Hello! This video covers Romanesque Europe, so Europe
around the year 1100 CE or so --
plus or minus -- "Romanesque" just means "Roman like",
but be careful don't use the term "Romanesque" just describe anything that
looks
ancient Roman. This is a very specific period in the later part in the Middle Ages --
just before the Gothic period starts
really taking hold, so just be sure that
when you're using the term "Romanesque", you're only using it to describe this period,
Really don't use it to describe something that looks ancient Roman,
in general. It does mean Roman like
in this case, but that means that they're using of the
type of architectural features of ancient Rome -- things like the pure semi-
circular arch,
a lot of masonry or a lot of stonework. So
here I have an image of an ancient Roman aqueduct, just giving you an idea of those
archways that we're gonna see it the Romanesque style of
architecture. We also see a
clear focus on relics and reliquaries, which had been important in Christianity but
really gain
a higher level of importance during this period,
we'll talk about the Crusades a little bit, which were an important
reason for warfare,
for interaction for trade around this time. You have an apocalyptic mood going
on, so
remember around the year 1000 everyone was very nervous about the end of the world --
well, that kind of mood will continue to survive and stay around for a while.
The Romanesque style spreads from France and Spain,
over to Germany and Italy, so we'll see some examples in
all of those countries in this lecture. So starting off, I just wanna show an example
of a reliquary. This reliquary comes from France, from Conques, which was an important
pilgrimage church.
This represents St. Foy and it includes have an amalgam of different
materials. So it includes an ancient Roman helmet and cameos,
it includes beautiful stones -- precious and semi-precious stones -- similar to the
"Lindau Gospels" cover that we saw
in the early medieval lecture. This is a very ornamented
work that celebrates an early Christian martyr and is said to hold
her relics -- hold these relics of this important martyr.
So this was how these relics and reliquaries worked. So the relic
is the actual body part inside, or the object and
this holy figure was said to have touched, or a garment that maybe they wore.
So the relic is actually inside. The reliquary is the case that it would go
in.
So here we're seeing the reliquary and the relic is presumably inside.
So the idea is that you make it as beautiful as possible to speak highly of
these relics,
which were real generators of income and of
interest in different churches, so if you had a really important
relic and reliquary that meant that you were going to get more visitors,
more pilgrims, coming to your church, and Conques was an important pilgrimage Church.
So you would have visitors making their pilgrimages
and making sure that they stopped at this church to see some of the important relics
and reliquaries
there. This is an example of what we call "FURTA SACRA" or
holy theft. This idea that you can
steal a relic and reliquary from another
monastery, so these relics were said to have been translated to one spot or were said to have
arrived at a site, and then they were stolen by a monk to bring them to Conques.
So what would happen is you'd often have a monk, who would end up at a monastery,
he would wait awhile -- wait until he could get access to a relic -- and then bring it back to
his home
abbey, or bring it back to his home monastery, so there was definitely a system of
taking these relics from one place to another
for spiritual reasons, community reasons,
probably monetary reasons, too, in order to generate income for one's church,
so
this is an example of that kind of theft. People also saw problems with this kind
of visual richness
of the gold and the materials, the stones that were used
that this could be problematic, and there was a Cistercian monk,
who was quite austere, Abbot of Clairvaux. His name was Bernard of
Clairvaux.
He was very unhappy with some of the worship of relics and reliquaries,
that "eyes were fixed on relics covered with gold... the thoroughly beautiful image of
some male of female saint is exhibited and that saint is
believed to be the more holy, the more highly colored the image
is" -- so this worry about idolatry, about possibly
worshiping these images, as if they are
gods, or to the fact that they look beautiful, that you should worship them
even though there might be other saints that might be more worthy
of ones devotion, so
these weren't universally appreciated by all.
What did these pilgrimage churches look like? Let's have a look at
Santiago de Compostela, which would be the most important. It's way at the end of Spain --
way at the end northern Spain -- so it really was at the end of the known
world. Remember we haven't arrived in the Americas yet.
So this idea that you would make a pilgrimage all the way out to the
western coast of Spain -- out to where you could pick up this kind of scallop shell, this
seashell that would mark your pilgrimage, and
mark the fact that you made this great effort to arrive at this important
church that was sacred to St. James.
So if we look here, you can see this is a typical pilgrimage plan, where you have
radiating chapels -- these little
bumps sticking out at the end or these radiating chapels, where you can easily store
relics. Also you tend to see large barrel vaults done in masonry,
so this adds a vaulting like the vaults of the heavens,
but also adds a bit of fire protection so you no longer have
flat timber roofs -- flat roofs made out of wood --
this way you have a vaulted ceiling looking like the heavens,
but also it's made of stone so it protects your church.
The downside to this is these are so heavy that they were very worried about
poking or piercing the walls with windows, so you tend to see rather small
windows,
or windows with really, really thick sides to them.
So you don't get a lot of light in these churches. They tend to be pretty dark
and dungeon-like. In this church here, I'm showing you an image where there's quite a bit
artificial illumination.
But just to give you a sense of what that would have been like, and Santiago
today has had a lot of changes --
Baroque additions from much later, so I'm show you a reconstruction of what the church
would have looked like originally.
And here I'm just showing you some important elements of Romanesque architecture.
So, the most important is this ambulatory with radiating chapels,
which allows pilgrims to visit, to see the relics without interrupting
any the rituals or liturgy going on in the nave, the area at the crossing square,
the side aisle, or the area the transept. And just a quick note, the crossing square really
was
the way that you would measure different ratios of the church.
So, for example, this area here between
the column and the pier here, you have an area that would be half the size
of the crossings square, and this area in the side aisle is one-fourth the size of the crossings
square. So this way all your measurements are related.
Let's carry on. Another thing we tend to see in Romanesque churches
is a lot of sculptural decoration, but not the kind of
heavy figures that we tend to see in the Roman or Greek period.
These figures tend to be a little bit thinner -- remember the human body is a little
bit de-emphasized, a little bit abstracted during this period.
It emphasizes spirituality. It also keeps people from having any kind of
impure thoughts about the human body when you're inside church.
So what we tend to see is along the naves and side aisles of
churches is we see some beautiful sculpted column capitals. So here we're looking into
a church
at Vézelay, and you can see
very traditional Romanesque style: barrel vaulting,
those alternating voussoirs, which we've seen before. And so one example is
"Samson and the Lion", which is a story from the Old Testament that may allude to this idea
of Christ's struggle or fight with the devil --
this idea of fighting off sin or fighting off challenges, fighting off
evil. So these often could be read on multiple levels.
Another interesting one is the abduction of Ganymede, which refers back, of course, to
a Greco-Roman
of Zeus (Jupiter) spotting a beautiful Trojan youth, Ganymede,
and then abducting him, and bringing him up to be with the gods, to be
on Mount Olympus. And so this is obviously a very odd selection, but it
may speak to the dangers of
older monks preying on some of the younger boys
that were entering the monastery, or just another commentary of ideas of sin in the Christian
Church at this time.
So you can see this bird -- Zeus was said to have transformed himself
into a bird, into an eagle -- to come and grab on to Ganymede here,
who you see as this young boy, and then this devilish creature
grabbing onto the bird from behind.
And the next -- a very famous image from the Romanesque period -- is
this idea the "Mystic Mill", and this also refers back to the idea
of having the Old Testament and then refining that as you move into the New
Testament in the period of Christ and idea of salvation being brought with
Christ.
So you have Moses here pouring grain -- and, of course,
grain would have really been image that so many individuals here would have been
familiar with -- this idea
of bread being important, grain being important, an important
part of their survival around this time. So you have Moses pouring grain, which
symbolizes the Old Testament into the mill, which is Christ --
this idea that he's refining the message --
into this sack
that the Apostle Paul is collecting. So this idea of transforming the Old
Testament, which
predicts certain elements of Christ coming, which tells of
certain elements that that are relevant when Christ comes, and Christ
is going to refine that message through the New Testament and through his arrival and through
his
offer of salvation. So that is represented there. We also will see it
in stained glass windows later on and in other representations in Art History.
Another representation that we see very frequently is still this
idea of "The Last Judgment", which, of course, was very relevant
around the year 1000, but remained important until later on.
This is a tympanum, which is semi-circular form
right above a portal -- right above a door -- to a Romanesque church. This is a church in
France, and what's important about it is we know the sculptor. We believe a sculptor
named Gislebertus --
and it says his name that he did this. He could be the patron --
that's been suggested.
He apparently was a very well-known sculptor, had a workshop,
and he took credit for some of these works. So we believe that he was probably
the sculptor
here. These bodies do tend to be more abstract, more elongated,
more spiritual in their overall quality. You can see there would have been
a little bit of paint applied. There's some pigment that survives, and the main idea
here is you
Christ -- obviously very powerful, strong -- as judge at center;
figures who had been awakened and are
waiting for this moment of judgment hesitantly along the bottom
with little angels hurrying them along -- saying "come on, come on, keep moving";
and then you have figures being boosted up into heaven -- right over
here, with the Virgin Mary,
on this side. So remember Christ's blessed side is his right side [our left when viewing]
and more of the negative side is his left side. So,
of course, on his left is more of the hellish side with people being pushed
into the Hellmouth,
and people souls being weighed and these little devil figures
pulling on the scale to manipulate it, so
definitely a scarier side here, and a more pleasant side here.
which would, of course, remind people of judgment as they came
into the church, so reminding them to behave themselves.
Another reminder of behaving oneself would be this image of Eve, which we
see in another portal of the church -- in the North Portal,
in one of the lintels. And what we see here is Eve looking almost like a snake.
She's slithering along the ground there, and it's as if she's calling to Adam --
you see her calling, and she is represented nude, but strategically covered here.
She's grabbing onto the
fruit. We see a little snake figure here, but this idea that she
is this individual, who's inciting sin, who's calling for him,
and it's another example of Gislebertus' style of sculpture.
Demonstrating the kind of spirituality of this time -- if we move
over to Germany --
we see an individual name Hildegard of Bingen (or Hildegard von Bingen).
This no longer survives -- we see it here as a facsimile -- so just a reproduction in
color.
It give us a sense of the spiritual moments
that people were having at this time or were said to have been having --
the intense experiences -- the way they would describe their Christian faith.
So Hildegard was one who was said to have received received visions.
She dictated her visions to a monk, and we see her here in
one of those moments. So the architecture she's in is quite abstract.
Her drapery is very typical of the time. It doesn't reveal a lot of the body
underneath -- very stylized drapery
folds, and we her here working away on a wax tablet
trying to feverishly record what's going on
because you see these little flames or fingers coming down on her head,
and so she's feverishly writing all this down, and this monk,
of course, is trying to catch every word of it as well -- just in case she misses
something
or in case it's not coming very clearly.
So she started receiving these visions very young, and
she was a very learned woman -- she wrote scientific treatises and composed music,
and she's one of the few women that we hear about from this period, so it's interesting
to think about her role in this time.
We also see the Romanesque style going into places like Italy. Very famous
series of structure, which would be the cathedral complex at Pisa -- most
famous for it's campanile or its
leaning tower here. But you have that Romanesque style with the emphasis
on semi-circular arches.
Although, because you're Italy, we're still seeing a strong influence coming
from
ancient Roman basilicas with the flat roofs, and, in fact, this doesn't have a barrel
vault. If you
go inside the cathedral, it's a flat roof, but you do have a lot of
these semi-circular arches, and you can see later on they added Gothic elements like
these
gables with little crocketts sticking out --
those prickly elements that we tend to associate with the Gothic period -- so
the Romanesque style is definitely spreading, and then the Gothic style will
spread later on
as well. And then finally will stop off in England, and just briefly the look at the
"Bayeux
Tapestry", which records the Battle of Hastings -- a very important battle
in 1066 -- which was a battle to take over for
at King Edward. So William -- who's named "William the Conqueror" after he wins --
so he's the winner. He was Duke of Normandy -- the area of northern France.
He's going against Harold, Earl of Wessex, and this just records the entire storyline
on tapestry that runs over 200 feet in length,
and technically it's a more of an embroidery, than a tapestry.
And then we also have the development of this move towards more of a Gothic style with a
ribbed, groin vaulting
which we see here at Durham Cathedral, so we'll move to this idea of
taller churches with more ornate architecture.