CHAPTERVII.

CHAPTERVII.GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE FROM SPAIN.That the grandest of styles should be known by the name of the rudest of people—that architecture should be called after dwellers in tents and tenants of huts—that the Goths should have ceased to exist before the Gothic was invented is, indeed, a phenomenon. The word, nevertheless, has served during many centuries all the purposes of a name, and does not appear until these latter days to have been the object of criticism or cavil. At last the word “Gothic” became a field of literary debate, and immediately of religious discussion. Some articles in a magazine, on the architecture of the Middle Ages, connecting incidentally therewith contemporary practices and dogmas, was the first symptom of the hallucination, out of which arose two schools of mystagogues, theologians materializing dogmas, and mathematicians idealizing forms. In these transmutations the gross did not become ethereal, nor the airy, grave; but the solid melted into air, and the spirit was turned to mud. Under this double perversion of piety and science we had the progressive developements for the structure of conscience, and an arch.[370]Gothic art and Christian faith were deduced from Paganism by a “series of conversations”—suppositions regarding the centre of a vault, were called “tenets,”—the change of an ornament was a “manifestation”—finally a cathedral was a “petrifaction of religion”—Artwas called “Christian,” and then, of course, the Reformation could be re-argued upon the plan of an architect.It was truly a Pagan thought to call art-religions the appropriation of art; it was the very life of Paganism, and justly did Quintilian say, that the Minerva and Jupiter of Phidias “added something to religion.”But these things were for those without the veil. The initiated were untaught art and its symbolism, and to them was revealed the immaterial existence of the Godhead, his solitary being, and omnipotent power. “That which was at first a gross symbol,” says De Quincy, “became a sublime metaphor, because invested with the poetry of art.” With us the external expressions of the feelings of a devout age have been changed by the pedantry of a learned one into objects of idolatry; and Christians direct Christians back to the mysteries of Pagans unteaching the truth which Pagans knew, and pretend to reform their own worship by transferring to the sanctuary the external images in which the Pagans presented natural religion only to the uninstructed crowd.In the religions of the ancient world, Fetichism lay at the bottom: the gods of the country were raised into deities, or these were brought down as patrons of the spot. It was an honour and a security to address them; there was no idea of proselyting the arts; the wealth of the votary or the stranger was expended on their service. Christianity presented a new character, the reverse of all that preceded it; men were to be saved from craft and its devices, from art and its enchantments, from vice and its seductions, from the world and its wisdom. It was a religion of proselytism, repentance, and abnegation. It was preached by fishermen and addressed to babes. It thus stood the very antithesis of Polytheism, and the association of art and religion was as essentially an un-Christian, as it was essentially a Pagan thought.Architecture has given rise to these aberrations only because its history is unknown. The architecture of Europe, as revived subsequently to the eighth century, was from the Saracens: they communicated to Europe the impulse which retrieved her from that lethargy, or, as M. Guizot calls it, that death by the extinction of every function which came upon her after she had made experience of Rome and her greatness—Christianity and her light—the Barbarians and their vigour. They furnished also the models and the first workmen. Had it been known that ecclesiastical architecture came from a Mussulman source, surely we should not have heard of “the Gothic springing from the Bible,” and like foolish speeches.Of kinds of excellence, or periods of greatness, architecture has furnished the fewest. How many are the admirable languages, systems of government, and epochs of splendour! The whole human race, during thousands of years, have brought forth scarcely more than two or three distinct styles of architecture. Language is learnt unconsciously; it survives under every vicissitude. A political system a founder may plan. In science, by the discovery of one, all benefit,—painting or sculpture arises when a few excel. Architecture belongs to the circumstances, no less than the genius of a people, the climate under which they live, the soil on which they dwell, their customs, and their belief. The knowledge or taste from which it springs must be universal, so also the habits it engenders.Buildings are raised for man’s necessities, by his labour: they are the creatures of his hand; they are the most permanent, the most essential of the types of his race; they have embraced and protected the lowliness and weakness of his origin; they have expanded with his growth, hardened themselves in his danger, swelled into magnificence in his pride, or arisen to sublimity in his adoration. Architecture has laboured itself into life by long trial and patient progress. Like no other art, it is within the grasp of no individual genius: the materials are of the rudest kind, the labour is conducted in the people’s eye, the poor man is the workman, and the embellishments are of the commonest nature. Architecture is as identified with the people, as the nest with the bird, or the honeycomb with the bee.How, then, should architecture have come into being in the midst of an unlettered race, without a previous traceable conception and gestation; and how should it at once be applied on the grandest scale to the noblest monuments, without previous practice and adaptation in private uses to common life? Yet this must have been the case, had an original architecture arisen among the inhabitants of the North, whether Saxons or Normans. Nor is it a science standing by itself; it is the application of many other sciences previously pursued and thoroughly understood. Mathematics and dynamics must prepare the way, by calculation of the pressure of weights and the power of supports; and above all is such preparation requisite in that style which combines height, solidity, lightness, and symmetry, depending upon the proportioning of shafts, the inclination of buttresses, the curve of arches, and the groining of vaults. How should perfection in all these have been attained, by tribes emerging from their forests, or landing from their hide-covered boats? To-day, amidst the wonderful progress of all other sciences—with models before us—with the greatest zeal and opportunities—seeing the enormities which result from every architectural plan—shall we suppose that it should have sprung at once to perfection among a people inexpert in other arts and ignorant of every science?There were, indeed, before the tribes that overthrew the Roman empire, the models of classical antiquity; but they, when they began to build, built in another style. It is very easy in the varieties of times and places, to trace here and there coincidences and adaptations, which theorists, by the aid of analogies and similes, may connect. It is easy to draw scales of lines and forms, which shall show an insensible progression from the Erechtheum to Westminster Hall; but the style that then arose was as distinct from the Greek and Roman, as these from the Egyptian, the Chinese, or the Hindoo. But had they restored the classical, would the mere existence of the models explain the fact? They had Cicero and Homer, without being orators or poets, and, though England was filled with Roman masonry, the making of bricks was a new discovery a thousand years after their departure. The sight of masterpieces does not suffice, even for copying them—that is a new invention. Man requires living teachers, and these were no more to be found in the organic remains of classical architecture than in their own unfashioned thoughts and uncultivated faculties.Independently of theseà priorireasons, we find this architecture not springing up at any definite moment, or at any particular spot, but arising simultaneously amidst a variety of tribes, such as would occur if derived from a foreign and a common source. Where, then, are we to look for that source, if not amidst the almost fabulous people, which at that very time appeared in the South?It is no novel idea that Northern architecture was derived from the Saracens; but our supposed intercourse with that people is confined to the Crusades, which, coinciding, indeed, with, or shortly preceding, the Gothic style, followed by centuries the Saxon and the Norman; and as the three are so intimately associated that they do in reality constitute but one style of architecture, the admitted obligation is reduced, so to say, to nothing, by the great effort of the first invention being attributed to ourselves: or rather we lose sight of the greatness of the effort by supposing it to have been made where faculties equal to it had no existence, and we fall into this necessity by not seeing how, if not of our own invention, we could have borrowed the first steps.[371]But the intercourse of Northern Europe with the Saracens preceded the Crusades by four or five centuries, and the intercourse of England with Africa preceded Islamism. The first architectural movement in England, in the age of St. Winifred, followed by half a century the erection of the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, one of the noblest monuments in the world. The Lombard style arose in the south of Italy after these people had come in contact with the Saracens, and learnt their arts, and employed their artists. The second architectural age in England was that of the Normans: it was preceded by their conquests in Calabria and Sicily, inhabited by the Saracens, who excelled—as the ruins left behind them attest—in the very highest branches of this art. The Gothic arose in Europe, when the Goths of Spain were regaining power in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and they could emulate the arts and command the services of their Moorish competitors; and the Spanish peculiarities of the style passed into Europe with their name, precisely in the same manner as that of the Norman or the Lombard before them.The most common and primitive style of Moorish arching is the flat wall cut into the semicircle, supported without entablature on wall or column. That is exactly the Saxon: it was only known to them after they had crossed the seas: they did not find it in England—they must have acquired it in the course of their maritime enterprises; and they were familiar with Western Africa, then inhabited by Christians. Hadrian, the counsellor of Alfred, who first brought Greek letters to England, was from Africa. African Christians, as recorded in old Spanish charters, built churches in the north of Spain, where the Mussulmans never penetrated. By Domesday Book we find Africans settled in England at the time of the Conquest. Constantinus Afer was founder of the school of Salerno; and the old British bards mention African princes as the allies of their Saxon invaders.[372]The Saxon race came in contact with the Saracens in the earliest times of Islam by pilgrimages to the Holy Land—they served in the armies of the Greek emperors. From the time of Constantine, an uninterrupted connexion of the Arabs and Northmen, during four centuries, is attested by twenty thousand Saracenic coins in the Cabinet of Stockholm, found in Gothland and along the eastern coast of Sweden.Having thus established the improbability of an original architecture among our Northern forefathers; having shown in the previous chapter the existence in western Barbary of the style which had descended from the earliest antiquity, and having now indicated the channels through which it might have passed thence to Europe, and the links between Africa and each of the races who were distinguished for any of its varieties, I shall now proceed to the internal evidence the buildings themselves afford.The present buildings of Africa are doubtless exactly what they were in the time of Mahomet, and before the conquests of the Saracens. They contain the rudiments of the Gothic, Saxon, and Roman styles. The tomb is a cube, surmounted by a half-globe vault. The door-way is an arch, horseshoe form, semicircular or pointed; it is shouldered by a spandrel. Exactly the same are the tombs of India—the great monuments of Jehangir and Akbar, which by some, from a mistake in the date, have been considered as the type and the model of the Gothic.The building next in importance is the tower, which is composed of these cubes placed one above the other: the inner tower rises at the top higher than the outer one. In their domestic architecture they use flat roofs; but in the mosques they employ rows of gable roofs, supported below by columns and arches. There are sometimes double rows of arches, and intersecting arches. Their dwelling-houses are enriched with a great variety of details, which may be compared to miniature representations of the embellishments of our religious edifices, such as niches, small pointed windows, pierced spandrels, mouldings, and cornices. The same style pervades every kind of building, ornament, and utensil,—their tombstones, their cushions, the wood-work of their apartments, their trays, their stools, the latter of which might be taken for small models of Gothic buildings.It was impossible to behold daily these objects, and not perceive that Morocco, whence issued the people who raised the great monuments in Spain,[373]had been the native country of the Gothic. The long vault and taper spire, indeed, were wanting; nor were there any buildings to which, as a whole, the title of Saxon, Norman, or Gothic could be applied. But then it occurred to me, that these modifications might be traceable through the Saracens, and in their various settlements in Europe, down to the historical period of the art in its European sites. To pursue such an investigation appropriately would require a lifetime. However, I have examined buildings in sufficient numbers to trace, and I think establish, the connection.The Saracens were established, not in Spain only, but also in the important island of Sicily, and the southern extremity of Italy. These were conquered at an early period by the Normans, and the Saracens continued for half a century under them, working for them, building chapels, churches, palaces, and cathedrals.[374]These Normans were in continual intercourse with their native country on the British channel. Passing constantly through France, they soon afterwards conquered England. It was this people who gave the great impulse to architecture in the eleventh century in England and France; and thus arose the style known by their name; not merely raising those buildings by the wealth they possessed in Normandy, or acquired in England, but even by contributions made from the booty of Calabria, and the spoils of Sicily. It is a remarkable fact, that a connexion so well authenticated between the Normans and the Saracens, should be passed by unnoticed by the writers upon architecture. For my own part, when I stood within the north transept of the Cathedral of Winchester, where the Norman portion has remained undisturbed, I should have been sure of that connexion, had no records of it been preserved.Theophilus cites the Arabs (of course of Sicily) as excelling in a branch wherein we have least acknowledged their merit—the working of metals: he particularizes its various branches, casting, hammering, and chiseling.“The Arabs,” says Vasari, “have given their name to a species of ornament, which they have invented in obedience to the precepts of their Prophet, and which is composed only of fruits and flower foliage, and embranchments.” May not this description, so unlike the Arabesque as we know it in the Peninsula, be derived from the chased works of the Arabs in Sicily, where, out of their alliance with the Greeks, a character sprang very distinct from that to which their union with the Moors gave birth in the West?The oldest of the specimens we have in Sicily, is the Capella Palatine, built, soon after the conquest of the island, by Roger. It approaches to that square form adopted by the Eastern churches, to which Sicily then belonged, after there had ceased to be catechumens, and so consisted of the solea and meroi, to the exclusion of the elongatednaosor nave.[375]The chapel is small, but it is one of the most perfect—if not the most perfect—pieces of workmanship in the world. The floor, roof, and walls, are completely inlaid, or incrusted, with marble or mosaic. There is a wide band running round the apse in Arabic characters. This led to its being supposed to be a mosque. The inscription, however, is a long string of honorary epithets applied to Roger.[376]From the succeeding reign we have the Cathedral of Cefala, the Church Dell, Amigralio, that of Jerusalem, the Royal Chapel of St. Peter’s, and the splendid Hall of William I., all in like manner the work of the Saracens. There is no single instance among them of a horse-shoe arch. There is no vaulting of the roof; but in the Cathedral of Cefala there is a perfect Norman arch, bevelled or chamfered, and exactly the same as we see them in the north of Europe. This edifice bears a Latin inscription attributing to a Saracen the honour of the construction, “Hoc opus musei factum est;” but these buildings were greatly surpassed by the Cathedral of Montreale, erected by WilliamII.It is adorned with arches, traced upon the walls without, and they are all Gothic; the floor of the Solea is laid down in marble in Arabesque figures; the walls are encrusted with marbles or mosaics, or covered with paintings; the gates are in bronze chased; the doors and windows—many of them, at least—are in the old classic style of Greece; the outline of the building is also classical and rectangular, but ornamented with intersecting Gothic arches, which spring from the jamb unbroken by cornice, capital, or entablature. On the whole it presents in dimensions, height, richness of material, elegance of design, variety and adaptation of styles, an object of art unique. It is singular that this greatest work of the Normans in the South should have in it no trace either of that style which we call Norman,[377]or of that which is the peculiar feature of the Moor, the horse-shoe; and the two styles that are there united, and which nowhere else are so found, are the Greek and the Gothic. At the time of its erection this cathedral was esteemed the masterpiece of architecture, and as surpassing at once St. Sophia, and the St. Peter’s, of that day. Pope Lucius says of it: “Simile opus per aliquem regem factum non fuerit ab antiquis temporibus.” The Duke di Sara de Falco, who published at Palermo, in 1838, elaborate and beautiful engravings of it, has collated with some of its ornaments, fragments from Owen Jones’s “Alhambra;” but it is as Moorish as the Alhambra itself. The towers are divided into stories, and each is somewhat smaller than the one beneath, so that they have the appearance of buttresses without being really so. The Sicilian author and artist says:—“While this temple was building there arose in Palermo the magnificent Duomo, and the Church of the Holy Ghost in Messina, the Cathedral and the Church of St. Mary, at Raudazzo, and so many others that it is needless to cite. We have ascertained that the artists employed at Montreale were neither Italian nor Greek, but Sicilians; and that is rendered more manifest by the Mosaic work, and the details of ornament and construction so largely drawn from the Arabs, which certainly did not come from the Greeks of the East, but from those who, long familiarized with the Saracens, had imitated their manner; and that a school of these workers in mosaics existed in Sicily is demonstrated by the variety of composition, the fertility of genius, and the power of design in those days, and they all agree with the workmanship of Montreale.”He then proceeds to claim for his country the honour of introducing chasings and carvings into Italy, and Gothic architecture into Europe: the former he deduces from the ancient Greek arts of Sicily, the second from the Saracens.In Spain the Goths were as entirely the pupils and followers of the Saracens as were the Normans in Sicily. The variation of style from the Moresque to the Spanish, or Gothic, was connected with the difference of the social habits of the people. The Moors in Spain remained constituted by tribe,—as much so as in the Desert, although without its space. The feuds of the different tribes of Yemen were transferred to Cordova and Seville; and a fray between two uleds bordering on the Great Desert might suddenly produce bloodshed in the narrow lanes and thick villages of Andalusia. There were also the frequent ruptures and the permanent animosity between Brebers and Arabs, and thus their buildings of necessity retained externally the ponderous and castellated form, while their perfection in the various arts of decoration embellished them internally with stuccoes, carvings, gildings, paintings, enamel and mosaics. The Spaniards, as they recovered the country, were on the one hand, relieved from these sources of continual alarm; and, on the other, were destitute of those arts of interior decoration: hence a more aspiring exterior, and a more gloomy interior; and upon the stones was concentrated the care which the Arabs had to give to so many other materials.There has been a great destruction in Spain of Moorish buildings. We do possess, indeed, but two remarkable ones; the one the fragment of a palace raised within latter days, the other a mosque, the first in fame, but also the first in date, being now 1300 years old. It does not, therefore, afford us the opportunity of judging of the progress of the art. There subsist, however, some smaller specimens of a later date, which might almost be taken for Gothic buildings.[378]The characteristics of the Gothic are—the pointed arch; the arch resting on the column without entablature; vaulting; arched gateways; splayed windows; buttresses; the spire tower, or belfry. These may severally be traced to the Saracens.THE POINTED ARCH.This is to be found from the first moment of the appearance of the Arabs, in countries the most remote from each other, and in structures destined to the most diverse purposes. I may instance:—The Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, the first building of the Saracens, commencedA.D.637.[379]The Mosque of Amrou, at Cairo, the first Mussulman building in Africa, commenced towardsA.D.650. That of E’Naser Mohammed,A.D.698.[380]The Nilometer (lancet-niches),A.D.700. Shella, in Morocco, date uncertain, probably anterior to the Mussulman era.[381]The Tower of Alcamo, in Sicily, the earliest Mussulman building in Eastern Europe.[382]The Tower of Gibraltar,A.D.745, which contains a regular Gothic church window, though now built up. The Cathedral of Montreale,A.D.1174, where the arch springs unbroken from the jamb. In fact, whenever the Saracens appeared, they brought the arch we call Gothic. It is found in universal use by them, and was so used by no people before them. When used by any people, the connexion with them may be traced. In Morocco or Spain may be found all known arches—the elliptical, the four-centred, the horizontal, the surbased, the lancet, the angular—if I may so describe one unknown to us, and formed like a truncated triangle. They had the stilt arch, the ogee, and, at Seville, is to be found a specimen of our recent invention, the skew arch; they had the trefoil, the pentifoil, as ornaments, with a multitude of unclassed and unnamed forms, which may, in our terms, be characterized as pensile, stalagmitic, serrated, cusped, fanned, dentiled. These may be studied in Jones’s Alhambra.CHAMFERING OF THE ARCH.I am not aware that this modification exists on the soil of Africa to-day, unless in a fragment described in the Pentapolis, by Dr. Shaw: this is the modification of the Norman upon the Saxon, and is to be found in the Cathedral of Cefala, and the tower of Gibraltar.VAULTING.This portion of modern architecture is Roman; but it in no way suffices to say that the Roman had vaults to account for our having them: the models of a dead people do not introduce a new art; the Saracens did not copy the classical models. The Moors had, indeed, the half-sphere, as the Romans; but they had not the elongated vault. The pointed and elongated vault, with its intersections, was, therefore, original in the Gothic, and may have been constructed by the Saracens, in Spain. To it there was the closest approximation in their pointed arches, doorways, and windows. The gable form of their mosque roofs would suggest the pointed and not the semicircular vault. Whenever they covered these in stone, here was the point—where their original material, the tapia, failed, it could rise from four sides into a dome; but elongated vaulting, and its intersections and groinings, depended upon the mechanical adjustment of the separate stones. When they came to build in this fashion in Spain (as in Egypt, Syria, Sicily, &c.), their mathematical skill would be called into play, and they must, of necessity, have thrown stone roofs over the large churches and cathedrals which they were employed by the Christians to build.[383]ARCHED GATEWAYS.This is one of the most remarkable features of the Gothic, so unlike the doors of any other style, giving such grandeur to the edifices, and suggesting, even at once, its whole designs. And here the identification is complete—the entrance to every Moorish room is like the porch of a cathedral, and the massive portals that close them with the wicket, presents in every Moorish court the gateway of a monastery or acollege.WINDOWS AND STAINED GLASS.From the want of windows in Moorish houses and mosques, and from the great dimensions, elaborate structure, and important office of windows in our churches and cathedrals, it might be supposed that here we should be at fault in tracing the connexion; but the Moors afford us the most interesting rudiments of the stone-framed figures of our window, and the painted glass with which they are embellished.Above and beside the door in Moorish rooms, there are small apertures for air rather than light, generally narrow, with a trefoil head. Two, four, or more of these may be placed side by side, and over them a circular figure pierced in like manner. In some of the Spanish cathedrals—and I again quote Toledo—there are windows which represent these openings in the wall, andare glazed. In the Alhambra, the Alcazar of Seville, and every other Moorish structure in Spain, there are to be seen the pierced work in stucco, in the form of Gothic windows;—the patterns of these correspond with the tracery on the walls, which being in colour, it was natural to continue the patterns in colour to the open spaces; and to effect this, where the exposure required it, bits of painted glass are stuck into the plaster while fresh. A colder climate would suggest the extension of the glass, the reduction of the stucco, and the substitution of stone for stucco. Glass for windows was peculiarly a Spanish art; it was already known in England and France in the seventh century:[384]the staining of glass commenced in Spain, though it was carried to the highest perfection in France. Two of the colours and substances were designated Spanish at a time when few original colouring matters were employed.[385]The Saracens were, besides, proficients in the making of glass, whether transparent or coloured. The first I accidentally fell upon in the Mosque at Cordova—they used coloured glass for the mosaics; but it was opaque;—they also understood enamelling, and in encaustic tiles they were unrivalled. Stained glass is, to this day, of universal use among the Easterns, who have spread more to the northward, and have adopted external windows. A Turkish room is a miniature cathedral, with its ascending floor; its entrance opposite to its lights, and its clerestory windows,—for there are two rows of them—the lower one rectangular like ours, and furnished with curtains, the upper one of every variety of shape, and in stained glass, and made to correspond with the ornaments of the corresponding panels of the apartment.The apertures in the Moorish tapia thus became Gothic windows, and the pierced patterns of the stucco mullions and transoms, with cusped trefoils and foliage in stone, with the intervals glazed in stained glass: the adjoining portion of the wall must then have been pared away and bevelled out. The Moors were the first people to adopt this process, as applying it to military architecture: they adopted it for their loopholes and embrasures, while bows and arrows were yet in use. Their first external windows were embrasures—churches were built for defence as well as devotion. The bevelling in their walls is on both sides less without than within, exactly as it is practised in Gothic windows.BUTTRESSES.Next to the arch itself the buttress has been considered essential to the Gothic.[386]This member is supposed to have its origin in the North, and to have been requisite for the passage from the Norman to the Gothic, and from the tower to the spire. The buttress is to be found among the Arabs, as early as the pointed arch, and as universally known, though not so commonly used.The square building at Gibraltar, used as a magazine, and with a sort of pyramidal roof, is strengthened by powerful and expanding buttresses, irregularly placed on the angles,A.D.749. Specimens are abundant at Jerusalem, in Cairo, and in Sicily.I have met with no instance of flying buttresses: these, however, may be seen in Spain, carried to a width unknown elsewhere;—as for instance, in the Cathedral of Seville.THE TOWER AND SPIRE.The early English towers are copies of those of Morocco. The Moorish tower stands apart from the Mosque: so do our early belfries and the Campanile of Italy. The spire has been naturally suggested by the minaret, which may be connected with the obelisk, being the only instance of the kind in the ancient world; and the minaret having been first adapted to Saracenic buildings in Egypt, where it was engrafted on theSmaor square tower of the Moors—together they constitute our spire, as seen in the half tower, half minaret of Egypt.If any one will turn over successively the pages of Roberts’s Holy Land, Costes’ Egypt, Hope’s German Churches, Sara de Fulco’s Sicily, and Gally Knight’s Italy, he will recognise the features of the one in the other, and trace the resemblances just as if turning over the grammars of various languages derived from a common source.CLOISTERS.The quadrangle with the columns sustaining the advanced building of the first story, over an open corridor below, is as Moorish as if the models had been sent from Morocco.[387]The court of the Monastery of Bellem at Lisbon, is the most beautiful specimen I know. It is at once purely Gothic and purely Moorish; each style seeming to have taken something from the other to heighten its effect. In the centre is a fountain, and on each side lines of tanks for water, intersected with stages for plants, which are lined with coloured tiles around: there are Gothic arches, filled with the screen or stonework of windows—without the glass, as in the Campo Sancto of Pisa. In the angles of the quadrangle, the limbs of a projecting and wider arch seem to embrace and protect a sharper arch within. This may be seen in Moorish works, and also in the porch of the Cathedral of Rouen. The church belonging to this monastery presents an interesting field for studying the influence of the Moors upon European architecture, and it is in every way a building not less original than beautiful.A connexion between Africa and England is traceable in a point where we might least expect it, and at a very early period—and that is fire-places. “Chimneys,” says Mr. Hallam, “which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome—a discovery of which Vitruvius never dreamed—was made perhaps in this country by some forgotten barbarian.”[388]He refers to Coningsby Castle, supposed to be of a date prior to the Conquest, to prove the existence of chimneys, before the alleged date of the discovery in the fourteenth century. Had he inspected the chimney in question, he must have perceived a peculiar and unique method of joining the key-stones of the flat arch that supports the front in lieu of a mantelpiece. This process, unique in Europe, is common amongst the Moors.Whoever has visited the East must have been struck with the original character of the fireplaces and chimney-pieces; they are an embellishment to the room, in what we should term the Decorated Gothic style. Whoever has looked down upon the city of Lisbon from its garden-fortress, cannot fail to observe the contrast between the small neat rows of apertures that serve for chimney tops, and our unsightly and grotesque expedients for the same purpose. Whether in the mode of placing the fire, in the embellishment of the portion of the room appropriated to it, or in the elegance of chimney tops (so as to change them from a blemish to an ornament), we have yet to learn and borrow from the Moors. These chimney tops and appliances are not to be seen indeed in Morocco; but the traces subsist further north, where they adapted themselves to the necessities of the climate. The general resemblance of feature is also to be traced in the names, many of which I have already mentioned, such as, house-door, barbican, dairy; but and ben, and cabail of the Highlanders; roof, stable, gypsum-house, garret, and even burgh, which we have been content to take from the Greekπύρος, is after all an Arabic word, in common use for pigeon-house, when built in the form of a tower.[389]In conjunction with these we must take so many terms and usages, exhibiting an intimate connexion between Africa and England, dating from the decline of Roman power.In these observations I neither propound a new theory nor agitate a settled question. I present the good and valid reasons upon which our ancestors adopted a title, which we use with disgust and are endeavouring to discard. I trace our architecture back to the people to whom it properly pertains, and through them to an antiquity venerable in itself and deeply interesting from its association with the inspired writings. But it is more particularly the means of its introduction into Europe that it is useful to establish; for this, if anything, might diminish theodium theologicumwhich has sprung from this source. A more perfect antidote there cannot be than that this “Christian” art, this weapon of proselytism, by which no religious community achieves conquests, but by which all faith is smitten, should be itself Mussulman, and that we should owe the architecture (if there were any ratio between the supposed cause and the effect) which we attribute to the Bible, to the Koran.What would have been the reply of the early Christians, had such a mania then prevailed, to those who argued the truth of polytheism, from the temples that had been raised in its honour, or the statues with which they were adorned?[390]What, again, would those have said, whose works are now taken as models, had they been told that in a future age of light and freedom their walls and arches should become steps in the ladder of conviction, shibboleths in polemics and lists of orthodoxy![390]In the long and vehement contests between the Christians and the Mussulmans in Spain, both reciprocally used the temples of the other, which were sometimes even divided between them.“Men have before now been led to adopt Romanism by its fancied connexion with poetry, or painting, or Gothic architecture; and if such men had lived while the mythologies of Greece or of Rome were living systems, they would with equal reason have forsaken Christianity for heathen religions, in which art had arrived at its highest conceivable excellence. The adoption of religious views, merely because they are in some way connected with what is gratifying to our senses or our feelings, and without primary reference to the evidence for their truth, is a proceeding which seems indicative of a practical disbelief in the evidence of any revealed truth, or of any religious truth whatever.”[391]The inhabitants of England, who first introduced it in the North, did not call themselves Goths, but Saxons: nor were the followers of William, Goths, but Normans. The Gothic name had disappeared from Europe as the designation of any country, and the later modification of the style appeared, and the epithet was applied. But there was one country in which the name of the Goth was still preserved, and that was Spain. That name would have disappeared in Spain as elsewhere, had it not been for the Saracen conquest. The Goths had not originally appeared in Spain as ravagers or conquerors; theycamein the name and with the authority of the Roman empire to drive out the Vandals, to put an end to anarchy, to protect property, and to sustain the laws. The people of Spain had evidently been disinclined to espouse the quarrel of the Goths against the Saracens; but, in subsequent attempts to throw off the Saracen yoke, the Goths must have been their leaders; and in fact to be a Goth was to be a freeman, and no longer tributary to the Mussulmans. As the Christians reacquired strength, they could neither take the title of Andalusians, nor of Murcians, nor of Castilians, far less of Spaniards, for these names belonged as much to the Mussulmans as to themselves. They took, therefore, that of Goths, an ancient and a noble name, and associated at once with their national independence, the traditions of Rome, and the authority of the Christian Church; and to this day the peasant of Spain, when he points out a great monument, will say, “Obra de los Godos.” Gothic is to them synonymous with heroic—the Gothic times, the Gothic kings, Gothic courts, Gothic laws, Gothic glory. It marks in Spanish history the period of struggling and triumphant freedom. It is the period which contrasts in all things with that known as “Catholic.”[370]IDEAL STRUCTURE OF AN ARCH.STRUCTURE OF AN IDEAL CONSCIENCE.“Theintroductionof the archunderminedthe Greciansystemof entablature,and introduceda double plane of decoration: theruinof taste and artsuperveningupon this,broke upstill further the Romantraditional arrangement; caprice, and the love of novelty, introduced newformsofmembersand ornaments into this incoherentmass; arches of various shapes were invented or borrowed; the Byzantine dome wasadded(!) to the previous forms of Roman vaulting.So far all is a proof of disorganization.But then comes in a newprincipleofconnexionfirst, and ofunityafterwards: thelines of pressureare made the prominentfeatures; the compound arches are distributed to their props; the vaults are supported by ribs; the ribs by vaulting shafts, theupright meetingof the end and side isallowed to guidethe neighbouring members. Finally, thegeneral authority of vertical lines is allowed; the structure is distributed into compartments according to suchlines, each of these beingsymmetricalin itself. Thecontinuityofupright linesbeingestablished, the differentplanesof decorationglideinto tracery and feathering, andTHE GOTHIC SYSTEM IS COMPLETE.”—Whewell.“We are now, then, able to see with some distinctness thefundamental maximsof thephilosophy of faith. Conscience, viewedin abstract, has no power of discoveringmore than the immutable principles of morality.Butin proportionas it is pureandwell disciplined, it discriminates and appropriatesmoral and religious truth, of whatever kind, and disposes the mind to listen tothis external message rather than that; while each new truth thus brought before itfrom without, in proportion as it is deeply received, and made the subject of religious action and contemplation, elicits a deep and hitherto unknown harmonyfrom within, which isthe full warrant and sufficient evidence of that truth. Viewed then in the concrete, as found in the devout believer, we may regardconscienceandfaithto be the one and the samefaculty. Considered as submissively bending before external authority, and ever deriving more of doctrinal truth, we call itFAITH; considered as carefully obeying the precepts of which it has knowledge, and as laboriously realizing and assimilating the truths of which it has possession, we call itCONSCIENCE.”—Ward.[371]“The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period.The science manifested in them is not however very great, and their style, though by no means destitute of lesser beauties,is upon the whole an awkward imitationof Roman architecture, orperhapsmore immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain.”—Hallam,Middle Ages,vol. iii. p.431.As we become philosophical—that is, as the habit grows of accounting for everything—we must of course deny what we cannot account for.[372]Gormound, who fell at the battle of Derham, on the borders of Gloucestershire, about 570; Gulfred, Ranulph, and others.[373]“Has the attention of architects, or of writers on architecture, been directed sufficiently to Spain? A comparison of the genuine Saracenic remains in the Peninsula, with the earliest specimens of Spanish architecture, in their details might do more to illustrate the connexion of the two schools, and the history of the pointed style, than has been effected, or is likely to be effected by elaborate theories on the subject.”—Foster’sMahometanism Unveiled,vol. ii. p.252.[374]For instance, the Cathedral of Coutances, finished twelve years before the battle of Hastings.[375]I cannot help referring to that new absurd term Naology, so perfectly pagan that it was even excluded by the Greeks, in adapting their own terms to the Christian worship (see Simeon of Thessalonica), (Leon, Allazzi, De Solea Goar, Rituale Græc.). Whewell is at the same time endeavouring to exclude the term “nave,” where we have got the thing, substituting for it, “centreaisle.”[376]Ugon Falcandus, in Carusi Bib. Sicul., b. i.p.487. This inscription corresponds with that upon the Dalmatic, which was supposed to have been the imperial robe of Charlemagne. Tyschen has, however, made it out to be the work of the Arabs of Palermo,A.D.1132. A baptismal font at Caltabellota bears an Arabic inscription, which is interpreted by M. Lanci—“Office (workshop) of Ben Messid, son of Nain.”[377]In the Norman buildings the pointed arch occurs. Mr. Whewell, observing the fact, instead of concluding that the various styles were contemporaneous, gets rid of the fact, as usual, by a theoretical explanation.[378]“At the place where we breakfasted to-day (Naval Carnero) there is a really beautiful church of the Arabesque order. It has two Moorish towers, with the sphere and globe: the interior is most devotional. I thought the Moorish arches of the nave quite equal for devotional effect to the Gothic, which it much resembles. Nothing could be more chaste. The interior besides was very neatly kept, which, in these days of revolution and robbery, is no slight matter. If it had not been in Spain, I should have thought that I was in a Gothic church.”—Extract from aMS.Journal.[379]“A large square plinth of marble extends from the top of one column to the other, and above it there are constructed a number of arches all round, which support the inner end of the roof or ceiling, the outer end resting on the walls of the building. This is composed of wood or plaster, highly ornamented with a species of carving, and richly gilt.”—Russel’sPalestine,p.500.Dr. Richardson speaks of it as the most beautiful building he had ever beheld; but gives no description.Ali Bey observes, that “the great centre nave of the mosque Al Aksa is supported on each side by seven arches lightly pointed, resting upon cylindrical pillars, in the form of columns, with foliaged capitals, which do not belong to any order: the fourth pillar to the right of the entrance is octangular and enormously thick, called the Pillar of Sidi Omar.”—P. 501.On the conclusion of this work, there was a letter from the architects to the calif, as given by Jellal Addin, which may be read in our days with perhaps some profit, or at least surprise:—“God hath brought to an endthat which the Commander of believers hath commanded us respecting the erection of the chapel of the sakhra, the sakhra of the Holy City, and the mosque Al Aksa.And there remains not a word to be spoken about it.Moreover there remainssome surplus above the money grantedus by the Commander of believers to that end, after 100,000 dinars have been expended thereon. Let the Commander of believers convert it to the object he likes best.”—Temple of Jerusalem,p.186.[380]“It is remarkable for an elegant doorway, with clustered pillars in the European or Gothic style, such as might be found in one of our churches, and therefore differing in character from Saracenic architecture. Over this door is an inscription, purporting that the building was erected by the Sultan Mohammed, son of the Sultan El Melek El Munsoor E’deen Kalaoón E’Salehee. The date on the lintel is 698A.H.(orA.D.1299), and on the body of the building, 695. The minaret which stands above this Gothic entrance is remarkable for its lace-like fretwork, which calls to mind the style of the Alhambra and of the Al Cazar at Seville.”“The pointed arch was evidently employed in Egypt previous to the accession of the Fatimite dynasty, and consequently long before it was known in any part of Europe.”—Wilkinson’sThebes,vol. ii. pp.241, 288.[381]It is supposed to have been the capital of the Carthaginian colonies. It is held a place of peculiar sanctity, and no Christian or Jew was allowed to enter it. It has been in ruins since the twelfth century.[382]The pointed arch is here merely in the substance of the wall, placed to strengthen it above the windows, with a low or four-centred arch. The same is to be found in the gates of Jerusalem.[383]“An entire side of a chapel of the cathedral of Toledo, opening out of the southernmost nave, is ornamented in the Arab style, having been executed by a Moorish artist at the same period as the rest; and not (as might be conjectured) having belonged to the mosque, which occupied the same site previously to the erection of the present cathedral.”—Wells’sAntiquities,p.128.[384]Du Cange, v. Vitrea.[385]The fine colour then given to stained glass in Europe was derived from the old mosaics, which were pounded and laid upon the glass, and thus passed into the furnace. See TheophilusDivers, Artium Cedula. Immense must have been the destruction of ancient relics through this practice, to which the Moorish mosaics were subject, as well as those of Rome and the glass of the Phœnicians.[386]“In Gothic works the arch is an indispensable and governing feature; it has pillars to support its vertical, and buttresses to resist its lateral pressure: its summit may be carried upwards indefinitely by the jamb thrust of its two sides.”—Whewellon German Churches,p.20; 3rdedit.[387]In one of the faces of the old font in Winchester Cathedral, belonging to Saxon times, there is a representation of a building which might be taken for a Moorish house.[388]Middle Ages,vol. iii. p.425.[389]Wilkinson’s Thebes,vol. ii. p.18.[390]The Wickham brotherhood, an association of Catholic Mystagogues, headed by Pugin, voted those uncatholic, in an architectural sense, who did not believe in the Gothic of the thirteenth century.[391]Palmer on the Doctrine of Developement andConscience,p.86.THE END.LONDON:Printed byS. & J. BentleyandHenry Fley,Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

That the grandest of styles should be known by the name of the rudest of people—that architecture should be called after dwellers in tents and tenants of huts—that the Goths should have ceased to exist before the Gothic was invented is, indeed, a phenomenon. The word, nevertheless, has served during many centuries all the purposes of a name, and does not appear until these latter days to have been the object of criticism or cavil. At last the word “Gothic” became a field of literary debate, and immediately of religious discussion. Some articles in a magazine, on the architecture of the Middle Ages, connecting incidentally therewith contemporary practices and dogmas, was the first symptom of the hallucination, out of which arose two schools of mystagogues, theologians materializing dogmas, and mathematicians idealizing forms. In these transmutations the gross did not become ethereal, nor the airy, grave; but the solid melted into air, and the spirit was turned to mud. Under this double perversion of piety and science we had the progressive developements for the structure of conscience, and an arch.[370]Gothic art and Christian faith were deduced from Paganism by a “series of conversations”—suppositions regarding the centre of a vault, were called “tenets,”—the change of an ornament was a “manifestation”—finally a cathedral was a “petrifaction of religion”—Artwas called “Christian,” and then, of course, the Reformation could be re-argued upon the plan of an architect.

It was truly a Pagan thought to call art-religions the appropriation of art; it was the very life of Paganism, and justly did Quintilian say, that the Minerva and Jupiter of Phidias “added something to religion.”

But these things were for those without the veil. The initiated were untaught art and its symbolism, and to them was revealed the immaterial existence of the Godhead, his solitary being, and omnipotent power. “That which was at first a gross symbol,” says De Quincy, “became a sublime metaphor, because invested with the poetry of art.” With us the external expressions of the feelings of a devout age have been changed by the pedantry of a learned one into objects of idolatry; and Christians direct Christians back to the mysteries of Pagans unteaching the truth which Pagans knew, and pretend to reform their own worship by transferring to the sanctuary the external images in which the Pagans presented natural religion only to the uninstructed crowd.

In the religions of the ancient world, Fetichism lay at the bottom: the gods of the country were raised into deities, or these were brought down as patrons of the spot. It was an honour and a security to address them; there was no idea of proselyting the arts; the wealth of the votary or the stranger was expended on their service. Christianity presented a new character, the reverse of all that preceded it; men were to be saved from craft and its devices, from art and its enchantments, from vice and its seductions, from the world and its wisdom. It was a religion of proselytism, repentance, and abnegation. It was preached by fishermen and addressed to babes. It thus stood the very antithesis of Polytheism, and the association of art and religion was as essentially an un-Christian, as it was essentially a Pagan thought.

Architecture has given rise to these aberrations only because its history is unknown. The architecture of Europe, as revived subsequently to the eighth century, was from the Saracens: they communicated to Europe the impulse which retrieved her from that lethargy, or, as M. Guizot calls it, that death by the extinction of every function which came upon her after she had made experience of Rome and her greatness—Christianity and her light—the Barbarians and their vigour. They furnished also the models and the first workmen. Had it been known that ecclesiastical architecture came from a Mussulman source, surely we should not have heard of “the Gothic springing from the Bible,” and like foolish speeches.

Of kinds of excellence, or periods of greatness, architecture has furnished the fewest. How many are the admirable languages, systems of government, and epochs of splendour! The whole human race, during thousands of years, have brought forth scarcely more than two or three distinct styles of architecture. Language is learnt unconsciously; it survives under every vicissitude. A political system a founder may plan. In science, by the discovery of one, all benefit,—painting or sculpture arises when a few excel. Architecture belongs to the circumstances, no less than the genius of a people, the climate under which they live, the soil on which they dwell, their customs, and their belief. The knowledge or taste from which it springs must be universal, so also the habits it engenders.

Buildings are raised for man’s necessities, by his labour: they are the creatures of his hand; they are the most permanent, the most essential of the types of his race; they have embraced and protected the lowliness and weakness of his origin; they have expanded with his growth, hardened themselves in his danger, swelled into magnificence in his pride, or arisen to sublimity in his adoration. Architecture has laboured itself into life by long trial and patient progress. Like no other art, it is within the grasp of no individual genius: the materials are of the rudest kind, the labour is conducted in the people’s eye, the poor man is the workman, and the embellishments are of the commonest nature. Architecture is as identified with the people, as the nest with the bird, or the honeycomb with the bee.

How, then, should architecture have come into being in the midst of an unlettered race, without a previous traceable conception and gestation; and how should it at once be applied on the grandest scale to the noblest monuments, without previous practice and adaptation in private uses to common life? Yet this must have been the case, had an original architecture arisen among the inhabitants of the North, whether Saxons or Normans. Nor is it a science standing by itself; it is the application of many other sciences previously pursued and thoroughly understood. Mathematics and dynamics must prepare the way, by calculation of the pressure of weights and the power of supports; and above all is such preparation requisite in that style which combines height, solidity, lightness, and symmetry, depending upon the proportioning of shafts, the inclination of buttresses, the curve of arches, and the groining of vaults. How should perfection in all these have been attained, by tribes emerging from their forests, or landing from their hide-covered boats? To-day, amidst the wonderful progress of all other sciences—with models before us—with the greatest zeal and opportunities—seeing the enormities which result from every architectural plan—shall we suppose that it should have sprung at once to perfection among a people inexpert in other arts and ignorant of every science?

There were, indeed, before the tribes that overthrew the Roman empire, the models of classical antiquity; but they, when they began to build, built in another style. It is very easy in the varieties of times and places, to trace here and there coincidences and adaptations, which theorists, by the aid of analogies and similes, may connect. It is easy to draw scales of lines and forms, which shall show an insensible progression from the Erechtheum to Westminster Hall; but the style that then arose was as distinct from the Greek and Roman, as these from the Egyptian, the Chinese, or the Hindoo. But had they restored the classical, would the mere existence of the models explain the fact? They had Cicero and Homer, without being orators or poets, and, though England was filled with Roman masonry, the making of bricks was a new discovery a thousand years after their departure. The sight of masterpieces does not suffice, even for copying them—that is a new invention. Man requires living teachers, and these were no more to be found in the organic remains of classical architecture than in their own unfashioned thoughts and uncultivated faculties.

Independently of theseà priorireasons, we find this architecture not springing up at any definite moment, or at any particular spot, but arising simultaneously amidst a variety of tribes, such as would occur if derived from a foreign and a common source. Where, then, are we to look for that source, if not amidst the almost fabulous people, which at that very time appeared in the South?

It is no novel idea that Northern architecture was derived from the Saracens; but our supposed intercourse with that people is confined to the Crusades, which, coinciding, indeed, with, or shortly preceding, the Gothic style, followed by centuries the Saxon and the Norman; and as the three are so intimately associated that they do in reality constitute but one style of architecture, the admitted obligation is reduced, so to say, to nothing, by the great effort of the first invention being attributed to ourselves: or rather we lose sight of the greatness of the effort by supposing it to have been made where faculties equal to it had no existence, and we fall into this necessity by not seeing how, if not of our own invention, we could have borrowed the first steps.[371]

But the intercourse of Northern Europe with the Saracens preceded the Crusades by four or five centuries, and the intercourse of England with Africa preceded Islamism. The first architectural movement in England, in the age of St. Winifred, followed by half a century the erection of the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, one of the noblest monuments in the world. The Lombard style arose in the south of Italy after these people had come in contact with the Saracens, and learnt their arts, and employed their artists. The second architectural age in England was that of the Normans: it was preceded by their conquests in Calabria and Sicily, inhabited by the Saracens, who excelled—as the ruins left behind them attest—in the very highest branches of this art. The Gothic arose in Europe, when the Goths of Spain were regaining power in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and they could emulate the arts and command the services of their Moorish competitors; and the Spanish peculiarities of the style passed into Europe with their name, precisely in the same manner as that of the Norman or the Lombard before them.

The most common and primitive style of Moorish arching is the flat wall cut into the semicircle, supported without entablature on wall or column. That is exactly the Saxon: it was only known to them after they had crossed the seas: they did not find it in England—they must have acquired it in the course of their maritime enterprises; and they were familiar with Western Africa, then inhabited by Christians. Hadrian, the counsellor of Alfred, who first brought Greek letters to England, was from Africa. African Christians, as recorded in old Spanish charters, built churches in the north of Spain, where the Mussulmans never penetrated. By Domesday Book we find Africans settled in England at the time of the Conquest. Constantinus Afer was founder of the school of Salerno; and the old British bards mention African princes as the allies of their Saxon invaders.[372]The Saxon race came in contact with the Saracens in the earliest times of Islam by pilgrimages to the Holy Land—they served in the armies of the Greek emperors. From the time of Constantine, an uninterrupted connexion of the Arabs and Northmen, during four centuries, is attested by twenty thousand Saracenic coins in the Cabinet of Stockholm, found in Gothland and along the eastern coast of Sweden.

Having thus established the improbability of an original architecture among our Northern forefathers; having shown in the previous chapter the existence in western Barbary of the style which had descended from the earliest antiquity, and having now indicated the channels through which it might have passed thence to Europe, and the links between Africa and each of the races who were distinguished for any of its varieties, I shall now proceed to the internal evidence the buildings themselves afford.

The present buildings of Africa are doubtless exactly what they were in the time of Mahomet, and before the conquests of the Saracens. They contain the rudiments of the Gothic, Saxon, and Roman styles. The tomb is a cube, surmounted by a half-globe vault. The door-way is an arch, horseshoe form, semicircular or pointed; it is shouldered by a spandrel. Exactly the same are the tombs of India—the great monuments of Jehangir and Akbar, which by some, from a mistake in the date, have been considered as the type and the model of the Gothic.

The building next in importance is the tower, which is composed of these cubes placed one above the other: the inner tower rises at the top higher than the outer one. In their domestic architecture they use flat roofs; but in the mosques they employ rows of gable roofs, supported below by columns and arches. There are sometimes double rows of arches, and intersecting arches. Their dwelling-houses are enriched with a great variety of details, which may be compared to miniature representations of the embellishments of our religious edifices, such as niches, small pointed windows, pierced spandrels, mouldings, and cornices. The same style pervades every kind of building, ornament, and utensil,—their tombstones, their cushions, the wood-work of their apartments, their trays, their stools, the latter of which might be taken for small models of Gothic buildings.

It was impossible to behold daily these objects, and not perceive that Morocco, whence issued the people who raised the great monuments in Spain,[373]had been the native country of the Gothic. The long vault and taper spire, indeed, were wanting; nor were there any buildings to which, as a whole, the title of Saxon, Norman, or Gothic could be applied. But then it occurred to me, that these modifications might be traceable through the Saracens, and in their various settlements in Europe, down to the historical period of the art in its European sites. To pursue such an investigation appropriately would require a lifetime. However, I have examined buildings in sufficient numbers to trace, and I think establish, the connection.

The Saracens were established, not in Spain only, but also in the important island of Sicily, and the southern extremity of Italy. These were conquered at an early period by the Normans, and the Saracens continued for half a century under them, working for them, building chapels, churches, palaces, and cathedrals.[374]These Normans were in continual intercourse with their native country on the British channel. Passing constantly through France, they soon afterwards conquered England. It was this people who gave the great impulse to architecture in the eleventh century in England and France; and thus arose the style known by their name; not merely raising those buildings by the wealth they possessed in Normandy, or acquired in England, but even by contributions made from the booty of Calabria, and the spoils of Sicily. It is a remarkable fact, that a connexion so well authenticated between the Normans and the Saracens, should be passed by unnoticed by the writers upon architecture. For my own part, when I stood within the north transept of the Cathedral of Winchester, where the Norman portion has remained undisturbed, I should have been sure of that connexion, had no records of it been preserved.

Theophilus cites the Arabs (of course of Sicily) as excelling in a branch wherein we have least acknowledged their merit—the working of metals: he particularizes its various branches, casting, hammering, and chiseling.

“The Arabs,” says Vasari, “have given their name to a species of ornament, which they have invented in obedience to the precepts of their Prophet, and which is composed only of fruits and flower foliage, and embranchments.” May not this description, so unlike the Arabesque as we know it in the Peninsula, be derived from the chased works of the Arabs in Sicily, where, out of their alliance with the Greeks, a character sprang very distinct from that to which their union with the Moors gave birth in the West?

The oldest of the specimens we have in Sicily, is the Capella Palatine, built, soon after the conquest of the island, by Roger. It approaches to that square form adopted by the Eastern churches, to which Sicily then belonged, after there had ceased to be catechumens, and so consisted of the solea and meroi, to the exclusion of the elongatednaosor nave.[375]The chapel is small, but it is one of the most perfect—if not the most perfect—pieces of workmanship in the world. The floor, roof, and walls, are completely inlaid, or incrusted, with marble or mosaic. There is a wide band running round the apse in Arabic characters. This led to its being supposed to be a mosque. The inscription, however, is a long string of honorary epithets applied to Roger.[376]

From the succeeding reign we have the Cathedral of Cefala, the Church Dell, Amigralio, that of Jerusalem, the Royal Chapel of St. Peter’s, and the splendid Hall of William I., all in like manner the work of the Saracens. There is no single instance among them of a horse-shoe arch. There is no vaulting of the roof; but in the Cathedral of Cefala there is a perfect Norman arch, bevelled or chamfered, and exactly the same as we see them in the north of Europe. This edifice bears a Latin inscription attributing to a Saracen the honour of the construction, “Hoc opus musei factum est;” but these buildings were greatly surpassed by the Cathedral of Montreale, erected by WilliamII.It is adorned with arches, traced upon the walls without, and they are all Gothic; the floor of the Solea is laid down in marble in Arabesque figures; the walls are encrusted with marbles or mosaics, or covered with paintings; the gates are in bronze chased; the doors and windows—many of them, at least—are in the old classic style of Greece; the outline of the building is also classical and rectangular, but ornamented with intersecting Gothic arches, which spring from the jamb unbroken by cornice, capital, or entablature. On the whole it presents in dimensions, height, richness of material, elegance of design, variety and adaptation of styles, an object of art unique. It is singular that this greatest work of the Normans in the South should have in it no trace either of that style which we call Norman,[377]or of that which is the peculiar feature of the Moor, the horse-shoe; and the two styles that are there united, and which nowhere else are so found, are the Greek and the Gothic. At the time of its erection this cathedral was esteemed the masterpiece of architecture, and as surpassing at once St. Sophia, and the St. Peter’s, of that day. Pope Lucius says of it: “Simile opus per aliquem regem factum non fuerit ab antiquis temporibus.” The Duke di Sara de Falco, who published at Palermo, in 1838, elaborate and beautiful engravings of it, has collated with some of its ornaments, fragments from Owen Jones’s “Alhambra;” but it is as Moorish as the Alhambra itself. The towers are divided into stories, and each is somewhat smaller than the one beneath, so that they have the appearance of buttresses without being really so. The Sicilian author and artist says:—

“While this temple was building there arose in Palermo the magnificent Duomo, and the Church of the Holy Ghost in Messina, the Cathedral and the Church of St. Mary, at Raudazzo, and so many others that it is needless to cite. We have ascertained that the artists employed at Montreale were neither Italian nor Greek, but Sicilians; and that is rendered more manifest by the Mosaic work, and the details of ornament and construction so largely drawn from the Arabs, which certainly did not come from the Greeks of the East, but from those who, long familiarized with the Saracens, had imitated their manner; and that a school of these workers in mosaics existed in Sicily is demonstrated by the variety of composition, the fertility of genius, and the power of design in those days, and they all agree with the workmanship of Montreale.”

He then proceeds to claim for his country the honour of introducing chasings and carvings into Italy, and Gothic architecture into Europe: the former he deduces from the ancient Greek arts of Sicily, the second from the Saracens.

In Spain the Goths were as entirely the pupils and followers of the Saracens as were the Normans in Sicily. The variation of style from the Moresque to the Spanish, or Gothic, was connected with the difference of the social habits of the people. The Moors in Spain remained constituted by tribe,—as much so as in the Desert, although without its space. The feuds of the different tribes of Yemen were transferred to Cordova and Seville; and a fray between two uleds bordering on the Great Desert might suddenly produce bloodshed in the narrow lanes and thick villages of Andalusia. There were also the frequent ruptures and the permanent animosity between Brebers and Arabs, and thus their buildings of necessity retained externally the ponderous and castellated form, while their perfection in the various arts of decoration embellished them internally with stuccoes, carvings, gildings, paintings, enamel and mosaics. The Spaniards, as they recovered the country, were on the one hand, relieved from these sources of continual alarm; and, on the other, were destitute of those arts of interior decoration: hence a more aspiring exterior, and a more gloomy interior; and upon the stones was concentrated the care which the Arabs had to give to so many other materials.

There has been a great destruction in Spain of Moorish buildings. We do possess, indeed, but two remarkable ones; the one the fragment of a palace raised within latter days, the other a mosque, the first in fame, but also the first in date, being now 1300 years old. It does not, therefore, afford us the opportunity of judging of the progress of the art. There subsist, however, some smaller specimens of a later date, which might almost be taken for Gothic buildings.[378]

The characteristics of the Gothic are—the pointed arch; the arch resting on the column without entablature; vaulting; arched gateways; splayed windows; buttresses; the spire tower, or belfry. These may severally be traced to the Saracens.

THE POINTED ARCH.

This is to be found from the first moment of the appearance of the Arabs, in countries the most remote from each other, and in structures destined to the most diverse purposes. I may instance:—

The Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, the first building of the Saracens, commencedA.D.637.[379]

The Mosque of Amrou, at Cairo, the first Mussulman building in Africa, commenced towardsA.D.650. That of E’Naser Mohammed,A.D.698.[380]The Nilometer (lancet-niches),A.D.700. Shella, in Morocco, date uncertain, probably anterior to the Mussulman era.[381]The Tower of Alcamo, in Sicily, the earliest Mussulman building in Eastern Europe.[382]The Tower of Gibraltar,A.D.745, which contains a regular Gothic church window, though now built up. The Cathedral of Montreale,A.D.1174, where the arch springs unbroken from the jamb. In fact, whenever the Saracens appeared, they brought the arch we call Gothic. It is found in universal use by them, and was so used by no people before them. When used by any people, the connexion with them may be traced. In Morocco or Spain may be found all known arches—the elliptical, the four-centred, the horizontal, the surbased, the lancet, the angular—if I may so describe one unknown to us, and formed like a truncated triangle. They had the stilt arch, the ogee, and, at Seville, is to be found a specimen of our recent invention, the skew arch; they had the trefoil, the pentifoil, as ornaments, with a multitude of unclassed and unnamed forms, which may, in our terms, be characterized as pensile, stalagmitic, serrated, cusped, fanned, dentiled. These may be studied in Jones’s Alhambra.

CHAMFERING OF THE ARCH.

I am not aware that this modification exists on the soil of Africa to-day, unless in a fragment described in the Pentapolis, by Dr. Shaw: this is the modification of the Norman upon the Saxon, and is to be found in the Cathedral of Cefala, and the tower of Gibraltar.

VAULTING.

This portion of modern architecture is Roman; but it in no way suffices to say that the Roman had vaults to account for our having them: the models of a dead people do not introduce a new art; the Saracens did not copy the classical models. The Moors had, indeed, the half-sphere, as the Romans; but they had not the elongated vault. The pointed and elongated vault, with its intersections, was, therefore, original in the Gothic, and may have been constructed by the Saracens, in Spain. To it there was the closest approximation in their pointed arches, doorways, and windows. The gable form of their mosque roofs would suggest the pointed and not the semicircular vault. Whenever they covered these in stone, here was the point—where their original material, the tapia, failed, it could rise from four sides into a dome; but elongated vaulting, and its intersections and groinings, depended upon the mechanical adjustment of the separate stones. When they came to build in this fashion in Spain (as in Egypt, Syria, Sicily, &c.), their mathematical skill would be called into play, and they must, of necessity, have thrown stone roofs over the large churches and cathedrals which they were employed by the Christians to build.[383]

ARCHED GATEWAYS.

This is one of the most remarkable features of the Gothic, so unlike the doors of any other style, giving such grandeur to the edifices, and suggesting, even at once, its whole designs. And here the identification is complete—the entrance to every Moorish room is like the porch of a cathedral, and the massive portals that close them with the wicket, presents in every Moorish court the gateway of a monastery or acollege.

WINDOWS AND STAINED GLASS.

From the want of windows in Moorish houses and mosques, and from the great dimensions, elaborate structure, and important office of windows in our churches and cathedrals, it might be supposed that here we should be at fault in tracing the connexion; but the Moors afford us the most interesting rudiments of the stone-framed figures of our window, and the painted glass with which they are embellished.

Above and beside the door in Moorish rooms, there are small apertures for air rather than light, generally narrow, with a trefoil head. Two, four, or more of these may be placed side by side, and over them a circular figure pierced in like manner. In some of the Spanish cathedrals—and I again quote Toledo—there are windows which represent these openings in the wall, andare glazed. In the Alhambra, the Alcazar of Seville, and every other Moorish structure in Spain, there are to be seen the pierced work in stucco, in the form of Gothic windows;—the patterns of these correspond with the tracery on the walls, which being in colour, it was natural to continue the patterns in colour to the open spaces; and to effect this, where the exposure required it, bits of painted glass are stuck into the plaster while fresh. A colder climate would suggest the extension of the glass, the reduction of the stucco, and the substitution of stone for stucco. Glass for windows was peculiarly a Spanish art; it was already known in England and France in the seventh century:[384]the staining of glass commenced in Spain, though it was carried to the highest perfection in France. Two of the colours and substances were designated Spanish at a time when few original colouring matters were employed.[385]The Saracens were, besides, proficients in the making of glass, whether transparent or coloured. The first I accidentally fell upon in the Mosque at Cordova—they used coloured glass for the mosaics; but it was opaque;—they also understood enamelling, and in encaustic tiles they were unrivalled. Stained glass is, to this day, of universal use among the Easterns, who have spread more to the northward, and have adopted external windows. A Turkish room is a miniature cathedral, with its ascending floor; its entrance opposite to its lights, and its clerestory windows,—for there are two rows of them—the lower one rectangular like ours, and furnished with curtains, the upper one of every variety of shape, and in stained glass, and made to correspond with the ornaments of the corresponding panels of the apartment.

The apertures in the Moorish tapia thus became Gothic windows, and the pierced patterns of the stucco mullions and transoms, with cusped trefoils and foliage in stone, with the intervals glazed in stained glass: the adjoining portion of the wall must then have been pared away and bevelled out. The Moors were the first people to adopt this process, as applying it to military architecture: they adopted it for their loopholes and embrasures, while bows and arrows were yet in use. Their first external windows were embrasures—churches were built for defence as well as devotion. The bevelling in their walls is on both sides less without than within, exactly as it is practised in Gothic windows.

BUTTRESSES.

Next to the arch itself the buttress has been considered essential to the Gothic.[386]This member is supposed to have its origin in the North, and to have been requisite for the passage from the Norman to the Gothic, and from the tower to the spire. The buttress is to be found among the Arabs, as early as the pointed arch, and as universally known, though not so commonly used.

The square building at Gibraltar, used as a magazine, and with a sort of pyramidal roof, is strengthened by powerful and expanding buttresses, irregularly placed on the angles,A.D.749. Specimens are abundant at Jerusalem, in Cairo, and in Sicily.

I have met with no instance of flying buttresses: these, however, may be seen in Spain, carried to a width unknown elsewhere;—as for instance, in the Cathedral of Seville.

THE TOWER AND SPIRE.

The early English towers are copies of those of Morocco. The Moorish tower stands apart from the Mosque: so do our early belfries and the Campanile of Italy. The spire has been naturally suggested by the minaret, which may be connected with the obelisk, being the only instance of the kind in the ancient world; and the minaret having been first adapted to Saracenic buildings in Egypt, where it was engrafted on theSmaor square tower of the Moors—together they constitute our spire, as seen in the half tower, half minaret of Egypt.

If any one will turn over successively the pages of Roberts’s Holy Land, Costes’ Egypt, Hope’s German Churches, Sara de Fulco’s Sicily, and Gally Knight’s Italy, he will recognise the features of the one in the other, and trace the resemblances just as if turning over the grammars of various languages derived from a common source.

CLOISTERS.

The quadrangle with the columns sustaining the advanced building of the first story, over an open corridor below, is as Moorish as if the models had been sent from Morocco.[387]The court of the Monastery of Bellem at Lisbon, is the most beautiful specimen I know. It is at once purely Gothic and purely Moorish; each style seeming to have taken something from the other to heighten its effect. In the centre is a fountain, and on each side lines of tanks for water, intersected with stages for plants, which are lined with coloured tiles around: there are Gothic arches, filled with the screen or stonework of windows—without the glass, as in the Campo Sancto of Pisa. In the angles of the quadrangle, the limbs of a projecting and wider arch seem to embrace and protect a sharper arch within. This may be seen in Moorish works, and also in the porch of the Cathedral of Rouen. The church belonging to this monastery presents an interesting field for studying the influence of the Moors upon European architecture, and it is in every way a building not less original than beautiful.

A connexion between Africa and England is traceable in a point where we might least expect it, and at a very early period—and that is fire-places. “Chimneys,” says Mr. Hallam, “which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome—a discovery of which Vitruvius never dreamed—was made perhaps in this country by some forgotten barbarian.”[388]He refers to Coningsby Castle, supposed to be of a date prior to the Conquest, to prove the existence of chimneys, before the alleged date of the discovery in the fourteenth century. Had he inspected the chimney in question, he must have perceived a peculiar and unique method of joining the key-stones of the flat arch that supports the front in lieu of a mantelpiece. This process, unique in Europe, is common amongst the Moors.

Whoever has visited the East must have been struck with the original character of the fireplaces and chimney-pieces; they are an embellishment to the room, in what we should term the Decorated Gothic style. Whoever has looked down upon the city of Lisbon from its garden-fortress, cannot fail to observe the contrast between the small neat rows of apertures that serve for chimney tops, and our unsightly and grotesque expedients for the same purpose. Whether in the mode of placing the fire, in the embellishment of the portion of the room appropriated to it, or in the elegance of chimney tops (so as to change them from a blemish to an ornament), we have yet to learn and borrow from the Moors. These chimney tops and appliances are not to be seen indeed in Morocco; but the traces subsist further north, where they adapted themselves to the necessities of the climate. The general resemblance of feature is also to be traced in the names, many of which I have already mentioned, such as, house-door, barbican, dairy; but and ben, and cabail of the Highlanders; roof, stable, gypsum-house, garret, and even burgh, which we have been content to take from the Greekπύρος, is after all an Arabic word, in common use for pigeon-house, when built in the form of a tower.[389]In conjunction with these we must take so many terms and usages, exhibiting an intimate connexion between Africa and England, dating from the decline of Roman power.

In these observations I neither propound a new theory nor agitate a settled question. I present the good and valid reasons upon which our ancestors adopted a title, which we use with disgust and are endeavouring to discard. I trace our architecture back to the people to whom it properly pertains, and through them to an antiquity venerable in itself and deeply interesting from its association with the inspired writings. But it is more particularly the means of its introduction into Europe that it is useful to establish; for this, if anything, might diminish theodium theologicumwhich has sprung from this source. A more perfect antidote there cannot be than that this “Christian” art, this weapon of proselytism, by which no religious community achieves conquests, but by which all faith is smitten, should be itself Mussulman, and that we should owe the architecture (if there were any ratio between the supposed cause and the effect) which we attribute to the Bible, to the Koran.

What would have been the reply of the early Christians, had such a mania then prevailed, to those who argued the truth of polytheism, from the temples that had been raised in its honour, or the statues with which they were adorned?[390]What, again, would those have said, whose works are now taken as models, had they been told that in a future age of light and freedom their walls and arches should become steps in the ladder of conviction, shibboleths in polemics and lists of orthodoxy![390]In the long and vehement contests between the Christians and the Mussulmans in Spain, both reciprocally used the temples of the other, which were sometimes even divided between them.

“Men have before now been led to adopt Romanism by its fancied connexion with poetry, or painting, or Gothic architecture; and if such men had lived while the mythologies of Greece or of Rome were living systems, they would with equal reason have forsaken Christianity for heathen religions, in which art had arrived at its highest conceivable excellence. The adoption of religious views, merely because they are in some way connected with what is gratifying to our senses or our feelings, and without primary reference to the evidence for their truth, is a proceeding which seems indicative of a practical disbelief in the evidence of any revealed truth, or of any religious truth whatever.”[391]

The inhabitants of England, who first introduced it in the North, did not call themselves Goths, but Saxons: nor were the followers of William, Goths, but Normans. The Gothic name had disappeared from Europe as the designation of any country, and the later modification of the style appeared, and the epithet was applied. But there was one country in which the name of the Goth was still preserved, and that was Spain. That name would have disappeared in Spain as elsewhere, had it not been for the Saracen conquest. The Goths had not originally appeared in Spain as ravagers or conquerors; theycamein the name and with the authority of the Roman empire to drive out the Vandals, to put an end to anarchy, to protect property, and to sustain the laws. The people of Spain had evidently been disinclined to espouse the quarrel of the Goths against the Saracens; but, in subsequent attempts to throw off the Saracen yoke, the Goths must have been their leaders; and in fact to be a Goth was to be a freeman, and no longer tributary to the Mussulmans. As the Christians reacquired strength, they could neither take the title of Andalusians, nor of Murcians, nor of Castilians, far less of Spaniards, for these names belonged as much to the Mussulmans as to themselves. They took, therefore, that of Goths, an ancient and a noble name, and associated at once with their national independence, the traditions of Rome, and the authority of the Christian Church; and to this day the peasant of Spain, when he points out a great monument, will say, “Obra de los Godos.” Gothic is to them synonymous with heroic—the Gothic times, the Gothic kings, Gothic courts, Gothic laws, Gothic glory. It marks in Spanish history the period of struggling and triumphant freedom. It is the period which contrasts in all things with that known as “Catholic.”

[370]IDEAL STRUCTURE OF AN ARCH.STRUCTURE OF AN IDEAL CONSCIENCE.“Theintroductionof the archunderminedthe Greciansystemof entablature,and introduceda double plane of decoration: theruinof taste and artsuperveningupon this,broke upstill further the Romantraditional arrangement; caprice, and the love of novelty, introduced newformsofmembersand ornaments into this incoherentmass; arches of various shapes were invented or borrowed; the Byzantine dome wasadded(!) to the previous forms of Roman vaulting.So far all is a proof of disorganization.But then comes in a newprincipleofconnexionfirst, and ofunityafterwards: thelines of pressureare made the prominentfeatures; the compound arches are distributed to their props; the vaults are supported by ribs; the ribs by vaulting shafts, theupright meetingof the end and side isallowed to guidethe neighbouring members. Finally, thegeneral authority of vertical lines is allowed; the structure is distributed into compartments according to suchlines, each of these beingsymmetricalin itself. Thecontinuityofupright linesbeingestablished, the differentplanesof decorationglideinto tracery and feathering, andTHE GOTHIC SYSTEM IS COMPLETE.”—Whewell.“We are now, then, able to see with some distinctness thefundamental maximsof thephilosophy of faith. Conscience, viewedin abstract, has no power of discoveringmore than the immutable principles of morality.Butin proportionas it is pureandwell disciplined, it discriminates and appropriatesmoral and religious truth, of whatever kind, and disposes the mind to listen tothis external message rather than that; while each new truth thus brought before itfrom without, in proportion as it is deeply received, and made the subject of religious action and contemplation, elicits a deep and hitherto unknown harmonyfrom within, which isthe full warrant and sufficient evidence of that truth. Viewed then in the concrete, as found in the devout believer, we may regardconscienceandfaithto be the one and the samefaculty. Considered as submissively bending before external authority, and ever deriving more of doctrinal truth, we call itFAITH; considered as carefully obeying the precepts of which it has knowledge, and as laboriously realizing and assimilating the truths of which it has possession, we call itCONSCIENCE.”—Ward.

[371]“The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period.The science manifested in them is not however very great, and their style, though by no means destitute of lesser beauties,is upon the whole an awkward imitationof Roman architecture, orperhapsmore immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain.”—Hallam,Middle Ages,vol. iii. p.431.

As we become philosophical—that is, as the habit grows of accounting for everything—we must of course deny what we cannot account for.

[372]Gormound, who fell at the battle of Derham, on the borders of Gloucestershire, about 570; Gulfred, Ranulph, and others.

[373]“Has the attention of architects, or of writers on architecture, been directed sufficiently to Spain? A comparison of the genuine Saracenic remains in the Peninsula, with the earliest specimens of Spanish architecture, in their details might do more to illustrate the connexion of the two schools, and the history of the pointed style, than has been effected, or is likely to be effected by elaborate theories on the subject.”—Foster’sMahometanism Unveiled,vol. ii. p.252.

[374]For instance, the Cathedral of Coutances, finished twelve years before the battle of Hastings.

[375]I cannot help referring to that new absurd term Naology, so perfectly pagan that it was even excluded by the Greeks, in adapting their own terms to the Christian worship (see Simeon of Thessalonica), (Leon, Allazzi, De Solea Goar, Rituale Græc.). Whewell is at the same time endeavouring to exclude the term “nave,” where we have got the thing, substituting for it, “centreaisle.”

[376]Ugon Falcandus, in Carusi Bib. Sicul., b. i.p.487. This inscription corresponds with that upon the Dalmatic, which was supposed to have been the imperial robe of Charlemagne. Tyschen has, however, made it out to be the work of the Arabs of Palermo,A.D.1132. A baptismal font at Caltabellota bears an Arabic inscription, which is interpreted by M. Lanci—“Office (workshop) of Ben Messid, son of Nain.”

[377]In the Norman buildings the pointed arch occurs. Mr. Whewell, observing the fact, instead of concluding that the various styles were contemporaneous, gets rid of the fact, as usual, by a theoretical explanation.

[378]“At the place where we breakfasted to-day (Naval Carnero) there is a really beautiful church of the Arabesque order. It has two Moorish towers, with the sphere and globe: the interior is most devotional. I thought the Moorish arches of the nave quite equal for devotional effect to the Gothic, which it much resembles. Nothing could be more chaste. The interior besides was very neatly kept, which, in these days of revolution and robbery, is no slight matter. If it had not been in Spain, I should have thought that I was in a Gothic church.”—Extract from aMS.Journal.

[379]“A large square plinth of marble extends from the top of one column to the other, and above it there are constructed a number of arches all round, which support the inner end of the roof or ceiling, the outer end resting on the walls of the building. This is composed of wood or plaster, highly ornamented with a species of carving, and richly gilt.”—Russel’sPalestine,p.500.

Dr. Richardson speaks of it as the most beautiful building he had ever beheld; but gives no description.

Ali Bey observes, that “the great centre nave of the mosque Al Aksa is supported on each side by seven arches lightly pointed, resting upon cylindrical pillars, in the form of columns, with foliaged capitals, which do not belong to any order: the fourth pillar to the right of the entrance is octangular and enormously thick, called the Pillar of Sidi Omar.”—P. 501.

On the conclusion of this work, there was a letter from the architects to the calif, as given by Jellal Addin, which may be read in our days with perhaps some profit, or at least surprise:—

“God hath brought to an endthat which the Commander of believers hath commanded us respecting the erection of the chapel of the sakhra, the sakhra of the Holy City, and the mosque Al Aksa.And there remains not a word to be spoken about it.Moreover there remainssome surplus above the money grantedus by the Commander of believers to that end, after 100,000 dinars have been expended thereon. Let the Commander of believers convert it to the object he likes best.”—Temple of Jerusalem,p.186.

[380]“It is remarkable for an elegant doorway, with clustered pillars in the European or Gothic style, such as might be found in one of our churches, and therefore differing in character from Saracenic architecture. Over this door is an inscription, purporting that the building was erected by the Sultan Mohammed, son of the Sultan El Melek El Munsoor E’deen Kalaoón E’Salehee. The date on the lintel is 698A.H.(orA.D.1299), and on the body of the building, 695. The minaret which stands above this Gothic entrance is remarkable for its lace-like fretwork, which calls to mind the style of the Alhambra and of the Al Cazar at Seville.”

“The pointed arch was evidently employed in Egypt previous to the accession of the Fatimite dynasty, and consequently long before it was known in any part of Europe.”—Wilkinson’sThebes,vol. ii. pp.241, 288.

[381]It is supposed to have been the capital of the Carthaginian colonies. It is held a place of peculiar sanctity, and no Christian or Jew was allowed to enter it. It has been in ruins since the twelfth century.

[382]The pointed arch is here merely in the substance of the wall, placed to strengthen it above the windows, with a low or four-centred arch. The same is to be found in the gates of Jerusalem.

[383]“An entire side of a chapel of the cathedral of Toledo, opening out of the southernmost nave, is ornamented in the Arab style, having been executed by a Moorish artist at the same period as the rest; and not (as might be conjectured) having belonged to the mosque, which occupied the same site previously to the erection of the present cathedral.”—Wells’sAntiquities,p.128.

[384]Du Cange, v. Vitrea.

[385]The fine colour then given to stained glass in Europe was derived from the old mosaics, which were pounded and laid upon the glass, and thus passed into the furnace. See TheophilusDivers, Artium Cedula. Immense must have been the destruction of ancient relics through this practice, to which the Moorish mosaics were subject, as well as those of Rome and the glass of the Phœnicians.

[386]“In Gothic works the arch is an indispensable and governing feature; it has pillars to support its vertical, and buttresses to resist its lateral pressure: its summit may be carried upwards indefinitely by the jamb thrust of its two sides.”—Whewellon German Churches,p.20; 3rdedit.

[387]In one of the faces of the old font in Winchester Cathedral, belonging to Saxon times, there is a representation of a building which might be taken for a Moorish house.

[388]Middle Ages,vol. iii. p.425.

[389]Wilkinson’s Thebes,vol. ii. p.18.

[390]The Wickham brotherhood, an association of Catholic Mystagogues, headed by Pugin, voted those uncatholic, in an architectural sense, who did not believe in the Gothic of the thirteenth century.

[391]Palmer on the Doctrine of Developement andConscience,p.86.

THE END.

LONDON:Printed byS. & J. BentleyandHenry Fley,Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

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