formation and development of a new and original art were found in conjunction; the old civilization, which, between the fifth and the eighth centuries, had seemed buried beneath the debris, had taken on fresh vigor from the ninth century, and had just produced a rare and beautiful efflorescence in the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth; it was then still capable of furnishing the peoples of the north with the examples needed to hasten the development of their own artistic spirit.
The Frankish race has now attained a degree of civilization favorable to a flowering out of the arts. Wherever it has become firmly established, it possesses a sufficiently marked predominance to enable it thenceforth to put its own stamp upon its works, though at the same time it must borrow its materials from foreign civilizations. By contact with the latter it will gain what it still lacks though without letting go of what constitutes its own force and originality.
Now, then, that it was possible for a new architecture to be created, where was it destined to see the light? Was it in the heart of Germany, where the Frankish tribes originated, in regions having only distant and indirect relations with that old society from which the indispensable initiative must come? Truly not, for the contact necessary for this creation was not realized there. Was it in the most remote provinces, where the men of the north, occupying the farthest outposts, were scattered among peoples of quite different stock, manners and institutions? Surely not there either, for the new element was not sufficiently preponderant, it had already been altered, the native blood had not remained pure.
The region where, apparently, the looked-for art would appear was that lying on the confines of Neustria and Austrasia, not too far from the original sources nor too far from the points where the old civilization flourished; that is to say, somewhere in the country between the Loire and the Rhine, where the Franks of Austrasia came in contact with the Franks of Neustria, who were earlier comers and who had, up to that time, been unable to produce any artistic work exclusively their own.
The first wave of invasion had, as it were, not brought a sufficient quantity of fertilizing material to transform the nature of the ground; the importation of a second and more powerful alluvion was needed for this. Then a few centuries — from the eighth to the eleventh — were required for the latter to penetrate deeply into the soil.
We shall certainly not attempt, as some archæologists have done, to settle rigorously the question of which was the earliest of all the edifices to which the term Gothic may be applied. It would be necessary to determine first — in the continuous chain of transformations from the Romanesque to the Gothic — the precise moment when Romanesque forms and dispositions had disappeared and Gothic elements had come in to such an extent as to justify one in dropping one of these terms and adopting the other; this grammatical, rather than architectural, distinction is above our powers of discernment. We will not therefore attempt to decide where the first Gothic structure was cradled; still less will we try to determine where the architect of this embryonic creation originated, although that would be necessary in order to enable one to fix the paternity of the style upon a particular province. These questions seem to us almost incapable of solution, and we deem it wise to stick to the general facts and the laws of ensemble noted above; we would refrain also from ascribing the origin of an event, so important and so general as the creation of a new architecture, to petty and accidental circumstances.
What form would the new-born art naturally take? Military architecture certainly made its appearance at an early date; but it was incapable of producing works of art of an elevated character, for in it art is wholly subordinated to the necessities of defence. Civil architecture had not yet been developed on a large scale, for, outside of their fortified castles, the Franks of the period saw no need or even use for luxurious structures adorned with all the resources of art.
There was at that time one grand sentiment alone which was pervasive enough, strong enough, deeply rooted enough, to call forth a really grand creation, and that was religious belief.
Here, too, we must take into account the important influence which the Crusades exercised in various ways over all the fixed populations of Western Europe; these movements were themselves the outcome of an ardent faith, and they exalted religious feeling to a still loftier pitch; they brought all the tribes just issuing from barbarism, without exception, into contact
with the highest civilization of the Orient; they put these tribes into closer and closer relationships, uniting them in common expeditions and mingling them intimately with one another. They thus paved the way for the rapid diffusion, throughout all the regions occupied by the men of the north, of the in-coming art.
The Crusades caused an extraordinary awakening of the human mind all over Western Europe. Amid disorders, struggles, rivalries, wars and invasions, a common sentiment, a single tie had survived, namely religious faith. “ The world of the eleventh century had in its diversity one common principle of life.... A religious war was the only bond that could
bind it together; the diversity of race and political interests, which kept it divided, could be forgotten only in the presence of a greater and more general diversity. ” Disregarding all distinctions of rank, class, origin and race, hordes and disciplined armies alike set off in succession from Toulouse, Normandy, Picardy, Flanders, England and Germany. They founded in distant lands principalities and empires which were subject to the feudal regime, and which had only an ephemeral existence. But the barbarians had at different times found themselves in the presence of the Byzantine and Arabic civilizations, and what they witnessed there made an indelible impression upon their minds. The remnants of Latin civilization, letters, the arts and sciences, had been dispersed and had almost wholly disappeared in the darkness in which all Western Europe had been, until now, enveloped. On approaching the shores of Asia, a radiance streamed upon these eyes unused to the light.
The impression made was deep and lasting, and it was religious architecture, especially, that profited by it.
Religious architecture had long been in the hands of the monastic orders, which having establishments scattered throughout Europe, had intimate relations at an early period with the civilized world, where they trained or hired architects and builders, master-workmen and artisans; these constituted a part of the order and journeyed for it from one house to another. The Byzantines and the Lombards of Italy, by this means, exerted a powerful influence for a long period over the style of the monastic constructions.
By the side of the regular clergy, were the secular clergy, who were long too barbarous to be able to compete with them. We have seen that the highest functions of the clergy gradually passed into the hands of the Franks, and, in many cases, of the representatives of their most influential families. The bishops and archbishops of barbarian origin, jealous of the influence, wealth and power of the monastic orders, whose establishments extended to the boundaries of distant empires, soon entered into rivalry with them, and conceived the design of rearing magnificent edifices which should symbolize their own grandeur. It was very natural that they should not wish to employ the builders attached to the monastaries; they therefore formed a corps of masters, independent of the monkish orders and bound to the prelates, but who may have belonged to the same race and had the same origin as the others. What is certain, in any case, is that the cathedrals which sprang up at the bidding of powerful masters under the direction of the clergy, were conceived in a spirit differing radically from the Latin, and were inspired by bishops of Frankish origin.
In the provinces fully occupied by the Franks, creative tendencies and an artistic taste hostile to tradition had already formed, as might be expected in a young and vigorous people, that had ceased to be content with inspirations derived from external sources.
Naturally, the first fruits thus realized would at once attract and charm souls eager to create for themselves; a wide-spread rivalry in the construction of masterly works would be the immediate result. This accounts for the rapidity with which the new style, when once inaugurated, made its way over the country and among all peoples of Germanic stock, and explains the fact that contemporary examples of it exist among these various peoples, the origin of which must be assigned to the earliest years of Gothic art.
It was a grand style, and wholly overturned traditional ideas; this will not seem surprising, if the conditions noted above as necessary for the appearance of a really original art be accepted. But many an admirer of this style, overlooking the inevitable and sometimes quite unsuccessful gropings of mediæval builders, has gone so far as to declare that it appeared, from its cradle, as a profoundly logical and entirely rational style; that, even in the smallest details, reason reigned as absolute mistress;