dethard von Winterfeld, “Gautier de Varinfroy, ein ‘Denkmalpfleger’ im 13. Jahrhundert”; and Anne Prache, “Pierre de Montreuil.” 9. Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, XIIIe siècle: Le livre des métiers d’Etienne Boileau; Roland Recht, “La loge et le soi-­disant ‘secret,’ 10. 10. Recht, “La loge et le soi-­disant ‘secret,’” 88: “Il puet estre maçon a Paris qui veut, pour tant que il sache le mestier et qu’il oevre as us et aus coustumes du mestier, qui tel sunt . . .” 11. Pierre du Colombier, Les chantiers des cathédrales, 61–­79. 12. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 136. 13. Psalm 33:9. 14. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 117–­18. 15. Jacques Brengues, “La Franc-­maçonnerie opérative d’après une étude comparée de manuscrits et textes du Moyen Age.” 16. This total control bequeathed to the master mason a status that might surpass that of architects of other periods; see Franklin Toker, “Alberti’s Ideal Architect.” 17. Lon Shelby, Gothic Design Techniques, 47. The “extrapolation device” was the geometric key to deriving the elevation from the plan. See also Roland Recht, “La loge et le soi-­disant ‘secret,’” 17. 18. Lon Shelby, Gothic Design Techniques, 48. 19. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 133. 20. Frederick M. Hunter, A Study and Interpretation of the Regius Manuscript. The Latin text begins: “Hic incipiunt constituciones artis gemetriae secundum Eucyldem.” 21. I do not have the space here to provide an overview of the extent to which the ordinances of the Regius Poem match those of the late Gothic lodges; a useful overview is provided by Jacques Brengues, “La Franc-­maçonnerie opérative d’après une etude compare de manuscrits et textes du Moyen Age.” 22. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 199–­208. I have proposed a heavily stratified group of masons with a privileged cadre at the core, but relying heavily upon semiskilled artisans hired locally and seasonally. 23. Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt. 24. William Clark and Thomas Waldman, “Money, Stone, Liturgy and Planning at the Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis,” 70–­71. 25. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 35; Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:6: “Advenerat autem inter alios artifices quidam

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Senonensis, Willelmus nomine, vir admodum strenuus, in ligno et lapide artifex subtilissimus. Hunc, caeteris omissis, propter vivacitatem ingenii et bonam famam in opus susceperunt. Huic et providentiae Dei opus perficiendum commissum est.” 26. Peter Kidson, “Gervase, Becket, and William of Sens,” 971. 27. Ibid., 986–­87. 28. The most famous such expertise was recorded in relation to the construction of Milan Cathedral. See James Ackerman, “Ars Sine Scientia Nihil Est”; also Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 57–­110. 29. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 129: in 1382–­83 the chapter of Troyes Cathedral engaged Henri Soudain and Henri de Bruiselles to construct the new choir screen, dismissing the resident masons, Michelin de Jonchery and Jehan Thierry. 30. Thus we have seen that Gervase committed the outcome of the building enterprise at Canterbury not just to the genius of the master mason but also to divine providence. 31. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 50–­51. 32. Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 142, charter of officiality of city of Amiens, 1260, mentioning the tenancy of Master Mason Renault de Cormont of a house “in manso dicti domini Episcopi.” 33. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral and Beauvais Cathedral; Denis Cailleaux, La cathédrale en chantier. 34. The master mason’s contract might run year by year or for multiple years; it might include, in addition to a generous salary, signs of recognition of the master’s rank: perhaps a fur-­trimmed cape or a cane. 35. The best example would be the Parler family; see Marc Carel Schurr, Die Baukunst Peter Parlers. 36. At Amiens Cathedral the second of the three masters, Thomas de Cormont, was probably a former apprentice of the first master, Robert de Luzarches. See Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 82–­86. 37. Renault de Cormont, son of Thomas of Cormont and builder of the Amiens upper choir, may be seen as a type of Icarus—­a son who cast aside obedience to his father. 38. Peter Kidson and Peter Draper argued for such continuity; Francis Woodman against. 39. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 36; Gervase, Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:6–­7: “Nec tamen ea quae operi erant necessaria seu per se seu per alios praeparare cessavit. . . . In adquirendis igitur lapidibus transmarinis opera data est. Ad naves onerandas et exonerandas, ad cementum et ad lapides trahendos tornamenta fecit valde ingeniose. Formas quoque ad lapides formandos his qui convenerant sculptoribus tradidit et alia in hunc modum sollicite praeparavit.” 40. Giovanni Coppola, “Carrières de pierre”; Tim Tatton-­Brown, “La perre de Caen en Angleterre.” 41. On the provision of building stone, see Louis Francis Salzman, Building in England, 119–­39, and Pierre du Colombier, Les chantiers des cathédrales, 22–­34. Yves Gallet, ed., Ex Quadris Lapidus, provides an extraordinary collection of essays devoted largely to the means of production in medieval architecture and sculpture. 42. Giovanni Coppola, “Carrières de pierre,” 297: the good quarryman would know exactly which level of strata or banc would yield the right stone for a specific function, and medieval texts differentiate between the best quality (lapis vivus, francus, columnaris) and the worst (lapis villanus). Modern terminology includes banc pourri, gros banc, banc craie, pierre franche, banc royal (for sculpture), banc de quatre pieds, franc bank (for construction). 43. Dieter Kimpel, “La sociogenèse de l’architecte modern,” 141. 44. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 180, stone contract, 1507–­8: “Despense pour le foretaige de ladicte perriere de Tanlay. . . . Laurent Germain, maistre perrier de la perriere de Tanlay prés de Tonnerre a convenu et marchandé . . . a messrs. de ceste eglise de esquarrer et eschemiller chascun millier de pierre du ban des cloz et du franc banc dur en la maniere que s’ensuit, c’est assavoir la moindre haulteur de piece de pierre, que on appelle communement ung bloc de douze peusses de hault, l’aultre haulteur de 15 peusses et l’autre N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 8 – 1 22

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haulteur de 18 peusses de hault, et de longueur chascun desd. blocz de quatre piedz de long, ou ainsi que led. bloc pourra contenir tous lesd. blocz de deux a trois piedz de large, et le plus estroictz de pied et demy.” 45. Jean Mesqui, Chateau forts; Joseph Decaëns, “Les origins du donjon rectangulaire.” Stephen Gardner, “The Influence of Castle Building,” proposed formal links between the S-­Denis western frontispiece and contemporary castles. See also Elizabeth Brown, Saint-­ Denis, 82–­83, on the castlelike qualities of Abbot Suger’s frontispiece. 46. Alain Erlande-­Brandenburg, “L’architecture militaire.” 47. Jean Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders, 59–­75. 48. This was most eloquently expressed by Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, 4–­8. 49. Pioneering work on such polychromy was done by Jürgen Michler, Die Elisabethkirche zu Marburg; more recently, see Patrice Calvel, “La restauration du décor polychrome du choeur de la cathédrale de Chartres.” 50. William W. Clark, “The Recollection of the Past is the Promise of the Future”; Eric Fernie, “The Use of Varied Nave Supports in Romanesque and Early Gothic Churches.” 51. Yves Gallet, “Lire la pierre comme un marqueur spatial et fonctionnel.” 52. Rosemary Leach, An Investigation into the Use of Purbeck Marble in Medieval England. The material was brought from the quarries to Corfe Castle, where some prefabrication may have taken place, and shipped from the port of Ower, across from Poole Harbor. 53. Fabio Barry, Painting in Stone. 54. Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown, 6, suggested that the red marble at Canterbury came from the Philippeville area of southern Belgium. 55. Lon Shelby, “Medieval Masons’ Templates” and Gothic Design Techniques. 56. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 36. Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:7: “Formas quoque ad lapides formandos his qui convenerant sculptoribus tradidit et alia in hunc modum sollicite praeparavit.” 57. In fifteenth-­century Troyes such templates might be made of paper so that they could be folded and stuffed into a saddlebag, allowing the forms of the cathedral to travel. See Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 147, fabric account from 1451–­52: “Pour 2 mains de papier de grant volume de mauvais papier a coler pour faire les faulx moles pour les pierres de la perriere d’Aigremont. . . . A Jaquet le maçon pour porter lesd. faulx moles a Aigremont pour ses despens, 3s. 4d.” 58. “Vesci le[s] molle[s] des chapieles de cele pagne la devant, des formes et des verrieres, des ogives et des doubliaus et des sorvols p[ar] deseure.” 59. Robert Javelet, Image et Ressemblance, 107. Hugh of S-­Victor’s notion of the “forming form” (forma formatrix) lies at the heart of his understanding of relationship between the eternal form of God and the hierarchy of created forms: “Le rapport entre cette Forme et les formes créées est comparé à celui de l’âme avec le corps; c’est une présence active et formatrice, transcendante et immanente, donnant d’exister et d’exister selon l’essence divine, à l’image même de la Trinité. Forme non pas formée, mais qui forme, forme formatrice, c’est la forme des formes, la forme de l’être.” 60. Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:19–­20: “super quos et murum exteriorum alarum, arcus et fornicem decenter composuit; . . . Super hos decem arcus et fornices posuit.” 61. Ibid., 20: “Peractis autem utrisque triforiis et superioribus fenestris, cum machinas ad fornicem magnam volvendam in anni quinti initio praeparasset, repente ruptis trabibus sub pedibus ejus et inter lapides et ligna simum cum ipso ruentibus, in terram corruit.” 62. Volume M of the Novum Glossarium: Mediae Latinitas ab anno DCCC usque ad annum MCC (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1977), 7, gives the following meanings for machina: instrument, war engine, scaffolding, intrigue or machination. 63. John Fitchen, Construction of Gothic Cathedrals, 86–­122. 64. Malcolm Thurlby, “The Use of Tufa Webbing and Wattle Centering in English Vaults down to 1340.”

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65. John Fitchen, Construction of Gothic Cathedrals, 101. 66. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 170–­71. Regarding 1496–­97 purchase of dirt for centers: “Despense pour terre a maçonner.” Removal of earth that had fallen into the nave: “A Colleçon Faulchot pour avoir osté toute la terre et poutrerie qui estoit en la nef a cause de la premiere volte, 20d. t.” Removal of dirt fallen into the gutters of the aisle roofs: “A Gillot de Lessart pour avoir nettoyé les chanlettes dessus les basses chapelles qui estoient pleine de terre que les maçons y avoient faict cheoir en faisant les voltes, pource cy payé 20s. t.” 67. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 16–­32, 55–­56. 68. Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:27. 69. Ibid., 27” “hic fornix ex lapide et tofo levi decenter composita est.” 70. Interestingly, it also provides support for Viollet-­le-­Duc’s belief that ribs and arches behaved differently from severies. 71. Robert A. Scott, The Gothic Enterprise, esp. 36–­42; Jean Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders. 72. At the time of this writing, the most recent case study on funding the construction of a Gothic cathedral is the work by Denis Caillaeux, La cathédrale en chantier; an overview is provided by Wim Vroom, Financing Cathedral Building; a very useful short account of the economic circumstances of the construction of Chartres Cathedral can be found in Peter Kurmann and Brigitte Kurmann-­Schwarz, “Chartres Cathedral as a Work of Artistic Integration.” On the agrarian sources of ecclesiastical wealth, see Georges Duby, Rural Economy; André Chédeville, Chartres et ses campagnes. 73. Wim Vroom, Financing Cathedral Building, 298–­306. 74. Canons understandably did their best to avoid having to part with a substantial part of their prebend. The fabric accounts of Sens Cathedral reveal the use of a tax (tail) upon that prebend, while the canons of Troyes avoided such regular payments altogether. 75. In so many respects the cathedral was in the city but not of the city; see André Mussat, “Les cathédrales dans leurs cités.” Audiences were made up, to a great extent, of the rural population and, in the case of a pilgrimage church like Canterbury, beyond. 76. On the close relationships between cathedral chapters (particularly Soissons) and the seigneurial community, see William Mendel Newman, Les seigneurs de Nesle en Picardie. 77. Stephen Murray, Beauvais Cathedral, 154–­55. Within seven years the bishop was essentially bankrupt. 78. At Troyes Cathedral the municipality became directly involved in the construction of the steeple over the crossing, the grand clocher. See Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 59–­60. Henry Kraus, Gold Was the Mortar, 110–­30, has documented the role of the townsfolk in the construction of the western frontispiece at Strasbourg. 79. Wim H. Vroom, Financing Cathedral Building, 467, found a similar situation at Utrecht Cathedral. 80. Denis Cailleaux, La cathédrale en chantier, 191; Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 210–­11. 81. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 102–­3. 82. The abbot in his writings returns frequently to the generosity of the king. William Clark and Thomas Waldman, “Money, Stone, Liturgy and Planning at the Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis,” have documented substantial royal gifts to the abbey in the years between 1122 and 1131. They suggest that work on the western frontispiece started as early as 1129. 83. Stephen Murray, Beauvais Cathedral, 49, and Notre-­Dame of Amiens, 75–­77. 84. Laird Addis, Natural Signs. 85. St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2, quoted by David S. Clarke Jr., Sources of Semiotic, 24–­28. 86. Charles Saunders Peirce, Collected Papers, 2:274–­302, ca. 1893–­1902, quoted extensively in David S. Clarke Jr., Sources of Semiotic, 67–­77. Peirce’s third category—­the icon—­resembles the thing represented. 87. John Bilson, “On the Recent Discoveries at . . . Durham”; Robert Willis, The Architec-

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tural History of Canterbury Cathedral. In France the name associated with such “reading” of medieval buildings was, above all, Eugène Lefèvre-­Pontalis (“Comment doit-­on rediger la monographie d’une église?”). 88. The concept and the range of work is best laid out in a website: see www.archeologies enchantier.ens.fr/. See also Nicolas Reveyron, “L’apport de l’archéologie du bâti dans la monographie de l’architecture,” and Gerardo Boto et al., “Archéologie du bâti.” 89. The careful study of the regularity (or lack of it) of the horizontal stone coursing of a wall can yield clear results. For a critical overview of problems in “reading” masonry, see Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 151–­57. 90. Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, 96–­125: to attribute painting we should look at the most trivial details that would have been least influenced by the mannerisms of the school—­“characteristic trifles,” earlobes and the like. Ginzburg draws a parallel between the work of the connoisseur of painting, of Sherlock Holmes, and of Sigmund Freud. 91. Dieter Kimpel, “Le développement de la taille en série.” 92. John Fitchen, The Construction of Gothic Cathedrals. 93. Andrew J. Tallon, “An Architecture of Perfection.”

Chapter 6 1. Paul Binski, “Reflections on the ‘Wonderful Height and Size’ of Gothic Great Churches.” Sublimitas in its original usage simply meant lofty. Longinus (Treatise on the Sublime) carried the notion over into rhetoric; Binski (136–­43) has provided a very useful reminder of the power of the terrifying height and steep proportions of Gothic buildings to transport the viewer to the transcendent. 2. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot. 3. On the vexed question of deducing meaning from the medieval work of art in the post-­ Mâle/Panofsky age, see especially Brendan Cassidy, “Introduction: Iconography, Texts and Audiences,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. Cassidy, 3–­15; Jeffrey Hamburger, introduction to The Mind’s Eye, ed. Hamburger and Bouché, 3–­10; and Andreas Speer, “Is There a Theology of the Gothic Cathedral,” in The Mind’s Eye, ed. Hamburger and Bouché, 65–­83. A useful overview of the production of meaning can be found in Roland Barthes, Image-­Music-­Text, esp. 32–­51. 4. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 47–­49. The verse was probably not composed by Suger himself. 5. Ibid., 55. 6. Ibid., 105: “The midst of the edifice, however, was suddenly raised aloft by twelve columns representing the number of the Twelve Apostles and, secondarily, by as many columns in the side aisles signifying the number of the [minor] Prophets, according to the Apostle who buildeth spiritually.” 7. William Durand of Mende, The Rationale Divinorum Officiorum. William Durand, “unquestionably the most renowned liturgical scholar of the later Middle Ages,” was born near Béziers in Provence around 1230 and was educated in cathedral schools in Provence and (ca. 1260) the University of Bologna. For two decades he served as chaplain, lawyer, diplomat, and adviser for Pope Gregory X. In 1285 he was elected bishop of Mende, and he took up residency in 1291. The Rationale was written around 1291/92 with a second redaction in 1294/96. He died in Rome in 1296. Two hundred medieval copies of the Rationale exist; it was one of the first nonbiblical books printed at the Gutenberg Press in Mainz. 8. Ibid., 2. 9. Ibid., 1. 10. Ibid., 3. 11. Madeline Harrison Caviness, “The Simple Perception of Matter.” Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible, 15, traces the practice back to John Cassian. 12. William Durand, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, 4. 13. Ibid., 5.

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14. Ibid., 11. 15. Peter Fingesten, “Topographical and Anatomical Aspects of the Gothic Cathedral.” 16. William Durand, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, 16. 17. Francesco di Giorgio represented the analogy in his church plan with a superimposed body; see Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles, fig. 1a. The author of the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 55–­60, made similar use of the allegorical potential of the forms of the church:“Its state as it rose fitly expressed the form of a cross.” “These parts, though they have been described with a child’s simplicity, import an allegory. On the outside the church is like a hard shell, but inside is formed a kernel; outside it is like wax, but inside it is a honeycomb.” 18. The author of the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 55, follows a similar path: “The gripping mortar glues the white stones together, all of which the mason’s hand has hewn true to the mark. But although the wall is put together from the mass of separate stones, it seems to disdain this fact and gives the semblance of joining in a continuum the contiguous parts.” 19. Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image,” 38–­40, understood the problem as one of anchoring the “floating chain of signifieds.” Paul Crossley,”Medieval Architecture and Meaning,” 120, suggested that by the 1950s attempts to find a grand theory of meaning had come to an end. 20. There can, of course, be no question here of attempting a survey of all the possible meanings of the Gothic cathedral—­I merely want to apply the new thinking derived from our plot to the illustration of four commonplaces offered by our interlocutors. 21. In the spirit of Hans Sedlmayr, beholders bring their own “shaped vision” (Gestaltetes Sehen): The Vienna School Reader, 33; more on this later. 22. Vitruvius, Ten Books of Architecture, 34. 23. Ibid.; Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, Discourses, 32. 24. Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise. The clearest articulation of the dependence of architecture upon Nature can be found in William of Conches: “It must be recognized that every work is the work of the Creator or the work of nature, or the work of a human artisan imitating nature. The work of the Creator is the first creation without preexisting material. . . . The work of an artisan is a work that man engages in because of a need, as making clothes for protection against cold or a house against bad weather. But in all that he does, the artisan imitates nature.” See Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 41. 25. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, Discourses; Barry Bergdoll, introduction to The Foundations of Architecture, trans. Whitehead, 19–­20. Georges Cuvier (1769–­1832), a pioneering natural scientist, in Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe told the story of creation based not on Genesis but on his study of a range of natural evidence, including fossils and geology. 26. Burchard von Hall, chronicler of Wimpfen in Tal, recounted that the prior “summoned a mason highly skilled in architectural design who came recently from Francia from the city of Paris and ordered him to build the church of hewn ashlar in the Frankish manner . . . People flocking from all sides admire the uncommon work, praise its master craftsman.” See Jan van der Meulen, “Gothic Architecture,” 582. 27. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 273. Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise, 100, has suggested that Raphael may have based his text upon Lucan’s description (Pharsalia 3.390) of a shrine in the woods near Marseilles, whose “interlacing branches enclosed clear cool central space.” See also Ingrid Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance, 228–­30, and “Raphael, Angelo Colocci and the Genesis of the Architectural Orders.” 28. See Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 97–­101, for the humiliation of the papacy at the hands of the French. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 259, found the word Gothic first applied to signify rude or rustic and associated with the question of the use of an artistic mode considered appropriate. Erich Auerbach, Literary Language, 33, has addressed the question of cyclical theory and appropriateness in the interpretation of modes of literary production. It is intriguing to associate the genre of sermo humilis in literature with Gothic architecture. Ingrid Rowland, “Raphael, Angelo Colocci and the Genesis of the ArchitecN O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 6 – 1 3 9

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tural Orders, 95, notes, “It is worthwhile here to remember that goffo, the adjective by which Raphael’s letter describes medieval style, is the direct ancestor of our own pejorative ‘goofy.’ I have already alluded to Ernst Gombrich’s pertinent question “Do you have to like a thing to understand it?” 29. Ingrid Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance, 229. 30. Ibid., 228. 31. We can, in fact, extract no fewer than four levels of meaning from our text: the forms of Gothic are (1) evidential signs of forest origins; (2) signs of the agency of Goths or Germans; (3) ugly; (4) structurally weak. Only the last allegation is subject to factual recourse. Recall that the laws of physics have determined that the strongest kind of arch is the catenary arch, which is close to a pointed arch; see Jacques Heyman, The Stone Skeleton, 7–­21. A pointed arch is actually much stronger than a round one. 32. Ingrid Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance, 245–­46. 33. In the mid-­fifteenth century such indulgences might also go to northern churches; thus in 1451/52 those contributing to the fabric of Troyes Cathedral, then under construction, were granted a general pardon. See Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 62. 34. Ingrid Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance, 245–­46. 35. Vasari, Vite (1568), 1:67–­68, quoted in Anne-­Marie Sankovitch, “The Myth of the ‘Myth of the Medieval,’” 34. See also Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 290–­91, and Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, 188–­90. 36. Anne-­Marie Sankovitch, “The Myth of the ‘Myth of the Medieval,’” 39, documents the continuing adjustments Vasari made to his theory between the first and second editions (1550 and 1568). 37. The question of how much actual looking at “Gothic” buildings Vasari did has been raised by Sankovitch and by Gombrich, who suggested that Vasari’s famous verbal response to Gothic resulted not from looking at buildings but from reading Vitruvius’s description of “decadent” wall paintings where the images are not based upon nature; see Ernst Gombrich, Norm and Form, 83. 38. Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 97, discuss the animus that Julius II held toward the French, and the pope’s personal role and humiliation in the unsuccessful defense of Bologna in 1499–­1500. In 1512, soon after the very bloodly battle of Ravenna where the Spanish and papal forces of the Holy League were crushed by the French, the papal legate Cardinal Giovanni de’Medici was taken prisoner—­the cardinal was later to become Pope Leo X and would entertain dreams of a Medici principate. 39. Esmond Samuel de Beer, “Gothic,” 150: In 1610, the Jesuit C. Scribianus in describing the Antwerp Bourse used the following phrase: “Hic columnis triformes insistunt arcus de opere Gotico.” In 1619 the Parisian canon Bergeron described the château of Beuvrages near Valenciennes as “bâtie d’une espèce d’ordre ionique et corinthe mais un peu gothique et non ordonné comme nos batîments de France.” Martellange, the Jesuit architect of the cathedral of Sainte-­Croix d’Orléans, presented in 1626 “ung desseing à la Gotique pour la croisée.” The same architect wrote of “aultres Eglises basties à la Moderne et d’ordre gotique.” 40. Jan van der Meulen, “Gothic Architecture,” 580. 41. Esmond Samuel de Beer, “Gothic,” 155. Lord Arundel described Milan Cathedral as having the “misfortune to bee done on an ill designe of Gothick Architecture.” 42. Howard Colvin, “Gothic Survival and Gothick Revival”; Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy.” 43. James Hall, Essay on the Origin, History and Principles of Gothic Architecture. For Hall’s place in the long history of speculations on the forest origins of Gothic, see Jurgis Balstrusaitis, Aberrations, esp. 108–­35, “The Romance of Gothic Architecture.” 44. The idea of the green cathedral is still alive and with us: in 1987 Marinus Boezem planted his Groene Kathedraal near Almere in the Netherlands. 45. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Von deutcher Baukunst (1773), compared Strasbourg cathedral to a “giant tree with a thousand branches, twigs and leaves” (quoted by Ethan Matt Kavaler, “On Vegetal Imagery in Renaissance Gothic,” 297).

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N O T E S T O PA G E S 139 – 142

46. Paul Crossley, “The Return to the Forest.” This was an idea already advanced by Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House, 101, where the author contrasts the silence of medieval writers on the forest metaphor for Gothic to the “vast increase in the use of plantlike ribs and columns” toward the end of the fifteenth century. Rykwert attributes the phenomenon to readings in Vitruvius’s account of the origin of the Orders. It should be added that Vitruvius was much better known in the North than in Italy throughout the Middle Ages; see Peter Kidson, “Vitruvius.” 47. Matthäus Roriczer, Büchlein von der Fialen Gerechtigkeit and Die Geometria deutsch; Lon Shelby, ed. and trans., Gothic Design Techniques. 48. Ethan Matt Kavaler, “Nature and the Chapel Vaults at Ingolstadt,” 230, proposes a structuralist argument of opposing principles, suggesting that the foliate forms took on significance in relation to the opposing “abstraction” of the purely geometric forms as the organic elements partly mask the geometric ones. Interestingly, Kavaler raises the possibility of a negative reading, where the vegetal imagery is understood as a “perverse corruption of divinely ordained matter, as a departure from God’s initial plan.” 49. Ethan Matt Kavaler, “On Vegetal Imagery in Renaissance Gothic,” 298. 50. An idea derived form Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte. 51. Ethan Matt Kavaler, “On Vegetal Imagery in Renaissance Gothic,” 298. 52. Raphael’s account invokes evidential signs to suggest a causal relationship between forest forms and Gothic origins; Northern use of forest forms may be understood as a conventional language. 53. Etienne Hamon, “Le naturalisme dans l’architecture française autour de 1500,” 332, finds himself led back in time from the hundreds of late Gothic (ca. 1500) monuments with naturalistic foliage to the “metamorphosis” of natural to lithic leaves, a phenomenon going back to antiquity, in the period around 1200, citing the extraordinary nave pier of the church of Vermenton, where the foliage of the capital spreads into the en délit shafts and the abacus, continuing to sprout in the springing of the arcade arch, as well as the images of foliage in the carnet of Villard de Honnecourt. 54. Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 1–­48. 55. Denise Jalabert, La flore sculptée. See also Lottelise Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt der mittelalterlichen Kathedralen. 56. Nikolaus Pevsner, The Leaves of Southwell, 68. 57. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 62–­63. 58. Roland Bechmann, Les racines des cathédrales, 25–­51 and 100–­112, has attempted to put Gothic architectural production in its natural/ecological context. 59. The Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln. 60. T. A. Heslop, “Art, Nature and St. Hugh’s Choir at Lincoln,” 64. 61. The Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 55–­57. 62. Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 111. 63. Ethan Matt Kaveler, “On Vegetal Imagery in Renaissance Gothic,” 298, suggests that carved vegetal images might retain some of the magic significance of the real thing, as defined in scripture, herbal writings, and other sources. 64. The notion of the organic “spread” of Gothic foliage is projected by the rhetoric of the interlocutor; thus Ethan Matt Kavaler, “On Vegetal Imagery in Renaissance Gothic,” 297, wrote: “In the years around 1500 vines creep across the surface of the vaults. . . . Architectural members suddenly morph into living forms, an effective artistic conceit and an instrument for conveying the mystical nature of religious experience. These botanical forms, these vines, branches, flowers and the like, could communicate the miracle of animation, of vivification and its divine origins.” Lottelise Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt der mittelalterlichen Kathedralen, 50–­85, has a chapter titled “Die blühende Kathedrale.” 65. Meredith Cohen and Xavier Dectot, Paris ville rayonnante, Villard de Honnecourt, fol. 22r. 66. Secular patrons too—­it is intriguing to find the crescendo of naturalistic capitals in the Sainte-­Chapelle, commissioned by King Louis IX. N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 42 – 1 48

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67. On the place of the rustici in the cathedral, see Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon, 9–­12; also Jacqueline E. Jung, “Beyond the Barrier,” 634–­40. 68. Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 25: “The horizon of expectations of a work allows one to determine its artistic character by the kind and the degree of its influence on a presupposed audience.” 69. Richard Krautheimer, “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture.’” See the critique by Paul Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Meaning: The Limits of Iconography.” Of the work of the four principal scholars who sought to elucidate meaning in medieval architecture (the others being Günther Bandmann, Erwin Panofsky, and Hans Sedlmayr), that of Krautheimer has the most enduring value since, according to Crossley (120) he realized that layers of meaning may be contradictory, only half-­defined, and focused not on styles or periods but on “individuals locked in situations of choice and conflict.” 70. Richard Krautheimer, “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture,’” 8. 71. Richard Krautheimer, “The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture.” 72. Stephen Nichols, Romanesque Signs, 1–­14, explored the power of history writers to establish the appearance of legitimacy through a kind of “mythic resonance” between, for example, Clovis and Constantine. Similitude in architecture has the same power. Nichols’s notion of the Romanesque “white mantle of churches” as an allegory of transfiguration and baptism (Romanesque Signs, 16) is also enormously illuminating for the Gothic phenomenon. 73. Willibald Sauerländer, “Première architecture gothique.” 74. William W. Clark, “The Recollection of the Past is the Promise of the Future.” 75. Louis VI (1108–­37) at the end of his reign made Paris his principal residence. 76. On architectural “quotations,” see Hans-­Joachim Kunst, “Freiheit und Zitat”; Wolfgang Schenkluhn, “Bemerkungen zum Begriff des Architekturzitats. 77. Stephen Murray, Beauvais Cathedral, 61–­111. 78. Quoted in Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 149 (1412–­13): “Pour les despens de Bleuet, maistre maçon de Rains, pour avoir son advis par quelle maniere en poursuivrat pour faire les tours devant l’eglise, 27s. 6d. Lequel a bailliee response a messrs. qu’il seroit bon de visiter plusieurs eglises comme Rains, Amiens et Nostre Dame de Paris et se la fait il donroit son advis.” Ibid., 141: “Pour 1 voyaige fait par led. Nantes at maistre Thomas Michelin, maçon, a Bourges et a Meun sur Yevre, pour veoir les clochiers des eglises desd. lieux, qu’on disait moult bons.” 79. We might talk about the “narcissism” of Gothic; the same point has been made for Netherlandish artistic production by Amy Powell, “A Point Ceaselessly Pushed Back,” who suggests that the validity of a devotional image might be related to its resemblance to multiple images of its type and time rather than to any authoritative prototype. 80. Carl Barnes, “An Essay on Villard de Honnecourt,” 22–­23. 81. The word modernism, I believe, is appropriate where not only is the novelty of artistic forms recognized but the self-­conscious application of these forms is part of a wider cultural agenda. During the period of construction, what we call Gothic would be designated simply as “new work”—­yet as we will see, our Witnesses appear to recognize its modernistic potential. 82. Marvin Trachtenberg,“Italian Gothic,”“Suger’s Miracles,” and “Desedimenting Time.” 83. Trachtenberg invokes Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 84. Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 1:290: “But in France, the rational interpretation of Gothic was clearly familiar long before Viollet-­le-­Duc emerged during the nineteenth century to elaborate and codify it. The germs of this self-­conscious mediaevalism can be traced back to the Middle Ages themselves.” 85. Philibert de l’Orme, Les nouvelles inventions pour bien bastir et à petits frais (Paris, 1561), and Architecture (1567). De l’Orme’s knowledge of Gothic came from actual involvement in the edifices themselves—­churches such as S-­Etienne du Mont in Paris, and (1548) the completion of the Ste-­Chapelle of Vincennes. See Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 1:292. 86. François Dérand, L’architecture des voûtes, ou L’art des traits et coûpes des voûtes (1643),

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392: “These vaults, employed particularly in France and in other northern countries, are made up of ribs and conoids [de nerfs et pendentifs]. The ribs are projecting bodies decorated with various moldings, which carry and support the conoids.” Cited by Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 1:293; my translation. 87. Florent le Comte, Cabinet des singularitéz d’architecture, peinture, sculpture et gravure (1699); see Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 1:303. John Evelyn published the same idea two years earlier; Christopher Wren made the same suggestion about “Saracen” style in 1713. 88. Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 1:316. 89. Ibid., 1:289. 90. H. Leblanc, L’architecture des églises anciennes et nouvelles (1733), cited by Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 1:319, my translation. 91. Ibid., 1:320. 92. Marc-­Anthoine Laugier, Essai sur architecture (1753), 201, cited by Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 2:101. 93. Jacques-­Germain Soufflot (1713–­80) was inspired by Gothic structure; his principal critic, Pierre Patte (1723–­1814), however, claimed that the four central piers of the Pantheon were inadequate to support the proposed dome. 94. Robin Middleton, “The Abbé de Cordemoy,” 2:110. 95. Ibid., 2:118–­20. 96. Charles Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival, 318, records the sense of shock that these drawings induced in contemporaries: “M. Viollet-­le-­Duc not only supplied geometrical drawings of such features [plans and sections] but added perspective sketches, in which the parts to be illustrated are dissected in a manner that renders them intelligible to everyone at first sight. . . . One looks down upon a church or town hall, partly stripped of its roof or gable, and straightway the whole anatomy of its walls is revealed.” 97. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, “Construction,” in The Foundations of Architecture, 113. 98. Ibid., 116–­17. 99. Ibid., 133. 100. Ibid., 140. 101. Ibid., 145. 102. Introduction to ibid., 15–­16. 103. On the relation between the encyclopedic and the discursive in Viollet-­le-­Duc, see Robin Middleton, “Viollet-­le-­Duc’s Academic Ventures and the Entretiens sur l’Architecture”; see also Barry Bergdoll, introduction to Viollet-­le-­Duc, The Foundations of Architecture, 11–­30. 104. For Viollet-­le-­Duc’s dependence upon Georges Cuvier, see Barry Bergdoll, introduction to The Foundations of Architecture, 18–­22. 105. On dialectical thinking in Viollet-­le-­Duc, see Martin Bressani, “Notes on Viollet-­le-­ Duc’s Philosophy of History.” 106. The idea of Gothic as lay, bourgeois, secular, almost Protestant was inspired by the writings of the scholar-­statesman François-­Pierre-­Guillaume Guizot (1787–­1874). 107. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, “Architecture,” in The Foundations of Architecture, 90. 108. Georges Duby, Le Dimanche de Bouvines. 109. On the improbability of France’s becoming France, see Yves Renouard, “Comment les traits durables de l’Europe occidentale moderne.” 110. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, “Construction,” in The Foundations of Architecture, 162. 111. Ibid., 179–­80. 112. Ibid., 188. 113. Laurence Hull Stookey, “The Gothic Cathedral as the Heavenly Jerusalem”; Ann R. Meyer, Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem, esp. 69–­97. 114. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Erwin Panofsky, 105. N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 54 – 1 6 4

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115. Ibid., 115. 116. Ibid., 121. Paul Crossley, “The Integrated Cathedral,” 173, concludes that in Suger’s response linking the material and the immaterial; the corporeal and the spiritual “we come close to what the twelfth century may have described as the ‘holistic cathedral.’” 117. Dominique Poirel, “Symbolice et anagogice.” 118. Viollet-­le-­Duc’s theories had come under vigorous attack, especially by Pol Abraham, Viollet-­le-­Duc et le rationalisme médiéval. 119. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale. Sedlmayr was professor of art history in Vienna from 1936 to 1945, in Munich from 1951 to 1964, and in Salzburg from 1965 to 1969. He joined the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1932 and following World War II lost his position at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, eventually moving to Bavaria, where he worked for Wort und Wahrheit, a Catholic magazine. In 1951 he became a professor at the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich. 120. Added to the sense of contamination from Sedlmayr’s Nazi past was the irritating assertiveness (not to say dismissiveness) of his tone, which made a scholarly reductio ad absurbum quite easy. The review most available is Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 753–­57. See also Louis Grodecki, Critique 65 (1952): 847–­57; Ernst Gall, Kunstchronik 4 (1951): 14–­21, and Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 14 (1951): 14–­21; anon., Times Literary Supplement, January 4, 1952; Roland Recht, Believing and Seeing, 23–­24. Levels of disapproval are sometimes high-­pitched: Frankl called the book an “aberration,” and Paul Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Meaning,” 119, found Sedlmayr’s vision “bizarre,” complaining that it runs “counter to the whole character of medieval symbolism to transform this metaphorical meaning [cathedral as heaven] into a literal one.” Yet several scholars, including Paul Binski and Peter Fergusson, have recently returned to the representational potential of medieval architecture: at Canterbury Cathedral the axial chapel known as Becket’s Corona mimics the form of the severed crown of the martyr’s skull. 121. The Kritische Berichte zur kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur 1917–­37 provided a platform for younger, theoretically oriented art historians including Sedlmayr, Pächt, Panofsky, Schapiro, Gombrich, Pevsner, Wittkower, and von Einem. Sedlmayr and Pächt launched Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen, which published the former’s “Towards a Rigorous Study of Art.” Their methods failed to seduce the English-­speaking world, however, and Meyer Schapiro published a very critical review in the 1936 Art Bulletin. The reevaluation of Sedlmayr’s ideas is facilitated by the sympathetic foreword by Bernhard Rupprecht in the new edition (Graz, 1988); some of Sedlmayr’s writings have been translated in The Vienna School Reader (with an excellent introduction by Christopher Wood, 9–­72); see also Otto Pächt, The Practice of Art History. 122. The Vienna School Reader, ed. Wood, 13. 123. “Zu einer strengen Kunstwissenschaft,” Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen(1931), 1. 124. Hans Sedlmayr, “Towards a Rigorous Study of Art,” in The Vienna School Reader, ed. Wood, 138. 125. This passage is a précis of ibid., 139–­41. 126. Ibid., 144: “This thing only possesses artistic properties when it is approached with an ‘artistic’ attitude, and it only possesses specific artistic properties when it is seen in accordance with a specific attitude.” 127. Sedlmayr's desire to take the reader back to the original state of the cathedral with its color, sound, and furniture resembles the current quest for the “holistic cathedral.” 128. In the last twenty years that blackened hulk has been, to a great extent, cleaned up with the application of a range of problematic new techniques (the laser) and discredited old ones (sandblasting, scraping, and refacing), and many churches have been entirely repainted. Responses have been mixed. 129. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, 46. 130. Ibid., 60: “Den Eindruck des Schwebenden haben vor solchen Bauten fast alle Beschauer seit jeher gehabt. Es is ein irreales Schweben, mit nichts vergleichbar.” We might

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remember Procopius’s image of the dome of Hagia Sophia appearing to be suspended from golden chains from heaven. 131. The idea of the diaphanous wall had been articulated by Hans Jantzen, Zur Beurteilung der gotischen Architektur als Raumkunst (1927), cited by Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 784. The English-­speaking world knows about this author’s ideas principally through his High Gothic (1962). 132. Sedlmayr has most perceptive observations about the fragmented planes (Splitterflächen), the layered facades, and the aesthetic qualities of the newly invented flying buttress system. 133. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, 91–­92. 134. Ibid., 92: Sedlmayr uses a stronger word than depicted—­what is being “shammed”? (vorgetäuscht): “was denn durch diese “unwahrhaften” Formen vorgetäuscht werden sollte.” One thinks of Villard’s engiens and Gervase’s machinas (words synonymous with tricks or ruses) and of the “counterfeiting” of geometry in the Regius Manuscript. The word Kunst (art) also brings undertones of deception. 135. Ibid., 95–­96. 136. Ibid., 96: “Man muss lernen, den Symbolsinn des Baues von seinem abbildenden Sinn zu unterscheiden.” 137. Peirce would distinguish between icon and symbol. 138. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, 102. This hierarchy of resemblance was current in thirteenth-­century thought, for example, in St. Bonaventure; see Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 2:268. 139. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, 97. 140. Sedlmayr renders the hymn thus: Urbs Jerusalem beata, dicta pacis visio Quae construitur in coelis, vivis ex lapidibus Et angelis coornata velut sponsa nobilis . . . [Blessed City of Jerusalem, vision of and assurance of peace Built in heaven out of living stones And adorned by the angels like a bride for her consort . . . See Stephen Nichols, Romanesque Signs, 24–­25. 141. Hans Sedlmayr, Die Entstehung der Kathedrale, 104. 142. Patricia Stirnemann, “P,” in “L’inscription alphabétique.” Here the singing is said to be “O quam metuendus est locus.” 143. Michel Andrieu, Le pontifical romain, 183. 144. Gervase of Canterbury emphazises the ability of the keystone to represent the entire vault or ciborium. 145. Wilhelm Schlink, “The Gothic Cathedral as Heavenly Jerusalem,” 285, calls the notion of the Gothic cathedral as Heavenly Jerusalem “pure fiction by the Vienna Art-­Historian [Sedlmayr, Schlink’s teacher]. But it is more than a harmless fiction; for it is the product of a neoconservative ideology with mystical and utopian predispositions and with a strong anti-­ intellectual touch.” 146. Otto von Simson was born in Berlin, 1912; studied with Hans Jantzen, Walter Friedlander, and Kurt Bauch at Freiburg, and with William Pinder at Munich with a dissertation on Rubens. He converted to Catholicism in 1937. In 1939 he came to the United States, teaching at Marymount College, Tarrytown, Notre Dame, Indiana, and the University of Chicago. He published Sacred Fortress (1948) and then The Gothic Cathedral (1956), which received general acclaim, except from art historians (Crosby in Art Bulletin). In 1957 von Simson returned to Germany to teach at Frankfurt, later becoming director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut of the Freie Universität in Berlin. His work was ridiculed by Willibald Sauerländer, Première architecture gothique. See also Roland Recht, Believing and Seeing, 24–­25.

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147. Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, xvii: “The medieval sanctuary was the image of heaven. King Henry I and Abbot Suger both describe it as such.” 148. Ibid, xvi–­xvii. For his definition of the symbolic vision he relies on Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580–­662):“the ability to apprehend within the objects of sense perception the invisible reality of the intelligible that lies beyond them.” 149. Ibid., 54. Analogy may be understood as the cognitive process of transferring meaning from one subject to another target subject. It is a key element in all processes of cognition. 150. Ibid., 5. 151. Ibid., 7. 152. This is, of course, a misunderstanding: rib vaults cannot be understood entirely as the intersection of two half-­rounded tunnels, and while a groin vault results in theory from the intersection of two barrel vaults having the same height, the reality of such a geometrically perfect phenomenon is rare indeed. 153. Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, 8. 154. Ibid., 25. 155. Ibid., 50. 156. Ibid., 52. 157. Ibid., 55, where it is observed that the opening verses of St. John’s Gospel were read at the close of the Mass: “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” 158. Willibald Sauerländer, “Première architecture gothique” and “Integration.” In Sauerländer’s pages the notion of the “spiritualized middle ages” attributed to von Simson and Sedlmayr is dismissed as a product of post–­World War II longing for redemption. This line of thought is continued in “Gothic: The Dream of an Un-­classical Style,” where we are told that “the dream of the cathedral is over;” transcendent meaning is dead, we should desist from reading Pseudo-­Dionysius and stick to the Ordinaries and studying devotional/functional traditions. 159. Otto von Simson, Sacred Fortress. 160. Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral, 61. 161. Christopher Wilson, The Gothic Cathedral; Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale, Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich; Alain Erlande-­Brandenburg, The Cathedral. 162. Ann R. Meyer, Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem, esp. 69–­97, “Liturgy at St.-­Denis and the Apocalyptic Eschatology of High Gothic.” 163. Margot Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres. 164. Dominique Poirel, “Symbolice et anagogice,” 169, argues that a building cannot be a direct translation of the written word. Theology is expressed in spirituality, which is translated into liturgy: “C’est par la liturgie, qui leur est commune, que les moëllons d’une église et les concepts d’une théologie entrent en contact, se frottent l’un à l’autre et finissent par s’épouser.” 165. Paul Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Meaning,” and introduction to the new edition of Paul Frankl, Gothic Architecture. 166. Brendan Cassidy, “Introduction: Iconography, Texts and Audiences.” 167. The concern with the significance of materials has been a most useful dimension of recent scholarship: see Aden Kumler and Christopher Lakey, “Res et significatio,” as well as the other essays in Gesta 51 (2012). Also Yves Gallet, ed., Ex Quadris Lapidibus, and Arnaud Timbert, ed., L’homme et matière. 168. Stephen Murray, “Slippage of Form and Meaning.” 169. Arnold Van Gennep addressed the cross-­cultural significance of movement, transition, and entry in his 1908 pioneering work The Rites of Passage, 20, where he introduced the notion of liminality: “The door is the boundary . . . between the profane and sacred worlds in

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the case of a temple. Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world.” Such rites might include the laying of a foundation stone or the consecration of the finished edifice; one thinks of Suger’s ecstatic sense of union of material and heavenly at the consecration of the new chevet. The moment of liminality between two states or regions may bring regeneration (182). Van Gennep’s ideas were extended and applied to pilgrim responses by Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage; see especially “Pilgrimage as a Liminoid Phenomenon,” 1–­39. The experience of the pilgrimage may produce a “cleansing of the doors of perception” or a transformative effect that will enhance the impact of images and religious buildings, particularly those encountered toward the end. Caroline Bynum proposes a useful critique, “Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality,” suggesting that such experiences are tempered by gender and class. 170. Quoted in Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon, 70–­71.

Chapter 7 1. Michael Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-­Dame, esp. xi. 2. On the end of Gothic, see Monique Chatenet et al., eds., Le Gothique de la Renaissance. The death in 1532 of the last great master mason of French Gothic, Martin Chambiges, has a certain symbolic value as a terminus. Yet in 1601 work started on the great Gothic cathedral of Orléans. 3. Andreas Speer, “Beyond Art and Beauty,” 82. 4. Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” 23: “Common opinion has it that the plot of a narrative imposes a meaning on the events that comprise its story level by revealing at the end a structure that was immanent in the events all along.” 5. The complexity of desire in the plot first came to me with readings in René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, and was further developed with Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot, and Susan Stewart, On Longing. 6. Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art, provides a useful overview of the problem, correlating artistic production with other kinds of material production as a collective enterprise. More specifically on medieval architectural production, see Martin Warnke, Bau und Überbau. Marxist theory encouraged more emphasis upon materiality and production exemplified, for example in the work of Dieter Kimpel, “Le développement de la taille en série,” and Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale, Die gotische Architektur in Frankreich. See also Alain Erlande-­Brandenburg, The Cathedral, and Robert Scott, The Gothic Enterprise. 7. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, following his teacher Henri Focillon, did his best to counter this appearance of a smooth developmental flow by looking for unexpected turns in the sequence of Gothic. On the inherent difficulty in reconciling Marxist and formalist schools of thought, see Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 9. 8. This approach is not unlike the one adopted by Martin Warnke, Bau und Überbau, 151, who talks much about a heightened Anspruchniveau or level of aspiration on the part of the patrons about the scale and grandeur of edifices that were so expensive as to force multiple agents (bishop, bourgeoisie, king) to work together. 9. On the creation of programs of meaning through the intervention of the users, see Brigitte Bedos-­Rezak, “Form as Social Process.” For the physical transformation of cathedral space to respond to the needs of the users, see Henry Kraus, “New Documents for Notre-­Dame’s Early Chapels” and Gold Was the Mortar, 29; also Mailan Doquang, “The Lateral Chapels of Notre-­Dame in Context.” 10. That redefinition will often affect the peripheral spaces associated with individual devotion, as opposed to the corporate space of the main vessel. On the social role of the choir screen, see Jacqueline E. Jung, “Beyond the Barrier” and The Gothic Screen. 11. In Strasbourg Cathedral the role of the townsfolk (bourgeois) assumed ever-­increasing importance in the construction of the nave and became dominant in the western frontispiece; see Henry Kraus, Gold Was the Mortar, 109–­30. At Troyes Cathedral, because the con-

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struction of a tower (over the cathedral crossing, 1420s) involved urban identity, the number of proviseurs (organizers of the fabric) was increased from two to three to include a representative of the townsfolk; see Stephen Murray, Bulding Troyes Cathedral, 47. 12. John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 66–­69. Peter the Chanter had roots in the area to the north of Paris (Gerberoy, near Beauvais) and was associated first with Reims Cathedral (where he seems to have formed his hostility toward ostentatious building) and Notre-­Dame of Paris. Soon after the Notre-­Dame choir had been completed, Peter wrote, “Just as Christ who is the Head of the body of the church was humble and lowly, so should the apses (capita) of our churches be lower than the edifices” (68). For excepts from Alexander Neckam and Peter the Chanter, see Teresa Frisch, Gothic Art, 30–­33, esp. 33, Peter the Chanter: “Moreover this superfluity and costliness of buildings and stone walls is a cause why we have in these days less pity and alms for the poor; since we are not rich enough to feed them while we spend also upon such superfluous expenses.” More recently, see Alexandra Gajewski, “Stone Construction and Monastic Ideals.” 13. Robert Lopez, “Economie et architecture médiévales” Lopez failed to understand the chronology of the cathedral or the impact of royal taxation on the economy of northern cities like Beauvais and Amiens. The economic woes of these cities in the middle decades of the thirteenth century had more to do with the weight of royal taxation to finance the crusade than with cathedral building. 14. Barbara Abou-­El-­Haj, “Artistic Integration”; Jane W. Williams, Bread, Wine and Money. 15. Willibald Sauerländer, “Gothic: The Dream of an Un-­classical Style.” 16. Stephen Murray, A Gothic Sermon. 17. Such cities would include, for example, Vézelay, Laon, Chartres, Reims, and Beauvais. 18. Augustus Welby Pugin, Contrasts; Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect. 19. Romanticism, it appears, like liberalism, has become a Bad Thing. 20. For example, Robert de Torigni (1144), cited by Alain Erlande-­Brandenburg, The Cathedral, 23: “In my diocese, there is the most extraordinary sight, for everyone, whether knight, burgess or peasant, hastens to Chartres in order to have the honour of working for Notre-­ Dame . . . they rush there in a disordered mass, paying no heed to distinctions of rank; the load is sometimes so heavy that a thousand men are needed for each waggon.” 21. Denis Cailleaux, La cathédrale en chantier, 168–­71. 22. This conclusion reflects the same concerns expressed by Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge, 6, “to turn from trying to explain social phenomena by weaving them into grand textures of cause and effect to trying to explain them by placing them in local frames of awareness is to exchange a set of well-­charted difficulties for a set of largely uncharted ones.” For Gothic cathedrals, the closest we have come to this “case study” approach is in André Mussat, “Les cathédrales dans leurs cités.” Henry Kraus, Gold Was the Mortar, also has much to offer, though he is excessively preoccupied with the role of the bourgeoisie. 23. Robert Branner, “Historical Aspects”; Stephen Murray, Beauvais Cathedral, 37–­38. It should be noted that the written sources from Beauvais indicate that the townsfolk were not unified in their opposition to the bishop: the lower levels of society tended to support him. 24. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 209. See also Wim H. Vroom, Financing Cathedral Building, 631: “The offerings of the faithful from the diocese at large were of great importance. Donating money towards cathedral construction counted as an act of piety.” 25. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral, 209. 26. Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 26. Ada Levett suggested that Bishop William of Wykham’s various building projects did more to transform working relationships and commutation of services on the estates of the See of Winchester than the Black Death; see Ada E. Levett, The Black Death on the Estates of the See of Winchester. 27. Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 76–­77. 28. Brigitte Bedos-­Rezak, “Form as Social Process,” 243. 29. Ibid., 244. 30. The image was drawn by Viollet-­le-­Duc himself and engraved by Etienne Guillaumot.

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I am grateful to Martin Bressani and Arnaud Timbert, who confirmed the master’s authorship. 31. The stems of the dividers are engraved with a zigzag, and the arms can be fixed at intervals in order to fix the radius as in God’s compass in the Bible moralisée. 32. It has been coined from an image of the Three Estates, those who work, those who pray, and those who fight; see Georges Duby, The Three Orders. Was Viollet-­le-­Duc familiar with the analogous image of King Offa and the builders in the Vitae Offarum (reproduced in Nigel Hiscock, The Wise Master Builder, plate 13). 33. Stephen Murray, Building Troyes Cathedral. 34. Thanks to Arnaud Timbert, who brought my attention to the resemblance. 35. Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, 32–­33. 36. Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 190 and 320n24, from Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium (in Anecdota Oxoniensia, Medieval and Modern Series, pt. 14, ed. M. R. James [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914], 59): “It is in our times that these things have arisen. By ‘our times’ I mean this modern period [nostra dico tempora modernitatem hanc], the course of the last hundred years now just approaching completion and the memory of whose notable events is relatively fresh and clear, for there are still some centenarians alive, and there are very many sons who possess, by the narration of their fathers and grandfathers, distinct knowledge about things they did not actually see. I say that the hundred years that have just run out constitute our ‘modern times.’ [Centum annos qui effluxerunt dico nostrum modernitatem.]” 37. Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 167–­69. The term series narrationes was a favorite expression of Hugh of S-­Victor (168), characterizing the story as an articulated continuity that made sense, as distinct from abstract Platonic ideas. Although such a series resulted from a whole plan, it had to be realized in real time through human agency. 38. Antonia Gransden identified similar formlessness in Walter Map’s De nugis curialium, a collection of tales reflecting court gossip and satyrical jibes: “a little book I have jotted down by snatches at the court of King Henry.” Walter compared his product to “a forest or a timber yard.” Historical Writing, 243.

Chapter 8 1. For the language of desire, see C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, 4, where it is asserted that the affective language of the troubadours “effected a change which has left no corner of our daily life untouched. . . . Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.” 2. Cited in chap. 1 n46. 3. Susan Stewart, On Longing, 37–­103, has much to say about the vibration of the gigantic (for us, a cathedral), the miniature (Villard’s drawing), and desire in narrative. 4. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 34; Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:4–­5: “Hoc itaque modo domus Dei hactenus ut paradisus deliciarum delectabilis, jam tunc in incendii cinere jacebat despicabilis . . .” 5. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 35; Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:5–­6: “Sic ergo filii Israel occulto quidem sed justo Dei judicio de terra promissionis, immo de paradiso deliciarum ejecti . . . per quinquennium in aula ecclesiae muro pavulo a populo segregati in lacrimis et luctu permanserunt.” 6. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 52; Gervase, The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. Stubbs, 1:22: “Vere autem ejusdem, id est, sexti anni post incendium intrante et tempore operandi instante, desiderio cordis accensi chorum praeparare curaverunt monachi, ut ad proximum Pascha introire possent.” 7. Robert Willis, The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral, 55. 8. This passage has been quoted in full above, chap. 3 n65. 9. Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 1–­39. 10. Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 45.

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11. On the start of work on the new chevet, see William Clark and Thomas Waldman, “Money, Stone, Liturgy and Planning at the Royal Abbey of Saint-­Denis,” 75. 12. Frank C. Gardiner, The Pilgrimage of Desire, 2. In the twelfth century versions of this Officium Peregrinorum were produced at Rouen and at Beauvais. 13. Ibid., 2–­3. 14. Ibid., 14. 15. Ibid., 8. The theme of desire as dynamic movement or passage is explored in Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 29–­34; see esp. 31: “The importance given to desire confers on St. Gregory’s doctrine an extremely dynamic quality. It is concerned with constant progress.” 16. It has, to the best of my knowledge, never been pointed out that the composition of the tympanum of the southwest portal at S-­Denis, which depicts the last communion of Saints Dionysius, Rusticus, and Eleutherius, may have been derived from an image of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. See, for example, the ninth-­century plaque in the cloisters: Peter Barnett and Nancy Wu, The Cloisters, 25. 17. Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis,” 69: “Suger a guidé le lecteur . . . à la manière d’un itinéraire à travers l’abbaye.” See also William Clark and Thomas Waldman, “Money, Stone, Liturgy and Planning,” 65: “Everything is presented in a spatial sequence along an east-­west liturgical axis.” 18. This is the work that Suger describes as shining “with the radiance of delightful allegories”; see Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 62–­63. 19. Here the monks celebrated the first office of the day. 20. Clark Maines, “Good Works, Social Ties, and the Hope for Salvation,” 79. 21. Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 70. 22. Richard Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, 233. 23. Ibid., 226. 24. Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 25–­32. Gregory used dialectical oppositions—­ presence and absence, light and darkness, possession and nonpossession, certainty and uncertainty—­to create a “structured” Christian experience. His repeated use of terms like anhelare, aspirare, suspirare brings the idea of spiritual ascent or transcendence: like an eagle, one must soar on wings, hastening toward God. The power of love is like a mechanism that warms us, causing the hardened soul to become tender (emollitur). Such thoughts lie behind Gregory’s interpretation of the Song of Songs—­an interpretation that became popular in the twelfth century with the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux. 25. Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, 121. 26. The lost tympanum of the northwest portal of S-­Denis, rendered in mosaic, may have depicted the Coronation of the Virgin. 27. Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 1–­48. 28. Arnold, abbot of Bonneval near Chartres, a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, attributed such actions to God. Much of his story of God’s creation of the universe could equally be applied to a master mason building a cathedral: “God distributed the things of nature like the members of a great body, assigning all their proper places and names, their fitting measures and offices. Nothing is confused in God, and nothing was without form in primordial antiquity; for physical material, as soon as it was made, was forthwith cast into such species as suited it. . . . He encloses all things, strengthening them from within, protecting them from without, nurturing them from above, supporting them from below, binding contraries with perceptible art, joining opposites into one and with marvelous moderating power enjoining peace upon them, holding down lightweight things lest they fly off, holding up ponderous things, lest they crash downwards. . . . By God’s moderating rule diverse and contrary things meet in the unity of peace, and static and erratic things are brought into orderly line: huge things do not swell larger, and the smallest things do not disappear. The entire fabric of the world—­consistent though made of such dissimilar parts, one though composed of such diverse things, tranquil though containing such opposed elements—­continues in its lawful and ordered way, solid, harmonious and with no dread prospect of ruin,” De operibus sex cierum (P.L., 89, 1515–­16), cited by Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 9.

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29. Marie-­Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 20–­21, points to a kind of entelechy that results from the discovery of the laws by which the Universe was created. The existence of those laws allows the story of creation to be told in only one way—­the outcome was already in the mind of the Creator. We have encountered a similar entelechy in the story of Gothic. 30. Matthew M. Reeve, Thirteenth-­Century Wall Painting of Salisbury Cathedral, 104–­26. 31. Ibid., 125. Reeve, commenting on the “blandness” of Salisbury’s architecture, suggests that the absence of mental “noise” in the form of lavish ornamental architectural forms “provided a rich but purified interior space that focused the viewer on the central narratives of Salvation History.” 32. Nancy van Deusen, ed., The Place of the Psalms; Elizabeth Parker, “Architecture as Liturgical Setting”; Dirk J. Human and Cas J. A. Vos, Psalms and Liturgy. 33. René Girard, “Triangular Desire,” in Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 1–­52. Thanks to Hélène Grimaud for the reference. 34. In ibid., Girard constructs the triangle of desire as a sociological mechanism: we desire what is desired by the admired other. The person we want to imitate is the mediator. Thus we might reflect that the subject King Henry III of England, in his construction of Westminster Abbey, the object, wanted to be like Louis IX, king of France, the mediator. However, I want to adapt Girard’s notion of the triangle of desire to recognize that the object of desire itself may become the mediator or medium: one wants something because it delivers something else. Thus the builder desires the new church, but equally he desires the salvation that his building promises; he desires the political and economic benefits that the construction of the new church will deliver. 35. Think of the Basse Oeuvre at Beauvais. 36. Peter Kidson, “Bourges after Branner.” Kidson demonstrated that despite the apparent unity of the cathedral, this was a monument that did not result from a single grand vision in 1195 but was developed piecemeal through interventions that had begun some two decades earlier. 37. For the use of Merovingian spolia at S-­Denis, see William W. Clark, “The Recollection of the Past Is the Promise of the Future.” For spolia in early Christian architecture, see Dale Kinney, Santa Maria in Trastevere and “Spolia from the Baths of Caracalla in Sta Maria in Trastevere.” Of the one hundred or so Romanesque churches in the Bourbonnais recently surveyed, around one-­third embody significant amounts of the older building, particularly in the outer walls of the nave; see www.learn.columbia.edu/bourb. 38. It is commonly assumed that builders began to depend upon such drawings only in the years around 1200 and that thereafter the master builder became essentially a draftsman; see Robert Branner, “Villard de Honnecourt, Reims and the Origins of Gothic Architectural Drawing.” 39. Villard did not do this all by himself, but the images in the little book provide an indication of how it was done. 40. The most famous insistence on verisimilitude comes on folio 24v with the image of the lion that was “counterfeited” from life: “Vesci I lion si com[me] on le voit p[ar] devant et sacies bien q[ui]l fu contrefais al vif.” Interestingly, we have seen that the masonic ordinances in the Regius manuscript mention geometry as something “counterfeited” by Euclid. Villard’s lion is counterfeited around four perfect circles; see Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 167. 41. Marie-­Thérèse Zenner, “Imaging a Building: Latin Euclidian and Practical Geometry,” 231, demonstrates direct dependence of some of the geometric devices in Villard upon the Euclidian tradition, known in the West from Latin translations. See also Lon Shelby, “The Geometrical Knowledge of Medieval Master Masons.” 42. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 35, translates force de maconerie with the colorless “techniques of masonry.” Hans Hahnloser, Villard de Honnecourt, 13, surely comes closer to the meaning of force with the German word Kraft. The online Dictionnaire du moyen Français, while recognizing the meaning of force as “violence” or “constraint,” gives as N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 96 – 20 2

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first meaning “énergie, puissance qui est dans un être ou une chose et qui est susceptible de produire un effet.” 43. Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, undertook a careful search for the telltale puncture mark left by the point of the compass. With this evidence we can conclude that Villard took great pleasure in the sweep of the compass arm. Compass-­drawn circles are evident on folios 5r, 7v, 9r, 10v, 14v, 15r, 15v, 16r, 17r, 18v, 20r, 21r, 21v, 24v, 30v, 31v, and 32r. 44. François Bucher, “Design in Gothic,” introduced the principle of dynamic geometry to the English-­speaking world; the best treatment of the fifteenth-­century handbooks that document its application can be found in Lon Shelby, ed. and trans., Gothic Design Techniques. Roland Bechmann, Villard de Honnecourt, 160, remarked, “Cette opération [quadrature] a quelque chose de fascinant et de magique et on comprend qu’elle ait frappé les Anciens.” 45. Lon Shelby, Gothic Design Techniques, 47–­48. 46. Robert Bork, The Geometry of Creation, 22, concludes, rightly, I think, that the final shape of the building was not necessarily fixed by the complex geometric figures he finds in the plans analyzed: “Gothic design can be seen as an architectural topiary, in which geometry provides the quasi-­random growth factor, while artistic judgment guides the pruning process.” 47. Andreas Speer, “L’abbé Suger et le trésor de Saint-­Denis,” 59. 48. Eric Fernie, “A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Architectural Proportions and Systems of Length,” 229. 49. This was the kind of delightful allegory put forth by Abbot Suger with his description of the “Mystic Mill” of the apostle Paul—­a mill that extracted “inmost meaning” from the brain, as depicted in a window in the S-­Denis ambulatory; see Abbot Suger, De administratione, ed. Panofsky, 74–­75. 50. The notion of jouissance, derived from Roland Barthes, Le plaisir du texte, and Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot, was also developed by Ethan Kavaler, Renaissance Gothic, 51, where the jouissance provides “a motor for continued viewing.” 51. I felt this particularly with the discovery of the unfolding geometry of Amiens Cathedral; see Stephen Murray, Notre-­Dame, Cathedral of Amiens, plate 45. 52. Ibid., 170–­73. 53. Jean Bony, “Essai sur la spiritualité de deux cathédrales.”

Chapter 9 1. Jean Bony, “La genèse de l’architecture gothique.” Bony’s “accidental” theory for the generation of Gothic architecture has been explored above; see p. 4. 2. Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. Panofsky’s little essay continues to draw fire; see Paul Binski, “Working by Words Alone”; Katherine Tachau, “What Has Gothic to Do with Scholasticism?” 3. Gabrielle Spiegel, The Past as Text. 4. Alain Erlande-­Brandenburg, “L’architecture militaire”; John Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 294–­303. 5. Dieter Kimpel and Robert Suckale, Die gotische Architektur, 67: “The underlying thesis of our book is that the area that saw the origin and expansion of Gothic up to 1200 corresponds to the French royal domain. Until 1270 innovation is concentrated in the workshops of the royal domain” (my translation). 6. However, certain church-­building projects must certainly have attracted royal attention: Senlis Cathedral, immediately adjacent to a royal château, and the collegiate churches at Mantes and Etampes, for example. 7. Arnaud Timbert, “Existe-­t-­il une signification politique.” 8. Donna Sadler, “The King as Subject, the King as Author.” 9. Kirk Ambrose, “Influence,” notes the figurative quality of the word, which is derived from the Latin influere, as when a river flows into the sea. Ambrose, while recognizing that the word has received bad press from art historians in recent decades, makes a case for continuing use, especially in fields (like Romanesque sculptural production) where we know next to nothing about the circumstances or the working practices of the artist. He notes

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that the alternative notion appropriation depends upon the assumption of a single scheming author. Abbot Suger might clearly be considered such an author. 10. Abbot Suger, De consecratione, ed. Panofsky, 90–­91. 11. Ibid., 104–­5. 12. William W. Clark, “The Recollection of the Past Is the Promise of the Future”; Willibald Sauerländer, “Première architecture gothique”; John Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 86–­87. 13. Jacques Henriet, “La cathédrale Saint-­Etienne de Sens”; Stephen Murray, “Notre-­ Dame of Paris”; Andrew Tallon, “Experiments in Early Gothic Structure.” 14. Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, Discourses, 238. We might be inclined to apply the notion of a “paradigm shift”’ see Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 15. Again Kirk Ambrose, “Appropriation,” has provided some very salutary warnings about the use of a word that is, perhaps, sometimes applied without sufficient thought in current art-­historical discourse. Ambrose reminds us that not all aspects of cultural production are deliberate but may rather reflect a kind of genetic “hardwiring” in the author/artist. 16. Paul Frankl, The Gothic, 363–­64: Christopher Wren, in his report on Westminster Abbey, wrote: “This we now call the Gothic manner of architecture (so the Italians called what was not after the Roman style) though the Goths were rather destroyers than builders; I think it should with more reason be called the Saracen style, for these people wanted neither arts nor learning; and after we in the west lost both, we borrowed again from them, out of their Arabic books, what they with great diligence had translated from the Greeks.” John Evelyn (Account of Architecture) had already linked “Gothic” with the Moors and Arabs; see ibid., 359. John Warren, “Cresswell’s Use of the Theory of Dating,” 59, having reviewed early examples of pointed arches in Islamic architecture, suggests that the pointed arch appeared in the West as early as the ninth century. Peter Draper, “Islam and the West,” 17, concedes that while in its early use in the West (in the third abbey church at Cluny, for example), the pointed arch might lend an “exotic” flavor, “once the pointed arch started to spread in Western Europe it is unlikely that there was any continuing awareness of its eastern origins.” 17. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, 17: “The pointed arch . . . had been adopted first in Islamic architecture of the Near East in the course of the eighth century and had propagated itself through Egypt and Tunisia to Sicily, then under Arab domination” 18. Elie Lambert, “La croisée d’ogives et l’architecture islamique.” Lambert documents the extraordinary range of applications of ribs to vaults in a variety of regions, especially the west of France, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the difficulty of typological or chronological classification. 19. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, 13. Henri Stierlin, Islam, 89–­90, for the Cordova Great Mosque: the rib-­vaulted mihrab belongs to the extension of the mosque under al Hakam II, 961–­76; for the small Ummayyad mosque of Bib Mardun, Toledo (999, later Cristo de la Luz), where the cubic shape of the structure is divided into nine small squares capped by ribbed domes, see ibid., 110. And, of course, forms resembling ribs could be seen in Byzantine as well as Roman architecture. 20. Jean Bony, French Gothic Architecture, 26. 21. Other objects of desire for the builders of S-­Denis may also be considered as part of an iconographic program; this would include the upstairs chapel to the west (referring to the empire). 22. Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol, 81, challenging Panofsky’s notion of “dissociation” in Christian quotations from pagan sources, suggests that “we have assumed the Other’s language so that we may utter what we want to say.” 23. See Anne Lombard-­Jourdan, Aux origines de Paris, 72, on the hostility between the king and the bishop, fueled especially over the struggle to control the Champeaux, the lucrative marketplace of Paris. It has recently been suggested that the struggle between king and bishop lies behind the images in the tympanum of the southwest portal of Notre-­Dame; see Laura Gelfand, “Negotiating Harmonious Divisions of Power.” See also Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger, 70–­71. 24. The late Alfred Frazer, my colleague at Columbia, used to like to compare the five-­ N O T E S T O PA G E S 21 0 – 21 4

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aisled nave of Notre-­Dame with the similarly five-­aisled nave of St. Peter’s in Rome. The height of the Gothic vaults (to the keystone) approximately matched the height of the tie beams of Constantine’s great church. 25. Tournai, S-­Germer-­de-­Fly, S-­Leu d’Esserent, Senlis, Soissons south transept, Noyon, Laon, etc. 26. Marcel Aubert, Notre-­Dame de Paris, 217–­20, saw Notre-­Dame as a negative example; the opposite case was made by Michel Lheure, Le rayonnement de Notre-­Dame de Paris. 27. See “Material Contexts,” p. 115 above. 28. German builders were interested particularly in certain great churches in the east of France including Laon and Reims Cathedrals; see Norbert Nussbaum, German Gothic Church Architecture, 21–­22. 29. Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey, 46, cites the poem “La paix au Anglais,” which parodies Henry III’s desire as being a wish to wheel the Ste-­Chapelle (which he saw in 1254) back to London in a handcart. 30. Arnold Wolff, Der Kölner Dom; Norbert Nussbaum, German Gothic Church Architecture, 54–­55. 31. Christian Freigang, Imitare Ecclesias nobiles, esp. 357 for the critical text from the Narbonne chapter archive that confirms the power of the prototypes of the Île-­de-­France: “Intendit dictum capitulum facere et capellas noviter construendas [i.e., eastern nave chapels] et in faciendo imitare ecclesias nobiles et magnifice operatas et opera ecclesiarum que in regno francie construuntur et sunt in preterito Jam constructe [et] usum et consuetudinem et modum aliarum ecclesiarum observet vel observare velit in dicta fabrica construenda.” On Spanish Gothic see Christian Freigang, ed., Gotische Architektur in Spanien, esp. 83–­104, Angela Franco Mata, “La catedral de Toledo: Entre la tradición local y la modernidad foránea.” Franco notes that Toledo was begun in 1227 by a Master Martin, probably a Frenchman. 32. Compare the spread of American culture—­particularly popular music, jazz, and cinema—­after World War II. 33. Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia appeared in 1728, Denis Diderot’s multivolume Encyclopédie between 1751 and 1772. 34. For example, Albert Lenoir, Statistique monumentale de Paris. 35. Charles Nodier, Isidore Taylor, and Alphonse de Cailleux, Voyages pittoresques. 36. Michael Twyman, Lithography; Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer. 37. Foundations of Architecture. 38. Yve-­Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, Formless. 39. Robin Middleton, “Viollet-­le-­Duc’s Academic Ventures and the Entretiens.” 40. Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-­le-­Duc, Discourses, and Barry Bergdoll, introduction to Foundations of Architecture, 22–­23. Viollet-­le-­Duc sought a means of propagating his message that would be easily comprehended by broader audiences, particularly the young. The result was a big picture of the history of freedom from the theocracy of Asian civilization to the aristocracy of antiquity and finally the democracy of Christianity, which was the last stage in the historical dialectic where the application of reason and artifice allows man to become “a creature in the image of the Creator.” 41. Martin Foys, Virtually Anglo Saxon, 189–­201, with his concept of remediation, provides a good example of what can be done when a scholar in the humanities experiments with the essentially interactive qualities of medieval art. A useful overview of scholarship in the world of digital media can be found in Working Together or Apart: Promoting the Next Generation of Digital Scholarship. See also Swati Chattopadhyay, “Architectural Representations.” 42. The project was funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation; my co–­principal investigator was Andrew Tallon; Rory O’Neill and Robert Stenson played key roles in the development of computer code. I also want to thank the staff of the Media Center for Art History and, most sadly, to remember James Conlon and Caleb Smith. 43. My model was John Ruskin’s unforgettable visit to Amiens Cathedral proposed in the pages of The Bible of Amiens.

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g 

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282

BIBLIOGRAPHY

g 

Abou-­el-­Haj, Barbara, 182 Abraham, Pol, 168 accidental, the, 45, 51, 64, 81, 172, 286n1 accounts, fabric or building, 61, 62, 71, 108, 114, 125, 128, 152, 183, 187, 189, 224n20, 232n54, 247n74 Adam, 190, 227n61, 230n26, 249n24, 249n27, 251n46 and Eve, 138 Adam, abbot of S-­Denis, 91 Adams, Henry, 182 agents of construction, 12, 13, 100, 102, 179–­ 87, 189, 257n8 agrimensores, 39, 41, 169 Alan, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 60 Alberti, 142, 244n16 Albertus Magnus, 9, 146, 148 Alfege, archbishop of Canterbury. See Elfege allegory, 35, 37, 51, 68, 135, 174, 197, 249n17, 252n72, 259n1, 262n49 Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 47 Amiens Cathedral, vii–­viii, 5, 6 fig. 1, 17, 90, 101, 102, 106, 107, 114, 115, 148, 149, 152, 169, 175, 181, 182, 183–­84, 196, 203, 216, 218, 226n49, 231n48, 235n14, 242n24,

Index

243n29, 248n89, 252n78, 262n51, 264n43 anagogy, 87, 88, 93, 107, 135–­36, 165, 236n16, 236n26, 236n28, 237n32, 239n61, 239nn66–­68, 254n116, 256n164 analogy, 9, 69, 78, 108, 136, 137, 145, 170–­72, 249n17, 256n149, 259n32 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, 55, 60, 66, 69, 195, 229n14, 233n74, 233n76, 234n107, 240n88 anticlericalism, 182, 184 antique revival, 30, 163 Antonio da Sangallo, 141 apocryphal stories, 45, 50, 63–­64, 70, 90–­ 92, 99 appropriation, 19, 91, 150, 151, 212–­14, 216, 263n9, 263n15 Aquinas, Thomas, 195 arch, pointed, 3–­4, 77, 106, 109, 139, 141, 153, 155, 159, 160, 184, 185, 212–­13, 234n18, 250n31, 263n16 archéologie du bâti, 130, 248n88 Aristotelianism, 5, 146, 263n17 Arras Cathedral, bishop of, 83 artistic integration, 2, 247n72, 256n158, 258n14 astrolabe, 42, 45, 228n85

283

Augustine of Canterbury, Saint, 48, 55 Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 47, 129, 135, 247n85 Auxerre, S-­Germain, 109 Auxerre Cathedral, bishop of, 83 baldachin, 167, 169 Baldwin of Worcester, archbishop of Canterbury, 52, 60, 67, 229n8, 229n10, 233n88, 233n93 Barnabas, apostle, 83 Barnes, Carl, 19, 117, 152, 223n1, 223n7, 223n9, 226n44, 227n59, 227n68, 261n40, 261n42, 262n43 beauty, 69, 86–­87, 107, 135, 148, 155, 157, 171, 191, 195, 210, 216, 221n1, 239n66, 239n68, 243n29, 257n3, 260n21 Beauvais bishop of, 83 Cathedral, 17, 120, 128, 151–­52, 183, 203, 247n77, 247n83, 252n77, 258n13, 258n23 Bec, abbey of, 47 Bechmann, Roland, 37, 222n1, 224n25, 227n63, 227n65, 251n58, 262n44 Becket, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 47–­48, 52, 53, 55, 64, 66–­71, 119, 123, 182, 187, 198, 229nn2–­3, 229nn5–­ 6, 230n30, 232n57, 233n85, 233n90, 233n92, 233n95, 233n98, 233n102, 254n120 Bede, the Venerable, 47, 240n85 Bedos-­Rezak, Brigitte, 184, 257n9 Beer, Esmond de, 141, 250n39, 250n41 Benedict, Saint, 82 Bernard of Clairvaux, 47, 51, 78, 83, 195, 196, 260n24, 260n28 Bible moralisée, 114, 259n31 Bilson, John, 129, 247n87 Binski, Paul, 68–­70, 107, 229n3, 229n6, 229n10, 232n71, 246n54, 248n1, 254n120, 264n29 Bleuet, master mason of Reims and Troyes, 152, 252n78 Boileau, Etienne, 115, 215, 244n7 Bony, Jean, 2, 4, 109, 110 fig. 24, 150, 172, 174, 204, 212–­13, 235n14, 257n7, 263n17, 263n19 Bordeaux, bishop of, 83 Bourdieu, Pierre, ix, 22, 142, 208, 224n21 Bourges Cathedral, 109, 204, 261n36 Bouvines, battle of, 162, 253n108 Bramante, 139

284

INDEX

Bucher, François, 20, 223n10, 224n18, 262n44 Burgos Cathedral, 215, 216 Byzantine architecture, 123, 171 Caen, 50 calcaire de, 121–­23, 126 S-­Etienne, abbey of, 213 Cambrai Cathedral, 20, 42, 152, 163, 201, 215, 224nn14–­15, 225n28 Camille, Michael, 179, 263n22 cannabis, 18 Canterbury Cathedral, 8, 47–­49, 52, 56 fig. 18, 58 fig. 19, 61–­62, 65 fig. 20, 67–­69, 70, 83, 113, 119, 121–­24, 129, 163, 170, 180–­ 82, 187, 198, 205, 211, 214–­15, 225n36, 228n1, 229n13 Christ Church Priory, 47–­48, 50, 64, 67, 70, 118, 120, 186, 198, 228n17, 232n62 Capet, Hugues, king, 74 Capetians, 74, 208, 213, 216 Carruthers, Mary, ix, 100, 241n6 Castiglione, Baldassare, 139 castle construction, 121–­23, 207, 246n45 cathedral, holistic, 7, 254n116, 254n127 Catolacus, 73, 90, 91 Catulliacus. See Catolacus Celestial City, 2, 82, 124, 136, 150, 164–­75 Zion, 164, 190, 237n42 cephalophores, 73, 90, 234n2 Châlons (en Champagne) Cathedral, bishop of, 83 Chambiges, Martin, master mason, 120, 257n2 Charlemagne, 74, 91, 150 Charles the Bald, emperor, 74, 194 Chartres Cathedral, 1, 20, 33, 109, 163, 173, 183, 215, 221n10, 228n85, 231n33, 246n49, 247n72, 258n17, 258n20 bishop of, 83, 94 Châteaubriand, François-­René de, 156 Château Gaillard, 162 chiaroscuro, 18 Childeric, 91 Christ, 74, 83, 85, 87, 137, 138, 148, 171, 173, 196, 200 body of, 136 cross, 148 image of, 54 incarnation of, 50, 79, 194, 197 resurrection of, 191–­92, 201 Church, Catholic, 140 ciborium. See baldachin cinematography, vii, 51, 57

Clark, William, 150–­51, 163, 224n25, 239n62, 247n82, 260n17 clerestory, 20, 94, 106 Clermont-­Ferrand, Cathedral, 216, 228n75 Cluny, abbey of, 9, 116, 152, 212, 263n16 cognition, 9, 84, 108, 221n12 cognoscentus, 32, 106 Cohen, Meredith, 146, 225n39 Colocci, Angelo, 139, 249n28 Cologne Cathedral, 167, 215, 235n14 archbishop of, 216 Columbia University Core Curriculum, vii Mathews Lecture, 2 Media Center for Art History, viii–­ix columns, 150, 210–­12 compasses, 202 compression and expansion, 13, 41, 54, 200–­ 203, 213 compulsive looking or scanning, 12, 22, 23, 85, 106, 123, 197, 203, 204 computer, 5, 9, 217, 218 Conrad, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 49, 52, 54, 55, 57, 62, 231n45 Constantinople, 74 context, material, 103, 113–­31 contrapposto, 30, 33, 184 Coutances Cathedral, bishop of, 83 Cragoe, Carol, 49, 69, 229n10, 230n30 Creation story, 4, 5, 12, 51, 52, 66, 99, 106, 138, 145, 149, 157, 161, 171–­72, 185, 198, 214 Crosby, Sumner McKnight, 172, 234n1, 255n146 Crossley, Paul, 2, 27, 145, 221n2, 242n18, 249n19, 252n69, 254n116, 254n120 culée, 31, 38, 39, 108, 163, 214 Cuvier, Georges, 138, 161, 249n25, 253n104 Daedalus, 31, 203, 226n49 Dagobert, king, 50, 74, 79, 84, 85, 91, 94, 151, 194, 238n57 databasing, viii, 18, 23, 37, 204, 217, 219 deceit, 45–­46, 79, 155, 174, 207, 257n5, 261n33 Dectot, Xavier, 146 delectation, 99, 107, 147, 190–­91, 194–­95 Dérand, François,154, 252n86 Denis, Saint (also Dionysius), 73–­74, 77, 83, 90, 134, 173, 194, 213, 229n6, 234n2, 260n16 desire, object of, 9, 11, 12, 22, 53, 78, 87, 91, 92, 93, 175, 180–­81, 187, 189–­204, 205, 212–­13, 216

developmental theories, 77, 94, 139, 146, 169, 173, 181, 205, 214, 218, 257n7 dialectic, 4, 11, 13, 63, 69, 79, 81, 85, 88, 94, 117, 119, 161, 163, 173, 181, 185, 207, 230n31, 240n88, 253n105, 264n40 Dionysius the Areopagite, 74, 234n2, 240n85 Dionysius the Pseudo-­Areopagite. See Pseudo-­Dionysius Doric order, 139 Draper, Peter, 68, 70, 245n38, 263n16 Dunstan, Saint, archbishop of Canterbury, 53, 54, 60 Durand, William, bishop of Mende, 135–­36, 174, 192, 248n7, 248n12, 249n16 Durham Cathedral, 129, 213, 247n87 Eadmer of Canterbury, 50, 52, 229n14, 230nn29–­30 Eadwine Psalter, 57, 58 fig. 19, 119, 231n46 ecstasis, 105 Eden, Garden of, 138, 148, 190 elasticity, 158 Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of France, 83, 194 Eleutherius, Saint, 73, 234–­35n2, 238n51 Elfege, archbishop of Canterbury, 53, 54, 60 eloquence, 23, 29–­30, 123, 157, 159, 211 Emmaus, 191–­92, 193 fig. 31, 201, 260n16 encyclopedic movement, 3, 19, 156, 161, 216, 217, 253n103 engiens, 45, 111, 126, 131, 185, 200, 202, 223n2, 255n134 entelechy, 119, 162, 221n10, 261n29 Erlande-­Brandenburg, Alain, 173, 258n20 Ernulf, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 47, 49, 54, 55 Erwin von Steinbach, 116 etiological myths, 4, 162 Eucharist, 164, 170, 172, 195, 196, 231n50, 237n32 Euclid, 117, 261nn40–­41 Evelyn, John, 142, 253n87, 263n16 Evreux Cathedral, bishop of, 83 expertise, 119, 245n28 fabric fund, 59, 61, 113, 114, 119, 127, 128, 152, 183, 185, 232n54, 243n33, 246n57, 247n74 Fassler, Margot, 173 Félibien, Alexis, 19, 222n1, 223n8 Fergusson, Peter, ix, 57, 232n 58 Fernie, Eric, 203 Firmin, Saint, 90, 148

INDEX

285

Fitchen, John, 126 Florence Cathedral, 1 Florent le Comte, 154, 253n87 flying buttresses, 3, 5, 21 fig. 6, 38, 62, 77, 94, 95, 106, 108, 130, 154, 171, 211, 232n69, 240n89, 240n93 Focillon, Henri, 2, 257n7 forgery, 91–­92, 100 formlessness, 9, 187, 259n38 formwork, 62, 111, 126, 131, 162, 212 France, kingdom of, 5, 91, 161, 240n85 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 146 Frankl, Paul, 2, 167, 168, 179, 221n1, 224n24, 228n1, 235n14, 244n7, 249n28, 254n120 Frézier, A. F., 154 Fulrad, abbot of S-­Denis, 74 Galilee, 54, 190 galleried elevation, 62, 214 Gardiner, Frank, 191, 260n12 Gardner, Stephen, 246n45 gemstones, 146 Genesis, book of, 4, 13, 51, 71 génie français, 19, 77 Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, 94, 173 geometry, 18, 37, 38, 45, 86, 117, 171, 172, 201, 202, 227n65, 255n134, 261nn40–­41, 262n44, 262n46, 262n51 Gervase of Canterbury, viii, 8, 38, 47–­71, 73, 80, 90, 99, 102, 105, 107, 109, 113, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 129, 134, 146, 163, 164, 175, 179–­80, 186–­87, 189, 190, 192, 197, 199, 201, 205, 207, 214, 215, 216, 219, 228n1 Gestaltetes Sehen (structured seeing), 166, 190, 192, 249n21 Gestaltungsprinzip, 165 “Gothic” “change” in, 120 forest theory of, 4, 27, 137, 139–­42, 145, 150, 155, 174, 225n38, 250n31, 250n43, 252n 52 northern identity, 3, 140–­45 “spread” of, 141, 146, 186, 205, 206 fig. 32, 207, 208, 212, 214, 215 “style,” 2, 3, 17, 77, 139, 149, 153, 154, 180, 215 Goths (Germans), 4, 139, 145 Gransden, Antonia, 48, 230n20, 233n88 green man, 29 Gregory of Tours, 82, 234n2 Gregory the Great, Pope, 47, 48, 192, 195 groma, 41, 42 fig. 15

286

INDEX

Guibert de Nogent, 31, 226n48 Gunzo, monk, 9, 10 fig. 3 Hackington, 49, 66, 67, 70, 187 Hahnloser, Hans, 19, 20, 33, 35, 222n1 Hall, Sir James, 142, 143 fig. 26 Hamburger, Jeffrey, 78 Hanning, Robert, ix, 84, 85, 237n46 Hearn, Millard Fillmore, 24, 55, 70, 225n36 Heaven, 2, 80, 84, 87, 88, 124, 134, 138, 147, 149, 164–­74, 191, 194. See also Celestial City; Paradise Heavenly City. See Celestial City Henry, archbishop of Sens, 173 Henry I, king of England, 170 Henry II, king of England, 64 Heslop, T. A. (Sandy), 69, 147, 233n74, 234n107 Hilduin, abbot of S-­Denis, 74, 90, 91, 194, 234n2 historicism, 92, 151, 153 Holmes, Sherlock, 70, 248n90 horizon of expectations, 149, 252n68 Howard, Thomas, early of Arundel, 142, 250n41 Hugh of S-­Victor, 47, 88, 187, 236n23, 236n26, 236n28–­29, 241n6, 246n59, 259n37 Hugues, archbishop of Rouen, 82 Hugues de Fouilloi, 182 iconography, 18, 133, 149, 150, 248n3 idée dirigeante, 77, 114, 203 illusionism, 35, 69, 71, 78, 93, 154, 168, 227n61 indulgences, 128, 140, 250n33 inexpressibility topos, 107, 243n28 influence, viii, 209, 216, 262n9 Ingolstadt, 142, 145, 251n48 Innocent III, pope, 49 interlocutor, viii, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 17, 19, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 45, 48, 63, 64, 68, 70, 73, 77, 85, 90, 93, 99–­111, 113, 114, 123, 129, 130, 133, 134, 136–­ 37, 141, 145, 148, 158–­61, 163, 164, 165, 173, 174, 179, 180, 185, 187, 204, 211, 218 Islam, 37, 42, 154, 216, 227n63 Islamic architecture, 212–­13, 216 Ivelines, 82 Ivo of Chartres, 47 Jalabert, Denise, 145–­47 Jean d’Abbeville, dean of Amiens, 196

Jean de Chelles, master mason of Notre-­ Dame of Paris, 115, 244n8 Jerome, Saint, 47 Jerusalem, 135, 173, 191 Holy Sepulcher, 150 jouissance, 145, 203, 222n23, 262n50 Julius II, pope, 140–­41, 250n38

Lopez, Robert, 182, 258n13 Louis VI, king of France, 81, 173, 207 military engagements of, 208 fig. 33 Louis VII, king of France, 83, 173, 194, 207 Louis IX, king of France, 128, 152, 173, 207 Luke’s Gospel, 87, 191 Luther, Martin, 140

Kavaler, Ethan Matt, ix, 145, 251n48, 251n64 Kidson, Peter, 66–­68, 70, 77, 87, 105, 118, 119, 224n18, 230n26 Kimpel, Dieter, 130–­31 and Robert Suckale, 2, 130, 173, 179, 207, 262n5 Krautheimer, Richard, 149–­50, 200, 252n69

machinas, 62, 126. See also engiens magic, 31, 37, 45, 46, 106, 155, 216 maniera, 139 tedesca, 140–­41 Map, Walter, 186 marble, 59, 63, 68–­69, 80, 123–­24, 215, 233n102 Purbeck, 124, 147 Martel, Charles, king, 74 Martin, Saint, 64, 73, 213 Mary, Virgin. See Virgin Mary masonic lodge, 37, 115–­18, 202, 227n65 workshop, 116, 120, 152 masonry ashlar, 121–­23 petit appareil, 121 See also stone production master masons, 12, 13, 19, 20, 22, 23, 37, 39, 45, 50, 51, 52, 57, 59, 64, 67, 105, 106, 113, 114–­21, 131, 160, 172, 185, 186, 197, 210, 216, 224n24 means of production, 38–­39, 57–­62, 102–­4, 113–­31 Meaux Cathedral, 42, 83 memory, 23, 54, 56, 60–­61, 71, 102, 106, 196, 197 Merovingians, 74, 89, 91, 150–­51, 211 metonymy, 114, 137, 138, 140 Metrical Life of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 108, 147, 243n28, 243n34 Michelangelo, 4 Middleton, Robin, 154, 156 Millin, A. L., 156 Milon de Nanteuil, bishop of Beauvais, 151–­52 mimesis, 50, 137, 138, 154, 155, 168 miracles, 50, 52, 64, 67, 70–­71, 74, 79, 80, 81–­ 82, 84, 111, 131, 148 mnemonics, 35, 53–­57, 100 modernism, 2, 63, 92, 137, 141, 153–­63, 174 modernitas, 89, 186, 239n76 Monte Cassino, 74, 82, 84 Montfaucon, Bernard de, 154 Montjoie, 91 Muldenfaltenstil, 24, 31, 223n1 mund-­gawi, 91 mythic resonance, 82, 252n72

labyrinth, 31, 115, 203, 226n49 La Morlière, Adrian de, canon of Amiens Cathedral, 107, 243n29 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 49, 52, 54, 122 Langton, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, 69 language, 3, 19, 22, 38, 51, 60, 62–­63, 81, 86, 87, 89, 102, 108, 130–­31, 133–­34, 151, 161, 162, 166, 170, 171, 190, 212–­13, 215, 221n1, 229n18, 242n21, 259n1 figurative, 108–­9, 133, 174, 196 Laon Cathedral, 17, 22, 26, 28 fig. 10, 31, 38, 109, 163, 190, 210, 215 laser scanning, 217, 254n128 Lassus, Jean-­Baptiste, 19, 222n1 laughter, 32, 227n57 Laugier, Marc-­Anthoine, 155 Lausanne Cathedral, 30 Lebeuf, Jean, 154 Leo X, pope, 139–­41 Léon Cathedral, 215–­16 Libergier, Hugues, master mason of S-­Nicaise, Reims, 115, 244n8 light illumination, 172 luminosity, 171, 172, 211 theology of, 5, 78, 171–­72 liminality, 191, 256n169, 257n169 Lincoln Cathedral, 108, 124, 147 literacy, 86 literati, 140, 142, 238n23 lithography, 217 liturgy, 1, 2, 37, 52, 54, 55, 57, 60, 62, 69, 74, 77, 80, 82, 84, 88, 93, 134, 135, 137, 164, 167, 169, 170, 173, 175, 184, 186 Lombard-­Jourdan, Anne, 90–­92 London, the White Tower, 122

INDEX

287

Narbonne Cathedral, 216 narration, 3, 63, 100, 162, 218. See also storytelling nature, 4, 22, 27, 29, 138–­49, 153, 157, 161, 196, 249n24 Neckham, Alexander, 182 Neoplatonism, 5, 77, 87, 91, 145, 171, 173 new media, vii–­viii, 1, 156, 217, 219 Nicolas de Biard, 115 nomenclature, 38, 62, 106 Noyon Cathedral, 77, 149, 210 bishop of, 83 nude, male, 18, 33, 34 fig. 12, 225n41 Odo, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 64 opus francigenum, 138 orality, 23, 63, 70, 83–­85, 92–­93, 117, 151, 189, 201, 217 Orléans Cathedral, 154 bishop of, 83 Pächt, Otto, 165–­66, 254n121 Panofsky, Erwin, 2, 77–­78, 150, 172, 173–­74, 179, 206, 236n23 panoramic photography, 217 paradigm shift, 94, 153, 263n14 Paradise, 51, 62, 138, 146, 148, 190–­92, 194, 249n24, 249n27. See also Celestial City; Heaven Paris, 47, 73, 90–­91, 115, 116, 117, 120, 123, 151, 152, 207, 211, 214 bishop of, 77, 83, 90, 214 Louvre, 123 Notre-­Dame, vii, 1, 17, 95, 107, 109, 110 figs. 24–­25, 115, 148, 150, 152, 155, 162, 181, 184, 203, 204, 211, 214 Pantheon, 155 S-­Germain-­des-­Prés, 19, 150, 153, 154, 207 S-­Martin-­des-­Champs, 153 Ste-­Chapelle, 146, 216 S-­Victor, 173 Parlier, 116–­17 Paul, Saint, 74, 192, 194 Pepin the Short, king, 74 periodization, 3 Perronet, Jean-­Rodophe, 155 perspective, 18, 24, 35 Peter the Chanter, 182, 258n12 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, 83 Pevsner, Nikolaus, 146 Philibert de l’Orme, 154, 252n85 Philip Augustus, king of France, 62, 123, 162, 207 Pierce, Charles Saunders, 129

288

INDEX

Pierre de Corbie, 33, 42, 44 fig. 17, 202 Pierre de Montreuil, master mason, 115, 152, 244n8 pilgrimage, 53, 68, 90, 119, 136, 175, 183, 191–­ 92, 194, 209 of desire, 191 pilier cantonné, 130 Plaine S-­Denis, 90 Plantagenets, 209 fig. 34, 213 Plato, 105 Poirel, Dominique, 78, 88, 173 Poirot, Hercule, 35 Pontoise, 79 postmodernism, 89, 239n77 preaching, 24, 30, 115, 146, 175, 182, 196 production of meaning, 5, 69, 73, 103–­4, 133–­ 75, 179, 181, 213 progress, 3 Promised Land, 138, 190 proviseur, 12, 22, 119–­20, 127, 183, 185, 258n11. See also sacrist Psalms, 82, 85, 173, 196–­97, 237n42 Pseudo-­Dionysius, 5, 77–­78, 90, 91, 169, 172–­73, 234n2, 236nn23–­24, 238n57, 256n158 Areopagitica, 91 Pugin, Augustus Welby, 161, 182 puzzle, 31, 33, 35, 203, 226n49, 226n51 quadrature (rotated squares), 41, 44, 202 quarries, 79, 82, 121–­22, 124–­25, 210, 211, 245n42 Quintilian, 9 Raphael, 3, 27, 139, 141, 142, 145 rationalism, 5, 39, 153–­63, 174, 211, 212 Ravenna, 74, 172 reality, 9, 23, 24, 29, 34, 45, 53, 66, 73, 81, 92, 93, 100, 105, 172 reality effect, 18, 22, 27, 48, 217, 223n3 virtual reality, 22, 186, 216, 217, 219 Reeve, Matthew, 196 Reformation, 140 Regensburg Ordinances, 116, 120 Regius Manuscript, masonic, 117, 202 Reims Cathedral, 17, 18, 20, 21 fig. 6, 22, 24, 25 fig. 7, 26, 27 fig. 9, 31, 38, 39, 40 fig. 14, 45, 115, 125, 150, 152, 163, 167, 169, 183, 190, 201, 215, 216, 218, 223n7, 224n18 archbishop of, 83 S-­Nicaise, 115 S-­Remi, 150, 215 relics, 49, 53, 54, 55, 60, 74, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 94, 128, 148, 182, 194, 200, 215

rhetoric, ix, 1, 2, 3, 9, 23, 63, 73–­95, 105, 117, 186, 187, 189, 191, 195, 200, 206, 214 of persuasion, 73–­95, 100, 183 Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, 54, 60, 64, 66 Richard, king of England, 162 Riegl, Alois, 165 risk, 14, 162, 211 Robert de Cressonsac, bishop of Beauvais, 152 Robert the Pious, king, 74 Romanesque, 52, 63, 67, 69, 73, 123, 153, 159, 163, 171, 173, 180, 189, 199 romanitas, 89 Rome, 3, 47, 64, 66, 69, 82, 139, 140, 141, 210, 211 Palace of Diocletian, 210 Pantheon, 168 St. Peter’s, 141 St. Peter’s, Old, 152 Roriczer, Matthäus, 142, 144 fig. 27 Rouen, archbishop of, 82, 83. See also Hugues Rowland, Ingrid, 139–­40 Royaumont, abbey of, 152 Rudolph, Conrad, 82 rustici, 148 Rusticus, Saint, 73, 234n2 sacred topography, 2, 49, 53–­54, 192 sacrist, 8, 12, 48, 59, 61, 73, 102, 113, 120, 127, 185, 186, 232nn62–­64. See also proviseur sacristan. See sacrist Sadler, Donna, 207 Salisbury Cathedral, 196 Sankovitch, Anne-­Marie, 141 Saracen, 35, 36 fig. 13, 37, 99, 117, 210, 213 Sauerländer, Willibald, 2, 150, 182 scaffolding, 51, 52, 59, 62, 64, 66, 67, 95, 111, 126, 184 Schröder, Jochen, 62, 228n1, 230nn20–­22, 230n25, 230n29 S-­Denis, abbey church, 8, 48, 54, 60, 64, 68, 73–­95, 75 fig. 21, 76 figs. 22–­23, 119, 122, 150–­51, 153, 164, 180, 209, 211, 214–­15, 216 allegorical windows, 194 chapel of St. Romanus, 191 chevet, 74, 79, 86, 90, 93–­95, 118, 134, 170, 181, 183 cross of St. Eloy, 194 eagle lectern, 194 Great Cross, 194

Tree of Jesse window, 194 western frontispiece, 74, 75 fig. 21, 79, 87, 93, 118, 213 secrets of the mason, 18, 22, 37, 39, 186 Sedlmayr, Hans, 78, 150, 165–­70, 172, 173–­74, 179, 254nn119–­21, 254n124, 254n127 Senlis Cathedral, 77, 262n6 bishop of, 83 Sens, 64 archbishop of, 83, 173 Cathedral, 68, 77, 119, 120, 211, 215 See also William of Sens S-­Gall, abbey, plan of, 57 S-­Germer de Fly, abbey church, 77 Shelby, Lon, 202–­3 signs, 12, 64, 69, 70–­71, 79, 102, 129–­31, 135–­ 36, 142, 151, 160, 174, 250n31 conventional, 68, 70, 133–­34 evidential, 17, 68, 70, 129–­30, 134, 142, 148, 184 signifier and signified, 23, 78, 86, 93, 135, 137, 173, 187 Simeon, Saint, 82, 95 Simson, Otto von, 2, 78, 165, 170–­74, 179–­80, 255n146 S-­Leu d’Esserent, priory church, 77 Socrates, 105, 242n20 Soissons Cathedral, 5, 7 fig. 2, 235n14 bishop of, 83 Solomon, Temple of, 31, 82, 170, 173, 227n65 Song of Songs, 148, 196, 260n24 Sontag, Susan, 12 soteriology, 11, 88, 109, 190, 197, 198 Southern, Richard, 195 space, ix, 2, 5, 9, 11, 100, 170, 174–­75, 179, 180, 192, 200, 202, 205, 218 spaciousness, 211 Speer, Andreas, 81, 203, 236n17, 236n23, 237n32, 237nn48–­49 Spiegel, Gabrielle, 81, 237n34 spolia, 123, 261n37 S-­Quentin, collegiate church, 20 statecraft, 172 statistique monumentale, 217 Stephen, king of England, 49 stone production, 39, 50, 61, 62, 118, 121–­25, 130, 172. See also masonry storytelling, viii, 4, 8, 18, 23, 31, 48, 50–­53, 63–­ 69, 73, 78, 79, 85, 90–­92, 101, 103, 162, 180, 187, 202, 204, 205, 216, 217–­19. See also narration Strasbourg Cathedral, 33, 116, 184 Strukturforschung, 165 Stubbs, William, bishop, 47 INDEX

289

Suger, abbot of S-­Denis, 73–­95 synecdoche, 3, 59, 77, 103, 114 Tacitus, 142 Tallon, Andrew, 218, 240n89, 241n6 templates, 13, 20, 39, 40 fig. 14, 50, 62, 111, 117, 122, 124–­26, 131, 189, 207 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 47, 83 Thérouanne Cathedral, bishop of, 83 Timbert, Arnaud, 207, 210 fig. 35 Titurel the younger, 168 Toledo, 213, 263n19 Cathedral, 215, 216, 264n31 Toulouse Cathedral, 216 Tours, Gregory of. See Gregory of Tours Tours, S-­Martin of, 73, 213 Trachtenberg, Marvin, 153, 163 transcendence, 172, 260n24 triangles, triangulation, 41, 42, 45, 108, 171, 180, 185, 197–­98, 198 plot A, 202, 203 Trinity, 50, 135, 171, 194, 228n80 tropes, 8, 63, 70, 191, 200 tropology, 80, 100, 125, 131, 135, 136, 182 Troyes Cathedral, vii, 108, 117, 119, 120, 122, 126, 128, 152, 183, 203 Turner, Victor and Edith, 191, 194, 257n169 unwonted images, 29, 35 Utrecht Cathedral, 183 Vasari, Giorgio, viii, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 27, 140–­41, 145, 150 Vaucelles, 42 vaults, 17, 26, 31, 39, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 94, 108, 114, 119, 120, 125–­27, 131, 145, 150, 153, 155, 158, 159, 161, 165, 168, 171, 196, 200, 201 barrel, 109, 157 fig. 28 groin, 63, 109, 153, 159

290

INDEX

rib, 3, 4, 63, 77, 89, 106, 109, 130, 136, 154, 163, 167, 168, 170, 212, 213 tufa, 63, 126, 215 ventriloquism, 105, 225n27 verisimilitude, 69, 202, 261n40 Vézelay, La Madeleine of, 159, 160 fig. 30 Victoria County History, 217 Vienna School of Art History, 165 Villard de Honnecourt, 17–­46 Viollet-­le-­Duc, Eugène Emmanuel, 12, 13 fig. 5, 19, 107, 126, 138, 150, 156–­63, 157 fig. 28, 158 fig. 29, 160 fig. 30, 165, 179, 184, 185, 211–­12, 217 Virgin Mary, 55, 148, 196, 256n50 Vitruvius, 4, 19, 41, 42, 137, 138, 139, 142 Voyages pittoresques, 217 Walter, Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, 48 Warnke, Martin, 182 Westminster Abbey, 215, 261n34 Wilhelm of Reichenau, bishop of Eichstätt, 142 William, duke of Normandy, 121 William, monk of S-­Denis, 84–­85 William of Sens, master mason, 50, 51, 52, 57, 59, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 118, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, 214 William of S-­Thierry, 83 Williams, Jane Welch, 182 William the Englishman, master mason, 52, 59, 62, 64, 68, 121, 211 Willis, Robert, 55, 56 fig. 18, 64, 129, 222n1 Wilson, Christopher, 173, 224n18, 234n109 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 146 Woodman, Francis, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 119 ymagier, 8, 17, 22, 23, 29, 33, 37, 48, 138, 146, 214