Unveiling the Romanesque Revival: How Western Art Rediscovered Its Distinctive Style

[Music] for the first time since classical antiquity a Western artist asserts his own vision and Western art finds its own distinctive style Romanesque [Music] although the Roman Empire was conquered by the barbarians and the lands of Western Europe were overrun by pagan tribes in the Dark Ages Roman civilization and above all Roman Christianity triumphed in the long run converted to the new faith the former barbarians became the heirs of Rome and the founders of modern Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the period we call Romanesque there was a remarkable revival of art and especially architecture when in the words of a contemporary it was as if the whole earth had cast off her old age and was clothing herself everywhere in a white garment of churches two of the most powerful forces moulding the development of Romanesque art and architecture were pilgrimage and the monastic movement and the Romanesque church here at vezelay in France embodies both Benedictine monastery and starting point on the pilgrimage route to Santiago in Spain the story of Vezelay echoes the story of Europe during the crucial years of transition between the ninth century and the 12th it was founded in the eighth 60s in the great cultural and artistic revival of the French Emperor Charlemagne it was burned down by the Vikings in the violent years of the 9th and 10th centuries at that time Western Europe was assailed on every side by Slavs magyars Saracens and Vikings and many people thought that Christian civilization itself might not pull through in response powerful dynasties built great strings of fortresses in which their beleaguered populations could shelter in the 11-hundred Europe turned the corner suddenly almost as if the passing of the millennium was the release we see a dramatic revival in the use of monumental sculpture and large-scale architecture such as had only been glimpsed fitfully in the previous centuries the cult of saints and the passion for pilgrimage to their shrines were dominant features of medieval culture 

[Music] One of the most famous was the pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain because the church was believed to house one of the sacred relics of Christendom the bones of St. James Santiago in Spanish one of Christ as Twelve Apostles from the top of the tower at Vezelay you can still make out the old way of St. James winding its way through the hills on its way to Spain it's astonishing to think that hundreds of thousands of men and women made that pilgrimage during the medieval period they undertook such arduous journeys for a multitude of reasons to plead for divine help to ask for the cure of illness to give thanks for favors given to ask for penance for their sins but above all they went for the salvation of their souls to achieve the state of grace conferred by his relics they traveled great distances on foot by boat on horseback wearing the typical pilgrims garb the Hat the staff the cockleshell symbol of Saint James [Music] but pilgrimage was not only a spiritual force it was a dynamic transforming element in society enabling the exchange of ideas Goods and especially of money there was a great deal of money to be made from pilgrimage indeed it was the offerings to the cents in their relics by pilgrims in their thousands that helped pay the construction costs of the great Romanesque pilgrim churches lining the Main Roads to Santiago there were four main routes that went through France to Spain these roads joined at parental Arena in Spain where a single Road passed through Burgos and lay on and culminated at Santiago de Compostela in the center of France the major starting point was the Church of Mary Magdalene at Faysal a this great Romanesque Abbey Church and vezelay in the heart of Burgundy is built far too large for the needs of its local population Paul Crosley is a distinguished architectural historian whose special interest is Romanesque and Gothic architecture it served primarily two functions it housed a large and prosperous community of Benedictine monks and secondly and most importantly it was one of the foremost places of pilgrimage in France for here was contained the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene thousands of pilgrims came through the Western portals of this church and they found themselves in a sacred way a long avenue of arches and aisles which led them to the distant and luminous choir where the body of C Mary Magdalene was contained [Music] to the devout medieval Christian a holy relic had the power to perform miracles even the tiniest fragment of the body of a saint encased in its relative represented the power the presence of the saint much of the art of the time was geared to the cult of saints and their relics medieval artists lavish their skill on these reliquaries only the most precious jewels and workmanship were considered worthy to hold for example a splinter of wood from the cross of the crucifixion or the scowl of Sir John the Baptist or the cloak of the Virgin Mary or the arm of a bishop or a saint now the status of a church and its attraction for pilgrims depended on the number and the importance of the relics that it held churches competed for relics and even stole them from each other a vision commanded us to steal it they would say or the Saint told us she was unhappy in that place if relics gave spiritual comfort images carved or painted instructed and terrified to a largely illiterate congregation images were essential to convey the church's message in Burgundy otai Cathedral is one of the most important pilgrimage churches on the route to Santiago ootek was lucky to be able to attract to its workshop in around the Year 1130 a sculptor of genius we know his name which is a rarity in the largely anonymous art of the early Middle Ages he is called gisli Bertus and he signed himself gisli Bertus hock fated gisli Berta's did this he has a style distinctly his own vivid and with a feeling for expressive detail unprecedented in Romanesque sculpture his temple 'm shows the Last Judgement and in the center is the serene figure of Christ the judge the focus around which the whole composition of the temple in terms but it's AG's angels blow the final trumpets on Christ's right-hand side are saved one of them where's the cockleshell badge of Sir James to prove that his soul had been redeemed by making a pilgrimage to Santiago little Souls already been received by angels on his left hand side of a damned 

[Music] It must be the young woman with serpents gnawing at her breasts singled out especially and perhaps most frightening of all these pair of disembodied claws which appears from nowhere and clutches a screaming soul so Michael the Archangel is weighing the souls opposite him a hideous devil is trying to tip unfairly the scales in his favor by pulling on them or inserting little demons into the scales cowering souls hide in st. Michael's coattails and across this whole nightmare runs the inscription let this terror a pull all those bound by earthly sin [Music] this figure of Eve is one of the first monumental news of the Middle Ages seductive and sensual she is the image of the sinner the first sinner her left hand clutches at the apple her right hand is raised to her cheek in shame Eve was originally placed on the lintel of the North Portal of o-tar Cathedral this was the penitence portal it was very appropriate that Eve should be here [Music] all the capitals with narrative scenes on them are carved by giz Libertas his Libertas shows us here for example the adoration of the magi cut in deep relief often using the drill to create charming effects of texture and surface around the corner of the capital suggested sits a little disconsolate [Music] another scene shows the flight into Egypt [Music] and perhaps the most moving of all the scenes is the dream of the major high in which the major line their bed and the angel comes to them as if in a vision touching their hands and pointing with his other finger to the Star of Bethlehem which is to lead the Magi his liberties his most traumatic composition is this one the suicide of Judas where the screaming Devils are even pulling on Judas's rope to hasten his death along with pilgrimage the second great influence on Romanesque art and architecture was monasticism a [Music] monastic ideal had long been a spiritual go of humankind from the farthest reaches of Ireland to the high Himalaya but Western monasticism only really began after the fall of the Roman Empire in response to the collapse of political part self-contained self-sufficient communities cut off from the world [Music] the most famous order the benedictine was founded by Saint Benedict in 6th century this great rule poverty chastity and obedience insisted on a life devoted to manual labor devoted to prayer and to the copying and interpretation of the sacred text 

[Music] decorating these books was an act of devotion during the Middle Ages sumptuous manuscript illuminations were the most important form of painting in Western art [Music] by 1100 and dard with massive grants of land from kings and Nobles the great orders the Benedictine the cluniac the Cistercian held virtual monastic empires across Europe powerful patrons of art and architecture this beautiful building is the Priory Church of Pavel ammonia it is in fact a perfect example of cluniac Romanesque architecture at the height of its powers where does the term Romanesque come from like many other widely used words in the history of art like Impressionism or gothic Romanesque began its life as a derogatory term historians in the early 19th century thought that the massive pillars and great vaults of ruinous buildings looked rather like a debased form of Roman architecture and so they called it Romanesco or Romanesque in fact the term couldn't be more apt for early medieval patrons and architects were constantly looking back to the glories of the classical Roman past trying to build in the classical language of architecture in Christian form but to fourth century Christians it was a practical matter needing places of worship they took over the long Roman Basilica which became the standard form for Christian architects in the West gradually over the centuries these architects transform the Roman form they first added a great transept to it thus making the church into a symbolic cross shape at the west end of the building they added towers breaking up the horizontal silhouette of the Basilica with vertical forms at the east end they retain the Roman apps but made choirs more with radiating chapels and inside the building they broke up the simple walls of the Roman Basilica with openings for the galleries and for the windows and instead of the flat wooden roofs of the early basilica's they used Roman style vaults in the Middle Ages Perrin demoniac would never have been used for weddings but nevertheless the cluniac monks did encourage a large lay congregation but this church is not just a superb example of monastic architecture it's a model by which we can understand the whole of high Romanesque architecture in France as a pilgrim or a member of the lay congregation we would have entered this building through a porch and found ourselves in the wide and splendid nave either in the central aisle where I'm standing or in the wide side aisles we would have moved up the church to the crossing behind me so-called because it's here that the nave of the church crosses with those side spaces called the transepts and beyond them the most holy part of the church with the choir the high altar behind which the most important relics were displayed and beyond the altar the curving ambulatory with the chapels radiating off it hundreds of pilgrims crowding into the church were dangerous and noisy and so the medieval architect evolved this superb corridor around the high altar which we call an ambulatory this solved perfectly what one scholar has called the traffic problem of the medieval 

pilgrimage but perhaps most distinctive of high Romanesque architecture here is the great tunnel a barrel vault above my head almost every great church in France from the 11th century onwards had these stone vaults and for very good reasons until then most churches had simple timber roofs over them and as you can imagine in buildings that were lit largely with candles this was a terrible fire hazard but there were other advantages in these great vaults as well they were visually beautiful they were acoustically obvious hakuna expect most of their day here in the quad chanting the divine services and their Gregorian chants would be taken by these barrel vaults upwards and dispersed to the whole church so stone vaults were very much needed in Romanesque architecture in the late 11th and early 12th centuries but they pose considerable problems for architects then they had no scientific knowledge of engineering they also had very primitive equipment simple wooden cranes and simple scaffolding they were bound to be failures vaults often collapsed in the Middle Ages if a Romanesque architect wished however to find a good model for large stone vaulting he could do no better than to look at the well-preserved examples of Roman vaulting which he could have found in the South of France or all around him here in Burgundy less than a mile from this Roman gate in the nearby town of o-tar stands ohtar Cathedral like Perry Lamoni all the Cathedral is a perfect example of the influence of classical Roman architecture on the Romanesque architect we can see the classical forms everywhere here the fluted pilasters crowned at the top by Corinthian capitals and in the middle story of the building this characteristic composition of round arches separated by flat plasters and closed by a horizontal cornice these forms come straight from the local Roman precedent here in Otara the porte de haut the Romanesque style spread right across Europe in 1066 it crossed the English Channel with the Norman conquest of England [Music] the Normans destroyed most of the main anglo-saxon churches replacing them with ones built in the French Romanesque or as it is known in Britain the norman style and it would be in england that some of the most daring and original innovations were made in medieval architecture durham cathedral even by the standards of norman architecture in england is a colossal building 

[Music] darn Cathedral was begun in 1093 on the sort of scale and grandeur common to many great norman cathedrals of england in the late 11th century durham is a masterpiece of structure and that makes it in a way a slightly ambiguous building because durham is undoubtedly a Romanesque church in fact it is a massive reminisce building one of the largest but it also has gothic elements in it in the 19th century archaeologists define the Gothic style as having three essential characteristics the pointed arch the rib vault and the flying buttress and dioramas got all three of these it's got pointed arches in the nave of the building Darren's also got ribbed vaults in fact it's perhaps one of the first buildings in Europe consistently to use rib halls throughout the whole structure and finally Dharam does have flying buttresses can't see them from down here below but they do exist up in the dark triforium supporting the gallery roofs of course but also taking some of the lateral thrust of these great vaults outwards and downwards onto the ground what do these three features make Dharma gothic building of course they did because Dharam like every other Romanesque Church perhaps even more so supports the thrust of its faults on great walls and pillars it's not the buttresses that support the structure it's the sheer weight of the masonry of course there's Allah mentor Dharam very exotic there is the use peps for the first time in England of Chevron ornament this zigzag ornament and perhaps most famously are the extraordinary incised patterns but the Masons have placed around the great columns of Dharam it is precisely this mixture in Durham of strong Romanesque forms and the beginnings of gothic elements that make it so important in the history of European architecture back here at vezelay the very moment of historical change can still be seen in the two distinct parts of the church the Romanesque nave and the choir here pure gothic and only 70 years separates the two this heyday of the Romanesque style in the West had drawn on many influences native Roman Byzantine and even further afield and that reveals a characteristic of the art of the West from then until now it has always sought change and the 11th and 12th centuries were a period of unceasing experimentation with artists and craftsmen forever groping for new ideas and better techniques the demolition of the Romanesque choir here at Vezelay almost new and its replacement by the Gothic would soon be mirrored across Europe but those gothic ideas that we saw prefigured at Durham were not a first followed up in England it was north France which gave birth to the new style a style which two contemporaries must have made the dignified Romanesque seem old-fashioned almost overnight but a style which ushered in one of the greatest of all periods in the history of the art of the world the age of Gothic 

[Music] 11:45 in this year says a contemporary Robert of Torrini the people of charge began to drag carts harness to their own shoulders laden with stone and wood and other provisions for the building of the new church [Music] the silence only broken by their cries to God for forgiveness of their sins [Music] the story of the cult of cats takes us to the heart of one of the most remarkable periods in the art of the West the age of the Gothic cathedrals and of all the churches built then one has come to stand for all the rest shocked [Music] the church at Chartres was burned down on several occasions between the eighth century and the 12th but each time the people of shot willed its rebuilding the craftsman the sculptors the glaciers the Masons the construction workers flooded in from far and wide but it was the people of short for themselves who provided the basis in the money raised by the sale the produce of their own labors but they also provided the emotional commitment and sometimes that could reach fever pitch as in 11:45 in 1194 the church was again burned on leaving only the great West Gate the Western towers and the ancient crypt miraculously their most sacred relic the tunic of the Virgin Mary survived intact in the crypt to the joy of the people and even more miraculously the entire church was rebuilt in 27 years and that is the church that we can still see today [Music] now what the cathedral meant to the people who lived in these streets in the 13th century is very different from what it means today then the cathedral was not only the center of spiritual life it was the focus of civic pride and daily life literally revolved around it as in many medieval towns the Western gates of the cathedral formed one side of a great open Square in the Middle Ages this was the place where the townspeople could meet the farmers and the produce of the countryside could be bought and sold here too they could mingle with tinker's and peddlers salt-cellars dealers in relics and the whole gallery of nefarious characters who throng the roads of Christendom at that time 

[Music] the important rituals of people's lives centered in the church in the church the infant was baptized the young were married and prayers were offered for the souls of the dead the tremendous outpouring of skill labor and faith represented in the age of Gothic cathedrals needs to be understood in the light of the great changes happening in Western Europe between 1100 and 1300 and the most important of these was a dramatic population boom as Europe grew more stable and more prosperous men and women seemed to have married younger and had bigger families as a result the population of the West increased threefold in those two centuries and in the richest parts up to ten fold hundreds of new towns were founded and the old ones thrived as local and long-distance trade flourished at the same time there were new intellectual impulses evidence best of all in the founding of the great universities Paris Oxford and Cambridge and inside the church great scholars such as Peter Abelard attempted to wrestle afresh with those eternal problems of the relationship between the rational and logic and faith so everywhere there was a sense of change no where is this sense of change revealed more dramatically than in architecture in a drab suburb of Paris at the Church of San Denis once the glorious burial place of the kings of France we can pinpoint the moment of transition to the new visionary Gothic style it's very rare in the history of Western architecture when we can see a new style born in a new place in one monument at a very specific moment in time but such is the case here where we for the very first time the Gothic style was created William Clarke is an art historian who has made new contributions to our knowledge of sandini and charged the new style of architecture is characterized by these tall thin columns their foliage capitals that lift up the now even ceiling height a network of pointed arches and ribbed vaults these things had been used before but what's new indeed unique here at San Denis is the new sense of the organization of the space the divisions are now played down in favour of an overall unified space that close from one side of the building to the other the differences from Romanesque architecture are clear Romanesque architecture had massive heavy thick walls and divided spaces here at San Denis the divisions between units like the walls between the radiating chapels have simply disappeared in favour of this vast expanse of space that seems to float around us and it's filled with light [Music] the wall or as a surface has disappeared and has been replaced by translucent screens of glass all this was due to the influence of one of the most extraordinary people in 12th century France the man who conceived the new building abbot Suchet of san denis Suchet believed that the light flooding the choir through the stained glass windows becomes divine light a revelation of the Spirit of God thus it was possible he said to create in a church a strange region of the universe suspended between Earth 

[Music] suja also placed gold and jeweled objects everywhere in his church for these two were felt to reflect the divine light in June 11:44 Suja consecrated the new crowd at San Denis in the presence of the King of France his nobles and the chief Archbishop's and bishops dazzled by what they saw they returned home inspired to equal or even outdo CJ's creation wrasse sauce Saudi soir song both a Canterbury and charge would soon show the influence of the noose Antony the medieval cathedral was the focus of popular pride and intense rivalry for the prestige and importance of a town was determined to a large extent by the size and height and beauty of its Cathedral this rivalry pushed church spires to unprecedented Heights the spire of char would extend beyond the top of a 30 story skyscraper a 40 floor skyscraper would be needed to surpass the spire at Strasbourg the dimensions of the cathedral at amia made it possible for the entire population of the city some 10 thousand people to attend one ceremony but it was in the height of the vaulting that the most intense competition reigned when the vaulting of Notre Dame in Paris achieved a height of a hundred eight feet short rows a hundred and twenty-one feet above the ground Reims then surpassed this with a hundred and 25 feet next a Mia Rose a hundred and thirty nine feet finally Beauvais Cathedral which would have beaten them all with a vault of a hundred and fifty eight feet went beyond the limits of safety and medieval engineering skill and the walls of the choir collapsed despite isolated disasters like both a gothic triumphed over much of Europe within a few generations at Canterbury when the choir was destroyed in the great fire of 1174 it was rebuilt in the new Gothic style England was the first to adopt the Gothic not surprising in a country with close dynastic and historical links with France but English architects always tended to go their own way favouring length over height evolving their own forms often by deliberately misinterpreting their French models by the early 14th century at Wells Cathedral the deep-rooted English tendency toward architectural fantasy broke through producing daring innovation most striking and eccentric are the massive strainer arches added to reinforce the supports of the crossing tongue and that most notable of English contributions to gothic the elaborately patterned vault with its delicate treasury of stone 

[Music] during the heyday of gothic hundreds of cathedrals and thousands of churches were built across Europe in that time it has been estimated that more stone was quarried in France alone than in the entire history of ancient Egypt at the heart of gothic was a combination of all the arts transformed by religious faith into a mystical vision [Music] and it is a charge that these elements are felt to have achieved their greatest harmony the West front of shop the so-called royal portal is the only group to survive the calamitous fire of 1194 the faithful were greeted by rows of Old Testament kings and queens recalling the biblical ancestry claimed by the 12th century French kings [Music] these Old Testament prophets and kings and queens give us a very clear sense of the new relationship between sculpture and architecture they stand away from their architectural background they float serenely in space touching neither the bottom nor the top their lines are dictated by those of the architecture behind them thus they're tall slim and vertical proportions but they are at the same time remarkably free from their architectural constraints at once majestic dignified but no longer remote they're very human and approachable in their facial expressions and their emotions 

[Music] up above in the tympanum we have our Christ in majesty with the four evangelists symbols with the elders of the apocalypse and angels a majestic vision symbolizing in fact the promise of salvation unlike the teeming and crowded tympanum of Salazar a tota who's subject was the Last Judgement in all its terrifying detail here we have the promise of salvation and a serenity and in majesty and above all an approachable humanity that animates the sculpture here we've seen them the very embodiment of the mid 12th century humanism that is so prevalent in the school of shark at this very time one of the most exciting things that happens at Chartres is that you can move from the west front to the North transept and you change completely the sense of style in the sculpture a complete change that's taken place and the attitude towards the human body these figures are now much freer and seemed to move they have animated facial expressions the drapery Falls around the bodies and reveals it in its contours we've got the Old Testament King stand prophets again on both sides all of these emphasize salvation through sacrifice Abraham for instance is preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac as God commanded him he looks up at the angel who orders him to substitute the RAM both the north and south transept portals belong to the new cathedral built after the 1194 fire the south side followed shortly after the north so the same changes we saw there are now even more advanced here for instance is the warrior saint theodore with the weight borne on one foot like the classical contrapposto pose he's liberated from the architectural framework in contrast to the other biblical figures for the very first time he is now dressed and armed as a contemporary 13th century Crusader the human form and its natural depiction now sanctioned by the church released the creative energies of the Gothic sculptor soon a great variety of individualized figures blossomed on cathedrals not only in France but all over York a great age of Gothic cathedrals then was an unparalleled time of expansiveness in European society but in saying that we mustn't forget that during those years the mass of society was still dependent peasantry unfree laboring under an extraordinarily rigid social system it was perhaps because their lives were so harsh that the cathedral meant so much to them they could hardly be a greater contrast between the squalid conditions of their lives and the splendor of the Cathedral to which they quite literally looked up 

[Music] here in charge we see the culmination of 50 years of architectural experimentation and development all brought together by a master builder and to create a completely new sense of Gothic space we start at the floor with those old lean pillars that rise majestically from the floor uninterrupted towards their capitals and their arcades and on the front side directly towards the vaults the second level is that horizontal wall passage that provides a little relief from the vertical and that prepares us for the most spectacular achievement it shot those enormous clerestory windows windows that are as tall as the arches below and windows that take up the full expanse of the wall that marks it as the beginning of the classic Age of French Gothic cathedrals the period that we call the high gothic sharra has more of its original blasts than any other medieval cathedral what makes possible the size of those windows and the openness of that wall is in fact the last major structural advance in Gothic architecture the external flying buttresses that take all the weight and the pressures from the vaults from a timber roof and transfer it away from the wall directly into the ground Romanesque architecture doesn't have this advantage there we have short heavy piers thick walls with small windows round arches and groin vaults creating solid but not very tall buildings in the Gothic church the walls do not carry the whole weight of the structure the inner piers are slim and narrow the rib vaults are thin under a tall timber roof massive windows take up most of the wall this openness was possible because the structural support has been moved to the outside massive upright piers surround the building giant arches like great arms spring from them to resist the pressures of weight and wind 

[Music] what I like particularly chard I think it is unique it's all it the Assam of stained glass it gives an atmosphere it gives really what the people of the time wanted to be it is a church it is a church in which people pray so this thin glass is to give a light which is not natural life which is another light and prash is an eminent French medievalist who has devoted much of her professional life to the study of the cathedral of shot and it's stained glass windows the moment you get inside this church the light change so you are really in another world in this sacred world it must have been a very great enterprise to decorate such a church it is supposed to cover about seven acres of windows which is something terrific when you think of the means the people had at the time the church is dedicated to the virgin and you find her everywhere she is the center of all the decoration of the church [Music] if you look at the central window on the West facade which is the larger window ever made in the 12th century 11 meters something like 30 feet high you have a great composition a kind of decoration just as you could see on neurons or on tapestries or great mosaics 

[Music] you can see that on top of the window she is enthroned between angels so she is really the queen of Haven for the stained glass makers they had no large pieces of glass they had only small pieces of them because they blew the glass they could not produce it as it is produced today so they could produce only little bits of glass so each time they wanted to change the color they had to change the piece of glass and to put all the glass the pieces of glass together they had to have LED going around so it's like a mosaic if you start studying these windows you can learn a lot about the life of the Middle Ages we have the furry earth we have even the sculptors and probe least one of the best representation of the 13th century it's really a great documentation for us so I think this stained glass of shark is really telling about the way people lived the way they thought the way they prayed all their ideals and beliefs the cathedrals of the Gothic age like shot were indeed as a bird Suchet had said new works suffused by a new light in that combination of soaring stonework sculpture and painted glass they had created an art to set beside and even to surpass the works of classical antiquity as we've seen there's was a living art which had taken centuries to come to fruition and it still has the power to astonish us by the sheer quantity and quality of the great churches the vast areas they covered the huge spaces they enveloped and their affair real duty their art originated slowly and painfully but those who came after them the artists we now call those of the early Renaissance would truly be standing on the shoulders of giants [Music] you [Music]