Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Castles

100

construction out of the range of a peasant farmer. All through the medi-

eval period, Europe’s castles were built by experts, often with international

reputations.

Construction was overseen by a master mason. These master masons were

carefully trained and very experienced in all tasks of planning, measuring and

surveying, stonecutting, and stone laying or bricklaying. They knew how to

make arches, walls, towers, gates, and other castle features, such as latrines

and ﬁ replaces. Some masons, such as Master James of Saint George, mason

of the Wales castles of King Edward I, were specialized in the military ma-

sonry of castles. Master James had trained in Savoy and was hired by King

Edward I after they met while the King was on a Crusade. Other masons

built castles, cathedrals, and all other stone buildings, but only in their re-

gions. These master masons planned, built, and tinkered to improve designs

and adapt to individual sites. The role of the architect as a planner alone only

came about in the late Middle Ages, blending into the Renaissance.

Castle construction involved many laborers, and masons were usually in

charge of hiring and supplying the labor. A king’s castle might draw skilled

workers from all over the region or country. A certain number of diggers and

woodcutters might be employed locally, as well. Typical building contracts

allowed the master mason a certain budget per foot of tower or wall, and

it was his task to hire within that budget. Master masons themselves were

highly paid. Contracts still exist, from all periods in the Middle Ages and

in every region, but English records are the most complete. We know that

many master masons were paid daily wages equal to or greater than a

knight’s wages.

Castle building was slow. Early motte-and-bailey castles, constructed of

timber, could be put up quickly. During the invasion of England in 1066,

Duke William of Normandy shipped precut, premeasured timber to England

so his men could put up a fortress, a simple castle, in hours or days. Stone cas-

tles were slower work, of course. Under conditions requiring extreme speed,

and by hiring every possible worker and sparing no expense, a castle could

be built in 2 years. Typical castles were built in 5 to 10 years. Work cutting

stone in quarries could continue in winter, but other building could only

be done May through October.

Castle Warfare

Castles were both forward bases from which to mount attacks and last-

stand places to fall back on. As long as a lord and his men were secure in their

castle, they were unconquered. An attacking lord or king could only camp

outside the walls and wait. Each side considered time an element of the ﬁ ght.

Either the attackers or the defenders could run out of food, and either side

could receive help from another king or lord. It was in the interest of each

Castles

101

side to prolong the siege to use the weapon of time, and yet it was also in the

interest of each to cut the siege short, since time could hurt both sides.

The attackers, after offering terms of surrender, began to assault the phys-

ical structure of the castle. They attacked from above and below. Attacks

from above took the form of rocks, darts, and other projectiles ﬂ ung with

different types of catapults. These projectiles harassed defenders and dam-

aged walls. Attacks from below meant digging tunnels under the walls, either

to weaken and collapse the walls or to create a means of attack inside the

walls. Attackers also assaulted the walls directly by climbing ladders in a hu-

man attack or by repeatedly hitting the walls or doors with a battering ram.

Additionally, they sent in spies if they could or attempted to communicate

with knights inside who might betray the castle gate.

The defenders, after declining the terms of surrender, did what they could

to discourage the attackers. They mounted their own catapults on the cas-

tle walls and hurled rocks or garbage at the attackers. They stood in the

hoardings or machicolations and dropped boiling water or quicklime into

attackers’ faces or armor. They tried to detect tunneling and blocked it or

counter-mined to surprise the miners and beat them back. Their defenses did

not need to be as active as the attacks, however, because the castle itself was

their weapon.

If the attackers succeeded in breaching the wall, then a battle began in-

side the castle. Defenders would ﬁ ght hard at the point of breach, but they

would also fall back to an inner ring, where the assault would have to

succeed a second time. When a castle was taken in battle, the defenders who

were not killed in battle were often executed afterward. Knowing this,

knights and foot soldiers fought desperately. A castle battle would include

ﬁ re, many corpses, and much general destruction. After the battle, the win-

ner might pull down the castle’s walls.

Often, a siege continued without a breach of the castle walls. If either

side received sudden reinforcements from allies, there would probably be a

pitched battle outside the castle. The castle defenders might also choose to

sortie, which was a sudden, direct attack on the besieging army. A sortie was

not the preferred defense, since if it failed the castle would be left unpro-

tected and would almost certainly fall. Many sieges ended with a draw. The

attackers could not prevail, and both sides were running low on food. Winter

was coming on, and the attacking army included peasants who could not

stay away from their farms any longer. The attacking army would withdraw,

leaving the besieged castle folk relieved, exhausted, and hungry.

Most besieged castles also sheltered peasants and nearby townsfolk. If

given time to prepare, the peasant farmers would have brought their crops

and animals into the castle. Their homes and any remaining crops were of-

ten burned so the attackers could not use them. A besieged castle was a

crowded, dirty place.

Cathedrals

102

See also: Crusades, Furniture, Knights, Latrines and Garbage, Sieges, Stone

and Masons.

Further Reading

Brown, R. Allen. The Architecture of Castles: A Visual Guide. New York: Facts on

File, 1984.

Brown, R. Allen. Castles: A History and Guide. Poole, UK: Blandford Press, 1980.

Coldstream, Nicola. Medieval Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Donnelly, Mark P., and Daniel Diehl. Siege: Castles at War. Dallas, TX: Taylor Pub-

lishing, 1998

Gies, Joseph, and Frances Gies. Life in a Medieval Castle. New York: Harper and

Row, 1974.

Kaufmann, J. E., and H. W. Kaufmann. The Medieval Fortress: Castles, Forts, and

Walled Cities of the Middle Ages. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004.

Keen, Maurice. Medieval Warfare: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

King, David James Cathcart. The Castle in England and Wales: An Interpretive His-

tory. Portland, OR: Areopagitica Press, 1988.

Stoksad, Marilyn. Medieval Castles. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Toy, Sidney. Castles: Their Construction and History. Mineola, NY: Dover Publica-

tions, 1985.

Warner, Philip. The Medieval Castle: Life in a Fortress in Peace and War. New York:

Taplinger, 1971.

Cathedrals

A cathedral is the church where a bishop presides, so it is usually located in

a large city that was the diocese’s governing center. The Latin word for the

bishop’s throne was cathedra. The name cathedral is often used for grand

churches that are part of an abbey, but an abbey was the governing center of

a monastic order, separate from the diocese, so technically these churches are

not cathedrals. Bishops governed the region around a city or large town; in

Italy, there were as many as 150, while in medieval England, there were

about 20. Other European countries ranged between these extremes. France

had around 75, Spain about 50, and Germany around 40.

A really grand cathedral was very expensive and took many years to build.

Grandeur was a top priority in the medieval church; they believed that only

the ﬁ nest, most expensive, and most beautiful materials and craftsmanship

honored God and the saints. When a church was built to honor a saint, the

people believed the saint watched to see how well he or she was honored

and would bring blessing to the community in proportion to the expense.

Bishops and kings could help ﬁ nance a cathedral directly. In England, the

Anglo-Norman nobility staffed the bishoprics and sponsored the buildings,

often contributing heavily from their own funds. Many German cathedrals

were built directly by the emperor, as well as by the duke of Saxony. Other

Cathedrals

103

European kings of France, Spain, and Bohemia also directly funded cathe-

drals.

A large fraction of cathedral funding came from non-royal sources. Pil-

grims left gifts for the saints, and some bishops had licenses to hold an an-

nual fair. Bishops and the Pope could sell indulgences, especially indulgences

for the sinful use of butter in cooking during Lent’s fast. Regional lords

bought these indulgences for their people, and these butter sales funded

many churches. City trade guilds sponsored portions of cathedrals—for ex-

ample, stained glass windows. In Pisa, the city built the famous Leaning

Tower and its cathedral with the spoils of war against the Saracens.

Classical Style

The basilica, which means “royal hall” in Greek, was the public meeting

hall of Roman cities. After the Roman Empire became Christian under Con-

stantine, the basilica became the standard plan for an urban church. Its lay-

out was simple. It was a rectangular hall divided into a central hall with aisles

by two rows of columns supporting a weight-bearing wall that helped sup-

port the roof. The magistrate’s seat or the altar was at one end. Some

churches recycled columns and blocks from Roman temples that were fall-

ing into disrepair. Many early classical churches were built on top of ceme-

teries, originally to protect the grave of saints such as Peter. Burial crypts

were automatically included in the design.

When the Christian faith spread into barbarian countries like Spain and

England, huge basilicas were not a practical plan for new churches that

served small populations. Churches were redesigned as tiny basilicas or stone

versions of native building plans. Most ﬂ oor plans remained large and sim-

ple but added side rooms. There was a preference for round arches and col-

umns to imitate Roman design.

The basic church ﬂ oor plan was a rectangular nave, the open area where

people could stand, and a semicircular apse, the end where an altar would

stand and priests would conduct a ceremony. The apse was sometimes on a

raised platform with a burial crypt below. The apse was also called the choir,

and it was where priests or monks sang the service. The common people

were not permitted there; it was separated and screened off. The pulpit was

in the nave so people could hear the readings and sermon.

Romanesque Style

Under Charlemagne, church building returned to the Roman model, but

the Carolingians developed the basilica into a more complicated building.

The basilica was still the main open hall, but, during the 9th and 10th cen-

turies, it added rooms and ﬂ oors. The ﬁ rst addition was a second apse (second

Cathedrals

104

choir), and then basilicas began to have transepts, additions that ran per-

pendicular to the main hall, forming a T . The transept allowed the church

to have separate chapels at each end, perhaps dedicated to speciﬁ c saints.

As the Carolingian monasteries and parishes built larger churches, they

added multiple stories; the main nave might be on the second ﬂ oor, and

there were frequently upper galleries with arched openings looking down

into the nave. Corner towers held spiral stairs. The transept, turned into a

multiple-story building, became known as the westwork. It was a building

at one end of the main church that held choir rooms, chapels, and stairs.

The outside of these buildings was generally plain stonework, and most

basilicas had towers at each end as well as other additions. Inside, the Roman

tradition of arches and columns continued, but, in a region without Italian

marble, different building strategies changed the look. Arches often rested

on square columns plastered white with the rest of the wall. The arches were

frequently part of the white wall so that the wall continued cleanly upward

until it reached the upper gallery with its row of smaller arches of the same

design. This upper row of arched windows was called the triforium. It could

be a real second-story gallery or just a design element along a wall.

There were outbuildings in later basilicas. True cathedrals belonging to

bishops had chapter houses attached, where the canons—the monks who

sang the service—lived. A cathedral might have around 50 canons. Baptis-

mal fonts and bell towers could also be separate rooms or buildings in a Ro-

manesque church. The baptismal font was often housed in an octagonal

room attached to the main nave. The octagon was a signature design ele-

ment for this period and also was favored for mausoleums and chapels. Bap-

tistries could also be separate buildings so that baptisms did not disturb the

services in the main basilica.

Most churches had at least one tower that held a bell to call the monks or

local people to services. The higher a tower, the farther the sound of its bell

could reach. All through the period, masons built higher towers. The tow-

ers could be square, round, or octagonal. They were often decorated with

layers of arches and columns, like a very tall wedding cake. The famous

Leaning Tower of Pisa was its Romanesque belfry.

Romanesque churches did not all look the same, but they shared certain

features due to the architectural methods of the time. Walls were thick to

support the weight of the roof, and windows had to be relatively small.

Windows were almost always arched with rounded arches. Indoor rooms al-

most always had arches and pillars of some design, whether square and plas-

tered or round with carved capitals. Round towers and octagonal buildings

also typiﬁ ed this style.

Decorative touches included imitation Roman capitals, stonework of al-

ternating colors, and brass railings. Stained glass windows were not a main

feature, although some churches had large, highly colored windows with

Cathedrals

105

Bible scenes. There were also ceiling and wall paintings and sometimes fres-

cos painted into fresh plaster. Cathedrals had many beautiful objects: the

bishop’s throne of wood or even marble, gold reliquaries, exotic lanterns,

objects of carved ivory and wood, and molded brass reliefs.

Romanesque buildings were usually built from local stone, which was

colored red, brown, yellow, or gray by region. Many pillars built of stone

blocks had patterns carved onto them at the quarry so they could be as-

sembled quickly and would form large geometric patterns. Dressing stone

this way was called ashlar technique, and ashlar stone was a signature of the

period. The buildings were colorful and not at all uniform like the later gray

Gothic cathedrals made all of Caen limestone.

The thick load-bearing piers inside a building, bearing the arches that

carried the wall’s weight, were often carved into shapes like clusters of col-

umns. Masons sought to construct piers that were strong enough, that were

made of components light enough to transport, and that were also inter-

esting to look at. Some cathedrals, such as Durham Cathedral in England,

had alternating designs. Some pillars were thick, round, and covered with

The famous “Leaning Tower” of Pisa was the bell tower for the Romanesque

cathedral compound, which also included a baptistry. All were lavishly decorated with

galleries of blind arches, instead of with the huge stained glass windows of later

Gothic cathedrals. (Miklós Ebergényi/Dreamstime.com)

Cathedrals

106

carved diamonds or chevrons, while other pillars were carved as clusters of

smaller pillars.

Another ashlar technique on the outer walls was to use decorative arches

that did not bear weight or have real openings. These “blind arches” and

“blind galleries” were arches or galleries in half-round relief set against a

solid wall. Superimposed galleries were rows of arches with real openings

but immediately backed by a wall and not serving any purpose other than

decoration. Since the walls of Romanesque churches had to be thick and

bear heavy loads, they could not have many real windows and would other-

wise have been solid, plain surfaces. Blind galleries could be designed in in-

teresting sizes and geometric patterns, including arches that crossed each

other in an interlocking pattern or rows of small arches under the roof’s

eaves. Pisa’s famous belfry has superimposed galleries—row upon row of

arches with the real wall immediately behind them.

The thick lower walls of a Romanesque cathedral led to the design of huge

doorways in which the wall was cut back in layers to an opening only large

enough for a real, much smaller, door where the wall was now thin enough

to hang it properly. These doorways looked like a series of decorative arches

within each other. The space below the largest arch was called a tympanum,

and it often had a relief-carved sculpture showing a Bible scene. The tym-

panum reliefs were large, complex, and educational for the illiterate towns-

people. They often showed the Last Judgment with the wicked being led

away to hell.

During the Romanesque period, architecture became an increasingly

skilled art. Early Romanesque churches were designed by bishops and ab-

bots, who oversaw many of the building details personally. But as builders

developed more reﬁ ned ways to structure foundations, roofs, and walls, pro-

fessionals took over the design and oversight. Master masons were generally

the architects and supervisors, and many worked internationally. Advances

in building techniques, and the development of this highly skilled class of

master masons, led to the next stage in building great churches. Architec-

tural problems faced during the period were mostly about the weight of their

building material—stone.

Master masons who laid out a building’s foundations had to be careful

that the stone piers set into the ground were all equally strong. Arches trans-

ferred the building’s weight onto these piers, especially at key points such as

the crossing. If one pier was weaker, or if the ground was softer, the build-

ing would settle unevenly. In other cases, during church renovation, the

builders were not sure how much weight the original piers could carry and

sometimes built a tower too high. Then the tower and building might sim-

ply collapse.

One of the more difﬁ cult tasks learned in the Romanesque period was

how to build a tower over the point where a transept crossed the main

Cathedrals

107

building. At this crossing point, the ceiling had to be made of arches. It was

difﬁ cult to build a tower on top of this structure, but the impressive appear-

ance of a tower at this crossing point led masons to ﬁ nd methods. A low,

round tower with windows provided light to the central area of the church.

A taller tower could hold the church’s bell. Many Romanesque crossing

towers were octagonal, with several layers of arched windows.

Another structural problem was the weight of the roof. Until the 11th

century, the roof vault of a basilica was usually made of timber. Wooden

roofs did not last as well and were vulnerable to ﬁ re. It was common for a

roof to catch ﬁ re if lightning struck the bell tower or if a bakery or even a

candle started a ﬁ re. The roof of the new cathedral of Mainz caught ﬁ re on

the day it was being consecrated in 1015, and, in 1174, the timber vault of

Canterbury Cathedral burned down, forcing a major renovation. Stone

supports and slate tiles were ﬁ reproof but very heavy.

The Roman solution was the barrel vault, essentially a series of round

arches laid together to form a solid round-arch ceiling. Where a transept

crossed, two barrel vaults crossed in a groin vault, where arches crossed from

corner to corner and met at a keystone in the center. Both kinds of stone

vaults were heavy and difﬁ cult to build, and their weight pushed down on

the walls and tended to force them outward. Medieval masons could not

calculate weights and forces and had to rely on experience to know what a

wall could hold. Timber supports were built ﬁ rst, and then the stone arches

were lifted onto them, until the keystone was in place and the timber could

be removed. Stone vaults did not always hold, but masons worked out many

building techniques that led to the advances of the Gothic period.

By the end of the 11th century, master masons had learned to focus care-

ful attention on the structure of roof vaults. Simple lessons learned in smaller

structures were applied to ever-larger buildings with more complex design.

The limits of round arches were thoroughly explored by 1100. The ﬁ rst

pointed arches were used in the 1088 design of a new church at Cluny. The

ceiling was to be 100 feet tall, and they wanted many windows punctuating

the thick walls. Probably borrowed from the Muslim world, pointed arches

were more effective in transferring weight downward rather than outward

as well. Even with these load-bearing pointed arches, part of the nave at

Cluny collapsed in 1125, and, as the masons repaired the walls, they added

the ﬁ rst ﬂ ying buttresses to help hold up the walls.

Ribbed vaults, a feature of Gothic building structure, began to appear in

late Romanesque cathedrals as decoration on groin vaults. The arches were

still rounded, not pointed. Masons may have discovered by accident that

decorating vaults with stone ribs made them stronger, which led the way to

more daring architectural feats.

Aisle vaults began to develop the concept of ﬂ ying buttresses. The aisle

vault was a lower side building whose outer walls helped brace the high

Cathedrals

108

walls of the main nave. The difference was that the structure sheltered genu-

ine indoor space—the aisles—unlike the later buttresses.

By the end of the Romanesque period, churches that were popular pil-

grim sites were being designed in the cross shape that became standard in

later Gothic cathedrals. The rounded apse grew larger so pilgrims could

walk around the altar and crypt where the relics were housed, and some-

times tiny chapels were added to this larger apse so pilgrims could sit and

meditate near the relics. Near this large apse, a transept crossed the nave,

usually with more small chapels attached.

The Benedictine abbey of Cluny is the greatest monument of Roman-

esque building. The monks at Cluny spent up to 10 hours a day singing the

hours (prayers) and contributed to making the liturgy more complex. The

abbey received many donations in exchange for prayers for the donors’ souls.

Because their spiritual role in the world was to offer continual prayer and

praise, the monks at Cluny put much emphasis on the beauty of their church.

A new church was built between 1088 and 1130, and it was one of the

largest churches in Europe. It had a large choir, two transepts with sepa-

rate chapels, and a large reliquary with an ambulatory walk around it and

tiny chapels in the apse nearest the relics. From the outside, it was impres-

sive, with an array of round chapels, arched windows, and rising roofs and

towers in perfect symmetry. Four towers at the crossings and over the main

transepts were octagonal, with rows of arched windows and steep pointed

roofs.

Gothic Style

The Gothic style was not called so at the time; during the 12th century, it

was just the new style. The term Gothic was used in a negative way by Italian

Renaissance writers to associate the style with the uncultured premedieval

Goths. The 12th-century style made use of all the new methods of architec-

ture to place a building’s supports on the outside and permit the inside to

be tall, open, and ﬁ lled with light. The high arched ceilings of Gothic ca-

thedrals changed the acoustic properties of the rooms, which led to the fur-

ther development of choral music and polyphonic harmony.

Abbot Suger of the monastery of Saint Denis, north of Paris, pioneered

the style. Saint Denis housed relics of the Virgin Mary, and the abbot

wanted the relics to have a very grand home. He wished the church to be re-

built larger and more in line with his vision of heaven. When the newly de-

signed choir apse was dedicated in 1144, the abbot invited many French

bishops to the ceremony. Many of these bishops soon after began building

and renovation projects in the same style, which became the dominant style

until the Black Death plague of 1350 made it difﬁ cult to ﬁ nd enough

skilled masons.

Cathedrals

109

Gothic cathedrals were staggeringly expensive. Materials and labor ab-

sorbed most of the region’s disposable income for a century. They took a very

long time to build. Amiens Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1269,

which was very fast. Chartres Cathedral took about 75 years. Some took

longer, a century or more, because work was started and stopped. By the

15th century, cathedrals were so covered with elaborate sculpture that they

appear almost impossible to construct. Famous, classic examples of Gothic

art and design include the cathedrals at Amiens, Bourges, Paris, Strasbourg,

and Gloucester. Westminster Abbey in London is the greatest Gothic work

in England.

A Gothic cathedral was always laid out in the form of a cross. Its geometry

was designed around a central square that was doubled or tripled to ﬁ nd the

measurements of the transept or choir. Arches, windows, and walls were di-

vided into smaller units in each higher story. All details are related to other

details in style and size to form a uniﬁ ed appearance. The plan was a celebra-

tion of mathematics and perfect regularity. The crossing, the open area of

the main nave, often had a ﬂ oor inlaid with tile that formed a labyrinth. Pil-

grims were supposed to walk the maze to the center of the design. At Reims

Cathedral, the archbishop’s heart was buried below the labyrinth’s center.

Carved stone was everywhere, along with elaborate stained glass and

carved wood. Even in a brightly lit Gothic cathedral, there are corners where

light never reaches, but stone carvers still positioned ﬁ gures or decorations

there. Stone sculptures cluster around the grand door portals, in relief or

close to full round. Stone traceries to hold stained glass windows, stone sup-

porting columns and piers, and stone ribs in vaulted ceilings were all carved

to look slender and even lacy. The style of the most heavily decorated stone

is called Gothic rayonnant. In late Gothic buildings, the stone was carved

to look like feathers, fans, or leaves.

The windows held by the stone tracery were round or even cloverleaf,

and they were often small. The ﬁ rst real window tracery was designed for

Reims Cathedral in 1211. It pushed architectural plans to become more pre-

cise with the use of drawings and templates. The stone pieces had to ﬁ t to-

gether very exactly when raised to ﬁ t into the window frames.

The Gothic was the period of stained glass. Gothic cathedrals were

ﬂ ooded with light to imitate heaven. The windows were all ﬁ lled with col-

ored glass as picture windows telling stories in a series of panels or as giant

rose windows. The rose window dominated a wall, usually above the front

door. Its design was a complex pattern of circles, diamonds, ﬂ owers, and

human ﬁ gures such as saints or apostles. A row of tall, arched stained glass

windows usually ran underneath the rose window. Tall, arched windows

also ﬁ lled the main walls. The chapel that King Louis IX built to house the

crown of thorns, the Sainte-Chapelle, is nearly all stained glass windows,

50 feet tall, with sufﬁ cient wall space only to support the windows.