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The Origins of Gothic Architecture: Some Further Thoughts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

John H. Harvey
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Extract

In 1713 Sir Christopher Wren, then in his 81st year, reported on Westminster Abbey and took the opportunity to enunciate a theory of great importance in regard to the origins of Gothic architecture. Referring to the new church of Henry III he wrote:

This we now call the Gothic manner of architecture … 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.… The crusado gave us an idea of this form, after which King Henry built his church.… The Saracen mode of building, seen in the East, soon spread over Europe, and particularly in France, the fashions of which nation we affected to imitate in all ages, even when we were at enmity with it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 1968 , pp. 87 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1968

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References

page 87 note 1 Wren, C., Parentalia (1750), p. 296Google Scholar.

page 87 note 2 Lethaby, W. R., Mediaeval Art (1904), 2 pp. 7–8Google Scholar; ed. D. Talbot Rice (1949), pp. 5–6 and especially p. 5 footnote.

page 88 note 1 Cf. the definition of beauty by St. Thomas Aquinas as id quod visum placet.

page 88 note 2 See Allsopp, Bruce, A History of Renaissance Architecture (1959)Google Scholar.

page 89 note 1 For St.-Denis see Panofsky, E., Abbot Suger (Princeton, 1946)Google Scholar; Conant, K. J., Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture (1959), pp. 291–3Google Scholar.

page 89 note 2 Conant, op. cit., pp. 207–9; Harvey, W., Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem (1935)Google Scholar.

page 89 note 3 Focillon, H., Art d'Occident, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1947), p. 156Google Scholar, n. 2.

page 89 note 4 Merlet, R., The Cathedral of Chartres (Paris, n.d.)Google Scholar.

page 89 note 5 Conant, K. J., ‘The Pointed Arch—Orient to Occident’, in Palaeologia, vii, no. 3/4 (1959), 33–6Google Scholar; Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, pp. 222–4.

page 90 note 1 Conant, op. cit., pp. 115 ff., 223.

page 90 note 2 Ibid., p. 122.

page 90 note 3 Not all scholars accept these dates for the first introduction of pointed arches into Europe, regarding the literary references by Leo of Ostia to fornices spiculos as concerning vaults, not arches; the western porch of Santʼ Angelo in Formis as a later addition to the round-arched church completed by 1075; and the introduction of the pointed arch into the design of Cluny as subsequent to the first dedication of altars in 1095.

page 90 note 4 Grivot, D. and Zarnecki, G., Gislebertus Sculptor of Autun (1961), pp. 17–19Google Scholar.

page 90 note 5 Conant, op. cit., pp. 129–31. It is of considering able interest, as linking Fontenay with the England of Henry I, that the special patron of the abbey was Everard (or Eborard), bishop of Norwich 1121–45.

page 90 note 6 See Creswell, K. A. C., Early Muslim Architecture, i (1932), 278–80Google Scholar; A Short Account of Early Muslim Architecture (1958), pp. 102–4.

page 91 note 1 Menéndez Pidal, R., Poesía árabe y poesía europea (1941), pp. 33–4Google Scholar.

page 91 note 2 Archaeological Journal, iii, 277. Though the details of this instance are vague, later cases of artistic work by Saracen prisoners of war are well attested. See also Postcript I, p. 99.

page 92 note 1 For Adelard see Haskins, C. H., Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science (New York, 1960), pp. 20–42Google Scholar; Clagett, M. in Isis, xliv (1953), 16–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have to thank Professor Clagett for his great kindness in letting me see his article on Adelard in advance of publication in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

page 92 note 2 Jervoise, E., The Ancient Bridges of Mid and Eastern England (1932), pp. 142–3Google Scholar; E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, s.v. Bow.

page 92 note 3 Haskins, op. cit., p. 26 and n. 38.

page 92 note 4 Milne, J., ‘Catalogue of Destructive Earth-quakes’ in Report of the British Association for 1911 1912), p. 665.Google Scholar

page 93 note 1 Haskins, op. cit., p. 23 and n. 19, p. 24 and n. 23.

page 93 note 2 Ibid., pp. 117–19.

page 93 note 3 Ibid., pp. 113–15.

page 93 note 4 Knoop, D., Jones, G. P., and Hamer, D., The Two Earliest Masonic MSS. (1938)Google Scholar.

page 94 note 1 Note especially the gigantic span of about 43 feet attained by Speyer Cathedral, begun c. 1030; by Hersfeld Abbey, of 1037; and by St. Rémi at Rheims, deliberately planned in 1041 to be the largest church in the whole of Gaul.

page 94 note 2 Bilson, J., ‘The Beginning of Gothic Architecture’, in Journal R.I.B.A., vi (1899)Google Scholar; ‘Durham Cathedral: the Chronology of its Vaults’, in Archaeological Journal, lxxix (1922)Google Scholar.

page 94 note 3 Pope, A. Upham, ‘Possible Contributions to the Beginning of Gothic Architecture’, in Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte Asiens (In memoriam Ernst Diez) (Istanbul, 1963), pp. 1–29Google Scholar.

page 96 note 1 Creswell, K. A. C., The Muslim Architecture of Egypt, i (1952), 164–5Google Scholar.

page 96 note 2 Op. cit., pp. 210–11.

page 96 note 3 Quoted in Manandian, H. A., The Trade and Cities of Armenia in relation to Ancient World Trade (Lisbon, 1965), p. 183Google Scholar.

page 98 note 1 Gabriel, A., Voyages archéologiques dans la Turquie Orientale, (Paris, 1940), i, 184–94Google Scholar; van Berchem, M., Strzygowski, J. and Bell, G. L., Amida (Heidelberg/Paris, 1910)Google Scholar.

page 98 note 2 Ülgen, A. S., ‘Siirt Ulu Camii’, in Vakiflar Dergisi, v (1962), 93–8Google Scholar.

page 99 note 1 For Dunaysir see Gabriel, op. cit. i.

page 99 note 2 Valuable collections of illustrations will be found in Rice, D. Talbot, Islamic Art (1965)Google Scholar; Hill, D. and Grabar, O., Islamic Architecture and its Decoration (1964)Google Scholar; Hoag, J. D., Western Islamic Architecture (1963)Google Scholar; Ünsal, B., Turkish Islamic Architecture (1959)Google Scholar. For the Seljuks and their art see Rice, T. Talbot, The Seljuks in Asia Minor (1961)Google Scholar. Much assistance has been derived from the Tourist's Guide: Turkey (1963), published by the Tourist Department of the Turkish Ministry of Press, Broadcasting, and Tourism, and from the illustrated Türkiye Ansiklopedisi published in 1964 by the Turkish magazine Hayat; and see below, II.

Postscript. I (see above, p. 91 and note 2). Another way in which eastern skills might reach the West is indicated by an anecdote told by Usāmah Ibn-Munkidh (1095–1188) of the son of a Frankish woman captured by Usāmah's father (1068–1137). The boy, named Raoul, accepted Islam and ‘learned the art of working marble from a stonecutter who had paved the home of my father’; married a Muslim woman who bore him two sons; then when they were 5 or 6 years old the family left and joined the Franks at Afāmiyah (Apamea, Qalʽah-al-Muḍīq), father and sons reverting to Christianity (Memoirs of an Arab-Syrian Gentleman, translated by P. K. Hitti, Beirut, 1964, p. 160).

II (see above, pp. 98–99). The Seljuk Conquest, like the Norman Conquest, led to a wave of new building construction. ‘These small Turkish rulers [of the Seljuk states founded in eastern Turkey after 1071, and especially after 1092] embellished their cities with numerous religious and social buildings’ (Faruk Sümer, ‘The Turks in Eastern Asia Minor in the Eleventh Century’, in Proceedings of the 13th: International Congress of Byzantine Studies, 1967, p. 440).