II Churches in Northern Germany
(From the Ecclesiologist, 1854–1857)
I — The Churches of Lübeck
Three old cities far apart, across the whole breadth of a continent, enable us to form a fair judgement of what the whole of Europe may have been in the palmy days of the Middle Ages. They are Lübeck, Nuremberg, and Verona; each telling its own tale, each marked with the impress of national peculiarity, and each remarkable, among other things, the one as the city of brick work, the next as that of stone, and the last as that of marble. In Lübeck nothing but brick was ever seen; in Nuremberg, stone was used with an excellence seldom rivalled; whilst in Verona, though brick was most beautifully used, the great aim of its architects was ever to introduce the marbles in which the district around it is so rich. Each of these cities deserves a full and ample study, for each teaches its own lesson, and that a lesson scarcely to be learnt elsewhere; and if this evening I give you such notes as I was able to make in the course of a short sojourn last autumn in Lübeck, it is not because I do not value Nuremberg and Verona much more, but because it would seem that if one were to write of all three, this is the one with which one should commence, as nearest to and most connected with our own country and style of architecture, and because its features of interest are in some degree less remarkable than those of the others, and one would wish to reserve the best for the last.
In one respect, moreover, two of these cities may well teach us a lesson. Nuremberg and Lübeck were to the world in the Middle Ages what London, Liverpool, and Manchester are to the world in this age: the very centres of all commerce for all Europe; and we may surely not do amiss if we take to ourselves, and ponder well upon, the lesson which the singular difference between their earnestness in matters of religion and ours ought to teach us. There was in these two old cities such an appreciation of the value of religious ordinances, and evidently so very great a readiness to provide places for their due celebration, that one cannot without a blush think upon the vast difference which such a city as Manchester displays, with its almost countless thousands of poor wretches uncared for and unthought of, and without any power of putting foot even in the sanctuaries of their God.
In the great Middle Age cities this never could have been the case, for apart from the fact that their churches stood with their doors ever open, while ours are ever jealously kept shut, they were so vast and spacious, and so crowded together, as it seems to us, that there never could have been a real difficulty in finding some home for the feet of the weary, how poor and how miserable soever they might be!
And Lübeck still shows this most grandly: you approach by a railway through an uninteresting country, passing one of those lakes which give much of its character to this dreary part of Germany, and suddenly dashing through a cutting, and under the shade of fine patriarchal trees which adorn on all sides the outskirts of the old city, you find yourself in such a presence of towers and spires as can scarce be seen elsewhere in Christendom. A succession of great churches standing up high and grand above the picturesque tall old houses which fringe the margin of the Trave, two of them presenting to us their immense west fronts of pure red brick, each finished with two great towers and spires, whilst others on either side rear their single spires and their turrets high against the sky, and here and there detached turrets mark where stands some other old building soon to be made acquaintance with; and all of these forming the background, as you first see it, to the most picturesque and grand old gateway—I am bold to say—in Europe, gives one a wonderful impression, vivid but dreamlike, and reminding one of those lovely cities with which Memling and his contemporary painters so often delight our eyes.
The plan of the city is simple enough. One great street runs the whole length of the peninsula on which it stands, from north to south, finished by the Burg-Thor, a fine old gateway, on the north, and by the cathedral and its close to the south. Right and left of this main street are a multitude of streets descending to the water which almost surrounds the whole town, and on the other side of the water are immense earth-works, rising really into respectable hills, and said to be the largest earth-works known; happily these great mounds—no longer useful for purposes of defence—are eminently so for ornament, and planted with great trees and laid out with walks and gardens form one of the most pleasant features of the place; on the outer side of those earth-works another line of water gives one certainly a very watery impression of the whole city.
The main features of interest to an architect are in the principal street. Beginning at the extreme south is the cathedral with its two towers and spires standing alone and forlorn in the most deserted part of the town, and even in the busiest days of Lübeck scarcely so near to the bulk of the people as a cathedral should ever be; then on either side we pass the churches of S. Giles and S. Peter, and going along under the walls of the picturesque old Rathhaus find ourselves close to the east end of the Marien-Kirche—a cathedral in dignity of proportions and outline, and here superior to the cathedral in its central position and in its greater height and general magnificence; next, the Katerinen-Kirche is left a few steps to the right, then S. James’s is passed, another tall spire, and then the west front of the very interesting Heiligen Geist Hospital; and a hundred yards further on we are in front of the relics of the Burg-Kloster, and close to this find ourselves at the Burg-Thor, a picturesque gateway second only in effect to the Holsteiner gate which I have before mentioned as terminating one of the cross streets which lead to the railway. The Burg-Thor stands just at the neck of the peninsula, and beyond it is the Burg-Feld, a wood intersected with paths, and looking rather like the Thier-Garten outside the Brandenburg gate at Berlin.
And now to describe the architectural beauties of the town we must go back to the cathedral, and as in duty bound begin with what is at once the oldest and the chief in rank of the ecclesiastical buildings.
The tradition is that this church, dedicated in honour of SS. John Baptist and Nicolas, is built on the spot where Henry the Lion, when engaged in the chase, fell in with a stag having a cross growing between its horns and a collar of jewels round its neck, with the produce of which the church was first in part built. There is some account of a church older than this, and octangular in form, having existed near the cathedral about the middle of the seventeenth century; it cannot however have been older by many years than some parts of the cathedral, as the first foundation of the present city seems to have been laid in the middle of the eleventh century, and the cathedral was consecrated in A.D. 1170 by Henry, the third Bishop of Lübeck, having been founded by Henry the Lion, who in A.D. 1154 translated Gerold, Bishop of Oldenburg, and made him the first Bishop of Lübeck; possibly the destroyed octangular church may have been the baptistery of the cathedral, as at this date baptisteries of this shape are not unfrequently met (e.g. at Cremona and Pisa), and I know of but one case of a church of such a plan.
Of the present cathedral, the most ancient portions appear to be the lower part of the steeples and the main arcades throughout. These are all Romanesque, though under the original arches pointed arches have been since inserted. The piers are heavy and square, and the whole effect is poor and ungainly.
Next in date is a magnificent porch on the north side of the north transept, which is altogether about the best piece of architecture in Lübeck, and remarkable as showing much more freedom in the use of stone than is found elsewhere. The shafts are of marble, and the arches and groining-ribs are all of stone, and, on the exterior, stone capitals and shafts are also used, whilst the brick work is far superior to that in any of the later examples. I fear I must say that this one remnant of the art of the thirteenth century is by far the most beautiful thing now left in the city. The sculpture on the inner door is very masterly in its character, but unfortunately the whole porch is now most neglected and uncared for.
Besides this porch there is little to notice in the exterior, save that the brick work of the transept front over the porch savours of the Italian mode of treating gables with deep cornices and traceries, and that the two great brick steeples at the west end are fine examples of a kind of steeple of which the city possesses however others much finer. The spires are not ancient; the whole exterior is of red brick.
In the interior of the church the most interesting features are the choir-screen and loft, and the rood. The screen stands at the east side of the transept crossing, whilst the rood is supported on an elaborately carved beam, which spans the western arch of the crossing, and the effect is most singular and certainly very piquant; the whole being in a very late but good style, with figures remarkably well sculptured. Under the screen is an altar, and on either side still remains another. They are of stone supported on brick work, and there is no mark of piscina, or of lockers, or places for relics in them. The rood, and the figures of SS. Mary and John, are on a very large scale, so that altogether, with their supports, they reach nearly the whole height of the arch under which they stand.
There are also throughout the nave of the cathedral a number of very curious seats; they vary a good deal in detail, but their outline is similar, and their effect rather striking; I confess, however, that I was sorry to see examples of fixed seats of such a date in a cathedral church. In the nave there are some pendents for candles; one an angel holding a light, and strongly reminding one of those beautiful angels with candles above the stalls in the choir of S. Laurence at Nuremberg; and the other, a much more elaborate composition, and coloured richly in gold, red, and blue; it has two sitting figures of Bishops under canopies, and bears three very large candles. One of the great treasures of this church is the magnificent brass to Bishop Johann von Mull, and Bishop Burchard von Serken, who deceased in 1350 and 1317. I was unable to make so careful a rubbing of this magnificent brass as I could have wished, but I have done enough to show how grand it is, and how very similar in its details to the famous Flemish brasses which remain at Lynn, S. Albans, North Mymms, Wensley, and Newark. Like two of these, of which we fortunately possess rubbings, it is remarkable for being one great engraved plate, and not, as was the English custom, a plate cut out to the shape of the figure, and then inserted in an incised slab; and compared with the S. Albans brass, which hangs by its side, it will be seen that the detail is so exactly similar, that there can scarcely be a shadow of a doubt that they were both engraved by the same man. It is perhaps altogether the finest of the whole, and if so, perhaps the finest brass in Europe. It is appreciated by the sacristan, who demands a fee for lifting up a cover which he keeps on it, and whose temper was of so difficult a kind that I almost despaired being allowed to rub it. However, by persevering, I at last succeeded.
Lastly, there is in a chapel on the north side of the nave a most magnificent triptych by Memling, almost unequalled by any work of his I have ever seen. It has double shutters; on the outer, figures of SS. Blaise, Giles, John, and Jerome, and inside are painted the Crucifixion, and a number of subjects from the Passion of our Lord, all worked together into one grand picture in a manner favourite with painters of Memling’s time, and not to be contemned because no longer the custom of our artists, inasmuch as Memling, Van Eyck, Giotto, and their contemporaries all did it, and what they did we may well believe not to have been done without good reason. The expression of all the faces is most careful, and the skill with which portraits are preserved throughout all the subjects, as e.g. of S. Peter, of Judas, and of our Lord, is very marvellous. They were obviously painted from actual faces, and not imagined. The colour of the whole is generally very rich and deep, the drawing very vigorous, and the whole forms one of the most magnificent specimens it is possible to imagine of the early German school.
I have forgotten to say that the font in the cathedral is of metal. It is a bowl arcaded and supported on four figures of angels; but it is not very good in its character; perhaps we might think much of it here, but in northern Germany, where I had just been seeing the wonderful fonts at Münster, Brunswick, and above all at Hildesheim, the metal fonts at Lübeck struck me as looking very poor.
I happened to come in for the end of a week-day sermon here, and was rather amused, after it was finished, to find the Prediger descending from the pulpit, and directing his steps towards me, whilst the people went on singing: however, he turned into a great sort of glazed pew in the choir-aisle, and there, having shut himself in, he enthroned himself in a comfortable chair, waited for about ten minutes until the sound of singing and music had died away, and then stole back and out of the church at the west. It is curious, in northern Germany, to observe how entirely, in public ministrations, the Lutheran ministers seem to consider preaching their only work; going in after the preparatory hymn is sung, and going away as soon as their sermon is finished, without regard to the hymn which always winds up their functions. In Lübeck there was a curious madness about preaching: every morning, between eight and nine, there seemed to be sermons going on; and as the congregations are infinitesimal, they do all they can to keep a stray listener, when they can have him within their walls, by locking the doors. Happily, I escaped, by judicious management, the sad fate of listening to a sermon from any of these divines in black cloaks and immense white frills, who look like so many repetitions of their great prototype, Luther.
And now I must leave the cathedral, and getting over the difficulties of the horrible pavement which distinguishes this end of the city as well as may be, take you to the Marien-Kirche; the church which, in one’s first view of Lübeck, one naturally takes for the cathedral, from its central position and general grandeur. The whole church is built of red brick, though unfortunately, internally, it has been daubed all over with a succession of coats of whitewash. I was able to measure the ground-plan, which may be taken as a type of the ground-plan most in favour in Lübeck, and indeed generally in this part of Germany. All the columns, arches, groining-ribs, and even the window tracery, are built of moulded bricks; and, as will be seen from the detail, the piers and arches are particularly well moulded and good. Not so the window tracery, which is very plain, and like all brick window tracery, most unsatisfactory, consisting as it does of three arched heads within the window arch, without cusping or ornament of any kind to relieve its baldness. The transepts hardly show on the ground-plan, and externally they are finished with two gables instead of one, and are so insignificant, consequently, as hardly to deserve notice. Between the buttresses all round is a row of chapels, their external walls being flush with the face of the buttresses. Among other good features in this church are the Lady-chapel to the east of the main apse, and the late turret over the intersection of nave and choir; and lastly, the two grand steeples at the west end. This kind of steeple was not an invention peculiar to Lübeck, but is a kind of which one finds many examples throughout northern Germany. The earliest with which I am acquainted are at Soest and Paderborn cathedrals, both of them very fine, and much earlier in date than the Lübeck examples; and these clearly have some affinity to the Lombard churches on the Rhine, save that the continual repetition of stage above stage, exactly alike, is a feature of their own, and one which the builders of the great brick steeples in the fourteenth century always had before them. Certainly, the two western steeples of the Marien-Kirche are very noble, and make one admire immensely this kind of spire, which, as you will see, rises from the angles of the tower and the points of the gables, which are so great a feature as a finish to each face of the tower. These great gables are generally filled in with tracery, without much regard to uniformity or symmetry, but sometimes, as in the noble steeple of S. John, Lüneburg, most effective: the spires in this case, and indeed almost always, are of timber covered with copper.
It will be seen from the plan that the dimensions of this church are very grand. The length is 280 English feet; height to vault, 108 ft.; height of aisles, 59 ft.; the spires, 344 ft.
The church was founded circa A.D. 1276, the north-west tower in 1304, and the south-west in 1310; and the whole may, I think, from its mouldings, etc., be taken as an example of Lübeck middle-pointed.
In the interior arrangement there is no very distinct triforium, though the clerestory windows have their inside arches lengthened down to a string-course above the main arcade, and in the choir there is a pierced parapet above this string.
The east window of the main apse, and the east windows of the eastern chapel, are filled with exceedingly brilliant stained glass, said to be the work of an Italian; it was brought in 1818 from the Burg-Kloster church, which was destroyed at that time, and which, judging from what still remains, and from the relics of its art treasures, preserved here and elsewhere, must have been one of the most interesting churches in the city. The three windows contain the legend of S. Jerome, the legend of the finding of the Cross, and the legend of S. Peter. They are said to have been done by the son of Dominic Livi, of Ghambasso, near Florence, who, after he had learnt his art and long practised it in Lübeck, went back in 1436 to Florence, where he executed the celebrated windows in the Duomo. I have never seen these Florentine windows, but, judging from my knowledge of the very mediocre character of Italian glass generally, I should say that there could be no improbability on the face of a story which would account for really beautiful glass being done at Florence. Certainly, this Lübeck glass is very good and brilliant, and valuable, as being, with a little still preserved in one of the windows of the Katerinen-Kirche, the only old glass preserved in any of the churches in Lübeck.
The nave of S. Mary is pewed throughout, and encumbered at the west end with a prodigious organ; but the choir is fairly perfect. It is screened in on all sides; to the west by means of a rood-screen, similar in plan to that at the cathedral, but of earlier date, and at the sides with screens mainly composed of brass. These screens are very common in all the churches here, but these are the best I have seen: they are very late in date, not at all satisfactory in their design, and in all cases the cornices and the lower part of the screens are of oak, the brass-work being confined to the uprights and the tracery, if tracery it can be called.
In the choir there is a magnificent metal Sakraments-Haus, very elaborate, and full of most delicate work; it has been shamefully damaged, but enough remains to make one class it with the best of these often beautiful pieces of church furniture. About twenty feet in height, it stands on lions’ backs, and finishes at the top with the Crucifixion.
One of the relics still preserved in this church is a Dance of Death, in a series of twenty-five paintings round the walls of a chapel which forms part of the north transept; it is a very complete painting, and its date, which is said to be A.D. 1463, makes it one of the earliest paintings of this very curious subject. Mr. Douce, in his treatise on the Dance of Death, mentions older examples at Minden, in the churchyard of the Innocents at Paris, in the cloister of the S. Chapelle at Dijon, and that at Basle, which is the most famous of all. Most, if not all of these, are, however, now destroyed, and the interest of this painting becomes therefore the greater. It is certainly very valuable; if for no other reason, for the variety of costume, of every rank and order of men, which it contains, beginning with the pope, the emperor, empress, cardinal, king, bishop, duke, abbat, and so on to the young woman and the little child.
Besides these paintings are two by Overbeck: one in the Lady-chapel, finished in 1824, of our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem, is certainly very beautiful, in its calm simplicity and purity of colour, reminding one much of Raffaelle’s early style, or of some work of that great Christian artist, Perugino; and therefore most grateful to me, and far more pleasing than the other, which is a Pietà, painted in 1847, and in a thoroughly different and much more naturalistic style. In the first painting the Lübeck people recognise and point out, with no little pride, Overbeck’s father, mother, and sisters, all of them—as also the great artist himself—natives of Lübeck, and perhaps fairly enough introduced in this his offering to his native town. A lion of the Marien-Kirche is the clock—one of those clumsy pieces of ingenuity which so often annoy one on the Continent. There is also a metal font, said to have been made in 1337 by one Hans Apengeter; but like that at the cathedral, not very satisfactory.
After these two great churches, certainly by far the most interesting church is that of the Minorite convent, S. Katharine, which is in many ways so remarkable, as to leave perhaps a stronger impression on one’s mind than anything else in the city. It is a desecrated church, but desecrated happily in a quiet way; unused, and not much cared for, but as yet not destroyed, and serving now only as a kind of museum of old church furniture, great store of which, from the Burg-Kloster church and elsewhere, is accumulated in its choir.
The date of the foundation of this church is given on an inscription near the door as A.D. 1335, and its founder Bishop Henry Bockholt; but an old chronicler, Reimar Cock, says that the guardian of the church, Brother Emeke, pulled down the church in 1351, and rebuilt it in three years more beautifully than before, with the alms which, during the time of the plague, were given to the monks.
I have drawn out the plan of this church, and, with the help of my sketches, this may, I trust, explain its extraordinary arrangement. This consists in the elevation of the choir, with a kind of crypt below it, above the floor of the rest of the church; the floor of the crypt being level with that of the nave, and divided into three widths with slender shafts, the whole groined, and when seen from the nave, presenting certainly one of the most striking and curious interiors I have ever met with. The west end of the under church opens to the nave with three arches, looking just like the ordinary arrangement of rood-screens in Lübeck; and this is just what it is: the whole choir is simply a prolongation eastwards of the rood-loft, and at the west end there is a raised screen surmounting the three arches, out of which rises a most magnificent and perfect rood, with SS. Mary and John on either side. The entire absence of seats in the nave, the great height of the church, the darkness of the long vista of arch and column under the choir, and the magnificence of the rood, make this interior one of the most satisfactory and least altered things I know; and if its arrangement is not absolutely unique, it is certainly not far from being so. In England I know nothing at all like it, unless such an example as the little church at Compton, near Guildford, be taken, in which there are indeed some points of similarity—the low sanctuary, with its groined roof, and the chapel above opening to the church, and fenced in with its low Romanesque screen-work; all this, though on a far smaller scale, certainly tallies curiously with this Minorite church at Lübeck.77
An iron grill shuts off the chapels at the east end of the under church, and in the centre of these is a fine brass, of which I obtained a rubbing. It is to a member of the Lüneburg family, and contains the figure of the burgomaster John Lüneburg, who died in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The inscriptions are curious, the name, etc., all in Latin, ending with “Bidde God vor em”; and another ending “Orate: ah werlt du hest mi bedragen!” It will be seen from the drawing of the interior that the whole detail is of a very severe kind,—all brick, and alas! all whitewashed. The access to the choir is by a staircase in the south aisle, which did not appear to me to be old. There is a space of some ten or twelve feet between the west side of the rood-loft and the choir-stalls, which are returned; and into this space the staircase leads. The stalls are old, and very good; and the whole pavement of the upper choir is of tiles, of a peculiar and interesting kind, if only for its novelty. The only pattern tiles are in the borders, the remainder are green, black, red, and light red, made in various shapes, and very good in their effect. One of the chapels in the Marien-Kirche is similarly paved, but not on so grand a scale, or with so many patterns. The only pavements at all approaching to the same kind which at the present moment I can call to mind, are that which has been so strangely—as it were providentially—preserved in the footpace on which once stood the high altar at Fountains Abbey, perfect and untouched, where all else is ruin and desolation;—and in those most lovely marble pavements in S. Anastasia, at Verona. Some of the arrangements of the patterns approach very near to these, but how much more beautiful the marble of Verona is than the tiles of Lübeck one can hardly say.
And with this ends all that one knows as positively belonging to S. Katharine; for in this unused choir is now a store of triptychs of that kind which, after some acquaintance with German churches, one learns to tire of, covered with carving, quaint, and richly coloured, or painted in Scripture story or strange legend, well enough in their proper place, and giving once doubtless great dignity to the altars they adorned, but here—collected and set out for view as a gallery of paintings—if not worthless, at best very unsatisfactory. But besides all these triptychs, there is a large aumbrye, with its old iron gates and locks still perfect, in which is a large collection of portions of monstrances, chalices, crosses, and the like: many of them very beautiful, but all damaged and in fragments. Among other things I saw a curious leather bag for carrying books, with an ingenious pocket for money contrived in its folds and very securely fastened.
But what is most rare and curious is a collection of ancient linen altar-cloths, which I had great trouble in getting a sight of, and which I could not draw, as the curator of the museum insisted on showing them himself, and when I wished to draw them, told me that he had already himself drawn them: this, as may be imagined, was a very poor source of comfort to me.
There was a corporal about 2 feet square, and fringed; along the edge of which was worked an arcade with figures of saints, the dresses stitched in a regular pattern all over, and the folds left plain: the date of this was about A.D. 1280. There was another embroidered corporal which I managed to get a drawing of: this was 2 feet square, with a large cross in the centre and four smaller crosses in the corners; the whole worked in a cross-stitch with blue and red on the white linen. Date, I think, about 1450.
Then there were two linen cloths for the altar: one, 14 ft. long by 3 ft. 10 in. wide, with a great number of figures of prophets surrounded with branching foliage; from the character of the figures, I date this at about A.D. 1400. All the outlines of the figures, leaves, etc. were marked with coloured ink borders on the linen before the work was done: the hair and points of the dresses here and there were marked with bright colour, but generally the work was all in white thread,—the stitches rather long, and arranged in regular patterns and diapers.
Another linen cloth of the same size has the whole history of Reynard the Fox: a curious subject, it may be thought, for an altar-cloth; but I may remark that I found the same subject in the bosses of the under church.
Besides this there was a magnificent linen dalmatic with apparels beautifully worked and fringed with white, red, white, blue, alternately. The orphreys had been taken off. The apparels of the sleeves were a succession of medallions, six to each sleeve, containing the Twelve Apostles, and the apparel at the bottom of the dalmatic had in front our Lord and two saints, and at the back S. Mary the Virgin, SS. Peter and Paul. The work was most beautiful, and, I have no doubt of the end of the thirteenth century.
I believe there were other things of the same kind, but I fear my curiosity rather disgusted the curator, who was not very anxious to let me see very much of these precious and invaluable relics.
The exterior of S. Katharine will be best understood by my sketches. The most noticeable fact is that some of the tracery in the eastern part is of stone enclosed within a brick arch, and exceedingly good in its effect; proving satisfactorily that this is the real way to use brick and stone together. There is no comparison between these windows and all the other windows in Lübeck. The rest are all ugly: these quite beautiful.
The transept has a double gable, as in the Marien-Kirche, and internally is arranged like an aisle rather than a transept. The west front is curious and indescribable: an irregular assemblage of arcades and windows without order or definiteness, but withal very effective. And as will be seen from the ground-plan, the north aisle being much narrower than the south produces of necessity a great irregularity in the whole elevation, and this irregularity is so carefully managed as really completely to conceal the awkwardness which would otherwise be very apparent. There is no tower, only a turret on the roof, at the intersection of nave, choir, and transept roofs.
In buildings connected with the church is a large library, some cartoons of Overbeck’s, and some work of Godfrey Kneller’s, he, as well as Overbeck, having been born here.
The other churches are not very remarkable. S. Peter’s has a good steeple with metal turrets at the base of the spire, and I believe there is a fine brass there, but I failed to see it.
S. James has a very plain brick tower, and a good triapsidal east end, very much like that of S. Katharine. The steeple is crowned with a modern spire: inside there is a late metal font, of the kind popular in Lübeck—a large vat-like vessel standing on the backs of four kneeling angels, and covered with small and ineffective arcading with figures and subjects. There is a large organ of rather early date, and two curious standard lanterns for carrying lights in procession: they are of very late date, but still so rare as to be worth notice.
S. Giles has no one feature of interest, save its very fine tower and spire.
Of the hospitals the most curious is the Heiligen-Geist-Spital: the ground-plan and general arrangement of which are most remarkable. The chapel is the oblong building at the west end, only two bays in length, but of great width: against its east wall is a rood-screen and loft, under which is the altar, and, on either side of the altar, doors which admit every one under the loft into the hospital. This, like many of our old hospitals (S. Mary’s, Chichester, and Higham Ferrers, are cases in point) is one immense hall, 250 ft. long by 40 ft. wide, and has down its length two passages, and four rows of cubicles for the inmates, and accommodates no less than 150 poor people: truly a most royal provision for the poor. There is an entrance at the sides, but the main entrance is through the chapel, through which there is a constant passing, and it is therefore more like a great hall than a chapel. How much better is the ordinary English arrangement (of which I saw a grand example at Lüneburg), in which the chapel is at the east end of the hall. There the chapel sanctifies the whole, instead of being itself profaned, as is the case at Lübeck.
The hospital was founded by one Bertram Mornewech, in A.D. 1286, and is similar in plan, I believe, to the great Gothic Hospital della Scala at Siena.
In the chapel are some brass screens like those in the Marien-Kirche, but inferior to them. The west front is remarkable and certainly very picturesque, with its three gables and its multitude of turrets.
The most interesting building left to be described is the ruin of the Burg-Kloster. This was a Dominican convent, and at the Reformation was converted into a hospital for the poor. In 1818, a portion of the vaulting of the church fell in, and then they pulled down the rest of the church, sending their stained glass and the organ to the Marien-Kirche, and their triptychs and altar furniture to the Katerinen-Kirche. The north wall only of the church now remains, but this shows traces of stone windows enclosed within brick arches, like those in the apse of S. Katharine, and its destruction is therefore specially to be deplored. The foundation dates from A.D. 1229. The rest of the conventual buildings still in great part remain, but so mixed up with other and modern erections, that it is rather difficult to understand them.
There is, however, a fair cloister on the north side of the church, groined throughout and tolerably perfect: out of this, on one side, is a kind of open groined stall, which looks something like the ambulatories which are so beautiful a feature of our own abbeys; and out of this ambulatory, one enters a large hall once apparently divided by a row of columns down the centre. North of these buildings is a room which seems to have been part of the refectory, remarkable for an exquisite pavement of small tiles—red, black, and white—arranged in an ingenious and intricate pattern, of which I made a careful drawing. My drawing shows the entire remaining portion of this pavement which, it will be seen, continued on beyond the present partition-wall. A central shaft is still left, with an old oak sideboard framed round its base in a most effective manner. In another part of the Burg-Kloster there is a small fragment of similar pavement, which looks as if it had been the hearth under a fire.
Near S. Giles’s church there is another ruined conventual building, S. Anne’s Kloster. This was originally a nunnery of “Clarissernonnen” (I suppose these were nuns of S. Clare, an order who had a few houses in England), but has been converted into a workhouse. Unfortunately a great fire in 1843 consumed the church, and left nothing but the outer walls standing, and when I was there it was used as a place for the workhouse men to break stones or the roads. The church is said to have been designed and built by one Synsingus Hesse of Brunswick, who came to Lübeck in 1502 with five assistants, and completed the work in 1510. With this date the work tallies very well, though I confess there is no mark of the peculiarities of a Brunswick architect, which, as must be known to any who have ever seen that very remarkable city, are decided enough. Part of the west front of the church of S. Anne was built with courses of stone and brick, a most unusual arrangement in Germany, though common enough in Italian pointed, and always very striking in its effect; the domestic buildings retain a good many groined rooms, and a simple cloister in very perfect condition.
We come now to the Rathhaus, whose long line of picturesque front is so great a feature in the principal street of the city. Its history is so confusing and its style so peculiar, that it is very difficult indeed to affix any certain date to its various portions. It was burnt down in A.D. 1276, and there was another fire in A.D. 1358. In A.D. 1389 there were considerable works executed, including the famous cellars, whose still more famous wine was all cleared out by the French, when they sacked the good city in A.D. 1806. The portion of the Rathhaus to the south of the market-place seems to have been built in 1442–44, and the alterations of the Börse towards the street in 1570 and 1673; so that we may well expect a confusing and picturesque mixture of works of various dates. The earliest external portion appears to me to be the screen on the north side in front of the two gabled roofs; and this and the other great screens or parapets towards the market-place and towards the street are the most picturesque portions of the building. They are entirely executed in red and black brick, the cusping being all done in moulded brick. As a rich piece of colour this work is very valuable, but architecturally its sole merit is a kind of picturesqueness, which it certainly has in great force.
The fact is that in northern Germany all the domestic architecture was very full of faults; the fronts of the buildings were very seldom at all ruled by the roof line, and their stepped gables, traceried, mullioned, and pinnacled, had no reference to anything save a desire to look well; and so here some of the most striking portions of the old Rathhaus are done without any regard to constructional wants, and simply as masks of the construction; the fronts are built up to conceal the roofs, arcaded and pinnacled without meaning, and in a style very elaborate as compared with the other brick work throughout the city.
A sketch of perhaps the most magnificent example remaining of north German domestic architecture—the Rathhaus at Münster—will show you how, even with the most beautiful detail and the best possible sculpture, this faulty mode of designing was always persisted in; from Münster in the fourteenth century one may trace it going into the brick districts to the north and—as at Lüneburg—filling entire towns with its extravagancies, and then settling down, as we find it at Lübeck, into a regular system of stepped gables and panelled façades, beyond which the dream of house-builders never went. I confess to having been sorely disappointed in the street architecture of Lübeck. In the first place everything except the churches, hospitals, Rathhaus, and gateways, is painted white, or whitewashed in the most ruthless manner, and the architectural merit of the houses before they were whitewashed must have been very small. The houses at the side of the Heiligen-Geist-Spital are the best specimens of the kind of elevation most in favour, and will, I think, quite justify my strictures, though they are less objectionable than most, in that the gables follow the roof line instead of being sham.
I have left until the last the town gateways, which are certainly two of the most effective I have ever seen. The Holsteiner-Thor has two spire-like roofs at its extremities, which are very effective, and its front towards the town is really a magnificent specimen of the good effect of a great quantity of arcading. The outer front of the gate is much less ornamental. In the string-courses there is a great deal of inlaid terra-cotta ornament. The date of this gateway is about A.D. 1477. The Burg-Thor and the buildings on the town side form about as picturesque a group as can well be imagined. It has all been lately restored, and, I fear, painted: the colour of the red and black bricks savouring to my eye uncommonly of artificial colour; but one can scarce imagine anything more strikingly picturesque than the whole group. The other side of the gate is almost exactly the same; but standing by itself, without the picturesque buildings on either side, is not nearly so effective.
All that I had heard of Lübeck made me promise myself a great treat in the study of the old brick buildings and the old treatment of brick. I must confess, however, that this was not so good or so satisfactory as I had expected, and that it is certainly very inferior to the Italian brick work. It is generally coarsely done, and there is but little attempted in the way of tracery, and that little is never very effective. I saw nothing, for instance, at all comparable to such brick work as one sees at Verona, Mantua, and Cremona; and I doubt much whether Germany produces any which can be compared to it. Except in one instance, and then only to a very slight extent, there is no attempt at all at mixing stone with brick, save at the quoins of the towers, where there are always immense blocks of stone, intended for strength, but contributing, I suspect, to the weakness which is quite a characteristic of all the churches in Lübeck, Hamburg, Lüneburg, and generally throughout this brick district. The brick churches of Italy are remarkable in that they owe much of their beautiful effect either to the mixture of stone with brick, or to the exquisite moulding of the brick, and the care and delicacy with which it was built; and one observes that whilst in Italy all the buildings have an air of refinement, in northern Germany they have an air of great coarseness, to which, perhaps, the entire absence of what can fairly be called window tracery in a great degree conduces.
Something may, however, be learnt even from the failure of other men, and so some points may well be attended to in this German brick work. And first it teaches us, distinctly and unmistakably, that brick is no material for window traceries; the necessity of using it ends either in the repetition of very simple and ugly windows, such as are almost universal in Lübeck; or, as in the Stadt-Haus, and again in the very remarkable church of S. Katharine, at Brandenburg, in the eternal repetition of the same small piece of moulded tracery, which, of necessity not very good in itself, becomes, by much repetition, quite hateful. And the effect is painful in the extreme upon the whole practice of art: in all cases, without any exception, I believe, where men have condescended to attempt to execute traceries or carvings in brick moulded in this way, the tendency has been, naturally enough, to repeat for ever things which by repetition become cheap. One moulded piece of brick tracery would be dearer than one like it in stone; but multiply it a hundred or a thousand times, and it becomes infinitely cheaper, but who can say by how much more infinitely tedious and unartistic! So at Brandenburg, crockets, crocketed gablets, component parts of tracery, and the like, are repeated over and over again, in a manner which is really marvellous; and because it was necessary to do this, immense sham fronts, sham parapets, and the like, must be raised, in order to display all the resources which were at their command. Now this is very poor architecture, very vile art; and it requires no argument to prove that it is only the natural and certain result of the attempt to use materials out of their proper place, and in a way in which it was never intended they should be used. Far worse would be an attempt to mould clay, so that it should counterfeit the work of nature; and so, in addition to the destruction of all art by its endless repetitions, insult God’s handiwork by counterfeiting stone quarried from the bowels of the earth.
The Lübeck churches show us, however, in other respects, what great things may really be done, and done well and naturally, in brick. You may form mouldings to any extent, because each moulded brick tells its own tale, does its own work; and mouldings, so far from not bearing repetition, gain by it. All the windows in a noble church require varied traceries, but it were as well that no two of them should vary in their mouldings. Here, therefore, the reproductive power of the moulder is most valuable; so, too, is it in all forms of ornament (as, e.g., the billet, chevron, and the like) which become ornamental only by repetition, and not in any way by reason of art or skill in the man who works them. These are absolutely better in brick than in stone, because, as no thought and no taste are necessary in the man who carves them, it were better the human intellect should be as little as possible deadened by working upon them. The windows of S. Katharine, Lübeck, show how these moulded bricks may be used in conjunction with stone traceries, and with admirable effect, when compared with the attempts at tracery in brick which this and other churches here exhibit.
But one of the most important facts which we can learn here is, that brick is not only good outside, but just as much inside a church. All the Lübeck churches are built, inside and out, with red brick; most unfortunately, this has all been whitewashed, but I think we may have faith enough in the men who built them to be sure that they would not have been built with brick had not the effect been good. For myself, I am persuaded that they were right in so doing; because I have seen in Italy the wonderfully solemn effect produced in this way, and have since tested it myself. In truth, no red brick building should ever be plastered inside, save where it is intended to introduce paintings of some kind more brilliant than the colour of the bricks.
On the whole, therefore, though the brick work of Lübeck is far inferior, in delicacy and beauty, to that which I have seen in Italy, there is much to be learnt from it, and much proof to be obtained, if proof be needed, that brick is really a most noble and serviceable material, and one which, wherever it is the material of the district, ought invariably and unhesitatingly to be used.
But I feel that, in criticising its brick work, I have been led into abusing old Lübeck almost too much. Perhaps I ought only to express my grateful recollection of all the treasures which she still possesses,—of her screens, her church furniture, her spacious interiors, and her many picturesque features of antiquarian and ecclesiological interest, her triptychs, her brasses, and her gateways,—rather than attempt to draw a parallel between her and Italy; between the stern ruggedness of the north, and the sunny softness and delicacy of the south; between, moreover, a city built as it were in a day,—for Lübeck’s rise was sudden almost beyond all precedent, without a history, and without older days to teach and to correct her,—and a land whose memories of the past and associations with old art were, even in the Middle Ages, well nigh as great, and as valuable in their influence on the mind of her people, as they can be even at the present day. More just it is, perhaps, only to be thankful for all the pleasures with which my three days’ sojourn in this noble old city was full even to overflowing; and (forgetful of the faults of her architects) to dwell more upon the lessons which their works cannot fail to teach us, if we will only lovingly and patiently study and examine them.
II — Naumburg Cathedral
I reached Naumburg late at night in a tremendous storm; but the sun rose cheeringly, and I started early for the cathedral fearful of disappointment, as I had spent half the previous day in a mistaken attempt to find something interesting at Merseburg,—a place against which it is only right to warn all ecclesiologists. At Naumburg my fate was happier. The first view of the exterior is not very striking. A fair apsidal choir with a tower rising on either side, Romanesque at the base, and finished in late third-pointed, does not rise above the picturesque, and gives but small promise of the excessive interest of the interior. The plan is curious. A late Romanesque, or very early-pointed nave finished with eastern and western apsidal choirs, and separated from both of them by rood-screens; that to the eastern choir Romanesque, that to the western of most exquisite early pointed, and both of them coeval with the portions of the main fabric to which they belong. The eastern choir extends across the transepts, and is raised considerably above them, with solid stone parcloses, arcaded on the faces towards the transepts with semicircular arches, a kind of parclose not uncommon in the churches in this part of Germany.
Under the whole of the choir is a crypt entered from the transept, and in the angles between the transepts and the choir are towers, the lower stages of which are open to the transepts and form chapels, whose altars stand in small apsidal projections on the east face of the tower. A door on either side of the sanctuary leads by a staircase in the thickness of the wall to rooms above the chapels in the tower. The entrance to the choir is through the old rood-screen by doors on either side of the altar, and by doors in the parcloses, reached by long flights of steps in the transepts. The nave is divided into three groining bays, each bay subdivided and having two arches into the aisles. The western choir has one bay and a five-sided apse. On either side of it is a narrow passage leading to staircases which lead to rooms above some chapels, which have now to be mentioned. They form the base of towers at the west end of the aisles, but project considerably beyond them: only one of these towers has been built; the other is carried up and finished externally as though it was a transept, and produces at first some confusion when seen from the exterior. These tower chapels are very curious. That on the south side has a circular central shaft, decreasing in size to the capital, and the vaulting has four ribs springing from corbels in the angles of the chapel in a semicircular arch to the cap of the column, and there are no other ribs. In the east wall is a small semicircular recess, in which still stands the original altar with a double footpace. The north tower chapel is almost exactly like the other, save that it has a polygonal central shaft, and the recess for the altar is rectangular. Both chapels are lighted with small round-headed windows in their western faces. From this description it will be seen that the ground-plan of this church is so curiously alike at its eastern and western ends, as to be somewhat confusing at first.
And now to describe this most interesting church in detail. The eastern choir-screen is most remarkable. It has admirably carved capitals, and its three western arches (which are semicircular) rest on delicate clusters of shafts. The original doorways still remain, and in front of them steps, arranged in semicircles radiating from the centre of the door, which lead up into the choir. No doubt an altar once stood under this screen, but this has been destroyed in order to convert it into a pew! The front of the screen too is so much obscured by a modern gallery, and by the reredos of the Lutheran altar, that it is impossible to say how it was finished: there seemed to be traces of a vesica with sculpture just over the centre arch. Entering the choir by this screen, one finds all the old arrangements undisturbed. Between the two western doors there are three stalls with canopies, and on either side against the stone parcloses eleven stalls and ten subsellae. In the midst stand three ancient, heavy square desks for office books, and upon these five most magnificent books, well bound and of astonishing size, still maintain their old place. They are all manuscript on vellum, and two of them have very large illuminations of subjects, and foliage of very admirable and bold character. I never saw such magnificent books on their own proper desks,—never, I think any of such grand size anywhere. The stalls are not particularly good, and are of late date, with immense finials, of a kind I had met before at Halberstadt. A rise of several steps divides the choir from the first bay of the sanctuary, which is long and without furniture, save some late stalls, which do not seem to have any business where they are placed. This bay of the choir terminates the transitional work, which is carried throughout the whole church, with the exception of the eastern apse and the western choir. It is of the earliest pointed, very simple and bold in all its details; the piers looking rather like Romanesque in their section and capitals, carved in the most admirable manner. The foliage is all disposed in circles, being regular and geometrical and invariably kept severely and carefully to a regular outline; it is an example of the very perfection of that kind of conventional foliage, of which some of the early capitals at Venice are such admirable specimens, and I think in no way inferior to them. The groining throughout is very simple, with diagonal and transverse ribs. The eastern apse is an addition in most admirable middle-pointed, and (save the upper stages of the towers) the latest work in the whole fabric. The section of the groining shafts is particularly elaborate and good; corbels of foliage inferior to the rest of the carving throughout the church supported figures under canopies at a height of about eight feet from the floor, but the figures are all gone. A very bold string runs round the apse at this point under a passage-way in the wall, which is reached by a staircase between the choir and the tower-chapel apses. The windows are of three lights, and have good geometrical tracery, and the apse is well groined with boldly moulded ribs, the boss in the centre being four ivy leaves. In the sanctuary stand four oak sedilia of the thirteenth century, with open arcaded backs and carved ends, the carving peculiar, but the whole a very remarkable work and very perfect. The chapels in the towers on either side of the choir are not in the old state, one being used for rubbish, and the other as a vestry: above the former a room in the tower is used as a receptacle for hardware! Perhaps the Prediger deals in it! The crypt under the choir is very perfect and fine. We had an illumination of it, and consequently a careful examination. The capitals are all carved, and the arches all semicircular. It is divided by shafts, some of which are clustered, into three spaces in width, and in the length there are two bays under the choir, then a solid wall with a doorway, and then five bays, and an apse of three bays. The old altar still remains.
In the transepts there is little to notice, save that there is an old altar in each. The well-like effect of these German transepts, in which the choir is continued across with heavy stone parcloses of great height, is most unpleasant. In this case the parcloses are no less than 16 feet high from the floor of the transept; and, owing to the great elevation of the choir, the floor of the crypt is only 4 ft. 6 in. lower than the transept floor.
No one, going into the nave of the church as now arranged, would believe that he was in a church of more than very mediocre interest. Between all the columns are small tenements, painted white, carefully roofed in and glazed, and papered with whatever paper the fancy and good taste of their several proprietors suggest. In front of these are rows of pews, arranged longitudinally, and all painted white; and as the aisles are by this arrangement practically lost to the church, galleries are built in them, to supply the created want.78 A white wooden screen behind the Lutheran altar conceals the eastern rood-screen; whilst another white wooden partition, out of the centre of which projects the pulpit, serves also to conceal the rood-screen of the western choir. The whole arrangement is, in short, just the most judicious that could possibly be imagined for the entire annihilation of the architectural effect of the interior.
This western choir-screen is certainly the most striking I have ever seen even in this land of screens. No description can, however, do justice to its exquisite beauty, dependent as this is, to a great extent, on the exceeding originality and beauty of the foliage, which is all varied, and all executed from natural models. The doorway is double, and rather narrow; the doors of iron, cross-framed; and they form the only openings in the screen, the rest being quite solid, arcaded on the eastern side, and on the western (that is, on the inside, or choir side), remarkable chiefly for the exquisite open staircases on each side of the door leading to the loft. On the eastern side, against the doorway, are a Crucifix and SS. Mary and John; but these seemed to be of later date than the door. The figure of our Lord seated in the tympanum above is no doubt original; it is very curious, being partly painted, partly carved, and reminded me of an early picture, managed in the same way, which I saw in the gallery at Berlin. Above the arcading, on either side of the doorway, are a series of subjects, the execution of which (with the exception of the two last, which are not original) is marvellously good. They are, beginning at the south—the Last Supper, the Betrayal, ditto (S. Peter smiting Malchus), the Denial of S. Peter, our Lord before Pilate, the Scourging, Bearing the Cross. The open staircases on the western side of the screen are remarkable for the beauty of the succession of detached shafts, with finely carved capitals, which support them.
There are no fittings in this western choir save the altar, the mensa of which is 8 ft. 5 in. long, by 5 ft. 11 in. wide, and 3 ft. 8 in. high; and this faces west, as all the altars throughout the church do: so showing its back (in the centre of which is the usual closet) to any one entering through the door of the screen from the nave. It has a double footpace. The detail of this choir is earlier and bolder than that of the eastern choir; the windows of two lights, with very bold monials, and circles sexfoiled, with soffit cusping in the head. The groining-shafts are good; and, as in the other choir, there is a very bold string under a passage-way in front of the windows, at about 8 feet from the floor. The windows do not fill up the whole width of the bays, and on each side have small open arches, which add very much to the richness of the whole effect. Against the groining-shafts are figures, very well sculptured, and standing under canopies of very varied design, finished at the top with what seem like models of churches. Some of the windows retain some exquisite stained glass. The mouldings throughout this apse are exactly like those of the screen, and the foliage was evidently carved by the same hand,—that of as great a master in his day as was the artist who carved the early capitals in the nave. I think I have now described the whole of the interior.
On the exterior there is a large cloister (partly ruined) on the south of the nave; half of this is pointed, the other half late Romanesque. It opens into the church with a small round-arched door, in the third bay from the west; and on its east side into a large kind of porch or narthex, south of the south transept, from which there is a particularly grand doorway, with five shafts in each jamb, into the transept. This porch is groined in two bays, and communicates with other buildings to the south, one of which seems, by its apse and pointed windows, to have been a chapel. These old buildings group picturesquely with the east end of the church. The southern was not, however, the only cloister; the good men of Naumburg seem to have been specially fond of duplicates, and as they had two choirs, two rood-screens, and two towers at each end, so they thought right to have two cloisters. The northern cloister seems to have tallied in size with the southern; but all that now remains of it are the groining-ribs against the north wall, and the springers of the groining throughout. The base-mould of the western tower is continued all along this north wall, and the groining springs from corbels; all which makes it look as though it were a subsequent addition: but its arches are nevertheless round, whilst, as we have seen, pointed arches are used throughout the main arcade. There are two doors from this destroyed cloister into the church—one into the north aisle, the other into the north transept.
The western apse is remarkable, on the exterior, for the excessively beautiful carving of its cornices; these are varied in every bay, and, I think, the best I have ever seen. They are of that exquisite imitation of natural foliage, springing upwards, and filling a large hollow with its ramifications, which commends itself to my mind as the most perfect type of cornice foliage. There is a somewhat similar carved string under the windows, equally good, but much more simple. The buttresses finish at the top with delicate pinnacles.
At the east end the detail is also good, the windows being well moulded, and the buttresses finished with good simple niches and figures. The apsidal projections on the eastern face of the towers finish with pyramidal stone roofs against the towers, at a low elevation.
The north-west tower is late, and has open turrets at its angles, beginning at the second stage; it is picturesque, but not very good. The upper stages of the eastern towers are also octangular, but without pinnacles; and what ornament they have is of a very late kind, and not effective.
Such is the cathedral of Naumburg—little known to, and scarce ever visited by, English tourists; and yet undoubtedly one of the most interesting and least altered churches in Germany: its two rood-screens would be alone sufficient to give it high claims upon our admiration, since they are, so far as I know, the two earliest examples remaining, and certainly older than any quoted by Mr. Pugin in his work on Screens. Besides this, the architectural value of some parts of the building is so pre-eminent, as in itself to repay a long journey.
III — Erfurt and Marburg
At Naumburg there was little, save the cathedral, to detain an ecclesiologist. The Stadt-Kirche deserved little more than a hurried visit, though the singularity of its plan deserves a note. It has an immense apsidal west end, a vast semicircle on the plan, embracing both nave and aisles, and its choir is also terminated with an apse. Beyond this the only remarkable features are the large multifoiled arches which occupy the space between the windows and the plinth in each bay of the eastern apse.
From the railway station one obtains a good view of the cathedral steeples over the vine-clad hills on which Naumburg stands—refreshing sight after the dreariness of the country generally in which I had been journeying. From Naumburg to Erfurt the railway runs through a really pretty, often very picturesque, country, with hills and rocks by the river-side, ever and anon capped by those feudal keeps in which all German rivers seem to be so rich; as picturesque now as they were formerly advantageous to their predatory chiefs. I had but two or three hours at Erfurt, but this was enough to show me that much was to be seen. The Barfüsser-Kirche was the first that I saw—one of those immensely long churches of which Germans were rather fond; a nave and aisles, and an apsidal choir, all groined at the same height, with windows of the same size and character throughout, and the whole “restored” in that peculiarly chilling fashion, which Lutherans are so singularly successful in achieving, which makes one’s recollection of such a church not very grateful. There is, however, some old glass in the choir windows, and a most prodigious carved and painted reredos behind the altar, which, though apparently to some extent modern, is nevertheless striking in its effect. The entrance to this church is by double doors on the south side which run up into and form part of the windows, the same jamb mould being continued all round.
I had some difficulty in finding my way to the cathedral—strangely enough too, for when at last I reached the Dom-Platz, there, rising high into the air, and approached by an almost endless flight of steps, stood the magnificent choir of the cathedral, surmounted by its singular triple arrangement of central steeples, and by its side, and on the same high plateau, the church of S. Severus emulating, I should almost say, aping, the cathedral both in height and design very curiously. The east end of the cathedral, built on the precipitous edge of a rock, has been under-built with a terrace supported upon arches, which, concealing the natural rock, gives it an effect of extraordinary height. These arches have been all modernized, but there are traces here and there which prove the arrangement to be original.
Let us mount the flight of steps which lead by the entire length of the north side of the choir to the porch, and we shall see reason to class one at least of the architects of Erfurt, with the greatest of his race. No position can be conceived which would present more difficulty to one who wished to show the doors of his church to the people who might gather in crowds in the Dom-Platz, and seeing nothing but the tall east end of their church and the sharp perspective of its side, shrink from the attempt to find a door at the end of the long flight of steps before them. Every one must have felt how those great foreign doorways call upon all to enter; they are always open, guarded on either side by kings, and saints, and martyrs, and revealing glimpses, precious because vague, of glorious interiors and worshippers within on their knees. They call upon all to enter, and who can refuse? At Erfurt, however, one might have deemed it impossible that people should be made to feel this, but yet it has been done, and done nobly and magnificently. There are no transepts, and so against the eastern bay of the north aisle of the nave is set a triangular porch of grand size and lovely design and detail. Its base rests against the church, and its two sides, jutting out at angles of sixty degrees from the wall, show both from the west and from the east the whole width of its two glorious doorways. So, as one gazes up from the Dom-Platz, and wonders at the singularity of the position of the church and the beauty of the choir, one’s eye follows up the track of those who ascend the toilsome flight of steps till it rests upon the doorway at their summit, and one is led at once to find one’s way through its great opening into the nave of the church. Sad to say, wanton havoc has destroyed much of the more delicate ornaments of this most noble piece of early fourteenth century architecture. Of the nave little can be said, save that it is entirely unworthy and unsatisfactory; between it and the choir is a great mass of wall, pierced only by a narrow arch opening into the choir, and supporting a curious combination of towers—a central tower rising from between one on either side—in a singular and rather picturesque fashion of which I recollect no other examples than the imitation of it here in S. Severus, and the cathedral at Constance. The interior of the choir is very noble; its elevation very great, and its windows of rather late middle-pointed, full without exception of brilliant though late glass; too rich in colour however for the traceries, which it quite conceals, giving a useful warning to architects in dealing with stained glass.
The only piece of old furniture in this choir of which I made a note, is a curious figure in brass, supporting three branches for lights, one in either hand, and one growing out of his back. The effect of this is not at all satisfactory.
This cathedral is Catholic, as also is S. Severus and some of the other churches, the Lutherans holding about an equal number.
S. Severus imitates the cathedral very curiously; it is within some thirty or forty feet of its northern side, and has in the same transeptal position a great mass of tower, the outer flanks of which are crowned with tall spires, whilst from the intermediate wall, and raised above the others, rises the central spire; the mass of tower is smaller, but nevertheless by dint of its slated spires, S. Severus manages to rise higher than the cathedral. As may be imagined, the whole group is one of most picturesque character. S. Severus has some very good middle-pointed detail, especially in its window traceries.
It was late in the evening when I left the Dom-Platz, but I saw hurriedly the exteriors of some eight or ten pointed churches. They were mostly of the same date, circa 1320 to 1400, and of very various degrees of merit. One—the Prediger-Kirche is the not pleasant dedication by which it is now known—is of enormous length as compared to its width and height: fifteen bays to a church consisting of a not very lofty nave with narrow aisles is an excess of this proportion; its length cannot be less than about 225 feet. Near it, but apparently having no connection with it, is a detached campanile.
In one of Erfurt’s many squares or market-places, is a good pointed house, with a large bay window, and three traceried windows, one on either side, and one above it in its gable end.
In another Platz is a church with two western steeples, one with a spire rising from the gabled sides of the tower. Another church occupies a triangular piece of ground, the tower being at the western angle, between two streets. It is desecrated, and I could not get into it, but its internal arrangement must be most singular.
These hurried notes are all that I could make. I was homeward bound, and obliged to travel all night to Marburg. So I did what a pilgrim to the shrine of S. Elizabeth of Hungary ought, I suppose, not to have done—I slept as the train passed Eisenach, and neglected therefore, even to get a glance through the starlight of the castle on the Wartburg, her residence and the scene of most of the beautiful story of her life.
It was early morning when Marburg was reached. Under high hills, covered with vine and picturesque in their outline, stands the noble church, conspicuous as one first sees it by its two completed and nearly similar towers and spires rising in all the beauty of their deep-coloured stonework against the green hillside which rises so precipitously close behind them. On the summit of the hill are the tall walls of the fine old castle, and to the left of the church and below the castle the town covers the hillside with the ramifications of its old steep and narrow streets. The church is perhaps rather too much outside the town for the use of the townspeople; but then it was not built for them, and in the general view it certainly gains much by being placed where it is.
And now, before I say anything about the church, two or three dates, which seem to be settled beyond dispute, may as well be mentioned.
S. Elizabeth of Hungary was born, then, in the year 1207, was married when but fifteen years old, and ere she was twenty left a widow, her husband having laid down his life in the third Crusade: three years and a half of widowed life were all she saw before an early grave received her; and from thence forward year after year saw fresh fervour excited by the contemplation of her virtues, and fresh enthusiasm awakened about the old city of Marburg, in which the last years of her life had been spent in the practice of austerity and self-denial such as the world has seldom seen. She was canonized in A.D. 1235; and in the same year the church as we now see it was commenced, and completed by about A.D. 1283.
More I need not say; for the life of her whose memory gave rise to this grand architectural effort is foreign to my present purpose, and moreover is too well known to need repetition.
Judging by the evidence of style—which is not however very strong, as the whole work has been completed carefully upon a uniform plan—I should say that the work commenced at the east, and was continued on westward, so that the west front, with its two towers and spires, was the latest portion of the work. I am inclined to think, too, that the sacristy, a large building of two stories in height, filling the angle between the north transept and the northern side of the choir, is an addition to the original fabric, but probably earlier than the steeples.
The plan shows a very regular cruciform church, the choir and transepts all having apsidal ends, a large sacristy, and two western steeples; the whole very regular and similar in character throughout.
The exterior of the church is perhaps, with the exception of its west front, more curious than really beautiful. Throughout its whole extent every bay is similar, and consists of two stages, the upper an exact repetition of the one below, each lighted with a simple two-light window with a circle in the head, and divided by a great projecting cornice, the top of which is on a level with the bottom of the upper windows. The nave and aisles are all groined at one height without triforium or clerestory; and the outer walls are, therefore, the full height of the groining of the nave. Now this endless repetition of the same windows in a manner so apparently unnecessary was at first most perplexing to me, inconsistent as it seemed with the delicate taste exhibited elsewhere by the architect; but I was not long perplexed. The cornice between the windows was, in fact, a passage-way extending all round the church in front of the windows and, by openings, through all the buttresses: whilst in front of the lower windows a similar passage, not corbelled out, but formed by a thinning of the wall from this point upwards, again encircles the church. The sacristy is the only portion of the building not so treated. The church has not and never had cloister, chapter-house, or any of the ordinary domestic buildings of a religious house, attached to it; it stood on a new piece of ground, away from houses, and with an open thoroughfare all round, and all this helps in the solution of its singular arrangements. We have but to recall to mind that the relics of S. Elizabeth were visited by more pilgrims for some two or three centuries than any other shrine almost all Europe could boast of, to see the difficulty accounted for. It was built from the first to be a pilgrimage church, and carefully planned with an especial view to this. No doubt it was a great shrine, round which thousands of pilgrims congregated in the open air, to watch as processions passed with the relics they came from so far to see, passing by these ingeniously contrived passages round the entire church again and again, seen by all, but unencumbered by the pressure of the multitude.
The whole arrangement is so curious that I have dwelt at some length upon it, feeling that it certainly shows well how boldly a thirteenth century architect ventured to depart from precedent when he found a new want to be provided for, and when a before unthought of necessity had arisen. I need hardly say, that the effect of the corbelled-out passage is to divide the height distinctly into two parts, a division perhaps more difficult of satisfactory treatment than any other that one can imagine. The only variety in the tracery of the windows throughout the body of the church is, that the centre window of each apse has a sexfoil in the circle in its head, none of the other windows having any cusping whatever. The moulding of the windows is very simple,—a very bold roll and chamfer; and it is noticeable that in the tracery the roll-moulding does not mitre with the same moulding in the arch, but is just separated from it, an ungraceful peculiarity; the roll-moulding of the tracery is treated as a shaft in the monial and jambs, and has corbelled bases, the effect of which is not at all good. The buttresses run up to the eaves, but finish abruptly without pinnacles, nor is there any parapet. It seems probable that something must have been intended, but possibly never done; and I confess I should shrink from venturing now upon the introduction of either pinnacles or parapet, and I cannot but trust that in the extensive repairs now in progress, restorations of this conjectural kind will not be attempted. Better, in such a case, let well alone, rather than run the risk of destroying everything by some monstrous mistakes!
The west front is quite a thing to be considered apart from the rest of the church, later in character, and the work, I am inclined to think, of another man, who did not only this but all, or nearly all, the magnificent fittings of the interior. The first man worked under the trammels of a transitional style, endeavouring after yet not achieving the beauties which the second man was able, in all that he did at a more advanced day, so completely to realize.
The west door at once fixes one’s attention. It is very lovely: the jamb perhaps too plain, and lacking mouldings between its shafts, but the arch absolutely perfect; it has two rows of the freshest and brightest stone foliage ever seen, and the tympanum—diapered over one half with a trailing rose, and on the other with a vine, both creeping naturally upwards with exquisite curve and undulation, regular in their irregularity,—is certainly of a degree of exquisite and simple beauty such as I have never seen surpassed. In the midst of this bower stands a fine figure of S. Mary with our Lord in her arms, and on either side an angel censing. As one looks at the carving, one thinks of the prettiest perhaps of all the legends of S. Elizabeth, and it may be that the sculptor, as he struck out the bold and beautiful work, which even now surprises by its beauty and its sharpness, thought of those roses of paradise with which S. Elizabeth in the legend surprised her doubting husband.
Above this doorway a pierced parapet carries a passage in front of the fine and thoroughly geometrical west window of six lights. Another parapet, and then a row of traceries and canopies which mask the roof gable. On either side the great buttresses of the steeples give an air of solidity and plainness to the whole elevation, which I think very satisfactory. A two-light window on the same level as the great west window, and very long narrow belfry windows, also of two lights, are the only openings in the towers. The buttresses finish with pinnacles, and the towers with pierced parapets, above which, on the cardinal sides, are gables with windows, and at their summit an octangular open parapet, from which the spires then rise without further break or ornament. The composition is unusual and very good.
Besides these western steeples there is a turret of poor and modern character over the intersection of the transept and other roofs.
And now let us enter, and we shall find ourselves in what seems like a very lantern; windows everywhere, tier above tier, and admitting a flood of light which is bearable only when—as happily still in the choir—all the windows are filled with the richest stained glass.
The architectural peculiarities of the exterior are as marked but not as intelligible in the interior; and one cannot cease to regret the effect of the reiteration of the same window everywhere: otherwise, however, the interior is full of beauty; the nave piers very simple—large circles with four engaged shafts—very lofty and with finely carved capitals. The transept piers are clustered, and the groining throughout is very simple, but of exquisite proportions.
And now I must go on to describe the fittings and arrangements of this interior, which are so perfect as to make it, perhaps, the most interesting and complete church in Germany.
The choir extends to the western side of the transepts, and is finished towards the nave with a high stone screen, against the western side of which is a large people’s altar. The screen is traceried and panelled over its whole western surface, and surmounted by a delicate open arcade finished with pinnacles and gablets; the portion over the altar being elaborated so as to form a reredos rather than a screen. The only openings in this screen are a row of small windows (as one may almost call them), opening just above the backs of the stalls, which in the choir are continued not only on the north and south sides, but quite across the west side also. The only entrance to the choir, therefore, is on either side from the transepts to the east of the stalls. On the eastern face of the screen, a kind of large ambon is corbelled forward in the centre, just the width of the people’s altar; and above this rose—I say “rose,” for when I was there, it was lying on the floor, as a first step to “restoration,” which may not, I trust, mean “destruction,”—a grand trefoiled arch of timber, covered with very boldly carved natural foliage, and flanked by two massive pinnacles. All trace of the figures is gone, but there can be no doubt that this arch and the pinnacles bore on their summits the Crucifix with the figures of S. Mary and S. John; and, indeed, the marks of their having once been affixed still remain.
In the choir there is a double row of stalls round three sides, the subsellae having low original desks in front of them. These are perfect all round, and, as I need hardly say, valuable for their rarity. The stalls are finely treated, and the upper row is well raised. The effect of the whole is most singular and very new to an English eye, for though, as I had occasion to show at Naumburg, and as I saw elsewhere in the same part of Germany, stalls against the centre of the eastern side of a screen are not uncommon, I have nowhere else seen such a complete shutting-off of the choir from the church as has from the very first existed here. There is a space between the back of the stalls and the rood-screen, in which probably an entrance was originally contrived to the ambo under the rood, though of this no trace now remains.
There are no parcloses between the choir and the transepts, whilst between the latter and the aisles of the nave there are only rude and modern screens, without any trace of the original arrangement.
And now that we are in the choir, the most noticeable feature is the altar with its reredos, and its great standard candles on either side.79 The reredos is elaborately decorated with colour, and consists of three very fine trefoiled arches with crocketed gables above, and elaborate and lofty pinnacles between them. The spaces within the three arches are much recessed, and ornamented at the back with sculpture of figures in niches, and tracery; the whole very full of delicate taste in its execution. The altar is perfectly plain and solid, with a moulded mensa, and footpace of three steps in front and at the ends. It stands, of course, on the chord of the apse. The arrangement at the back of the reredos is most singular: there are two lockers on either side, and in the centre a doorway, which when opened discloses steps leading down to the space under, and enclosed by, the altar. In this space there are five square recesses below the level of the floor: three on the west side, and one at each end; the dimensions of this chamber are 8 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in., and 7 ft. 3 in. to the under side of the mensa of the altar; the recesses in it are 1 ft. 8¾ in. wide by 1 ft. 7 in. deep. But one of the most singular features in it is, that there were evidently originally sliding shutters in front of each of the three recessed niches which form the front of the reredos. These are all gone, but the grooves remain both above and below, and leave not a shadow of doubt as to their former existence. There are two grooves in front of each division, and of course there are corresponding openings in the mensa of the altar. The arrangement is so new to me, that it is difficult to say exactly for what specific purpose it may have been made; but it seems obvious that it might allow of great variety of decoration or illustration of subjects suited to the varying seasons of the Christian year, supposing the sliding shutters to have been decorated with paintings.
To the south of the altar are oak sedilia—a long seat undivided, but with five canopies above: the work all good, but defective in not having its divisions marked through the whole height.
The windows in the choir are, as I have before observed, full of fine stained glass, some of which is of very early character. The lower tier of windows is filled with subjects in medallions, the upper with two rows of figures and canopies—a satisfactory and common arrangement in old work.
Some old lockers in the walls, and banners suspended round the apse, serve to complete a most striking and long-to-be-remembered tout ensemble.
Unfortunately there are no signs of any ancient pavement, unless we take for old the wretched gravestones of the Landgraves of Hesse and their family, which almost cover the floor. They are effigies of recumbent figures in not very low relief, but partly sunk below the proper level of the floor and partly raised. One stumbles over these wretched man-traps at every step, and wishes heartily that such a device for damaging ankles had never been invented. In the south transept there are a number of high tombs with recumbent effigies, beginning with one of early date and fine character.
The north transept, however, contains something better than these monuments, and one of the greatest curiosities of the church—the chapel, as they call it, of S. Elizabeth. It never had an altar, and was not a chapel, but simply a very beautiful kind of tabernacle, within which was deposited the marvellously beautiful shrine in which were preserved the relics of the saint, and which—now removed to the sacristy—is still the great treasure of the church. The relics were all dispersed, I believe, at the time of the Reformation, though the church is still held by the Catholics. This tabernacle, if I may so call it, is a rectangular erection, narrow at the east and west, and with its principal front towards the south. A trefoiled arch on each face, supported upon clusters of shafts at the four angles, forms the design, the arches inclosed within a square projecting moulding, with their spandrels not carved but bearing marks of painting. The great beauty of the work is the exquisite foliage which is carved in such masses all round the arches and elsewhere as quite to take the place of mouldings. All this foliage is natural, much varied, and undercut with such boldness as to stand out in very great relief. I would that every carver in England could have the opportunity to study this exquisite work, and still more, the sense to profit by it. All the openings are filled in with iron grilles; and the whole is just large enough to contain and protect the shrine. It stands upon double steps, which are prolonged to form a footpace for an altar which has been built against its west side, and which, on the south, are worn into hollows by the knees of pilgrims.
Above the stone work is an open wooden railing, apparently of the same date; and this incloses a space which is reached by a staircase from behind. In the reredos of the altar erected against the shrine are some sculptures from the life of the saint, her death, her burial, and the exaltation of her relics after canonization, etc., whilst on the shutters are paintings representing some of the more remarkable subjects in her story.
The shrine has been removed for safety to the sacristy, and is carefully guarded and fenced about with ironwork, as well it may be. It is an exquisite work of the best period—circa 1280–1300—covered with the most delicate work in silver-gilt and adorned profusely with jewels and enamels, and on the whole I think the finest shrine I have ever seen.
The doors in the sacristy and elsewhere throughout the church are of deal, and were originally covered with linen or leather, which as far as I could make out was always coloured a bright red; it is a most curious evidence of the extent to which colour was introduced everywhere, and must have been most effective. It is not, however, the only instance with which I have met; and I may mention the magnificent north transept doors of the cathedral at Halberstadt as examples of the same thing.
Between the north transept and the sacristy is a passage, which leads to the external passages which I have already described as surrounding the whole exterior of the church.
My notice of Marburg has already extended far beyond what I purposed, though not beyond its deserts; and yet I cannot conclude without saying a few words about the castle, which so grandly towers over the old tower and church.
The climb up to it is really a serious business; and when I reached the summit I had to exhibit no little adroitness in passing a sentinel who obstinately wanted to send me back, in order that I might ascend by some more tortuous and more legal path than I had chosen.
I went first into the chapel. This is raised to a considerable height upon other buildings, and approached by a newel staircase. It is a very curious and very satisfactory little building, its entire length 39 ft., and its width 18 ft. 6 in. There is a three-sided apse at either end, and one bay only between them; this central bay has projections on either side, which inside have the effect of very small transepts, and externally are treated as bay windows. The windows are all geometrical, of two lights, and very good detail. Externally, there are buttresses at the angles of the apse, which rise out of the much thicker walls of the rooms below the chapel, and do not go down to the ground. In the eastern apse there are a piscina and a locker. The old pavement still remains; it is all of red tile, arranged in large circles, with tiles generally triangular in shape and of various sizes. Unfortunately, this little chapel is full of galleries and pews.
From hence I ascended to the Ritter-Saal, a fine large groined hall, somewhat like the well known hall in the Stadt-Haus at Aix-la-Chapelle. It is divided by a row of columns down the centre, from which the groining-ribs spring, and is about 100 feet long by 42 feet wide. Each bay has a very fine four-light transomed window, and the whole is of early date. Below it, on the ground floor, is a smaller hall, the groining of which springs from a central shaft, and the windows in which are of three and five transomed lights, and of very early character.
The interest of both these halls is very great, as they are quite untouched, and of a rare date for domestic work on such a scale. The exterior of this portion of the buildings is very fine, boldly buttressed, with great angle turrets, and occupying just the edge of the cliff.
The castle stands upon a narrow prong of hill, very precipitous on three sides, and all around its base the town clusters; on one side is the grand church of S. Elizabeth, looking most admirable in this capital bird’s-eye view, and on the other a long flight of steps leads to a church which from above looks very well, but which did not repay examination, its only interesting feature being an old Sakraments-Häuslein.
I walked back from the castle by a roundabout path all through the old town, and reached my inn too late to get on to Frankfort by the train I had fixed on; but I was not sorry, as I had an excuse for getting some more sketches of the exterior of the cathedral, and had all the more pleasant thoughts wherewith to solace myself as I travelled through the dark night to Frankfort.
I think I have said enough to show that ecclesiologists may depend upon pleasure of no ordinary kind in visiting such churches as those of Naumburg, Erfurt, and Marburg. They are remarkable, not only for their generally fine character, but more especially for their exquisite sculpture and for the extent to which they have preserved almost untouched and undamaged their extraordinarily beautiful furniture and fittings; and are, therefore, of especial value to us, who have so little of the same kind of thing left in our own churches.
IV — Münster and Soest
In the course of the autumn of last year, I spent a short holiday, not unprofitably, I hope, in the examination of some of the old towns in the north of Germany; and, as the interest of the architectural remains in this district is very great, and our acquaintance with them too slight, I cannot help thinking that a mere transcript of my diary during the time that I was examining them may be of some use and interest. I have already printed notices, drawn up from the same journal, of the churches of Lübeck, and the cathedral at Marburg; and I shall now employ myself in giving shorter descriptions of the other chief features of this journey.
Crossing by Calais, and taking hurried glances only at S. Omer, with its noble cathedral, and the fine relic of the abbey of S. Bertin, remarkable among great French churches for its single western tower, I went on to Lille,—a town whose interest to architects just now is rather in the future than in the past, but whose church of S. Maurice is a striking example of the difference in the conception of a town church on the Continent and in this country in the Middle Ages. It has two aisles on each side of the nave and choir, and is groined throughout. Here we should look on such a church almost in the light of a cathedral; there, on the contrary, it is a not very remarkable parish church. Some old brick work at the back of the Hotel de Ville is the only other old feature which I remember in Lille; but its streets and market-place are busy and picturesque.
From Lille, passing by Courtrai, I reached Ypres in time to spend the afternoon in sketching and studying what is perhaps the noblest example of the domestic work of Germany. Les Halles, as this great pile of building is called, seems to have been a great covered mart, rather than a mere town hall; and when I was there, a fair was being held within its walls, and, filled with picturesque groups of people, and stalls for the sale of every conceivable kind of merchandise, the grandeur of its size and design was well seen. The main portion of the building is of uniform early middle-pointed date, and forms an immense and rather irregular parallelogram, enclosing some long and narrow courts. The principal front towards the market place is, by a rough measurement which I made, about 375 feet in length; very uniform in its design, but broken in the centre by a fine lofty engaged tower, surmounted with a spire, finishing in a sort of louvre, of modern character. The whole effect of the building is inconceivably grand, leaving behind it in point of general effect even (I am bold in saying it) the Ducal Palace at Venice. In elevation the main building is divided into three stages. The ground stage consists of a succession of openings with square heads, trefoiled; the next of a long series of two-light windows with quatrefoils in the head, the openings in which are square, the tracery not being pierced; and the third stage has again an immense succession of traceried openings alternately glazed and blank. The whole is surmounted by a lofty traceried parapet corbelled out, and the steep and original timber roof is surmounted with a ridge-crest of stone, of more delicate character than I have ever seen elsewhere. The front is finished at the angles with immense octangular pinnacles, corbelling out at their base from the wall, and the tower, which rises two stages above the ridge of the roof, has also at its angles similar pinnacles. The general motif of the entire front is continued happily in the steeple, the faces of which are occupied with rows of lofty windows of two lights. From the belfry, and from within another corbelled parapet, springs the spire, which, at first square, becomes, below the tourelle on its summit, an octagon.
Immediately behind Les Halles, stands the cathedral. This has a fine western tower, built circa A.D. 1380, and remarkable for the triple buttresses at its angles. The west door is double, and set within an enclosing arch with the west window, in a common German fashion. The interior is lofty and spacious, with cylindrical shafts, whose capitals have simple foliage of the thirteenth century. The triforium is good, and some of the clerestory (e.g. that in the south transept) is also early and good; but the whole church is not by any means of the first order. The south transept has recently been very creditably restored, the new carving being executed with much spirit. The east end is remarkable externally for its tall buttresses, without weatherings, and for the deep arches under which the windows are set, and which give the building too much of a skeleton effect to be pleasing. A rather graceful turret (of Renaissance character) surmounts the crossing.
The cathedral and Les Halles, though close together, are not absolutely parallel, but the combination of the two buildings, with their towers and turrets, and two other towers, is very good, and gives an imposing effect to the general views of the old city.
It is to be observed, that though in Les Halles the pointed arch and the very best window-tracery are everywhere used, there is no possibility of mistaking it for a church, or even for a religious building.
There are many old houses in the town, generally of the sixteenth century, with stepped gables, and four-centred window-heads with carved tympana; but their effect generally is not satisfactory.
Between Ypres and Courtrai (whither I next journeyed) are some large churches, of which that at Comines would, I think, repay examination. Courtrai has not much to call for remark; though its market place is quaint, picturesque, and irregularly grouped, with a clock-tower, turreted at the angles and with a spire-like capping, rising suddenly out from among its houses, out of whose windows sound forth constantly those cheery chimes which give so much colour to the recollection of all the towns in this chime-loving part of the world. At the back of the market place a fine middle-pointed church tower rises, capped with a most picturesque slated tourelle. The church to which it is attached is the largest in Courtrai, but not remarkable. It has an apsidal projecting chapel in the second bay from the west, noticeable in that the axis of the apse is north and south. The other churches are of little value, and much mutilated. Notre Dame has a western tower, and a chapel added on the south side of the choir which has pinnacles, and a bell-turret on the gable, of very good character.
Perhaps the most interesting building in the town is the town hall. It is of late date, and the tracery of the windows, and the figures which once adorned the front between the windows, are all destroyed. The doors are original, and an old staircase with panelled sides, and partly old metal balustrade, leads to the hall on the first floor. This has a fine simple open roof of timber, with double collar-beams and arched braces: this, I fear, is no longer visible, as, when I was there, workmen were just about to begin the erection of a ceiling under it, to make the room fit for the reception of the King of the Belgians. In two side rooms there are very remarkable fireplaces, one of which is well known by Haghe’s drawing. The finer of the two is adorned with a profusion of sculptures representing the Vices and Virtues and very striking in their treatment.
From Courtrai, a short journey by railway brought me to Tournai—a town not, I think, so well known as it ought to be for its magnificent cathedral—doubtless the finest, by very far, in Belgium. The nave and transepts are Romanesque. In the former, there is that quadruple division in height so frequent in the thirteenth century churches in the neighbouring part of France. The transepts are very noble, and ended with grand apses, and both they and the choir are very much more lofty than the nave. They owe much of their grandeur to the number of detached shafts of great size, and to the fact that the aisle, triforium, and clerestory, are all carried round the apses. The choir is all of the thirteenth century, and very lofty and light in its proportions. The windows are being carefully restored; but some bad stained glass has been recently put up. In the sacristy there is a little old plate, of which I may mention a fine monstrance, and two shrines; one of which, of the thirteenth century, is one of the most exquisite I have ever seen, being adorned with a great deal of enamelling and silversmith’s work, of most delicate character. There is also here a fine cope-chest; but I found only one old vestment,—the orphrey of a chasuble, with figures of saints; date about A.D. 1450; the rest were modern, and generally very tawdry. But they possess here, in addition to these vestments, an altar frontal, of great interest; it is embroidered on a white silk ground, with a tree of Jesse: the figures are well executed in high relief, and the effect of the whole, with the stiff conventional arms of the tree encircling the figures, is very striking. The embroidery is executed in the same way as our old English work; but I never saw any figures worked with so much spirit or so much character in their faces. The old fringe of red silk over gold thread remains.
The external view of the cathedral presents one of the most singular, and, at the same time, most grand assemblages of steeples I have ever seen. There are two tall towers, richly arcaded and capped with square slated spires, to each transept, and over the crossing a much lower though larger lantern also capped with a spire. These five spires are well seen from the market place, and with a tall campanile at its upper end, of the thirteenth century, combine in a very grand group. I should have mentioned that the central spire is octagonal with four square slated turrets at the angles. The east end of the cathedral deserves notice; its scale is great, and its flying buttresses and detail generally very good. Chapels are formed between the buttresses and roofed with gables running back to the aisle walls.
The Maison de Ville was formerly a convent and still retains a few old portions built up in the more modern additions.
In the market place is a small church, the entrance to which is at the east, and the altar at the west end. Over the east door are two triplets, quite first-pointed in their character. There are round turrets at the west angles and to the transepts, and a picturesque slated spire over the crossing; the whole is groined, and reminded me of the style of the transepts of the cathedral, though it is not very effective.
Another church on the way to the railway station has an eastern apse, and a tower and slated spire over the crossing. The nave has a continuous clerestory, with two or three windows in each bay; the effect of which is satisfactory. Across the nave, one bay west of the choir, there is an arch with a kind of triforium gallery across it, pierced on each side, and serving apparently for a passage-way only. It is not continued up to the groining.
Nearer the railway there is another large church with a continuous clerestory and large unfinished-looking tower at the south-west angle.
There are some other churches, but not, I think, of great interest. This, however, is amply afforded by the magnificent cathedral towering so grandly over the town, whose only defect in the distant view is the low height of the nave as compared with the choir and transepts.
A sluggish train took me in five or six hours to Namur to sleep, and thence early the next morning by a strikingly beautiful line of railway along the banks of the Meuse; and passing by the picturesque old town of Huy, with its fine church and castle, I found my way to Liège.
The churches here are really too often visited and too well known to require any description from me. I think the little church of S. Croix, with its gabled aisles (the gables running back into the main roof), pleased me as much as anything; it is just the kind of special town church which we want to see more in fashion in our own large towns, adapting itself boldly to every variation in the boundary of the land on which it is built, and giving a very considerable effect of height without extravagant expense.
The metal font in the church of S. Bartholomew is a very admirable work of art, and most interesting in every way.
In the cathedral is a new pulpit, by Geefs, much praised in guide books, but not a favourable specimen of his powers, I trust.
S. Jacques, S. Martin, and other churches in Liège are remarkable for the richness of their internal polychromatic decorations. They are all, however, of very late date, quite Renaissance in their design and colouring, and very tawdry in effect and in detail. The east end of S. Jacques is, however, very impressive owing to the rich colour of the glass in the windows, which carries the decoration down from the roof to the floor, whilst elsewhere, the roof only being painted, and the whole of the walls left in the coldest white, the effect is heavy and unsatisfactory. We have, in short, here a good practical proof—worth a thousand arguments—that colour to be successful must be generally diffused and not confined to one part of a building.
From Liège to Aix-la-Chapelle, of which too I shall say but little. The choir of the cathedral, which had been entirely despoiled of its tracery, is being gradually and well restored. It is both a noble and a very peculiar church, and perhaps the best view of it is to be obtained from the staircase in the old Rathhaus. How striking is the immense height of the choir as compared to its length, and how thoroughly fine and picturesque is the kind of dome, surrounded at its base with gables, which crowns the polygonal nave.
No one who visits Aix should omit to see the treasures in the sacristy of the cathedral. I have never seen anywhere so fine a gathering of mediaeval goldsmith’s work, and a little study of these old remains would immensely improve the work of the few men who are attempting to revive the old glory of their craft.
The Rathhaus contains in its upper stage a fine large groined hall, called the Kaiser-Saal, divided down the centre by columns and arches; it is approached by a good groined staircase, and is now being restored and decorated in fresco, by a Düsseldorf artist, with subjects from the life of Charlemagne.
Near the cathedral is a valuable remnant of good domestic work; it has windows with plate tracery, and above them a row of niches or arcading, the divisions of the arcade being filled in with figures of kings in a very effective manner. It reminded me of the famous Maison des Musiciens, at Rheims.
At Aix I was too near Cologne to omit the pleasure of spending another day among its crowd of architectural treasures, and so, instead of going to Düsseldorf direct, I gave myself a holyday, and renewed all my old recollections of its many glories.
I cannot think that the new works at the cathedral are so satisfactory as they are generally said to be. When I was there the scaffolding had just been removed from the south transept, and the effect was very far from good; there was a degree of poverty in the execution which is not felt in the old work; it looks thin, “liney” and attenuated, and makes me doubt very much, first, whether it is a fair reproduction of the old design; and next, whether the following out of an old design drawn to a small scale is possible without very great powers of designing. So much depends upon detail.
I believe that the building in Cologne which above all others ought most to be studied, is that wonderful church of S. Gereon, the interior of which is so fine, and so unlike what we ever think of doing in our new work. Its nave consists of an irregular decagon, entered from a western narthex, and surrounded by chapels, from the east of which runs a long and spacious choir, approached by a great flight of steps. This nave is about 65 feet from east to west, and slightly more from north to south; forming a very grand unbroken area, all within easy reach of any one voice, and, from its height and rich character, very impressive. The choir is of considerable length, and raised on a crypt. A large modern altar placed on the steps leading to it from the nave, completely conceals it in the general view, and much mars the whole effect.
The filth of the church when I was there was extreme, and the noble crypt which extends under the whole length of the choir was thoroughly desecrated. I noticed an original altar in a side chapel in the crypt, used as a receptacle for candle-ends! The sacristy of S. Gereon is a noble middle-pointed addition, fitted with old presses, and with some very beautiful glass in the windows. This, in the tracery, is very light in colour, spotted with ruby.
Next in grandeur, perhaps, to this church, is the east end of S. Martin’s. Seen from the street below the east end, its great height, and the combination of the apsidal transepts and choir with the fine central steeple produce very great effect. It is worthy of notice, how completely similar all these apsidal terminations are in Cologne, and how like those of the same date in the north of Italy. The apses here, for instance, are almost exactly like that of the choir of S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo.
Cologne is rich in metal-work and early stalls. In S. Cunibert is a fine brass standard for lights, with a crucifix; in the choirs of S. Pantaleon and S. Andrew, some good thirteenth century stalls; S. Gereon has also some old candlesticks, and some woodwork worth notice, as also have some of the other churches.
Perhaps the best example of later work in the city is the fine church of the Minorites, a good fourteenth century building, with a lofty and elegant lead turret rising out of the centre of the roof.
I found in several of the Cologne churches services in the morning, attended exclusively by children. They had no seats, but a succession of boards, with small kneeling-stools at regular intervals, were provided for them. The singing was uncommonly good and hearty, and after one of the services (at S. Maria in Capitolio), I asked the children about it, and they told me that they went every day before school. I looked at some of their school-books, and found that they had a rather full Scripture history abridgment; and among other books one full of songs and hymns, which seemed to be particularly good and spirited—hearty, merry songs, which would be sure to take with children. We should do well if we could have such a service and such books for our English children.
There was an exhibition of early German pictures of considerable interest in the old hall called the Gurzenich. I found that it was organized by a Christian Art Society, which has a large number of members, and seems to be very actively at work. In the great hall of the Gurzenich is a magnificent fire-place, of late middle-pointed date, and much like the Courtrai fire-place in general idea; there are some very spirited figures in armour in its niches. This building is well known on the exterior by its general ancient character, and particularly by the lead canopies over the figures in its lowest stage.
But Cologne is too well known to make any more of my notes (which might be extended to tenfold length) palatable; and I shall, therefore, hurry on to what is, I believe, newer ground to most ecclesiologists than are its time-honoured and well known buildings.
From Deutz (the bridge to which place from Cologne affords the best general view of the city) a few hours of railway took me to Hamm, and thence by a branch I reached Münster. The country here is cheerful and English-looking; though rather flat, it is woody and well cultivated, and thickly populated,—at least, so I gathered by the multitude of passengers who swarmed at every station, all in blue smocks, and all smoking vehemently.
The churches and domestic buildings at Münster are almost equally interesting. Of the latter, the Rathhaus is the most remarkable. It is very elaborate and beautiful in all its details, but (like most of the house-fronts here) boasts of a regular show front. The ground stage consists of four open arches; the next, of four richly-traceried windows, divided by figures in niches, carved with great spirit; and above this is an immense stepped gable-end, divided into seven panels in width, and rising to about twice the height of the real roof. It is pinnacled, and filled with open traceries, which, being pierced above the roof, show the sky through their openings. The lower part of the building is of the best middle-pointed, but in the gable some of the tracery is ogee and poor.
This front was followed in Münster throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, as also by the Renaissance school, so that the whole town is full of arcaded streets, like an Italian town, and all the houses have more or less exaggerated fronts, stepped and pinnacled high above the roof-line. The tout ensemble of such a town, it may be imagined, is picturesque in the extreme, though not so valuable as at first sight it seems likely to prove to the architectural traveller. The endless repetition of the same—and that a bad—idea, is very tiresome, and so, beautiful as is the Rathhaus in some of its detail, and striking as it certainly is in its general effect, I have not forgiven it as being the first example with which I am acquainted of a long series of barbarisms.
The only old apartment in this building, so far as I could discover, is a room called the Frieden-Saal. It is a low council-chamber, of late date, which has been most elaborately restored, and renovated with much rich colour. There are some very good hinges and locks on a series of closets here.
Of the churches, there are some five or six old, besides some modern. The cathedral is very curious. Its plan shows two western towers, then a transept; a nave of two (!) very wide bays; transept again; and an apsidal choir, with several apsidal chapels round its aisle. The internal effect of the nave is singular. It is very simple, but from the great width of the bays rather bold-looking. The most notable things here are,—a very noble brass font; a brass corona in the choir; a stand for eleven candles, also in the choir; a magnificent stone rood-screen of late date; a very good Sakraments-Häuslein, and some niches for relics, etc., with their old doors; another stand for lights, something like that at S. Cunibert, Cologne; and some stalls of the seventeenth century, founded very closely upon mediaeval examples. The brass font is circular, supported upon five lions, the two eastern of which are standing, the others recumbent. The stem is covered with tracery and moulding, and the bowl has five large quatrefoiled circles, the eastern containing the Baptism of our Lord, and the other four the emblems of the four Evangelists, with scrolls and inscriptions in red letters; above them, a trefoiled arcade contains half-figures of the twelve Apostles. The corona is large, containing fifty candles in one row; but it is of late date, and frittered away in elaborate tracery and crocketing. The rood-screen has two doorways—one on each side of an altar in the centre of its west front. This altar still remains, with a sculpture of the Crucifixion at its back, but is not used now, a modern altar having been put up in front of it. Two very light open staircases on the eastern side of the screen lead to the Gospel and Epistle sides of the loft. There is also a very fine and large crucifix against one of the nave piers.
The main entrance to the cathedral is through a sort of Galilee of Romanesque date adorned with a number of fine statues; this is at the south-west of the church, whilst on its north side are some fair middle-pointed cloisters.
Next to the cathedral in importance is the Oberwasser-Kirche, a late middle-pointed building; it has a large south-west tower very much of the same type as the great tower at Ypres, having four windows of two lights in each stage, and four stages all exactly alike, and above them an octagonal belfry stage of later date. The first example of this kind of design is seen in the four belfry windows of the cathedral at Soest, and still more remarkably in the steeple of Paderborn cathedral, but here it is developed into even greater regularity. This design, however, is poor in kind, and only respectable when characterized as at Soest and Paderborn by massive simplicity. The south door of the Oberwasser-Kirche is good, being double with square openings within an arched head. Internally the church is very lofty and light, but of no great length, and has an eastern apse, and some traces of old wall painting. A very good brass water vat hung from a small crane by the north door and served as a stoup for holy water; this is a common plan in the Münster churches.80
This church was being scraped of paint and whitewash; so also in the cathedral they were removing some trumpery work of the last century, and indeed generally in this district a good deal is being done to the finer churches, and in most of them a box is provided for offerings for the restoration of the fabric: in most, I should say, which are not “evangelical”:—for in these, save where the government is repairing the stone work, they seem to be satisfied to put up pews and galleries, to keep the doors well locked, and to make their interiors look as cold, miserable, and repulsive as possible. Happily, however, the “evangelical” church is not very actively mischievous in architectural matters, and so one sees altars and reredoses still standing with candles and crucifixes, and curtains of white muslin or silk on each side, sometimes, as in the Petri-Kirche at Soest, double, first, on each side of the altar, and then the same height as the altar, and coming forward the full width of the footpace!81 In the old altars, there are always arrangements for closets—generally at one end—whilst in the middle of the back of the altar is often an opening, which I fancied might have been made for the reception of relics, but which seldom seems carefully enough fastened; the ends of the super-altars have also, very frequently, closets; generally speaking, the altars in this district are solid masses of masonry with a projecting and moulded mensa. This, however, is a digression, and I must now say somewhat of the Lamberti-Kirche, which is next to the cathedral the best church in Münster. Externally it has a western tower82 of considerable dimensions dwarfed in appearance by the immense size of the roof which covers both nave and aisles; this is a not uncommon arrangement in this district, and has a parallel, as will be remembered, in the noble choir of S. Laurence at Nuremberg. Its main result is the great internal effect of height in the aisles and the opportunity it affords of obtaining what Germans were so fond of—an immense length of window opening. The entrance to S. Lambert on the south side is by a very beautiful doorway; the doorway itself is not very large but its jamb mould runs up to a great height and encloses a fine sculptured tree of Jesse; the branches of the tree form a series of medallions, in each of which is a half figure; the whole is very rich in its effect, and the sculpture quite exquisite. Internally the only remarkable piece of furniture I noted was a very fine rood. The proportions and arrangements of the church are very similar to those of the famous Wiesen-Kirche, at Soest, which I shall have presently to describe, and mainly noticeable for the great effect of unbroken space, owing to the large span and great height of the arches, and the small number of piers supporting the roof.
Two other churches near this afforded little worth notice. One of them was Protestant, and as a consequence, was elaborately pewed and galleried; it was seven or eight bays in length, and groined throughout, and entered by a good double door. The other was very similar, and had a curious kind of narthex under the western tower.
The Ludgeri-Kirche is of more interest, having a fine octagonal belfry of late date; this was undergoing repair, as was also the church, whose nave is of simple Romanesque with a good middle-pointed apse. There is another church of small size with an eastern apse, and a very low gabled tower at the north-west angle. This is near the railway station.
For two things besides her domestic buildings Münster is certainly to be remembered: these are the brass work and the sculpture; the latter is generally remarkably good, and I think I have seldom seen more spirited figures than I saw there.
In a silversmith’s shop, opposite the Lamberti-Kirche, I found a magnificent old monstrance, of the fourteenth century, and of very elaborate detail; it belonged to a church some miles distant, the name of which I have forgotten; this man was making church plate in very fair fashion, copying old examples with some care and with a good deal of feeling and enthusiasm; I need hardly say that such men are as rare on the Continent as they are here.
From Münster I returned to Hamm, and thence by another branch railway to Soest, travelling through a country without any feature by which to remember it save its interminable rows of poplars.
The first view of Soest from the railway is striking; several steeples, of which that of the cathedral is the grandest, stand up well behind a bank of trees, and a great extent of picturesque and half-ruined old town walls.
The town itself is very curious, much more like some large Swiss village, such as one remembers in the Upper Valais or the Hasli-Thal, than any other cathedral town that I know in northern Europe. The streets are all absurdly irregular, bending and twisting about in every possible direction, and full of half-timbered houses, which are all corbelled forward and seem generally to be very ancient. I think, indeed, that I have never seen more picturesque grouping of old buildings, but it is difficult to imagine how they can have preserved their old character so intact; there is absolutely, I believe, not one shop with a shop front or display of its wares of any kind, and hardly more than one modernized house, and this is a smart little inn with a nice garden, and a large Speise-Saal whose walls were literally covered with English prints, many of them old and very good. The population of the place consists nevertheless of some seven or eight thousand persons.
The churches have some very remarkable features, of which the most singular is a kind of narthex at the west end, not forming part of the fabric, but built within the churches, the main groining extending on over it to the west end, and a large gallery being formed above it. The best example of this is in S. Peter’s, and I shall leave, for the present, a detailed description of it.
The cathedral is a great, rude, desolate-looking church with but few remains of any interest, save at the west end, out of the centre of which rises a fine simple Romanesque steeple. This has five single-light windows in the stage above the roof, and four three-light windows above them. Then above this belfry stage is on each face a steep gable, filled in with openings of varied shapes—on one side, a large circular window, with three other small openings, and on another side three large windows of three lights, and a very small circular window. These gables are not the full width of the tower, and from the angles between them rise four tall and massive pinnacles, slightly ornamented with corbel tables under the eaves, and covered with steep pyramidal metal roofs. The spire is of metal, octagonal in section,—the angles of the octagon springing from the apices of the four gables, and from the internal angles of the four pinnacles. The size and solidity of this remarkable tower give great grandeur to it, and whilst in the treatment of its lower part we see the type of so many of the towers of later date in this district, in that of the spire we see the precursor of those noble spires rising from simple gabled towers which are the glory of Lüneburg and Lübeck.
In addition to an internal narthex, the cathedral has, in front of its tower, another groined sort of passage-way, opening to the west with six arches, and to the north and south with one arch. There is a second stage above these arches, and then from behind this mass rises the steeple. The whole of this part of the building is Romanesque, as, indeed, is the substance of the entire church though it has been much mutilated by modern additions and alterations. The interior is painfully neglected and dirty, though it is, I believe, the only Catholic church in the place. The eastern apse has upon its groining some painting, which seems to be ancient and very good, having figures of saints etc., on a large scale, but it is very much hidden by an odious modern reredos. There is a good wooden crucifix against one of the piers, and some fine very early glass in the transepts windows. Early in the morning, when I went again into the cathedral I found it full of people singing well and very heartily.
The church of S. Peter stands close to the cathedral; and its choir and aisles, ending with three apses and steep slated roofs, its windows filled with middle-pointed traceries, with the old steeple at the west end capped with a modern bulbous spire, group very picturesquely with the stern and grand steeple of the cathedral. In plan it consists of a nave and aisles, of four primary bays (each bay being subdivided by two arches opening into the aisles), transepts, choir and apsidal choir-aisles, opening into the transepts. The two western bays of the nave are again subdivided into three divisions north and south, and four divisions east and west; all this space being groined over at a low level, and having a floor above, forming a gallery level with the triforium, which also is large and spacious. The internal effect of this low, dark entrance-way is most peculiar. In S. Peter’s, its length from east to west is nearly 46 feet—just half the whole length of the nave! The architecture of the church generally is not otherwise very interesting; though the east end is good, and has some fragments of fair glass still remaining. I have already mentioned the curious arrangement of the curtains on each side of the Lutheran altar here.
S. Paul’s is another church of precisely the same type. It has a good western steeple, with a very steep square roof, or rather, I should say, a low spire. The stages of the tower are repetitions of each other. Both this church and S. Peter’s are disfigured by a wonderful accumulation of pews and galleries; there is still, however, in the sacristy, a very good press, of three divisions in width and two in height.
I come, last, to the Wiesen-Kirche, a most remarkable building, of whose history, I am sorry to say, I know absolutely nothing. It appears, however, to have been all erected at one period—in the first half of the fourteenth century,—and its scale is so fine, and its character throughout so good, that it is certainly one of the most noticeable churches in the north of Germany. Moreover, in internal effect, I think I know no church of the same size which can vie with it for exquisite grace and elegance and, at the same time, boldness and grandeur of conception.
The plan may be described as a nave and aisles, of only three bays in length, about 76 feet in width, and 100 feet in length; the nave and aisles each terminating in an apse at the east, whilst at the west end there is an unfinished front, which seems to have been intended to have two towers. It is difficult to conceive how such a west front could ever have been suitable for a building which was in no other respect more than a mere chapel. It was never, however, at all nearly completed; and now a tall slated spire finishes one of the stunted towers in a fashion which is picturesque in the distant view, but very unsatisfactory when seen close at hand. The nave and aisles are covered with one great roof, and groined at the same level. The four nave columns are very lofty, and without any capitals; the mouldings being continuous to the groining; there being no more than four points of support in a square of about 76 by 120 feet, it may be imagined that from every point the whole interior is visible. The windows are of immense height, but judiciously treated, as in the clerestory windows at Cologne, by the arrangement of colour in the glass; besides which, a kind of transom of quatrefoils runs through all the windows at about one-fourth of the whole height. Below this transom, the glass is very rich and dark in colour; above the transom, for about half its height, there are figures under canopies, also dark with colour, and then a long sweep of beautiful grisaille runs up to the head of the windows, the patterns being all geometrical, and defined by delicate lines of colour: the whole is very jewelly and brilliant, and fortunately a good deal remains. This is, indeed, just one of those buildings which depends very much for its proper effect upon all its windows being filled with coloured glass. All the old altars remain, though the church is Protestant. There is one in each apse, and one against the west side of the two easternmost of the nave columns. All the altars have closets in their ends, and the one against the south-east column of the nave has a portion of a very good middle-pointed stone reredos and is itself richly panelled below the mensa. Behind another altar in the north-eastern apse, there is the remnant of a very fine middle-pointed rood of wood, which is now nailed up behind a late triptych. There is a very good early Sakraments-Häuslein in the north wall, and a good locker in the south wall of the principal apse, both with old iron doors. On two side altars in the nave, there have been erected some very fine pieces of late tabernacle-work. They have been brought from elsewhere; and I saw no place in the church from which they can have been taken. Another similar piece of stone work has been set up in the midst of the choir, and a door pierced through it leads into a pulpit, which grows out of and rests on the Lutheran altar! The north and south doorways are very fine; the latter having a window above it within the same arch, in the common German fashion. The whole church has an open parapet and lofty buttresses, with rather small pinnacles. The view from the east is certainly very striking; and though the idea is completely that of a chapel, rather than of a more ambitious church, it is certainly one of the finest chapels of its size that I have ever seen. The whole building is being restored at the expense of the King of Prussia, and at, I should think, very great cost, as it had suffered much from decay.
V — German Pointed Architecture
Some apology is necessary for venturing to attempt to grapple with so large a subject as is that of pointed architecture in Germany. My only excuse for making such an attempt must be the vivid recollection of the journeys I have at different times made in that country, and the desire to help cordially in explaining to those who have still the journey before them, the features which characterize its architecture.
I have unfortunately been unable to hear what Mr. Parker has told you of pointed architecture in France; but no doubt he has dilated with sufficient enthusiasm upon the exquisite art there seen, upon the skill in the disposition of the ground plans—never equalled elsewhere—upon the beauty and vigour of the sculpture, and upon the nervous manliness and at the same time delicacy of the art in nearly all the buildings of the best period, at least in the old Île-de-France, in Picardy, and in Normandy. I grieve to say that I shall be able to give no such commendation to German architecture, and that, delightful as the recollections of what I have seen there are, I cannot nevertheless shut my eyes to the fact that in most respects it is entirely inferior to the development of the same style in France and England.
There are at the same time some peculiarities in the dates of old German work which are rather striking in comparison with English and French works.
You have, then, first of all, a few buildings, such as the convent at Lörsch, which are said to be and perhaps are of Roman design. Then next there is an immense group of churches of which those of Cologne and the Rhineland are the most distinguished examples, which, whilst it is entirely unlike anything in the rest of northern Europe, has a most remarkable affinity to the Lombard churches in the north of Italy, at Pavia, Bergamo, and elsewhere. These churches date from the early part or the middle of the twelfth century and continue with but little alteration of importance down to the end of the thirteenth, when the strange spectacle is seen of a style almost completely Romanesque in its character suddenly supplanted by another style which, so far as I can see, in no way grew out of it, and which is distinguished from the first by peculiarities of a most marked kind, and by the perfect and complete form which it at once assumed. Then after this style, which again in its turn retained its hold longer than our styles ever did, and which to a late period is altered only slightly in its detail, you will find another essentially German style answering in point of date to our later third-pointed and to French flamboyant. The Germans have therefore less natural growth to show in their architecture than we have. Instead of our beautiful gradations from Romanesque to third-pointed in which the germ of each development is to be discovered in the antecedent work, you have there a series of breaks or gaps in the chain which it is very difficult to account for, and which make the study of the style highly interesting, and at the same time somewhat perplexing.
The question seems naturally to arise whether each of these new styles, thus wanting in evidence of natural growth one out of the other, is to be looked at as a German invention in the true sense of the word, or as the result of the sudden conversion of a slow and sluggish people to the beauties of foreign work, and then their resolute and hearty earnestness in the attempt to make the style their own by some infusion of national peculiarities.
I incline to this last opinion because I believe that no style was ever invented. Architecture has always grown gradually and systematically, and it is quite possible to imagine that Germany may have refused to follow the lead of France and England in art until their superiority was so great as to make it an absolute matter of necessity, and that then an attempt would be made to give a national character to what they had in the first place borrowed.
A slight comparison of dates of a few buildings will explain my grounds for speaking as I do of German architecture.
Of the Rhine churches the most remarkable are the work of the thirteenth century. S. Gereon at Cologne was commenced A.D. 1200 and vaulted in A.D. 1227. S. Cunibert was in building from A.D. 1205 to A.D. 1248, when it was consecrated. Naumburg has a nave of A.D. 1200. Limburg is early in the thirteenth century; and Bamberg the same; whilst Gelnhausen was in building from A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1370. Now all these churches are of such a character that were we to see them in France we should at once put them down as the work of the end of the twelfth century, and we should look for another class to fill up the period between A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1270, when Cologne was commenced or the nave of Strasburg completed. You will see how important these dates are when you consider that at the same time that S. Gereon and S. Cunibert at Cologne, the choir of Magdeburg, and Gelnhausen, were being built, Amiens cathedral, S. Denis and other churches of the same kind were rising throughout France, whilst in England Westminster and a host of other churches of late first-pointed were built at the same time. I do not mean to say absolutely that no transitional buildings are to be found, but only that they were of extraordinary rarity and do not afford the same evidence of natural growth that our own do.
Of work really similar to our own first-pointed I can hardly give you more than one example, and that at Lübeck in the north porch of the cathedral, where—to say the least—the paternity of the work may well be doubtful. Of a later style and almost unique in its character, is the fine church of S. Elizabeth, at Marburg, a church whose date is well known (A.D. 1235 to A.D. 1283), and which affords us one of the few German examples of a style intermediate between the work at S. Gereon and that of Cologne cathedral. This will be seen by the sketches83 which I have here, in which, however, it is to be observed that the design of the nave and apsidal terminations of the choir and transepts are the early portions of the work, and that the fittings and west front date nearer the end of the century. In the still beautiful reredos I think we may see the traces of an incipient departure from the style of the earlier work, and an approach to identity with what I must consider as the inferior art of the thorough German Gothic, as it is seen in its perfection in the cathedral at Cologne.
The aisles of the nave of Magdeburg cathedral seem also to me to be vastly superior to any other German work of the date that I know, whilst the western rood-screen and some of the details of the western choir at Naumburg are also of a degree of beauty which it would be very difficult to surpass elsewhere. The aisles of Paderborn cathedral, too, are of a peculiar but exceedingly good character. But these are, as I think, only exceptions which serve to prove the rule, and cannot in any degree be taken as evidence of the same kind of growth and gradual development that we trace with so much interest in every church and building of the Middle Ages in England. It was an architecture of fits and starts and conceits, not of growth, and full therefore of the contradictions and eccentricities which such a condition necessarily involves. And now having so far paved the way by a short statement of what is really the great peculiarity of German architecture, I will go on to consider and describe the several varieties of the style rather more in detail.
And first of all, as to the ground-plan. It is a curious fact, that each national style of pointed architecture has been distinguished by its adherence to some peculiarity of ground-plan, as well as by other distinctive features. In England, we all know how great was the love for the square east end, and how strong the desire to extend the length of the nave to a sometimes almost unreasonable extent. In France, you know how steadily the apsidal termination was adhered to, and how completely it was the rule to have an aisle and chapels round the apse, making, in some of the finer French churches, an approach to absolute perfection of effect. You know, too, how very rare the square east end was in France, and yet how equally rare was any but a square end to the transepts. In Italy, again, there are peculiarities. Either you have immense halls, wide and long beyond all other examples, and borrowed, no doubt, from the ancient basilica; or apsidal churches, in which the aisles do not extend round the apse, and a series of apsidal chapels are sometimes added to the east of the transepts.
In Germany, as I shall show, we have an equally distinct class of ground-plans. The apsidal termination, though most general, does not altogether supplant the square end; but it is remarkable, that unlike the beautiful chevets of the French churches, the German apses are rarely surrounded with aisles or chapels. They are either simply apsidal, or parallel triapsidal, or transverse triapsidal, and the main difference between early and late examples, is to be found in the introduction of that angularity which gradually became the great feature of all German work. The early apsidal terminations were all circular: as, for instance, in the Apostles’ church, at Cologne; whilst in Marburg, and later, in the little chapel of S. Werner, at Bacharach, though the transverse triapsidal plan is identical in other respects, it differs in that the apses are polygonal, instead of circular. At Bonn, the eastern apse is circular, the transeptal apse polygonal; and you may always take this as one of the certain evidences of later date, in works which may otherwise very nearly correspond.
Of parallel triapsidal churches, the church at Laach, and S. James at Ratisbon, are early examples; whilst Ratisbon cathedral, S. Catherine, Lübeck, the Marien-Kirche at Muhlhausen, and the Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are examples of the same plan angularized at a later day. And you should note, that this parallel triapsidal plan is by far the most common of German plans in all ages, and is, moreover, one of which scarcely any examples exist out of Germany.84
Sometimes, as in S. Nicholas, Lemgo, whilst the choir is apsidal, the east end of the aisles is square; but this is a rather rare and very bad plan. In all these varieties of arrangement, there is no comparison for a minute with the beauty of the French chevet; but it is right to observe, that there are some examples of imitation of this better type.
One of the earliest and most interesting, is the church of S. Godehard, at Hildesheim, in which we have the aisle round the apse, with three apsidal chapels, as well as apsidal chapels east of the transepts. This plan was imitated in the grand parish church of S. James, also at Hildesheim, at a much later date. The apse of Magdeburg cathedral is very much like that of S. Godehard, but of rather later date, and remarkable for the profusion of dogtooth in its cornices. In both, it is to be observed that the small chapels round the apse are mere excrescences, and finish with stone roofs below the parapet of the aisle. The Marien-Kirche at Lübeck is a later example of a chevet, whilst at Cologne cathedral, in emulation of Amiens, a plan of the best kind was adopted, and again wrought out on a smaller scale at Altenberg. There can be little doubt that it was not only in emulation but also in imitation of a French church, that this plan was designed. Scarcely another German church is at all like it, whereas its plan was the common one in France. In the Marien-Kirche at Lübeck, where there is an aisle round the apse, it is formed in the most clumsy manner, by enlarging the chapels; whilst S. Giles, at Brunswick, illustrates another and unsuccessful plan, viz., an apse, with the surrounding aisle, but no chapels.
I believe one of the reasons for this difference between French and German plans is to be found in the very remarkable objection which the Germans always exhibited to any departure from correct orientation of any of their altars. In the French chevet, it is impossible to attend to this; and hence, in a country where the feeling was strong on the point, it would be felt to be an unsuitable form. I believe that it was so felt in England, where, to the present day, the prejudice in favour of strict orientation is stronger than in any other country in Europe.
In Germany, we have most remarkable evidence of the feeling. At Magdeburg, for example, the altars in the apse of the cathedral are all placed with their fronts facing due west, and cutting, therefore, in the strangest way across all the main architectural lines of the building. It was for this reason that the parallel triapsidal plan was so popular.
But there is another most curious arrangement of plan, to which I must refer; that, namely, of which Laach, Bamberg, Worms, Mayence, S. Sebald, Nuremberg, and Naumburg, are remarkable examples, in which both east and west ends have apsidal choirs. The object of these western choirs is not very intelligible; but in that at Naumburg, we have most curious evidence of what I have before referred to: for the original altar in the western apse faces west, and has its back, therefore, towards the nave, so that the face of the priest at the altar would be seen by the congregation in the nave.
I ought to have observed, in speaking of some examples of apses with aisles, that even in these, the treatment was essentially German. The two churches at Nuremberg are examples which, as the aisles are of the same height as the choir, and the whole roofed over with one immense roof, present the appearance on the exterior of immense apses without aisles. And certainly there is great grandeur of effect in such a termination, though less structural truth, and less internal variety and beauty. Still, they are admirable departures from ordinary rules. The churches at Münster, S. Stephen at Vienna, Munich cathedral, Landshut, and the Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are examples of the same kind of design. They have a very fine effect of simple unbroken height, but the absence of the triforium and clerestory is not forgiven, whilst the plan helped to develop that German extravagance of proportion in the length of the window monials which we so often have to deplore.
And here I must not forget to tell you of the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the church of S. Gereon, at Cologne, in which the naves are circular and decagonal, of great size and grand effect, with long choirs running out to the east.
In the earlier churches western transepts are also not uncommon, as at S. Cunibert, S. Andrew, and S. Pantaleon at Cologne, S. Paul at Worms, Mayence, and many other examples; whilst towers of small size were commonly placed in the re-entering angles, between the nave, and choir, and transepts, as well as over their intersections.
Lastly, there is a plan of common occurrence, especially among smaller churches, in which the main building is a large and lofty parallelogram, with a small apse tacked on at the end, without any regard to proportion. There are two or three of these churches in Nuremberg, and many elsewhere.
I have detained you for a long time on the subject of ground-plans, but it is one of importance to the right understanding of any style of church architecture, and it was not possible therefore to pass it over.
I will now ask you to consider, a little in detail, the characteristics of the early German work. I do not intend to go thoroughly into the question of pure Romanesque work, for which I have no time. I am dealing with pointed architecture, and must confine myself as much as possible to it only. We may take the early churches at Cologne, and along the banks of the Rhine, as examples of the kind of work which is perhaps the most interesting, and very thoroughly German in all its characteristics. It was derived, as I have no doubt, from the churches in Lombardy, with which it has very many features absolutely identical. The churches at Pavia are beyond all question the prototypes of those at Cologne; but it is to be observed that their scale is smaller, and, their effect certainly not so fine.
S. Castor at Coblentz, at the end of the twelfth century, Andernach a little later, Zinzig, S. Gereon and S. Cunibert, Cologne, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, give us a fairly complete evidence of the succession of styles. After these we have Limburg and Gelnhausen, taking us on to the time at which the German complete Gothic was in other places in full perfection.
In the early churches there are many features worthy of remark:—
First, the curiously early development of a kind of heavy cusping, of which Worms, Zinzig, Boppart, Andernach, and S. Gereon at Cologne, are good examples. It is essentially German, and I know nothing like it out of the Rhine district.
Secondly, the treatment of the apsidal terminations is very remarkable. S. Castor at Coblentz, e.g., at the end of the twelfth century, has three stages in its apse, whereof that next the ground has a trefoiled arcade, the next is pierced with round-headed windows, whilst under the eaves is a recessed arcade and a cornice, which, in one form or other, was almost the invariable finish of these early apses. Zinzig has the same kind of apse, but it is polygonal, and each side is gabled. The eaves-cornice has a row of square sunk panels below it; and this singular feature we see reproduced very often, as at S. Gereon. The apse at Andernach is nearly identical with that at Coblentz, as also is that of Bonn. The fine cathedral at Worms has a very singular arrangement. The apse is polygonal, with the eaves-cornice and ground arcade as at Coblentz, but in the intermediate stage it has circular windows, filled in with quatrefoils and sexfoils. The apse and steeple of S. Martin, at Cologne, are extremely noble examples of these portions of the early German churches. Generally speaking, these early apsidal terminations are most remarkable for their similarity of design, but their external effect is, nevertheless, always striking.
The third and chief feature of the early German churches is the treatment of their steeples. They are square or octangular in plan, without buttresses, arcaded or pierced with windows pretty regularly all over their surface, and roofed in the most varied manner. You are all, no doubt, familiar with some examples of these really striking towers, and you will feel, I think, that in their whole composition they generally look too much like turrets, and are often too uniform in their height to be perfectly satisfactory. The towers were often gabled, and had square spires rising from the points of the gables; or, as in the fine example at Soest, they had octagonal spires. This Soest example has great interest: it is the first perfect example, so far as I know, of a long series of very remarkable steeples. At Paderborn, indeed, there is no doubt that the tower had a spire; but it is destroyed, and Soest is therefore the more interesting. At a later date, this kind of steeple was reproduced at Lüneburg and Lübeck, in the steeples which adorn their churches.
The variety of ornamental moulding is less, I think, in Germany than in either England or France; but there are some fine examples of carving in capitals and string-courses of early date at Naumburg and Magdeburg.
The groining of early German churches is generally simple. The lanterns, where central, are covered in with a plain kind of domical vault; and the apses have generally hemispherical groining, sometimes marked with ribs. The vaulting is first of all plain waggon-vaulting, then simple quadripartite, and sometimes—especially where (as is often the case in Germany) one bay of the groining covers two bays of the nave—it is sexpartite, and generally then very much raised in the centre.
Doorways are almost invariably square-headed, under pointed arches. In the north porch of Lübeck cathedral, as also at Andernach, and at S. Cunibert, and again at S. Gereon, Cologne, is a very peculiar doorhead, formed by two straight lines sloping to the centre at a very obtuse angle.
The windows are generally of a very simple and rude kind. There was no approach in their treatment to that delicacy which is such an especial characteristic of our English first-pointed; and this mainly because the science of mouldings was never worked out thoroughly by the early German school. It is true that no school of architects has ever rivalled the English in this particular; and one reason, perhaps, for this is to be found in the resolute way in which foreigners resisted any modification of the square abacus, whose only fault was, no doubt, the limitation it imposed upon the outline of mouldings.
One other feature of these churches must not be forgotten, viz., the great size of their triforia. This was usual all over Europe in Romanesque buildings; but in Germany in this, as in other things, the early tradition was long adhered to, and you have nowhere else such elaborate constructional galleries as theirs. Even in works of the latest date they are found,—as, for instance, in the curious church of S. Andrew, at Frankfort, where the outer aisles are galleried all round with a triforium, the arches in front of which are about twice the height of the main arches below them. The interior of Andernach cathedral will explain how grand the treatment of this feature was in the earliest buildings.
I trust I have said enough now to show you, at any rate, the general characteristics of early German work. Its great marks of distinction from French and English work are to be seen mainly in its planning, the treatment and number of its towers and spires, and in the peculiarly Italian character of its apsidal terminations; and, as I have said, this style prevailed, with but little modification, up to the very time at which the completely developed German middle-pointed made its appearance.
I suppose the characteristics of this later work must be known to most of you. Cologne cathedral is in fact so completely an embodiment of nearly all the essential features of the style, and is so well known to most people that I suspect less description is required of it than of any other foreign style. It has been often said—and that by no mean authorities—that the German middle-pointed was identical with our own, and indeed that this one style prevailed for a time all over Europe. The theory would be pretty if it were true: the gradual working up to the same point in various ways, and the gradual divergence of art again in different directions, would certainly be a strong ground for giving in our adhesion to this one perfect and universal style. But I confess that though there is something of a similarity, I have not been able to trace anything like an identity between German and French and English work at any time. I am thankful for this because, with all its beauty, the best German middle-pointed style is not a great style, and has many and obvious defects. From the very first is conspicuous that love of lines which is so marked and so unpleasant a peculiarity in German art, and that desire to play with geometrical figures—I know not how else to express what I mean—which in time degenerated into work as pitiful and contemptible as any of which mediaeval architects were ever guilty.
I have here a large collection (which should have been larger had I had time to select all the examples which I have scattered through my sketch-books) of German window traceries, which will enable you to judge whether I am too severe in my opinion of their demerits. And you may observe, by the way, that whilst in the earlier styles we have very many points for consideration in studying the characteristics of the style, in this work there is a sacrifice of almost everything else to the desire to introduce in every direction specimens of new and ingenious combinations of tracery. The windows at Paderborn are some of the finest and purest examples of early tracery. They are genuine and noble examples, and quite free from any tinge of the faults of later examples, and worthy of comparison with the best of our own early traceries. The mouldings of these windows are simple, but composed mainly of a succession of bold rolls, and so entirely free from any lininess. In the cupola of S. Gereon at Cologne, and a little later in its sacristy are also some good early traceries, whilst most of the windows at Marburg are also examples of the same character. So too are the traceries in one of the Brunswick west fronts, and in the apse of the church of S. Giles in the same city. From these look to the windows of S. Mary, Lemgo, and you have the commencement of the new style, though these are fine windows, boldly and simply conceived and carried out. Next to these come the marvellous series of traceries in Minden cathedral; a series, I suppose, quite unmatched for variety, and indeed, I must own, for a certain grandeur of effect, by those in any church in Europe. You will be struck, I think, by the curious desire for variety of arrangement which these traceries evidence. They are a series of aisle windows, placed side by side in a cathedral church of very modest pretensions. S. Martin in the same town has a great variety of traceries of a later type—good examples of the kind of tracery which henceforward is to be found for a long time predominant throughout nearly the whole of Germany, in which, whilst one admires and wonders at the ingenuity which has devised so many combinations of spherical triangles and circles, one is tempted to think that the men who excelled in this sort of work would have been admirably fitted for designing children’s toys and puzzles, but had much better have been kept away from church windows. Among the other sketches of traceries, those from Ratisbon are of the best kind, whilst those from the cloister at Constance (essentially German work) are almost as interesting as the Paderborn examples in their ingenious variety of form. They show too, occasionally, a tendency to ogee lines in the tracery, which leads me to say a few words on the curious fact, that whereas in England the ogee line was always seen in the later middle-pointed work, this was by no means the case in Germany. The tracery in the staircase to the Rathhaus at Ratisbon, though of late date, is noticeable for the almost entire absence of any but pure geometrical figures, but then these are thrown about in a confused and irregular manner, and are entirely wanting in due subordination of parts. When, however, the ogee line does show itself in German work, it is always a certain evidence of debasement.
But to leave the question of traceries and to justify my denial of the virtues of German pointed architecture, let me ask you to compare the effect of French and German work side by side in some of these most valuable evidences of facts which photography so liberally affords us. You have here side by side a west door from Amiens and from Cologne; and again here, some door-jamb sculpture from Amiens between similar works from Strasburg. Now striking as these German examples are, do you not see how entirely the Germans sacrifice all nobility and simplicity of expression, all that we call repose, to the vain desire to arrest attention by some tricky arrangement of a drapery and some quaint speckiness or lininess of detail?
The German love of tracery is evidenced by the fondness for such spires as that of Freiburg, which, striking as it is, is not altogether a legitimate kind of thing, and is certainly inferior in its effect to the much simpler spires of which we are so justly proud.
I can only say a few words as to the plans of German complete Gothic, and this only to repeat what I have before said as to the extent to which they contrived to build on the same plans as in earlier days. The parallel and transverse triapsidal plans were as popular in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as they were in the twelfth and thirteenth, of which the little chapel in the castle at Marburg is a curious example. It is apsidal at the east and west ends, and the bay between has the window-splay so contrived as to make another apse north and south. It was in detail more than in plan that the later architects developed.
But I feel that time will not allow me to go into the features of the style with more minuteness, or to do more than direct your attention to the strange eccentricity which characterizes the last phase of German Gothic, of which the design for the spire of Ulm (never carried out) is one of the most curious examples. In the short time that still remains to me, I would rather prefer to call your attention to the local peculiarities which you will meet with in different districts of this great country—a part of my subject which would, if I had time for it, be of more value perhaps to those who are going to explore German churches for themselves than any other.
I have said so much about the churches of Cologne and the Rhine, that I need say no more than that they are very much a class by themselves. You have there the best specimens of early churches; whilst in Cologne cathedral, in Altenberg abbey, in the church of the Minorites at Cologne—an admirable example—in the very interesting church at Oberwesel, and in S. Werner at Bacharach, a church at Andernach, and Frankfort cathedral, you have a series of examples within a short distance of each other of the best complete German Gothic.
Then leaving this district and going in a north-easterly direction, you will find a series of towns full of local peculiarities, quite unlike those of the Rhine:—Münster, for instance, with its churches of great height and without distinction between nave and aisles; or Soest, where the beautiful Wiesen-Kirche affords one of the finest evidences of what Germans could do in their palmiest days: whilst in the other churches in the same little known city you would see examples of Romanesque of the most grand kind in the remarkable steeple of the cathedral, and of a very curious kind in the low groined entrances which support a continuation of the triforia round the west end of the naves. In towns like these, and Paderborn, Lemgo, Herford, Minden, and Hildesheim, you will find a rich store of architectural matter; and then if you will venture so far, you will find at Lüneburg, and Lübeck, and Ratzeburg, abundant examples (as I have once before explained in this room) of the German mode of building in brick developed in a group of churches quite unlike any others in Germany, and most interesting in every point of view. Then again there are those curious churches at Brunswick and Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Burg, whose west fronts, contrived apparently solely for the sake of obtaining space for the display of immense window traceries, are so completely local and so thoroughly, I suppose I may say, an invention! Here too you will see the churches almost invariably with gabled aisles,—sometimes, as in the cathedral at Lemgo, so gabled at the sides that one doubts which is the side and which the end, and sometimes, as in a church at Brunswick, filled with tracery and panelling of extreme beauty. Then again at Halberstadt, Erfurt, Naumburg, and Marburg, you may see some of the most excellent work in all Germany of the best period. And if you go further south, to where Nuremberg takes you back in almost all externals to the sixteenth century, or where Ratisbon to the thirteenth, you will find yourselves again in the neighbourhood of brick churches, at Landshut and Munich: and lastly at Freiburg you may see one of the very best of German churches, eclipsed though it undoubtedly is by the unequalled (in Germany) nave of the thoroughly German cathedral of Strasburg.
I can but give you a hurried list of names, but not without a warm recommendation to you to go and see for yourselves how very much is to be learnt in all these churches, not only in architectural matters, but even much more in ecclesiological. Germany is the one part of Europe in which the furniture of the Middle Ages still remains. There where in Protestant Nuremberg every altar still stands with its white cloth, and candles, and crucifix; where the great rood still hangs aloft in the churches; where in one church, as at Brandenburg, one may see some thirty or forty mediaeval vestments still hanging untouched in their old presses; where you may see screens of every date, from early Romanesque to the latest pointed; where coronae, and all kinds of metal furniture and ancient work of a date far earlier than any other country in Europe can show are still preserved; where, as in the choirs of Halberstadt and Hildesheim, the old illuminated office books still rest upon the old choir desk; where hangings of quaint and gorgeous patterns still hang round the choirs, and where triptychs and carved retables are so common that one forgets to take note of them;—there it is, I say, that you must go if you would wish to study and to understand fully the ecclesiology of the Middle Ages. It is indeed a country full of the most wonderful interest to the ecclesiologist in all ways, and I am anxious to say that though I have been asked by your committee to give a second paper on Italian architecture, I feel very strongly that I should be doing their work much better by telling you somewhat of all those things to which I have just referred. In the first place, I have said my say on Italy, and have nothing new to tell you; and secondly, I have been obliged to avoid saying one word either on the furniture or glass of German churches, or on the domestic architecture in which the country is so rich,—and on all these points I should be only too glad at some future day to give you some notes of what I have seen.
Footnotes
1 Since these words were written that country has seen another harvest time; the fields have been ploughed with the trenches of armies and harrowed by the bomb and bullet: Street’s record of what men saw fifty years ago has grown precious for us who shall never see it more.
2 Your man of genius has run ahead of fashion by forty years. This description reads like the account of a house finished last week somewhere up the River or on the Main Line.
3 Note from the sketch-book: Tournus has a fine Romanesque church with one complete and one unfinished steeple at the west end and another complete steeple on the north side in about the position (I think) of a transept. These two steeples have two arcaded stages of about equal height above the roof and are finished with square tiled spires in a very characteristic manner. (These square spires seem to be of very frequent occurrence in this district.) Just in front of the church are two round towers which seem to form a gateway and the space between the western steeples of the church is finished horizontally with a crenelated parapet on a machicoulis—the battlements pierced with openings of this kind ✠—the whole looks as though done with a view to defence.
4 General de Boigne, d. 1830.—G. G. K.
5 These must be those now given to Cavallini and his school; and Street’s taste comes out right where knowledge was a-wanting.—G. G. K.
6 If Street did not know the name, how should the editor?—G. G. K.
7 This will be Messer Cino—of Dante and Mr. Hewlett.—G. G. K.
8 Eastern? queries Street in pencil.
9 Attributed to Jacopo della Quercia; it is not hard to divine why, when Donatello had failed to satisfy, Jacopo should offend.—G. G. K.
10 Qy.: S. Vincent?—G. G. K.
11 The same ornamentation appears in the doorways opening out of the Great Cloister at Las Huelgas (province of Burgos, Spain).—G. G. K.
12 The plan of six-foot cubicles, open above, with separate windows but a single lofty roof, carried on immense stone arches spanning the vast hall, is that of the great dormitory at the Cistercian abbey of Poblet, in Cataluña.—G. G. K.
13 Our ancient sculpture is therefore of inexpressible value to us; and it is to be hoped that we shall hear less and less of that destructive and dangerous process called “restoration” in connection with it. The Guardian lately contained a paragraph stating that a London carver is employed on the restoration of the ancient figure-sculpture at Lincoln. I shudder to think of the havoc which (if I may judge of him by the former performances of his class) he must be making. If the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln possessed a picture by an old master, would they employ a painter to touch up the noses and put in new heads where the old painting was defective? Assuredly not. And can they not feel that any sculpture is just as much a work of art, owing all its interest to the genius of the artist, as any painting can be, and as far beyond restoration therefore?
14 I am, of course, aware that some of these churches are not locally situated within the Île de France, and one of them—Rouen Cathedral—might have been expected to be purely Norman in its character. To my mind, however, it represents a fusion between the Norman and the real French style, affected, moreover, at first to some extent by Italian influences. And Rouen, as well as most of these churches, was comprised within the Domaine Royale before the death of Philip Augustus.
15 The plan of an aisle or “procession-path” without chapels is, in execution, the only form of apse, the effect of which is decidedly inferior to our English square ends. It is on the exterior that its deformity is most conspicuous.
16 The chapels round the apse of Senlis Cathedral form an intermediate link between the two plans at S. Leu. They form exactly half a circle on plan, and have only two bays, one of which is lighted with a window. Externally they have stone roofs, finishing under the triforium windows. These two churches should be studied and compared together.
17 No one who visits S. Leu should omit to go also to Senlis. He will find a tower and spire of unusual—if not unique—beauty and elegance. There are two fine desecrated churches, and other remains which, with the charming cathedral, make a tout ensemble not easily forgotten. It is a walk of about six miles only from S. Leu—passing by Chantilly.
18 I copied the following from the “Tariff” of the seats in S. Étienne:—
“Une stalle haute par année, 8 fr.
Une stalle basse par année, 5 fr.
Les deux premiers bancs à chaque côté du chœur, 8 fr.
Les deux centres bancs derrière l’autel, 7 fr. 50 c.”
19 See the Illustration of a Wheel of Fortune in Les Arts Somptuaires, Vol. II., taken from a MS. in the Bibl. Imp., No. 6877.
20 This work recalls to mind the work of the same character at Glastonbury.
21 It is sometimes called also the “Sainte Chapelle” of S. Germer: I know not, however, on what grounds. M. Viollet-le-Duc does not mention it in his list of S. Chapelles.
22 There is some reason for believing that the Lady-chapel of S. Germain-des-Prés was groined with sexpartite vaulting: if so, it differed from the other chapels in this respect.
23 P. 365.
24 These groined triforia are called tribunes by the French antiquaries. At Montierender, where both occur, the upper stage is more than usually similar to our English triforia; and in all these cases it would perhaps be best to accept the French terminology as being substantially correct. The tribune is, in fact, a second stage of the aisle.
25 The abbey church of Longpont was dedicated in A.D. 1227, in the presence of S. Louis. Its value as a dated example is therefore considerable, independent of its high architectural interest.
26 Dictionnaire, Vol. II. p. 309.
27 The arrangement of these gables recalls to mind the very similar arrangement at Salisbury and Lincoln.
28 The autumn of 1860. The original paper, which has undergone considerable revision since it was read on 7th January, 1861, will be found in the First Series of Transactions, 1860–61, pp. 97–119.—A. E. S.
29 I give an extract from “La Estoire de Seint Edward le Rei,” MS. Bibl., Publ. Cambridge. Ee iii. 59:
“Seint Pere, du ciel claver,
Va sa iglise dedier,
Des angeles mut grant partie
Li funt servise e grant aie.
Li angele chantent au servise,
La nuit quant dedient l’iglise
Tant ja du ciel luur
Ke vis est au peschur,
Ke li solailz e la lune
Lur clarté tute i preste e dune.”
This is the rubric descriptive of the illustration, whilst in the poem itself is the following passage:
“E cist si tost cum arive
Entrez est en sun muster;
Li airs devint lusanz e clers,
N’out en muster tenegre ne umbre;
Atant des angres grant numbre,
Ki s’en venent a sum servise
A dedier cele iglise.
Tant ja partut odur,
Ke vis est a cel pescur
Ke li solailz la lune
Sa clarté tute preste u dune
Angles pu cel avaler
Regarde e puis remunter;
Teu joie a, ke li est vis
Ke raviz est en Parais,
Pur l’avisium k’apert.”
30 L’Auvergne au Moyen Age, by M. Dominique Branche. Clermont-Ferrand, 1842.
31 The steps are arranged in successive groups of eleven, with platforms between them.
32 As evidence of the popularity of Notre Dame du Puy this may suffice:—in Amiens cathedral, until A.D. 1820, there existed a series of pictures given by the “Confrèrie de Notre Dame du Puy.” A similar confrèrie existed at Limoges.—G. E. S. There is an image and a devotion of N. D. du Puy at Estella in Navarre, carried thither by French pilgrims.—G. G. K.
33 The passage to the right is evidently modern, that to the left looks as though it were ancient, but a protest against the removal of some ancient work, in the course of constructing it, which I have found in the Bulletin Monumental [A. de Caumont], seems to show that it is not so.
34 S. Martin d’Ainay, at Lyon, is a parallel triapsidal church, with a central dome, and a western tower of unusual and picturesque outline, adorned largely with inlaid tiles and bricks.
35 At present the exterior of the lantern is covered with a domical roof; but an illustration that I have seen shows it finished with a low-pitched tile roof, and without any of the inlaid mosaic which is now upon it.
36 The division of the building into work done at various epochs is beyond question, though there may be some question as to the date I assign.
37 Mérimée, Notes d’un Voyage en Auvergne, p. 226.
38 See Viollet-le-Duc (Dictionnaire, art. “Clocher,” pp. 312–18) for a reference to this influence of the Rhine churches.
39 M. Viollet-le-Duc considers the earliest part of the cloister to date from the tenth century; M. Mérimée thinks the eleventh century more likely.
40 The Maîtrise was, I believe, the school attached to the cathedral.
41 Mérimée, Notes d’un Voyage en Auvergne, p. 232.
42 It is very difficult to understand precisely where these hangings were found. M. Aymard, a distinguished antiquary at Le Puy, in the Album Photographique d’Archéologie Religieuse, speaks of the painting on the wall of the Salle des États, and then, in another place, says that the tapestries given by Jean de Bourbon served to decorate the Salle des États of Velay, and after the regrettable destruction of that hall the remains of them were preserved part in the cathedral and part in the museum. Possibly he refers to the removal of the floor below the Salle des États, for the hall itself has not been destroyed.
43 M. Mallay, of Clermont, says that the mosaic work of the church of Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, was all set in red mortar originally.
44 See further observations on this subject, page 223.
45 The predecessor in the See, Stephen II., uncle of Bishop Peter I., was buried at Lavoulte-Chilhac.
46 A diploma of A.D. 1146 is dated from the “Ville d’Anis” (i.e. Le Puy) and fixes the date at which this “cité” received the name of “ville.”
47 See M. Aymard’s Album Photographique d’Archéologie Religieuse, and a communication from the same gentleman in the Bulletin Archéol. vol. ii. p. 645. M. Aymard mentions one other example, a diptych, figured in Montfaucon (L’Antiquité Expliquée) vol. iii. p. 89, which dates from about A.D. 900. The hand at Le Puy is larger than life, and has a double nimbus round it, the inner yellow, the outer dark red; the hand is white and the ground within the nimbus dark blue. The Secretary of the Comité Historique des Arts et Monuments considers that this representation of the Greek mode of giving the benediction makes it certain that the work at Le Puy is Byzantine in its origin. But one may, I think, be allowed to doubt whether this conclusion is to be absolutely depended on.
48 M. Aymard. See footnote on preceding page.
49 The spire-lights in the cathedral steeple are very similar, and the same form is seen in the steeple of the church of S. Marie des Chases, in Auvergne.
50 Also the octagonal church, surrounded by an octagonal cloister, of the Templars at Eunate in Navarre, and the church of Vera Cruz at Segovia.—G. G. K.
51 The elevation of one bay of the nave of this church is almost exactly the same as that of S. Petronio, Bologna, though of course on a very reduced scale. The plan is Italian also, the nave groining-compartments being square, whilst those of the aisles are very oblong; the contrary arrangement is, as I need hardly say, almost invariable in northern Gothic plans.
52 The cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, a fine fourteenth-century church, is said to have been originally on the same plan as Notre-Dame-du-Port; excavations have proved this to have been the case. The present cathedral is almost precisely similar in plan to those of Narbonne and Limoges (see Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire), and is said to have been commenced in A.D. 1248 by Bishop Hugues de la Tour.
53 I give a list of some of the churches which either belong to or illustrate the Auvergnat type, with their dates, as nearly as I can ascertain them:—Conques, completed by A.D. 1060. S. Étienne, Nevers, commenced A.D. 1063, consecrated A.D. 1097. S. Eutrope, Saintes, consecrated in A.D. 1096. S. Genés, A.D. 1016-A.D. 1120. S. Front, Périgueux, A.D. 984 to A.D. 1047. Angoulême, A.D. 1109–1136. Fontevrault, A.D. 1100. S. Hilaire, Poitiers, A.D. 1049; Moustier-neuf, ditto, A.D. 1069–1096; S. Radegonde, ditto, A.D. 1099. Riom (S. Amable), A.D. 1077–1120. S. Sernin, Toulouse, circa A.D. 1150. Cluny, commenced A.D. 1089; consecrated A.D. 1131. Dorat (Hte. Vienne) and Bénévent (Creuse), circa A.D. 1150–1200. S. Germain-des-Prés, Paris, consecrated A.D. 1163. Le-Moûtier (suburb of Thiers), A.D. 1016. S. Saturnin, Volvic, Issoire, S. Nectaire, N.-D.-du-Port, Clermont, circa A.D. 1080–1160. Brioude, circa A.D. 1200. Orcival.
54 St. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Francorum) says that in A.D. 440 a church was erected in Clermont by the Bishop Namacius, 150 feet in length, 60 feet wide, 50 feet high from the seat of the bishop to the vault; a circular gallery surrounded the choir, and on each side were two aisles elegantly constructed. The church was in the form of a cross, had 42 windows, 70 columns, and 8 doors.—L’Auvergne au Moyen Age.
55 S. Hilaire at Poitiers and Angoulême cathedral have only four chapels.
56 At Mozat is a magnificent shrine of copper, enamelled, and at S. Nectaire a variety of precious relics, crosses, reliquaries, and the like, of which M. Mérimée has given a list.
57 See M. Mallay’s Essai sur les Églises Romanes et Romano-Byzantines du département du Puy-de-Dôme. Moulins, 1838.
58 St. Mark’s, Venice, was commenced in A.D. 977.
59 Plans (to a uniform scale) of S. Mark’s Venice, and of S. Front, Périgueux, are given in Transactions, Vol. IV. n.s. Illustn. xxviii., pp. 172–173.
60 Mr. Fergusson gives a section of a church at Granson on the Lake of Neufchâtel, in which the aisles and nave are roofed in the same way as at Conques and in the Auvergne churches. He says that the date of this church is the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century, but I do not know what his authority for this very early date is.
61 The Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Caen, has its aisles roofed with transverse barrel-vaults.
62 I ought to mention that this dome and the western part of S. Julien at Brioude are much older than the choir, to which I have before referred in speaking of the date of the church.
63 This qualification is necessary, for the curious evidence which M. Verneilh has given of the existence in the tenth century of a Venetian colony at Limoges would be enough to make it probable that, though S. Front is the earliest complete example extant of a French domed church, others may have been built before it and that some of those which M. Verneilh supposes to have been derived from S. Front may really have been derived more directly from the East.
64 There is no end to the diversity of the countries in which they are found. In the cathedral at Worms there are squinches formed by semi-domes. In S. Nicodime at Athens they are identical with those of S. Étienne at Nevers, and the same form is repeated in the domical vault of the steeple at Auxerre cathedral. At Notre-Dame-du-Port, Clermont, the dome is circular, but the squinches below are octagonal in plan, and the circle (which is not, however, a true circle) is set upon the octagon.
65 This statement must of course be made with caution, inasmuch as the invariable whitewashing of the interior makes it very difficult to say what was the exact nature of the decorations with which they were adorned.
66 The subject of this paper, the probable identity of the architect of S. Mary’s with that of Westminster, interested Street greatly, and he refers to it often. The careful description of conscientious restoration has an interest for us as well. I have therefore reprinted the greater part of it without troubling the reader by indicating the trifling omissions.
67 Will of John Bokeland, p. 10.
68 One of these windows is still left in the south wall of the chancel.
69 It appears from a note by Mr. Heathcote, a former Rector, in the parish book, that the church and chancel were ceiled in the year 1777. This is the only note in these books which refers to the building, if I except an entry in regard to the erection of a western gallery, which has been removed in the course of restoring the church. The old parish books are all destroyed, and no record exists earlier than the end of the last century.
70 “Less usual,” but not unique. The church at East Barnet afforded another example of the same mode of spending money in the palmy days of ample church-rates and irresponsible church-wardens.
71 John Bokeland, in his will, talks of the chancel door: I believe he means the door in the Rood-screen, from the nave into the chancel.
72 The central shaft and part of the internal tracery of this window are destroyed, and we have been unable yet to restore them.
73 I see no evidence of the existence of a clerestory; and the columns are so delicate that I think it is impossible that it can ever have been intended to erect one.
74 I cannot express my vexation at finding that in spite of my earnest injunctions to the workmen to be careful, this painted cross was destroyed. It is often absolutely impossible for an architect to stop wilful destruction of this kind. I have sometimes thought that it might be a good plan to draw up a contract for church restorations, inflicting a heavy fine on the contractor for any such destruction of any old feature.
75 See particularly papers by me on Some Churches in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, in the Ecclesiologist of 1850, and On the Middle-Pointed Churches of Cornwall, in the Transactions of the Exeter Architectural Society, vol. iv.
76 There are one or two points which appear to me to make it possible that the sculpture of foliage was not done at Stone, but wrought elsewhere and sent there to be fixed. The northernmost spandrel in the east wall should be examined with a view to this point.
77 I need not say, to those who know the north of Germany, that the arrangement of this church is, after all, only an exaggeration of a not uncommon plan. The cathedrals at Hildesheim and Naumburg, the Liebfrauen-Kirche at Halberstadt, and many others, have crypts, whose floor is but little lower than the floor of the church, whilst the floors of their choirs are raised immensely, and so shut in with solid stone screens and parcloses, that little can be seen of them from the naves. The crypt at Wimborne Minster is a rare instance of the same kind of thing in England; but this is a middle-pointed contrivance for creating a crypt in a first-pointed church, which was never intended to have anything of the kind.
78 It is owing to this arrangement of the nave, and the consequent uselessness of the aisles, that several of the old altars still remain, one in each bay, against the north aisle wall, and one or two against the south aisle wall.
79 I have given a drawing of these candlesticks for the Instrumenta Ecclesiastica. They are not movable candlesticks, but regular fixtures to the pavement, and made in some kind of white metal.
80 I have given a drawing of this vat in the Instrumenta Ecclesiastica.
81 It must be understood that these are not the original curtains; but that the Lutherans have here preserved an old arrangement is very evident.
82 On the south side of this steeple still hang the iron cages in which John of Leyden and his confrères were suspended before their execution.
83 This paper was read before the Oxford Architectural Society, in 1857.—G. G. K.
84 Street was not yet familiar with the Spanish churches, in which it is the dominant native form. Cf. Gothic Architecture in Spain, new edition, I, 58.—G. G. K.