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The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European
Architecture 1st Edition Alexandra Gajewski Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Alexandra Gajewski
ISBN(s): 9782503522869
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 88.50 MB
Year: 2008
Language: english
T h e Ye a r 1 3 0 0 AND THE C r e a t io n of a
N e w E u r o p e a n A r c h it e c t u r e
A r c h it e c t u r a M e d ii A evi
Vol. I
Series Editor
Advisory Board
E d ited by
B R E F
LIST OF AUTHORS
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
D / 2007/ 0095/133
ISBN 978-2-503-52286-9
F or ew or d and A c k n o w l ed g e m e n t s 7
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6 C ontents
Forew ord and A ck n ow led gem en ts
The concept for this book has germinated at the inter that Crossley’s introductory essay should inaugurate
national architectural conference held at the Cour- the volume, just as his opening remarks set the scene
tauld Institute of Art in London in May 2005, under for the conference, thereby placing him among col
the. tixVe. The 1300 and the Creation oja N eu Euro leagues, friends, and former students, who, over the
pean Style. The aim of the conference - and of the years, have shared and often benefited from his phe
book - was to convene an international cast of scholars nomenal scholarly expertise, infectious enthusiasm,
with a focus on diverse architectural issues affecting and his inexhaustible kindness and good will.
the decades around the year 1300, often seen in tradi
tional classifications as an “in-between” period of We would also like to record our deep thanks to
European Gothic. The illuminating quality of papers Professor Thomas Coomans, the series editor who was
delivered on that occasion and the relative lack of instrumental in bringing this volume to fruition, and
scholarly publications in this area, have convinced the whose help and advice were essential. Professor Chris
conference convenors (now the book’s editors) of the topher Wilson kindly provided the cover photograph.
need to commemorate that event with a dedicated Dr Kathleen Doyle, Professor Megan Holmes, Chris
volume which also marks the beginning of a new ven topher Masters, D r Agnieszka RoZnowska-Sadraei,
ture: a much-needed series on medieval architecture, and Dr Nick Lambert, offered valuable editorial and
published by Brepols. Alongside the editors, Professor technical assistance. We are also grateful to Chris Van
Paul Crossley was the prime mover of the conference, den Borre and Brepols Publishers, to the British Acad
which coincided with his sixtieth birthday. Although emy, whose grant helped the funding of the confer
not conceived as a Festschrift, the present publication, ence, and to the Courtauld Institute, the conference’s
by a consensus of all its authors, is warmly dedicated generous host.
to Paul Crossley in honour of that memorable occa
sion and of his scholarship. Having been one of the
first to draw attention to the importance and com The Editors
plexities of architecture around 1300, many of the London and Jonquières, 19thJuly, 2007
papers pay tribute to his ideas. It is therefore fitting
Fo r e w o r d and A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s 7
i
i
1؛٠ﺋ ﺶ
- ٠
ا؛.
ا
;.
ﻢﺗ
.
P a u l CROSSLEY
In 1948, amid the ruins of German intellectual and Gothic architecture across much of central and west
political life, Werner Gross published his ground ern Europe.
breaking study of Gothic architecture in Europe
300 ة١ ﻋ ﻣ ﺔ ا ل؛ ا١ ةعء١ أ ا,D ieAbendländischeArchitektur While Gross’ turn of focus from German to ‘west
um 1300.1 This grand synthetic account grew out of ern’ architecture was wholly consistent with Germa
his 1933 investigation into the essential characteristics ny’s post-war rejection of militant nationalism in
of German church architecture, particularly its men favour of a “new Europe”, it also recognized a real his
dicant variant, in the century between 1250 and 1350 torical re-alignment in the development of Gothic
- an architecture he called Hochgotik, but we would architecture.3 The fourteenth century saw the expan
now describe as Rayonnant.2 Gross’ new study went sion of Gothic from a largely French into a wholly
far beyond the exclusive focus on Hochgotik and its European phenomenon. The architectural hegemony
conventional divisions into building type (“hall enjoyed by Paris and northern France in the twelfth
church”, “basilica”, “high choir”). Taking as its widest and thirteenth centuries came to be disputed by cen
context the whole of medieval architecture, from the tres of patronage hitherto on the fringes of the Goth
Early Christian basilica to the dome of Florence cathe ic world: Naples, Florence, Cologne, London, Barce
dral, Die AbendländischeArchitektur was the first con lona, and Prague. From a style limited in distribution
certed attempt to explain what happened to Gothic but relatively consistent in form, Gothic emerged into
building across both northern and southern Europe in the new century as an international language of
the critical decades either side of the year 1300, a peri extraordinary formal diversity; as it proliferated to the
od written out of most histories of the style as one of edges of the Christian world, so it splintered into
sterility and decline. Beside the heroic age of Gothic inventive regional and national dialects. Gross was
experiment, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries acutely aware of these ramifications. His subject build
(the so-called Early and High Gothic), and the Goth ings ranged from north German Backsteingotik to
ic “autumn” of the fifteenth century (the so-called Late Catalan basilicas, from Rayonnant choirs in northern
Gothic), the architecture of the early fourteenth cen and central France to Tuscan town halls. His sensitiv
tury had occupied a limbo world in the art historical ity to the formal nuances of Gothic also alerted him
syllabus, as a doctrinaire and reductive version of High to the profound changes affected by French Rayon
Gothic (Doktrinärgotik, Reduktionsgotik). Gross was nant architecture on the type of the Great Church
among the first to reject this anachronistic biological represented by the “classic” cathedrals of the High
paradigm. He recognized that the year 1300 saw pro Gothic. Rayonnant replaced their plasticity and power
found and creative changes in the style, geography, with linear and brittle latticeworks of tracery, inscribed
patronage and typology of Gothic architecture, chan systematically across increasingly large windows and
ges, he argued, which amounted to a blueprint for Late extending over thin, apparently weightless, walls.
In t r o d u c t io n 9
Gross also alerted us to the simultaneous appearance ture,4 an insight fleshed out later by Pevsner himself
across the whole of Europe of Rayonnant’s apparent and, most fully, by Jean Bony.5 Christopher Wilson’s
opposite: the spacious, austere, and block-like church essay helps to restore this imbalance, though in terms,
es of the Cistercians and the friars, and their off-shoots not of English influence on the Continent, but of
in Catalonia, eastern Europe and the Italian peninsula. French Rayonnant influence on English Decorated.
Hitherto dismissed as “Reduktionsgotik”, Gross was
the first to appreciate the colossal creative contribu But perhaps the main difference between Gross’
tion of these simplified churches to new versions of great study and the attitudes reflected in these essays
European Gothic. The architecture of the friars, he lies in their welcome embrace of heterogeneity, their
recognized, was not a matter of internal reform alone, ready appreciation of the diversity and variety of Euro
but a radical change in aesthetic and liturgical thinking pean architecture around the year 1300. To us, this
having profound repercussions on almost all types of multiplicity of patronage, art centres and formal
church architecture outside mendicant patronage, modes is one of the main attractions of early four
including palace chapels, basilicas and especially parish teenth-century architecture; to Gross it posed a seri
and collegiate churches. To Gross, these two seem ous problem of method. His essentially formalist
ingly irreconcilable versions of Gothic - brittle Rayon Stilkritik required the reconciliation of such oppo
nant and spacious Reduktionsgotik - were not separate sites; it demanded the existence of a single stylistic
phenomena; they borrowed particular ideas from a common factor which visually united the complexities
common repertory of forms, and they even exchanged of Rayonnant with the austerities of mendicant and
fundamental formal principles at some deep level of Cistercian Reduktionsgotik. Only then could he unco
optical affinity. ver the “core” and generating principle of the style.
Gross located this common denominator in what he
These essays, the fruits of an international confer regarded as a new treatment of interior enclosing walls,
ence held at the Courtauld Institute of Art in May particularly in the church’s main elevations, namely, a
2005, make no pretence to be a “new Gross”, even reduction of the wall to a weightless surface receptive
though many of them touch on the essential insights equally to the overlays of tracery (in the north) and to
of Die Abendländische Architektur. M e n d i d axchv- illusionistic fresco painting (the south). 6
tecture figures in this collection as a radical force in
the re-shaping of the notion of the “church” and its This essentially post-Hegelian normative theory of
urban context (Coomans, Bruzelius, OpaCiC). We are style no longer carries conviction. The interiors of
reminded of Gross’s broad geographical reach by Santa Croce in Florence and Saint-Urbain in Troyes
papers on Kraków cathedral (Wçclawowicz), and on are remarkable more for their striking dissimilarities
the patronage of the Pfemyslids and Luxembourgs in than for any notion of a shared mural weightlessness.
Prague and its environs (BeneSovska, OpaCiC). And we For us, the very absence of formal unity is one of the
pursue Gross’s subtle analyses of the formal systems of salient features of architecture circa 1300. Indeed, Nor
Rayonnant with papers on the visual organization of bert Nussbaum puts the notion of “the hybrid” at the
Saint-Urbain at Troyes and Clermont-Ferrand cathe very centre of fourteenth-century architecture.
dral (Davis), and on the arch-shaft systems of Nar Hybrids synthesize elements not usually connected
bonne and Cologne cathedrals (Freigang). If anything, into surprisingly new and meaningful constructions.
our geographical range is more ambitious than Gross’. The contrasts in fourteenth-century architecture
He ignored Lorraine (Brachmann), down-played between a tendency to extreme simplicity and an
southern Italy (Bruzelius), and rarely touched on the unprecedented increase in typological and formal rep
Low Countries (Coomans). His real blind spot was, ertories is one such formation, since hybrids prosper
however, England. No English buildings figure in in situations of mutually enhancing difference. Four
Gross’ synthesis, though by the time the Abend teenth-century architecture is grounded in what Nuss
ländische Architektur had appeared in print (1948) baum calls “the aesthetics of effect”: a certain showy
Nikolaus Pevsner had begun to appreciate the vital virtuosity which prefigures the contrasting and para
importance of the English Decorated style in the for doxical structures of the German Late Gothic. Hans
mation of continental fourteenth-century architec- von Burghausen’s choir gallery of St M artin’s at
10 Paul C ro ss le y
Landshut, with its pointed contrasts between bare conservatism, or a decline in originality, but as a sensi
wall and intricately nodding ogee arches is one (Late tive response to a new set of patronal and functional
Gothic) case; another is Peter Parler’s transformation, demands, namely, the renewed interest from the dukes
on the south transept façade of Prague Cathedral, of a of Burgundy in Saint Bénigne, their ‘national’ saint,
buttress into its opposite : an openwork spiral staircase. and the monastery’s increasing participation in civic
Both solutions had precedents, though less showy, ear functions and its growing dependence on the genero
lier in the fourteenth century. Nussbaum sees similar sity and patronage of the lesser nobility and the middle
disjunctions and miss-matchings in the looser and classes. The sobriety ofits cathedral-like structure was,
more “relaxed” geometrical dispositions of fourteenth- therefore, not wholly the result of financial constraint
century choir plans.7 or poverty of invention; it was a subtle adaptation of
older formulae to new social and liturgical pressures.
Northern European Rayonnant architecture and
its transformations figure as prominently in our vol O ther contributors to this volume tease out
ume as in Gross’ conspectus. But whereas Gross was neglected aspects of Rayonnant, notably its technical
content to describe and identify Rayonnant’s special achievements and its power to organize devotional
graphic and linear qualities, we concentrate on a wider experience. Christian Freigang, in specific reference to
set of problems associated with the style: on questions Narbonne Cathedral, notes the constructional effi
of influence and cultural context, on matters of use, ciency of Rayonnants tendency to standardize, and
technique and audience, and on inconsistencies and reduce in number, templates for cut stone. Such uni
variations behind Rayonnant’s apparent uniformity. formity has, he suggests, a profoundly visual value, for
Some outstanding buildings seem to have been too one of the essential constituents of Rayonnant is what
ingenious for established taste. Christopher Wilson he calls “the wall-framework structure”, that is the
points to the mannered eccentricity of the parish regular and continuous integration of arches and their
church of Saint-Urbain at Troyes (begun 1262) as one “supporting” shafts into smooth and uninterrupted
reason why a building of such imaginative brilliance grids. These visual frameworks lie over the surface of
exercised little or no influence on later Rayonnant the wall, frame it into compartments and often dis
architecture in northern France. Other Rayonnant guise its irregularly-shaped core by their uniform re
enterprises, like the choirs of Evreux Cathedral and of petitions and their seemingly weightless transitions.
Saint-Germain at Auxerre, delight in novelty with a Michael T Davis defines this kind of Rayonnant in
freedom that Peter Kurmann has called “proto-Late pictorial as much as in architectural terms. For Davis,
Gothic”.8Yet in the new choir of Saint-Ouen at Rouen Rayonnant is not only a formal system but a quasi
(begun in 1318), Yves Gallet points to a “return to con magical scaffolding for image display. His holistic and
servatism” - a retrospective restraint that deliberately multi-media analysis of the choirs of Clermont-Fer
recalled the clarity and coherence of the High Gothic rand Cathedral and Saint-Urbain at Troyes reveals
of a century earlier. Gallet likens this retrenchment to their “visual logic”, a logic which shapes and directs
John XXII’s contemporary injunctions against elabo liturgical and devotional experience by means of divi
rate polyphonic music, usually in motet form. Both sions and compartments, by framed hierarchies of
music and architecture, Gallet argues, are liturgical images and by graduated spaces, all designed to give
objects, and both - Saint-Ouen and the Pope’s critique perceptible measure to the act of seeing. There are pa
- represent a call to order, a return to the principles rallels here with contemporary studies of optics, for
and foundations of their respective disciplines. A simi these carefully orchestrated frameworks of architec
lar conscious return to a traditional, austere, and, in ture and space, figure and frame, construct the viewer’s
this case, local style of Great Church, can be found in vision and transform it stage by stage into a poten
the new building of the ancient Benedictine abbey of tially transcendent experience.
Saint-Bénigne in Dijon, with its clear quotations from
“the golden age” of early thirteenth-century Burgun How similar co-ordinations of space and imagery
dian architecture. Alexandra Gajewski elucidates this work to communicate an institution’s self image is
updated version of Dijonnais tradition not, as some exemplified by Tim Ayers’ analysis of the choir of Mer
earlier commentators have done, in terms of provincial ton College Chapel, a rectangular long choir visually
In t r o d u c t io n 11
dominated by Rayonnant traceried windows. The asymmetry between French and English responses to
stained glass here sets out a rising hierarchy: from the arguably the most sophisticated product of French
clergy in their stalls to the figures of the Apostles (their Rayonnant in the second half of the thirteenth cen
rightful predecessors) in the stained glass above them, tury: the choir and transepts of Saint-Urbain at Troyes
and to the image (repeated no less than twenty-four (1262- circa 1286). Its strict adherence to the format of
times) of the Chancellor of the university, Master evenly-sized upright windows is seen by Wilson as a
Henry Mansfield, kneeling either side of an Apostle. critique of French Rayonnants interest in all shapes of
And the whole community, fictive and living, is turned traceried window, while its skeletal and eccentric
towards the climactic east window, which displays details became the blue-prints for the salient features
Christological themes and a proudly institutional her of the Strasbourg west front. More importantly, Wil
aldry. Here the liturgical divisions of the chapel’s spa son traces Saint-Urbain’s quirky inspiration in some of
ces, its choir, sanctuary and high altar, are matched by a the most influential buildings of the English Deco
correspondingly graded and framed imagery; and these rated style, in the cathedral choirs of Exeter and
hierarchies of image and space dissolve the boundaries St Paul’s in London, in the chapter house of York
between the living and the dead and re-shape them into Minster, and, most significantly, in Michael of Canter
a diagrammatic and ideal community. The living com bury’s St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster, the single
munity of the clergy and their chancellor-patron, all most formative building of English Decorated.
endorsed by their fictive apostolic predecessors, eter
nally participate in the mystical body of Christ. Wilson explains this remarkable reception not
through direct contact with the actual building but via
Little wonder that the dazzling imagery and the collections of lodge drawings. The practice of archi
gravity-defying architecture of Rayonnant had, by the tectural drawing, accelerating around the year 1300
year 1300, become a truly international style, moving with the foundation of collections of drawings in the
speedily from its homeland in northern France to Eng lodges of Cologne and Strasbourg (and later Vienna
land, northern Spain, the Rhineland, and the Danube. and Ulm), radically altered the relationship between
Not surprisingly, it was quick to appear in the duchy the architect and his sources. Drawings could open up
of Lorraine, bordering on the archdiocese of Reims. a vast new repertory of knowledge, but they lacked the
As Christoph Brachmann underlines, Lorraine - a direct authority of the real model. W ith their sharp,
neglected art historical territory - was neither an out inscribing linearity, drawings are paradigmatic images
post of north French and Burgundian influences nor of the rigid geometrical frameworks of Rayonnant.
a mere corridor between France and Germany. Brach W ith the clarity of a legal document, they fixed an
mann argues that early fourteenth-century Lorraine, architect’s conception for the benefit of his patrons
particularly the church architecture of the imperial and the limitation of his successors. But as Robert
city of Metz and the Antonine church at Pont-à-Mous- Bork points out, drawings not only delineate detailed
son, showed an inventiveness which paralleled - per forms or general structures; their lines, pin-pricks and
haps even anticipated - some of the most advanced measurements lay bare the geometric ratios which
forms of Rayonnant architecture in Alsace and the underpin almost every aspect of masonic design: they
Upper Rhine. Marc Schurr includes Metz, principally open up to us the inherent logic of the architect’s plan
its cathedral, in the mix that makes up what he calls ning. And by means of Computer Aided Design
the “second Rayonnant style”, the style of the west researchers like Bork can investigate the geometry of
front of Strasbourg cathedral and its offshoots, a style Gothic buildings with new accuracy and rigour. Bork’s
which deployed a now distinctly German version of analysis of Plan F in Cologne and Plan B in Strasbourg
Rayonnant and which exceeded its French models in establishes the primacy of the Upper Rhenish design
structural daring and visual sophistication. Schurr and shows that the Cologne architects knew the geo
traces some ingeniously “reduced” versions of Stras metrical methods and even the units of measurement
bourg to Niederhaslach and Salem, as well as identify used by their Strasbourg colleagues.
ing upper Rhenish impulses in Habsburg Lower Aus
tria, particularly in the dazzling choir of the Cistercian The geometric procedures of drawing united all dif
church at Heiligenkreuz. Wilson addresses the stark ferences of scale and dimension. The same manipula-
12 Paul C ro ss le y
tions governed the design of a large window as the importers of a pared-down version of northern Goth
miniature arches of an altar retable or a statue bal ic. It would be simplistic to lay this architectural puri
dachin. As Freigang reminds us in his analysis of the tanism wholly at the feet of the mendicants. Tenden
Plan F for the colossal west facade of Cologne, the cies to austerity and sobriety in architecture around
Cologne draftsman employed essentially the same 1300 were not the monopoly of the preaching orders.
design principles for large-scale buildings as for small Zoë O patit finds them in Cistercian basilicas and in
fictive architectural structures of the kind found parish and collegiate churches in Bohemia and Silesia,
increasingly in contemporary manuscript illumination and especially in the simplified structure of the ‘hall
or in stained glass. The years around 1300 marked the church’ (Hallenkirche), exemplified by the church of
emergence of microarchitecture as a creative medium the so-called Emmaus Monastery in Prague, a Bene
for architects, draftsmen, glaziers, metalworkers, and dictine house which - contrary to all expectations -
illuminators. Toy buildings, usually variants of the adopted the format of a large but simple hall church
niche or the baldachin, crowned reliquaries or framed rather than a traditional basilica. And Alexandra
standing figures in glass or fresco. They formed cano Gajewski’s study of Saint-Bénigne in Dijon reminds us
pies for miraculous images and monopolized interior that certain branches of northern late Rayonnant also
furnishings, such as stalls or screens. Much of later tended towards a “stark, monumental simplicity”, and
medieval masons’ energies went into the making of that even the most intricate Rayonnant was, as Gross
these small but intricate confections, and since their was the first to note, not immune to reduction (Reduk
form and geometrical design procedures were identical tionsgotik), purity (Gereinigte Gotik), and a new clarity
to full-scale architecture (Bork), they established a kind (neue Klarheit). But the proliferation of simplicity
of magical kinship between the infinitely large and the across all branches of church architecture around 1300
infinitesimally small. Practically, microarchitecture, cannot disguise the fact that the friars were the pio
like drawing, could be treated as a testing ground for neers in the evolution of extreme Reduktionsgotik.
novelties which only later were constructed full scale. Ethical precept and practical need led to their creation
Aesthetically, microarchitecture contributed to a uni of a new genre of Gothic architecture in the second
versal visual order, since its realizations in all media half of the thirteenth century, one characterized by
united the whole church in the same language of pre mural simplicity and colossal spaciousness. Despite
cise but miraculous geometry. Indeed, the eye-catching their modest use of “northern” window tracery, these
qualities of microarchitecture may explain the tenden buildings - especially their naves - seem to belong to
cy of English architecture in circa 1290 to 1300 to com a more secular world (barns, refectories, hospitals, and
pile designs for full scale buildings out of enlargements chapter houses) or to a deliberately un-Gothic revival
of the microarchitecture of French cathedral portals of the simplicities of Early Christian architecture. As
(Wilson). But in the last resort, microarchitecture’s evangelists for the urban middle classes and teachers
symbolic resonances far outweighed its aesthetic or of theology in the new universities, the friars cut dras
practical advantages. As Achim Timmermann demon tically into the textures of established Christian life,
strates in his essay on the intricate octagonal font cibo changing patterns of piety, attracting new classes of
rium of St Mary’s at Luton (probably made in Lon patron, conflicting with local clergy, and leaving their
don), this miniature version of a full-scale, centralized imprint in the cities they colonized in the form of a
building can only be properly understood against the novel and unmistakable version of Gothic architec
background of a symbolic typology that began with ture. Ayers points out that the new choir of Merton
octagonal Early Christian fonts, proceeded through College Chapel in Oxford, despite its dependence
centralized Tombs of Christ, and ended with the hyper (ironically) on the dimensions and plan of the slightly
elaborate font ciboria of German fifteenth-century earlier Dominican Church in Oxford, was built against
Late Gothic (at ulm and Erfurt, for example). the background of sharp conflict between the friars
and the secular clergy of the university. The repetition
In stark contrast to this Rayonnant world of intri of the Apostles in its glass (see above) endorse the col
cate geometrical ornament is the simplified and aus legiate clergy beneath them as their legitimate succes
tere vocabulary of the friars’ churches, especially in sors, and all of them find their imprimatur in the
southern Europe, where the new orders acted as the images of Christ in the climactic eastern window.
In t r o d u c t io n 13
But the quarrels between the mendicants and the stimulated accelerated exchanges in stylistic patterns
secular clergy were physical as well as intellectual; they and aesthetic novelties. “Towns“, said Braudel, “are like
concerned bodies as well as minds. The competition electric transformers. They increase tension, accelerate
between the friars and other clergy over lucrative the rhythm of exchange and constantly recharge
rights of burial and commemoration is the focus of human life”.9 Zoë Opaüe unpicks the complex circuits
Caroline Bruzelius’ examination of the friars as intru of stylistic interconnection in eastern-European four
sive forces in the religious life of their cities, especially teenth-century church architecture generated by the
in southern Europe. For Bruzelius the character of greatest single urban enterprise north of the Alps in
mendicant architecture cannot be defined solely in our period: Charles iV s New Town in Prague. The
conventional visual terms, as the austere architecture eclectic and radical Reduktionsgotik developed here,
of reform. It has to be understood as an architecture and particularly in the hall church of the Emmaus
with its own unsystematic methods of construction, Monastery, anticipates and parallels, the sober and
an architecture of “process and not project”. It is infor monumental language of fourteenth-century “town
mal, episodic, and additive. It also has its own func Gothic” in Silesia (and especially Wroclaw). This
tional agenda, expressed not in two but in three spatial ‘New Town’ style - indebted to, but going far beyond,
divisions: a choir to accommodate the growing cleri- a previous generation of Bohemian urban and monas
calization of the orders (a process especially relevant tic architecture - seems to have had a particularly
to the Franciscans); a nave, set aside not only for urban identity, for it showed little or no connection
preaching but also for burial; and a large western with the up-to-date Rayonnant evolving simultane
facade fronting a square and dominated by a pulpit. ously in the Prague cathedral lodge. Yet its horizons
Exterior preaching extended the church’s liturgy out were far from provincial, for the New Town’s Stadt
beyond the facade and the piazza into the town. But baumeister may have been (Opaeie suggests) no less a
it was preaching with a special backdrop. The prolif figure than Matthias of Arras, the cathedral’s first
erating tombs that rapidly filled up the naves of friars’ architect; and the structure and spatial organization
churches, some of them only half built and only slow of the Emmaus church implies a knowledge of Pope
ly completed, reinvented the idea of the Early Chris Clement VI’s mausoleum at La Chaise-Dieu. Here the
tian funerary basilica, but now transferred from extra local, the imperial and the papal come together in a
muros to the heart of the town. In bringing both Death metropolis that was conceived, from the start, as a
and the Word to the centre of expanding cities, friars’ “world city”.
architecture tested the barriers between the church
and the street, the dead and the living, the secular and Many of these urban building types spoke the lan
the sacred. guage of collective civic identity and registered chan
ging habits of piety. In embracing new formal langua
The fourteenth century saw the heyday of Euro ges and new forms of building, Gothic acquired
pean municipalities. Independent, wealthy and ambi unfamiliar powers of expression: a novel vocabulary to
tious, towns mounted a creative challenge to the eccle articulate a new set of ambitions. Architecture, of
siastical monopoly of Gothic. Thomas Coomans course, had always been parlante, a semiotic medium
examines the growth of new types of architecture in both forceful and imprecise. A case in point is the
the Low Countries, the richest nests of cities north of Parisian-inspired Rayonnant of the mid-thirteenth
the Alps. Here the years around 1300 marked a moment century. By the year 1300 this style had lost some of its
of genuine political and economic change. Conven original inspirational force, but not its political asso
tional Great Church architecture continued to flour ciations. It had served the Capetian image of sacred
ish in the coastal cities of modern-day Holland, and in kingship so theatrically that it continued to cast a
Brabant (French, German or local in style?), but it glamorous glow over the ambitions of royal and aris
now found itself accompanied by new and ambitious tocratic patrons throughout Europe, and right into the
types of specifically urban building: walls, merchants’ fourteenth century. An ultimately French-inspired
houses, town halls (though none survive from this Great Church associated with royalty and rulership,
period), belfries, cloth halls, beguinages, hospitals and defined by Hans Sedlmayr as Königskirche, dominated
hall churches (especially in Flanders). Urban life also the architectural programmes of the increasingly
14 Paul C ro ss le y
wealthy monarchies and principalities of Central But equally, we must resist the temptation to reduce
Europe.1. Klâra BeneSovska discusses this retrospec agency in architecture to social, economic or ideo
tive love affair with Capetian kingship and Parisian logical imperatives. If architecture around 1300 is
fashion in relation to two Bohemian Königskirchen of prominent for its diversity, for its regional and nation
the late thirteenth century - the Cistercian churches al dialects, for its new agents of patronage and its new
of Sedlec and Zbraslav. Both are associated with the centres of experiment, it is also remarkable for its
interests and patronage ofKing Wenceslas II Pfemyslid, extraordinary creativity - its skill in answering new
an admirer and collector of all things Parisian. Sedlec, functional challenges in forms that are both beautiful
on the scale and in the shape of a French High Gothic and inventive. As Christopher Wilson reminds us, the
cathedral, is both an echo of Suger’s Saint-Denis and crucial factor in the influence of Saint-Urbain at
a reworking of the “Cistercian High Gothic” of the Troyes on English Decorated architecture was not
Île-de-France. It is also a highly sophisticated experi patronal intervention or functional parity or ideo
ment in the most up-to-date language of Central logical meaning, but the architect’s keen appreciation
European Cistercian Reduktionsgotik. By contrast, of Saint-Urbain’s uniquely brilliant architecture.
Zbraslav, the Pfemyslids’ mausoleum, combined the Agency here is not cultural or collective, but individ
functions of Royaumont with the hall choir format of ual. The borrowings made by English architects in this
the Austrian Cistercian church of Heiligenkreuz, a case were meaning-free and aesthetically motivated;
model chosen for its “French” Rayonnant brilliance and in their transformation of the Troyes model into
and its Habsburg connections. In both cases a “court” a characteristically English product they stand as an
art is grafted on to international monastic traditions object lesson in the imaginative powers of the medie
in order to advertise cultural modernity and to play val architect. If the richness of early fourteenth-cen
out political rivalry. tury architecture registered a period of extraordinary
social and political change, it also reflected a special
An even more specific case of architectural language ingenuity on the part of its creators. “The main motive
expressing political allegiance is neatly exemplified in of innovation and change”, writes Wilson, “alongside
the story of the new choir of Kraków Cathedral, the institutional competitiveness, was the creative imagi
coronation church and mausoleum of the revived Polish nation of the architect”.
Piast dynasty. Tomasz Wçclawowicz alerted the confer
ence to the recent discovery of the foundations of a In the history of European Gothic the architecture
Sedlec-style chevet beneath the present fourteenth-cen of the years around 1300 marks a moment of rare open
tury choir of the cathedral. It was clearly laid out by the ness, internationalism, and inclusivity. For our “post
Czech Bishop of Kraków, Jan Muskata, in the second -modern” sensitivities, its multivalence, its pluralities,
decade of the fourteenth century, to demonstrate une its transference from established centres to new mar
quivocally to the citizens of Kraków his allegiance to gins, strike us as especially sympathetic. And its inter
Wenceslas II, then King of Poland as well as Bohemia. nationalism is in tune with our modern suspicion of
But by 1320 Wenceslas’ death had ushered in a new, the national and regional. W ho could not admire an
Piast-led dynasty as kings of Poland, and Muskata’s architecture that set out to take advantage of diversity
demise prompted the abandonment of the Bohemian and its tensions ? Indebted to High Gothic but prefig
model - and all that it stood for - in favour of a more uring Late Gothic; welcoming extremes of scale, yet
local design. The new Piast Königskirche scrupulously disciplining them into systems; tolerating an enriched
avoided any clear reference to Bohemian Gothic, and repertory of decorative forms, but shaping them into
modelled itself on the choir of the more traditional, and a semiotic discipline - “western” church architecture
more “Piast” Wroclaw Cathedral, begun about seventy around the critical year of 1300 was at once devotion
years earlier. As a public art, attuned to the needs of its al and social, political and creatively aesthetic.
patrons, architecture can never wholly escape from
political or religious ideologies.
In t r o d u c t io n 15
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