. The history of construction in medieval France can be divided into two major periods. The first, embracing the 5th century into the 12th, is characterized by the survival and variations on the building techniques, as well as many of the ornamental forms, of Roman architecture. The second, the Gothic era of the 12th century to the early 16th, witnessed the advent of innovative methods of building and design and led to a dramatic change in the status of the architect.
The architectural record of France prior to the 9th century is fragmentary. With the collapse of coherent imperial authority in the West and the spread of Christianity in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the church and in particular its bishops emerged as the primary sponsors of major projects. At Cahors, Bishop Desiderius enclosed the city within defensive walls and built aqueducts in the 6th century, while Sidonius Apollinaris, the late 5th-century bishop of Clermont, erected a luxurious villa complete with baths and a swimming pool. However, church structures, not public works, were the primary focus, with the basilica and centralized baptistery serving as the major building types. In the laying out of ecclesiastical complexes, it has been argued that early-medieval masons employed Roman planning strategies based on harmonic proportions, but it is more likely that the simple geometric ratios that order the designs represent the habits of craft practice rather than a conscious continuation of past architectural principles.
In terms of actual construction techniques, political fragmentation produced increased variety. Rather than the Roman system of mass-producing standardized elements, such as columns or capitals, which were stockpiled at the quarry and later shipped to specific sites, building was conditioned by local materials and models. Nevertheless, it appears that many Roman building practices were continued, albeit on a decidedly less monumental scale. Masons continued to build using a rubble wall construction faced with cut-stone patterns, seen in the crypt walls at Jouarre (7th c.) or Notre-Dame de la Basse-Œuvre, Beauvais (late 10th c.), which were composed of opus recticulatum in the Roman manner, or stucco, as at Saint-Laurent, Grenoble (8th c.). The more impressive structures often incorporated spolia, for example, the cathedral of Vienne (5th c.), Selles-sur-Cher (mid-6th c.), or as at Jouarre imitated Roman columns and capitals. The sensibilities and renowned skill of “Gallic” masons are showcased in the baptistery of Saint-Jean, Poitiers (7th c.), where the pilasters, pediments, moldings, and geometrical designs set into the wall fabric become surface embroidery rather than structural articulation.
The loss or abandonment of pozzolan concrete as a primary building material had enormous technological consequences. Although masonry vaults and domes were erected from the 5th century (baptistery of Fréjus) through the 7th century (Jouarre), the weak lime mortar used in place of pozzolan limited their scale, and large interior spaces were covered by timber roofs. Yet, despite their structural simplicity, early-medieval French buildings contributed new elements to the language of architecture. Monumental towers were erected at Saint-Martin, Tours (5th c.), in response to defensive and liturgical requirements and as a mark of the church’s distinction as the burial site of St. Martin. Spacious crypts were created around the tombs of saints, seen at Notre-Dame-de-Confession at Saint-Victor, Marseilles (5th c.), or Saint-Germain, Auxerre (6th c.), or as privileged burial sites, such as Jouarre. The elaboration of interior space and the creation of an impressive exterior silhouette were to occupy architects throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages.
In the Carolingian period of the late 8th and 9th centuries, architectural practice was invigorated by a new wave of Roman retrospection. In the abbeys of Saint-Denis (754–75) or Saint-Riquier at Centula (790–99), the basilican plan with a transept, likely based on Constantine’s St. Peter’s in Rome, reappeared, but both buildings sported multiple
Flying buttresses, Chartres cathedral. Photograph courtesy of William W.Kibler.
exterior towers. In addition to their ideological message, these plans reveal a greater coherence in planning. A consistent set of geometrical proportions governs the design, with the result that each constituent space is related to the larger whole. In a similar vein, Carolingian construction achieved a greater degree of precision as builders turned increasingly to stone as the primary building material in contrast to the irregular rubble technique of previous centuries. At Saint-Philibert-de-Grandlieu (814–ca. 847), which combined stone, brick, and rubble, the masonry is laid in regular courses and ashlar blocks are used to articulate piers and arches. Despite these advances, however, the essential structural characteristics of Carolingian architecture remain virtually unchanged. While walls grew more massive, the main interior spaces were roofed in timber. The combination of groin and barrel vaults, small domes on squinches, and horseshoe arches at Theodulf’s oratory at Germigny-des-Prés (806) hints at the absorption of external influences, probably from Byzantine architecture, but the Carolingian masons of Neustria never developed a structural complexity and spatial monumentality comparable with that of their eastern Mediterranean counterparts.
The quickening of France in the 11th and 12th centuries stimulated a burst of building that produced rapid technical development. Although each region of France tended to develop its own more or less distinctive traditions, Romanesque architecture can be characterized by massive walls and a complex structure that supported stone vaults. As the term “Romanesque” implies, this architecture approaches that of Rome in its monumental scale and its mastery of masonry construction. Related to the Roman opera, its muscular walls were built of rubble faced with brick or ashlar blocks and articulated by applied shafts and arcades.
The realization of many buildings must be understood as a collaboration between learned clerics and stonemasons. Cluny III, begun in 1095, was planned by the monks Gunzo and Hezelo, who drew upon their sophisticated knowledge of geometry, music, Vitruvius, and number symbolism to create a design whose order at once ensured stability, achieved beauty, and symbolized divine perfection. But once these programmatic decisions were made, the master mason set out the plan at full scale by means of ropes, a measuring rod, or simple pacing off, and his workshop then raised the structure according to long-established masonry traditions that did not require the guidance of intellectuals. While there were infinite variations, in general southern French Romanesque employed continuous courses of uniform bricklike masonry articulated by corbel tables and bands and emphasized vertically continuous elements. On the other hand, northern Romanesque techniques differentiated stone types, distinguishing frame from fill, tended to break the elevation into separate parts and stressed horizontal divisions.
Architectural ideas were transmitted over significant distances, as shown by the appearance of the “pilgrimage roads” plan and elevation at Saint-Martin in Tours, Saint-Martial in Limoges, Sainte-Foy in Conques, and Saint-Sernin in Toulouse during the last third of the 11th century. However, the repetition of this scheme, in which the main choir space was ringed by an ambulatory and radiating chapels and the elevation was composed of an arcade and gallery, was likely the result of patronal interchange rather than of migrating gangs of masons. To the contrary, Romanesque workshops, so far as we know, maintained a regional focus. One of the ateliers at Cluny III can be followed throughout Burgundy, where they built sections of churches at Charlieu, Anzy-le-Duc, Macon, Perrecy-les-Forges, Vézelay, and Paray-le-Monial.
The mastery of masonry vaulting was the most significant technological stride made by Romanesque builders. The first completely vaulted structures, including Cluny II (ca. 1010) and Saint-Bénigne, Dijon (1001–18), probably drew upon slightly earlier Lombard models. In the course of the 11th and early 12th centuries, each region seems to have developed its own response to the new technology. Spacious domed churches rose at Angoulême, Cahors, and Périgueux in Aquitaine. Hall churches appeared in Poitou. In Burgundy, pointed barrel vaults were introduced in the churches of Cluny III, Autun, and Paray-le-Monial; transverse barrel vaults covered the nave of Saint-Philibert at Tournus; while the nave of Vézelay received a groin vault. Norman churches, such as Bernay and Jumièges, retained timber ceilings through the 11th century but during the first quarter of the 12th introduced the ribbed groin vault at Saint-Étienne and Sainte-Trinité, Caen. Vaults appeared in combination with a variety of wall systems. At Dijon, the barrel vaults were supported by a vaulted gallery, but their weight reduced the windows to small openings. Such later examples as Saint-Sernin, Toulouse, and Conques retained galleries to buttress their barrel-vaulted naves but eliminated windows. In the “thick-wall” system of the Caen churches, a muscular wall, honeycombed with passages, was developed in depth while the “thin-wall” structure of Jumièges or Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville achieved stability through vertical masonry spines applied to the interior and exterior while emphasizing mural planarity. One of the stimuli to the widespread experimentation in Romanesque architecture may have been a search to combine the fireproof stone vault with greater interior illumination.
During the 1130s in the area around Paris, a new style began to take shape. Combining diverse Romanesque structural elements, such as the ribbed groin vault and pointed arches, this architecture, exemplified by the new choir of the abbey of Saint-Denis (1140–44), achieved a breathtaking spaciousness and visual lightness. In the course of the following century, master masons exploited the structural advantages of the ribbed groin vault to eliminate progressively solid areas of stone and transform the wall into a glazed membrane. With the invention of the flying buttress in the mid-12th century and the introduction of tracery in the early 13th, French architecture combined stupendous size with small-scale effects that effectively expressed transcendental spirituality and intimidating ecclesiastical power.
In writing about the reconstruction of Saint-Denis, Abbot Suger remarked that his master mason laid out the choir through his arithmetical and geometrical cunning. As plans became ever more complex, including congregational and clerical spaces, peripheral aisles for circulation, and a multitude of secondary chapels, and elevations grew taller yet more finely detailed, the master mason increasingly turned to drawing as a tool for design and to ensure precise execution. Small-scale preliminary sketches and full-scale plans of such elements as piers, window-tracery patterns, and flying buttresses were drawn in temporary tracing houses or on the floors and walls of the buildings themselves. Parchment drawings, which served as show plans to a patron as well as project blueprints, survive from the mid-13th century, although their previous existence is likely. The illustrations of church plans, stonecutting, and surveying procedures in the sketch-book of Villard de Honnecourt (ca. 1230) disclose the centrality of geometry to all aspects of the architectural endeavor.
Faced with the daunting task of erecting monumental buildings with the greatest possible speed and economy, Gothic masons evolved a system of production based, as in Roman architecture, upon standardized forms. At Chartres, Soissons, and Cologne, the prefabrication, which extended to pier components, vault ribs, triforium shafts, and window tracery, permitted the separation of cutting and place-ment procedures. These elements could thus be prepared during the winter months, when inclement weather halted active construction, then rapidly installed. Amiens cathedral (begun 1221) reached an even higher degree of rationalization, likely based on production models offered by the local textile industry: the nave piers were assembled from only three elements, the engaged piers from two, and the wall-masonry courses were regularized. A complete uniformity of stonework was achieved at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1241–48).
These new production techniques led to a greater specialization and division of labor as well as a marked rise of the master mason’s social status. He increasingly focused on the graphic design of forms and the coordination of production activity at the quarry and in the lodge, leaving the actual cutting of stone to a second-in-command, the appareilleur. From the mid-13th century on, the stratified workshop organization, together with the use of drawing as a standard procedure, allowed the architect to supervise several projects simultaneously. The names of masters were now recorded in building records, their achievements celebrated on tombstones and in inscriptions. Pierre de Montreuil, a Parisian master who died in 1267, was vaunted as a “teacher of masons” (doctor lathomorum); the Late Gothic architect Martin Chambiges, who oversaw major projects in Beauvais, Sens, and Troyes, was called supremus artifex during his lifetime. No longer a mere craftsman, the Gothic master mason brought his awesome structures into being through his practical organizational abilities, his technical skills, and his gift of design, which seemed a reflection of divine creativity.
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