The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine. M. F. Mansfield
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With that "hotbed of heresies," Holland, this book has little to do, dealing only with three centres of religious movement there.
Holland was the storm-centre for a great struggle for religious and political freedom, and for this very reason there grew up here no great Gothic fabrics of a rank to rival those of France, England, and Germany. Still, there was a distinct and most picturesque element which entered into the church-building of Holland in the middle ages, as one notes in the remarkable church of Deventer. In the main, however, if we except the Groote Kerk at Rotterdam, St. Janskerk at Gouda, the archbishop's church at Utrecht, and the splendid edifice at Dordrecht, there is nothing in Holland architecturally great.
IV
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF RHENISH
ARCHITECTURE
It cannot be claimed that the church-building of one nation was any more thorough or any more devoted than that of any other. All the great church-building powers of the middle ages were, it is to be presumed, possessed of the single idea of glorifying God by the building of houses in his name.
"To the rising generation," said the editor of the Architectural Magazine in 1838, "and to it alone do we look forward for the real improvement in architecture as an art of design and taste."
"The poetry of architecture" was an early and famous theme of Ruskin's, and doubtless he was sincere when he wrote the papers that are included under that general title; but the time was not then ripe for an architectural revolution, and the people could not, or would not, revert to the Gothic or even the pure Renaissance—if there ever was such a thing. We had, as a result, what is sometimes known as early Victorian, and the plush and horsehair effects of contemporary times.
In general, the churches of Germany, or at least of the Rhine provinces, are of a species as distinct from the pure Gothic, Romanesque, or Renaissance as they well can be. Except for the fact that of recent years the art nouveau has invaded Germany, there is little mediocrity of plan or execution in the ecclesiastical architecture of that country, although of late years all classes of architectural forms have taken on, in most lands, the most uncouth shapes—church edifices in particular—they becoming, indeed, anything but churchly.
The Renaissance, which spread from Italy just after the period when the Gothic had flowered its last, came to the north through Germany rather than through France, and so it was but natural that the Romanesque manner of building, which had come long before, had a much firmer footing, and for a much longer period, in Germany, than it had in France. Gothic came, in rudimentary forms at any rate, as early here as it did to France or England; but, with true German tenacity of purpose, her builders clung to the round-arched style of openings long after the employment of it had ceased to be the fashion elsewhere.
This, then, is the first distinctive feature of the ecclesiastical edifices erected in Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the new Gothic forms were elsewhere budding into their utmost beauty.
One strong constructive note ever rings out, and that is that, while the Gothic was ringing its purest sound in France and even in England, at least three forces were playing their gamut in Germany, producing a species quite by itself which was certainly not Gothic any more than it was Moorish, and not Romanesque any more than was the Angevin variety of round-arched forms, which is so much admired in France.
One notably pure Gothic example, although of the earliest Gothic, is found in Notre Dame at Trèves, with perhaps another in the abbey of Altenburg near Cologne; but these are the chief ones that in any way resemble the consistent French pointed architecture which we best know as Gothic.
The Rhenish variety of Romanesque lived here on the Rhine to a far later period, notably at Bonn and Coblenz, than it did in either France or England.
German church architecture, in general, is full of local mannerisms, but the one most consistently marked is the tacit avoidance of the true ogival style, until we come to the great cathedral at Cologne, which, in truth, so far as its finished form goes, is quite a modern affair.
In journeying through Northeastern France, or through Holland or Belgium, one comes gradually upon this distinct feature of the Rhenish type of church in a manner which shows a spread of its influence.
All the Low Country churches are more or less German in their motive; so, too, are many of those of Belgium, particularly the cathedral at Tournai and the two fine churches at Liège (Ste. Croix and the cathedral), which are frankly Teutonic; while at Maastricht in Holland is almost a replica of a Rhenish-Romanesque basilica.
At Aix-la-Chapelle is the famous "Round Church" of Charlemagne, which is something neither French nor German. It has received some later century additions, but the "octagon" is still there, and it stands almost alone north of Italy, where its predecessor is found at Ravenna, the Templars' Church in London being of quite a different order.
Long years ago this Ravenna prototype, or perhaps it was this eighth-century church of Charlemagne's, gave rise to numerous circular and octagonal edifices erected throughout Germany; but all have now disappeared with the exception, it is claimed, of one at Ottmarsheim, a fragment at Essen, and the rebuilt St. Gérêon's at Cologne.
These round churches—St. Gérêon's at Cologne, the Mathias Kapelle at Kobern, and, above all, Charlemagne's Münster at Aix-la-Chapelle, and others elsewhere, notably in Italy—are doubtless a survival of a pagan influence; certainly the style of building was a favourite with the Romans, and was common even among the Greeks, where the little circular pagan temples were always a most fascinating part of the general ensemble.
It would hardly be appropriate in a book such as this to attempt to trace the origin of Gothic, as we have come to know that twelfth and thirteenth century variety of pointed architecture, which, if anything, is French pointed. It has been plausibly claimed that, after its introduction into France and England, it developed into the full-blown style of the fourteenth century, which so soon fell before the Renaissance in the century following.
In Germany the process, with differences with regard to its chronology, was much the same.
It has been the fashion among writers of all weights of opinion to break into an apparently irresistible enthusiasm with regard to Gothic architecture in general, and this, so far as it goes, is excusable. Most of us will agree that "the folk of the middle ages had fallen in love with church-building, and loved that their goldsmith's work, and ivories, their seals, and even the pierced patterns of their shoes should be like little buildings, little tabernacles, little 'Paul's windows.' Some of their tombs and shrines must have been conceived as little fairy buildings; and doubtless they would have liked little angels to hop about them all alive and blow fairy trumpets."
In the building of the great cathedrals it must certainly be allowed that there is an element that we do not understand. Those who fashioned them worked wonder into them; they had the ability which children have to call up enchantment. "In these high vaults, and glistening windows, and peering figures, there was magic even to their makers."
Gothic art must ever, in a certain degree, be a mystery to us, because we cannot entirely put ourselves in the place of the men of those times. "We cannot by taking thought be Egyptian or Japanese, nor can we again be Romanesque or Gothic," nor indeed can we explain entirely the motif of Burmese architecture, which, appearing as a blend of Chinese and Indian, stands out as the exotic of the Eastern, as does the Gothic of the Western, world.
Only in these latter two species of architectural art does stone-carving stand out with that supreme excellence which does not admit of rivalry, though one be pagan and the other Christian.
Germany, above all other nations of the middle ages in Europe, excelled in the craftsmanship which fashioned warm, live emotions out of cold gray stone, and to-day such examples of this as the overpowering and splendid cathedrals at Cologne, Ratisbon, Strasburg, and Münster rank among the greatest and most famous